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Comment by manas666 | Hacker News Reader

I would like everyone answer few questions to define what is fair and what is not:

1. Is it fair for high-skilled Indian-nationals to wait 10+ years for a GC?

2. Is it fair that indian consultancy bodyshops overwhelmed the IT market and H1B quota and then brought down the wages of IT professionals via C2C, 1099, OPT/CPT, fake resumes and other tricks?

3. Is it fair that indian GC backlog will delay GC for other nationals, in case the 7% limit is lifted?

I would say since Indians enjoyed getting the majority of H1-Bs, they should also bear the consequences of hitting the country limit. Otherwise, it would only benefit Indian nationals only at a cost of other nationals.

I am not even talking about nurses and other professions that will be harmed by this bill.

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Nations don't get visas. Individuals do. Punishing or rewarding people on the basis of where they were born instead of their own skills is wrong.

Regarding #2, the body shops are able to get away with it because of the long GC backlog for Indians. Hence companies like to hire Indians precisely because they will work for them for a long time without pay hikes because of the GC backlog, compared to hiring Americans or workers from other non-backlogged countries. This bill will take that away and equalize everyone's footing. You know the body shops and staffing companies hate this bill right?

>Is it fair that indian GC backlog will delay GC for other nationals, in case the 7% limit is lifted?

Yes, it is. It's called first come first served. That's like asking if it is fair that people who got into the queue at the DMV before you get to go to the counter before you. Yes, it definitely is.

But its fairer - its certainly not fair that one country take the lions share?

What about some bright young kid from Saharan Africa doesn't get a fair chance at a H1b Visa.

And you could argue from a realpolitik view that allowing more sub Sharan h1b's would act as a counter to the Chinese Belt and Road would be a good policy

The bright young kid from Saharan Africa has a less chance of being hired by a company right now because he will get his green card in 7 months, compared to 70 years for a less bright Indian worker. Companies can pay the Indian worker less to retain him for a decade since he cannot switch companies easily unlike the African worker. It also reduces their employee turnover so they prefer Indian workers. This new law will make it more likely for that African worker to get hired because everything would be on an even footing so the bright young kid would get preferred.

> What about some bright young kid from Saharan Africa doesn't get a fair chance at a H1b Visa.

Why not? They can go the student, OPT route and a shot at H1B the same as anyone else. Plus they'll get a green card faster than any bright Indian or Chinese kid.

EDIT: Changed some wording and "engineer" to "bright kid"

But the bright possibly partially self taught "bright kid" wont have the same support structure. Its just like WASP kids with a rich mommy and daddy who can support them in unpaid internships for those high status jobs.

How does keeping per-country green card quotas do anything at all to fix this problem? I'm not seeing any connection here.

The reason why diversity is good is because it helps break down enclaves and bubbles and let's the dominant culture play a bigger role. When people from one nation migrate en masse are they forced to integrate into their new environment and culture or they do they form ethnic and cultural enclaves that resist the dominant culture and form a concrete in group that resists outsiders, including the native population?

Country quotas have existed across the globe and history for a reason. People inherently have in group preferences, they are nationalist, that includes migrants.

First of all, this bill benefits people that are already in the US and working there for close to a decade, so all that text about diversity in your post is completely irrelevant.

Looks like you need to advocate for national quotas on H1B visas, so you're barking up the wrong tree.

>Country quotas have existed across the globe and history for a reason

Not really. Do you have examples of other countries still enforcing a country quota on work visas?

You know Indians aren't just coming from consulting companies right? They are individuals. Is it fair that the children of Indians who have grown up in the US have to self deport because other nationalities think it's better to subject indians to decades long uncertainty rather than not considering race or national origin (which would equalize wait times to 5-6 years)?

Btw pretty much NO other country in the world has national origin quotas. Are you saying that racially discriminatory provisions put in place to satisfy southern segregationists that no other country follows are fair??

I was talking about big picture. Majority of H1-B are taken by nationals of one country. It cannot be one way street to benefit one country nationals only in H1-B and GC. I agree that the system is completely broken, but the harm to the system is contained within H1-B system only. Thanks to the country limit, the GC immigration system is not broken yet for all other nationals.

If America wants diversity in immigration, then the country limit is doing its work perfectly as was designed.

I dont agree with you that "US system is subjecting indians" - this is manipulation. You failed to mention that fact that there is entire industry of bringing Indian engineers into US from Hyderabad (and cities like that) via student visas, H1-B, and then GC. It is this system that is flooding the immigration with H1-B and then GCs that put family immigration and other category GCs in a very long backlog

As a society we decided a long time ago that blanket punishments based on country of origin are immoral.

Err no - society and states are quite happy with economic and other pressure being applied and effecting a population.

