Hacker News Reader

Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I'm OK with the H1B scheme, if it's used the way it's intended — to bring in the smartest people who can fill niche jobs that are hard or impossible to fill with Americans.

But my experience in Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond taught me that most H1B's aren't any smarter than the average American high school graduate. The only difference is they'll work for a fraction of the money and be thankful for the exploitation. (And in the case of Russians, rack up a ton of speeding tickets and apartment damage fees and leave the country.)

India, China, Pakistan, and wherever else — send us your best and brightest. We'll welcome them, make them better, and sent them back (if they choose to go) with knowledge they can spread at home. But don't send us a bunch of warm bodies for no other reason than to supplement your economy with Western Union Moneygrams.

View on HN

> (And in the case of Russians, rack up a ton of speeding tickets and apartment damage fees and leave the country.)

This part of your comment on Russians is xenophobic as it implies some negative personality traits that are common for some nation.

> The only difference is they'll work for a fraction of the money and be thankful for the exploitation.

This part is also xenophobic for the same reason - implies that all H1B holders are "thankful for exploitation".

It's not xenophobic. As noted in the original message, "In my experience." I have first-hand experience with this, as a former apartment complex employee who had to deal with a slew of damaged apartments, as well as people trying to find former residents who left the country before their court dates.

While it might make you feel better to tell yourself it's just a stereotype, in my experience it is real.

It's not xenophobic, which is fear of foreigners, and it might actually represent his experience of Russians. Stereotypes exist for a reason; it should hardly be surprising that people from the same culture tend to act similarly, and not all cultural traits are perceived positively by others.

>It's not xenophobic, which is fear of foreigners,

Of course it is. Xenophobia goes beyond fear of foreigners and often manifests itself via attribution of negative traits to a culture, usually something nasty and bad like violating laws. I encourage you to check out some definitions [1] for more details.

> and it might actually represent his experience of Russians.

Saying "In my experience, most Russians/H1B holders are" is just a form of confirmation bias.

If I said, "In my experience of living in Bay Area, most Americans are <insert some bad trait here>", you would be quicker to call out my B.S. and would be right of course. It's just Russians and H1b holders is a smaller group that is easier to attack like that.

> Stereotypes exist for a reason; it should hardly be surprising that people from the same culture tend to act similarly, and not all cultural traits are perceived positively by others.

Come on, implying that Russians are getting speeding tickets and damaging apartments and H1b holders are glad being exploited are not "cultural traits" by any measure, please.

Anyways, it is really disappointing for me to get to such a low point in discourse on HN where we have to debate the basics of being civil in our comments.

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

Oh gawd, enough with the social justice warrior routine.

I've been overseas more than half of my life in different countries and can tell you every country and culture has is it's nuances, good and bad, which exist and can be very different and very noticeable.

That's true of almost all slurs, and people still aren't allowed to post them here.

alexk's use of 'xenophobic' was standard. That word no longer means the same as the sum of its roots.

It's not ok to post like this here, no matter how unpleasant your experiences of tiny samples from other nations. I'm sure you meant well, but alexk's reply gets it right. This is one of those cases where broadcasting to a large international population (like HN readers) is not the same as talking over the issues with friends and a beer. It's easy enough to make your points without crossing that line.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Send us your best ? What for ? The best and brightest of India are nowadays working at startups in India itself. They are smart enough to realize the greediness and exploitation of US corporations who wants cheap H1B labor to look good on their Q4s. Tatas and Infosys scratch that itch of greedy corporations thats all.

H1B is not a skilled visa if anyone thinks otherwise. There is no merit system in H1B. An example for merit based skilled visa is Canadian Express Entry system.

> The best and brightest of India are nowadays working at startups in India itself

This is difficult to prove without more data. Anecdotally, my Indian friends who moved outperform those who don’t. The red tape in India is formidable.

When did your friends move to US. Recently or before 2012. Since 2010, the decline started and since 2012 very few highly qualifies Indians are moving to US. It has been a mix of growth in local startup ecosystem and know how much the immigration situation for Indians sucks in US!

> very few highly qualifies Indians are moving

I am not commenting on the quality of the input; I don’t know, in that respect. Just outputs. Those who moved earned more, raised (or failed) faster, exited earlier, et cetera. Granted, very few were H1-Bs.

I can very well attest to the fact that the chaff gets H1Bed to the US thru mega body shops and the cream stays in India.

