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Comment by codelord | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant.

There are companies like Cognizant/InfoSys/Tata/... whose business model is based on abusing the H1B system, and that's obviously wrong and I'm quite surprised they get away with it. I'm not defending that.

To those who broadly argue against skilled visas, consider this: Most H1B immigrants are between 20-30 age range. The prime age to join the workforce. Think how much investment you have to make on a child's health care and education to make them into a highly skilled workforce. It would at least cost you 1$M and probably much more. Now all these immigrants have learned your language, passed job interviews, and are competing to come to your country to give you 1$M and help your economy. Why would you not want that? People seem to think that number of jobs is a limited constant and if you stop immigrants that will have a positive effect on the economy. But in reality companies can simply just scale. If they have more workforce they can do more. Things get done faster and they just make more profit. Stopping immigration obviously would dent the economical growth. Never mind that many top tech companies in the US were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.

To those who say we must invest in local workforce, I wonder why would you have to stop immigration to start investing in local workforce? As if allowing immigration would reduce the amount of money for investment, while in reality immigrants pay taxes. I personally have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes so far. I'd be happy if this money was used to educate the American workforce. However I know that it doesn't. I would like to see that change.

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I know this will probably be flagged or voted down, but at least please understand that I truly want to see people in the US get better and more equal. Here it goes: if the US wants to invest in local talent, the US had better invest heavily in education. And I'm not talking about an-iPad-per-kid kind of investment, but investment to hire great teachers, lots of them, to public schools to the point that tutoring schools become a joke, investment to set up a system that can fire bad teachers -- the kinds who ask students in grade 9 physics class "which is heavier, pound or kilogram". Investment to ensure that even the poorest area can have public schools that are at least as good as KIPP. Investment to really keep students in their discomfort zone so they can learn every day. Investment that builds a system that really pushes the limit of every student instead of being complacent with the craps like "Kids can discover most math by themselves" or "left no kids behind" or "challenging math is systemic bias against the poor" or "math is racism" -- maybe they are, but then they are because our governments offer such low-quality education that family with means can get ahead by going to soul-sucking tutoring schools.

Education is the key to local talent, and is the key to equality. Yet, what has the US done to make our education better?

> the US had better invest heavily in education

At this point, more money is not going to help. Education in the US is fundamentally broken. Combination of "no child is left behind" and standardized testing (because everything else will be called discrimination) ensures uniformly bad results. If you pour more money in, it's just going to be wasted on bureaucracy and busywork.

So H1-B is actually a great idea. If we can't educate, let's attract well-educated people from elsewhere. They want to live here, so we can choose.

We don't mind buying electronics made in China because they can do it better and cheaper, why not do the same with people. Finland seems to be doing just fine with education at a fraction of US cost, let the market do its thing and flex the comparative advantage.

This comment is the reason why we need to rethink our current culture of censorship and social media outrage.

It explains a non-trivial logical connection, showing how something that could look unpopular from the surface, would pay off in the long run. Except you cannot make comments like this in public anymore. Because all it takes is an angry mob leader shouting "%USERNAME% is %CLICHE%ist" and that's it. Your employer fires you, your friends abandon you, you are socially bankrupt in an instant.

There are many bright people our there with great perspectives to share. Except they have to maintain radio silence, because they are not willing to take that risk. So the only voices to be heard are the most extreme ones that have nothing to lose.

I sincerely hope we can overcome this and get people to discuss problems and work together on solving them before our civilization sinks into medieval barbarism.

I don't see anything in the parent comment that's even remotely controversial. Almost everyone across the political spectrum agrees that we should spend more on education, at least in the abstract. There's plenty of disagreement on the details, but I don't see anything in the comment that stakes out a strong position on any of the major issues. Perhaps I'm missing something.

You’re not missing something. But that’s the point. You read the whole comment and interpreted it in good faith. What the comment you are replying to is saying, is that it is easy to cherry pick statements out of nuanced comments that do not hold up well on their own. So unfortunately many people are afraid of making nuanced points online, and stick to banal platitudes that can’t be easily misinterpreted in bad faith.

I was actually arguing that we should spend differently, not necessarily more, in our education system.

Here's the problem: you cannot guarantee equal outcomes across intersectional groups. Period. Not going to happen. A hundred years of psychometric research backs this up; there are simply differences that cannot be papered over by adjusting metrics and applying equalizing coefficients.

A highly effective education system that really gets the best out of every person involved is also going to be selective, it is going to group people into different classes based on ability, and the resulting output is going to be highly offensive to the militant people who right now are literally doing their best to take over American cities.

So no, we can't fix this problem. We can spend more on it, but ultimately all of that money is just IOUs against a decaying system that demands everyone be equal, even if that lowest common denominator means all but the super-rich end up living in a favela within a few decades.

In short, you're claiming that some races or genders are inherently more capable than others, independent of all 'nurture' factors? If so, you're wrong, but feel free to clarify what "hundred years of psychometric research" you're referring to.

How about you show me an IQ study with a big cohort that shows otherwise? You're the one asserting something that doesn't line up with anyone's experience with zero proof.

No we are claiming that we need $4309582309239 extra spending on the Governor's wife's tennis partners' baker's niece's program to totally-not-put-all-those-dollars-back-into-the-governors-electoral-budget.

That will fix it.

What I mean to say is that 99.9% of those programs are just abusing the system (even if 10% of them started out with honest intentions).

Explaining my downvote: I'm thoroughly annoyed at all of the versions of this comment on HN lately. It adds nothing to the discussion, and derails the conversation we were having to talk about some vague injustice where People These Days don't let you say Stuff Like This.

Can you point to something you've said that's resulted in the problem you've described?

Does it have to be something parent specifically said? If not look around the news?

