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Comment by biocomputation | Hacker News Reader

End H1-B immediately.

Americans, many who simply cannot move to other countries, need to be first in line for access to economic opportunities in this country.

It's utterly disgusting to make American workers second class citizens in their own country. How many more Disney's, Qualcomms, and Southern California Edison's do we need to see before we realize that the program is harmful to Americans?

Then there's the matter of non-profits being exempt from the caps on H1-B visas - this is a significant reason why PHD graduates have trouble finding jobs in their field.

H1-B is bad for America. In my mind, ending H1-B is a matter of social justice for Americans, just like marriage equality.

( Before anyone thinks that I'm a Trump supporter, please be aware that I'm a gay man, and life long Democrat, who is absolutely horrified at the thought of what Trump's choices for the Supreme Court could mean for marriage equality and social justice. Just to be clear: I don't support Trump in any way, shape, or form. )

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So free market for commodities but throw out the common man trying to make a better life for himself?

Everyone here arguing against H1b saying that US companies should prefer American citizens first are forgetting that most multi-nationals or even American companies earn their money globally. IBM,Apple, Microsoft, Google all earn as much money out of US as inside. Yelling "dey tuk er jerbs" is going to drive them away to where they will find more programmers to do their jobs. You guys don't understand that companies are not tied to national borders.

And plenty of these companies: Microsoft, Google, Pepsi, Mastercard etc have Indian CEOs who are/were on their H1b. Kick them out too?

51% of billion dollar silicon valley companies were founded by immigrants. If you are asking to shut down legal migration and build a wall for illegal immigration you are either deluded about the market or have no idea how economy works.

You live by free market, you die by it.

So if you're not a Trump supporter and actually want to give this a fair shake. Have you perhaps asked WHY H1-B employees are so attractive? They are living in America (same cost of living), so why are their salaries lower? Who is the real second-class human here?

P.S: The answer is that H1-B's are virtually locked into their jobs and have no negotiating power. Give them that and American employees will look magically more attractive.

I'm not a Trump supporter. I didn't vote for him, and as noted in my previous post, I am truly horrified when I think about what his Supreme Court choices could mean for marriage equality ( among other things! ).

* We don't need to give H1-B guest workers negotiating power.

* We need to end H1-B and send the guest workers home.

* We need to replace the guest workers with American workers.

Access to jobs, and the economic mobility accompanied by it, is a bedrock social justice issue in America.

It is an enormous social injustice to make American workers compete with foreign nationals for jobs. Frankly, I don't see how it's possible read about American workers having to train their foreign worker replacements and not see it as anything less than deeply and tragically wrong.

I am a trump supporter, and work in tech management. I agree with 100% of what you're saying. I've personally seen the abuses of the H-1B program.

I know that the required job searches prior to utilizing the H-1B program are basically perfunctory. I know that the workers under the program are abused. I know it depresses wages for American workers overall.

Its funny, I generally despise the term "social justice," but, you're dead on here.

Thanks for your remarks.

We'll definitely have to agree to disagree on Trump, but you and I do have common ground in our belief that access to employment is an issue of social justice, and that the H1-B program has been abused and corrupted in a way that has created profoundly unjust outcomes for Americans.

The United States already has a program for legal immigration, right? Why do we even need H1-B?

> The United States already has a program for legal immigration, right?

H-1B is part of the immigration path for many immigrants, since it's a dual intent visa. There's a couple paths to immigrating on a permanent basis to the US, H-1B to green card to citizenship being one of them.

> The United States already has a program for legal immigration, right? Why do we even need H1-B?

I'm pretty convinced you don't have solid understanding about inner workings of immigration and H1-B. You just have some hatred against this visa.

Most of jobs holded by h1-b candidates are temporary and their ranks stand at the very bottom of the food chain. These jobs last not more than few months and in very rare cases 1-2 years. So, they are the first ones to leave the company before the permanent ones.

H1-b candidates are very expensive to hire. Although, they do get paid very low.

Now, please go and educate five other people so that we can end this BS propaganda.

>> You just have some hatred against this visa.

