The U.S. Congress is doing its best to lose the global talent war | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. Congress is doing its best to lose the global talent war

economist.com

20 pointsuuilly11 comments

I agree with the Economist, and PG, that the US immigration system is dysfunctional, and keeps out top contributors.

However, any recommendation to expand the H1B program must include a recognition that this program severely curtails the freedom of the skilled workers who come here. By and large, consuting, startups, and other non-corporate sponsored work are out of the question for H1B holders who hope to get a green card.

This is why I find it so irritating when people point to Andy Grove, Sergey Brin, and other immigrants as evidence of the value of the H1B. Don't they know these people wouldn't have been allowed to start a company under the terms of the H1B visa?

The H1B says "we'll allow you to come here to work for Oracle, but we won't allow you to come here to start a company that competes with Oracle."

"how do you win the global talent wars when Congress is already in the hands of the idiocracy?"

You expect that kind of thing from a cynic, but it's pretty sad (and telling) when The Economist is saying things like that.

It seems like anyone that takes half a second to think about it would realize that having H-1B visa holders is a great thing for our country, but they'd have to get past the daddy model (to borrow PG's term).

There seems to be this standard view that there are X jobs in America and that by allowing in Y immigrants, Americans are left with X - Y jobs. But with H-1Bs, the people are guest workers for a specific job with a specific employer. Since they are such a pain in the ass to get, you have to reason that the company wouldn't go to the trouble/expense if they could just hire local talent to do it. If the choice is between an unfilled job and one filled with immigrant, how hard can it really be?

Sadly the prevailing view is that all immigrants are bad, no matter what, and you can't explain H-1Bs in a soundbite.

That might be true for small companies, but large companies (Intel, MS, Google, etc.) might realize cost savings by the difference in wages paid to immigrants versus U.S. workers.

I think the immigrant vs. American worker stems from a fear or intuition that there are, indeed, a finite number of jobs and, possibly, that the number is trending down, not up, for the developer/designer kinds of jobs. Let's be honest here, IT, admin, maintenance, and testing jobs are lower caste than architect, design, and coding. Jobs in the first category, on average, pay less than the the jobs in the second. I think the number of positions required in the second category are on the decline. As the computer software industry matures and evolves, we just don't require so many developers. If and when we start moving towards a realized utility computing future (Ref. The Big Switch by N. Carr), we won't need as many maintainers and admins, either. Of course, it doesn't help to watch many of these jobs go overseas, either. Combine that with H1-B visas, and American tech workers can be forgiven for a little bit of xenophobia. But, maybe it's possible that broader economic and industry trends are the real issue. That's my theory, and I could be wrong.

Do you have an details on the wage differences between immigrants vs U.S. workers? I was under the possibly mistaken impression that companies were not allowed to pay H1B workers less.

I don't, and I think you are correct about the rule. But, I have anecdotal and second-hand accounts that it isn't always the case in practice.

The bidding for H1Bs system would solve this pretty well. The current laws make it seem as if every H1B is identical - seems counterintuitive to me.

They aren't, but it's a largely unenforceable and really pretty stupid provision in a field with such a massive difference in productivity between workers.

Sure, I suppose you can require that a company pay some posted "prevailing wage", but that that hardly tells you this is the wage an individual would get if he or she were free to find another employer, join or found a startup, or enter a different field entirely.

There is little question that the H-1B system is broken. However, there are legitimate reasons to want to limit the number of H-1B's that enter the US. At the simplest level supply and demand means that increasing the number of qualified people who do X reduces the amount paid to those people. The classic example being doctors who have been over compensated due to artificial limits on the number's of doctors for a long time.

If we really want to get the highest skilled workers have company's bid on H-1B's (aka I want ted and I bid 40k/year) and you end up with the most talented / highest value without diluting the job pool significantly.

PS: The other reason to limit immigration is you don't want people to use infrastructure without being a net gain for the economy. Aka If our infrastructure is worth 50k / person then brining someone in that is worth less than that is a net loss for the economy.

H1Bs are better than nothing, but they're kind of exploitive, bounding the employee to a specific employer. If there's a market demand for those immigratn skills, let all employers bid for it, rather than giving those who master the H1B process cheap indentured workers. (The article recognizes this, acknowledging more green cards are an even better policy.)

Any non-criminal who can pay their own food, shelter, health costs should be allowed in. If the number of slots must be rationed, as a political matter, at least ration them rationally, via an economic/auction process, so idiocrats have to see the foregone revenue caused by the caps that pander to incumbents/"sooners".

Maybe we could outsource immigration legislation to higher-quality, lower-cost overseas legislators?

I agree with the Economist, and PG, that the US immigration system is very poor.

The H1B says "we'll allow you to come here to work for Oracle, but we won't allow you to come here to start a company that competes with Oracle."

At the end of the day, the country is transferred to a new and different people. This is not a job market question--jobs and money and material comforts pass away. The things that are fixed in number: Land, natural resources, political power, etc, are the properties truly in play. The elites know this, and that is the reason for mass immigration...to "elect a new people". The southwest is almost gone, the coastal regions are almost gone: As much a Shanghai slum or barrio as anything identifiably American. In London, I would say, "A Pakistani slum". In Germany, "A Turkish slum". In France, "An Algerian slum".

As long as they don't steal jobs...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com