Sorry, based on your comment history I don't think I'd like to discuss anything with you. Cheers.

So because someone has a counter opinion from yours to refuse debate but stand on a public forum without desire to be challenged? Wow.

I'm happy to have discussions with people I disagree with, but generally once you're down the "poverty is good, actually" [0] rabbit hole I think a discussion would be a waste of both of our time.

I think you should be embarrassed at edgelord takes like "I don’t see the value an impoverished set of humans can provide" [1], and I don't have any interest in talking with far-right extremists. Bye.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23591648

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599938

Read the rest of the comment, which is the point you’re failing to realize. You’re judging without understanding the complete picture. So again read that comment again and read it from a logical standpoint instead of emotional. It literally says the next sentence they have value in some situation and your failure to understand that some poor bread maker can’t have anything valid to say when writing software or building a rocket. That’s my opinion, change it if you want with facts. Not everybody that disagrees with you is a right wing extremist. Some of us are capable of discussing actual facts and values. And you also pointed to a comment made after your comment so how this can be influential in your first comment suggests you have some ability to travel through time.

To further explain my position, I actually don't disagree that help should be given if possible. But right now I don't see why given we have uneducated and poor people still within the US we should help another country. IFF we have this problem resolved, AND we have surplus resources (money, goods, etc), then clearly why not provide as much help as possible? But when we have yet to solve the problem here it's an ask to divert resources. So then the value proposition question comes up. If I must divert resources then this must somehow create more value for me to justify it, so that I can then in turn help those in need in my country that these resources could be going to help instead.

Are you literally not looking around at all these days? Your filter bubble must be very, very small and selective indeed to somehow have missed Cancel Culture.

I've seen people get offended by celebrities with insensitive takes, but I've never seen anyone on HN get cancelled because of a comment. The worst I've seen is "this is wrong and here's why" or "I don't want to talk to you".

Generally I've seen people reach for "cancel culture" when:

1. Fear-mongering the left over perceived injustice.

2. Defending bad takes by tone-policing any disagreement.

Can you point to a comment by john_moscow where they've been 'cancelled'? Or maybe a comment by you?

I'm not sure this comment contributes to the discussion at hand at all. Other than to try to derail the convo into some dialog about "censorship".

please lend your support to the ongoing movement to shift investment from the prison-industrial complex into health and education.

Please explain what the “prison-industrial complex” is

The prison industrial complex is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

Yea so this doesn’t clear it up at all. Are you suggesting we start legalizing things, so that instead of going to jail people are treated for mental health problems if someone robs a house or commits murder? Why can’t people just not commit crimes?

Through its reach and impact, the prison-industrial complex helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through problematic means.

There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the prison-industrial complex, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant.

This power is also maintained by earning profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for “tough on crime” politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination in the US.

None of this is fact, yet it’s being portrayed as such.

If mass media images are a problem then why do these groups not join Trump saying MSM is problematic and untrustworthy?

For profit prisons are more efficient, because the government can’t run anything without substantial cost. So privatizing prisons saves costs.

If your main concern is getting people to commit less crimes then we should support a system that promotes rehabilitation over punishment.

Perhaps take a look at Norway's system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway

Why aren't all former penal colonies full of criminals? Maybe it's because there are a lot of crimes that are situational. For truly violent offenders who refuse to be rehabilitated? Keep them away from everyone else, including other prisoners. For everyone else though? We should be figuring out what they lack and help them find it.

The reason we DON'T do that is because state prisons are glorified slave rackets. The very existence of for-profit prisons is an obscenity that will be seen as being as barbaric as slavery in the long run.

Which crimes are situational? And I still don’t agree that someone committing a crime is the victim here. To entertain that idea is just silly.

For profit prisons are more cost effective than government run prisons. We are a capitalist society, people seek profit here, including the entirety of the country.

Nah, what's silly is the idea that we need to rationalize uses of force against citizens by private third parties. It's fundamentally stupid and should be illegal because it incentivizes incarceration.

And most people don't "seek profit" here in their day to day lives. That's zero-sum idiocy.

I guess we’ll just agree to disagree on the first part.

And the second part, I’m guessing most people don’t work then?

>>Here it goes: if the US wants to invest in local talent, the US had better invest heavily in education.

As some one who worked in US and returned to India. Let me tell you immigrants will support this as soon as they get their US passports and Green Cards.

It's just which side of the fence you sit on. Once these people have a stake in your country, they magically shift their loyalties to the exact opposite position to what they had before.

In India itself, many of these elites oppose policies like Right to Education Act. knowing well they can fund their kids higher education in foreign countries, and eventually their kids getting settled in US. They don't want poor people to have literacy or any edge in education. Meaning, less competition the better. Why work for Right to Education, when your kids go to expensive private schools, tuitions, coaching classes and then foreign universities, with jobs and citizenships overseas. You want less competition and lesser poor people and underprivileged people studying so that more opportunities are freed up for your kids.

People are deeply selfish at a personal level and unless they have a stake they feel no need to change. I honestly feel things in India will improve with fewer visas. People will work for good domestic education facilities once they realize they are trapped in their own country.

yes I don't understand why people don't just stay in their countries for a while. people need to stop hopping around the world chasing $. leaving dangerous/unsafe places is a different matter. we are in a digital world and the work done in the Bay on h1b can be done from India. people can stay in their countries and build them up and keep the talent there. if US tech companies are desperate for talent they should just build engineering facilities in India and figure out the remote work situation. Honestly the talented Gen Z Indian youths aren't even fussed about moving abroad and have enough opportunity domestically, why should they put up with the hardship of being an immigrant where they are not wanted when they can stay near their parents and still work for Apple on interesting stuff?

It has worried me for years why salaries for tech employees in, say, India, don't equalize with US salaries. It seems like there is something artificial preventing it.