Jobs are a bedrock social justice issue in the United States. You're free to characterize me remarks however you like, but I'm pretty sure that the fact that 60-80% of H1-B visas are issued to citizens of only two countries is a sign that the program has been hopelessly corrupted.

> I'm pretty sure that the fact that 60-80% of H1-B visas are issued to citizens of only two countries is a sign that the program has been hopelessly corrupted.

Those two countries are also highly populated in the world so the numbers are proportional

> H1-b candidates are very expensive to hire. Although, they do get paid very low.

Huh. I don't feel horribly underpaid. I'm pretty sure I'm making about the same as my American citizen peers.

are you a full time employee or a contractor? first layer companies charge around $80 per hour. Contractors get paid around $50.

I'm a salaried full time employee at a major tech company.

Good for you. This is why you don't feel underpaid

here they come, crawling out of the woodwork...emboldened. and this is just the beginning of who knows how long a time period..at least 4 years , maybe indefinite.

both this and parent comment who mentioned he is gay.

both pretty much saying, as long as it does not affect us and our group, let us disrupt the lives of people who came here legally and have paid taxes etc and throw them back.

its not that you are saying change the policy for new guys coming in who can then decide whether to come in- you actively want to disrupt the lives of people you probably see and work with everyday, maybe go to happy hour with.

who came here and have built a life with some long hard path to a greencard implied when they chose to take the H1 path.

today this group, tomorrow another, then the next - attack the non-enfranchised and weak, weaken the next group, attack.

and so it has begun...

i am a bit nervous of having typed this out.

fear.

>> here they come, crawling out of the woodwork...emboldened.

Who exactly is crawling out of the woodwork? People who are against H1-B because it creates profoundly unjust outcomes for American workers?

When H1-B is discussed on HN, a lot of the participants who are American citizens have written a lot of negative remarks about the program. Are you suggesting that all these people are closet racists as well?

H1-B is unpopular program with American workers because access to jobs is one of the most important elements of social mobility in the US and a hell of a lot of American workers just happen to believe that they should not have to compete with foreign nationals for economic opportunity.

I've said it many times in this thread: Access to jobs is a bedrock social justice issue in America.

No one here has made a single personal attack or nasty remark to anyone else.

Your remarks make you sound like a proper fascist, and you really should apologize.

one of your earlier comments can be paraphrased to "round em up and throw em out" and i am a fascist :)?

just answer this - is this what you propose: a H1b guy had been here 8 years, greencard is in process 4 years, scheduled to come in 2 more.. you want him fired and sent back home right away?

btw, i run a business. when you hire and do it right - you hire for value produced and then consider cost of worker. as a consumer you want the best prices. but you are not comfortable with how the market will ensure it delivers your want, especially in your field of work.

crawling out of woodwork refers to the closet trump supporters who did not speak up until now, there are plenty and you will see plenty more. like the guy whose comment i replied to originally. 47% and trending upwards.

trump has used extremely skilled techniques to mobilize crowds and influence people - even very intelligent people. he will continue to do so, since mob momentum is very very hard to fight against.

whether you realize it or no, its not about specific issues anymore because each of them is small by itself. you said you are gay, so just wait your turn after the H1b dudes, mexicans working fields producing our food and a few others are dealt with.

>> one of your earlier comments can be paraphrased to "round em up and throw em out" and i am a fascist :)?

No, that's not how paraphrasing works. Rewriting my remarks in that fashion is called twisting someone's words. I said H1-B should end and we should send the guest workers home.

>> just answer this - is this what you propose: a H1b guy had been here 8 years, greencard is in process 4 years, scheduled to come in 2 more.. you want him fired and sent back home right away?

Yes, but he can stay long enough to train his American replacement.

Is this unjust? It's far less unjust than making American citizens train their replacements and then sending them to the unemployment line.

ok, thank you for replying and making my case.

Ok, lets walk through a scenario, how that might work in practice.

- A law is enacted that says that H1b workers must leave US after training their replacement.

- One of the big five companies puts out a requirement for a Software engineer with 10 years of experience who is also a US US citizen.

Currently, there are about a thousand job openings for software engineers with 10 years of experience in all big 5 companies combined that they are not able to fill, so a change is law is not required for this and won't do any good here.

- So say they relax the rules and say anyone can apply and will get trained.