Yes, states do all sorts of awful immoral things. But blanket punishments go against the post-war consensus regarding fundamental human rights.

Not comparing the backlogs to Japanese internment, but if you look up the history of immigration law you'll realize that the country limits in the 1965 law always had racist intent.

You mean this 1965 law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac... ?

While it was sold to the American people as not affecting demographics ("Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), asserted that the bill would not affect the U.S. demographic mix."), this turned out to be extremely false, as pretty much any demographic chart will show.

Yes, that's what I mean by racist intent. Turned out some of the actions done with racist intent (focus on family-based immigration) backfired, while others (per-country limits) worked out perfectly.

But the law was passed specifically because the previous law was viewed as racist: "the National Origins Formula increasingly came under attack for being racially discriminatory. With the support of the Johnson administration, Senator Philip Hart and Congressman Emanuel Celler introduced a bill to repeal the formula."

It's very common for racism to be replaced by slightly less terrible racism! The most obvious example is how slavery was replaced by Jim Crow laws, segregation, and later the prison system.

>If America wants diversity in immigration, then the country limit is doing its work perfectly as was designed.

No, it's not. The H1Bs that the bill benefits are already in the US and have been living there for several years. The lack of a green card is stopping them from switching jobs, which lowers their salaries which hurts the job market. It also stops them from starting up their own companies and creating jobs for everyone.

>You failed to mention that fact that there is entire industry of bringing Indian engineers into US from Hyderabad (and cities like that) via student visas, H1-B, and then GC. It is this system that is flooding the immigration with H1-B

Body shops and US companies prefer Indians instead of other nationalities because they would be stuck in the backlog which makes it really hard for them to switch jobs, so they can be paid less while reducing turnover costs. This bill will equalize things so people from other nations will be on a level playing field.

that's the problem of broken H1-B system that indians abused for a very long time and enjoyed the benefits of getting tens of thousands H1-B eveyr year. Now are paying for it by being in a queue.

H1-B is a temporary visa for 3 years, and was designed as such. This is not a guaranteed GC, so let's talk about who is abusing the system from working as intended, rather than lifting systemic barriers that will hurt everybody (including american citizens that will lose their jobs really fast)

>rather than lifting systemic barriers that will hurt everybody (including american citizens that will lose their jobs really fast)

The bill does not add one new green card or one new H1B visa so I have no idea of what people like you keep talking about. Looks like the fake news and propaganda has won. I give up.

>Now are paying for it by being in a queue.

Yea lets punish rural doctors for being born in India.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/08/news/economy/immigrant-doct...

Indians did not abuse it if the law allowed their entry. There is no such thing as "working as intended" when it comes to law - there is (non)compliance. Congress's intent is fully specified when the law is written. Any wiggle room is due to Congress's inability to be precise, and occasionally interpreted by the Court when some specific law becomes a big enough issue to a complaining party that it's worth their effort to take it that far.

yes they do abuse and they are very creative in bending the law for own favor. H1-B program was designed as temporary program to bring skilled immigrants. But somehow ended up being abused by huge tiered network of consultancies:

1. CV/resumes for H1-B candidates - are 90% fake, inflated experience -> that leads to hiring overseas nationals over domestic professionals.

2. Usage of training visas (cpt/opt) for actual work. The training visas are for training entry-level students, not just a work authorization for experienced foreign IT specialist working for entry level wages.

3. Lower effective wage in the industry, due to inability of Department of Labor to depress wages. They go around the rules by creatively choosing specialty occupation codes to determine prevailing market wage and make foreign-brought IT talent way cheaper than domestic ones.

4. Outsourcing itself allows greedy companies to slash full-time staff and increase profits, as foreign IT nationals require fewer/cheaper benefits than domestic -> that's why C2C and consultancies in general are in high demand

there are countless other examples of how the system was abused that I can go on and on forever.

It's not easy for American citizens to get permanent work/live visas in most other countries either.

And it is often in the interest of each country to prevent an influx of additional (lower wage) workers in trades that already have enough workers.

A parallel can be seen of how Walmart entered rural and small town America years ago and killed many local businesses. It also lowered local wages, because the primary job became Walmart Checker.

If you are a country of 330 million people, and you do not put limits on countries 5X larger, then you will find your citizens less employed and lower income.

This is not racist, nationalist, or any other label. I suppose you could label it "localist", whereby you favor local resources over remote ones.

The excuse used by tech companies starting around 2000 was that there were not enough talented local workers, so importing cheaper (and often lower skilled) workers was the answer. That's not to imply that all foreign labor is lower skilled. However, displacing local workers with foreign workers without some quality control, especially where the pay is lower, will result in an accumulation of lower skilled workers.

Agree, every day companies merge and reduce their workforce and who's getting axed first? Expensive american workforce.