But as long as the discrepancy exists, then it seems like there would be a tremendous benefit in allowing people to freely immigrate, even for those already at the destination. Fear of immigrants is based on the idea that they will work for less, but if it's still more than they were making, then the competitive situation for labor has improved, as long as one accepts that it is a global market. I wish there was a way to get political traction for this, as a self-interested goal for American (or other developed country) workers.

It already invests heavily in education. USA already spends ones of the highest level of funding per school pupil in the world and for college its by far the highest spender.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cmd.pdf

It's easy to spend a lot of money, it's hard to execute and get results.

Despite the USA spending a ton of money, it doesn't curate quality education.

The entire system needs to be reworked.

The whole teaching towards the test, and prepping kids for college (which I've heard we even do a bad job at), is just awful. We don't typically educate to teach people in a way that can make a connection that to what can be used in the real world, nor do teach real world things, such as basic money handling matters. I was able to take a Math of Money class in high school, but that was my senior year and your had to have had to pass other classes to take that.

I know there are some classes for stuff like electronics and mechanics, but why not offer more career based classes?

I think the requirement for more advanced computer classes has come down, don't need a AP calc/trig credit to take a basic programming class anymore (it's been well over 20 years since I graduated).

This is the same argument that progressive educators have been arguing for decades, and I respectfully disagree. Schools teach students fundamentals. Simplified, but fundamentals nevertheless. You think learning Newton's laws does not teach student how to "make a connection to what to be used in the real world"? You think that years of training in maths didn't prepare the students for the real world? You think it's fruitless to study rigorously and hard on "spherical chicken in vacuum"? You think that all the algorithms, mathematical stats, or data structures have little to do with real-world engineering? Unfortunately, here is the shocker: they are very relevant, and they are the secret of a nation can educate millions of qualified engineers, scientists, and business people who can reason with data and numerical sense.

The only reason that students have to study highly simplified models is that the real-world is too complex. Without years of study of "simplistic physics" in high school, there is just no way that one can learn rigid-body mechanics. Without years of practice on algebra 1/2 in high school, an ordinary kid will have no hope of understanding calculus, and without understanding calculus, the kid loses hope of understanding stats, and without understanding stats, the kid loses hope of understanding machine learning, and without understanding machine learning, the kid won't be able to jump on the gravy train of being a machine learning researcher. And now should the kid cry wolf the world is not fair and the system is rigged? Of course, this is an extreme example and there are thousands of other professions. All I'm saying is that sometimes a subject looks hard and mundane and pointless, but it is actually useful in the long run.

And as specific as Math on Money? It's nice to have, but it's not necessary. I have no problem studying on my own the theory of options and quantitive finance even though I had no idea how money worked. But I have strong background in math, in stats, and in computer science, and some background in economics. And really, such fundamentals carries me a long way.

Why is everyone so convinced that we're getting "low quality education"? I've grown up here and went to "bad schools" and "good schools" and I have not seen any quality problem in education other than what subject matters are being taught and not taught.

I’m guessing a lot of that money is spent on buildings and administration. It’s not for hiring teachers and paying them well.

I’m going to go off the rails more. You can’t reform the education system in a vacuum without dealing with larger societal problems that affect the US.

The war on drugs - have unfairly targeted minorities breaking up families and when they get out of jail, its harder to get a job because of their criminal record. No matter how good the education system is, if the students home life is unstable, education suffers.

Government funding through court ordered fines and tickets that also cause people to enter the criminal justice system when they can’t afford to pay. They end up in jail and lose their jobs. Again an unstable home life.

Lack of affordable higher education. Also, colleges love to give spots to non US citizens because they pay the full tuition costs.

Education funding is based on local property taxes. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Not in California. The State is responsible for allocating education fund, with a few exception.

33% of education funding comes from the local government.

https://lao.ca.gov/Education/EdBudget/Details/281

https://ed100.org/uploads/images/shares/CA-19-20-budget.png

But the California State government allocates the fund, right? If the state government decides where the fund goes, then can we still conclude that "the richer gets richer and the poor gets poorer" from the fact that local tax funds education?

I am assuming the state sends each school district the same amount of money per student and the local government makes up the difference. So yes it is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I know in my Metro area the more affluent parts of the city, love breaking off into their own city to keep their money even more localized.

> I am assuming the state sends each school district the same amount of money

It does not, not even per pupil since there is a 20% supplement for each designated “high needs” pupil, and additional funds iif “high needs” pupils exceed a certain threshold.

> But the California State government allocates the fund, right?

It allocates the state funds that make up the vast majority of education funding among the counties. It doesn't specifically direct how counties spend the money.

> The State is responsible for allocating education fund, with a few exception.

That’s between untrue and misleading. The state allocates a very large share of the total education funding among counties, but it does not allocate the funding counties have (whether from the state or from local funds) by line item.

There are not enough such teachers to teach 1:1. There are not enough people who could be drafted to be such teachers either. It would require a lot of altruism to work as a teacher whereas there are much higher paying positions in the private sector.

We have the technology to amplify a great teacher's lecture to millions. However, the education system relies on the model of interactive lectures given to a class of people of whom many are not acutely interested in the subject. Following that lecture, parents are drafted as involuntary teachers to help their kids with homework. If the student's parents have sufficient background, this works. Else, we end up with the situation where students continue to fall behind as their parents are unable to teach them.

We need to bootstrap our students' learning to the minimally accepted level that sustains self-directed learning. I would define that as mastery of arithmetics as first phase and algebra as second phase. However, we are talking about mastery that does not require a review, which means spending more time on in-depth training without jumping ahead.

Such classes should be separate from mainstream math classes so as to not to bore those of us who already have achieved that mastery.

I am working on this.

