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Comment by jacknews | Hacker News Reader

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 Trump, I do accept the point that it needs a review. And if the terms were set fairly, there's no reason it couldn't be extended to allow many more people to participate.

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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.

So let's say the minimum is $130k. That means you could hire an American for $90k (or even less depending on experience) and spend $20k training them and still come out ahead. For a lot of jobs that I've seen H1B's doing at the company I work for, you could find someone from the U.S. willing and capable of doing it - they might not be a perfect fit, but $20k worth of on the job training is a lot. I'm talking CRUD apps and basic infrastructure kinds of stuff, and that's what I've seen a lot of H1B's doing.

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.

That is what the program was designed for. I'm not really a fan of mutating legislature for other purposes.

Lower wage, and high wage workers are different and a VISA program designed for one isn't going to necessarily be fair to another.

Currently, employer influence of H1-Bs is high because they can essentially deport you when you get fired and you lose the life you built in the USA. That's not 'fair', but its at least mitigated if (a) you pay a very high wage and (b) the employees are in high demand globally so sending them out of the USA isn't really a downturn in their lives.

I don't think this really gets to the issue. The median one-bedroom apartment in SF has rent 5x the median for all rentals in Indianapolis. Paying $111,000 in the midwest beats $130,000 in the Valley because you'll come out ahead after housing and taxes.

So the problem is that two-fold: hard salary cutoffs translate poorly between locations, and $130k is enough to price out most parts of the country almost entirely.

Raising the salary cut-off to $130k would basically be urban protectionism: you could hire visa workers for well-paid but unexceptional tasks in NYC, SF, and Boston, but only for exceptional expertise everywhere else.

Exactly the point. Let the market set the salary cut offs would be much more logical than just set salary value for the entire country.

> for example the minimum wage was set back in 1989

1998, under the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act[1]. $60,000 in 1998 would be about $89,000 today, after adjusting for inflation. Trump's initiative is around $40K above that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Competitiveness_and_W...

> $60,000 in 1998 would be about $89,000 today, after adjusting for inflation.

I have a hard time believing $89k is the equivalent of $60k in 1998. Gas was $1 a gallon, average rent in LA was $900, health insurance was $35 a month, DOW was at 9k.

I used an online calculation service, but it is an average of 2.6% per annum, which seems consistent with what is normally reported. It's also consistent with the previous comment's assertion, as the starting point of 1989 puts it at about $120k. What do you think the inflation rate was through that period instead?

the official inflation rate isn't accurate, as it doesn't take into consideration any of those things you just mentioned.

i'd say $60k 20 years ago is more like $120k today... and that's being generous.

Each and every category, except the stock market which isn't a consumer good, that was mentioned is in fact measured quite carefully by US CPI measurements.

The poster just happened to cherry pick things that have increased faster than inflation: refined petroleum, coastal city housing, and health care.

As an aside, people's perception of health care increases are driven by factors somewhat decoupled from a reasonable measurement of actual cost increases:

- employers have steadily shifted a larger fraction of healthcare premiums onto employees

- older people's healthcare is dramatically more expensive than young people's (actuarially). The fact that everyone alive has aged 20 years means your perception of cost is dominated by the age curve, not the steady-age cost

> employers have steadily shifted a larger fraction of healthcare premiums onto employees

This is true, it's a major reason the public understanding of health care cost growth doesn't mirror health care spending growth. But it's also meaningful, because it defines consumer spending, and it's not usually accounted for.

Healthcare's piece of the CPI basket is ~5%, but for a lot of people the real share has grown rapidly and is ~20%. Which means that using a CPI calculation to scale income is a problem - one of the faster-than-inflation segments has rapidly taken over much of the basket.

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