Exactly, top Chinese engineers are also much more likely to choose to work in China now. The local IT industry is booming

That says a lot more about China than it does the US.

In the last 15 years, China's economy has gone from extraordinarily backwards and impoverished, to massive, increasing in size by eight fold.

What that means is, there is a lot more money to pay the best Chinese engineers to keep them in China. There is a lot more capital to fund local businesses.

You haven't seen or don't know about some of the horrific practices that employers use on employees in India.

Check out the workplace stack overflow.

I am not surprised that engineers want to leave India

Here’s the deal. H1b (and most but not all immigrant visas) are not meant to bring the best and brightest.

Before the major immigration reform that was passed in the 1960’s (by President Lyndon Johnson, who unfortunately gets no credit) all immigration to the US was based on the color of your skin. The immigration act of 1960’s changed that to include other non-white countries.

But this misses the larger point, the current argument always seems like the US is favoring the immigrant, whereas historically US needs those immigrants more than they need the US. For the simple reason that, US needs to have population growth (most western countries as well) without which there would be almost no long term economic growth. Either that or they start schemes to have the current population produce babies like the world has never seen before.

So it’s really for selfish reasons that the US needs immigrants not the other way.

Infinite growth is not a smart policy. I don't understand why the desire for infinite growth has become almost a religion in the United States.

True...but everyones retirement in the US is structured so there is infinite growth.

> send us your best and brightest. We'll welcome them, make them better, and sent them back

Ahh yes, the lesser known inscription on lady liberty, so long "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

H1B is not meant to bring smartest engineers. O-1 visa is for that purpose. H1B is meant to bring generic engineers who have Bachelor's degree or above.

The O-1 is meant to bring in Nobel Peace Prize winners. It just turns out that, on paper, and according to the US, they tend to have a lot in common with developers.

Wow, then I sure do know a lot of Nobel winners. (joke) They hand these out to professional musicians all the time. They are fantastic musicians, each one of these 0-oners. But we also have fantastic musicians here in the US. We are wall-to-wall with underemployed, incredibly well trained, very low paid, top-notch musicians in NYC. In fact, I don't know a single musician who is upset about the O1s being handed out. We are happy to play with a wide variety of players. It helps the art, frankly. But what we would like to see more of, many of us, is a reciprocation from other countries, so the arts can become more fluid. This would help raise the level everywhere. The problem is, the door just swings one way a lot of the time. It is very difficult for an American musician to get an orchestral job in Europe. When they do, we all cheer. The current concertmaster of Berlin Phil is an American. But he's the violin version of a Nobel winner. Our orchestras are filled with Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

Its not that high of a bar.

I always thought the full name of O-1, "Alien of extraordinary ability," was hella cool.

I have an O-1. Still didn't help me get a Green Card!

If you don't mind answering. For an O-1, do you really have to be a Nobel prize winner? or a Phd or a lot of work experience help?

No, you just need great documentation of your accomplishments and an excellent lawyer who knows how to handle the process. $$ It helps if you have done original work, and if a well known/internationally famous person in your field (or several) vouches for you in the form of a recommendation letter.

Try yearly lottery. You have higher chance! ;-)

GC lottery depends on where you were born and countries with a certain amount of immigration do not get to participate in the lottery. India almost certainly is one of those countries that doesn't get to participate. Others are Mexico, Canada, probably China and Philippines too.

The intention of H1B is not to bring the smartest people, its to limit the supply of immigrants.

A Visa designed to let smart people come in would not need a quota.

Can we get over the “send us their...” rethoric? Nobody is sending anybody. These are actual people making these decisions for themselves, not geopolitics playing out in airport immigration lines.

> American high school graduate

Do you understand how abysmal your people's mathematics skills in comparison to average Asian countries? SAT math is like 7-9th graders' homework, definitely not high school level in Asia.

Your claim about average Asian countries isn't supported by the actual results. Asia is extraordinarily poor at the median and average, under-developed, and with low educational attainment. There are a billion people in Asia without access to proper sanitation, who have less than the equivalent of a 5th grade US education. It's simply unfair to compare most of Asia to the developed world.

If they're so great, where are the results of that? The reality is, the elite math outcomes of Asia are superior to that of the US, no question. The bottom 50% of Asia barely has any formal education at all. Their extremely low economic development matches their extremely low educational development. According to UNESCO, 35% of all the world's people that are illiterate are in India. That makes it practically impossible to do comprehensive, fair comparisons with developed nations.

