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The idea that H-1B workers suppress US wages is a harmful myth that gets thrown around HN a lot.

The study that supports the claim that the H-1B program suppresses US tech wages is about 20 years old, and no longer reflects the current reality.

In fact, a 2017 Glassdoor study found that the wages of H-1B workers were 2.8% higher than their American counterparts: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/

The US creates several million new jobs each year on average, and the H-1B cap is 85K, which is an order of magnitude less than the number of jobs created per year. In order for the H-1B program to meaningfully impact the US labor market, the H-1B cap needs to be increased significantly.

Getting paid more than domestic workers doesn't mean you don't lower the wages of the sector overall, it could just mean you're competing with the top end of the market.

I was over there working on an E-3 a few years back, and I'm pretty sure I got hired because it was easier (e.g. cheaper) to set up a hiring funnel in another country than within the US. That doesn't automatically mean lower wage growth, but it could.

I tentatively think that skilled migrant workers lower wages within a single sector but have a neutral or positive effect on wages overall, and the US tech labour market is so hot that I don't feel bad for making its wages drop, stagnate, or increase slightly slower than they might otherwise, assuming the overall impact on every other sector is positive.

Any additional workers in an area will lower wages in that area. Simple supply & demand and off course you are right that they also grow the overall pie. I do wonder though how much the added friction when changing jobs as an H1B holder creates a downward pressure. I'd bet comp in all areas with lots of H1B workers would go up if we made it much easier to change jobs while on an H1B and give a lot more time to find a new job when suddenly unemployed (1-2 years instead of weeks)

> The US creates several million new jobs each year on average, and the H-1B cap is 85K, which is an order of magnitude less than the number of jobs created per year.

H-1B hires are not evenly distributed across all job types. A large fraction of them going to particular industries, like is seen in big tech, could move the needle in those industries.

> In fact, a 2017 Glassdoor study found that the wages of H-1B workers were 2.8% higher than their American counterparts

The problem with this is that H1B workers work a lot more than 2.8% harder, on average, and companies know this.

Many H1B workers are practically abused. They may be doing the work of two engineers. Unlike a typical work relationship between an upper-middle class professional and a tech company, separating from the company may not be realistic recourse because the work-visa immigration status is a Damoclean sword.

I've seen this bite even harder for L1B immigrants who work for multinational tech companies and get lured to the US from abroad, because even if you find another company willing to sponsor your H1B you are still subject to the caps. It's pretty messed up.

It’s not a myth. I worked for a prominent US company that routinely hired non-Americans based on price. There are innumerable ways around the H-1B limits. I quit the company.

Name a name then

Looking for work?

Perhaps it is a myth with no basis. That said, increased supply decreasing demand is usually the null case, yes? So I'd want to see evidence that additional workers do not supress wages.

Basically what you're asking for is protectionism. How is it different than putting tariffs on Japanese cars to make american cars less uncompetitive?

I made no argument on any decision, only on a means to answer a specific question of measurement.

I am not purporting that the H-1B program has no effect on tech wages, just that it has a negligible effect due to its small cap relative to the number of tech jobs available.

Any increase in labor supply would have some effect on the wage level in an industry.

There might technically be enough Americans who would like to make FAANG-level wages and know how to use a computer and are willing to be an engineer.

But there's definitely not enough Americans skilled enough for those jobs.

Should FAANG be forced to train Americans rather than hire H1B workers? I don't know.

It's a mystery to me they bring people to the US instead of just employ them in other countries in the first place.

But if the US didn't allow H1B workers, they definitely would.

Should American companies not be able to have foreign offices staffed with foreign workers? I don't know.

But this sounds like a recipe for handicapping American companies vs global competitor...

I think it's hard to export the SV software engineering culture to foreign offices. You have at most a few people to seed it, but then it's overrun by people with totally different backgrounds that have no idea what it's about.

FAANG are the worst example because they turnaway more applications who can perform those roles then apply. FAANGs shouldn't be allowed H1B workers.

also consider that we issued more than 350k student visas this year. if the h1-b cap is 85k then we are giving immigrants some of best college-level education in the world and then refusing to hire >75% of them. this has never made sense to me.

Or we force them to marry locally.

Or 20 years of wage suppression worked and now they're at parity.

What happens to demand when supply is increased?

