Trump Administration to Slash Green Cards by 50%, Affecting H1-B/EB
alcorn.law
alcorn.law
1) Diversity lottery needs to go. IMO it's purpose was to find low skilled immigrants who'd often become taxi drivers or food cart owners. Most of these industries that relied on DV immigrant labor have been disrupted and the new incoming DV immigrants have fewer jobs. If not stopped, the US itself has a brewing problem with unemployed new low skilled immigrants.
2)for people from India and China, abolishing h1b and EB green cards and replacing it with merit based system will be a zillion times better. Current system of giving 20,000 green cards to Indians, 20k to Chinese and 20k every other country, is highly discriminatory and leads to many many sufferings that Americans don't (want to) realise. Hope Trump admin abolishes h1b, L1b, EB green cards and replaces the whole thing with a merit based immigration system.
3) iirc Trump's rhetorics against legal immigration that his voters are concerned about, is primarily the h2b visa, which was expanded under the Obama administration, thus regularising the illegal immigration from Mexico into legal one (correct me if I'm wrong here). Either his voters liked it when there was more illegal immigration so the labor would be cheaper, or just that right now there's a lot of competition they face for their jobs and want to reduce h2 b visas.
US economy is changing a lot in terms of automation, AI, and machine learning, thus reducing the need for a lot of cheap immigrant labor, while increasing the need for high skilled labor to stay competitive with Tech giants from China. Which means, the US immigration policy needs to adapt to it ASAP.
I wish politico and alcorn.law dug into these points instead of writing click baity articles to score points against Trump.
First, DV is supposed to use random selection (lottery) - so the resulting distribution should reflect the statistical makeup of the applicant pool.
Second, one of the DV requirements is a high school diploma - so the pool is biased towards higher education from the start.
Third, the rest of the process (documentation, online application, English/affidavit/liquidity requirements) again favors educated/affluent individuals.
So I posit that the opposite is true: DV is selecting from a highly-skilled applicant pool, and the benefitting immigrants are better educated than the average population.
Anecdotal evidence: all DV immigrants I know (including myself) hold at least a bachelor degree, and work in high-skill professional fields.
Treat with skepticism.
1) can you reply without an account?
2) how did you skip your first post?
3) what makes a reply "hijacking"?
4) where is this "visibility" thing and how do I cash in?
5) do you always judge posts based on the author instead of content?
High school diploma is not exactly high skilled. But I agree with the rest of what you say, that there are a good number of immigrants on DV who are high skilled, including you.
But the problem of basic skilled immigrants getting DV lottery over highly skilled immigrants from certain countries getting shafted still remains as is. Most taxi drivers I have spoken to in north east either come through DV or family based legal immigration path.
With a merit based immigration system, you and I can immigrate to US with way fewer hassles and uncertainties while less skilled people will need to skill up to be eligible.
And that's a good thing - prioritizing immigration based on the hot job du jour seems quite dangerous and guaranteed to produce the opposite of "diverse".
Until now, immigrants who were not highly skilled (with graduate degrees) were needed to fill the space, but increasing levels of automation and AI, its dangerous for US to not tweak its immigration program to factor this in. If immigrants coming to US have no job prospects, it can only lead to more abuse of immigrants and / or rise in crime.
Immigration need not be prioritized based on the "hot job market", but needs to be prioritized based on those who can remain employed with increasing levels of automation and AI.
I distrust Trump just as much as any other liberal, but even a broken clock can sometimes be right. Any moves we make towards a Canadian model of immigration, would be a great improvement over the status quo.
"Those admitted to the U.S. on the basis of merit have accounted for less than 10 percent of all legal immigrants over the past 15 years"
"The legislation would, for example, increase the number of green cards — which allow for permanent residency in the U.S. — that are granted on the basis of merit to foreigners in a series of categories including outstanding professors and researchers, those holding advanced degrees, and those with extraordinary ability in a particular field."
Would be interested to see a break-down of degree and field. I will posit that majority of H-1Bs are Masters holders in IT field from the same country.
But high skilled merit based immigration helps industries that are not in the IT field.
If people in the industry can't distinguish between qualified and non qualified people, how can the government?
However today the people most likely to bring their families over are "brown" people who immigrated on merit or as refugees or who got lucky, so now it's time to close that loophole.
"legislation would also mark a broader shift away from the current immigration system, which favors those with family currently in the U.S., toward a merit-based approach."
