60 Days to Find a Job or Leave the Country | Hacker News Reader

60 Days to Find a Job or Leave the Country

restofworld.org

63 pointstaubek117 comments

I sometimes wonder what the "right amount of time" for this would be. Surely 30 days is nowhere near enough. 60 days also feels like too little.

90 days is the typical tourist visa duration; that seems more reasonable as a minimum duration to me.

Does it need to be 180 days? 364? I just don't know, but 60 seems too low.

It should increase with time.

90 days if you are let go during your first year of working in the country.

180 days if you have been working in the country for more than a year.

365 days if you have been working in the country for more than three years.

"It should increase with time."

Why is that?

to avoid hacking

It incentivizes people to invest more. If you know that even after 4 years of time you are still only 60 days away from deportation you likely won't put down as much of an investment in the country.

The longer you've been in a place the more established you'll be there. You'll have built relationships, you might own a home, you might have made large purchases that aren't easy to move like a car... etc.

also, kids in school or have a girlfriend/boyfriend that you may want to marry. you really don't want to rush a marriage just because your visa is about to expire.

The longer you have worked, the move you have proved yourself.

Bayesian inference.

As an immigrant, because you’ve built your life here, because you managed to be a positive contributor to a society for years, because you are clearly aren’t here to abuse american benefits (that you can’t even get).

You shouldn't build your life here on a temporary visa. 4 years should be the maximum allowed stay, and the employer should be obligated to have you train your replacement the entire time. Otherwise, it's just a wage-suppressing system of indentured service.

Why not actually treat them with dignity instead, and give them a legit chance to settle?

Because clearly people who weren’t born here are unworthy of being treated equally. And because “they took our jerbws”

I am in favor of treating H1B holders with dignity, but I think it's at least fair (and likely proper) for any country's government to give priority and preference to its own citizens/permanent residents over the citizens/permanent residents of other countries.

I think that's what the debate ends up being about in a time like this. If there comes a broad tech recession, should the US government prioritize the needs of US citizen/permanent resident tech workers or the needs of H1B tech workers? As much as I believe we must treat everyone with dignity, it seems eminently reasonable for the US government to prioritize the first group over the second group (and even unreasonable to not do that).

What you say holds true. Of course the US nationals have to be prioritized.

But the reality is they already are. Hiring someone on H1B results in lawyer fees and visa fees. Every company is already incentivized to hire domestically.

Which I do agree is 100% fair. However how is extending the grace period beyond 60 days harming anyone?

Per upthread, I am in favor of extending the grace period beyond 60 days.

I'm not disagreeing on the principle. As the sovereign of the land, of course you're going to prioritize yourself. The prioritization you're talking about does not come in as giving an advantage to the domestic worker, it comes in the form of hostile treatment of people who are here on work visas, and has been living here quite a while.

That's not how immigration works, at all, much less for high-skilled immigration. It's such a bad take that falls into the bucket of "not even wrong"...

Or perhaps you are in the xenophobic camp, which is just sad.

Whoa whoa, 4 years is not remotely short term.

Why would anyone want to uproot their life and move here for the mere opportunity to live in the US for 4 years and have to uproot your life again? Are you supposed to be celibate for 4 years? The limits you are suggesting only discourages assimilation or giving a fuck about your life in the US since it’s only temporary.

Also wage-supressing? You are supposed to pay market rate to H1B workers and since they work in the US and not off-shore this isn’t the money saving scheme you think it is.

Besides all the H1B salaries for your company are published in a national database and have to be prominently displayed (aka printed and posted to some board somewhere in your office), so one could argue it does actually help wage transparency.

Lastly, as to your genius point about training your replacement. If you can only be employed by a company for a certain period, you would technically not be an FTE, but a contractor. Most companies have policies barring any contractors from training FTEs (because it creates perverse incentives and opens companies up to discrimination lawsuits).

We're talking about H1B visas, which are non-immigrant visas which should be short-term. The only reason a company can obtain an H1B visa for an employee is to certify they can't fill the role with domestic workers. Yeah, they're never going to fill the role with domestic workers if they don't have to train domestic workers.

The wage equation is simple. More available labor means less wages. Nobody debates this.

