Jesse Jackson: H1B Visas Hold Back Diversity in Tech Hiring | Hacker News Reader

Jesse Jackson: H1B Visas Hold Back Diversity in Tech Hiring

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22 pointscolawars26 comments

Every time you file an H1B Visa, you pay something called a ACWIA Fee (“American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998”). For employers who have between 1-25 full-time workers, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act fee is $750. For employers with 26 or more full-time employees, the fee is $1,500. [1] This fee was established to fund training and education programs administered by the Department of Labor.

As of 2018, there were 420K active H1B visas in the USA. These people need to renew their visas every 3 years (most are Indians and they can never become PR in their lifetime). So that means 300-630 million USD is being added to this fund over a 3 year period.

It would be useful if he could find out where that money went and why isn't it being used to provide scholarships and training to disadvantaged students.

[1] https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa-processing-fees-2016/

>>It would be useful if he could find out where that money went and why isn't it being used to provide scholarships and training to disadvantaged students.

100%

Why can’t they become permanent residents? Is that just a quirk of H1Bs or is the US immigration system really that bad?

I’ve seen posts on Reddit where it’s like “Just got my citizenship after 20 years here”, but to not even be able to get PR seems pretty crazy

This has been an argument not just made about tech but also other sectors, usually with a nationalist bend, for example Mexican immigrants taking industrial jobs from domestic minorities, and so on.

Many things wrong with this (including an odd definition of diversity that excludes nationality, culture, language and so on), but I'd want to stress one thing in particular.

In contrast to ivy league college admissions, the private sector is not a zero sum game. It is not a game of musical chairs. Immigrants coming to join any given economy aren't just occupying jobs, they're creating new jobs, both indirectly and directly. Indirectly of course by contributing to the overall wealth by creating value and creating demand, but also disproportionately(!) by becoming entrepreneurs.

The rate of entrepreneurship among immigrants particularly in the US is very high. A significant amount of the companies providing the jobs that Mr Jackson is talking about have been created, or are being led by immigrant executives or founders.

There's numerous factual errors in your frankly disingenuous post.

This article is about H1B's. The H1B is not an entrepreneur visa, and shouldn't be used to start companies in the US.

> A significant amount of the companies providing the jobs

All of the statistics I've seen about immigrants starting tech companies deliberately mispresent their claim by including companies with non-immigrant founders. So if there's 3 founders, with only one being an immigrant, then that's categorized as an "immigrant-founded company."

In reality, companies hire H1Bs primarily on cost. Otherwise, they wouldn't pay extra fees and immigration attorney costs, now would they?

I'm not sure I see the contradiction here. Of course H1B visas are for employees, not entrepreneurs, but many employees don't stay employees forever, entrepreneurs aren't conjured up out of thin air. Just take Uber as an example. That company alone has spawned an entire ecosystem of founders and venture capitalists as talent over the years has migrated away from the company.

>So if there's 3 founders, with only one being an immigrant, then that's categorized as an "immigrant-founded company."

I don't think that's a misrepresentation, particularly not in the context of my post, because if a company has an immigrant co-founder that still indicates that an immigrant contributed to the founding of a business.

> many employees don't stay employees forever

Then they would have to return to their country if they're no longer an employee.

The path to citizenship for an H1B is over 10 years now.

>The path to citizenship for an H1B is over 10 years now.

you can already start a business as a green card holder, but yes it takes a while in the current system to obtain the ability to start a company. I don't see however how that relates to the argument. The average age of h1b users is very young (majority between 25 and 34), so they all have a fulll career ahead of them.

Aren't people from other countries more likely to be diverse in terms of education, worldview, language, technical background, and even race than American-born people?

I understand that H1B visas may depress the wages of skilled Americans, perhaps with a disproportionately negative impact on some minorities, but that's not quite the same as 'holding back diversity'.

"Diversity" is one of those terms that have diverged from its etymological roots. In modern American usage, an organization has diversity if it has lots of people who are diverse, and a person is diverse if they're black, Hispanic, or female. When someone wants to talk about other kinds of diversity, they'll say something like "let's find people who speak other languages" or "let's welcome people from nontraditional backgrounds" to avoid confusion.

In this context 'diversity' actually means 'people of a protected class'. I've seen people refer to a team of 10 African-American women as '100% diverse'.

I don't buy it. Asians dominate technology jobs because they dominate college enrollment in science, engineering and CS. To compound this problem, socioeconomic factors also work in their favor as well, since Asians have the highest overall median household income (by a healthy margin).

More diversity in tech starts with more diversity in college programs, which probably starts in high school when students are deciding what to do with their life.

https://www.zippia.com/advice/college-major-distributions-by...

When colleges admit non-traditional students, people complain that "they're taking up all of the spots of the Asian students who deserve it".

It's a common complaint on HN.

Mr Jackson, how about you introduce a bill, which requires interview and work requirements waived for your preferred diverse group. /s

Oh god, I’ve worked with bootcamp grads hired through a “diversity” program at ex-employer. The hiring process was basically what you describe. Would not recommend.

How don't H1B workers provide diversity? These are people from across the world who generally have such different backgrounds and experiences from a group of native-born Americans.

I assume he's talking about diversity of skin color, which seems so shallow to me it's hardly worthy of a response.

Not to mention - is there a university out there that isn't actively trying to recruit skin color diversity? Is there a large company that isn't trying the same?

As with everything else in his purview, Mr. Jackson only sees this issue in black and white.

All colleges, especially graduate schools, are working tirelessly to recruit based on skin-color, as such diversity is now a significant component of the US News Rankings.

Diversity at our company has an explicit definition. It means women, plus latino and blacks of any gender (including mixed race with a parent of such a background). That is probably not what people think of as diversity in a broad sense, but it is likely what most universities and corporations mean. And black here does not mean African-American, it means someone with African ancestry.

They usually qualify diversity as "under-represented minorities". You have to be both a minority in the classic sense as well as under-represented.

Link to the article: https://www.americaninno.com/chicago/jesse-jackson-h-1b-visa...

Most people on an H1B are from an entirely different race and culture. How can you even make this statement with a straight face.

Jesse Jackson is a race hustler. For him, diversity == African-American.

Rev Jackson is right. This is well known

for a narrow definition of “diversity”

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