- A laid off steel plant worker applies for the position of a software engineer.

- Once hired a H1b worker starts training him for the job that he was doing. Which might take a lot of years. Nothing against steel plant workers, they are just as honest and hardworking as any engineer. It would have taken me the same number of years to be good at steel manufacturing, just the transition takes time.

Now if I am any of the top 5 companies I am thinking, it will take a decade for us to hire these replacements and make the transition, and they are right. So what do they do, they come up with their own plan. They send that H1b worker home (india/china) and say 'you know what work from home' or they send him to a third country like Ireland or Canada and get him to work from there. Effectively its a sum negative for US economy because a tax paying job has now left US.

> - So say they relax the rules and say anyone can apply and will get trained. - A laid off steel plant worker applies for the position of a software engineer

This is a fantasy world. Companies aren't going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training people who have no experience.

> We need to replace the guest workers with American workers.

I object to the idea that I am as substitutable as a bag of rice or a tonne of pig iron.

I understand that you object to it.

In terms of your value to your employer, is it not true?

> In terms of your value to your employer, is it not true?

I work for humans, so: Nope.

Humans have a long record of classifying people in that way, so; yep.

If you don't like the way I just passive-aggressively took your glib, evidenceless hipster comeback and repeated it back it to you, don't spout that sort of passive aggressive childish crap. If you want adult conversations, you know where to find us.

Please know that many of my responses here have been hastily typed and that I in no way meant to suggest that a person is interchangeable in the same way as a bag of rice or a ton of pig iron.

I simply believe that American workers should get first crack at all economic opportunities in this country and that it is unjust to make Americans compete with foreign nationals for jobs.

I'd prefer if you just said it's because you'd like protectionism to lead to higher wages for American citizens.

Oddly enough, right now, the USA skims the world's talent this way. You get to tax the brightest, you get to profit from the companies they found here, the people they employ here, the business they do here.

I'm here on the E3. Australia has turned up for every US war since Korea. Our blood is mixed with yours in the mud of a dozen nations on four continents, including ours.

Our reward, as one of my colleagues quipped, is that the US gets to take our brightest people.

>I'd prefer if you just said it's because you'd like protectionism to lead to higher wages for American citizens.

If he does want "protectionism to lead to higher wages for Americans", why is that wrong? The purpose of any government is to advance the interests of its own citizens first and foremost.

>Oddly enough, right now, the USA skims the world's talent this way. You get to tax the brightest, you get to profit from the companies they found here, the people they employ here, the business they do here.

I agree with you that inviting the world's brightest to come here certainly benefits America, but the system is being abused to bring in average foreign employees to the detriment of American tech workers(e.g., the Disney case). This practice should end, with H1B focused on extraordinary candidates only.

>I'm here on the E3. Australia has turned up for every US war since Korea. Our blood is mixed with yours in the mud of a dozen nations on four continents, including ours.

This is a bizarre comment; what relevance does it have? Should H1B favor military allies rather than the best candidates? Why does someone else's wartime sacrifice justify your presence here? Does their sacrifice nullify American sovereignty? If the people or their representatives decide to limit the flow of foreign workers, that is their right and that right supersedes any non-Americans privilege to come here.

>Our reward, as one of my colleagues quipped, is that the US gets to take our brightest people.

America isn't "taking" your brightest people, like some form of intellectual impressment. Those people are exercising free will and -choosing- to come here, as you seem more than happy to have done.

>> If he does want "protectionism to lead to higher wages for Americans", why is that wrong? The purpose of any government is to advance the interests of its own citizens first and foremost.

Yes, this is exactly what I want. This is social justice for American workers.

>> If the people or their representatives decide to limit the flow of foreign workers, that is their right and that right supersedes any non-Americans privilege to come here.

Exactly. I've never spent a single day in India and I wouldn't dream of telling the Indian people how to run their country, nor would I tell them that acting in the best interests of their citizens is somehow wrong.

Yet with H1-B, I feel like huge corporations and foreign nationals are exploiting the system in a way that produces profoundly unjust outcomes for American workers.

