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Vote Today on Senate H-1B Bill

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28 pointsgriff198643 comments

> It eliminates the per-country cap, which meters issuance of green cards so that they are distributed to applicants from all countries

I'm not an especially pro-diversity person, but won't this just mean Indians will get 99% of green cards with immigrants from all other countries fighting over the remaining 1%? I don't know if that's a good thing necessarily, change my view.

This perception is just based on my own company, in which I (an American) seem to be in a tiny minority compared to Indian H1-Bs.

The problem is how we define diversity. People from Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Monaco are considered different from each other. But people from Punjab, Kerala, and Assam are not. I’ll argue that people from the latter group of states from India are as diverse as people from the former group of countries from Europe. And because those Indian states have bigger populations than many countries, obviously those states will produce more talented people whom we’d want to keep in USA. For reference, one state in India, Uttar Pradesh, has a population of 200m.

Very well put.

The GC wait times for Indians are insane and it needs to be remedied, but the backers of the bill got a bit too overzealous.

I personally prefer a temporary lift on Quota 2-3 year time frame and capping per country to 49%.

1. The US issues approximately 1M greencards every year - employment based petitions are around 10% of that number 2. The bill does a gradual rollout of eliminating the cap - so most people who have already applied for a green card and are in the US should not be affected 3. Employment based green cards are allocated based on skills - there's a specific allocation of 50K green cards just for diversity every year. That's around 35% of the employment based allocation.

I believe the problem of the "gradual roll out" is it doesn't consider people from the countries that already exceed the per country limit, those people will wait a long time before they can get the green card.

>This perception is just based on my own company, in which I (an American) seem to be in a tiny minority compared to Indian H1-Bs.

The question is, which of these two seems better to you?

* Someone comes to the US, works 10 years on an H1-B, and then goes back to India afterwards.

* Someones comes to the US, works 10 years on an H1-B, get's a green card and stays in the US.

Very politically charged statement. It doesn't matter what the end result of what they do.

It's about who gets the cards in the first place. If India can undercut it'll just be more indians instead of having diverse backgrounds from around the world. As diverse as India could be there are other reasons to pull people from other countries fairly.

This seems exclusively to increase Indian immigration rates and not actually improving diversity of green cards given out. (If you want to play identity politics)

India has ~18% of world population, and still are way less proportionately as immigrant population.

Genetically, Indians are the most diverse ( next to entire African continent ) than any where else. Religion wise (ALL major ones and many, many minor too), linguistically, culturally too.

By any objective measure group of Indians immigrant will be way more diverse as an immigrant population, unless you define diversity incomplete until a favored group of people is not highly included.

In a highly capitalist world, there's no free lunch; surely most of the immigrant must be bringing great value?

Yes, to answer your question, the GC will be given to people from one country for a decade or more.

In the same time, people from Philippines, China etc will EVENTUALLY benefit from it, but before that "benefit", they will suffer more than 10 year wait because of the initial impact of this bill.

The Philippines, Mexico, and China hit their cap as well, so they would benefit as well.

They will eventually, but two things: 1. Before they benefit from it, they will need to wait like 10+ years because of the initial impact from India. 2. Immigration laws change constantly (on the magnitude of 10 years), TBH, who knows how it's gonna change in the next ten years. So, to hope something that will eventually benefit people (in like 10 years) and hurt them now, I don't see much hope in it.

For both H.R.1044 and S.386, if they pass, people not born in India will wait for years before getting the green card. For example, currently, people born in China (note, it matters only where you born, not what citizenship you currently hold), would wait about 4 years to get green card (after they start the process), but once one of these bills passes, they would have to wait for 10 years to get it.

You would probably say they have a grace period, but unfortunately it only "protects" people born in the country that currently doesn't not exceed the per country limit. People from Philippines, China, etc will get the impact almost immediately. To make this really fair, we need to create extra quota for people born in India, not grabbing quota from other countries. (But I guess this will diminish the chance of this bill getting passed so they choose to hurt others, which from the perspective of people born in India, I totally understand, but I feel sad that I and other people not from India will get hurt inevitably once this bill passes).

[edited for typos]

> For both H.R.1044 and S.386, if they pass, people not born in India will wait for years before getting the green card.

Not true. Anyone who doesn’t have an i140 with a priority date of 2012 or so will have to wait years for a green card. Including people born in India.

If you were born anywhere in the world, and applied for a green card in the next month, your wait time would not be different- Indian or not.

As an immigrant myself I don't support this bill as this means we will have more green card holders from just two countries, India and China, and hence less diversity.

Also add to your comment, every time this bill comes up in the news, it says people from India and China will benefit from it. But the reality is, only people from India will so because currently the wait time for people born in China is about 4 years, after the bill, for the next 10 years, no GC will be given to people born in China because the long waitlist from India.

In fact, no one from China I know supports this bill.

Why downvote? I am stating the fact. We are discussing the issue, and you should not downvote just because that person is potentially against your interest.

HN will become the next Reddit with vote manipulation. Even when it's absolutely clear this has major flaws.

Yes, and even the "why downvote" comment got yet another downvote.

This is a super weird way to think about it.

Scenario 1: 10 Indians, 10 Chinese, 10 French, 10 Mexicans

Scenario 2: 100 Indians, 100 Chinese, 10 French, 10 Mexicans

Both seem pretty diverse to me.

What do you define as diverse? You wouldn't call a diet that consisted of 90% rice and beans, and 10% whatever else diverse. As opposed to a diet that consisted of 25% rice, 25% beans, 25% leafy greens, 25% meat.

I define it the same way the dictionary does: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements.