Let's not act like people here on H1B are some kind of humanitarian cause. They're the brightest and most educated in the country (according to H1B proponents anyway).

My goal is to lift up impoverished people domestically. The best way to do this is to have more white collar jobs that lower-level workers can move into. If those roles are always filled, there's no need for scholarships or apprenticeships from companies to train the next generation of workers. They get to push the problem on the university system, and then ignore the vast majority of those graduates because they're only hiring 'senior level' positions.

So you want to lift up impoverished people in the US by exploiting immigrant labor?

There are many reasons why companies hire H1B people and if you do as you suggest you remove any incentive for anyone to want to pursue H1B. The effect will only be detrimental to the US economy.

As a highly skilled immigrant I have personally generated 10s if not 100s of millions of dollars in profits for the US corporations. There are already very strong incentives for companies to hire domestically, that already work to filter our the best and brightest and most capable people in the industry. Plus the US has spent $0 training those people.

By the way I am not saying the US is obligated to hire H1B workers as some humanitarian cause, but if the US wants to continue hiring immigrant workers it has to be mutually beneficial.

The 4 year limit is meant to be a process for training a domestic replacement, or otherwise a very short period of time (relatively) for the company to invest in whatever it needs to invest in to be competitive.

The only lawful reason to bring in an H1B is that you cannot find that skill domestically. That's how the program works. Obviously, the program is being exploited by corporations to bring in low-wage workers that are beholden to them.

I encourage you to look at H1B salary stats, you will see that majority are not even remotely low wage. Your argument about “the more skilled workers there are the cheaper the labor” is also backwards, this means we should all be trying really hard to ensure there are no new CS graduates to enter the workforce that will inevitably reduce our earnings.

I’m all here for uplifting people in the US, but what you are advocating for is blatant exploitation. D As an older individual I have trained many younger professionals. I have and continue to be involved in university recruiting and many programs that support minorities in tech. How is that not contributing positively?

If I was only allowed to be in the US for 4 or however few years, why would I give a single fuck about “girls who code”, or anything else that doesn’t maximize my financial gain the short term I am allowed to remain here?

Also I would like to point out to you the difference between “non-immigrant visa” (which most visas fall into this category) that does not guarantee you a path to immigration if you choose to not pursue it, and imposing arbitrary limits on how long an individual can live and work in the country of their choice proven they are able find employment and sustain their life.

If you can't see how hundreds of thousands of extra employees in the labor pool depresses wages, I don't know what to tell you.

> How is that not contributing positively?

You understand that universities are the #1 gate keeper for the impoverished, right? Your company can afford to be highly selective with hiring candidates from universities because immigrants have created a surplus of labor. If there were not immigrants in these high paying jobs, the university pipeline would be inadequate to fulfill hiring goals, and they'd have to invest in either putting more people into universities or providing them with apprenticeships.

Are you claiming that an employee with decades of experience can be replaced with a new grad willy-nilly? That's a false equivalency.

A lot of things you seem to believe are incredibly backwards. Please educate yourself, because you do come off as xenophobic.

Good place to start: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa...

Looks like there's already a 6 year max that is obviously being abused.

> Please educate yourself, because you do come off as xenophobic.

I do not care about foreign workers, only domestic workers. I don't think immigration should be tied to employment for any reason. It has nothing to do with cultures, or races, or nationalities, it has to do with wages. There are too many poor people in the US that are not able to move up economically for a variety of reasons, one of which is a large influx of white collar labor.

> Looks like there's already a 6 year max that is obviously being abused.

How is it being abused? E.g. it is perfectly legal to apply for a green card after your H1B and there are quotas for immigrants from each country. Alternatively, after living in a country for 5+ years someone may marry a US citizen. Should it be banned? Are we to impose a ban on dating anyone who is not a US national?

> I don't think immigration should be tied to employment for any reason.

So what should immigration be tied to then? What are other reasons for someone to be in the US for extended period of time.

> I do not care about foreign workers, only domestic workers.

Replace "workers" with "people" and here you have the reason why you are a bit xenophobic.

