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US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

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Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#81

Post by nostromo »

JOnAgain wrote: post #31
nairteashop wrote: post #12

Does anyone know why the number of visas isn't capped on a per-company basis? Last year, apparently 40,000 of the 85,000 available visas went to outsourcing companies, and one outsourcing company, Cognizant, got 9,000 visas! http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134... At my last job, we tried to get an H1 for just one person, and failed in the lottery! I feel there would be much less abuse of the…

Or just rank em by salary/comp. More skilled people => more valuable to the economy => receive higher salary => more likely to get visa (=> pay more in taxes).

I think they should be auctioned off. (Either the company or the individual could pay the final auction price.)

The end result is the same: the most valuable workers are let in. It'd also have a small, but nice benefit: a voluntary revenue stream for the US to spend on whatever it would like (perhaps improved education and training for citizens).

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#82

Post by ksolanki »

logn wrote: post #40
fsk wrote: post #2

They really should call them "indentured servant slave visas". The H1-B visa holder has to leave the country if he gets fired (and doesn't find a new employer quickly), and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over. Because the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job, he becomes more attractive than hiring a US citizen, (assuming equal salary and qualification).

I don't think calling it slavery is accurate, but indentured servitude is close (except I don't think they experience maltreatment or harsh conditions). Anyhow, this article is great: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant One of the similarities that stuck out to me: Most white immigrants arrived in Colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young men and women from Britain or Germany, under the a…

Your point actually makes H1B worse than "indentured servitude" of the past. Many (if not most) H1B folks stick around at one company just waiting for a green card. This kind-of means it is involuntary in some sense. However, unlike indentured servitude, there the "young person" does not automatically get a green card and is not "free to leave" at the end by default. By default, at the end, he/she has to leave the US.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#83

Post by wosos »

conanbatt wrote: post #47
tokenadult wrote: post #26

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

I can speak for Argentina in this case: first and foremost, an average entry-level programmer in argentina might make 600 dollars a month. There is no consideration for your degree in that regard. Second but not least, because ARgentina grows so much on outsourcing contracts, the quality of the job to do is poor and uncommitted. Product management in Argentina is almost non-existent. This means that the most likely j…

Exactly this, in El Salvador for example your employment options grow an order of magnitude if you've any experience working in the US.

Also, you have the possibility to learn about bleeding edge tech in situ.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#84

Post by msvan »

tokenadult wrote: post #26

What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?) (I'm genuinely curious about this…

I live in Northern Europe. It's arguably superior to the US in many ways, but there are some things which we cannot get here.

One thing is size. The US has 300+ million people, whereas my country only has a few million. All communities are smaller here; interesting things get here later or not at all (with bad localizations) because the market is too small. Things are tinier, quieter and get less traction.

Another thing is that there is something of a cultural identity crisis going on. We cannot match the enormous cultural influence of the US, and so a lot of our culture is American. If you've ever talked to someone from Northern Europe and wondered "why does s/he speak English so well?" it's not because of school. One half of our cultural identity is located on the other side of the Atlantic, and we keep in touch with it mostly through backlit screens.

The deluge of information and entertainment that has come from the US since it became a superpower has served as a really efficient marketing strategy. We're not terribly interested in moving to Oklahoma. We have been sold on New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other metropolises in the US, because that's what we read and hear about. These places are perhaps not better than Northern Europe to settle down and start a family in, but they certainly seem more exciting.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#85

Post by pacaro »

hnnewguy wrote: post #62
joe_the_user wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all, relative to other advanced or semi-advanced nations? More applicants than places does not prove that much in a world of scarce jobs. People are dying, literally drowning in the Mediterranean, to get into Europe. As I know, people still apply to work in Qatar even as they engage in work practices that well be "nothing less than murder"in the process…

> What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all You don't have to look very hard to see that the US is still very attractive for migration: about 1 million people, legal, permanent, per year for almost 3 decades[1] (and 1.5MM "temporary"). For comparison, Germany had about 800k in 2011, France 150k, UK 500k. [1] http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigrat...