I am a H1b worker and a Indian national, I did my masters in one of the top universities in US and in the past 10 years that I have been in US, have worked at 2 of the big 5 companies. Yes for past 10 years I have been on H1b Visa, why you might ask ? because you see, Indians don't get green cards for decades (vs a Australian national or an Irish national you can get a green card in less than 3 years), so we are forced to be in H1b visa, until we get a green card.

But I agree with you, go ahead and remove the H1b visa and send all of us back home. All I then ask is that Indian government enacts laws similar to China (which I think it will, given the current Prime Minister of India) and blocks US companies from operating freely in India, so Indians get a shot at building their own Google, Facebook and Uber. Force local companies to use homegrown cloud rather than the one that Amazon and MSFT sells. After all why use services of these companies if you don't get a chance at building them. Make it a patriotic mission not to use IT from US firms and build it ourselves. To steal your words, anything less of a response than that is deeply and tragically wrong.

Remember, europeans built ships and explored the world because turks closed access land route via Constantinople. Go ahead provide us with that impetus, we will compete with US firms on a global stage.

I'm very sorry that you are upset by the fact that American citizens believe Americans shouldn't have to compete with foreign nationals for jobs.

I can totally understand how you might feel like it's an attack against you personally, but it isn't.

Abuse of the H1-B system has created profoundly unjust outcomes for American workers, and as an American citizen I feel like I should speak out against programs that are harmful to my fellow citizens.

>> But I agree with you, go ahead and remove the H1b visa and send all of us back home. All I then ask is that Indian government enacts laws similar to China (which I think it will, given the current Prime Minister of India) and blocks US companies from operating freely in India, so Indians get a shot at building their own Google, Facebook and Uber.

>> Make it a patriotic mission not to use IT from US firms and build it ourselves.

I wish you and India nothing but success and prosperity no matter what path you and your country choose!

India should absolutely do what needs to be done to protect its citizens and put them first in line for economic opportunities. Just like they do right now!

>> Go ahead provide us with that impetus, we will compete with US firms on a global stage.

Competition for US firms, in concert with ending the H1-B would produce best of both world results for Americans, both as employees and as consumers. I absolutely welcome any alternative to companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

Well I really don't think any of this is good for the world, it will lead to a more closed societies, suspicion, mutual hatred and wars. If anything, we need to move in a direction were companies of all countries are allowed to compete freely across the globe and employees and employers are free to choose who they want to work with.

PS: I was sarcastic in my previous comment, only to highlight the fact that protectionism in US will be met with protectionism in other countries as well and thats terrible for human progress and well being.

// After 10 years of living in this country I have sincerely come to believe that majority people in this country support open societies based on merit rather than closed ones based on alliances and privilege of birth.

This is textbook tribal protectionism. The result is usually more protectionism from all countries and the destruction of the WTO. Another poster clearly laid out the possible reactions from the Indian government (for example). Your tech companies are making MILLIONS in these other countries, learn how to spread that wealth more efficiently.

The world has known only ONE model of peace (yes world peace, look at the metrics), and that is globalized trade, take that away and we'll be back at each other throats.

"The world has known only ONE model of peace (yes world peace, look at the metrics), and that is globalized trade, take that away and we'll be back at each other throats."

This seems ripe for a reference request. When has there been either globalized trade or a period of sustained world peace? I'm most definitely skeptical, and would happily be convinced otherwise.

Study[1] after study[2] has analyzed this. You wouldn't know it if you watched enough news, but you are currently living in a period of sustained world peace (unless you live in a localized regional conflict) and trade is fully globalized. In fact, most of the war-torn regions in the world are ones that are economically estranged. We don't think twice about bombing the shit out of Syria because..who cares, it won't affect us. But we dare not do so with China, they buy so many government bonds! The average citizen doesn't actively think about this, but I assure you your government is (even if unconsciously).

[1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/matthew-o-jackson-can-...

[2] http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/38/4/445.abstract

Thanks for the links!

I see now what you were getting at with respect to the influence of trade and war. That makes a lot of sense to me. I was pushing back at the absolutism of your statement. I agree that the trend of world violence is downward and the trend of global trade is upward.

I think statements like "The world has known only ONE model of peace" don't reflect the nuance of the claims made by your references. For example, the hypothesis of "The Impact of War on Trade: An Interrupted Times-Series Study" is "trade promotes peace".