> There are too many poor people in the US that are not able to move up economically for a variety of reasons, one of which is a large influx of white collar labor.

There is literally no evidence to support the claim that white collar skilled immigrant workers do anything but create MORE job opportunities in the United States.

>I encourage you to look at H1B salary stats, you will see that majority are not even remotely low wage.

Are they not atleast lower wage when compared to domestic workers with similar qualifications?

I’m sure someone somewhere compiled the stats per region or per company.

Average h1b SWE salary is $109K, average SWE salary in the US is $108K

Of course average does not particularly prove one thing or the other. You can however look up your employer and compare the compensation to your own https://h1bdata.info/topjobs.php

Not sure how feasible it would be, but the limit should be a runtime calculation depending on various factors (e.g. Median time it's taking to find a job nowadays).

A static time limit, I feel is wrong for somethimg that is so fluctuating. Especially in current climate.

Extending the duration based on a poor job market would certainly be more accommodating to the people on H1-B visas who are between work, but it works against the stated purpose of the program.

The H1-B program is designed* to provide labor force supplementation when no citizens/permanent residents can be found to fill a given position.

In a prolonged recession, I'd expect the median time to find a job to go up substantially, but also for the argument that "we can't find any permanent residents to fill this position" to be substantially weakened.

* - at least ostensibly.

I mean yes, but there should be some incentive to keep the H1B workers that are already in the country, and have been in american workforce for a few years.

Considering barriers to actually interviewing and assessing someone who is abroad, and how long it takes for someone to actually get a brand-new H1B and move to the US, 60 days just does not seem like incentive enough.

Besides what is the downside of allowing people to remain longer? They don’t have access to majority of benefits citizens get, yet they pay same (but also due to highly skilled job nature much higher taxes)?

It should be extremely relaxed and extend if there is a little bit of evidence that work is being pursued. It's expensive to live without working, people aren't going to do it on a lark.

If even the opportunity for sporadic work is there, this may be a better option than going to your home country where either pay is much lower, or the type of work isn't available. These rules are made to avoid obtaining a reserve of foreigners who do not work, even if they're capable.

I'm not arguing whether this is good or bad, but that seems to be the intent.

Yeah, I'm not interested in picking at the details of how the terrible program is designed, I'm making an assertion about what I think makes sense.

90 days seems more reasonable.

When it's higher, this deliberately sets a higher bar for foreigners.

None of the 2 political parties want to fix it. They don't want influx of well educated immigrants who can make informed voting decisions

It's six months in Ireland.

Germany's visa for job search for professionals gives you up to 6 months to find a job. A foreigner who has completed an academic degree in Germany can get up to 18 months afterwards and a foreign researcher who has finished her or his research up to 9 months. For a vocational qualifications it is up to 12 months.[1]

These time limits are maxima, but are usually granted for people already living in Germany if their livelihood is secured and no other important aspects speak against it, such as a criminal record.

There is no time limit if a foreigner has an open-ended residence permit, which is possible after 5 years living in Germany (additional requirements apply).[2]

[1] § 20 AufenthG, see: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/aufenthg_2004/__20.html (in German)

[2] For mor infos see: https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/MigrationAufenthalt/Zuwanderer...

Note as a professional you can get a PR after as little as 21 months

The US is super weird.

It's the only place I know of that doesn't have a clear, fixed-time based, permanent residency program, without quotas.

As an example, in all European countries that I know of, permanent residency works like this:

- you need to fulfill some prerequisites (usually a civics course/test, a language course/test, no criminal record, be employed or in education)

- then you need to be in the country for N years

- then you need to apply and you generally get the result in a few months, maximum

That's it. For the average person the "hard" requirements are actually: learn the local language up to the required level, spend N years.

It doesn't matter where you're from.

Are there any Asian countries besides Japan that give out permanent residency?

Singapore gives them out like candy to high earners.

Thailand comes to mind

Korea I think.

It's not "a few months" everywhere. E.g.in Ireland current processing time is about 19-24 months since the moment you've sent your application.

True, but once you fulfill all the requirements, it's just about slow bureaucracy, the same it is for everything.

It isn't what could be described as malevolence, see those US green card policies that make the processing time for some cases take decades.