Why are people so quick to always blame teachers? What makes you think throwing even more money at the problem will make things better?

Growing up in a poor area, I went to some of the "worst" schools you can imagine (one even had to get shut down) and I had one of the most inspiring history teachers there, that I still remember to this day. And all the other teachers were great too. It's not the fault of the teachers when students are too busy pencil fighting and throwing basketballs at the teacher's head, rather than studying.

What on earth do you mean with "low quality education"? I certainly didn't see that in the worse schools I went to. I think people misunderstand term "bad schools" and take it literally to mean that the schools are bad. this is completely incorrect. When people say "bad schools" it means the students who went to the school performed bad on standardized tests. It's not a reflection of teachers, or schools or funding. I went to such schools and still did just fine, so did many others.

No, I'm not blaming teachers for all the disciplinary problems in school. I am blaming bad teachers for squandering time of ordinary kids -- kids like me who have a shot if pushed and educated properly.

You're lucky to have great teachers, and I just think we need more of such kind. As for bad schools, let me give you a few examples and you can check out the documentary Waiting For "Superman" to get a more grim picture.

- Did you know that teachers in some Cupertino schools asked parents to grade student homework?

- Did you know that a straight-A student who graduated high school in NYC couldn't pass the math placement exam in The City College of New York? I mean, placement test in a college, how hard could that be, right? The story was featured in NYT, IIRC, a few years ago.

- Did you know that only 48% of public school students who took the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) met or exceeded grade-level standard in 2016. And we're talking about CAASPP, a standard that is really not that high.

- Did you know that SAT is not differentiating to say the least, yet the average score of SAT math in California is merely 536. Pathetic, shall we say?

- Did you know that elite students in the Bay Area routinely completed more than 10 AP classes, yet the average students could barely understand Algebra 1?

And now let me give a few counter examples to show what good teachers can do to students:

1. All 14 students in Jaime Escalante's class passed AP Calculus I back in 1982, even though the school was in a hood. The success was so shocking that people thought the students cheated.

2. KIPP. Merely extending the school time to 6:00pm and offering classes in summer helped students stay in school and make steady progress towards entering college.

3. Schools in other countries. Take the schools in China, for instance. Teachers enforce cultures. Great scientists and philosophers and writers become household names because of them. They form research groups to continuously improve teaching materials. Better ways to teach, better problem sets, better projects, and better exams. It is widely assumed that teachers are better problem solvers than students in China. Can we assume that in the US?

By the way, a student doing well in standard test may not be a good student, but a student who does not do well in standard test is definitely not good academically. I don't really see why people keep blaming standard test for student's miserable scores. Do we really think these students could solve much harder free-form problems when they can't eve deal with much easier standard test? There is a reason that multiple-choice problems are the easiest ones in other country's college entrance exams. It suffices to say that if students in a school couldn't even pass standard tests, then the school has failed the students.

You can't blame teachers if the students don't do well on standardized tests. If you want to know why students don't do well on these tests, just spend a week or two substituting for teachers (or go there as a student) in one of those inner city schools. I guarantee, you'll have an epiphany and you'll see why they don't score well. It doesn't have anything to do with teaching, the problem is cultural.

Yes, put money into edu but that’s very different from giving teachers more money. Teachers do relatively little. The major influence is parents.

You need to change the cultural mindset. You need to build more colleges. Computer science programs are already maxed out. You need more professors.

I think both are critical. Kids naturally listen to their teachers, probably because they treat their teachers as authorities. Plus, teaching is a profession, a profession that demands deep expertise. A quite amusing example: parents try to teach their 7-year old fractions, and only find themselves yelling and kids crying hard. Yet when a teacher in Russian School of Mathematics teaches the same concepts, kids just understand the concept without any problem, and start to enjoy the learning process.

problem is not in teachers. Problem is parents. Yeah parents.

Good parents with good parenting skills raise good kids. Bad parents/single parents - it is much harder to raise kids and give them good education.

if you want reforms - you need to adopt Scandinavian policies in America (high taxes, universal healthcare, universal childare, universal K-12, universal college system) - that way it will be easier to raise well educated kids

Unfortunately parents don't know how to teach STEM topics, not in the US, especially given years of cultural slash on hard science and engineering. I don't have hard numbers, but I'll venture to guess that very few parents can explain how to use recursion to find the closed formula of a sequence, or the intuition behind vector space, or why 0.9999... is actually 1, or even as simple as modeling a problem as a linear equation system. And all these are really high school basics. I'm using math as an example, but the same idea applies to other subjects too, like not every parent knows how to write, let alone providing precise and accurate feedback to the writing of their kids.

And from a parent point of view, why would I want my kids to waste his or her time in school learning very little, and then to spend my own time tutoring them? All I want is my teachers to do their job, and do it decently.

Look, the people coming over on H1B are the top picks from other countries in terms of motivation and willingness to work - people that see tech as their golden ticket

What you are saying is how can the US turn their bottom tier performers to match this

Nothing lights a fire under your ass as realizing you are a layoff away from leaving the country and having to start over

H1B Employee with 100k Salary contributes $12,400 to Social Security and $2,900 Medicare every year. (Total:$15,300 per year).

Majority H1B from India and China are stuck in green card backlog; with the current immigration system, they will never get the green card. Option for them is to stay in the USA on H1B in green card waiting queue or return home. (I do not think this is right or wrong people who are stuck in the queue, they chose to come to the USA and work here, it is up to that person to decide if they want to stay or go back or go to another country). After returning to home country from the USA, Social Security and Medicare deducted is a contribution to the USA (I am not saying this is right or wrong, just a fact).

Social Security contributions are not forfeited, they're your for life.

How so? Do they pay you back ssn taxes if you leave?

