Not enough foreigners applied for H1B visas this year, govt ran a second lottery
theregister.com
theregister.com
A lot of my friends who did their masters in the US are trying to move out as well due to the visa process. You can't live forever on a H1B. Canada seems to be the country of choice for those moving out. Money can only go so far, you need peace of mind. You can't build your life on a temporary foundation.
Also one other recent phenomenon is that you can make boatload of money staying in India and working for a startup. So the incentive to go to the US is lesser atleast for the cream of the talent from the top universities.
Add in visa free travel to all of Europe and it’s probably a great experience.
All the reasons you citied for why it makes sense were true in april of 2020 too when H1B was oversubscribed by multiple factors.
So how does it make sense to you?
Its not like indians were getting Green cards in 2 yrs in april.
Correct explanation imo is drop in outsourcing contracts due to pandemic. TCS, Wipro don't need h1b anymore.
https://infotechlead.com/bpo/infosys-reveals-some-clients-se...
Now since a H1B visa can't be issued if you're outside the USA (executive order), all those picked applications will be abandoned.
This is on top of another trend where EU and Canada are competing for high skilled immigrants and making it easier to move there.
1. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/U...
Is this actually true? I found this on google
https://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-cap-reach-dates-history-graph...
Looks like it actually skyrocketed after trump took office. Its the highest under his administration than any point in history.
Are you just trolling? If so, why?
Bailing on a move to the US because of an unchecked pandemic certainly makes sense. I don't think this really fuels the American decline narrative any more than the unchecked pandemic itself does.
Between SK and China, SK's per capita income is not far off from US but China's is. I am surprised China is able to compete better than US purely on financial might.
If you make 1000000 but all of that does down the drain because the country you earn it in doesn't have common facilities available you end up with a pretty bad bottom line.
This means for the whole waiting period you need to be employed (in a job that's related to your degree) or you lose legal status.
Compare this to Canada where you arrive with permanent residency, have good healthcare and don't have to worry about losing your residence. Easier to put down roots.
The best deal is for those who earn their stock grants in the US and make a mid-career move to Canada. They start with a good asset base.
The stock grants in US ones definitely are better off, a lot of Europeans also use this and go back.
For Chinese, it's becoming more and more attractive to just stay back (current geopolitical tensions aren't helping).
If you're a EU citizen, grad school in the US is not that attractive comparitively unless you're specifically targeting a lab. Over there you have flexible options like doing a PhD through research projects at work (some govts even give you a subsidy for this). Full time grad students have decent benefits too.
For Chinese, I think there are a lot of other strong reasons to stay back. As I understand from the amount of research coming out of their unis in mainland, they seem to have improved a lot there. Also, R&D in some industries reaching on par to Western counterparts, with jobs paying quite well in big cities, so little reason for them to move away from their homeland.
More than a dozen of my friends who graduated at the same time did similarly, both those who went on to grad school and those who went into industry. This wasn't because there weren't options for us in the US — we all had choices. The honest truth is that, among those bright people I knew in undergrad, the large majority (Americans and international alike) were wholly disgusted by the US in recent years, and being unable to effect any change, they left the country.
As for myself, I have avoided any position that requires me to move in the US. I take a substantial cut because of COL adjustments, but I'm not that interested FU money.
I think the cutting edge stuff is getting less pronounced now because of either global offices/remote or ease of access of resources anywhere.
http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/record-number-of...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/americans...
another one from 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/10...
> compared to the prior year
why only compare it to previous year? Previous year was the lowest. ~450 compared to ~3500 in 2014.
Alternate headline from last year:
CNN: Record number of americans not giving up citizenship .A fall of 600% compared to Obama presidency.
It still is. you theory is that it suddenly stopped being that country suddenly from April of this year? Totally absurd logic. Check back how many ppl apply for h1b next year when pandemic is over.
Edit: actually, it's a bit more than one - I have friends who work for SV companies in their London offices and they all rejected real offers to move to US(with an increase in pay) citing issues plaguing the country. My cousin had a transfer visa already arranged and ready and changed his mind for the same reason - US is just not an attractive country to move to. Or at least in my mind it's equal to Russia as a place to live in - I'd consider it for good money but it's not normally on my list because it seems like the systematic issues of the country are off putting.
:)
stupid amount of money , what would this be for you, compared to current amount of money you make?
> with an increase in pay
Maybe they were low balled. I will bet my house that they will move to SV in a heartbeat if they were paid what SV engineers get paid. Just wait till pandemic is over.
>>. I will bet my house that they will move to SV in a heartbeat if they were paid what SV engineers get paid
I don't know, I have a friend who moved from a £50k/year job in UK to a $250k/year job in the US(SV) and he's currently planning to move back, he massively dislikes everything about working and living in the US. Money isn't everything. But of course, these are anecdotes.
Tell me when he actually moves back :), i guarantee you that he is BS-ing.
All my indian friends always talk about "moving back" but we never do. Everyone knows that its BS but we let it slide.
remember all the celebreties that vowed to renounce their citizenship if trump is elected. Yep, they are still here. every one of them.
Once you have “enough” you don’t have to make choices based on making more.
