America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away | Hacker News Reader

America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

bloomberg.com

232 pointspetethomas379 comments

I do not typically post, but these suggestions seem like genuine improvements to the existing system:

"Kerr suggests allocating H-1Bs not by lottery as they are now, but by salary — the more that a company is willing to pay for a foreign worker, the quicker they can get a visa."

"A second change would be to allow H-1B workers to apply for permanent residency green cards on their own, without having to be sponsored by their employers."

Both of these would ensure that we can get smart and talented individuals from outside the US and would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete while continuing to provide broad-based wage increases.

> Both of these would ensure that we can get smart and talented individuals from outside the US and would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete while continuing to provide broad-based wage increases.

As an immigrant, I'm all for better and easier immigration system. As a parent of an 11 year old, I can tell you that what your country really needs is not more smart and talented immigrants, but better education.

When I was brought to work here on H-1B visa, I couldn't understand why the US would need so many immigrant software developers. Now that I've had 5 years to see what your schools are teaching kids, this is no longer a mystery to me. Your education is appalling and is the main reason why I'm planing to leave the country eventually.

America's education is a paradox.

The U.S. produces many of the world's great intellectuals, inventors and engineers. So how does it do it if the education system is that bad? The answer is that it isn't. This is what I've observed:

Its K-12 education system isn't that great in general, but it's good enough.

Its colleges however do a good job filtering the non-academically inclined and catching up those remaining to the rest of the world in 4 years. U.S. college graduates are no worse than say UK college grads in terms of ability, even in technical disciplines. Elite U.S. colleges arguably produce students of equal or higher quality and the elite universities in most countries.

Taken broadly, U.S. grad schools are on par with the rest of the world. Its elite grad schools however are heads over heels better -- which is why everyone wants to go to grad school at a good US university. The funding is way better too.

Certain European countries like France, and funneling societies like India and China, produce more highly trained technical types at the college level, but these advantages wash out at the graduate level.

Most of the world optimizes education at the K-12 levels. The U.S. optimizes education at the tertiary level.

Echoes David Goodstein's "Paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates" from the early 90's[0]:

"The answer, I think, is that in education and in science, as in fast food and popular culture, America is not really worse than the rest of the world, we are merely a few years ahead of the rest of the world. What we are seeing here will happen everywhere soon enough. Our colleagues abroad can take what scant comfort they can find in the promise that our dilemmas in science and education are on the way, along with Big Macs and designer jeans ... Most elementary school teachers are poorly prepared to present even the simplest lessons in scientific or mathematical subjects. In many places, Elementary Education is the only college major that does not require even a single science course, and it is said that many students who choose that major do so precisely to avoid having to take a course in science. To the extent that is true, elementary school teachers are not merely ignorant of science, they are preselected for their hostility to science, and no doubt they transmit that hostility to their pupils, especially young girls for whom elementary school teachers must be powerful role models. Even those teachers who did have at least some science in college are not likely to be well prepared to teach the subject."

[0]http://www.geoffdavis.net/dartmouth/policy/elites.html

You should hear how much elementary school teachers complain about the math portion of their required test. Quite a few fail to pass it on the first time (or second, even) and the test doesn't even get as complex as exponentials/logarithms, if I remember correctly.

I can agree that the graduate level in the US is good, and sometimes the best. But as someone who studied in Europe and taught undergrads in the US, they were appallingly poor students, entitled, and lazy. The university was and is considered (roughly) in the top 15% in national academic rankings, and one of the top for its region. No way they were graduating at the same level as many other countries.

Yeah, I can only compare with Canadian undergrad and they were still far behind by 3rd and 4th year, even though the rankings show the universities higher. The rankings have little to do with quality of education and more with impact of research I presume (or they're entirely made up).

At the graduate level (Master/PhD) I'd say it becomes comparable, but there were very few Canadian students compared to Chinese and Iranians.

>>America's education is a paradox.

That is really not that hard to explain. Once you solve hunger, clothing, mobility and housing. You basically take away the most important of human instincts which drive a person to work insanely hard for success.

At that point a person has to call upon his internal human enterprise to succeed. That's hard.

America is just a victim of its own success. This is also called decadence.

Nice anecdote. Here's another theory: American kids are being priced out of universities with good CS programs because those universities have burdensome pension programs that can only be paid by importing international students with rich parents.

Everyone who focuses mostly on universities is forgetting that you have years of education to go through before getting to the university.

Well, as long as we are speaking in hyperbole, everyone needs to realize that K-12 CS education needs CS teachers, who are disproportionately not those international students who either get cushy jobs in SV or go home.

Which countries with decent state-funded universities generally don't have because you've decided that the free market "works" in providing what is basically an essential service for the growth of society.

US colleges used to be affordable before the federal government started pouring money into them with guaranteed loans. It's not a free market, but one distorted by government intervention.

Which countries? Here in Canada our universities are very well funded (relatively speaking) and yet the pensions programs are still screwed from 2008.

Never mind the issues with union staff you can't fire despite their rampant ineffectivity...

It’s not the pension programs, it’s the administration, executives, and luxury accommodations. College should be cheap considering the number of students to professor ratio. Keep admin costs low and pass that on to students. No where seems to do that anymore though.

A story of underfunded pensions coming to a local municipality near all of us.

that's not why tuition costs are out of control

The fact that CS programs / education largely start at a college / university level is I think a bigger problem. A growing set of countries have such courses as required curriculum for all students, starting earlier.

Paul Graham pointed out that the US has 5% of the global population. But, it has been a magnet for talent, allowing it to punch above its weight in technology.

You do make a good point. Perhaps america is only using 2.5 of it's 5%. Half, in other words.

But that's still tiny compared to the sheer amount of foreign tech talent america has been able to benefit from.

Your opinion is obviously contradicted by the facts. The American education system is a major reason people immigrate here in the first place. Many of the best universities and research centers in the world happen to be in America. You may have some gripe about your kid’s teacher or whatever, but if you feel that a single data point from a parent’s biased perspective is more informative than the facts and statistics, then there’s not much point trying to have a reasonable conversation with you on this topic. You are choosing innumeracy and anecdote over easily accessible data.

Maybe it's my fault, but I haven't found "easily accessible data" on the quality of elementary and middle school education, which is something a lot of people seem to be ignoring in this discussion.

Sure, people might be motivated to immigrate here by your universities. Even when I was a teenager growing up in an Eastern European country, I had heard of MIT and dreamed of studying there. But there's a long road to go down before you arrive at your university's doors.

Another thing I would like to point out is that an important aspect of an education system is the access to it. It's kind of like your health care: some of the most advanced treatments are available here, but there's a huge inequality preventing vast numbers of people from having access to those treatments.

Bottom line is that the overall quality of your education system should not only be measured by the quality and prestige of your universities, but a myriad of other factors that influence the final outcome -- that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens.

> that outcome being an apparent shortage of your own skilled citizens.

The interesting thing is even when we had millions of people out of work who worked in technical fields, SV and other major tech hubs were pushing for even more H1-B's.

It really has nothing to do with skilled citizens and more to do with the salaries they demand which tend to be on the scale of 1-3 times more expensive to hire and keep then the off-shore people they're hiring.

Just an anecdote for you:

I was hired as a contractor on a financial application at a major health care provider here in the states. I was the only US born developer on the entire team. That included developers, project managers, and scrum mangers, On a team of 18 people, I was the only American. Several times I overheard team members talking about salary and what they were getting paid. It was shocking to me that I was getting almost twice as much as they were per hour for virtually the same work.

It's not the skills or education that are lacking, it's the cost of the labor which is considerably lower for off-shore talent or H1-B contractors.

If you want your children to be educated well in most regions of the United States, you either need to do it yourself or through private schools. There are a small handful of public schools that have the funding and leadership to do it well, but they are rare - and usually located in the richest counties.

You can't pay attention to achievement metrics or school ranking systems either. They are almost all relative to American schools only and fail to measure well across different global education models. You may find your local public school as an "A" grade from some rating agency, but it means nothing. The only reliable metric is how many of the graduates are accepted into top tier liberal arts colleges.

Frankly, I'm not even trying any of that mess with my children. We teach them ourselves.

A shortage of skilled citizens is another way of saying costly labor. Better access for US citizens to universities and healthcare will not be gained by importing ever cheaper highly skilled labor, especially labor that like you is here to take what they can, selfishly, before they jump ship.

The k-12 numbers are easy to find. Google Pisa.

Google "PISA scores"

Private, elite prep schools and colleges in the US are the best. The average college or high school is dismal compared to the rest of the world. We consistently score below the average of OECD countries.

These stats are thrown off by a number of factors that it would be imprudent to get into here. Control for demographic samples similar to the other countries and you'll see a very different picture.

Do the comparison again controlling on country of origin. E.g., how do US citizen students with families from Japan compare with students still in Japan? Instead of Japan, substitute Canada, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, England, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Baltic countries, the Balkan countries, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Poland, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Singapore, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf States, North Africa including Egypt, West Africa, Central Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, ....

The US is a uniquely diverse country, and such a diverse country necessarily will have a tough time competing in average performance scores with better countries that are not diverse and, instead, have a quite uniform culture. So, right away on average scores, the US will have a tough time competing with much of Europe and the better Asian countries.

