Hacker News Reader

Comment by fuzz4lyfe | Hacker News Reader

If H1B workers had the same rights and could demand similar salaries as their local counterparts (while also requiring additional effort and costs to hire) I suspect you would find that firms wouldn't hire very many H1B workers. in effect both policies have the same result.

View on HN

> If H1B workers had the same rights and could demand similar salaries as their local counterparts (while also requiring additional effort and costs to hire) I suspect you would find that firms wouldn't hire very many H1B workers.

They they shouldn't hire them. The H1-B program isn't meant to allow firms hire foreign workers at low salaries, even though it's abused to do that. It's meant to help fill real skills shortages (and if there's a real shortage, firms should be more than willing to pay a premium to satisfy their unmet demand).

FAANG would hire same or more, my previous employer who treated H1B as slaves would hire fewer. I'd say both of those things are positive developments.

Eh, I suspect they would. Talented people are born throughout the world, and historically, an 'unfair advantage' of the US has been our ability to attract them. Look how many big companies were founded by a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant.

It'd be a great way of letting the market figure out how many work visas we need, in any event, rather than having a number someone plucked out of their ass.

That assumes no local candidate can do the work, there will be some exceptions but why hire someone is more of an administrative hassle with greater costs for no benefit? If the person in question is somehow better than a local candidate by enough of a margin to justify the costs then they probably are priced incorrectly. (IE miss classified as a junior dev as opposed to a senior)

I'm pretty happy to let companies and candidates figure that out. If companies are only hiring foreigners because of "cheap!", greater H1B freedom would curtail that - or possibly just lead the company to open an office in another, cheaper country. I don't think it's really the business of the government to decide who is worthy and who isn't.

The entire point of H1B is to allow companies to hire skilled workers when there's shortage of said skill in the US. If the company suddenly doesn't hire H1B once they're forced to pay them equally, then you know their real motive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com