Pretty soon they are replaced by foreign nationals either onshore or offshore using "workforce augmentation" companies that are consultancies

Let's talk about the entire picture, if we want to discuss immigration "fairness"

my wife will have permanent resident visa for France in just a few weeks. It took me 7 months to get a k1 visa then 1.5 years to get a green card.

"localist" -> you're looking for "xenophobic".

Nope. Having an affinity for people you live near does not imply that you dislike others. It may be true for some people, but it is not a logical truth.

Isn't a K1 visa related to marriage? That's nice for people who happen to be marrying a national, but that doesn't apply to most people.

> It's not easy for American citizens to get permanent work/live visas in most other countries either.

Getting permanent residence in any foreign country is going to be a more difficult process than getting a tourist visa. I think you're underestimating how much harder the American system is, and how things really are easier for US citizens in other countries.

To take a random example, Americans can apply for work permits while physically within Germany[1]. After some years of residency (I think it's 3) one can apply for a EU Blue Card if one has a college degree and an employment contract of EUR 53k/year[2] (easily attainable by a software engineer in Germany).

So your average HN US citizen software engineer can:

1. Interview with a German company on video chat

2. Visit visa-free for an onsite interview

3. Sign offer, apply for work and residence permits after relocating. Permits are for the duration of the employment contract

4. Get a Blue Card after 3 years

Which honestly sounds like a breeze compared to what a foreign-born software engineer would need to do to work in the US:

1. https://www.internations.org/go/moving-to-germany/visas-work...

2. https://www.howtogermany.com/pages/eu-blue-card.html

except why would you ever migrate to Germany where wages are like 50% of the US salary for IT engineers and like 20% of silicon valley wages for senior folks.

supply/demand in action, and difficulty of the immigration process is just an indicator of that

What about fields other than software?

Besides there are lots of reasons to emigrate to Germany besides the money - minimum 5 weeks' vacation every year, employee-friendly labor laws, cheaper healthcare and childcare, college, more interesting city centers all sound pretty good to me.

Also, "you can make a ton of money here so there's no need to improve our processes" isn't a great argument for the US to make.

> racially discriminatory provisions put in place to satisfy southern segregationists

The vast majority of green cards go to majority-non-white countries - the chart at the bottom of https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/06/more-than-h... shows the country of origin breakdown.

Non white countries have white populations.

How many whites vs blacks get visas in South African historically?

If you have statistics showing that US green cards are mostly awarded to whites, despite going to mostly non-white-countries, please share them. It would certainly go against the general trend of US immigration, which is predominantly non-white, and has been since 1965.

Correct me if I am wrong but those numbers are not for work green cards.

I'm honestly not sure. Until now, I had no idea that was a special type of green card. The second-to-last chart in that article mentions employment as an admission category, so maybe? Better sources are welcome.

In either case, pretty much every source I'm aware of shows immigration to the US as predominantly non-white, so I'd like to see the claim that it appeases southern segregationists backed up by some evidence.

Only about 14% of total green cards are work based. The rest are family based.

I've often heard "fair" being referred to as "The F word" in communications circles. The reason is that the word will have many meanings to many people, with all of them being "correct" to some degree. And many of those meanings will be contradictory to one another.

The only meaningful response I can give to your questions is that "No. A fair solution to the problem is not possible". You have to pick what you are optimizing for. Whatever solution you come up with will have elements of unfairness.

The major concerns here are:

1. Whether it's OK for people to jump the queue (current system)

2. Whether diversity is important (currently, yes).

3. Whether it's OK for someone who has contributed with advanced degrees to the country for over a decade to find him/herself without a job and being booted out of the country. (currently, yes - putting the US in the same category as a bunch of Middle Eastern countries).

You're not going to devise a (simple) system that solves all 3.

1. Waiting a decade for GC is not such a uncommon thing, actually I would argue every person has to wait for a decade before they become permanent resident, even the marriage people

2. The current lottery system should be replaced with highest salary first system. Show me the money, this would take away the incentive of using H1-B as cheap labor sourcing.

3. It is fair, for too long people outside of 4 countries pretty much walked in the park and got GC, refer to point #1. I prefer people stay in US for 10 years for the privilege of GC.

>actually I would argue every person has to wait for a decade before they become permanent resident, even the marriage people

For people of equivalent degrees and skills as those Indians, the wait is often about 2 years for EB-2. So no, almost no equivalently skilled person needs to wait a decade.

Why make a country-case at all. Would you advocate for import quotas from china because china takes too much of US's imports?

Forget entirely about the well being of foreign nationals, take the most cynical and cold approach to them as if they did not matter at all. Look at americans: they would like to purchase goods and services at the best available price/quality ratio they can get, and they are forbidden from doing so explicitly by immigration law.

It is literally taking away liberties from the american people.

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