Also understand that the famous, prestigious US universities -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, MIT, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Columbia, most of the SUNY schools, most of the Big Ten, CMU, Chicago, U. Washington, most of the University of California campuses, Stanford, Caltech, University of Texas, Rice, Georgia Tech, etc. are RESEARCH universities and do not concentrate on technical or vocational training for software developer positions where H1Bs are common.

Why are you picking a fight with the parent poster when they are describing k-12 education (which is rotten; many studies have shown this) and using our universities (which are good) as your counterpoint?

May be, it is that the academic level after high school is much higher while the academic level in high school and below is very low.

How are U.S. schools failing students? What should they be doing/teaching instead?

Where did you go to school? How did your education differ from what you've seen in America?

It really depends on the region and city, the US educational system has zero consistency across the nation. It also varies considerably by income, where rich school districts have educational standards above European levels, and where poor districts have standards on par with Latin America or even Africa.

It's not that we don't produce educated people, it's we don't consistently produce educated people across the board and your location and income is a huge factor in your future success.

Those living in West Virginia have almost no chance, and those living in California have much better opportunities. The US, like many countries, falls prey to sweeping generalizations that are at best partly true.

Some state schools in not well known areas of the country are excellent and very affordable (IU, Purdue, Case Western, Carnegie Mellon).

Of those, only IU and Purdue are "state universities". Case Western and Carnegie Mellon are private universities and aren't particularly affordable, although certainly more affordable than Harvard or Yale, etc.

Carnegie Mellon is neither a state school nor what I would call affordable.

why wouldn't you call it affordable? CMU has a $72k sticker price (which only 30% of students actually pay in full) and has an average financial aid award of $44k. if your parents are actually destitute, you will pay very little. the elite universities in america do not cost much more than a typical state school if you are poor.

Education in this country echos everything, it's a shadow of the extreme wealth inequality.

You are spot on.

Used to be, at least in my region of the USA, companies made local investments to build the talent pool needed.

Tektronix is a stellar example.

https://watch.opb.org/video/oregon-experience-the-spirit-of-...

People literally walked in off the street, got jobs, got education and went on to do great things.

It costs more to do that, but the benefits are easily seen.

Today, we see much less, and demand for people, largely from places that do continue to invest in people, has grown dramatically.

I just wish it was reciprocated. I would like to work in Spain (no really). If I work in Spain, the US should open a spot for someone from Spain to work in the US. You want to hire someone from Turkey? No problem, find someone in the US to move to Turkey. You could allow companies to even grease the wheels, "Work from Turkey and get a 30k / year extra free bonus stipend!! yay!!"

Not on a 1-for-1 basis, but something like this is the argument for allowing free movement between comparable countries. If the UK, Canada & Australia opened up to each other, there'd be no massive net flow, but many individuals could work for the most suitable company / near their in-laws / in a climate they like.

This was I think also what was envisaged when the EU first wrote free movement into law -- general mixing, rather than one-directional floods.

EU folks can work any where in the EU right? I wonder how it is working out

Places to rent in cities in Germany are getting harder and harder to find because we have so many migrants, most of them from the EU. This is about the only problem we have with it locally, but it is getting annoying. The housing market is not very flexible and takes a while to catch up.

Migration is limited because almost every EU country has its own language.

Mostly... brexit is how it worked out.

Personally I would like to see freedom of movement in trade agreements. Goods and capital can already flow freely - letting labor do so as well would be more free and have potential to make the workforce something competed for more as well. Companies can already outsource so letting people flow with less artificial resistance (as opposed to natural like language and cultural barriers) seems both fair and efficient.

Granted I acknowledge that has potential to be messy in reality without a whole lot of work to get a framework - let alone one that would be accepted. Perhaps some sort of "social service fee" minimum for benefits in taxes paid to prevent free rider issues for instance.

You just invented the European Union :)

Can we try it again except this time without the power of an organization to push awful copyright laws down the throats of every country[1]? It’s like if you consolidate power it becomes easier to corrupt.

1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/effs-letter-eus-copyri...

I dont know about Turkey, but at Spain 30K/year wont be your bonus. Will be you salary. And consider it good salary.

I have no idea why this comment was killed but yes, 30K/year is a pretty good salary in a lot of Europe.

Especially in eastern Europe, for example in Romania you could live like a king on $30k per annum

Yeah well rural Europe is a lot of Europe, but 30k in a capital where the 30k jobs are give you is just mediocre.

This would be the extension of an already bad idea in the US immigration system that almost no other country shares. I can't think of another country that has this notion of per-country quotas.

Spain isn't interested in getting an American immigrant just because one of its nationals moved to the US.

There’s obvious brain-drain problems. Turkey doesn’t want it’s smartest people moving and working here. Nor is it in the interest of the US for high skilled workers to go abroad.

I'd argue that it is in our (U.S.) best interest for highly skilled worked to go abroad for a short period of time (2 years?). Being exposed to different ways of living can do wonders for creative thinking.

This kinda implies that countries own people.

That's lunacy. How many Americans can you find that want to work in Africa, or India or China?

Its going to be a infinitesimally small fraction compared to the number of people from those regions that want to work here.

How much will it pay? Americans work in UAE and KSA where their life looks like it was plocked from a dystopian novel.

But if your doing that as a westerner your on a full ride expat ticket with a considerably higher salary and can save a lot.

For really dodgy areas not soft postings like UAE / KSA you also get a premium. I remember a colleague who was on +80% for Angola (he got robed twice on the trip from airport to town)

I'd love to work in China. So there's one.

Underrated idea

The problem is that pay isn't uniform across skilled labor demand, and the purpose of the H1B program is to fulfill demand in the economy.

If you set a quota and give to the highest bidder, you're going to see private sector executives and financial roles being filled in cities with high costs of living and competitive wages. Salary is a function not only of demand but also location and industry.

This will discriminate against rural and middle America by depriving them of the skilled labor that they need to survive.

> This will deprive rural and middle America on the skilled labor that they need to survive.

That's kind of already happened. Since the recession almost all new jobs created were in cities and metro areas, and mostly to educated workers.

Rural and middle America have this problem all on their own: skilled labor does not want to live in rural and middle America. Especially young skilled workers. There's even the concept of rural brain drain, as the top 5 % are sure to leave right after they're done high school.

> skilled labor does not want to live in rural and middle America.

I'm unsure about this, and think it's kind of a chicken and the egg problem. I know tons of people who are from the midwest that would prefer to be there, but tend to flock to the coast simply because it's hard to find as rigorous of a professional environment back home.

It's not a chicken and egg problem. Cities are much more efficient for labor and companies. You have a larger pool of talent, a larger pool of freshly educated replacements for those who retire or leave, and often more services available for said talent.

Edit: Now that I'm thinking about it a little more I can maybe sympathize a little bit. I prefer to live in rural areas in some ways due to my hobbies, but I'm never going to as the economics of a tech company, or even a company that needs skilled, educated workers makes no sense in rural areas. So there's something to the want vs. choice angle, but what one fantasizes about has little to do with economic realities. Plenty of people want high paying low skilled manufacturing jobs to be a thing again, that doesn't mean it's realistically going to happen.

s/want/choose/ in the original, I think.

That's an entirely different problem, and switching H1B to an auction will only exasperate it without solving the task that H1B is intended to solve.

> If you set a quota and give to the highest bidder, you're going to see private sector executives, lawyers, and financial roles being filled in cities with high costs of living and competitive wages.

Yes, that's the point. Skilled labor immigration is for skilled labor.

It should not by a subsidy to companies that cannot afford to pay prevailing wages and/or are unwilling to invest in their workforce.

> This will deprive rural and middle America of the skilled labor that they need to survive.

Middle America will be fine; Chicago, KC, Pittsburgh, etc. can and do compete with the coasts for skilled labor!

That said, I could get behind a rule that adjusts for cost of living so that e.g. 100k in Pittsburgh or KC == 200k in SF. That seems fair.

As for rural America, there's a reason these areas can't attract companies or talent.

  > As for rural America, there's a reason these areas 
  > can't attract companies or talent.

Look, I don't want to live in a remote shit-hole either, but...

The fact that the concerns of rural communities are summarily dismissed when making policy was one of the big contributing factors to the election victories of both Brexit and Trump. (Possibly more due to resentment rather than as a rational response, but that's irrelevant.) Urban vs Rural is becoming one of the more significant divisions in this country, as wealth consolidation favors urban.

And, more fundamentally, there are people who live there. The actions of a democratic government are supposed to be for the benefit of its people. That includes the people who live in rural communities. Policy that lets the economic advantage of urban areas snowball more is something that should be given more thought than "it wouldn't matter anyways, those places suck."

Maybe there isn't a solution, or maybe this policy in particular isn't the best place to address it, but it deserves at least a modicum of thought rather than a dismissal that is, frankly, disdainful. Those places do suck, but we should treat that as a problem to be addressed rather than avoided.

[edit]: Let me clarify: I am not saying the urban-rural divide is caused specifically by the lack of high-skill immigrant labor. I am saying the urban-rural divide is exacerbated generally by dismissing the concerns of rural communities when making policy. I don't think this policy suggestion in particular is the highest-value one, but I also think that no individual snowflake is responsible for the avalanche.

Sorry, but this doesn't scan. "The concerns of rural communities" are overrepresented in American politics. Twenty percent of the population is represented by the Senate majority and are able to, at minimum, gridlock the American system of government (and, at maximum--well, quite a lot, given SCOTUS and what we've seen over the last few months).

