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Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

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Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#791

Post by _ph_ »

rayiner wrote: post #677
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is the extraordinary time it takes to approve or reject a greencard petition. In many cases it takes years - or even over a decade or more. That's insane. People bring their spouses here, they have kids who are born and go to school here, and all along the way their immigration status is uncertain. And meanwhile they are tied to whatever job they're in. It's…

It’s insane because it’s a kludge. The US doesn’t really have a general purpose skilled immigration visa. The H1B visa is a temporary worker visa. There is this whole legal fiction where, when you get one, you have to announce non-immigrant intent with a wink, then once you’re here you say “I just now changed my mind and I want to stay here, can I get a green card.” It was never designed to be a payday to permanent r…

There should be both. I am German, work for an American company. It shouldn't be difficult for me to move to an US office for some time and return back home. Of course, there is some likelyhood, that if I stayed at a place for more than a coumple of months, that I want to stay at that place long term, and this should be possible without too high bareers.

Here in Germany, you basically need a job offer which matches certain criteria, to be get a temporary residency. This can be prolonged as long as you stay employed in Germany. Similar rules exist for students. I have an Indian colleague who studied in Germany and now is working here. If you stay in the country for 5 years, it is pretty much just a formality to apply for unlimited residency and it is also reasonably straight-forward to even get German nationality, though this is less common.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#792

Post by ocommentator »

reissbaker wrote: post #200
jedberg wrote: post #9

Credit where credit is due, this is a good move. The H1B program has been abused for a long time. It sounds like these changes should help make it too expensive for the fraudulent abuse to continue.

The higher pay seems like an overall positive change to reduce the prevalence of "body shops" and so that H1-Bs aren't an easy way for companies to lower overall pay rate. I'm not sure that narrowing degree qualifications is a win; high-skill immigration is a significant boon to America's economy, and I think ability to do the work, and American company willingness to pay above-rate salaries (legally mandated now to…

"…to lower overall pay rate." What's with this nationalism and view human value? Just because a person was or wasn't born in a certain place, something they had no ability to affect, they have more or less right to a certain job with a certain salary in a certain place?

Looking at it from the other perspective of the individual who can get a job, they are probably not lowering their salaries, but rather significantly increasing it.

And looking at this from an historical context for the USA makes it even more absurd. Most people with these high paying jobs in the US are direct descendants of people who immigrated to the US with the sole purpose of getting a higher salary – because of poverty and lack of economic opportunities in their home countries.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#793

Post by woem »

sisama wrote: post #664

I estimated the new prevailing wages for NYC/SF/SEA using z-scores and the new %-iles. For NYC: (I II III IV) = (116,003 137,323 160,321 203,405) For SF: (I II III IV) = (138,283 162,157 187,910 236,155) For SEA: (I II III IV) = (128,082 148,708 170,957 212,639) The level for an applicant is determined by their education + experience. Level I is supposed to correspond to an entry-level role requiring specialized skil…

About 86% of H1Bs at Amazon, and 55% of H1Bs at Google won't make the cut anymore.

source: https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#794

Post by lonesword »

alixander wrote: post #734
rmk wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For "exceptional" people, there's the O-1 visa category. But candidate no. 1 likely would not qualify. You seem to think that the H1 program should place candidate 1 over candidate 2. Let me give you a counterexample: Suppose you are hiring candidate 1 to write an app that will help you single men find hot women to date in a 5 mile radius in your 4-billion dollar, VC-backed startup. The second candidate is being hire…

The scenarios you’ve posed doesn’t make candidate 2 any less replaceable. Maybe candidate 1 is needed for whatever advanced AI the dating app uses, but there’s many non-foreign options for the function candidate 2 is performing at ImportantCorp.

Yes, I think what the parent comment intended to say was that the UI for the CT scan machine is more valuable for the society (and hence candidate 2 should be given preference) than the fancy AI algorithm that goes into the dating app, even if it would actually take an ETH grad to come up with it.