The Jackson paper[0] includes a stronger statement: "In the context of the alliances we have analyzed, trade motives are essential to avoiding wars and sustaining stable networks,", but all like all good science, acknowledges "in the context of the alliances we have analyzed".

Like I said, the premises and findings of these papers make sense to me, and I don't find them surprising, but I don't think they support such an absolute statement.

Thanks again for the links! I wouldn't have likely have come across them otherwise. Good stuff!

[0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15277

Are you using "textbook tribal protectionism" like it's supposed to be some kind of insult or like it's something I'm supposed to feel ashamed about?

Because I'm not ashamed.

Jobs are a bedrock social justice issue in the United States. H1-B creates( and will continue to create ) profoundly unjust outcomes for American workers.

>> The world has known only ONE model of peace (yes world peace, look at the metrics), and that is globalized trade, take that away and we'll be back at each other throats.

Social justice for all is a basic requirement for peace in all groups regardless of scale.

Education is a social justice issue. Employment is not. One is an equal opportunity, the other is an equal outcome (not a guarantee).

Train and retrain your workforce as much as needed on the tax payers dime, but you are never guaranteed a job.

> Jobs are a bedrock social justice issue in the United States

How many times are you going to repeat this?

You should be wary of protectionism.

I'm an American and I work in tech with a bunch of people on H1-Bs, and I think your proposition is ridiculous. The people I work with are really good. We interview a ton of Americans as well, but there just aren't enough strong candidates to fill the positions.

It's not like American tech workers have high unemployment... Maybe some companies exploit the system, but your stance is extreme. We should promote importing talent. Maybe the system needs work, but it doesn't need to be eviscerated.

>> We interview a ton of Americans as well, but there just aren't enough strong candidates to fill the positions.

Access to jobs is a bedrock social justice issue in America.

If your company didn't have access to foreign H1-B guest workers, you would have two primary options: 1.) hire and train American workers, or 2.) recruit more aggressively by paying even higher wages. A wild guess on my part says that your company would hire the weaker candidates and train them.

I'm all for the first option, but the second option is okay too.

You forget the most viable third option - relocate the job to where engineers are available

Sure, since it isn't going to an American anyway.

Hiring an immigrant vs offshoring has many more benefits. Tax dollars to start with, but immigrants also spend that money on food, housing, etc

That's what Amazon is doing with their Vancouver office. Since getting enough hires into the US is too complicated, it's easier to open an office really close to Seattle and give those tax dollars to Canada instead of Uncle Sam.

Plus they can pay people drastically less because the Canadian job market is a joke.

Amazon's problem is completely different. The management disgraced the company and no self respecting American wants to work there. Some of their tech departments are 70% Indian. They want to hire people in American, but, surprise, America is full of those damn Americans, none of whom want to work there.

>If your company didn't have access to foreign H1-B guest workers, you would have two primary options: 1.) hire and train American workers, or 2.) recruit more aggressively by paying even higher wages.

Or 3) offshore the work. This effectively gives smart people overseas on-the-job training, sends money into the economies of the nations of which they are citizens, and teaches them how to compete with US businesses.

Protectionism _never_ works.

>> Protectionism _never_ works.

That's a very convenient aphorism, but it's not true. There are thousands of laws in this country that do a great job protecting people. Intellectual property laws and labor laws are a great example of "domestic protectionism" if you will.

It's socially unjust to make American workers compete with foreign nationals for jobs. If the end game of a company is to simply offshore all their jobs, then they can also plan on giving up the benefits of being based in a stable democracy like the US. EX: it's highly unlikely that their assets will be nationalized.

You realise that Singapore, Britain, most of Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are also stable democracies?

Many of them notably more stable, in fact.

Yes, I do realize this. Would companies relocating jobs to these locations have any reasonable expectation of paying lower wages and less taxes?

I think you're losing track of your narrative: this is about finding skilled engineers, not about money. The EU, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. have plenty of talented people.

Face it, even cutting off H1-Bs entirely, which thankfully is not what is being proposed by Trump, would not make weak candidates attractive to hire.