This is, of course, an intentional behavior of our system of government. You can even make an argument that it's a positive one. (I would disagree.) It is not, however, "democratic", nor does it point at some kind of underrepresentation.

And actually the problem is worse - some of those places don't suck, and causing them to RAPIDLY grow in population, turning them into Urban areas that really shouldn't be.

It would be much better if more small towns had similar offerings such that the 10% aren't overrun by people looking to get away from the city.

Of all of the reasons for Trump winning the election, rural areas not having enough immigrats is not one of them.

I am sure that many of these places would be very happy to have less H1Bs living there.

> The fact that the concerns of rural communities are summarily dismissed when making policy was one of the big contributing factors to the election victories of both Brexit and Trump

Do you think that an influx of underpaid skilled labor is going to ease the tensions that created Brexit and Trump?

Your assertion here appears to be that Trump voters were pissed off that more immigrants weren't making it to their hometowns. I find that assertion... highly implausible.

> Policy that lets the economic advantage of urban areas snowball more is something that should be given more thought than "it wouldn't matter anyways, those places suck."... Those places do suck, but we should treat that as a problem to be addressed rather than avoided.

Oy.

1. IMO they don't suck. They have many advantages. But they aren't particularly good locations for doing highly skilled labor.

2. There are a lot of policy levers that can be used to help rural areas. Trying to turn them into immigration-fueled discount tech/med hubs is doomed to fail and is therefore definitely not the right lever.

3. It's also worth noting that even rural economic development tends to be geographically concentrated. Just as wealth concentrates in cities with 10M people compared to cities with 100,000 people, wealth also concentrates in cities with 100,000 people compared to cities with 1,000 people. And BTW, those 100,000 person towns where skilled labor would invariably concentrate are in many cases already doing quite well.

Even rural development -- and ESPECIALLY rural development based on skilled labor immigration -- isn't going to help the rural places that have been hardest hit in the past two decades, which tend to be in the 1,000 to 10,000 range.

The argument isn't that policy should benefit urban America. The argument is that trying to bootstrap tiny local economies with skilled labor immigration is doomed to fail.

> Middle America will be fine; Chicago, KC, Pittsburgh, etc. can and do compete with the coasts for skilled labor!

These cities may as well be "coastal" relative to their regions. There are a lot of hurting small PA towns less than 100 miles away from Pittsburgh experiencing a brain drain, for example.

> These cities may as well be "coastal" relative to their regions.

IF KC and Pittsburgh aren't "middle america", then the term ceases to have much of a meaning and we might as well stick with "rural".

I don't see rural and middle America crying out for more immigrants of any type. They won't be complaining, and it isn't proper to complain on their behalf due to whatever you judge to be best for them.

That leaves nobody to complain.

If you insist on deciding what is best for rural and middle America, I sure hope you don't object when they return the favor, deciding on your behalf that cities would be best off without any immigration.

The supply / demand in the economy is specifically determined by the salary. If the demand grows high enough so that salaries go up, then you can obviously compete with other highly paid professionals. There is no reason Tata and Infosys should be hiring 70k contractors to do shitty jobs.

>The supply / demand in the economy is specifically determined by the salary.

Salary is a function of location, industry, and demand. Discriminating against American businesses that need skilled labor and are not in the most competitive industries or locations is not the purpose of the H1B program.

>There is no reason Tata and Infosys should be hiring 70k contractors to do shitty jobs.

This is a different problem, which is being solved as USCIS is cracking down on consultants who are registered in one region but work in another.

Arguably, the salary (and price in general) is measure of marginal utility. Hence if one job pays 140, 000 over 70, 000 we can argue that the one that pays more provides more marginal utility to society. That is, the United States as a whole gains more value from that job.

> This will discriminate against rural and middle America by depriving them of the skilled labor that they need to survive.

Rural and middle America needs to get off its collective ass. I have seriously considered moving to one of those places -- alas, while I can get a house cheap and have what I need to survive inexpensively, I cannot get high speed internet even if I pay $1,000.00 per month.

That's not the fault of most of those communities. Many of them have tried to set up their own municipal wifi/ISPs and many (most?) have been stopped cold by legislation and back room deals at the local and state levels by the telco and cable companies. Just read some of the stories about what Google, one of the richest companies on Earth, ran into when attempting to bring high-speed Internet to various cities.

I don't care. I have money. I want a service. They can't provide it. This means they do not get to complain that my six figure buying power chooses a city.

> This will discriminate against rural and middle America by depriving them of the skilled labor that they need to survive.

What jobs are rural American companies hiring H1Bs?

You could index it with cost of living. So an H1B in a California company would expect to see a higher salary than one in Kansas.

The easier way is to just have ratios. Companies that already employ lots of Americans should be able to easily hire foreigners. Companies that hire predominantly foreigners should have a difficult time getting more. A few rules to prevent gaming the system and you've got a system that works well for everyone involved and doesn't need CoL adjustments. Plus, ensuring that foreigners work closely with Americans helps both integrate those foreigners into American culture as well as helping them learn from those foreigners.

The H1-B system seems designed to allow big companies to exploit foreign labor to drive down wages and hold those foreigners hostage while they're here. Ratios better allow mobility of foreign workers and allow them to seek market rate salaries. If I were in control of immigration policies, I'd set a 3:1 American-to-foreigner ratio based on job classification/salary bands and make it apply to any company with more than 50 employees. Any immigrant who passes a DHS background check and can get an offer from an eligible company should be able to get a work permit, regardless of their home country, with no time limit when they'd be sent home. Only failing to find employment at an eligible employer within, say, 6 months should force someone to leave. And after a 5-year working period, they should be able to apply for citizenship. At worst, it becomes a jobs program that forces employers to employ American citizens to get the workers they need.

Banning any body shops from the H1B program all must be direct employees - would help I think.

That still doesn't consider pay differences between two completely different jobs.

Then it would be working as intended. Jobs where labor isn't so scarce as to push prevailing wages up really high don't need extra labor brought into the market.

The remaining concern is distorted markets like foreign language teachers (brought up elsewhere in the thread), where it may be politically infeasible to raise compensation to match the value workers create.

Perhaps this could be offset by using something like the GS Locality Pay[0] index?

[0]: https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality

Your arguement is true, but it is also, IMO, the intended behavior.

Having higher paid workers push out the lower paid ones, is kinda the whole point. I want more skilled labor to move to where they are in demand.

Does rural and middle America rely on H1B to fill its labor pool today?

"Kerr suggests allocating H-1Bs not by lottery as they are now, but by salary — the more that a company is willing to pay for a foreign worker, the quicker they can get a visa."

Would need to be artfully worded so that sign-on bonuses and short-term employment is not used to game the system by permitting averaging down over time.

I think I agree with you (although I bet for different reasons) but, Why?

What do you think is actually is the problem if highly compensated employment is used as a fast track to immigration and perhaps even citizenship?

rrggrr is worried companies will say "1 year contract, $10,000 per day first week, $0 per day subsequent 51 weeks" and jump to the top of the stack as they're paying $10,000 per day.

Presumably the salary they bid would have to be maintained throughout the visa validity (e.g. three years for H1-B).

If the salary ever drops the visa is invalidated and becomes available for bidding by other companies.

You can require them to pay an average salary over the whole period of employment.

In the UK, the immigration agency checks that you are still being paid above the minimum salary for a work visa. I see no reason why they couldn't check on this sort of thing.

I always thought H1B should simply be $100k or $120k+ plus jobs only.

I was looking through online records and found folks being brought in for sub 50k jobs that looked like low level ... customer service roles.

That's what I thought too, then I saw my company use an H1B to fill a junior web developer job at 70k in the DC/Metro area, which is basically the area's going rate for a 0 experience, straight out of college software developer.

Man, if someone needs an entry level web dev fast... there are so many bootcampers available. Granted the quality varies wildly (I'm a bootcamper myself, I know those people) but they are easily found.

That seems fishy, the minimum required salary to apply for h1b was 60k/year till the beginning of the year, and there was a bill that was introduced which proposed raising it to 90k/year.

Straight up it was sub 50k listed in the database...

I'll see if I can find it later.

you can get the same effect on salary by making it easier for a H1B recipient to leave the company that brought them over. Right now its very hard for a visa recipient to move companies so they can be given sub market rate salaries, if you make it so once they show up they can move to get a market rate salary then the companies who make a pratice of hiring foreign talent and paying them below market rates will end. The companies will incur all the cost of bringing in an H1B and some other company can just pay them more and receive the benefit.

This also addresses the concerns about salary differences between different industries and regions.

In theory it is not very complicated for a H1B to change employer. It simply requires the employer to file a petition to sponsor the H1B. It doesn't count towards the "seats" available yearly, and it's almost guaranteed to be granted. There is a small cost, maybe a few grands. If you think about it, it's way cheaper than paying recruiter fee fo example.

In practice you're right though. Most companies have limited experience with this process and just don't want to get into it.

If you intend on applying for a green card you need to stick with the same employer until your I-140 is approved. Just getting there with a single employer can take years, and if you don't have an approved I-140 when your H1B expires your out of luck. Also up until 2017 even if you had an I-140 you would still lose your spot in line if your employer revoked it.

oh man. This chain of responses must be literally on hackernews like a million times. Maybe someone can extract QA site from hackernews comments.

Two problems:

- The green card process doesn't completely transfer over.

