81–90 of 111 posts
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Actually I am quite interested in hearing about these "H1b cartels." I feel that this issue is underreported. I am also still quite bitter about the Disney World bait-and-switch, and so I believe this issue deserves more attention. I work in higher education, and H1bs have been very useful for attracting talented faculty from all over the world. It's neither a perfect nor fundamentally broken system, but to understan…
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Where in the recording is the quote you're talking about?
Watch from 2:32 in the video on this page https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bannon-flattered...
I'd like to hear the quote in context and not speculate or repeat partisan spin based on one sentence he once said.
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> Steve Bannon would prefer fewer legal immigrants I think that's a fair characterization of his position. Fewer. But I'm asking about a source for the claim "[Steve Bannon] wants to stop skilled immigrants from coming to America".
When he's talking about CEOs of tech companies, "skilled" is assumed.
I'm well aware of trumps desire to crackdown on ILLEGAL immigrants but fail to understand how that's going to affect the normal immigrants that make up Silicon Valley like the Russian and Indian used as examples in the article. The travel ban was the first thing I've heard from him that was abhorrent and the near universal smack down it's received from every direction gives me hope that Trump will be kept in his plac…
While the policy rhetoric often focuses on "illegals", the substantive policy from the Republican Party is anti-immigrant, not just anti-illegal-immigrant. The bill just introduced to cut the number of green cards issued in half, eliminate the diversity lottery, and impose permanent cuts in the number of admitted refugees would be exhibit 1.
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Do you have a source for Steve Bannon's argument?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-explained-his... FTA: On a March 2016 episode, Bannon said that restoring sovereignty meant reducing immigration. In his radio shows, he criticized the federal H-1B visa programs that permit U.S. companies to fill technical positions with workers from overseas. The “progressive plutocrats in Silicon Valley,” Bannon said, want unlimited ability to go around the world and…
Beyond the obvious awfulness, the "progressive plutocrats" bit is impressively slimy. I guess he had to name their politics to differentiate them from Trump's record as a plutocrat employing immigrants at (illegally) low wages?
Trump's immigration policies are truly abhorrent. I agree with the article that tech doesn't work like a factory, it's people are not necessarily fungible. However, attracting the very best people is not how the H1B visa system is being (ab)used at the moment - for example the minimum wage was set back in 1989, and should be more like $130,000 in 2017, given inflation. So much as it pains me to agree on anything with…
Now, If we do set the minimum salary at that level SV will be just fine, but what about non-NYC or SV regions, who also have tech companies (believe it or not) and yet much lower income median. We will be embracing newcomers to only come to the coast, which is hardly Trump's point here.
Now I realize that there are real specialties that you can't train someone for that easily, and if that's the case, then those people should be making a lot of money no matter where they are located.
Isn't the solution to H1B abuse to just let people work anywhere they want after being granted the visa? This would then let the market determine the salary for this class of workers, and should put a stop to the abuses by big consulting firms.
I'd love to see the H-1B visa cap expanded, I'd just like it to be done alongside a move to let workers actually enter the labor market like citizens. The current "must pay market rates" setup is a bizarre attempt to duplicate market results under a command system, and we see all of the mis-labelling and other abuses we'd expect with that approach.
I did see that as of 2017 there's a brief window to find a new visa'd job after leaving an H-1B position, which is a nice start. But I'd really rather see the thing reformed via something like "he's a skilled labor visa, go for it". Even if employers were still forced to apply for visa slots it'd be progress to say "here are people with visas, here are companies with slots, coordinate however you'd like".
Questions for Valley workers: at what point is enough enough? What will it take to pack it up and leave? Would you consider moving to a different country or returning to a home country? If so, would you continue to work for your current employer, would you look for a job in the local market, or would you found a startup?
I had started making plans to leave in late 2014. I convinced myself that if the administration does not do anything to fix green card backlogs by end of that calendar year, I should leave in 2015. Obama's State of the Union address gave new hopes, and I stayed back. The promises made then went through the red tape and USCIS finally published its ruling last November [1]. Unfortunately it did not contain any relief for skilled immigrants stuck in green card backlogs.
My current plan is to wait until end of this calendar year to see how things progress. My green card priority date is April 2012 and, as things stand now, I am still many years away from getting a green card. I will re-evaluate in December. If I don't see this administration making any concrete plans to fix things for the green card backlog, I will leave in 2018.
H.R.392: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 [2] gives me hope. It currently has 66 co-sponsors [3] and will hopefully pass.
H.R. 392, Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act replaces the current per-country caps
on immigration with a first-come first-served visa system without increasing the total number
of available visas. The current system of awarding no more than 7% of available employment-based
visas to one country is discriminatory. It ultimately imposes decades-long wait times for people
from some countries, creating a backlog of qualified workers. The bill makes no changes to the
current law limiting US employers to hire foreign workers except when there are no qualified,
willing, able, and available American citizens.
[2] http://chaffetz.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentI...
[3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...
- Secondly, right now, it is the only pathway for legal immigration. If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amount of hate I see piled on people trying to come here via the employment-based immigration is insane. The thing that infuriates me about the dialogue on H-1B visas is that they are effectively trying to ban skilled immigration, and exclude people like me from coming. I've written about my personal story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13530886
- Thirdly, the HN user ones_and_zeros is one of the most immigrant-hating users on HN, and is capable of spewing incredibly hateful vitriol against immigrants, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11313462 To begin with, he believes in a bunch of lies (like the not being able to change jobs part). But even if he got his facts straight, his views are so extreme that only a total and complete ban of all immigrants might satisfy him. It's better not to engage with balls of hatred like the HN user ones_and_zeros. Talk to him enough, and you realize that he just hates every immigrant from the depths of his heart.