H1B is an easy scapegoat. You see people of certain nationalities on visa and think ohh the companies are bringing in cheap labor. The reality is that most of them would be citizens if the immigration laws were created equal. You wouldn’t see that many people on visa if they didn’t have to stay on it for decades.

People come from Europe all the time and become citizens, and you don’t say “ohh look at all these foreigners on visa taking away all the jobs and suppressing the wages” because they transition to citizenship and you don’t see them on visas for long.

Create a fair immigration system and you won’t see H1Bs around for long.

+1B. Unfortunately no one cares about legal immigration in the US so all this talent is sitting around for decades and wondering why years or decades assimilation isn’t enough to walk through the front door.

One of the major competitive advantages of the US is that it brain drains the rest of the world through its education system and career opportunities, but that’s starting to dwindle after a decade of neglect. US’s loss and Canada’s win, I guess.

Canada has one of the worst housing markets in the world, mediocre pay for software engineers, and a slowly collapsing public healthcare system (and private healthcare is illegal). Many of those issues are exacerbated by Canada's ridiculously high per capita immigration rate. The US has its own dysfunctions, but Canada does not look like a model to emulate.

You guys have no clue about US immigration system. There are equal green card quotas for each country, which is the main merit path to citizenship. Of course some countries have a huge population or huge demand for US visas, but that still means that green cards for that country are equal in number to green cards from other countries. And for example, there are a lot of countries in Africa.

On the other hand, children of undocumented immigrants get citizenship without any quota. So there are many more new citizens from Mexico and Central America vs Europe. I am not saying they are bad citizens, but there is some rational limit to immigration that protects native culture from sudden disruption against wishes of existing citizens. So, defining what is fair is not as easy as you might think.

It is really very easy.

1. If you want equality then apply it to H1B itself. Why is it that you want equality when it comes to green cards that give people equal rights, but not when you want to bring them in to do work? Apply country caps for H1B visa and let’s see how that works. Equality for employment green cards but not for visas is not a system of equality.

2. Apply equality everywhere else as well, family immigration especially.

3. You could design a system that is more equal if you really wanted. You are quick to blame huge populations, but also ignore the fact that countries like India and China are almost as big as Europe. Take into account the size as well if you wanted equal representation.

Defining fair is not easy, but you can at least try.

For small European country. I remember one my co-workers. He used to work in USA for some years, got green cards for himself and family, I think in months. Then returned here and simply just returned those cards.

The system truly isn't equal. And from outside is bit bizare.

I think when you have a country which many more people want to live in than it can realistically sustain, you're bound to end up with a system which isn't equal. It's like a game of musical chairs with 500 people and 5 chairs.

The US has 50m foreign-born residents, the second highest is Germany at 16m. There's no country on Earth which takes in more immigrants (I'm actually one of them!) yet my whole life I've seen nothing but people demanding that they take in even more.

>Create a fair immigration system and you won’t see H1Bs around for long.

You hit the Nail right on the Head!

H1B is being used as an easy scapegoat for all the ills plaguing the US labour market.

Ah yes, entitlement all the way down. The American complains that only Americans should be hired despite same skill for cheaper elsewhere. After restricting to Americans, the SF dev complains the company hired a Denver dev who is cheaper for the same skill. Then in Denver, the dev complains they hired from Omaha. Screw the guy from Omaha!

Markets are global especially on the internet. If Facebook and Twitter don't compete on a global scale, TikTok will eat the lunch you believe you are entitled to.

The entire article discusses that immigration is needed and American's don't want those jobs. I don't need a team of the most skilled and experienced PhDs. A big portion of my team are just reliable people who can keep the lights on.

Markets are not global. The immigration market is highly regulated and the H1B visa is an abusive system which keeps Indian and Chinese immigrants enslaved to their jobs for up to 20 years while waiting for a green card. It’s a perfect labor group to take advantage of. You want a real global market for international labor? Fix the immigration system.

One of my points was even if you restrict the employee market, customers remains global, revenues remains global. Forcing wage costs higher will eventually make the US uncompetitive.

Yea and there are Americans that want those jobs to keep the lights on and get paid over 6 figures.

>Ah yes, entitlement all the way down.

This is the hard truth but people don't want to face up to it.

