The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

Regulation has unintended consequences. As an example trying to save retails investors from fraud means IPOs are fewer and large investors get all the growth.

Not to make this political, but highly educated and highly paid “employees” voting for “career politicians” and “bureaucrats” seriously overestimate their understanding of issues and competence. They are missing data points and should lean to minimum regulation.

Recent changes asking H1 to be paid >40th percentile of salary instead of 17th percentile seems sensible and enough.

- Non tech professions also hire people on H1Bs and don't pay as well as FAANG-likes do.

- Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas.

> Employees who voluntarily quit or are terminated are free to take any other job paying at least what the sponsor's job paid, provided they do so within 3 months.

3 months is generally not enough time to find a new job, finish immigration transfer formalities. This small duration to find a new job also leads to a lot of scams to maintain status.

In practice, I suppose somebody with that kind of money has other options. Still the proposal seems open to abuse.

This is how labor was brought in from Africa not too long ago. I agree a market solution is probably the least unfair one. But, as a country, America should not make the same past, historical mistakes.

That’s not accurate. The original law in the 1960s was designed to be very different, and one of the basic bargains was that it wouldn’t increase net immigration. That ended up being false because Presidents ended up using executive action and regulations to depart from the original design. For example, Clinton narrowing the public charge exclusion to refer to only cash welfare. Indeed, the H1-B system was never intended to be a vehicle for permanent immigration. That was created by administrative fiat too. Trump’s administrative changes were to make the system more consistent with what the law actually says.

You can't target family based immigrants because their families might already have been naturalized and have voting powers. The family GC recipients would also eventually get naturalized, and you don't want to upset potential voter base (however, tiny it might be).

> There has been no meaningful legislation changes to H-1B program in over two decades and I don’t think that there is political capital to make those changes .

This makes it even better. You get to throw punches which makes you look tough, but also doesn't really hurt the other side. Sort of win-win. Although I do think the other side in this is the H1B sponsoring employers and not the folks actually on H1B.

For certain policy aspects, such as national security and defense, it absolutely makes sense to actively exclude and ignore the concerns of non-citizens. They are really not 'true constituents'. But for most other things, the person who's considered a constituent is a law-abiding, tax-paying person, not a persona non-grata (that would be the illegal immigrants aka 'undocumented immigrants' whose cause is taken up with gusto by both political parties); it is absolutely the responsibility of the elected representative to pay attention to his concerns.

This is actually acutely important to both the history of the United States of America and to a grasp of how a representative democracy (if the US is to remain one) works

So, let's go back to the mid-18th century. America is a colony. The colonists are unhappy because they feel unrepresented, but in Westminster, London, the Members of Parliament are content that indeed those colonists are represented - by them - even though the colonists don't get a vote. This concept is named "virtual representation" and we'll return to it. The colonists oppose it, "No taxation without representation" they cry.

It is worth taking a moment here to consider that those Members were not elected by the majority of the people in the districts they were elected to. Only wealthy men in England could vote at that time, a tiny fraction of the population who'd be affected by the Parliament's decisions. This is also prior to Great Reform, so the districts represented do not closely resemble one another in population (though next century things would get much worse before they got better)

So, the Americans revolt, and having won their independence they set up for themselves a new system of government. In many ways this system is reminiscent of the one they've just got rid of, except that (no surprises) the rich old white men who didn't like the old system are instead placed in charge of the new one. In particular, the United States of America does not in fact enfranchise all its citizens, it actually only gives the vote to wealthy men, almost exactly the same as England had done. Still, they now feel represented (and indeed have become important political figures in their new country) and so for them it seems mission accomplished.

The US Congress offers exactly the same weak rationale as the English parliament, virtual representation. Sure, women, the poor, slaves, children and so on are not allowed to vote but we promise your Congress people are representing you anyway.

And so that's the status quo. Either you aren't really a representative democracy, with your millions who are disenfranchised for various reasons†, or you accept that representation is necessarily distinct from enfranchisement - the right to vote.

† In both England and the US the franchise was greatly expanded, to include more men, and eventually women, but although such expansions are almost invariably described as "universal" by their proponents in both countries many people can't vote, and neither is close to even achieving the more reasonable standard of allowing everybody who can meaningfully express an opinion (which would rule out newborns for example) the vote. Not least both prevent people from voting if they are in prison, as if somehow prison reform wouldn't be a very significant issue those people might now have more insight into than other voters...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24702805

No. H1B is a skills based visa and not diversity/family based. The only thing that should matter are the skills and not the country they come from. Steps should absolutely be taken to ensure the system can't be gamed and that only well qualified applicants get selected.