- Filing a petition to transfer an H1B puts the employee at risk of getting a denial. Every petition sent to USCIS is risking an audit, denial, and at the very least, many headaches.

Much of the green card process has to be redone though.

Can you elaborate? I'm not very familiar with GC via employment.

Word on the street from hiring managers is that it now takes > 6 mo to process such a visa transfer and you can’t get premium processing to speed it up.

People are making offers to candidates with undefined start dates many months in the future. The candidate has to commit to switching jobs when the transfer is submitted. If current job gives them a promotion in the interim and they decide to stay, they can’t just cancel the transfer. Their current employer (who didn’t know a transfer was happening) has to file a reverse transfer with the same delay that puts them in some kind of limbo.

It’s a complete clusterfuck and is making it really hard to hire for some positions.

I think most of this comment is wrong. A "transfer" is actually not a thing. When another employer files a petition for a worker who already has an H1B, it doesn't "cancel" the first H1B. It simply makes it possible for this second employer to hire the worker. It is completely possible for the applicant to change their mind and decide to stay with the first employer.

I went through 2 H1B "transfers" (so in total I have been employed by 3 different employers as a H1B) 7-ish years ago so I'm very familiar with this process. At least, the way it was working at that time.

Has anyone had success with an H1B visa transfer in the past few months? If so, I’d be very interested to hear and it would add more to the discussion than a downvote.

A nice idea but would make it impossible, for example, for my kid’s foreign-language school to bring in qualified teachers.[+]

It’s difficult already as teachers switch jobs over the summer which over the past couple of decades has been when the supply is already used up.

[+] English teachers are recruited from the California system. Unfortunately CA schools are so terrible that if the kids go back to their jobs,encountry they are frequently behind in English!

These sorts of "highest salary wins" rules should typically be crafted in an industry/sector-specific way. So schools have to compete with each other on salary but not with tech/finance/med. And then there are caps by sector.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that you need a judge/executive who follows the spirit of the law so that I can't get a bunch of cheap tech workers by saying "oh, job ABC in town XYZ is its own industry/sector and not comparable to SWEs at Google".

I'm not sure I agree with this. I work for a university, and I am stunned with how talented and accomplished many post-docs are considering the level of low pay and career uncertainty they continue to face.

The RAND institute, among others, concluded that the reason US citizens have turned away from graduate degrees in the sciences is a rational market response to poor pay and working conditions in favor of fields that offer better salaries and career stability. In short, there is no shortage, just a desire to pay extremely low salaries and establish exploitive working conditions - which you can do when you control someone's right to live and work in the US when these rights are difficult to come by.

Not only do I think that there's no reason to prop up a system that suppresses salaries outside tech/finance/med (or within those fields, that happens too, especially in tech), I think there's real harm in the market distortions these schemes produce.

There's always a trade-off. You can have cheap steel, or well paid steel workers. You can have cheap medical care, or well paid doctors.

Arguably by making postdocs underpaid, the US as a nation is getting cheap scientific advancement, in exchange for dangling the promise of eventual American citizenship (and the American dream) in front of said postdocs.

I don't think that's worth the overhead. If you end up only importing medical professionals then that's going to help the US economy quite a bit more than importing 'highly skilled' bank tellers.

Money is a very good proxy for demand after all. If company's can easily place people for 350+k jobs that's going to lower the pay of those 350k jobs.

PS: Effectively, your describing a planned economy where someone picks the level of expected pay for each job with more foreign workers available for overpaid jobs.

It sounds like foreign-language teachers ought to have a different type of visa. This is a case where being foreign is actually a benefit, unlike the situation with engineers.

How about allocating some large number of 6 year work visas by a pure auction? The visa goes with the person, they can work anywhere, and after the visa is up can be a US citizen with minimal hassle. Employers could pay the fee for people to come and work for them, if they like, with a claw-back clause, if necessary. It would be interesting to see what the price would be for such a visa.

> The visa goes with the person, they can work anywhere, and after the visa is up can be a US citizen with minimal hassle.

You basically described a green card (except it's nominally five years to citizenship, not six).

Yes. A green card auction would be great. Expand it to some large number and get rid of all the huge variety of visas and paths to citizenship. Maybe half or more of all immigration to the US could go this route.

After some years of high demand and high prices, I imagine that the price would drop to some stable level. When that happened, we might have an opportunity to bring some sanity to the illegal immigration problem in the US. In some more sane world, both parties might agree that a person that can prove they have been in the US for some number of years can pay for a green card at the auction rate (gov financing available).

As a former H1B, I fully support the second change yes. IIRC, an H1B can be renewed once and last a total of 6 years (apologies if regulations changed in the past 6 years, I haven't followed since I got a GC). 6 years is a long time and should allow application for GC without sponsorship.

I'm not sure the first change is a good idea. Wouldn't it give a huge advantage to bigger companies? Haven't really thought this one through.

I think the first is a great idea. A $450k/year neurosurgeon should get a massive preference over a $45k/year Sharepoint contractor. The highest paid are tautologically in the shortest supply.

Realistically though, a neurosurgeon would probably be able to immigrate on another type of visa. Same goes for most executives, lawyers, partners at VCs or hedge funds...

An auction based allocation would favor ad selling companies that can pay juniors 200k to do A/B testing.

Then sure, it would partially solve the abuse from cheap IT consultancies, and that's better than nothing. But there would definitely be adverse effects.

How is that different than now? Larger companies can already afford to pay people more and smaller companies have to compete in salary.

Outside of the west coast and FAANG companies, salaries aren’t that crazy. I haven’t seen any difference in comp based on company size in most of the US. They all have to compete for the same talent pool.

> ...would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete...

of course "the US" is not a monolith. it's a collection of competing interests. big corporations, consumers, and the existing stock of US-based workers each claim to be "the US."

While the salary thing would help me gravely, not all industries/states pay in a similar way. It would help software companies in CA/NY a lot, but a biological research center in Midwest would be tough out of luck.

They'd definitely need to account for region, rather than just looking at the dollar amount.

This would result in most H1B allocations on east/west coast, where salaries (and cost of living) are relatively higher. I think this is already the case, but enforcing it by salary will result in a wider gap. Companies operating in low "cost of living" areas, will not be able to get skilled workers on H1Bs.

There is already a “prevailing wage” thing you have to meet, that varies by region, so it could be done as percentage above the prevailing wage.

I"m not sure this should be a consideration. If that midwest company cannot compete, it should not exist. That is tghe essence of capitalism. You should not subsidize it by making it not compete fairly for H1B applicants.

It’s a bit of an odd argument to make against a state sanctioned limit to labor that it should be driven by pure capitalism/free market principles.

The premise of the article was to use a capitalist supply and demand metric (salary) as a way to fairly allow merit based immigration. I think that strategy makes a lot of sense, and was making the point that our hypothetical midwest company should not be allowed to scuttle the non-gameable merit-based proposal in favor of something more political and squishy. Our hypothetical midwest company can either pay enough wage to get the employees it needs, or it can't, and if it can't, capitalism has a solution for that. (creative destruction)

That would only make one more thing you can get better with more money.

So you want only the rich and privileged to be allowed into the USA? I find this highly negative.

Having people immigrate who are guaranteed to be able to make their own way is not only NOT negative, it's written into the immigration policies of virtually every nation.

This is a separate argument from allowing economic refugees asylum into a country.

So you want to hire managers and other upper level people but not skilled technicians or artists? If we are going by the whoever has the highest salary idea, we obviously won't get real skilled workers. Just more managers. I am not talking about economic refugees.

The H-1B topic strikes a personal tone with me. After the dot-com crash in the early 2000's, IT jobs in California were hard to come by. I almost got one job, but the company decided to go with an H-1B worker instead. I had a new young family, but had to go out of state to find work, leaving my family behind.

I'm NOT summarily against H-1B's but wish to insist they be used ONLY to fill in true skill shortages instead of those manufactured via job ad word-smithing.

> I almost got one job, but the company decided to go with an H-1B worker instead.

This scenario is explicitly forbidden by the provisions of the visa program and it is illegal to select a guest worker in preference to a domestic candidate. That is why there is a public notification requirement for all jobs open to guest workers. Obviously all it takes is one minor reason to deem you unqualified. The Disney IT incident shows that there are no consequences for abusing American employees.

"Public notification requirement" = job posting you leave up and internal email you circulate to CYA in case you get audited. It's a ruse. This can't be enforced.

They can go get hired elsewhere I suppose. Does it rise to 'abuse'? Who is entitled to a particular job anyway?

Who is "entitled" to work in America is defined by the law, which disallows replacing American workers with H1B recipients.

Are you suggesting that everyone in the world should have the right to live and work in America?

I think it will not change anything to be honest. I work for a relatively large US company we have offices in CA, VA, NC, Ireland, Germany, India. If it becomes harder to higher in US they will just grow teams in other offices.

But not every organization is internationally distributed like that. If physical location of employee really didn't matter, then your org would have most of its IT staff in India, because the labor rates are lower and that's the largest pool of English-speaking IT talent.

I agree there is some fluidity to IT labor, but there is a limit to it also.

Besides, the stated on-paper purpose of H-1B visas is to fill (alleged) skills shortages. After the dot-com crash there was a big surplus of labor in the area, yet us citizens were competing with H-1B's still. The stated goal was missing the target during that time.

I'd say the ones employing majority of programmers are and that will affect the market at large.

As someone who has worked on H1b in US, I can understand what you are saying.

