High-skilled visa holders at risk of deportation amid tech layoffs | Hacker News Reader

High-skilled visa holders at risk of deportation amid tech layoffs

washingtonpost.com

60 pointspseudolus69 comments

I sympathize as so much to say that I understand and I've been there as an H1B immigrant myself. One of my friends got personally deported for overstaying her H1B, and got a 10 year ban from entering the US.

However, there was never, ever a period of time where any of these H1B holders were ever guaranteed permanent residency in the US. Not a single time in the last 20 years. Every single one of them KNEW what they were getting themselves into, and that not only could they get laid off at any time, but the road to a Green Card was extremely, extremely long (10+ years) and hard.

I personally helped one of my best friends get his Green Card after 10+ years of waiting (he's Indian). But at no point was he under any belief he was owed anything. He hated the situation, but he knew exactly what he was up against, and the same goes for every other H1B holder.

So, it sucks, but it's part and parcel with the privilege of working in one of the best countries, in one of the best paying jobs in the world. None of these H1B holders are owed anything, and if their 60 day timer runs out, yes, they will need to leave.

And I fundamentally disagree with increasing the number of GCs for Indians. The Indian body shops have completely exploited the H1B system by inundating H1B applications, which is why it is so heavily overrun with applicants. We should not reward this bad behavior, so just let everything work itself out over time, without rewarding the bad players.

> None of these H1B holders are owed anything

They are owed common decency. They are owed a responsive government that gives them the ability to plan their lives.

The whole idea of giving employers control over their employees’ ability to stay in a country is perverse.

> We should not reward this bad behavior, so just let everything work itself out over time, without rewarding the bad players.

We should fix the system so “bad players” cannot exploit it.

They are given a tremendous amount of generosity. Once they are in the GC process, they can extend their H1B indefinitely, something that wasn't available when I got my GC. The spouses are eligible for an EAD, meaning they can work whatever job they want. They have 60 days to find a new job. They can buy houses, they can job hop, they have a lot of flexibility considering that they aren't citizens.

There isn't a single Indian H1B holder that doesn't know they need to be here 15+ years to get their GC and if they get laid off, they need to find a job quickly. And yet, they still gamble on it. Very often they win and get their GC. Sometimes they lose and they have to go back to India. It sucks, but they signed up for it. The US doesn't owe them any sort of guarantee besides the flexibility and generosity that they already give them.

We will have to disagree. Forget about the inhumanity in letting someone build up a life and become part of the community for over a decade, and then kicking them out. The US owes its own people to not be giving employers even more negotiating power in setting labor prices by having access to labor they have even more leverage over.

This policy favors no one other than employers who want lower wages. If the US government was not so short sighted, it would be soaking up as much educated and productive labor as it could in the face of declining fertility rates.

There isn't a single H1B holder that doesn't know their work visa isn't a guarantee of citizenship. You calling it "inhumane" is nothing but garbage.

That's like saying the illegal immigrants who cross Rio Grande are fully aware that they may die while doing so. So it is OK to let them die... they signed up for it.

The point is that economic migrants often know they will be mistreated in the destination country, but that doesn't make it morally correct to mistreat them.

Your example is irrelevant. H1B holders are not being mistreated at all. They are being treated fairly. They are coming in on a work visa, and when they no longer have work, they need to leave.

Are you suggesting they should be given permanent residency just for getting a job? I'm sure you'll find that no country in the world does that.

If they are being treated fairly then that's one thing. Implying that if someone knew they are going to be treated unfairly then it is OK to treat them unfairly is another thing. Implying that some people of a particular race has done something bad, so it is OK to punish every person of that race, is well, racist.

I agree. However, since H1B holders are treated fairly, it doesn't apply in your situation.

It has nothing to do with race. You keep saying it's racist when it's not. The system is very fair, and especially fair toward people from India. You can't claim it's racist, you have no evidence, all the evidence points to it's very fair for Indians.

It is not the system I have a problem with. It is your statement that all Indians must pay for the behavior of some (i.e., body shops). Also, your claim of Indian friend reminds me of [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_not_racist,_I_have_black...

You're the racist here, accusing everyone of racism and lying about what they said when it's clearly written above. It's a sad way of living life but I guess some people can't live with the truth.

> They are coming in on a work visa, and when they no longer have work, they need to leave.

This is not accurate, and the crux of my post. They need to leave when they no longer are able to find an employer willing to sponsor them for an H1-B and do all the paperwork.

