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Comment by surferbayarea | Hacker News Reader

won't you want to factor by cost of living/geography/state taxes etc? 100k in Austin is very different from 100k in SF. It is quite hard to come up with an actual mathematical formula that can be used. I can sympathize with the law makers who are in charge of actually coming up with a concrete real formula.

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Make is simple... Who ever pays the most money gets the H1B. That would force companies to decide if they really need that foreign worker over a US Citizen. If they do because the person is an expert in their field they will pony up the money for the visa.

Before we do that we need a visa to keep the kids we're educating in schools here in the country after they get their bachelor's or master's degrees.

Right now to go to work full time they have to get an H1B, which means they'll get screwed over if it becomes a matter of who pays the most.

The US loses if we educate kids on things, and then they move back to whatever country they came from. I mean, it's good for the country they go back to, but if we're looking at this in a self-interested "Good of the US" standpoint (Which we must be, if we're having this discussion at all), we want to keep them here.

I take the point but why?

Oversees students are a revenue stream for universities as they can charge more and subsidise locals or pay the hug wages bursars get.

And is it fair to steal the best and brightest from third world countries?

>I take the point but why?

Because we are spending resources teaching them things, and not reaping the real reward of that effort. Being attractive to the best and brightest is a way to keep innovation and progress going.

>And is it fair to steal the best and brightest from third world countries?

Is it fair for them to be forced to live someplace with a lower quality of life just because they were born there? To deal with the lack of infrastructure? etc. If they feel a moral obligation to go back to their home and try to improve that, that's great for them - but it shouldn't be an obligation we've forced upon them because we decided that immigrants are icky and all we want from them is their money for 4-6 years.

There's absolutely no reason we shouldn't make it easy for students educated in the US to stay in the US, especially if they work in STEM or any other research heavy field.

Yeah I have been waiting for green card for 15 years. US Masters degree in CS from top-10 university, 6 publications, 100+ citations. Senior staff engineer in top valley company for 6 years, got multiple awards/always top performer. Then started own company(multi-million$ revenue) and created ~10 high-paying jobs in the valley. With the new proposed H1 changes, I will have to leave since H1 extensions are being revoked. Not that I mind, getting bored of the valley - Europe is definitely better in terms of diversity. Also I have seen that the advantage of being physically in the valley is no longer what it was. Everything happens remotely - yes even sales.

Perfect. The best case outcome for your proposed solution is a reduction of 1% in US unemployment rate. (65k H1b/year vs 6.6million unemployed in the US)

Well, arguably the total number of working H-1B visas (including extensions while waiting for a green card) (and working H-4 dependents) is the more relevant metric.

That number is not tracked directly, but it's about a million or so, all at significantly higher wages than the median US personal income of $31,099/y.

https://qz.com/949589/the-h-1b-visa-cap-tells-you-very-littl...

Have to start somewhere and go from there. At least it would be a start; it could be refined over time.

Got it. So if you were given the job to fix US unemployment of 6.6 million(likely more since this is just reported numbers), you would begin by focusing on the 1% bucket and then continue to refine the solution within that bucket.

I would at least fix that bucket rather than endlessly discussing hypothetical fixes and get nothing done. Perhaps I would gain some insights on how to fix the rest, too.

A one-size-fits-all solution might very well not exist.

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