No, you just get your your retirement pension once you become eligible age-wise. You do, however, need to earn at least 40 credits throughout the years, which translates to at least 10 years of employment in the US.

Just wanted to say that Social Security's Old-Age Income program is available to all non-citizens, regardless of immigration status. It is a good thing to be aware of.

The only requirements to meet is 10 years of work in the US (i.e. "40 quarters of coverage (QC's)"). I spoke to someone from India sometime ago, who had come to the US in their late 40s or early 50s. They were planning on going back to India after they had accrued 10 years of tax-paying years in the US, so they could collect on Social Security Old-Age when they retired in India.

With the exception of a few countries,the US government will in fact directly deposit money in your foreign bank account. [a] You don't need to have any ties to the US. The whole thing is actually quite profitable, if you've only worked in the US for 10 years. Per the formula [b], if they earned $130k per year, in 10 years they made $1.3 million (and contributed $198,900 at 15.3% in FICA taxes), which divided by 420 yields $3,095 - the AIME (Average Indexed Monthly Earnings). The benefits payable for it is: 960 x 0.9 + (3095-960) x 0.32 = $1,547. They can get $1,547 from age 67. If they live until 87, that's 20 years. And 20 * 12 * 1547 = $371,280.

All other federal benefits, plus the other programs funded by FICA taxes (ie OADSI / SSI + Medicare taxes) including SSI, the other parts of OADSI, and of course Medicare, are not available to non-resident non-citizens (with a few exceptions).

[a] https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10137.pdf

[b] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/piaformula.html

The max term of H1b is 6 years. You can stay on H1b beyond 6 years either by being on the green card backlog queue (after passing a certain stage you can renew your H1b beyond 6 years), or maybe leave US and come back again (likely requires another H1b lottery?). What I'm saying is sure stay in the US for 10 years on H1b is possible, but it's also quite hard.

Yup, they do need an approved I-140 in order extend beyond 6 years.

Much of what you say is true, but it's important to realize the H1-B is not designed with any of those benefits in mind. Its only purpose is to fill roles where there is no local talent.

The H1B is also not designed to support diversity or equality, which is crucial if we consider it a stepping-stone to long-term immigration (which many people want).

It would seem reasonable to place an intake limit of 10% from any one country, and limiting males to a maximum of 49%.

Right now, lets be honest, the H1B is giant immigration scheme for Indian males to get into the USA: 75% of applicants are Indian, and roughly 70% of applicants are male.

https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/people/three-...

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3050365/how-many-h-1b-...

With these kind of diversity requirements, it would also be much harder for crooked companies like Infosys to racially discriminate against non-Indians:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/infosys-faces...

The green card lottery visa has diversity metrics built into it explicitly, which is probably why it receives minimal negative attention.

We shouldn’t focus on diversity for the sake of diversity. The purpose of H1-B is to attract talent but when you say a certain percentage need to be from a specific country, or of a specific sex or race then it’s not about talent (and is actually racist, “you’re not indian so you can’t have this job”). Why do we even tolerate ideas like this?

The US could go all-in and treat the H1b program as a diversity program. The background of every candidate would be examined, and a deliberate effort would be made to amplify the most marginalized of communities.

India holds 17% of the world's population. Any program that is designed for diversity would have a 15-20% Indian population. That is much smaller than the current number, and in fact it would be a fairly different set of Indians: victims of sexism, casteism, "colorism", etc.

This could work out pretty well. Indian social inequalities would be reduced, US tech companies would get an infusion of extremely diverse workers on strong career tracks. If you believe that diversity is good for the workforce, this would be a huge boost.

But the straight/cis/brahmin/male Indians would get mad.

Here's a frank answer. I've worked with various foreigners and H1Bs over a long career and always enjoyed it. I worry sometimes that they're being seriously abused by their employers, but I figure that's for them to decide.

I feel less positive about the program these days given that a number of companies have made it a point of pride to emphasize hiring of "diverse" employees, which seems in reality to be a pretext for H1B hiring that would not otherwise happen. This stings a little bit for me personally, as it's become clear that I'm losing some jobs to H1Bs. And I'm sure it really stings for native techies that can't find work during this incipient economic depression. (I'm old enough that being whacked by H1Bs just means unexpected early retirement.)

For whatever reasons, I suspect the American base will continue to hollow out and turn into something different. It's a bit like British cuisine, which has (in my impression) been essentially overrun by Indian cuisine and that of other countries. Is that bad? I guess it depends on your point of view.

Anyway, as long as the hiring is legal, I'm good with it. Certainly I've never met a colleague from another country that I didn't enjoy working with.

I’m English, there was no English cuisine before Indian food. The closest thing we had to a national dish was fish and chips, which frankly, is fucking awful. About all you can say for English food is that we make nice beer.

Well, indeed, maybe it was an easy mark. But still, "fish and chips" was a thing here in the US in the 1970s to 1990s at least, and I still remember "Long John Silver's" with great nostalgia. (Not sure a Brit would care for it, but at least it was freshly fried.)

Mushy peas, on the other hand, are probably unsalvageable. Except, maybe, with a nice curry sauce... :-)

Also (if we leave aside the abusers like InfoSys etc), employers pay an additional cost for H1B visa workers (comparable salary + the cost of sponsoring the visa itself). Presumably this means there is a net benefit to the American company doing the hiring to be hiring these H1B workers. Seems like a win-win situation here all around.

If the concern is with abuse, then let's crack down on that.

HN needs to stop pretending only companies like Infosys and Tata abuse the h1b.

Even big tech companies like Amazon and Facebook hire h1b workers so they can create sweatshop environments. H1b workers are afraid of being deported if they do not perform well, and a certain percentage of workers are forced to be on the PIP plan every year in the stack ranking.

Can even lead to suicides or suicide attempts. Ex:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/facebook-employee-i-was-fire... https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-share-thoug...