You mean if I were hypothetically 27 years old, with a 3100 square foot house in the burbs where I am paying $2200/month mortgage, married with 2.1 kids, both my wife and I working and we are able to put one spouses entire salary toward long term goals, I could move to SV, work 10 years and move somewhere cheaper to buy the big house in the burbs so I could enjoy the nice laid back life that I already enjoy?
I was a lot older when that decision became a realistic possibility for me to pursue. But I made the same calculation. In hindsight, I’m glad I did. I chose to go down a road that allowed me to work remotely for BigTech. But I had no idea that I would fall into this position. I thought I would be working for a local consulting company at best when my youngest graduated.
Maybe you already live in a rich country. My savings went from ~20k to ~150k / yr (not counting investment market growth). I actually have a better lifestyle and vacations here, eg: I spent 2 weeks skiing this year in mid Jan in brekenridge, CO, something I couldn't even dream of in my home country.
So, yea if you are already from a rich country where a software dev can afford 2 brand new cars then it doesn't make sense. correct. "BS of American life" is a matter of perspective, to me america is heaven on earth.
If I was offered a good contract I won't lie, I would think about it, but it's still pretty attractive compared to anywhere else.
I don't see any reason to "not move no matter what". It's definitely in the top list of desirability. I'm pretty sure that I would have an easier time making friends and a life for myself in the US than in Germany or most northern-european countries, and if you're qualified enough you'll make decent money.
Now imagine you're a top IT guy in some poor country. Do you really think that it would be that difficult decision? It's easy to say "meh" when you live in Europe.
Well yes, obviously this was spoken from a perspective of a European so moving to US is not exactly appealing. But if you're from somewhere else then I can see how US would be at or near the top of your list.
Come on. Really. Equal to Russia.
We're reaching levels of antiUS kneejerking that shouldn't be possible. On the upside, salaries here will grow, which is nice.
You've established a hierarchy and placed both countries at the same level, thus making them the same.
2. I may be wrong, but if you get H1 completely approved the clock starts ticking even if you are unable to travel to US
3. Looks like students\ppl already here picked up, and those coming from outside did not because in spite of having sponsor (a consulting company), they have to find job in pandemic job market and of course travel restrictions.
America is still the place smart people want to come.
edit: i would appreciate feedback while you downvote me, what the disagreement is.
Poppycock.
That runs counter to the article's statement there were a record number of applications.
Something happened between the application deadline in early April & now, and that something is quite obviously COVID-19.
Even though I didn't have a job in India (didn't even look for one), I was completely in peace, no unending emotional pain with tears in my eyes, no stress, anxiety, no suicidal thoughts. Then one day my previous employer called me back, and I came back, because I cared for the project.
3 months later, homeland security (ICE) raided the office. Showed up suddenly, ordered us to stop everything we are doing, took all of us into a conference room. Wouldn't allow to even go for a bathroom break without them accompanying us. Questioned everyone. They were asking questions like 'are we paid enough, do we have any relatives in the office, am I staying alone or with other colleagues' and so on - the kind of things I see in twitter and other places where the anti h1b folks talk about us - that we all stay together because we don't get paid enough or nepotism and so on. The funny thing is even when I came back, I had no intention of staying in US for more than 3 years. I told the officers we are having a baby due in 2 months, and they are in India, hoping they would understand that I am there only for work, and has no intention to settle down. We didn't want the baby to be born in US and become a US citizen.
I look forward to an India were we won't have to rely on foreigners any more.
It's the best known country in the world. It's the most famous one. As a result chances are for a lot of people on this planet the people they admire the most and the people they despise the most will contain a lot of Americans.
I'm from the Netherlands. When we elect an idiot he falls of a skateboard and says something stupid. When Americans elect an idiot a country gets bombed or the world economy almost collapses.
It's too easy for the rest of the west to put all blame on the US. On the other hand: to be the leader of the free world was the ambition of the US for a long time. That does come with more responsibility.
If they dont want to carry all that responsibility by themselves one of the things that has got to go too is the American Exceptionalism. You can't have your cake and eat it too. The position came with both responsibilities and privileges.
And maybe it would be nice to a formal letter of resignation in that case.
Classifying it as "hatred" seems too extreme. If you quit a job, does that mean you hate that employer? Or do you just not want to work there anymore?
We need to hire and train US. Anyone can learn the skills, why are we rewarding education in other countries? Why are we drowning a hot job market and neutering the innovation industry?
Many H1Bs like myself were educated at taxpayer expense in their native countries. US essentially gets them for free to help fuel silicon valley and other tech hubs.
Skills shortage is real. If you are in a position to hire people, you would understand. You can't train people to perform at a silicon valley interview level no matter how much money you pour into training courses. Proper education from a university is needed to clear the high bar for most people. Free college education like in government run colleges in India would solve some of the skills shortage.
I’ve done interviews where we passed on a candidate who’d be educated and onboarded within 1.5 years. Except nobody wanted to take that risk as we’d rather hire the person who can start today.
If there was no h1b program, we’d of hired that American and trained them.
I am an immigrant myself, but I don't think the US gets anything for free when it gets an educated H1B. It's a trade off, you get more opportunities than any other country can give you. It's up to you to be able to identify them.