It would be much less of a problem if what you wrote was true, that the work visa meant they could stay as long as they were working.

If they don't have an employer, they don't have work.

Curious if you are an Indian too. You seem knowledgeable of the situation.

The fact is this system is rigged against people born in India specifically (not Indians, Indians born outside India are fine). If you had a rule that discriminated against, say, Jews, it would be called out for being anti-semitic. If you had a rule saying people born in Israel are ineligible for something, maybe it might be okay even though it largely amounts to the same thing. US is, of course, free to make whatever rules it likes, but it is a rule designed to discriminate against a particular nationality. Can you give an answer for why an H1B holder from India has to face a significantly higher wall than an equivalent H1B holder from, say, Spain?

The reason is because Indian bodyshops exploited the H1B system and flooded the H1B application process with Indian applicants. That's why the vast majority of H1B applicants are Indian. The unfortunate byproduct of this is that all of these H1B holders now try to apply for GC at the same time.

It's not rigged against India, it's backlogged because Indian body shops rigged the H1B system for their own gains and now there's a million H1B Indians all vying for a GC. Sorry, but these are the facts. There isn't nothing specific targeting Indians, it's the fact that so many applications have come from India, and to let Indians dominate the GC allocation would be unfair to the rest of the world.

The purpose of the H-1B visa program is to help US companies fill highly skilled jobs that require specialized knowledge and expertise that are not readily available in the US labor market. Given that purpose, the source country should not matter. If applicants from a particular country are not as skilled as those from another country, then that's certainly something to take into account. But the applicant's skin color isn't relevant, given the purpose.

Nothing you said was relevant to the discussion. H1Bs are not being denied because of skin color as evidenced by the fact that the overwhelming majority of H1B holders are Indian.

The issue is not in getting H1Bs, the issue is in conversion to permanent residency.

The US has a rule that limits the number of Green Cards per country. There is no rule that specifically targets Indians. Indians have over 1 million people in line waiting for a GC. They have flooded the GC application process and now they have to wait in line. The fact that the US even allowed so many H1Bs from India that pushed out every other country shows that the US is giving a lot of benefits to Indians. Should they have instead limited the number of H1Bs per country? Then would they be crying about "racism" against Indians still? Hogwash.

If the US let all the Indians have a Green Card then no other country would be able to get one. To think that Indians want the right to get a green card above and beyond anyone else is utter selfishness. They want what's best for them at the detriment of other people from around the world. The US takes a more generous approach and ensures that every immigrant from every country has a good chance to come into the US.

The rule limiting the Indians goes way back to the 60s. Also, if the issue is bodyshops act against them. At present this is collective punishment for something only a few Indians are engaged in and it doesn't even seem to be effective.

While I think it’s wholly in America’s best interest to keep most if not all of these people in our economy… This might be amazing for the countries they came from.

Getting an unexpected repatriation of a bunch of previously drained brains and some capital is a nice prospect for countries that have (hopefully) matured and improved in the interim

It's not clear from the article why the USCIS suggestion[2] to apply for a change of status is not a reasonable one.

You can't work, but if you're in the highly skilled visa category, you reasonably should have a buffer of funds to handle this risk (and if not, that's generally your mistake rather than your employer's or the US government).

Last I looked[1], the estimated processing time for my i539 change to a B1/B2 was 23 months (currently 13mo in CA, 19-29mo elsewhere), during which time I'm able to look for work, just not actually perform work as an employee. I didn't accrue unlawful status either. That's a lot longer than 60 days that is being complained about.

If you can afford it, take a break, take some time to recover post-layoff, travel, live cheaply, focus on building things other than your career. The 2020s have been tough. It's worth it to remember that and come back to work refreshed rather than burnt out.

1: https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/

2: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/informati...

Companies that laid off employees in the United States should lose their H1B quotas for 5 years.

If you got rid of workers, you shouldn’t be able to say you have a shortage and need to bring in more workers.

That seems clever at first glance, but I'm not sure it actually makes sense. If they laid off sales and recruiters, but need to hire software engineers, it's not like the sales people were fungible resources who could've just switched into software roles. It's very possible to BOTH have an excess of employees in one type of role, and still be struggling to hire a different (more difficult-to-fill) type of role.

Maybe if they only lose their H1B quota for the specific types of roles they laid off, but that seems like it would be very complicated to enforce.