"Those admitted to the U.S. on the basis of merit have accounted for less than 10 percent of all legal immigrants over the past 15 years"
"Trump praised the virtues of the merit-based models of Canada and Australia"
1: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/12/trump-legal-immigra...
I was at a Capitol One office last summer talking to their engineers. It was over 90% H1-B visa holders.
Either they have to open foreign offices in other countries for talent or hire American citizens.
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Instead we crank out liberal arts kids and other low value add degrees --I mean, nice to have well rounded education, but don't add to the economy as much as they could in other fields.
China isn't getting to where they are by having a bunch of kids graduating with humanities degrees, that's for sure.
It's a bit sad to see a country lose all its talent and potential due to bad economics and politics. If Russia just tried a little harder to open up, they would have the potential to be contenders. But the brain drain certainly does not help their cause.
Becoming highly educated in STEM isn't just low-value-add, it destroys value: a smart person wastes years of his life and productive capacity training for a research position he'll never get, then (optimistically) gets a programming or finance job which barely (if at all) leverages a few of his undergrad classes.
The economy, and basic human compassion, require that we stop wasting these people's youth and loading them up with debt. We need drastic cuts to STEM programs until we're producing graduates at somewhere near the rate at which we're hiring them.
That, or a massive investment in private sector R&D and public grant writing such that the output of the existing STEM education machine can find decent, relevant work.
Who knows, maybe the administration is right, we have a glut and need to restrict outside pressure in those fields.
Engineers (real ones, not programmers) have a reliable path to middle-class life, I suppose, but this is mostly due to their scarcity. There's enough demand for new bridges, cars, and airplanes to sustain the profession, but not a ravenous expansion.
That leaves technology. Where is technology education? There are some trade schools that will teach you to administer and support Microsoft and Cisco business-oriented products for a decent lower-midde-class life, though they are slowly being eaten by The Cloud. And then there's Computer Science, which is a precursor to working as a programmer only because we lack more direct pedagogical methods.
To be honest you don't need to be rubber stamped by academia to do research. Companies should have started to realise that.
People should aim for STEM degrees, but there's no need to burn years on a PhD.
Russian/China system builds on a competitive hierarchy of exams to basically classify people into buckets according to their intelligence level. Even though it may be good on a national scale, it is indeed a cruel system to individuals. Your confidence or personality is least of this system's concern, and living a micro society where score is literally everything and the ones with low score will be looked down upon by teachers and peers alike and being told constantly low score meaning no future, I doubt such system will be welcomed here by American society for, you know, greater good.
Disclaimer: survivor of such system, not really miss it though. It almost destroys my love for science, which only recovers many years later.
No one defends the making of unwarranted perjorative conclusions from low scores other than as a measure of competence in the subject tested.
From the Politico article the legislation would "increase the number of green cards — which allow for permanent residency in the U.S. — that are granted on the basis of merit to foreigners in a series of categories including outstanding professors and researchers, those holding advanced degrees, and those with extraordinary ability in a particular field."
1: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/12/trump-legal-immigra...
to correlate everything a president does with support of his general fan base is ridiculous. that's like saying democrats support murdering people with drones because Obama used that often. This type of logic is very divisive and dangerous.
Perhaps you're saying most Obama voters didn't like the drone killing but tolerated it because they liked the rest of Obama enough? That at least means they don't mind killing too much - it's not a show stopper for them.
In other words, it's not that this particular issue is a discriminator between candidates.
For example, one candidate is racist and thinks segregation and separate-but-equal is the way to go towards a peaceful society. The other one supports drone strikes (or something else you find vile). Any other candidates have one similarly vile views.
Abstaining from voting to protest these views doesn't seem to be the answer for most folks, so they look at other things and pick the one they like the most. Afterwards, you can voice your concern over the things you disagree with or choose to ignore them.
This isn't dissimilar to not needing to agree with everything your friends, partner, or family says to spend time with them.
So many people on HN seem to support strong climate change action, dislike drone strikes, and want massive immigration reform. But hardly anyone voted for the Green party.
The system in the states is a multi-party system in name only: Functionally, it is a two-party system, hence the low participation in such political parties. I think this could be changed with proper legislation, but am doubtful this will happen in the current political climate.
Besides, it isn't like the green party could make everyone happy either, and doubt they'd have an easier time getting things done in congress.
1: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/12/trump-legal-immigra...