> If the end game of a company is to simply offshore all their jobs, then they can also plan on giving up the benefits of being based in a stable democracy like the US

Or you take a trip a few hours north and you get a stable democracy which will happily take in skilled workers.

> It's utterly disgusting to make American workers second class citizens in their own country. How many more Disney's, Qualcomms, and Southern California Edison's do we need to see before we realize that the program is harmful to Americans?

They need to get rid of the fraud at places like Disney. Ban Tata and Infosys and other shitty consulting companies from obtaining H-1B ever again. Make the minimum cost 125k (about what MS and Google pay for H-1B), so it's not profitable for people to replace Americans (you get into the range where people are going to earn big bucks either way). Make it easier for an H-1B to switch jobs and announce that whistleblowers will be rewarded (money, green card slot, etc...).

As someone here on a visa I really, really, fucking hate these consulting companies for abusing the program. The company I work for is big, they create loads of jobs. They want to hire people on Visas because they want to hire pretty much anyone they can find who meets their bar.

I just don't think this is good enough.

Companies need to hire and train weaker candidates. It is socially unjust to make American workers compete with foreign nationals for jobs.

Werent Sergey Brin and Elon Musk immigrants?

Glad we let them in. Lol.

Immigration is not the same as H1-B. For the record, in another post in this thread I wrote:

"For the record, I support immigration, whether general immigration or for other reasons. To this point, I think it would been totally acceptable to allow the entire population of Syria to either immigrate the US ( green cards on arrival ) or grant safe harbor to those who want to return home until such time as it's safe."

H1-B is simply another vehicle for general immigration, and one that guarantees you are immigrating the best and the brightest of other countries. Your battle is with Wipro and Infosys, not the H1-B program.

I am confused. Are you saying that specifically H1B should be ended or no foreign individual should ever get a job in the US ?

I'm saying end H1-B forever. I fully support immigration. In another post in this thread, I wrote:

Thanks for the clarification

Many people who are now Americans didn't used to be. Are they job thieves?

Many people are the natural-born children of migrants. Are they job thieves?

Some people had ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower. Is everyone else a job thief?

Some people are descended from the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent. Is everyone else a thief?

Aren't you?

I don't believe my posts said anything about immigration.

For the record, I support immigration, whether general immigration or for other reasons. To this point, I think it would been totally acceptable to allow the entire population of Syria to either immigrate the US ( green cards on arrival ) or grant safe harbor to those who want to return home until such time as it's safe.

With respect to H1-B: in case I haven't been absolutely clear, I think its socially unjust to make American workers compete with foreign nationals for jobs. This has nothing to do with immigration.

So if tomorrow it was possible to become a US citizen by filling out a web form and paying $50, that'd be fine by you?

It'd be fine by me. But I'm a job thief. Unless I become a US citizen. At which point I'm still the same person, but somehow it's OK.

My remarks about the citizens of Syria were made in the context of the brutal war being fought in Syria at the moment.

>> So if tomorrow it was possible to become a US citizen by filling out a web form and paying $50, that'd be fine by you?

No, citizenship should never be for sale. Otherwise it's meaningless. You should be allowed to immigrate legally provided you can satisfy the requirements of our immigration program.

>> But I'm a job thief.

Please note that those are your words, not mine. I don't view people here on work visas as job thieves. My remarks are framed exclusively around what's best for Americans: it is socially unjust to make Americans compete with foreign nationals for jobs.

Very well.

If I could become a US citizen for free (and I can't, by the way), would you drop your objection?

Edit for your edit:

> Please note that those are your words, not mine.

I'm using the words protectionists like yourself have commonly used.

>> If I could become a US citizen for free (and I can't, by the way), would you drop your objection?

Other than the application costs, I think it is more or less free to become a US citizen.

>> I'm using the words protectionists like yourself have commonly used.

Noted

> Other than the application costs, I think it is more or less free to become a US citizen.

It takes years, can cost thousands of legal fees (not something you want to mess up) and typically starts with a work visa like an H1B.

You keep avoiding the question, so I'll restate it differently.

If everyone on the H1B could become a US citizen instantly, at no cost, would that remove your objection?

My wife is about to become a citizen. It took her 17 years. And she's Canadian.

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