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Comment by mamon | Hacker News Reader

I think this is by design. You don't want to issue visas to "people early in their career" - those jobs should go to Americans first. You only hire from abroad if there really is a shortage of specialists in some profession, and you want those professionals to prove their worth in their home country first, before allowing them to the US.

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Exactly. The H-1B program is intended to be for highly skilled workers. Most folks early in their career (GP is probably thinking straight out of school) can hardly be considered highly skilled. And surely there are plenty of American recent graduates from similar programs as the recent graduate H-1B applicant.

Well, it's possible for there to be a shortage of early-career specialists. Even now, with CS majors stuffed to the brim across the country, entry-level software engineering salaries keep rising and the big companies hire as fast as they can.

I see your point broadly, but I think it's possible for that to be true and to also take university-grad H1-B employees.

But still, you want that shortage to stay there for a while, because that provides the incentive to US universities to create more spots in CS programs for US teenagers. If you go straight to hiring foreigners you are leaving US kids behind.

Typically younger working age people are a net benefit to the system. They pay taxes, but their kids dont go to schools, they dont require as much healthcare (which can be publicly funded in some countries).

Ahh, I see. There's a logic to it, but I really don't agree with this zero-sum mindset. The tech sector is one of the few where the US is (arguably) a leader, and it seems like we will all benefit in the long run if the most talented people in the world build their careers here. It seems like there must be a better way to ensure that native workers are not harmed by it, such as collective bargaining.

Umm no. Everyone but Indian/Chinese H1b holder, get their green card in 1-2 years.

> Umm no. Everyone but Indian/Chinese H1b holder, get their green card in 1-2 years.

That's false. Maybe this was true in the past.

First, they cannot self-sponsor. Which means that the hypothetical company would have to apply as soon as they step foot on US soil. There are no incentives to do so and incentives against it. So they generally won't.

Expect the process to start a couple of years before the H1B visa is set to expire.

Even if started immediately, just for processing time alone you are looking at around 2 years. 2 to 6 months for the PERM process. I-140, similar. The AOS stage can take 10 (or more!) months to process. The last two can be filed concurrently. It's still one year on the absolute best case with no RFEs or audits whatsoever, counting from the moment the application was filed, assuming all documentation is instantly available (like employment verification letters from past workers, translations etc) and assuming lawyer time is zero (which obviously is not the case).

Of course, if you are Indian or Chinese, add years or decades to the above.

If you work at FAANG, they file immediately(and many more do, it's not a big deal). Are you aware for rest of world i-485 and i-140 can be filed concurrently.

> Of course, if you are Indian or Chinese, add years or decades to the above.

My understanding (I have always been a citizen of the US) is that the processing time to get a green card if you are Indian is so long it might as well not be an option.

Back log is roughly 1.5 million. Indians get 7% of the 140,000 employment based green cards each year plus any run off.

It’ll never clear without reform.

The H1B system is so unkind. We invite people into our country, only to trap them with a particular employer with the constant threat of losing work authorization. Then we don’t even lay down specific rules on how one can get out of this situation.

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