Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay • Hacker News Board

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

#881

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

quantgenius wrote: post #846

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…

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is that it is racist. When the law was passed, the grand compromise was that it would not change the racial makeup of the country. So there are country specific (which is really just race specific with a wink and a nod) quotas for different countries. This means if you are from Sweden or Ireland, it's actually pretty easy to get a green card. There is even a…

Shhh.... We don't tell American citizens that they are largely xenophobic, even though we have PEW Research data to prove it.

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

#882

Post by foolinaround » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

gopi wrote: post #751

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…

For Engineers and Doctors from India, its takes more than 20 years to get Green card now. Its because of the arcane country quota system which assigns the same numerical quota for each country regardless of population, so India and Monaco get the same number of Green cards. This is the remnant of the pre-1965 racist immigration country quota system which allowed only European whites into US.

there is no racist element to this; all countries have the same quotas.

India, China, Mexico, Philippines etc have backlogs because more people try to get in from these.

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

#883

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

unishark wrote: post #692

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…

The time to process applications is indeed on the order of months. https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt I believe the I-140 is for employment-based green cards. The long wait times are due to annual quotas by country, not slow handling of paperwork.

EB immigrant visas take ages and then there's the archaic process of some poor schmuck sitting in an USCIS office asking the questions and checking boxes on a form that you submitted a second time...

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

#884

Post by foolinaround » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

quantgenius wrote: post #846

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…

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is that it is racist. When the law was passed, the grand compromise was that it would not change the racial makeup of the country. So there are country specific (which is really just race specific with a wink and a nod) quotas for different countries. This means if you are from Sweden or Ireland, it's actually pretty easy to get a green card. There is even a…

Need citation for this.

when the basis is country-specific, and all countries are treated equally, it is purely supply/demand.

No one applies from Afghanistan, so it is easier to get a GC -- so is US biased towards Afghanistan?

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

#885

Post by tertiary » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #840

victor106 wrote: post #46

I finally agree with something this administration is doing. This is a solid move. H1B has been/is being abused by all companies (big and small) for a number of years at the cost of not only American workers but also the visa holders. The only ones benefiting are the companies that sponsor H1B visas by suppressing wages for everyone. I just hope the new administration don't role back these changes. Typically when a n…

I do think it’s strange that HN has a supposed stance against political discussion, but allows discussion of the one popular policy from a very unpopular administration. Seems like a double standard leaning to the right.

Exactly this. It has been frustrating watching basically any other news about this administration get flagged to death (or at least shoved off the front page) because "politics isn't allowed on HN." Then, we get an article like this and are expected to pretend that it isn't politics when it's happening in the context of the election being weeks away and while people are literally at the polls casting their votes as we speak.

There's loads of interesting news coming from the administration each day, but when only the items that least offend people's sensibilities make it through the flagging brigade, it acts as a politically biased filter.

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

#886

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #746

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…

I assume your talking about the visa dates? The actual process is pretty quick, a friend went from start to finish with a green card in 1.5 years. The backlog is due to: 1) the limited number of immigrant visa defined in the law and 2) country based diversity quotas.

That's not "pretty quick". That's 18 months.

Pretty quick would be a month.

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

#887

Post by JAlexoid » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

tootahe45 wrote: post #757

epicureanideal wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small startup.

As a New Zealander, this level of pay just baffles me. Is the US the only place where SWE's get paid well compared to other professions?

It's not "US", it's particular regions. San Francisco Bay Area pays a lot, while Cleaveland(OH) pays a third of that.

Globally it's the hotspots that pay a lot - London, Dublin, Moscow, Amsterdam, etc.

But then the reason why the salaries have skyrocketed - is just lack of supply.

I'm planning on leaving the field at 36 already. Moving to doing gardening work and running an olive grove... and there's no one that can replace me in NYC at a snap of their fingers. I bet there are people globally, but getting to work in US is a PITA.

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

#888

Post by AlphaWeaver » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

jason2323 wrote: post #876

I'm actually curious on the effects of this on international students who come to the US to study CS. One of the biggest reasons international students come to the US is to be able to live and work after graduation. If anything, this will deter international students from studying in the US, thus reducing much needed out-of-state revenue that colleges get from international students, which consequently only raises th…

Why would this deter international students from studying in the US?

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

#889

Post by ocommentator » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #855

ocommentator wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"…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…

Oddly the same could be said for Argentina, Mexico or Venezuela, but people aren’t knocking to get into their economies. Why does the US owe the world any more than other countries? At some point people have to be responsible for their own self determination —as leftists used to clamor for a couple of decades ago. Now they want a shortcut instead of doing the hard work to build viable economies. It took us a few hund…

This is a very odd argument in the USA context. People showed self determination by emigrating from poverty and lack of economic opportunity in Europe – they didn't stay "…doing the hard work to build viable economies."

Now the US people are denying other people the same opportunities their not-to-distant grandparents had. I guess it's an insiders market.

I find your concept of US "owing" anyone anything strange. Depending on your political opinions you might think that humans "owe" each other equal opportunity.

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

#890

Post by pembrook » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

spongepoc wrote: post #834

Cherian_Abraham wrote: post #117

“ Because those required wage increases take effect this week, existing H-1B holders looking to renew their visas might not qualify unless their employers raise their salaries accordingly.” This is really bad. Families are going to get told to leave. I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong.

We are facing record unemployment so people are having this happen to them across the board. The people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic but are struggling to find work because of the abundance of H-1B holders also "haven't done anything wrong". The question now is do we continue that flow of labour while jobs are scarce, or stem that flow while we get back on our feet again? On this, the Trump administration…

> people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic but are struggling to find work because of the abundance of H-1B holders

That’s a straw man. Those people do not exist. Look at the data.

There’s currently 18 million unemployed Americans. The majority of pandemic related job losses are low wage retail, hospitality and restaurant workers.

There’s a total of 500k H1b visa holders in the US, the vast majority of which are in IT.

There is very little (if any) overlap between those groups.

You aren’t suddenly going to make more money by kicking out all the immigrants. That’s not how the economy works. Those H1b holders are also consumers who spend a majority of their salaries on taxes and products/services in the US. Kicking out 500k people would further hurt unemployment in sectors hit most by the pandemic.