Sure- but there is never going to be a perfect policy. Facebook Engineering typically hires people with degrees from great programs, or great prior experience.

But most of the "IT" work done by InfoSys and others are things that can practically be done by Americans as well. It would take training, but it wouldn't take a degree from a top university.

So - companies like InfoSys and Tata are a good place to start.

Sure, but the big corp issue should also be addressed. Do you really believe a lot of big corp work couldn’t be done by other Americans?

People like Zuck aren’t advocating for more h1bs under current rules out of the goodness of their hearts.

Of course it benefits FB, but I'm not convinced it's about cost. FB is almost constantly hiring, implying there are more open positions than available qualified candidates. That coupled with what seems like on par compensation for H1B employees + the added cost of sponsoring a H1B worker to me means it's about hiring enough qualified candidates rather than saving money.

You can argue FB (and other FAANG companies) can just pay more. But 1) the FAANG compensation is already plenty high and 2) the talent pool is finite, and if FB pulls more from the local pool there is just less left for other companies. As it is less well known tech companies were (pre covid anyways) already having a hard time hiring because they can't afford to pay FAANG comp. Theoretically if you get rid of H1B workers and force up top end compensation, then we'll just have less workers available for the lower tier companies.

All those costs are written off as expenses when the company files taxes. Perhaps we should double the tax instead to cover unemployment for the american that didn’t get a job?

If companies like Facebook and Amazon had such a hard time hiring engineers, they wouldn't be cutting 10% of the workforce every year based on mostly political yearly reviews. That's why they are always constantly "hiring". Having visa workers that can be easily overworked is a huge bonus to try and force 80 hour work weeks and a toxic rat race.

The average engineer at these companies is not all that competent, the interview process is very noisy. I know many people barely able to write basic stuff like fizzbuzz, lots of them slither their way into middle or upper management.

You have to start somewhere. The best place to start is with jobs that Americans can be more easily trained for.

What about the increased cost associated with an American not taking the same position? We have to pay their unemployment

> Most H1B immigrants

There are no H-1B immigrants.

There may be H-1B holders who plan to become immigrants, but H-1B is a nonimmigrant work visa.

> Now all these immigrants have learned your language, passed job interviews, and are competing to come to your country to give you 1$M and help your economy.

No, they are competing to come and reduce the market clearing cost of labor and increase the returns to capital in our economy. Which is good for you if you are (1) one of the incoming laborers, or (2) a person whose main interaction with the US economy is via capital investment, not labor income.

> To those who say we must invest in local workforce, I wonder why would you have to stop immigration to start investing in local workforce?

You don't have to stop immigration.

You do, on the other hand, need to stop importing labor in a manner specifically and selectively designed to avoid upward pressure on wages (and thereby, stop the incentive to develop domestic supply) for high-skill, high-demand positions and to terminate temporary residency when it no longer serves that purpose.

Or, you need to better capture the returns produced by those means and direct them to domestic workforce development.

I'm one of the most pro-immigrant and pro-immigration and anti-Trump, people you’ll find, and I would shed not a single tear if Trump managed to permanently kill, rather than merely temporarily suspend, the H-1B program.

Exactly. H1B is great. Most people don't come to SV just for money. They are seeking interesting applications of technology, researching on breakthroughs, climbing corporate ladder etc. Whether you like it or not, most tech companies are run by immigrants. If someone is against that, I don't know whether you're afraid of competition or think that only natives have the sacred right to work on interesting stuff.

I'm not saying I'm not against people who are abusing H1B. That should be banned NOW.

I can understand how this might seem unfair to immigrants.

this part is completely wrong: "If they have more workforce they can do more".

The demand for labor is not determined by the supply of labor, it's determined by the demand for those products. When companies higher engineers for example, they don't just go, "hey, we just had two brilliant engineers interview, so instead of highering 1, we'll higher 2." It never works that way. Companies need the amount of labor they need, and not one person more.

The reality is there's a vast oversupply of labor right now in most fields. Wages have been stagnant for a long time. And even in the bay area, average engineering salaries lag behind the local COL.

Furthermore, the US simply won't allow for enough housing to be built. Even with the population we currently have, there's no where near enough housing. this problem is only getting worse. Sure, it's just politics, it's a choice voters have made, but we're stuck with that choice. And, having more immigrants/increasing population makes it worse.

Let's talk about immigrants that are being paid well, for a moment -- since Trump is seeking ban those people as well. (Also since I myself am one such immigrant, and I know several immigrants who were being paid extremely well, whose H-1B cases were denied by the US government under the guise of software engineering not being a "specialty occupation"[1]).

A friend of mine last year got a job as a L5 at Google, for around $380k a year in total ($190k base + $28.5k bonus + approx $160k stock). Plus a sign-on of $50k. First year pay is $430k. He's not doing rocket science, or managing. He's an individual contributor writing back end code.

Meanwhile, there are folks doing a similar jobs in Canada, who are making 100k CAD (on the high end), which is $73k USD. And the cost of living in big cities in Canada is shockingly high.

Now, you were saying something about bay area salaries being low? The salaries are, if anything, over the top insanely high.

Also, I'm trying to understand why companies go through all the processing delays, legal costs, frequent unjust denials since 2017, to hire someone who is not a citizen, while paying them well above the median for the job, if there is a supposed oversupply of talented top-tier skilled people who are looking for a job. The truth i that oversupply myth is just a lie, spun by people with anti-immigrant animus, plain and simple.

I can't fathom the head space you would have to be in to think that salaries are low. Incredible arrogance and entitlement, combined with a generous dose of xenophobia probably. Instead of being thankful, there are people who want to cut off / deport / exclude people from working in the US (and I mean people making these high salaries).