All I'm saying is there's two ways to look at it: either there's a lot of different options, or there are a lot of different options and they're not evenly distributed. To me, I don't know why "evenly distributed" matters and it feels like sophistry. Especially when the people making the argument are generally anti-diversity (to be ridiculously generous) in the first place.

Currently the diet is 25 grains of rice, 25 chopped pieces of beans, 25 leaves, and 25 cows.

Unhealthy? Likely. Unfair? Definitely.

The current bill tries to go closer to fairness by weighting based on population.

What if there are only 3 countries in the world, US, Lithuania, and Rest? Would you want 50 Lithuanians and 50 rest and call it diverse?

I just wanted to know what "diversity" had to do with the question, and what was meant by diversity. An overwhelming presence of one type of anything is not "diverse", but that doesn't say anything about health or fairness.

I'm not commenting on my support or opposition of the bill.

It's fair the way it is because it doesn't matter what country the people are from in the first place. I don't know how a monoculture is more diverse in this case.

It's backwards to think this is better for the people who are trying to get in from places like Europe or Canada, or even parts of Africa. They're now at the back of the line behind India and China. Nothing about this bill promotes fair diversity, or even diversity itself. Unless you explicitly measure diversity in quantity of melanin in their skin which is racist itself.

Ok so what you are saying is that in a 3 country world: US, Lithuania, and Rest, you insist and define 50 Lithuanians and 50 rest is fair, and call out any changes as racist.

By your definition, both a toddler and Arnold Schwarzenegger should both get same 2 slices of bread, because it is 'equal' and 'fair'. Anything else would be ageist?

Strawman argument but I'll try to explain. If we had only 3 countries then 50% would be from Lithuania and 50% from Rest. That is equal and fair because it doesn't discriminate against anything about those two countries. Mass emigration (to anywhere) is not something we should promote as a good thing. If we take all of the top people in the country that leaves the country poorer and worse off than if we did nothing at all.

The point is just because a place like India has a huge population shouldn't prevent or make it more difficult for people to immigrate from Australia, Europe, Africa, Japan, South Korea, or any less populated countries. The same goes with China. What gives China and India other than population alone the upper hand? Are they somehow more valuable than someone from Japan? Are the more valuable than people throughout Africa?

If you want unbiased immigration you treat everything equal. From within those pools you can argue who is more worth the green card via a merit system that can be scrutinized against those peers within the same country. By your standard India and China would dominate the immigrant population and leave less well off countries with an even worse chance for economic prosperity.

If diversity is so dear to you, you must be up in arms about family based immigration, which is much bigger piece of the 1 million GCs and its not that diverse there!

That's a multiplying factor on top of H-1Bs, so it makes sense to address the "problem" upstream.

The family based is overwhelmingly latin american and Philippino - I am sure H1-B is not the upstream.

All of you who are commenting on how it's unfair that this bill will mean most green cards over the next few years will go to Indians, how is it fair that Indians currently have an 50+ year queue for a green card? As a personal anecdote, one of my reports (at a FAANG company) has a double Masters (CS and Math) from a top 5 US school, and is a star performer, and without this bill, he has no hope of getting a green card during his working lifetime. He says that he will leave the US if the situation doesn't change in the next few years.

If you want an anecdote I've met multiple indians who have masters in the US who can't conceive of solutions themselves. They can't figure out "if" statements or solve logic problems that are trivial that I'd expect a freshman in college to solve.

Don't be fooled by that the people around you are the majority who get the green cards or visas. It's actually quite a weak argument all together. Same as this one.

And so the system will filter and reject them. Unless you believe everything is Office Space?

On paper they look great, they passed interviews because they mastered how to answer questions in interviews. It's not as black and white as you seem to believe.

I wasn't aware that we had a national obligation to be fair to Indians. Especially since Indian tech bodyshops have made a mockery of the entire H1B system.

I wasn't aware that US doesn't need a civil society since a part of the population has made mockery of the system have committed crimes and many are in jail.

No need to go off topic and try to stir up a flame war. Go to Reddit for that.

Ok to the point: 5-6 companies have made mockery of the H1B system. Let's not fix issue for suffering people who came legally as the cream of the system, are highest paid as an immigrant group, pay taxes, understand democracy because of 'those' rotten apples?

We make laws based on the lowest denominator. You literally cannot trust people to not take advantages of the systems in place when it's a choice between living in the most free country on Earth and their home country.

If you argue American isn't free or better then why are they trying to immigrate in the first place? Everyone I've ever talked to who immigrated here said America is better.

Don't believe everything you hear on the news buddy, they're selling the ad space just as much as Google and Facebook are.

Let's also not make it easier for those companies to abuse the system even more. Why blame the US for Indians' problems when Indian companies are incentivizing us to get rid of rules they're abusing? Reign in your companies instead of telling us to fix our immigration.

This Bill could get unanimous consent this week again. S386 will boost fraud Indian IT outsourcing companies and give green cards to Indian workers. Green card applicants from other countries will be blocked for 10 years including British, Chinese, Iranian, Korean, Russian and etc. American workers will suffer too from lower wages and lack of workspace diversity. See #S386 on Twitter. Such a consequential bill should not be passed without public hearing.

I don't understand how this would go through with unanimous consent. Diversity is the lifeblood of America. We don't want immigrants that are proportional to the rest of the world's population - we want the different ideas and ways of thinking from all over the world.

The other day, I was at a table with a white American, a Tunisian, an Omani, a Turk and an Indonesian, and it was some of the best conversation I've had in a while. All besides me (an immigrant) and the American were the children of immigrants.

Anyone have a TLDR summary of the bill?

From the twitter posts, seems like it removes the per-nation cap on Green cards. Is there an overall cap on green cards across nations? In other words does the pain just get spread onto everyone or does it actually improve things?

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