This is the root issue and it's systemic wage suppression. It's also surreal when entire management structures are h1b1 visa workers and speaks to deeper cultural issues that nobody wants to talk about.

> speaks to deeper cultural issues that nobody wants to talk about

Could you explain further?

>The sad fact is that we have enough software developers in America to fully meet all of every American companies technical needs; The problem is that these companies don't want to meet the market demands of that labor pool by paying what that market is asking to keep that sustainable, so they want to import people who they can abuse to temporarily lower labor prices for them.

This is a bogus self-serving argument that is offered by many entitled "American programmers" who want wage hyperinflation. Tech workers are among the highest paid professions anywhere, and still people like you complain about wage suppression, ha! How self-serving & entitled of you.

There is 100%+ employment in tech, and the people "looking for work" you speak of, wouldn't even pass a basic programming test and unemployable IMO.

In my view you are both wrong for different reasons.

There are not “enough software developers in America to fully meet all of every American companies technical needs”. There is virtually no unemployment among competent software developers and almost every team I have ever talked to consistently struggles to hire. It doesn’t pass the sniff test, as there are relatively few of these workers in any case.

Equally, workers are absolutely entitled to complain about companies abusing people in precarious positions—such as H1B visa holders—to reduce costs. Certain orgs are notorious for this. It is not “entitled” to think that workers should be paid the market rate for their work, and the reality is that software developers are highly-paid in part because their skills are hard to come by and drive significant financial benefit (i.e. they are worth it). You don’t need to put the effort in to defend companies who have famously colluded to suppress wages!

Is the real problem not the existence of a silly visa system in the first place? If you want workers, then allow them to enter the country and compete freely at market wages for roles - without making them so subject to the whims of their sponsoring employer. That system is basically designed to facilitate abuse.

ty. I think you made my point more eloquently than I could. Agreed that h1b has _several_ flaws, but then so has SS, Medicare/Medicaid, VA etc. Those aren't shining examples of good governance either. All its flaws notwithstanding, quite a lot of good comes out of h1b - the number of foreign born CEOs and entrepreneurs in tech is telling. I'd go so far as to say, no other program has done more to keep America competitive in tech than h1b.

There's widespread support in business for reform. Many of us are supportive of a points scheme for visas using salary indexed to COL, academic credentials etc as a better filter. Unfortunately congressional gridlock makes it extremely unlikely.

My objection was to the smug, sneery condescension about "cheap labor","wage suppression","no shortage if you pay enough". IMO it's driven in large part by racism and nativism coupled with self-serving avarice (delicious irony there) - not "wage concerns" or "h1b worker exploitation". That's the BS cover story!

Perhaps as a: MIT CSAIL Alum, AI+Machine Vision researcher passionate about using technology for societal good.

Not everyone is an MIT Alum and full employment is a dream that could only come from the halls of MIT

You are correct except that it's L1 visa driving wages down. H1Bs are typically employed at FAANG and are paid top of the market. Instead of a lottery system, they should use it for top of the market jobs or proven specialization like published papers in that field or certifications.

There are way way more H1Bs working for bodyshops that lease them to non-FAANG Fortune 500 companies than work for FAANG.

https://h1bdata.info/topcompanies.php

8 of the top 10 H1B filers are bodyshops. And of course the average salary for the 8 bodyshops is way below the 2 non-bodyshops.

Uhhh, no? I don't think u realize how big of the gap between the average programming work vs fanng+ companies. Note that I didn't say the quality of the candidates, because I don't think it's hard and most of the ppl can achieve that level if they really tried. But the difference in work is so huge it's basically 2 type of jobs. In typical fanng companies, most regular ppl wont survive. It's highly competitive and require ppl to be able to ramp up repidly. At the same time, u need to maintain high performance all the time. Hard deadlines everywhere. Required to lead different projects and be oncall at the same time.

It's highly competitive and demanding basically the opposite of what ppl going through in the regular school system right now.

I’m calling bs on this. Many people in faang companies I know are pretty average work effort required is also pretty average, could you provide more concrete examples of where this isn’t true?

Lets start from faang, Amazon/meta/Netflix have high review bar, u r behold to biquaterlly review and sometimes quarterly review. If u havent heard of ura, go look it up. Google is somewhat more relaxed as their culture encouraging improving the employees instead of performance based firing outright but this might change, look it up regardless. apple's wlb is suprisingly bad as their very top down, of coz the pay is good.