The social media app Blind, which is probably 50% Indian users now, is touting the “join a consulting company” route to staying in the U.S. i don’t know how viable it is.

> 50% Indian user

Are you sure? According to Similarweb, most traffic comes from Korea.

Might be 50% of users in America is of Indian origin (H1-B Visa).

Korean version is a different app

There's no demographic data to back up that claim.

I've seen a few posts on blind that ask people their background that seem to follow that general percent. Obviously incredibly non-scientific.

Anecdotally, that stat seems about right.

There's a huge gamification of these consulting companies

These layoffs are actually great for clearing some of pool of H1B recipient who, white frankly, shouldn't have been granted visas in the first place. Keep in mind that If I want to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup or

A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop [0].

my only path forward is H1! They'll both be listed as "computer related occupations" and apply for the same visa in the same quota. Does that make any sense to anyone?

Of course, my odds of getting a lottery spot for the former are dramatically lower, since we all know body shops and consulting firms won't hesitate to file 4-5 applications per seat they plan to fill out (so one can hopefully get a spot in the lottery and not get any RFE).

[0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...

Yes, but a lot of these layoffs are happening at the unicorn startups / Googles of the world, and these people generally map more closely to your former case.

So this is just lowering the scale of the pool, but the ratio is probably unchanged - completely agreed on the need for reform.

I wonder if it could be used in the other direction: use a layoff to clear out old, expensive local citizen talent and fill the gaps with cheaper h1b or offshored labor?

H1Bs are time limited (6 years). And converting them to Green Card is VERY expensive.

It's more time-consuming than expensive. If you need labor certification because you don't qualify for EB-1, the entire process currently takes something like 3 years. And that's the ideal case, where nothing goes wrong and your priority date is current.

Well you can get advanced parole and a work permit while waiting your priority date.

you make a point about offshored labor. But idea that H1-B talent comes cheaper is completely wrong.

H1Bs work much longer hours and are willing to do alot of grunt work. They also have a harder time switching jobs. They absolutely drive wages down

As someone who had an H1 for a brief period myself, I think two changes can fix the whole problem:

1) Allow H1 holders to switch jobs to ANY qualifying company any time after 3 months and be legally ok as long as they work at same or higher pay until the visa expires. This will prevent companies abusing visa holders. But now we get companies who sell H1 visas. So to avoid that…

2) Sort job titles (categories) by descending salary (adjusted for location) and pick the top N qualified petitions. No more race to the bottom.

Now it doesn’t matter if candidate is from CERN or fake-IIT. If a company is willing to pay above market rate even if the candidate can leave in 3 months, they are admitting that this job is not easy to fill locally - basically aligned with the spirit of the visa.

>” If a company is willing to pay above market rate even if the candidate can leave in 3 months, they are admitting that this job is not easy to fill locally.”

There’s more to it than ease of finding local talent. Hiring a citizen means you have to provide a whole host of employment benefits and follow more stringent labor laws meant to protect workers.

While it’s true the company has to pay more in salary, they often save money by not having to pay out as much in benefits. The company also gets increased flexibility and doesn’t have to worry as much about the process of ending their employment properly.

I'm a Canadian software developer looking to work in the US in the next few years. If I work on a TN visa and get laid off, do I also have 60 days to find a new job or leave? Is it less of a hassle for a company to sponsor a TN visa compared to an H-1B, improving my chances of finding a new job compared to an H-1B holder?

Also, when applying to US jobs that ask if I need visa assistance, should I say yes or no? Since my understanding is that I apply for the visa at the border, I just need proof of employment.

Yes, TN visa is extremely easy to acquire and one can have multiple TN visas at the same time to work for multiple employers. This is especially relevant to nurses who technically need a visa for each hospital they work at. I am currently on a TN and have had 5 in as many years as I jumped around employers. Each new one requires re-entering the US. One time I flew in from Brazil and got it at Houston when I landed. I have never been denied and happy to answer any questions.

When applying, I would say it depends. For startups, it was mostly a casual conversation where I walked them through the process. For smaller places, I wouldn't say you need sponsorship until you talk with a human because no lawyers need to be involved. For large multinational companies, they probably deal with TN all the time so no problem there.

EDIT: "Extremely easy to acquire" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. One has to have the professional credentials as required by NAFTA and a job offer in hand. I assume you have both of those things before looking to apply for a TN.

It's a temporary worker visa, not an immigrant visa. Same as H-1B and others.