After WW2, immigration dropped, while a lot of new work in all areas was popping up. Result - labour shortages and decent wages, more or less.
If any of them are from India/China and they understand what's really happening with the immigration policies in the US, they'll probably love these upcoming changes (related to merit based immigration)
If I was a stress drinker, I'd be going through a couple bottles of wine a day at this point.
Of course this is anecdotal. But what's not anecdotal is the fact that this country has been going south for quite some time now (even if living in the US, you may not realize it), which is why this destructive movement will prove hard to stop.
The Indian H1B folks have over run DFW. I was just told today that one of the H1B folks is going full time and the company is doing the paper work to make it happen (Green Card). It's a shame because they could have certainly hired a local person or a kid out of school but I suppose they can pay this person a pittance in comparison.
H1B program needs to to be done away with. It is being gamed and no longer serves its real purpose.
H1s cost $6000+ and are available 4 days out of the year in April, and even then you have a 33% chance of getting one. And should you get one you can't start until the new USCIS fiscal year in October.
What about that makes you think they'd rather hire a foreigner? The green card burden is years and many more thousands of dollars. Those people are probably just really good.
Also, your statement about H1s getting paid way less isn't usually true, they're required to be paid the prevailing wage for the job they're doing in their geographical area.
Now if you're talking about body shops, well that's a totally different conversation and needs to end but if those people were sponsored directly by your employer there's some good reasons. And if your employer is using a body shop you should be mad at them not USCIS -- for this, there's plenty of other reasons to be mad at USCIS haha.
They will always be cheaper than US labor. And there are other advantages like employer loyalty because they cannot easily change job, which means employers can push them very hard and they won't quit - because its complicated to shift to another employer and they have to restart their green card.
I think behind all this is the feeling that the best opportunities are given to foreigners who then rise up the ranks, opportunities which could have been given to Americans.
Regarding immigration in general, the left continuously argues to keep low-paid foreign workers here to the benefit of large corporates. The justifications of "all of Silicon Valley companies support foreign immigration" makes perfect sense for these companies, but not for the nation. Silicon Valley is a bubble.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
The US is still very sparsly populated, especially for a country with so much arable land & relatively mild climate.
Ever been to the Netherlands or Belgium? They are quite lovely. Both also have a population density well in excess of 10x the US's.
Lots more people can fit in the country without negative effects.
But the areas that have seen job growth in the last 20 years are highly concentrated in areas that are about as packed as most of Western Europe: LA, SF, Boston through DC, and about a dozen other massive metro areas. The vast majority of available land (from the Mississippi to the Pacific and Alaska) is uninhabitable or agricultural and without jobs.
All I know is that where I live we already have way too much traffic, lack of affordable housing, and the lowest labor participation rate in decades. So by what metric does increasing population help those of us who live here (besides companies who love cheaper labor)?
So by what metric does increasing population
help those of us who live here
areas that are about as packed as most of
Western Europe: LA, SF, Boston through DC,
and about a dozen other massive metro areas.
The US is sparse in any meaningful metric.
Also this part is important: "yearning to breathe free" is quite different from "yearning to establish a global Caliphate".
There's a big spectrum of behavior towards a political outcome between "opposed with deadly force" and "supportive with deadly force". Most Germans in 1940 wouldn't personally gun down Jews, nor even directly participate in organizing such a thing. But nor did they didn't oppose it with force, or energetically ensure it didn't happen.
Of course most Muslims aren't "scheming" to establish a caliphate, but they wouldn't oppose it the way you or I would.
This is an obvious reality that people just don't like to acknowledge.
They are for the vast, overwhelming majorly part, just normal people not unlike natives of the same social class. yes, if you compare the "typical" working class muslim to professional yuppies they come across a lot more conservative but not more so than the local-western working class.
And the muslim professional class (the doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc among them) are similarly not very different in this aspect from the local-western professional yuppies.
I think the discrepancy in perspective is that most yuppies don't otherwise notice the native working class.
That's easy to game and not enforced very well.
>there's some good reasons
Often that good reason is that if they're fired and can't very quickly find another employer, they'll have to leave the country. And if the company is sponsoring a green card, depending on where they are in the process if they change employers, they'll be moved back in priority.
Employing a workforce full of H-1B visa holders means you have a workforce with drastically reduced mobility. That alone is worth the price for many employers. Add to that the fact that it's relatively easy to get away with something like hiring someone for QA and making them do development work (to bypass prevailing wage requirements) and H-1Bs are a lot more attractive than you seem to think.