This document is hugely important to understand. Thank you for posting.

I always found Table 6 to be the most interesting, particularly in debates about immigration — I have a green card as a 9 year long EB3 process (Employment Based, 3rd class - the CIS doesn't value Philosophy degrees as highly as engineering degrees!)

To take the last year for which data are published, 2011

A partial breakdown of new Permanent Resident status issued—informally “green card”

    Family sponsored                  206,585
    Immediate relatives of citizens   209,984 
    Employment based                   14,955
In round numbers for every green card issued on basis of employment, 28 are issued to family members of citizens. This is pretty much the inverse of popular understanding of immigration.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#86

Post by scv119 »

ollysb wrote: post #72
ebiester wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only a few really good places to live for an educated worker. Japan, Australia, Western and Northern Europe, Canada, and the US. I will operationalize "good" as "an intelligent worker can make an exceptional living relative to their country of origin." Each of these places only take a limited amount of immigrants each year. Some are more difficult based on the national language -- learning Danish isn't more…

As a developer you can live anywhere that has a decent internet connection. That's a pretty large portion of the planet these days...

Sorry, there is no DECENT internet connection in China

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

pacaro wrote: post #85
hnnewguy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all You don't have to look very hard to see that the US is still very attractive for migration: about 1 million people, legal, permanent, per year for almost 3 decades[1] (and 1.5MM "temporary"). For comparison, Germany had about 800k in 2011, France 150k, UK 500k. [1] http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigrat...

This document is hugely important to understand. Thank you for posting. I always found Table 6 to be the most interesting, particularly in debates about immigration — I have a green card as a 9 year long EB3 process (Employment Based, 3rd class - the CIS doesn't value Philosophy degrees as highly as engineering degrees!) To take the last year for which data are published, 2011 A partial breakdown of new Permanent Res…

> In round numbers for every green card issued on basis of employment, 28 are issued to family members of citizens. This is pretty much the inverse of popular understanding of immigration.

There are people that don't understand that the US immigration system is primarily family-based? I think lots of people think the motivation for immigration is largely economic (and that's also true, even for the family-based visas), but I don't recall encountering many people that had any mental model of the immigration system that didn't know that being allowed to immigrate legally was largely through family-based classes. Certainly, much of the public political drama centers around that fact (e.g., the whole "anchor babies" thing.)

(Although "Family sponsored" is not, as you present it, necessarily family-of-citizen -- the family-sponsored grouping includes visa classes for family members of Permanent Residents as well.)

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#88

Post by JetSpiegel »

lolwutf wrote: post #73
ebiester wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only a few really good places to live for an educated worker. Japan, Australia, Western and Northern Europe, Canada, and the US. I will operationalize "good" as "an intelligent worker can make an exceptional living relative to their country of origin." Each of these places only take a limited amount of immigrants each year. Some are more difficult based on the national language -- learning Danish isn't more…

With the advent of remote work upon us, I find it hard that you'd be limited to those countries. In fact, literally the ENTIRE WORLD is your oyster, assuming you can reliably, regularly find power, wifi, and a team that'll work with you on your timezone's timeframe.

> In fact, literally the ENTIRE WORLD is your oyster, assuming you can reliably, regularly find power, wifi, and a team that'll work with you on your timezone's timeframe.

So, this is about what the parent said.

Re: US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

#89

Post by avmich »

JamesArgo wrote: post #69
ebiester wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only a few really good places to live for an educated worker. Japan, Australia, Western and Northern Europe, Canada, and the US. I will operationalize "good" as "an intelligent worker can make an exceptional living relative to their country of origin." Each of these places only take a limited amount of immigrants each year. Some are more difficult based on the national language -- learning Danish isn't more…

Canada will take anyone with an engineering degree.

What do you mean by "take"? Canadian employers aren't very familiar with a concept of working visa in practice - they prefer you to first have a permanent residence, then they can talk about hiring you. To get permanent residence, you have to pass the process, which is many months long.

Am I substantially missing something?

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