In theory, you are possibly right, but in practice, that is not always the case.

For instance, in France, currently some departments have a fixed number of interview slots per month, meaning people either have to hack their way into finding an available slot (e.g. using scripts to refresh the website in the middle of the night and hope to wake up when a slot becomes available; good luck if you don't know how to hack the system yourself), or they have to pay scalpers to get an appointment.

Then, you get assigned a pre-interview slot, which can take as long as a year of waiting. If you are lucky and everything works out, in the pre-interview, you will get assigned an actual interview slot. Which will be communicated by letter. And which can take yet another year of waiting.

Then, when the actual interview takes place, they give you no definitive answer for almost a year. You only know if it worked out at the end of the process. Overall, the "be in the country for N years" can thus become "be in the country for N+3 years, while not being sure that the next step will actually work or you will be sent back to the beginning"; also, hope that no politicians change the system in the meantime, since all of this is unspecified, so that they can change the rules at any moment and there's no one to complain to.

Of course, your mileage may vary; if you are rich enough to live in Paris, you will probably get better treatment.

So, the US is definitely bad, but the real situation in some Europeans countries is not as good as it looks like.

Why should someone be penalized for something they have no control over?

What is the differences between a person being of specific race or gender and a person born in a specific country? All of them are not a choice they made. If there is no safety reasons, i.e coming from a hostile country, why should a person born in India get treated completely different from someone born in the US? That is just racial discrimination to me.

I read it somewhere and still think it is true: if a native can't compete with a foreigner on their home soil, it just means the native lacks qualifications.

Because it is not a penalty despite it looks like one. They got a privilege they normally do not have (the visa) which has an expiration date.

Do not get me wrong, this is hard for every single person and sucks in a general economic turndown where the issuing country is no longer in need of foreign specialists.

The "privilege" to work should not be a privilege.

And there is absolutely a penalty. Every step of hiring is more difficult for a foreigner than a native, down to the interview step. The need for a sponsorship is a barrier for hiring since that is an extra cost. Approving and reporting a foreigner to the IRS is more involved. Requesting an SSN and doing background check on someone from another country is more expensive. Maintaining a foreign hire is risky due to H1B lottery, etc. And yet the companies are legally required to pay these H1Bs the same salary on top of all the extra costs. Those are definitely penalties for hiring a foreigners imposed so that a native hire is more desirable.

You can argue those are not meant to be punitive policies, but in effect they are acting as deterrents. And yet everyone is still hiring H1Bs. How many Indian and Chinese do you work with? That should say just how much the US economy depend on these high skill immigrants. Yet they get treated like disposable slaves.

>why should a person born in India get treated completely different from someone born in the US? That is just racial discrimination to me

That would be nationalism or xenophobia, not racism.

Generally speaking it's an organizational issue, determining who can do what on a mass scale.

No country other than your country of origin owes you a right to stay.

It's not inhumane or something to have visa only for work and not for indefinite residency. If the work visa was defacto a permanent residency visa, no one would give it and no one would get it.

And your country owes you why?

That's the general social contract that most people have as their mental model: "If I pay my taxes and do my part, my children will get the standard benefits of citizenship".

Honestly, I'm not sure what use you see from asking this question.

It's part of the socratic method.

It's reasonable to ask why your country of birth owes you anything. Keep in mind not every country gives you citizenship from birth, so it raises the question of whether what you're saying really is correct.

I would suggest if someone has worked somewhere for a decent amount of time they should not be disposed of so easily as the person in the article.

> It's part of the socratic method.

But that question wasn't. It was bad faith "gotcha!" question.

I don't think so. The question is short but it illuminates an angle most people wouldn't think of. Or when they think of it, there's no satisfactory answer immediately apparent.

There's why does any country owe you, and why does your country of origin in particular owe you.

I understand your overall point and agree with it, but let me state that "paying my taxes" is such an American, money-centered worldview.

Your country owes you citizenship even if you don't pay your taxes. It may punish you in other ways, but not by taking away citizenship.

Because if it is attacked, you have to defend it. This obligation to your country gives you the right to stay in it.