Primary reason an H1b with a net hourly rate same as a US citizen is more attractive to hire, is because the costs of firing that employee are too low. Unlike a citizen, especially if the citizen is older.

With the suggestion made in the Bloomberg article, it’d have probably been a positive outcome for you if H1b was distributed by way of highest salary first, instead of lottery (which I think didn’t exist during the dot com boom).

Don't mean to sound harsh but anyone who can't compete with an H1B to the extent they can't find a job in the entire state of CA should take a hard look at their skills and expectations and change one or both.

Please elaborate. The time-period was after the dot-com crash. Companies were laying off IT employees left and right, often because the companies died. CA was flooded with excess IT workers. I even put an ad on Craigslist around 2002 that I'd do development for minimum wage. No takers. What else do you want? I nearly left IT. Okay, I'm not the cream of the crop I admit, but are you saying average developers should get out?

But companies in CA were still hiring, as you mentioned. If the labor pool was flooded with laid off workers, then it's a buyers market. You would think the companies can just hire from that pool for whatever they wanted to pay (cuz in such a climate, they would have takers), without bothering with the H1B search and paperwork hassle.

Hiring isn't as simple as paying the least possible in the current climate. Significant variance in salary among people with similar jobs will be an issue (people talk). Additionally, labor surpluses don't last forever. Low-ball salaries in that situation will lead to turnover at the worst time - when the economy is recovering.

If they are thinking medium or longer term, then the short-term slump may weigh less in their decision process. A visa worker is less likely to be ABLE to go elsewhere if/when economy or an industry improves. They are almost like indentured servants.

Theres a ton of talk about skilled immigrants and the american education system, and as a blue-collar automotive mechanic, I have no problem with immigrant doctors and engineers. Where I see the real problem is unskilled immigrants.

Take for example a job posting I had up for more than 3 months. I needed a solid mid-level mechanic. oil/air/tires/suspension and electrical a plus. I dont want my apprentices doing this work because theyre learning to do manifold rebuilds and such. And i dont want my old timers doing it because it will cost a fortune and i need them on harder problems.

So for weeks on end, I get at least 3 interviews a day from grossly unqualified immigrants. Why immigrants? nobody wants a kid who grows up to be a successful mechanic i guess. Everyone "goes to college" now. just ask my alignment tech with a masters in english.

- Ive had a slew of random tourists from europe backpacking around in the US who want a job, and cant seem to understand the gravity of a visa violation. They all want three times what I'm paying and health insurance.

- Ive got college drop-outs from china, russia, you name it, who either blew through all their money or were never qualified for college in the first place, and need something to keep afloat while they fake college.

- and finally, perhaps most controversially, I have central and south americans. Theyre either trapped here because of american immigration policy, or theyre fresh off the boat with a slip of paper written by a friend dictating what they will work for in cash. Most of them speak about 8 words of english. They are radioactive as far as im concerned; you would be insane to hire them.

We're always going to need doctors and engineers. not everyone grows up to be a rocket scientist, and thats okay. But im frustrated at how Americans have turned trade jobs (plumbing, auto work, electricians, linemen, pipefitters, etc...) into some kind of field that no kid can ever enter lest they be disowned.

update: I should clarify. These applicants are upset they must wait 90 days for benefits. we do provide health/dental/401k, just not on day one.

So you're complaining about unskilled immigrants applying for your job opening, and apart from being unqualified for the job, they apparently can't even legally work in the USA anyway.

What about if you had skilled immigrants applying for the job? Say, some qualified mechanics, whether from Germany or China or Mexico?

The problem with America's immigration system (from an outsiders perspective) is that skilled immigration visas (i.e. H1B) are only worthwhile for high skill white collar jobs, and in particular for larger companies who can be bothered with the visa lottery.

I see no reason why skilled immigration for lower paying, but still skilled jobs, like auto mechanics shouldn't be possible. In most developed countries, they run a points system. If you want to move here to Australia and become an electrician or any other high demand job, it's relatively easy as long as you have a qualification, good health, and can speak English, and I think that's the way it should be. Obviously long term you should be trying to train more mechanics, but that's a 5-10 year process, and doesn't fix the problem that you're facing right now with a lack of mechanics.

It sounds like you have a bigger problem than simply a lack of qualified candidates. Do you have any unqualified Americans applying for your job? How little are you offering that European backpackers (who in my experience will work for a pittance) are asking three times what you're offering?

> Do you have any unqualified Americans applying for your job? How little are you offering that European backpackers (who in my experience will work for a pittance) are asking three times what you're offering?

Bingo. I think you nailed OP’s problem right there. If you’re offering to pay in bananas, don’t be surprised when you get a line of monkeys out your door.

I respect everything you're saying, but you kinda lost me at, "They all want ... health insurance".

Yes, indeed... as long as a soul-crushing job sitting in a chair and staring at a screen comes with health coverage, and a job in the trades does not, then my hope as a father is that my kids will take the health coverage route. Until we fix our crazy system, blue collar work it is a very frightening prospect.

> But im frustrated at how Americans have turned trade jobs (plumbing, auto work, electricians, linemen, pipefitters, etc...) into some kind of field that no kid can ever enter lest they be disowned.

I think the main reason is that you can easily find an office job where you won't be doing much other than showing up and participating in the office politics, that pays comparably to the jobs you offer.

Your salary constraints are obviously dictated by supply/demand (i.e. what others agree to work for and what the customers agree to pay for the repairs), so it's not really your fault, but I see the same trend in many industries - plenty of bullshit jobs pay more (or comparable) to the "real" jobs.

Frankly speaking, it spooks the hell out of me because it reminds me of the last decades of USSR before the big crash happened.

It seems more of a prestige thing than anything really. Americans seem to have a low opinion of blue collar workers.

>They all want three times what I'm paying and health insurance

Is health insurance not something you give out? If that's common enough in the trades to be a complaint about employee desires, then no wonder no one goes into the trades. There is definitely a stigma attached to blue collar work, but part of that is it not paying. All I had to do was read a few tutorials online and a few years later and the only way I'd be making as much money in the trades is by owning my own business or in super specialized niches.

Why would anyone looking at a career pick the trades over that?

If no one wants the job, then you're not paying enough or offering enough benefits. Period.

The fact that you name health insurance as a problem is a big enough warning sign.

Strange that the government acts with zealous intervention and unconventional ideas to solve worker "shortages" but does essentially nothing to solve extreme housing costs and shortages.

I agree with what Kerr is suggesting. It makes a lot of sense.

I also agree with a many Americans who are anti-H1b that it suppresses wages, hence makes it attractive to higher foreign workers, quite often for jobs that are not truly state of the art, but do require the technical know how.

This is why it makes sense for the H1-B to be a highest paid gets first kind of a visa. That way there's a strong incentive to not hire lowest paid employees.

In fact, I think a better way would be to give two 3-year temporary green cards. if at the end of 6th year if the person still has job, it becomes a permanent job. This removes any control that an employer has to depress the wages, and be fair to the American as well as immigrant labour. Such a system can be made available to at least the undergrad/grad/doctoral degree holders from the US universities.

By limiting the immigrant talent, US has already ensure China is taking a huge leap in terms of tech advances. India will figure out how to make the leap soon.

All the while, Canada is making the most of USA's anti high skilled immigrant situation, but inviting them in droves. We'll see a different Canada in the next 5-10 years, mainly due to the huge number of tech immigrants (of Chinese or Indian origin) moving to Canada.

>>In fact, I think a better way would be to give two 3-year temporary green cards. if at the end of 6th year if the person still has job, it becomes a permanent job.

No, the entire reason companies get away with paying H1Bs below market rate is because the visa is tied to employment.

It needs to be decoupled so that visa holders can freely and easily switch jobs without worrying about losing their status.

Or both?

ie grant them to people being paid the highest wages first, and limit the h1b holder to mandatory 1 year employment with the sponsoring company then 5 years of free to switch at will.

We'd still be willing to sponsor as we aren't keeping h1bs via the visa; we keep employees because they want to work here. The pain with sponsoring isn't the cost; it's the time and uncertainty. Sponsoring costs compare favorably to the standard 25% a contingency recruiter charges.

>> grant them to people being paid the highest wages first

I'm against that because it would give FAANG a massive advantage, since they can afford to pay really high salaries compared to, say, a startup.

average salary of h1b holder in bay area is $91k [1]. If startups can't beat that, they don't deserve employees.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/h-1b-visa-workers-earn-six-f...

Though it should be divided by industry. Otherwise, highly paid software engineers will take all the visas and other industries will struggle to match the salary required get a visa. How to divide industry is a very messy business though. Some of our immigration laws divide by industry and those were written 30 years ago. A lot of jobs we hire now didn't exist 30 years ago.

So what? Wouldn't that just make wages rise in those other industries, pushing more Americans into those apparently underserved fields?

I don’t know whether to agree or disagree with that.

Fields that’s get affected negatively could be offered some kind of respite wrt quota. Eg a medical professional on h1 probably won’t be subject to quota.

I think Eric Weinstein covers this question in a relatively academic way in his article:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...

"During the late 1990s I became convinced that in order to orchestrate lower wages for scientists, there would have to have been a competent economic study done to guide the curious policy choices that had resulted in the flooded market for STEM PhDs."

The supply of technical workers is artificially limited by Leetcode style interviews. There doesn't seem to be an actual supply side limitation, especially not at the entry level.