Yes, super subjective, but that's the point - it would be difficult to account for these things in the law.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#795

Post by lonesword »

zerr wrote: post #278
908B64B197 wrote: post #25

This is a great move. The current H1B program made no sense at all. If I wanted to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup or A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop my only path f…

So all the doors should open for the person with a rich family background, while the poor one should stay in poverty?

What about an Indian student who did a masters from ETH/EPFL, interned at CERN, and _then_ applied for an H1B visa? Will it mean that the said student is from a "rich family background"?

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#796

Post by whack »

rayiner wrote: post #677
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is the extraordinary time it takes to approve or reject a greencard petition. In many cases it takes years - or even over a decade or more. That's insane. People bring their spouses here, they have kids who are born and go to school here, and all along the way their immigration status is uncertain. And meanwhile they are tied to whatever job they're in. It's…

It’s insane because it’s a kludge. The US doesn’t really have a general purpose skilled immigration visa. The H1B visa is a temporary worker visa. There is this whole legal fiction where, when you get one, you have to announce non-immigrant intent with a wink, then once you’re here you say “I just now changed my mind and I want to stay here, can I get a green card.” It was never designed to be a payday to permanent r…

> The H1B visa is a temporary worker visa. There is this whole legal fiction where, when you get one, you have to announce non-immigrant intent with a wink, then once you’re here you say “I just now changed my mind and I want to stay here, can I get a green card.”

This is not true. Your description is accurate for the F1 student visa and TN work visa for Canadians - applicants for those visas are not allowed to have immigration intent. There is no such requirement for the H1B visa.

The poster you replied to is spot-on about the ridiculous wait times for green cards, and this delay has nothing to do with the H1B program itself. The government really needs to speed this up, so that immigrants and their families aren't living in fear of the next arbitrary Trump executive order.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#797

Post by em500 »

ocommentator wrote: post #792
reissbaker wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher pay seems like an overall positive change to reduce the prevalence of "body shops" and so that H1-Bs aren't an easy way for companies to lower overall pay rate. I'm not sure that narrowing degree qualifications is a win; high-skill immigration is a significant boon to America's economy, and I think ability to do the work, and American company willingness to pay above-rate salaries (legally mandated now to…

"…to lower overall pay rate." What's with this nationalism and view human value? Just because a person was or wasn't born in a certain place, something they had no ability to affect, they have more or less right to a certain job with a certain salary in a certain place? Looking at it from the other perspective of the individual who can get a job, they are probably not lowering their salaries, but rather significantly…

[flagged]

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#799

Post by nullc »

rmk wrote: post #694
908B64B197 wrote: post #25

This is a great move. The current H1B program made no sense at all. If I wanted to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup or A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop my only path f…

For "exceptional" people, there's the O-1 visa category. But candidate no. 1 likely would not qualify. You seem to think that the H1 program should place candidate 1 over candidate 2. Let me give you a counterexample: Suppose you are hiring candidate 1 to write an app that will help you single men find hot women to date in a 5 mile radius in your 4-billion dollar, VC-backed startup. The second candidate is being hire…

> You seem to think that the H1 program should place candidate 1 over candidate 2.

The bodyshop spams the program with a zillion and one replaceable cogs (from the perspectie of the bodyshop).

So if you compare C1 with all of the alternative C2 options submitted by the bodyshop, the C2 selection is many times (even hundreds of times!) more likely to get picked.

Re: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay

#800

Post by woem »

Will_Do wrote: post #169

> Under the new rule, the required wage level for entry-level workers would rise to the 45th percentile of their profession’s distribution, from the current requirement of the 17th percentile. The requirement for the highest-skilled workers would rise to the 95th percentile, from the 67th percentile. This is pretty abstract and probably the most important detail. How much would a software engineer have to make to qua…

A Software Engineer in the SF area with 4+ yoe would need to make $250k+ in base salary.
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