+$6000 is nothing when you're paying, let's say 60k instead of an American that would want 90k
The H1Bs I know are good, but Infosys/TCS etc they don't care, they just apply in bulk and whoever wins the lottery gets in. Because they don't care who they're getting they just need people to fill in seats (and yes, their - these companies - quality of service is low)
Body shops take the majority of H1Bs and we all know they game the system.
Totally false understanding of the H1B visa program. H1B employees are not cheap labor, in fact full-time H1B employees are paid on-par or more than American citizens. Employers are required, by law, to file the prevailing wages during labor certification before filing H1B visa.
Employers hire full-time H1B visa holders for only one reason: they simply can't find the people. And the business would suffer if they wait to only hire citizens or green card holders. So they spend exorbitant amount of money for visa and attorney fees and wait for through the whole H1B transfer process. It's not because H1Bs are cheap!
Some employees don't want to go through this whole process switching a job, leading to few employers taking "unfair advantage" of these employees. They are not offered fair wage hikes or promotions as the employer knows they are stuck in the green card queue for years.
But the thing is nothing is stopping these employees from making a move to a high paying job. They are just lethargic and don't want to take a risk. Employees should not sacrifice their career goals for immigration issues. How I do know? Been there, seen that, did that. I am still waiting for my green card for the last 6 years and I expect to wait for at least another 6-8 years.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392 can change this. This bill has bi-partisan support and I hope it will be put for a vote.
While I respect your opinions on H1B program because you are entitled to have one, you have evidently no idea how much an H1B is paid if you think its a "pittance" (or have a different definition of "pittance").
E.g. See http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Facebook+Inc&job=&city=SEAT...
BTW, the salaries mentioned are just base (i.e. cash component). You can safely multiply the amount by 2 to arrive at yearly gross salary after stock grants and misc bonuses (e.g. joining bonus).
You have to be more specific. EU has a huge range in cost of living. Switzerland/Norway are very expensive. Poland/Romania are cheap.
Plus, as an American, you will get double-taxed in some of the countries that don't have an agreement with the US.
Having living in both the US and the EU, USA is still cheaper, as in, you end up with a lot more money after all your expenses, even if you account the health insurance costs (which the difference with the EU taxes alone will offset).
While Democrats seem to welcome the unknown. Take that chance. Lets just take a leap. WTF, life is to experience it all. And then we die.
Seems that we are really not ready to live in urban areas yet, with all these foreign "tribes", amazed we all do.
Conservative friends: OMG that food is so spicy, how can you eat it?
Liberal friends: Give me more spice! Pile it on!
I'm an old WASP, pile on the spice, drop me off where I don't speak the language, can't figure out the food, toilet paper? What's that? Life is so short, I'm ready to just take any chance.
Mars? Sign me up, one way is better.
:-)
I wish you best of luck to your trip to Mars. Hope it is one way.
If you disagree with him (and there are legit reasons to), then write your views opposed to him, don't try to misrepresent his view and argue against that instead.
If Republicans as a whole are now "afraid of blacks" because a small southern group joined it as a revenge then would you also say that now they are also afraid of capitalism because some Bernie supporters joined it?
The Democrat party that fought to restore slavery is not the current Democrat party.
That stuff happened a long, long time ago.
I am sure most companies will find a way to hire talent remotely. The positive side of this act would be that huge companies will start to think about hiring people remotely. Which would mean improved practices in managing remote talent.
and frankly I think its overdue, the tools are the technology is there, why the do you need borders to impede your company's progress.
The truth is, if the remote teams in low cost places like India and China worked so well, they would have long ago offshored everything.
Cause let's be honest, most companies can't even deal with remote working once or twice a week from their own employees in the same city.
The time difference is awful. I'm up until 3am, regularly, and occasionally have to work from 11pm-3am, then get up again for an 8am call.
There's a reason that this isn't that common. It _sucks_.
I don't know how people used to manage their issues before jira/github but it certainly has helped remote work. Plus the internet as a whole is penetrating developing countries so the issues of no internet and lag is not there anymore.
I can't back this up with data but, I have personally seen a rise in the remote first companies. the first name that comes to mind is Linaro, plus I think red hat also supports remote hires. All the dev ops jobs that I see are remote.
So yes the change is a difficult one and it needs a particular mindset on the managers side as well. But I think the threshold to become a remote company is a lot lower now...