Maybe on the west coast but here in the Midwest we often have issues finding candidates that can write fizzbuz.

We recently had a candidate who's main language was python but failed to even run his code on the command line. Saddly this isnt overly rare.

I use to work in the midwest before moving to the west coast.

We had a guy come in for a programming interview. He claimed to have 3 years experience with a programming language we commonly use. We gave him a simple challenge (connect to a database using a database connector, read some fields and update another field based on data from the read fields). We told him it's fine to use google, and left him alone for four hours with a computer.

He asked to expand his interview time at the end of the four hours, we grant him an additional two hours. At the end he didn't have code that compiled, much less connected to the database.

This story is not atypical from my experience.

First I thought thats not straightforward to make a DB update because you know, not everything is loaded into our brains working memory like which package to use, exact syntax etc etc. But then I read that you guys gave 4 hours + Google and I am shocked. BTW are you hiring :)

Out of curiosity, what language was it?

Actually even in the west coast we have a hard time finding candidates that can write even fizzbuzz level of code. Its not even a recent problem.

The worst I've hard was a person with 20+ years of consulting experience for top companies in firmware could not code 3 lines of C code to traverse a linked list. Literally didn't know the syntax to dereference pointers!

Sounds like you need to pay more, have a better working environment, else work on your recruiting pipeline. A phone interview should be able to sniff that out quickly.

Anyone with a CS degree can write a fizzbuz

Decades ago tech companies like IBM would hire entry-level software developers with zero coding experience based on the results of aptitude tests. Then they put the new employees through internal boot camps. There's no reason a similar approach couldn't work today. Employers just generally got lazy about workforce development while the economy was slower and they had an unlimited supply of applicants.

It's not just software engineers. This also happens with skilled labor, like machining.

You used to be able to get hired and taught on the job, now the employers expect you to pay your own way through a technical school for several years before applying for a minimum-wage job. So you've got (a) lower wages (b) you need to pay to educate yourself (c) you need to pay to support yourself during those years of training and (d) you're guessing which job skills are going to be in demand after N years, so after spending the time training and taking on debt there might not even be a job waiting for you.

In the uk I often see posts for graduate programmer positions with essentially this arrangement: words to the effect of “candidates need not have experience coding but should show a willingness to learn and deep interest in tech” etc.

that's how I see it too.

I feel like the whole question here is simply: how much commitment to the existing US labor pool should US laws/regulations require from US employers?

Over the last decade, the answer has been "not much." But, now, because of political and economic realities, that answer might change.

This. If there was a real piece of missing demand these companies would change their interview process, but things are only moving in the opposite direction. The shortage is a myth to flood the software engineering job market with cheap workers. It needs to stop

Piggybacking off the fizzbuzz comment, but at my job we we don't ask hard whiteboard questions - just simple ones that prove people can code, and 75% of them can't do it. If you can't do fizzbuzz, you can't do this job. It's an effective filter.

Had one guy who insisted on using C++ in favor of C for a problem despite being hinted to use the latter. He was a self proclaimed "expert". All was good until forgetting to use delete[] instead of delete.

That and a complete unwillingness to educate and mentor your workforce. I don't understand why the government should step in to help employers because they want training to be somebody else's problem.

Companies don't train their workforce because said workforce then leaves and joins another company, which then benefits from that training.

...that's how it was explained to me by an executive at my former job (a big part of the reason why it's my former job).

California is an at-will state and all that, but surely executives and business consultants can structure some sort of incentive package to cause workers to stay for at least some minimum duration?

The workforce leaves because the company doesn't raise the salary to account for new training.

You can't have it both ways.

That by definition is called a “market force”. They should pay them more once trained.

My intuition is that H1B and similar programs hurt my personal compensation as a domestic provider of skilled labor. My reasoning is that less supply of skilled labor should result in increased cost - which gets paid to me.

I understand it's better for the companies and perhaps the economy as a whole to import labor, but it seems worse for me. Is there research on this subject or something I'm missing?

US engineering wages are 4-5x of what they are in other similarly developed countries. The reason for that is a whole ecosystem of succesful startups/tech companies.

High quality talent from abroad improves the competitiveness of the US ecosystem and drains talent from other ecosystems. I'm going to go ahead and guess that US wages actually go up with less restrictive immigration policies.

Aggregating talent has the effect of creating things that couldn't exist on their own. You don't know where your next co-founder is going to be from. You know you're going to be competing worldwide with other founders anyway so you want the best co-founder you can find next to you. He may be abroad. You want him here so you can meet him.

This intuition only holds as long as you believe there is zero chance of new large competitors arising in other countries.

If protectionism causes a rival to Google to be viable in other countries, that could hurt your salary prospects back home quite a bit.

It seems like the current model, which is import large numbers of software related folks to the US, hurts competition. What I mean by this is that Amazon, Google, etc have a few core businesses that are monopolies (search, online retail, etc) and many ancillary endeavors. Most software people don't work in the core business. If so many software people weren't imported to extend US software giants then some of those people would stay home and develop regional competitors. This would be bad for the company I work for, but for customers it would be good, for foreign software developers who could stay home AND work in a successful domestic company it would be good, and for me it would be good - I'd be paid more.

So the US should vacuum up all talent so hard it has no chance to coalesce elsewhere? I'm not sure this is a viable or even desirable strategy.

The most likely competitors are in China. The actions of the Chinese government have much much more to do with this than the actions of the US.

Historically, attempts to keep a lead by any other path than leading ahead haven't worked well.

The flaw in your intuition is that it believes there's a fixed demand. It's normal for your intuition to think that way — humans are notoriously bad at analyzing higher-order effects.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Thinking that demand is fixed would indeed be a flaw. But the right wikipedia link here is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand : demand curves slope downwards. More sellers (of a given kind of labour) means does mean higher volumes, but also lower prices (wages). GP's intuition is correct. I don't have links handy but it's my understanding that serious studies reliably back this up.

There are other effects too of course. Letting in Sergey Brin may have competed down CEO wages (as per theory) but arguably more importantly drove up demand for engineers. Letting in lots of H1B engineers no doubt drives up demand for gardeners & house-cleaners.

Less H1Bs could also mean less innovation and higher costs for software products. Or in the best case, transferred overseas. It could also mean more competition for the fewer jobs in your local economy.

Hire graduates and train them, problem solved. Cheap immigrant labor is a case of employers having their cake and eating it too.

The vast majority of these jobs aren't that challenging, hence the immigrants. They're mostly looking for monkeys, not 10x devs.

This doesn't work for widely usable skills with a mobile workforce. Consider…

Company A hires a worker and invests in training them, then before they can get their value back out of the education the worker changes to a higher paying job at Company B which doesn't have the training expenses to recoup. Our example worker and Company B are both making their best possible rational decisions.

There are solutions to making this work:

• It could be unlawful for the worker to use their skills, paid for by Company A, with another company until they had 'paid off' their training. Effective non-competes based on skills. Not a PR win for Company A. Also, you never want a judge to cite the Emancipation Proclamation to you in court.

• Company A could train a worker and have the worker incur unavoidable debt so that should they switch companies Company A will still be reimbursed for their training costs. This combines student loans with for profit workplace training. The conflicts of interest are huge and the optics are horrible for Company A. Again, you don't want a judge to say "indentured servant" to you in court.

• The worker could independently train themselves in something they feel might be advantageous in the work place, incurring any costs themselves in the hope of recouping that investment. This is the usual method in the US, there are some problems with workers making bad investments and incurring lifelong financial burdens.

• Both Company A and Company B could shoulder the cost of training/educating workers and have access to the resulting workers. This is known as taxation and state sponsored education. Workers still may make bad decisions in their training selections.

This is the paragraph where I espouse the best way to move forward. I've got nothing. I like the fourth one, but when you add in educational institutions with their own interests and some desire to steer the educational funding to studies which are in demand it gets very complicated.

Company A could simply pay the (now more qualified) worker a higher wage to remove the motivation to move to company B.

It's always lunacy to me when junior job positions require X amount of years experience. That's just not possible.

Late reply. But in Australia this is seen as 'okay' as generally the entry level job is to go the graduate role route which requires zero experience.

My god! The amount of discussion here is nuts. Skilled immigration is already a settled case. Just look at how Canada and Australia does it.

America has the whole idea of skilled temporary immigration completely backwards. You want the equivalent of Ivy leaguers from other countries but want to treat them like slaves with a ton of documentation and constant fear of deportation?

That is not a life Ivy-League level folks of any country want to live. Just look at other developed countries. America has really not kept pace.

Even worse, you study in a true Ivy League in the US, be successful, work for years, but still be treated like a slave with tons of bureaucracy. I'm not trying to be an asshole, and I understand I'm somewhat of an "outsider" because I'm not a citizen, so I don't have the same rights, but having lived in the US for years and learned everything technical I know here, it's really harsh that my existence here is debated every other week. Understandable but depressing.

One thing that is incorrect here is how the Republican position on immigration is portrayed. They want comprehensive immigration reform that specifically allows skilled immigrants to come to the US, do away with the lottery system and eliminate exemptions for those that broke immigration laws. Basically, most Republicans would prefer a system that is more like Canada's or Switzerland's, where you need to earn your way in.

Here's one site that better explains the Republican position: https://www.republicanviews.org/republican-views-on-immigrat...