Also, I know a lot of H-1B holders with high salaries. I myself am one of them. (In fact I don't know any low-paid H-1B holders, but my social circles are all folks working at top companies or friends from other social groups.) The intense amount of hatred for immigrants on HN always continues to appall and amaze me.

I usually tend to refrain from commenting on these threads, because the toxic amount of contempt and hatred for immigrants that I come across in these threads is extremely upsetting, but sometimes it's better to speak up, than be silent.

[1] See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20671424

Hatred comes from lack of understanding and knowledge. Most American citizens I interacted with on this issue have little or no idea of how the immigration system is designed or works. It’s hard for them to fathom why it is so hard for third world passport to travel or work in other parts of the world because they haven’t had to jump through odd Red tape hoops to do it themselves.

A google job is like the top 1-3%. The vast majority of people don't make anywhere near that much.

second, it's not about hatred for immigrants. It's just about jobs and housing. And, there's simply not enough of those to go around.

I mean, sure we could have more immigrants. But, make no mistake, it will reduce the amount high end jobs available and reduce the housing supply even more.

And, actually, most blue states are very welcoming to new immigrants which is especially ironic since they're the ones that don't want to support the housing growth needed to house an increase in population.

This doesn't address GPs question about why, if local talent is plentiful, companies are willing to spend a lot of money and jump through several hoops to pay top dollar to immigrants when they could pay the same to a local and not have to spend extra money and effort.

The locals are not captive workers and will do anti-business things like starting a family.

This is an extremely rude, blatantly false, offensive, degrading, and insulting comment to make about the 1 million+ high-skilled workers in the US. Plenty of people own homes, start families, etc. But, I'm not too disturbed/bothered anymore -- as I've come to expect these sort of low-effort low-quality dishonest, hateful/insulting comments due to xenophobia.

Here are comments from just one user on HN (who was sadly banned), but who is/was on the H-1B, who owns a $1.15 home, has an American kid, has lived in the US for 17 years, and makes $650K a year:

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20473537

2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19993373

3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19944062

4) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19525820

5) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19222618

The laws of U.S. that were written by Congress, make it practically impossible for India-born to ever become citizens or even permanent residents through the EB2 or EB routes. This is large topic, I've covered in some of my previous comments like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19857687 (short comment) or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19857878 (long comment).

Because, in essence, they get servitude from far more of those foreign hires than they do from the locals who can confidently exercise their rights.

No one here has contempt and hatred for immigrants, you're just being melodramatic. People have contempt for companies abusing the H1-B system.

Your entire post seems fairly out of touch. You're talking about Google L5, basically the top 1% of H1-B jobs in the US.

> Also, I'm trying to understand why companies go through all the processing delays, legal costs, frequent unjust denials since 2017, to hire someone who is not a citizen, while paying them well above the median for the job, if there is a supposed oversupply of talented top-tier skilled people who are looking for a job. The truth i that oversupply myth is just a lie, spun by people with anti-immigrant animus, plain and simple.

Just because you can't understand it, doesn't mean it's not happening. I have personally witnessed the oddly-specific job requirement postings, and have had friends who worked at some of these consulting companies as H1-B. Things are very different outside of the top tech companies. There is absolutely abuse happening. This is not some "anti-immigrant animus". This is happening. It's frankly ridiculous that you blame this on xenophobia on HN of all places.

I can't fathom the head space you would have to be to believe there isn't widespread H1-B abuse after reading countless articles and comments about it. Incredible arrogance and entitlement, combined with a generous dose of disdain for citizens wanting to protect their country from abuse probably.

Criticism of a widely abused immigration system and the companies that abuse it is not anti-immigrant sentiment.

I am an immigrant.

In order for the HB1 program to pass muster, and validate its value for US citizens, people taking advantage of HB1 must put into the US least as much as they are taking out.

I dont see US citizens emmigrating / benefitting from similar benefits at foreign countries, like those given by HB1s within the US. In fact, as far as i know, there are no USA emigres going to india to work, drawing india SS retirement benefits, for example.

In other words, the HB1 program is asymetrical. Americans put in a lot more than they get out of it.

As such, the only logical thing for the HB1 to be discontinued.

> And even in the bay area, average engineering salaries lag behind the local COL.

> the US simply won't allow for enough housing to be built

You don't see the connection here? Why do you think there will be enough housing even with less immigration? The "housing must increase value at all costs" mantra is responsible for this.

There are 17 million vacant homes in the US[0]. With the exception of the half a million of us that are homeless at any given time[1] we all live in one of the other 121,520,180 homes that currently exist in the country. How much housing is enough? What if instead of focusing on how much of the population we can cram into the fewest (constantly under construction) places we figured out ways to incentivize commercial development and rehabilitation of derelict communities?

[0] https://247wallst.com/housing/2019/09/30/there-are-over-17-m...

[1] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

O type Visas have no quota [0]. This is what the H1B are represented as though in practice suppress wages[1][2]. This issue is decades in the making and companies exploiting these programs earned their scrutiny. Especially when there's massive unemployment companies importing labor under these auspices need to be called out.

[0] https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-worker... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-look-at-the-h-1b-visa-pro... [2] https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/05/economists-h-1b-v...

O visas are much harder to get than H-1B. I've hired a bunch of people via H-1B that we could not have hired via O. None of them were displacing American workers -- we would have hired just as many (or more) qualified American workers if they had been available too. So it seems disingenuous to imply that O covers the intended purpose of H-1B. (For the record, I agree that companies like Tata abuse H-1B and that sort of situation should be banned.)

>None of them were displacing American workers -- we would have hired just as many (or more) qualified American workers if they had been available too.

Did you try increasing salaries until you could find applicants. I'm virtually certain that you did not.

What you mean is that you couldn't find American workers at the price you were willing to pay, and because you weren't willing to pay the market price, you found another market.