GDP per capita:

Myanmar - $1,272; 2% of the US

Cambodia - $1,389; 2.3% of the US

Bangladesh - $1,523; 2.5% of the US

India - $1,900; 3.1% of the US

Vietnam - $2,306; 3.8% of the US

Laos - $2,567; 4.2% of the US

Philippines - $3,022; 5% of the US

Mongolia - $3,500; 5.8% of the US

Indonesia - $3,858; 6.4% of the US

Sri Lanka, $3,905; 6.5% of the US

Thailand - $6,366; 10.5% of the US

Malaysia - $9,659; 16% of the US

How many of the above countries were destroyed in imperialism, world wars and subsequent American wars?

Look at China and India today. By not getting involved in any wars, they focused on their economies and got themselves out of it. India is only 70 years old as opposed to 250 of United States. They are behind because the British empire robbed them of their wealth.

Asia is poor because of global circumstances, not because their education is worse than America.

In the last two decades, we observe rapid rise in Asian countries and rapid decline in America. Part of the reason is American disinterest in competing by raising their kids well. Americans want to spend more on war than on research and education. Meanwhile, away from wars, Asian economies finally reflect the growth that their investment in education should be reflecting.

Asian GDP per capita is also a flawed measure of anything. Life is cheaper there, production is higher quality (not higher quantity). Your use GDP as your ranking score is flawed at best.

> How many of the above countries were destroyed in imperialism, world wars and subsequent American wars?

Subsequant American wars - you're referring to how the US saved South Korea from being destroyed by the Communist north and equally impoverished? And how the US attempted to prevent a similar outcome for South Vietnam, as the North sought conquest of the South?

Or maybe you're talking about how the US helped save China from the Empire of Japan, and then saved it again from being nuked by the USSR in 1969? And then developed it with trillions of dollars in capital, and helped to open up and liberalize their trade through political discourse.

> Look at China and India today. By not getting involved in any wars

Be sure to let Tibet know that China hasn't gotten involved in any wars, and Vietnam too. And let Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia all know how peaceful China is, as China annexes territory from them the size of Texas through military force. Taiwan of course has lived under decades of constant military threats from China, with China intent on annexing that nation entirely against its will. It'd be like if the US spent the last 60 years threatening to invade and annex Canada.

China's protracted development backwardness in the late 20th century was caused by Mao's Communist policies. As those were abandoned and the Communist party liberalized its economic policies toward market systems and property ownership, China began to rapidly develop perfectly in line with that.

> In the last two decades, we observe rapid rise in Asian countries and rapid decline in America

That of course is not in fact demonstrated by the extraordinarily low economic development of the majority of Asia. Japan for one hasn't seen its economy net expand in 25 years; the US economy has nearly tripled in size in that time.

The US has not declined in the last 20 years. The US is the richest it has ever been in its history. It has one rival globally, in China. It remains the sole military superpower. The USD remains by far the global reserve currency. Its median net wealth is higher than Sweden and Germany. Its median income is among the highest on earth, as is its median disposable income figure. Its average individual net wealth level is #2 or #3 on earth. Its economy has outpaced nearly all other developed economies, including in wage growth. It has separately outgrown Europe, Africa, Latin America, India and Japan over the last 20 years.

In just the last 10 years, the US has added $4.5 trillion to its GDP. Now compare that to growth in Asia outside of China. That growth is equal to two economies the size of India.

> Subsequant American wars - you're referring to how the US saved South Korea from being destroyed by the Communist north and equally impoverished? And how the US attempted to prevent a similar outcome for South Vietnam, as the North sought conquest of the South?

>Or maybe you're talking about how the US helped save China from the Empire of Japan, and then saved it again from being nuked by the USSR in 1969? And then developed it with trillions of dollars in capital, and helped to open up and liberalize their trade through political discourse.

Hang on! You really think US was the super hero rescuing the world selflessly? You really really really think US cared about the people there instead of their own self interest? I'd like you to revisit history books not viewed from American lens, please.

> Be sure to let Tibet know that China hasn't gotten involved in any wars, and Vietnam too. And let Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia all know how peaceful China is, as China annexes territory from them the size of Texas through military force. Taiwan of course has lived under decades of constant military threats from China, with China intent on annexing that nation entirely against its will. It'd be like if the US spent the last 60 years threatening to invade and annex Canada.

