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My very good friend is Indian on H1B. In the last 10 years he has had 4 jobs and is making >200k/yr base. I know white people that are in the same job for 10+ years and can't get another job because their skills degraded. H1Bs have mobility and great wages, if you're good, just like citizens.

I respectfully disagree with that.

Maybe your friend wanted to do a startup where he owned the majority voting control in the startup. You can't do it on H1. Maybe he wanted to go meet his family but couldn't because his visa renewal was going on. Maybe he wanted a great opportunity, but the company wasn't setup to do H1 paperwork.

H1 was expected to be a temporary state. If you are on H1 and not from India or China you can get a Green Card within 1 year. Even Chinese nationals can get it in 4-5 years.

I switched 5 times in 6 years. Joined LinkedIn, left to build a startup (where I couldn't have majority stake), sold it to Dropbox, built and incubator at Verizon, doing another startup. All this while I was doing fine financially. However I felt really suffocated by the lack of freedom.

Finally I am not on H1 and now I can own a controlling stake in my startup. If I wasn't on H1 earlier, I would have made different career choices all this while.

H1 system is broken. Companies all over the spectrum is using it to exploit employees. It's time to fix it.

You're making the point that being H1 is an inconvenience and to be honest, that's fine. It even sounds like your life was improved because you were H1. Would you have had these opportunities if you weren't?

Just because I was able to overcome, doesn't mean the system works fine.

It took a lot of hard work and luck to get me to overcome this. So I would say that my life improved in-spite of H1. I was able to found a startup (and successfully exit) while on H1, which is extremely rare.

Around 2010, the Green Card wait for Indians went from 3-5 years to 20+ years. Many people who moved before or around that time got invested here (bought a house, grew family, kids going to school) and in a way are stuck in a limbo. Many of them are smart and hard working people, who used to have dreams of building companies. But after a decade in limbo, all they talk about is the next H1 renewal and the uncertainties around that.

Now, the best from India are instead choosing to stay in India and build startups there. While the current system is allowing staffing companies bring subpar talent which displaces good American jobs. So yes the H1B system is broken and it needs fixing.

If I had stayed, I would have had different set of opportunities in India. Difficult to predict whether they would have been better or worse!

And it is easy to say "that's fine" - when you are not living the life with constraints.

H1B is a privilege not a right. You seemed to have done quite well for yourself, more proof that h1b isn't endentured servitude if you're good enough.

I completely agree. But the privilege works both ways. Which is why people like me aren't coming to the US from India anymore. They would rather build startups in India or go to Singapore, Europe or Canada.

Only of my friends, who has a profile very similar to mine just moved to Canada. He was given a Green Card before ever setting his foot there.

Instead US is getting people with really low quality education or fake degree, who are brought here by staffing company. They get paid really low salaries and displace American workers. The current system is encouraging and supporting these companies in taking advantage of the H1B system.

Because there is a lottery every year, best people from across the world do not get a chance to come here on H1 because the quota gets full. If someone decides to move to US on Apr 1st in 2017, they need to wait till Apr 2018 to see if they win the lottery. Even if they win, they can't join till Oct 1st, 2018.

Back in the days, when the quota didn't get full, people could apply at any time and join soon after. If you applied between Oct to Apr, you could join right away. If you applied between Apr-Oct, you could join in October.

It is in US's interest more than any one else to fix the current H1 system. Best among whatever Indians are stuck here in limbo will eventually move somewhere else. Best from whole world do not want to move here on H1 because of the uncertainty. This is not what the system was designed more.

There is a lot more to the story why big companies like contracting to H1 and L1 workers (tax benefits of Capex vs Opex). That story is for another day.

I don't know what you're smoking, Canada doesn't have green cards. And no, Canada doesn't give PR status to anyone before they have lived there for some time.

Check this out:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/

It's called Express Entry which gives Permanent Residency. If you are selected, you get PR before you land in Canada. The reason I said Green Card is that this is the term most people on this forum are most comfortable with. What I had meant is PR.

No, not really. You can't quit at certain stages of the green card process or you start all over. No matter how much you hate your current job you can't just quit. Pick the wrong company and they lay you off, that sucks leave the country now.

> I have suffered because of this. I spent 6 years on H1 with no end in sight.

Why did you not go back then ?

For many Indians including myself all the racist h1b/GC policies of US government are much better than life back home. It is a win-win.

>I worked with someone senior at FWD.us and as per that person the intention of FWD.us is to get more H1 and not Green Cards.

Obviously companies focus on H1B and not GC as H1B serves their need. Asians ideally should form their own organisations and lobby with the government against this selective apartheid.