"Republicans believe that family and skill should be prioritized when granting citizenship to those who go through the proper legal channels to enter the country. Priority should be given to children and spouses of immigrants that are already legally in the country. They believe the government should emphasize the skills that our economy needs most when determining eligibility, and that the Labor Certification Program should be overhauled. These two measures together would help match qualified workers with work that is in urgent need of filling positions in the country. Despite accusations of being anti-immigration, Republicans do understand the value that immigrants bring to this country, when entering via legal methods. In the Republican Platform adopted at the 2000 GOP convention, the Republican Party declared that it supports increasing the number of H-1B visas, to ensure that high-tech workers are provided to specialized positions, as well as expanding the H-2A program for temporary agricultural workers."

That page references John Boehner and Mitt Romney, who don’t have any influence in Republican policy anymore.

The current administration has repeatedly demonstrated their antipathy to legal immigration.

Cite please.

The current administration has never done anything to show antipathy to legal immigration, the first lady is a legal immigrant as are her parents.

"Muslim ban" affected the ability for Iranians to immigrate. All of the top engineering/science schools in the U.S. lost an entire cohort of Iranian students this past year.

First, there was no "muslim ban", and second the list of countries affected had been defined already by Congress years previous, not the President or the current administration.

Also school visas are not immigrant visas if one wants to be pedantic about it.

She's a white legal immigrant.

yeah yeah racism.

The siren song of those who have no argument.

> as are her parents

Uh, 'chain migration'?

This is a common misunderstanding. Trump has attacked through policy legal immigration far more than illegal immigration.

https://www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-commentary/trumps-attack...

There's literally no point in trying to support a position like this with a left wing policy blog.

The current administration as far as I can tell is trying to force Democrats to the table to get comprehensive immigration reform that includes the things I listed above.

Immigration is a complex topic.

Putting all other issues aside positive and negative, if you turned off the foreign immigration tap, the people in power (corporations) would be screaming at Washington to fix American education system so they could actually find qualified candidates. In that would be a lot of value.

The biggest problem with the H1B visa system is that it's mainly an outsourcing tool. Cognizant, Infosys etc are just offshoring companies and spam the system. The really talented engineers go to the FANGs but these represent a small proportion of visas used.

I support a point-based H1B and Green Card system allowing individuals to apply for their own green card. Salary should take precedence over lottery any day. Someone mentioned about making it industry specific, but that's just opening a loophole. Something like this might improve domestic salaries across sectors.

We could recover from needing skilled immigrants if we would educate our population for free like most of the world. We still only allow rich or lucky people to receive high level educations. How can we complain about skilled labor when we make no effort to create said skilled laborers?

Why would you think only rich or lucky people can go to college in the US? With grants and student loans pretty much anyone can go to college that wants to. And at my local state university, where tuition is a mere $5k/year, lower income kids make up over 90% of the student body.

Yet my area has a gross shortage of skilled trade labor. Want an electrician, prepare to wait 6 months. Need concrete poured at your house? Zero chance of getting a legitimate contractor, you'll be hiring someone doing it illegally. And you'd better treat your plumber like your best friend and not grouch when they pad the bill by a couple of hours.

Because it has been my experience. I personally was able to do 2 years of college but the student loans killed me after I wasn't able to get a high paying job. I love when they take money out of my paycheck. Most people have to work for a living, especially poor people. They cannot afford to not have an income, to just go to school... You are talking about lower middle class kids, not poor people. If you've never been poor don't assume you know anything about it.

Also a student loan is how you claim the poor can go to college. But I stated that most countries have free schooling. Being poor then immediately adding debt doesn't help yourself at all. Perhaps you should go hang out with some poor people and hear it straight from the source. Not trying to be rude or anything, as you make good points about skilled labor.

What is the difference between this headline and one that might read, “Americans’ Access to Affordable, High-quality STEM Education Needs to Improve?”

I’ve know too many friends and relatives, all American-born, who got into tech despite of rather than because of their state-funded primary and secondary education.

The option that isn't being discussed is the one that would align the interests of the working class in America and the immigrant population. Namely, a federal job guarantee for everyone in the country with a minimum standard of living and the requirement that everyone be treated the same. If the buisness community can't stomach that, then maybe they shouldn't get any desperate immigrants that essentially function like scabs because of the way they engineered the system. Our true enemy is the elites and the business community. Immigrants are just ordinary and often desperate people who deserve our kindness. Rise up!

Emphasis on "skilled" and add "legal", please. We don't need more chicken pluckers - there's a machine that does that faster and cheaper.

But not a machine to affordably and accurately pick strawberries or citrus, or clean your house and office park. Let’s not pretend that the demand for relatively unskilled work isn’t very high, because the work is perceived to be beneath the dignity or price range or natives. It would be nice if we could benefit from the immigrants willing and able to do this hard and unpleasant work, without also castigating them for doing it.

gotocake says: "But not a machine to affordably and accurately pick strawberries or citrus":

https://www.bing.com/search?q=strawberry+picking+machine&for...

gotocake says: "this hard and unpleasant work":

http://whvaustralia.net/fruit-picking-hard/

Certainly we don't need to castigate anyone. But we don't need more (illegal or legal) unskilled immigrants taking jobs that will soon be supplanted entirely by automation. We need skilled professions: doctors, engineers, nurses and (God forbid) lawyers.

We'd be fine (indeed, we'd be better off) w/o _any_ of the 7,000-14,000 migrants headed toward the USA's southern border right now.

Right, it's a mistake to think that there are a fixed number of low-skill jobs which need filling. A mistake encouraged by propaganda from those heavily invested in industries set up to employ them.

Swiss people clean their own damn homes at a wage which, in India, would justify several servants. This in turn drives a market for Roomba early adopters... but also just for less obvious technology, like houses well-enough sealed against dust.

That's actually far from the truth. A lot of US based businesses rely on cheap immigrant labor.

A side benefit that I hadn’t really considered but seems obvious; By taking in skilled workers from other countries, it’s like poaching talent from another company. Then they aren’t contributing to or building companies in their former country. Not sure the scale you would need to make a dent, but is there a name for this?

Brain Drain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight

A side benefit? It's been USA's primary competitive advantage for decades - brain draining the cream of the crop from a 5 billion population.

It's incredibly naive to think it was ever unintentional.

The beneficiary of pretty much every brain drain for the last 100 years. No wonder such a strong economy came of it.

California is probably THE focal point of this braininess.

And yet, California has an above average poverty level, below average per-capita education spending and achievement and all-too-frequent state budget problems.

How can this brain-driven economy coexist with this poverty and inequality? It's not the result I would expect. How do we explain this? More important - how do we reduce the poverty and spread the benefits of this brain-driven economy more evenly?

And the network effects of having some of the smartest people in the world together in proximity where they are able to cooperate and produce real innovation.

Brain Drain is a real issue in some parts of the world.

I grew up in Spain and got all my higher education for free. The state essentially spent large amount of money in me, hoping that I would give it back to the economy as a skilled worker.

After the 2008 crisis I moved like thousands others in my same situation. Now other countries will benefit from the ROI that my home country made on me instead.

How do you feel about that?

The choice of word is interesting: encouraging immigration of skilled workers to the US has the benefit of preventing them from participating in the development of their home country.

Short term, sure it's beneficial for the US, but I don't think it's a good idea to reflect in a vacuum or only thinking short term. Emergent countries being able to develop is beneficial for everybody.

> The choice of word is interesting: encouraging immigration of skilled workers to the US has the benefit of preventing them from participating in the development of their home country.

In theory, yes. However, in practice, "participating in the development" can mean working for crappy employers, for a pittance, on some ass backward php/delphi/whatever system that has been accruing technical debt for the past decade. Not all developing countries are friendly for entrepreneurs either(bureaucracy, corruption, taxes, limited access to credit), so options may be limited.

In many cases, they wouldn't be able to contribute that much, but they may be highly skilled, and the United States works as a force multiplier.

Source: came from a third world country, had a company for a couple of years, spent another couple of years trying to officially close that company after operations had ceased.

What about the immigrants? It's a huge benefit to them!

Of course, but that's not what the original message was pointing out. Comparing countries stealing other countries skilled workers and companies poaching employees is not a good idea IMO, that's all.

It's the same thing, it's just the barriers are different.

Silicon Valley is successful partly because noncompetes don't get enforced in California. It makes things slightly worse in the short term for each company but better for both the individuals and the world overall.

The US has been successful partly because it's attracted so many skilled immigrants. It makes things slightly worse for other countries in the short term (though remittances!) but is better for both the individuals and the world overall.

National (or oligarchical) competition is far from dead, despite the vacuous, maudlin bromides about global unity that will never be true. Why would you expect the US (or anyone else) not to drain other countries of their workers if it suits them? The emphasis is on "if". South Korea was transformed from a backwards rice farming country into a financially prosperous one not by draining Korea of Koreans, but in no small part because it was in the US's interest.

Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE

Human capital flight a.k.a brain drain/gain.

Brain Drain.

While H1B debate is ongoing, vmware invests $2b in india

As when any immigration topic comes up on here, I am in full support of getting the best talent from anywhere in the world to help create the next innovation or invention that makes people lives easier, better and richer. I just ask, because I know there are many immigrants on this forum, that if the American people are given a referendum on what they think is proper on how to handle immigration (whether it be legal or illegal) that you respect the vote of the electorate. With that being said I wish anyone that wants to immigrate to America has a good experience with the people here, works hard and achieves the American dream for themselves and their offspring.