If you could hire 20 people on H-1Bs but you only have enough money to hire 10 local people. You have displaced 10 American workers.

Please don't put words in my mouth. We were paying well over market rate. There simply are not enough qualified Americans to do all of the highly skilled jobs available.

> People seem to think that number of jobs is a limited constant and if you stop immigrants that will have a positive effect on the economy. But in reality companies can simply just scale.

This is completely wrong. Jobs are zero-sum. One H1-B worker hired is one lost American job opportunity. It's not that hard to understand and taxes have nothing to do with this. Yes, companies can scale jobs but how often are they doing this and how does it help if they are also scaling up the number of H1-B workers?

It is very strange that people in this comment section shout "nationalism, BAD" when someone says that skilled people should stay in their own country and potentially help these countries to grow out of poverty, and statements like the one you just made - essentially rob these country of talented people and bring them into US - is somehow not nationalistic and good.

I left my country to escape a totalitarian regime. I think just because you are born in a place doesn't mean you have the responsibility to completely sacrifice your life. Humans collectively have an obligation to help lift poor countries out of poverty. The question is are you against immigration because you genuinely care about the poverty in my country?

For me it wasn't totalitarian but "corrupt beyond salvation" (think bottom 50 on corruption index). A friend of mine recently went back and lasted six months before he came back to the US - he opened a startup and had to deal with bribes, threats, blackmail and "forced partnerships". I myself would never go back there.

Calling the Indian Government a totalitarian regime is stretching it a bit too much. India is still a paradise of liberty compared to China and some other countries in our region. Indians want H1B because they want to earn in dollars, plain and simple. All other reasons are secondary. H1B is modern-day bonded labor. You guys are the sugar slaves of this age, like it or not.

Makes you a slave master nonetheless.

As far as I know I'm not from India.

> H1B is modern-day bonded labor.

That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Bonded laborers were forbidden to leave their jobs under penalty of the law (like actual prison time). H-1B holders are free to leave any time, they just experience a massive drop in income.

It's not just a "massive drop in income"; if you get fired/laid off or want to leave your H1B job, you have 60 days to leave the country or find a new H1B job (which might not be so easy with quotas & applications etc).

Why do humans collectively have an obligation to lift poor countries out of poverty?

Because the world without poverty is a better place.

You’re just repeating sound bites. Why? explain in detail how this helps humans (especially since it goes against darwinism) and doesn’t hurt them.

If you are a social darwinist, I am not here to convert you.

This seems like a bow out and still I have no answer, just an assumption. So once again, what benefit does humanity have for decreasing poverty instead of the country decreasing it themselves?

I do not owe you answers, but I can continue a conversation if you pay me.

Humanity's competitive advantage—the reason we survive, thrive, and outcompete every other species—is that we work together. We cooperate, to balance one person's weaknesses with another person's strengths.

Social Darwinism is entirely based on misunderstandings of science and history. It is a dead-end philosophy, and needs to be eradicated with knowledge, replaced by the spreading of compassion and cooperation wherever it is found.

I agree with all of this, except I don’t see the value an impoverished set of humans can provide. They will have a point of few that is valid and valuable in certain contexts but are these useful? Secondly when the new baseline is removing poverty you remove the desire to become something more, which is where the real innovation comes from. So by not helping them we get better results, not worse.

Also I would love some papers on how natural selection is no longer valid, this sounds like pure opinion.

Because the opposite is to go and exploit them as it happened for most of the human history and is still happening here and there. Some of those country are drawn in poverty as the result.

Are you already tired of "helping" others? Don't forget that we aren't trying to cooperate for a very long time as it may seem to be. We aren't still great at doing it either.

What may seem to be broken to you isn't wrong in essence. We should help each other. We should support each other. And less poverty is better for all of us. Maybe we should just do it differently. Perhaps the way we are doing it isn't good and we should find a better way to do it.

By the very nature of a highly skilled worker, they likely cannot realize the full value of those skills without a certain economic and commercial context. It is definitely not the case that for most H1-B employees the counterfactual is "growing their own countries out of poverty." Most likely, the counterfactual is being another 75th percentile wage worker in a low income country.

In addition, this line of reasoning totally discounts the very real benefit of foreign transfer payments from workers in the United States to their international families, often supporting large extended families.

Could you please express yourself in simpler English? I cannot understand what you just said - not a native speaker.

Their thesis is that many of the home countries of H1B visa holders do not have the social, technological, and economic infrastructure to support lots of jobs with the skills that they are able to use to their potential in the US.

Thus, if they go home, they will not likely be "lifting their country out of poverty"—they will just be stuck in one of the jobs that is available there. Low-skill, low-pay jobs, without any prospect for advancing to something more like they would be able to do here.

I don't know to what extent this is true, but this is my understanding of their post.

A highly skilled person can only thrive in the right environment. As an extreme example, take the best programmer in the world, and send him back 500 years in the past, he's probably not going to be very productive.

(The counterpoint to this, which the GP didn't talk about, is that this person is still likely to be able to retrain and be productive in that society in other ways.)

Can you see how someone emigrating of their own volition and bringing their skills is different to a country purposefully trying to encourage immigration of skilled workers from [poorer] countries where there is a skills shortage.

The end result looks similar but motivation matters.

What we forget is actually an individual - relocation is a basic human right. There should be no lottery of birth.

Why don't you go to one of those countries and help it to grow out of poverty? It's pretty easy to be generous at the expense of others.

> Think how much investment you have to make on a child's health care and education to make them into a highly skilled workforce.

Let me fix that for you:

Think how much investment you miss out on — investment in a child's education to make them into a citizen who will carry your country's patrimony into the following generation.

Your description lacks the implications of being a market participant in the labour market.

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