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Comment by DubiousPusher | Hacker News Reader

> Even so, the quotas on H1B visas are highly restrictive. In the tech sector, at least, there is widespread agreement that the part of the US immigration system that deals with legal immigration of high-skill professionals is in badly in need of reform.

Is this widely considered the case? I work for a big ol tech company and I've been on teams where I am literally the only natural born U.S. citizen. I know I'm working in a somewhat unique case but is it so different elsewhere?

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> where I am literally the only natural born U.S. citizen

It's definitely an interesting phenomenon. I work at a large tech company, and within my team of ~70 people, I think there is maybe one other person beside myself who was born in the U.S.

My suspicion is that this is mainly due to the fact that U.S. culture no longer prioritizes STEM the way it does pop culture and entertainment, and so I don't really have any sympathy for the apparent inability of people born in the U.S. to compete with those from other countries who (at least from my perspective) appear to study and work much harder.

That's the case for me as well in a medium sized tech company. I'm the only non-H1B on my team.

Big companies have a large competitive edge when it comes to receiving H1B visas.

Half or fewer of the people qualified for an H1B get one in the lottery.

That might be considered an appropriate feature of the system.

Why? If you only want so many people to be able to come, why not make the qualification process more stringent, as opposed to assigning seats via lottery?

It would give you the illusion of meritocracy but the reality is it would be almost impossible to administer effectively. You just need to look at the problems businesses have interviewing candidates to see how difficult assessing candidates is.

Somehow most other countries manage without a lottery-based immigration system.

Ontario uses a sliding-point system. You're given points for things like language skills, having a job offer, having previously lived in Canada, your educational degree (once verified), being healthy, and sometimes, just random points based on when you applied if they want more immigrants at the time. Then, you're on hold until your points pass the threshold - which adjusts based on how many people they want in. It's not really any less arbitrary, and doesn't reflect the real needs of the labor market: obviously a PhD earns more points than a bachelor's degree, but you need significantly fewer, which is the opposite of what happens under a sliding point system. And notably, while a job offer gets you points, it's not a guaranteed entry, so businesses can't actually reliably sponsor anyone.

Other systems have their cons too, and a lottery is really quite reasonable.

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