>America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

Really? Why? It can't find enough people to educate among 350 existing million?

I think we should have a world without borders and countries, only states. People should be able to live and work wherever they want to irrespective of where they are born. Most of the problems arise because we have divided the world into countries. This is really something the world needs rather than immigration reform

Wouldn't this favor large companies? e.g. someone like Google, Amazon may pay the top $ to get talent from abroad but startups or small companies are not able to?

While the pay gap between companies exist even today, the difference is today small & medium companies can afford the foreign labor.

I have a modest proposal to help with the need for skilled labor. Reject all skilled applicants for visa's. Only accept the unskilled and uneducated. If you have an advanced degree and specialty skills you are not allowed in and have to remain in your country of origin. If you get a visa to study in the US you have to return to be employed in your home country. I think this will have two primary effects.

1. It will create a huge shortage of skilled professionals in America and will significantly drive up their costs and salary. This will result in more people choosing to enter those fields.

2. It will increase the global support of skilled persons as those who remain in their country of origin will be able to train and support more professionals.

My basis for this is looking at number of engineers per capita, the developed world produces an order of magnitude more engineers and doctors and scientists then the developing world, but then we take the few they do produce which inhibits future growth.

This is fine for the purpose you are outlining, but it completely neglects the fact that the primary reason people are emigrating from their home countries is seeking a better quality of life for themselves and/or their families. Closing the door to them shuts them out from this path.

Moreover, a lot of immigrants that arrive to the US end up having a greater impact on the world as a whole than they would or could have had in their home countries. This is the ideal scenarios of the sometimes true concept, "Land of Opportunity". I don't presume you are ignorant of this, but conditions in many other countries are worse for a lot of reasons.

My own anecdotal evidence: One of the main factors the lead to my own father's emigration from his home country was because the "old guard" at his university effectively blocked him from progressing any further lest it be a threat to their own established position. Arriving at in the US, he had no problem rising up to the top in the more merit-based system here and effecting major, positive change in his field.

So, as is the case with so many other issues, this one is not as cut-and-dry as your comment makes it out to be, and prevents a lot of other good from flourishing as well. There are not equal opportunities for world-benefiting success everywhere.

Also nobody here mentions that immigrants to the US pay taxes and spend most of their money inside the US propping up the economy.

It will also lead to a lot more hiring in other countries, which means less money into the US economy. Countries like Canada are already making it easier for immigrants from other countries to work. With similar timezones and standard of living, this will just ensure that many more jobs will just move overseas leading to a reduction in payroll taxes, income taxes, social security, local economy and spending.

I don't see any country adopting these policies, considering they want more and less expensive skilled workers, and depriving another country of their skilled workers isn't a deterrent (and may even be viewed as a positive, depending on if they view the global economy as a zero-sum game).

> This will result in more people choosing to enter those fields.

I think for skilled labor in the US there are way better ways to accomplish this. Lower the cost of education, and work to improve education on the whole.

But your idea is punitive of people in poor countries who have skills, yet are limited in how much they can improve their lot in life due to lack of demand for them.

Interesting: according to Kerr, recent restrictions on immigration shouldmindeed help they US be encouraging bright workers to go elsewhere and send remittances back to the US. Hmm.

You want good healthcare, good salary, the real Autobahns, good houses and you are talented, have at least a bachelor in IT and are willing to try something out? Come over to Germany. Honestly, no I other country I know of has such a fast and well thought out way to permanent residence for foreign talent than Germany. If you are interested in working here, drop me a message to eriklistserve at gmail dot com.

Correct me if I'm wrong, a friend of mine who looked into it, all he could get in Berlin was less than half his American salary, while his taxes were very substantially higher.

His take-home would have been slashed by about 70%, so he gave up the idea. Have things changed since then?

Berlin is the worst place if you want to have a good paying job. If you only want to work for startups, then Berlin is the place to go. But if you are open to work in Big Enterprise IT, then there are many places where you can work and earn very good salaries (especially Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg where Enterprise IT usually pays between 80k$-140k$ depending on your role). While taxes and contributions for singles are quite high, it also includes health insurance, retirement money and unemployment insurance. For food, Germany is one of the cheapest places in the world. Property taxes are REALLY low compared to the US (I mean, in the US or in Germany, you as a renter pay them, so rent is also cheaper here, even in the hubs). In big cities, many people do not need a car as public transportation is very affordable and available everywhere (so that money gets saved for some).

The biggest challenge: to stay here for longer, try to learn German well. It is not that difficult if you take your time.

> 80k$-140k$

Thats the problem. You used the dollar symbol, but even if its euros, the upper range you gave is 160k. That's way, way too low for an upper range if someone's thinking of salaries on one of the US' coasts (especially west, but also east). Insurance is mostly for if you lose your job...as long as you have one, its a pretty tiny part of the paychecks, retirement matching is pretty common, food isn't that expense (I dunno about Germany, but compared to other countries Ive lived in, its cheap). After the difference in taxes, the delta in the upper range is a significant factor.

Im curious about the property taxes part though. Do you have some examples? Real numbers are hard to google.

If you want to make 600k as a software developer, stay in San Francisco, live in your 2.5 million dollar .2 acre ranch house, and enjoy walking over homeless people on your way to work.

House worth 700k next to Frankfurt (the house I live in): 450 Euro a year.

If you really count in the high rents on east and westcoast, I doubt there is high net difference of money to live from. If you are working as a freelancer, your tech income will also be rather in the 160-240k$ range (and quite stable nevertheless)

Question: how big would the language barrier be? Not only at the workplace, but on mundane, day to day activities, for a family?

When I was considering moving to Europe, I thought of Germany, but quickly dismissed, and then came to the conclusion that the Netherlands would be a better fit. But I'm not sure how accurate that assessment was.

It totally depends. If you are working and living in one of the big centers like Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin or Hamburg, chances are good that you find work in a company that accepts English-only speakers and usually you can live day-to-day life in English, too. But of course I have to say that you should try to learn the language if you want to stay in Germany longer than just a year or two, as this will open up even more job opportunities (and potentially higher salaries). I personally work in a 100% English environment in Frankfurt (while being German myself). Working for smaller companies without working knowledge of German is difficult. German is not a dead language, so in smaller, non-international companies, people speak it all day long. On the other hand, the supply of talent is so tight that even smaller companies now adapt and accept non-German-speaking foreigners.

In Berlin, you can certainly work and live a 100% English life. Then again, salaries are lower there as you compete with cheaper workers from Poland and other Eastern European countries.

> But of course I have to say that you should try to learn the language if you want to stay in Germany longer than just a year or two

Of course. But being able to at least perform basic functions while also adapting to a new country is important(and it is overwhelming already without language issues). After a while, you're doing yourself a disservice by not learning the local language.

My aunt lived in Japan for close to two decades. She can't speak Japanese and knew barely enough to get by. She never really had to, as she's married to a native japanese, which doesn't help matters. But that's absolutely not the way to go.

You will absolutely get around Germany using English :) no worries.

I'm not yet buying tight talent supply. Does your company offer 90-100% remote work (from Germany/EU/similar timezone)? If it doesn't the market isn't really tight. Software can easily be done from anywhere you want with few meetings necesarry (well, maybe for teambuilding ;-))

That is this HackerNews mindset. Software can be done from anywhere, sure, and big German companies get it coded in India or East Europe. The high paying IT jobs here are not coders who produce software, but architects, business analysts, project managers, scrum masters, product owners, data scientists, IT consultants who work together with the client in person. The coding and system administration is offshored in a lot of cases.

That is what happens when you put meaningful education behind a wall of private business.

Couldn't they skill up non immigrants? That would improve inequality ad seems clear from Trump being elected that not everyone is happy with immigrants.

deleted

This is the sort of generic flamewar tangent that we're trying to avoid on this site. Hopping to the nearest inflammatory talking point is the quickest way to send a thread up in tedious, nasty flames, so can you please not post like that here?

Most of the thread is managing to stay focused on the specifics of this article. Please emulate that instead.

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

To whom is this replying? The linked article takes pains to ensure that nobody attempts to interpret this as advocacy for completely open borders:

"This does not mean open borders but a smart and lawful methodology for determining who should be allowed entry."

This article wouldn't even need to be written if the people/media/politicians didn't conflate "skilled immigration" with "unlimited immigration"/"open borders".

Not sure I understand. "Open border" folks don't vote, as I once noted lining up at a polling place near downtown Los Angeles.

No mainstream politician is pushing for completely open borders. That's a complete straw man.

The closest quote I can find from a national politician calling for open borders is Donald Trump in 2013.

"We will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability."

I think that just meant he was against tariffs and trade wars...

AFAIK this is not a "complete straw man". Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison (Minnesota) is strongly in favor of open borders, goes around wearing T-shirts saying the same. He has even been quoted saying that "America’s national borders create an injustice by keeping Mexican workers from traveling to the United States to look for higher-paying jobs". Maybe he has a point, however he does not share that opinion alone.

This still seems like a waste of resources. If the H1Bs are willing to come over for $40k, why should a bidding war result in them being paid $100k? Have the companies bid on slots. That money is a tax that should be used to train US workers for that same job. Pay the H1B $40k, pay a tax of $60k, and in 4 years you have a newly minted US College graduate qualified to do that job, with no college debt, and they’ll be willing to take the job for $80k.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com