Outside faang,twitter was famed to be a more relax place. its gone now after elon take over. stripe is famous for being aws 2.0. these are the places are either i worked at or have friends there. Also consider thr currently layoff is largely performance based

for wlb, 40-50 is the norm if u r good. if u are average in putting out the effort, i dont think u can survive the ramp up in the first year with less than 50h per week. companies like amazon doesnt even give u time to ramp up.

But if u survive the first 2 year, u r probably fine. An 'average' employee in this sense will be vastly capable of dealing with the org chaos and oncall, and churn out the commits at the same time. The wlb will be much better if he is in a stable org. He will be more experienced in gaming the reviews too.

Once again, i never mentioned the quality of the candidates, i only talk about the work and performance. i think most of the ppl are capable,just whether they really tried.

You described politics not performance. 40-50 hours is pretty standard across most industries. It’s rare to find non-unionised places that truly do 40 hours. I’d say in the software industry 50 - 60 is gut-feel where I see a lot of people working (just my own personal network).

I think companies that went remote probably automatically shifted it up towards 50 as default, just because the home/work separation became more leaky.

(No data to back any of this up, but I’m still unconvinced that the FAANGs are anything special other than being big mega-corps)

>The sad fact is that we have enough software developers in America to fully meet all of every American companies technical needs;

Absolutely wrong!

Software Developers and Engineers Shortage in the US: The case for Global Talent: https://www.revelo.com/blog/software-developer-shortage-us

H1B is a dual intent visa. It has never been just temporary, the idea that H1B workers can seek permanent residence is built into the visa. (It is not built into most other visas.)

Many H1B workers wish to become citizens but can't due to decades-long backlogs. If your post is actually meant to campaign for them to get quicker green cards and citizenship, I applaud you.

>H1B is a dual intent visa. It has never been just temporary, the idea that H1B workers can seek permanent residence is built into the visa.

This needs to be repeated time and time again until people "get it". It was designed as a "legal way" of immigrating to the US.

You don’t become more competitive by creating limits. China limits what people can read, say or do. US limits movement. It became great through free movement of people and reinvention of society, and creating any limits means you skew the outcome. You limit supply, so prices rise artificially.

Unless you’re Native American, your forefathers and mothers moved to the US at a time where it was easier to do so. That’s a lottery you happened to win and now you want to shut the doors. Your parents helped create the story of success, and that’s how the story will continue. No visas means no Jobs, no Nadella, no Brin, no Tesla, no very many people who create and sustain so many institutions that make you great. Immigration and entrepreneurship are the lifeblood of your story.

Don’t worry so much about slicing the pie. Grow the pie.

When my ancestors came to Canada, they settled their own land, lost half the family in the winters, and many of them still ended up trying to return to Ireland. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that's an "easier" experience than the route taken by folks today. There's tens of thousands of acres unsettled land left in Canada, but for whatever reason the vast majority of our new Canadians end up in the GTA.

The process of immigrating to North America today is so entirely different from how it was the 1800s it's a bit disingenuous to equate the two.

Easier from the perspective of getting a visa. You won the lottery is what I said.

I live in a country where we seem to work hard to keep people from neighbouring countries out. It does nothing for our competitiveness, just allows the current inhabitants who pretty much did nothing except have the right ancestors to get benefits and opportunities that neighbours don’t have.

In your case, Canada benefits greatly from the US having a more restrictive immigration policy. Net positive for Canada. It’s a total failure to have smart people not able to enter your country, because they’ll go somewhere. Quote SamA: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1554459751353683969

If that doesn’t convince you, consider the case of Russia now, with people leaving daily. If immigration is net negative then surely Russia is winning hand over fist because people are leaving the country in droves. Obviously not. It’s a horror show for them.

H-1B workers, look around you. This is the top comment here. Imagine for a second that you support a union. When you take your seat at the union meeting, someone like this sits down on your left, on your right, in front of you, and behind you.

Imagine you provide a tech union with manpower. Who do you think will hold the reins? You or some guy like this? Will you arm them so that they can execute on what they dream of?

Consider carefully what a union of people like this can do. Consider carefully what you will support. In the end, they have themselves to look after.