Corollaries:

- People who can't "defend the country" don't get these rights: women, children, old people, people with religious exemptions, people with an unreasonable fear of being violently killed.

- People who promise to come and defend will get these rights, regardless of where they were born? Do they just make a solemn oath or do they have to do boot camp and maintain their skills?

I hope you can see this is not where your rights come from.

You don't lose citizenship if you refuse to defend your country. Depending on the country, you may be jailed, fined or otherwise punished, but most countries won't take your citizenship away from you if you refuse to fight.

"And your country owes you why?"

Because its a UN convention.

https://www.unhcr.org/un-conventions-on-statelessness.html

You could argue that even your country doesn't owe you anything merely for existing. You have responsibilities, not just rights.

But for the purpose of this discussion, I'm assuming a person already has a country they belong to which does give them the right to stay.

No other country owes you the right to stay. Singapore does not owe me the right to be there, let alone stay there. Each country is free to decide the rules for who it allows in and how long it allows them to stay and under what conditions.

It's not a "human right".

So where do stateless people such as myself belong (not stateless now, but previously)? There's corner cases in every rule, but there can be a lot of cases where people slip through the cracks.

That's another discussion though. The topic at hand is someone who has a country and had an opportunity to work in another country is complaining that they have to go back to their home country because the work visa is not a permanent residence visa.

One thing that I would like to push back on the idea that “It is not a ‘human right’”.

A “human right” is a social term defined by the demands of the people living in that time collectively. There is no list we can check off, it is what people demand and can fight for.

By asserting the right they very well could be /creating/ it.

With your definition of „human rights“ we can just abolish the term altogether.

The beauty of human rights was that it was supposed to be a well-defined set of core things. Which can't be granted, they just shouldn't be stamped on. But now „human rights“ is becoming a very polarised topic with many bits where person A is forced to do provide something to person B because it's „human rights“. Does person A has a „human right“ to refuse to provide his service?

I think you are making a distinction between positive rights and negative rights; not human rights.

If it was supposed to be a a well-defined set of core things, where are you drawing that set from?

IMO human rights is a subset of negative rights.

Can it be a non-questionable human right to force others to provide you something?

Granting people that others will provide them something is fine. But it must be possible to discuss such topics. Human rights, IMO, shall be a very pure set of things that are not up to discussion, even with rather fringe views. Regardless of political quadrant. Of course, some freaks will always question anything. But wide wide majority (think 95% if not 98%) shall sign off on that.

Hopefully we can change that in the future - people have been displaced over the centuries (and worse) but what you're saying is such a 20th century phenomenon that I'd like to see us move forward to better structures.

Hopefully that does not change in the future. If anyone could just go anywhere that would be a terrible dystopian future.

Why?

There're many small countries where natives could be easily outnumbered by newcomers.

Right fuck those people who want to live outside of the place they were born in. /s

No, let people in other places live as they're used to and don't get overrun and outpriced of their home.

Your outrage is misplaced. I am an immigrant tech worker, I too can't afford shit in San Francisco. I do not think immigrants are the problem here

SF is a problem is we'd consider any non-San Franciscans as immigrants. And, given size of US, it would be correct. I'm really sorry for the old San Franciscans of the old era. It sucks when your city becomes a magnet of big money.

Well, the opposite, as in your city falling in despair sure sucks more.

People wanting to live in San Francisco aren’t the problem, housing red tape and nimbys are

How is it a 20th century phenomenon? In the past we had barely no movement in comparison with today and at least here you actually had to apply for permission to move away.

The whole welfare system is based on the requirement that it only applies to a selected few and adults today support the elderly so they can retire under the assumption that children will pay the adults for their retirement. If you open up the welfare system for 7 billion people that haven't contributed, it will all collapse.

Btw people on work visas have no access to welfare, despite paying taxes that fund the welfare just the same.

Permanent residents have some access to welfare, but there isn’t a straightforward path from work visa to green card.

Who is suggesting US welfare has to support 7 billion people?

> Who is suggesting US welfare has to support 7 billion people?

That's the result from advocating free movement or no borders considering stats such as 52% of Africa's youth wanting to relocate to Europe or US. Unless you dismantle the welfare state. But it's possible that I misunderstood what the person meant with the 20th century comment.

