Yeah the US really needs to completely revamp its immigration system. Not only H1B but GC as well. Take a look at the line for Indians waiting for green cards. It's apparently 150 years long. That is absurd.
There are about 4 billion people waiting in line to enter the US if they could.
There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries, just as there is now infinite demand for healthcare services now that we are getting older.
The number of people in this or that queue is no longer a valid metric unless we're talking purely about bureaucratic wait times, in which case those should be short.
H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud.
If it came with a bigger fee, like 5K for approval, it might cover the cost of an 'inspector' popping into the office to check up on H1 status granted individuals.
If companies knew an inspector would pop in once a year without notice, they might be hesitant to go on with the fraud stuff.
I suggest the blatant fraud is done by bad actors outside normal operations but they're enabled ultimately by BigCos who turn a blind eye.
i.e. anyone hiring contractors for more than 6 months have to also back their residency status, i.e. Cisco hires from ABC consulting and the inspectors come in and it's fraud, Cisco is on the hook as well.
That would be one way to help clean it up.
I think there is truly quite a bit of real business demand for H1s - even outside of the scammy stuff and 'replace our engineers' stuff.
The real REAL solution to this is to raise up the living conditions of people living in poor countries. At that point even if we had open borders not everybody would move to USA/Europe/Canada/Australia any more than everybody from Louisiana moves to California.
Besides the fees are already up there. I was on an O-1 for a while and IIRC it was roughly $8000 all in between lawyers and processing fees.
What percentage of Africans living in poverty, corruption, dysfunction do you think would like to migrate to Europe, the US or Canada? It's 'most'.
1/2 of Chinese would emigrate according to a few surveys [1].
Since everyone has the internet - they can now see that people elsewhere live in considerably higher material standards of living, why would they want to stay? Basically, family and culture ... but most people would trade that for a decent job and stable governance.
Yes - totally agree the solution is to help poor countries have some wealth, but what can we do to help? They mostly have systems of total corruption. Any real attempt to try to fix underlying problems would be utterly destroyed by leadership who wants to maintain their status. Either governmental or non-governmental.
Most African countries run on bribery. All the way up and down. So if a US Agency comes in and starts exposing this, how is the leadership going to react? With massive anti-American sentiment is how.
This is happening right now as China is greasing government figures to buy up land on the cheap. They're bringing in their own workers in lieu of hiring Africans. Why? Because they can, and they are paying off who they need to to keep it that way. [2
Finally - even if countries were wealthier - there would still be massive emigration.
Poland has a GDP/capita of about $14K US, but in PPP it's much higher. Poland is 'poor' for a rich country, but they are not poor. They have stuff. They have industry, they have regular clothes, housing, highways, governance that mostly resembles ours. None of it is UK/US standard ... but it's still pretty good. They are 'rich' compared to Nigerians, easily.
And yet, there's a massive exodus of Polish labour into other places, particularly the UK, which has caused calamity in Europe. That's a different kind of migration, because I think many Poles return at some point, but nevertheless, it's big.
So no, open borders would be a migration disaster by any stretch, even in some distant future where Central South American countries are hopefully much more 'caught up', it still can't work very well.
I think a NAFTA type arrangement for all of the Americas is within reason though: no visa requirement, and possibility of easy work for a few years, then apply for citizenship.
I think the fee for an H1 could be $1.5K a year. Maybe even a hint of a higher tax bracket, why not? $8K for an O1 sounds about right. You're supposed to be 'world class genius/talent' so that's not out of range.
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/17/half-of-china-s-mil...
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2015/11/05/wh...
I'm hinting at a 'system' that I think might work for North America.
I guess I'm saying NAFTA is a better model for the Americas than the EU, and even then, only when there is more economic parity.
Honestly, you are over estimating the number of people who would like to come to the US. There are other wealthy countries which have a revamped immigration policy (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, some EU countries) which manage it well and don't get 4 Billion applications.
> H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud.
I think H1 also needs to be tweaked for easier transfer across different companies. This will make sure that people on H1 can easily switch if they feel they are getting paid less.
But I do agree with you overall on everything else.
“150 Million Adults Worldwide Would Migrate to the U.S.”
https://news.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-world...
There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries, just as there is now infinite demand for healthcare services now that we are getting older.
There is a limit to how much can be done to keep people alive.
That 150M number seems about right.
That's not remotely the number that would move if they could.
If you walked into a household in a poor country and just offered them zero-friction citizenship to the US/UK/CA/Europe for their whole family, with the promise of a decent job etc. - no strings attached ... the number would be extremely high.