> China's protracted development backwardness in the late 20th century was caused by Mao's Communist policies. As those were abandoned and the Communist party liberalized its economic policies toward market systems and property ownership, China began to rapidly develop perfectly in line with that.

Sure. And they did it themselves, and they rose up themselves. What has America to do with it? How is this related to American education system vs Asian education system?

> That of course is not in fact demonstrated by the extraordinarily low economic development of the majority of Asia. Japan for one hasn't seen its economy net expand in 25 years; the US economy has nearly tripled in size in that time.

I kid you not. You keep viewing everything with GDP as a measure and that's silly. By most measures, quality of life in Japan is better than 20 years ago. Their GDP could be lower but who cares as long as life is better? GDP is not everything.

> The US has not declined in the last 20 years. The US is the richest it has ever been in its history.

Ask the poor in America if they believe it. Also, make sure you include national debt obligations in America's networth calculations. GDP is not everything.

> It has one rival globally, in China.

And this used to be a backward ass country only 60 years ago, was destroyed by world wars and basically had no allies globally. The fact that it took them on 60 years to become another global superpower should indicate something. Any other country with a headstart could've become a super power. Why did China? Why do you discredit their drive and desire to educate an entire generation out of poverty?

> The USD remains by far the global reserve currency.

And every day, there are articles about some countries exploring Yuan as another. Why is it that Yuan is even in contention? Surely either China is doing real well or America is doing bad or a combination of both?

Fwiw, I don't think global reserve currency is a measure of anything but if you're going to go down this route, I have arguments against it too.

> Its median net wealth is higher than Sweden and Germany.

Do subtract national debt obligations. Also, median networth means nothing unless it is PPP. Life is cheaper in Asia like I mentioned in my previous post.

> Its median income is among the highest on earth, as is its median disposable income figure.

Life is cheaper in Asia. Absolute values of disposable income is a useless measure. PPP is the measure. Look it up.

> Its economy has outpaced nearly all other developed economies, including in wage growth

Awesome. And "wage growth" is much much much higher in Asia year over year. Just fyi.

> In just the last 10 years, the US has added $4.5 trillion to its GDP. Now compare that to growth in Asia outside of China. That growth is equal to two economies the size of India.

I don't know if you understand math. But fyi, percentage growth is a thing.

Country A has 2% growth out of 100 = 102 Country B has 7% growth of 10 = 10.7

In absolute value, Country A grew more. In percentages, Country B grew more.

Neither absolute GDP growth or percentage GDP growth is useful without looking at the other.

I see that your understanding of the world is a simplistic GDP score. I'd suggest the following:

1. Learn math

2. Learn history of nations from non-American perspectives

3. GDP is not everything. There is more to life

4. GDP is not everything. There is more to life

5. GDP is not everything. There is more to life

6. Even if you think GDP is everything (which it is not), learn to subtract future debt obligations and to understand which countries are growing faster by making use of percentages and not absolute values.

You're really kind of proving GP's point that American education leaves kids underprepared.

China, India and Pakistan have fought wars recently.

Yes, and none of those wars were at the scale of World Wars, Vietnam War, Middle Eastern Wars, War on Terror.

Scale of war matters.

China's Communist conquest was a war of the scale of Vietnam. The Communist takeover of China involved several times more deaths than the entire Vietnam war. Ultimately tens of millions of people in China died in conflict and famine over three decades as Mao established control of the country.

Neither world war had singular causes, they were diverse and complex, involving dozens of nations over long periods of time. That's particularly true of their origins.

The Vietnam War wasn't started by either the US or European powers. It was a civil war, in which the Communist North was attempting to conquer the South, as North Korea attempted to conquer South Korea, and Communist China conquered the Republic of China. The Vietnam War also was not finished or continued by the US; after the Paris Peace Accords, and after the US left, the North predictably proceeded to continue its prior military conquest of the South.

Middle Eastern wars haven't stopped for the last two thousand years. Who are you planning to blame that on? Who would be the non-guilty parties? China currently gets an immense amount of its oil from Middle East theocracies.

SAT is not hard be design, this is true in general for tests of mathematical aptitude.

Suppy and demand at work here...are they sending such people or is usa asking for both expert and mediocre employees from other countries. Market is always right...think about it.

yes, right, on your logic, we should let drugs sell freely, because the market is always right.

obviously not, it has to be within context brother/sister :)...comparing drugs to employees ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com