If anyone offered you any guarantee that you will be able to permanently stay in the US with a temporary worker visa, you are being scammed.

For Canadians, the TN is up to 3 years and can be renewed an indefinite amount of times. It's basically as close to permanent without actually being permanent. Plus, it gives you an indefinite amount of time to make connections and even realize if you want to stay before going for a path to permanent residency.

It's classified as a temporary worker visa. That is the intent.

It is for the benefit of your employer, not you.

You need to be sponsored by an employer / you can only stay as long as you have a job.

I never indicated otherwise. I'm just pointing out that, if your employer likes you and keeps writing you TN letters every 3 years, you can renew the visa for 60 years if you wish. That's "permanent" enough for many people.

You forgot to mention that every time you cross the border, you can be reevaluated as to whether or not your TN visa is valid. The CBP can choose to deny your TN visa and you could be stuck out of the US until it is cleared up.

Sure, if you don't meet the standards or if you run into an agent that decides to throw the book at you. I always bring my physical diplomas which are large since they are framed. Usually, most agents accept my scanned copy as the frame is annoying to put on their scanner. Some say my scanned copy is not good enough. More importantly, there is nothing that prevents you from retrying later that day when the agents have changed shifts. I would wait a day and then just explain you were missing a vital piece of documentation which you left at home.

I once crossed the border from Canada with my Green Card, and was accused of not being the person that the GC was issued to. My jaw dropped because I had no way of proving that I was who I was besides all my identification, and that's when I realized how unfettered the power of CBP was. Sometimes they are assholes and bullies for no reason. He went away for a few minutes, and then came back and let me through but I still remember it to this day.

H1-B is dual intent.

Why the tech visa holders are any better than any others, with the same or similar visa?

Time to return some sanity to the hiring processes of the US tech world.

I know it is a bit heartless, but this has a positive side to it.

The current wave of layoffs are coincident with the rise of significantly novel AI algorithms that will create a ton of new opportunities. There are going to be 1000s of AI startups, more than there would have been without these layoffs. If immigration laws force highly skilled developers to return home, then many of those startups will be located outside of the US. This would be good for their home countries, and less so for the US.

A personal tragedy for those who have build up lives here and will see that destroyed in a matter of months, but a net benefit for the rest of the world in the long run. It is things like this that reduce discrepancies between developed and developing nations - whether intentional or not.

Easy to say when it doesn’t effect you. Lots of things would be good for the world that would foist suffering on a small group of people but that’s not how we try to do things.

Well, I guess as a non-US citizen I have no control or influence on US immigration policy. I think it hurts both the US as a whole as well as the individuals involved.

Cross pollination is incredibly important though. I've seen it in my personal experiences. Taking back Silicon Valley and other big company experience and operational knowledge back to their home countries and then applying it there is a massive benefit to their home countries's competitiveness.

And if their planes crash on their way home even better:

- less jet fuel consumed, preventing climate change

- the insurance money goes to underdeveloped countries, lowering income inequality

- the VCs get a chance to reallocate their capital, thus leading a more market dynamics

> And if their planes crash on their way home even better

H1B visas are pretty horrible. It is like servitude in that it is nearly impossible to get a green card. It is a poor system. At least in Canada you can get a permanent resident in 6 to 12 months.

That's too short for a marriage license nevermind a commitment for citizenship. Two or three years use to be the standard and it gives the person enough time to create roots before giving up on the country of birth.

We allow for dual citizenship so it doesn't mean they are giving up on their country of birth.

What in the David Eastman is all this?

Come to Australia please!

It's rough, but it's a personal choice for a TECH WORKER to move to a country with draconic immigration conditions.

If you brought your family over then you should be ready to leave the country at a month's notice. Understand that you're not really wanted in that society, even for a tourist visa you may have to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops depending on your country of origin.

There are other countries with friendlier visa conditions. You may have to learn a new language but you'll probably have a more stable and predictable experience. But if you chose to go to the USA and subject yourself to the H-1B uncertainty, then live with that choice.

FWIW it's even harder to immigrate to Europe than the US

Could you elaborate, please?

Most European countries just have very strict immigration rules. The US is actually on the easier side. That's what I've heard.

I find it hard to believe that the US would be on the easier side. There's no direct path from H-1B to Green card, for example.

But if you pick Belgium or France, you can get citizenship after 5 years of legal residence. Germany has a requirement of 7 years. Sounds like a lot, and it's a real hassle, but at least there's light at the end of the tunnel.

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