We're not supposed to use anecdotes here on HN but frankly it's life experience that has exposed me to the nuances of the most important things. Visiting these places and one kind of get an idea.
It's not colonialist, arrogant, condescending or anything. It's just a simple pragmatic reality of people's will to just have stability, safety and a bit of aspiration.
And yes, the answer mostly lies in helping these countries get much richer, and as I posted below, it's hard ...
But we are making progress. The number of 'absurdly poor' people, living on like $1 a day has dropped dramatically over the last few decades as the industrial revolution of 'making stuff' has started working it's gears in more traditionally poor places ... though that has come with a lot of baggage as well, like pollution etc..
There is a difference between “people who want to move to the US” and “people who want to move to another richer country”.
I’ve asked people on HN why don’t they move from thier country in the EU with less opportunity to a country with more opportunity and they cited extended family and cultural differences as a reason.
Heck, it’s hard to get people in the US to move to different cities and states for the same reasons.
But if your argument is "Moving to the US + decent job" then just the "decent job" part would be attractive. Moving to the US and having to face the possibility of bankruptcy because a family member got sick does not sound exactly attractive.
Source: I am a non-American who was offered opportunity to migrate to US but decided against it because the US feels like a dog-eat-dog country. Would much rather move to Europe IF I wanted to move.
By 'decent job' - I mean something that actually pays, and has healthcare. And by that I mean working in a factory, or Wallmart or serving coffee.
People from poor countries also want just a safe and credible environment to live in, as opposed to being harassed, and challenged in a system rife with corruption.
Have you even been to America?
The US is not 'dog eat dog' and the overwhelming majority have good health insurance. There are many options for those who even don't have it.
The US spends more per capita on public health insurance initiatives, then most European countries! I couldn't believe this when I found out, but Medicare, Veterans hospitals etc. is about $5K per citizen while Canada spends only $4K per citizen for socialized medicine. My number may be a little off but the ratio is about correct.
You can come from anywhere and have great success in America. In Canada, you will probably be more stable, but you won't have great success.
If you are not European, or 'white' - the Europeans will never, ever accept you into their society. In Germany, even if you are Polish, it's very evident - there is a huge line between Germans and everyone not German. You will always be 'foreign'.
If you expect to have a massive house, boat and gold plated insurance and retirement, then you're expecting too much, but if you're expectations are 'a job' and an abode, with acceptable health insurance, general safety and the rule of law then you'll find this in America. Outside of SF, NYC, LA etc. things are quite affordable.
We spend more but we don’t have better health outcomes by any measurable statistic.
For instance, the federal government is not allowed to negotiate drug prices for Medicare - unlike every other country. Some amount of the money we spend for “healthcare” goes to line the pockets of the private insurance company.
If you are not European, or 'white' - the Europeans will never, ever accept you into their society. In Germany, even if you are Polish, it's very evident - there is a huge line between Germans and everyone not German. You will always be 'foreign'.
Have you been following American politics for the past two years? The president just put out an additional that was too racist for Fox News.
No, there aren't, and most of the people who would if they could can't for reasons beyond border policy.
> There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries
No, there's not. There aren't infinite people outside of wealthy countries to start with, and not every person outside of wealthy countries would move to them if they could (as we know, because many who would be most able to—notably local elites—don't.)
> H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud.
H1B is a bad program designed to inhibit wage growth and needs to be abolished.
You really should stop listening to the politicians and learn more about the world.
This quota should be removed.
I think maximum percent limits make sense. But, 7% might be a bit aggressive.
After all, a country's borders aren't necessarily the best indicator of cultural diversity brought by those people. India (the biggest contributor to the H1B) is internally a lot more diverse than more ethnically homogeneous, yet highly populated countries such has Bangladesh, Russia, UK, Japan or France.
racial quotas (or per-country quotas)
If they didn’t have those, 90%+ of the immigrants would be of Chinese or Indian origin. Is that what we want?
If a law-abiding person lives and works here for a decade, they should be allowed to stay.
Yes, we'd want the 14% of skilled immigrants we allow to be skilled, irrespective of their nationality.
Of course, many more millions who haven’t applied would immediately join the new queue ...
I’m not sure even the US could deal with a sudden population increase of 30-40 million.
https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/indians-w...
Where did you get the 30-40 million number from?
The 30-40 million comes from the fact that there are lot more people who would come to the US that haven't bothered to apply. If you relaxed the criteria the number of applicants would expand.
I'm not anti-immigration (I'm Canadian and we're slightly more relaxed about immigration) but there needs to be some controls in place.
If there are 600K people of Indian descent waiting for Green Cards, then it seems rational there are a few million waiting overall.
You need to be able to "onboard" those immigrants.