The visa woes that shattered scientists’ American dreams | Hacker News Reader

The visa woes that shattered scientists’ American dreams

nature.com

35 pointspseudolus16 comments

Although skilled worker visas should be much easier to come by and the process a hell of a lot less painful, post doc imports are used as cheap labor in the US.

I have some experience to know that post docs come to the US to work at prestigious institutions (e.g. Harvard in association with MGH) and get paid about $50k per year as researchers.

For both H1Bs and researchers, labor import should include stipulations about minimum salary. The current system is highly exploitative.

> get paid about $50k per year as researchers

I quite agree with you that the current system is highly exploitative. But the problem runs deeper within the academia than with the visa system.

First, there isn't a market to begin with. Tech companies compete for the best engineers but universities do not need to compete for the best researchers. There are many more freshly minted PhDs every year than available postdoc jobs are in elite research institutions. Universities can pay them the bare minimum and still get to pick the best from a pile of applicants.

On the other hand, most research funding that a university lab or federal research lab relies upon comes from the federal government. As such, in many universities, the pay scale for postdocs is dictated by the funding agency that funds the research project. You probably wouldn't believe that in this tech bubble, there are researchers living on a 48k/y salary that barely pays the rent and necessities, Americans and foreigners alike. So why would anyone be willing to do this? Because there is no other way to land on a faculty job.

Does banning J1 and H1B visas help to address the glut of Ph.D. production and the problem with the way research is funded and evaluated? No. It would only turn those would-be Americans into would-be Canadians or Europeans.

(Edited for clarity)

>The current system is about cheap labor.

It is not, there a lot of people with extremely sought after skills that doesn't qualify for an O-1 visa (which is also more subjective so never a sure bet) for which H1B is the only option. Me and many other H1Bs were hired into positions with salaries above average for our american peers.

Yes, it is also abused, but saying it's only about cheap labor simply isn't true.

> For both H1Bs and researchers, labor import should include stipulations about minimum salary.

What you are asking for already exists for H-1B's!

To get H-1B you have to first file an LCA (Labor Condition Application) with DoL (Department of Labor) to get approval for the specific salary that'll be paid.

There is a govt database that maps job, skill level and location to a salary. The actual salary has to exceed both the one from the database, and also that for similar workers in the same company.

It would be a valid opinion to say the salary requirements should be increased. But saying there is no minimum salary enforcement for H-1B salaries is blatantly wrong.

The "cheap labor"/"greedy company" epithet is such a knee-jerk response to "H1b" on HN, is a testament to the very successful demonization of H1b by some entitled and spoiled bunch of Americans who feel tech jobs are just owed to them at $ whatever-number-i-state.

Businesses need not be apologetic about h1b - there is of course some fraud, but vast majority are very valuable contributors to the US. Instead we should highlight these "american programmer" groups are shakedown artists and often outright racist and should not be countenanced.

I would invite open-minded HN-ers to read Anna Lee-Saxenian's work at UC Berkeley.

Not to take this way off topic, but what should post-docs get paid?

They aren't regarded as fully independent researchers yet (that's why they're doing a post-doc), so you'd expect a lower salary.

And some Phd's only make $70-80k per year in full time roles outside of academia, so $50k wouldn't seem out of place for someone still "in training".

grad salaries should be 50-60k at this point and post doc should be 90-100k. right now theyre too low and exploitive. it is just a bad, abusive system right now. companies are now getting in on the post-doc scheme to in order to hire cheap phds with no guarantee of hiring after it is done.

i told my previous employer, of they continue the post doc program (i was the guinea pig) ill quit. the title and salary were terrible. everyone outside my group was horrified and telling me to leave and get a better job it was that bad.

This is the direct consequence of propping up numbers of phds in international genitalia measuring contests. If I were an employer, why should I pay a postdoc a lot. There are so many of them on the market and identifying "good ones" from the chaff is difficult. Is the median postdoc actually worth 45k? (For reference when I was a postdoc I topped out at 35k and made more applying to a position advertised for BA biologists, and then took a "pay raise" being a lyft driver for a year and a half.

Salaries in academia are generally much lower than industry. Salaries in non-tech are lower than tech. I think the bias of this forum towards tech industry shows in this thread. 100k is more than what most newly hired professors (i.e. assistant professors) earn, at least here in Canada. Postdocs making half as much as assistant professors makes total sense.

For h1b it absolutely does and has been for decades now. Some postdocs have h1bs but most are j-1s - those visas don’t have minimums at all afaik

Are international postdocs paid less than US Citizen postdocs ?

Yup, I'm tired of this political propaganda popping up

The Trump Administration has just proposed new rules that would limit the students of numerous countries to only 2yr VISAs.

Here's a good thread on the matter: https://twitter.com/doug_rand/status/1309125937066315782

One of the reasons countries get on the list is by having an overstay rate of greater than 10%, but this makes no sense. A single student from Nauru overstaying could make that nation's overstay rate 20%, while 80,000 overstaying students from Canada could be under 10%.

Aside from tiny places like nauru, is there any reason using a proportion is bad?

People who are going to overstay at four years are going to overstay at two years so this doesn't really solve the problem while what it does do is punish the innocent.

Importing highly skilled workers from overseas shatters American's dreams.

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