> "The intent of H1-B was to get talented immigrants for jobs for which we had a shortage of American labor."

Actually, the intent of H1-B is to fill jobs for which there are no Americans that have the skill set. A "shortage" simply means that they aren't offering high enough wages.

Of the major tech firms (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, ...) only Google has a presence in NYC of any size even though NYC has far more software people than SV, SF, Seattle. If there really, truly was a shortage as they claim, they would have much larger offices in NYC.

My understanding is that Gates in founding Microsoft in Seattle instead of SV did so precisely because he did not want to have to compete with SV firms for their tech labor which is another way of saying that Microsoft was in Seattle to maintained depressed tech wages.

If you're going to downvote by 2 points, please state what is inaccurate. Nothing I have stated is inaccurate and Americans agree with me.

Maybe you could provide some proof for Microsoft being in Seattle because he "didn't want to compete with SV".

But also as someone who works in Seattle (for a SV company), it's sort of insulting to imply that you have to be in SV. I get paid SV rates and don't pay any state income tax and have 4x cheaper housing, and the PNW is environmentally beautiful. But sorry I'm depressing your wage!

Seattle has presumably changed a bit since Microsoft was founded there about 40 years ago. No Amazon, etc. No competition for labor from other tech firms. Gates located there because he did not want to compete for labor from other tech firms and it was much harder then for SV or other tech to poach Microsoft employees paying them market wages. Remember Gates is very much the businessman.

Nobody is competing with my work, I am simply pointing out facts. HN readers, who generally deal with facts and data should appreciate that. Imported labor depresses wages.

You're right, I do appreciate facts. But you still haven't provided a source for your claim. Unless you do so, it seems like you're producing a mixture of facts, opinions, and speculation, and calling them all facts.

See my comment above. I recall Gates or other reliable source stating this information and it made sense, because for me, Seattle is boring, boring.

So basically you hate Seattle so you are going to keep pushing this narrative?

No, there is a business case as it keeps tech labor costs lower, at least at the time the decision was made 40 years ago to locate in Seattle. You'll note that Boeing relocated their HQ to Chicago.

Cool story. Maybe we have different ideas of what proof is... I was hoping for a link to an interview or an article.

Did Seattle rain in your coffee or something?

> "Did Seattle rain in your coffee or something?"

Haha very funny. Starbucks HQ is in Seattle. I do drink Starbucks sometimes.

Why not stay in Albuquerque then?

He and his cofounder both grew up in greater Seattle and the area is home to University of Washington, which has a top-ranked Computer Science program (right behind Berkley, CM, & MIT), making talent easy to find.

> "Why not stay in Albuquerque then?"

Couldn't find the tech talent there.

> "which has a top-ranked Computer Science program"

You do realize this was 40 years ago and as I had already pointed out, things change?

Those that have watched the Arthur C. Clark & Stanley Kubrick movie, "2001 A Space Odyssey" know that HAL was created in Urbana, Illinois, home of the Univ of Illinois which is one of the top engineering and computer science schools.

If you examine the chart near the end of this article, you can see that U. Illinois receives $170 million per year in CS NSF funds. #2 Cornell is < $120 million. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-06/want-a-jo...

As for the business decision of Gates/Allen to locate Microsoft in Seattle so as not to be in the competitive market for talent of SV, I saw it from a reliable source (perhaps something Gates himself said).

Disclosure: I grew up in Urbana (my h.s. is across the street from the U of I CS building) and I programmed for faculty on their supercomputers beginning when I was 15.

> I saw it from a reliable source

Yet you can't clarify where this source came from or provide any reference to it. This is worse than hearsay.

Depends on who is saying it. If you look at my previous comments on different topics you'll find that I cite references where I can.

Microsoft was in Seattle because Gates came from there. That's the whole secret.

It's true he was from there, but he also located there so that he would not have to compete with SV for labor.

I read his biography and I never read about this being a factor. They just wanted to move home from Albuquerque.

And of course, biographies are 100% correct, especially on what might be a contentious issue.

I'll believe a perfectly reasonable explanation over a conspiracy theory any day.

It is not conspiracy theory rather a business decision to not want to be in a labor market where your competitors can hire away your best workers. It could also be true that 1. Gates didn't want to locate in SV for that business reason but 2. Deciding that he didn't want to be in SV, he then chose Seattle over another location.

You do understand the business case for not locating his firm in SV? You do understand that at the time he made his decision, that SV and tech was much smaller than today and he wanted to keep his labor rates lower and that locating outside of SV was a way to achieve this.