H1B fraud is pervasive at this point and it needs a major reform. I have friends who work in immigration and it's obvious that some schools in India (JNTU for instance) are diploma mills that teaches nothing and ends up with people who should never have a degree to begin with. They exist just to ship people to the US through networking. Then there is the fraud where people from different countries come do their masters at Maharishi International University (or similar) and, once again,study nothing and get a degree. Finally the cherry on top is a lot of the people who were in H1Bs become rich by creating staffing companies bringing more H1Bs and paying them pennies. The government only does a bit of enforcement really. One of the few good things Trump did was to enforce the rules more.
Most H1Bs need a lot of training to be productive. I have worked with many. The H1B program - when it comes to STEM - was created to bring very educated people (think top universities with good grades, IIT and similar). Unfortunately, the many who should not have gotten one in the first place, create the problems for the ones who should truly qualify to get an H1B.
Of course the system gets abused, that's par for the course in the united states with all the lobbying. But that doesn't mean that a company is going to suddenly use non-existent local workforce to do the job. At the same time, if it really was just displacing locals for profit, that same could probably be done by just moving an entire department out of the country.
There is only one real way to resolve it effectively: be the better option.
If you are trying to apply some weird protectionism construction instead of simply being the best option, it just ends up hurting everyone.
When I say jump you say how high!
Why would offshoring the department hurt everyone though? Does "everyone" only count US residents?
If you were to make such a comparison you'd have to take all of the non-technical parameters in to account:
- communication
- culture
- values
- productivity
- intrinsic motivation
- team fit
Those would pretty much remove most of the 'canned workers' people seem to point to from the conversation, as well as most of the enterprise 'consultants' and the like (i.e. Deloitte)
If you want to include them, you would have to set the bar much lower, but then you also should make sure that the provisioning that government program for visas explicitly mentions that. At the same time, the 'interview process' is just bad as far as I've heard and experienced. 90% of the people you interact with and the activities you attend have nothing to do with the actual work or work context. At the same time, those kids that did some school work and now think they instantly get a job that happens to use the same words in their postings as the words they used to label their classes simply have a disconnect between theory and reality. But that's more of a general American thing than purely college-to-job flows being bad.
In the defense industry they can't hire internationals. Not coincidentally, this how interviews at those companies mostly go. And they plan for a lot of training of new hires to boot. Needing a hire to be productive their first day is a necessity for startups, not massive companies like Apple/Amazon/Intel/etc. They're just being cheap.
You can’t tell me that you couldn’t get a qualified Americans for 70% of what the major cloud providers pay.
I moved from Nicaragua to Mexico before Corona, and I'm waiting it out here: I was so surprised by this place (and by Nica before it).
There surely is a lot of asylum woe on the border, but I can't really believe anyone would want to leave here and go there, and nor can any of the other delightful cultured sweet kind and wonderful "bad hombres" who live here.
Can you give examples of what you mean by that? I've been living in the US (Seattle area) for over 7 years and haven't felt that at all.
The ten minute fiasco that followed, during which I was not permitted to re-enter the bar with my beer, but not permitted to put my beer in the trash can, nor permitted to "finish it" and throw the can away, I had to "pass it over the line" with outstreched arms, as though it was radioactive.
(edit: mis-remembered. I actually had to pass it over the wall that surrounded the entrance, not over the entranceway itself. Maybe that's part of the rules).
There were no cops on the scene, but I FELT we were on the verge of someone calling nine-fucking-one-one.
In order to re-enter the pub (closest to my airbnb), I had to "ask forgiveness", and I was "lucky enough" to have it bestowed on me.
Honestly I felt like a forty year old child.
The smoke blowing back into the restaurant was terrible (and I'm a smoker). But the rule-lady didn't mind: as long as the beer is here, and the smoke is there.
Generally cities are a hassle everywhere, with some exceptions. Have you been to New Orleans? Generally in the US, people who want to be left alone don't go downtown.
A woman (passerby) approaches me, and asks if I could please step into the street with "that thing".
I do so. She walks on.
Or is it that H1B employers have enough of a powerful lobby that USCIS had no choice?
(since I assume current administration would've been content with under-utilization this year).
So, no, USCIS cannot legally start denying visa applications (on grounds of the limit being reached) until the numerical limit has been reached.
It’s actually an absurd and cruel thing that there is even such a ridiculous numerical limit, and one that is extremely small in per capita terms.
Most developed countries don’t have such limits. Both Canada and Australia granted more visa applications than the US.
The numerical limit (along with other restrictions) has resulted in a lottery, which in turn led to many people who studied in the US getting effectively deported (as they had no way to stay without a work visa). People with a PhD from Harvard and MIT with a $250k+ jobs (or job offers) have gotten deported because of the absurd numerical limit on H-1B visas.
Your idiotic opinions on immigration come across as grossly xenophobic. Since Trump got elected people have been getting denied for absurd joke reasons. I myself was denied a $200k+ job and had to leave / got effectively deported from the US. And I am someone who has spent over 10 years in the US on visas. I’m sure you’ll celebrate my suffering.