No one is advocating for no borders here. Most people are saying that the time given to h1b visa holders to find a new job is too short.

Opening US borders for a free-for-all would be of course a disaster. But even that is a bit of a stretch to say that entire world’s population would move to the US.

> In the past we had barely no movement in comparison with today

People used to be highly mobile (and continue to be). The Americas were settled by millions of Europeans and Africans before the United States even became a country. South Asians were moved to Africa during the colonial era en masse. Vikings settled all over Europe and even Istanbul. The Huns, Goths, Romans, were all on the move.

If humans were merely fully replaceable units in the machinery that is a nation (and it seems that this is the goal of many of the elite), then that would make sense. But many humans actually form communities and welcome new residents in. Some of these newcomers become part of the community and even create new members.

Why even your country of origin? Okay, they can't just pick another country and shove people there, that's not fair and no country would accept that, but they could maybe dump unwanted people in the ocean. Just a thought.

Because humans are cooperative creatures, and if a society can't establish cooperation between its members, chaos will ensue.

Except for the fact that except for Indians, everyone else can get a green card after a few years on a H1-B.

> It's not inhumane or something to have visa only for work and not for indefinite residency.

It is in fact inhumane. It is also "or something" if you mean "unethical" by that.

The purpose of the arrangement is to obtain easy to exploit workforce to undercut the one locally available. The fact that it is precarious and exploitative is not an accident, but the goal.

By your characterization of the problem, the solution would seem to be to abolish work visas all together, and not allow any foriegners to stay for mere work.

What if there is a country which has had a strong influence over turning your country of origin into a place that is very difficult to live in?

Most countries have a path to permanent residency after 5 years of gainful employment in the said country. In the us it is a quota based on your nationality or a lottery system. Why should it matter how many other people from X country applied for a GC that year if I worked in the US for 10 years and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes?

... in the USA

Is missing from the title imo. Since it said "rest of the world" .org, presumably a joke regarding USA-centricity, I was expecting it was about something other than the USA. Joke's on me!

While I understand this would be good publicity for the H1B visa and its notice/grace period. I think if people were more aware (open to see another perspective) that the biggest problem, especially for those who are Indian and Chinese (the top two H1B recipients), is the abuse of sub-contractor companies being set up and using these visa recipients which create the backlogs.

Another thing, I've noticed everyone on an H1B already knows the responsibilities of holding this temporary visa. This type of article is nothing but complaining without providing a solution. Yes it sucks, but naivety to your responsibilities as a visa holder and to something that can happen to you is immature. And also risks putting other immigrants and visa holders in a bad light.

I've seen more and more of these types of writing regarding the H1B, visas, and the immigration system in light of the layoffs but I feel they are doing more for negativity than any positivity at all. If this could assist in anyway in moving towards seeing what the actual problem is in the system then ok but it didn't read at all like that tbh.

For anyone curious about the top H1B recipients (FY 2019) - https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b...

Wouldn't the actual solution be removing country caps (before bringing up diversity remember that country caps are on your country of birth, not naturalization so tell me how country of birth is not a skin color filter?) Or making this a point based scheme or making this region+comp based instead of a universal category all over? Also can the govt do anything to catch and filter the sub contractor companies or is it allowing it as it is a great revenue source?

No, I think country caps help in filtering. If removed it would open a pandora's box like experience for anyone in the process and those processing the applicants. Systemizing immigration into a manageable process and system is a hard task. Too many layers. I think modifying the country caps right now would be of benefit rather than stricly removing them. Then a refresh of the filtering process, processing system overhaul, and other parts would need working. But I don't think country caps are of any priority tbh.

The government can do something to catch and filter the companies but I think they are partly playing a role in their existence and continued business. When you talk about great revenue sources, do you mean for the gov? If so, probably both directly and indirectly. Probably part diplomacy sprinkled in

Again not sure if you meant country cap by birth or naturalization? I am not an Indian citizen and yet get discriminated like one despite my citizenship (not that anyone should be). Put another way my Australian born brethren get treated better than I do. I am not sure how you think that is fair or inclusive?

For anyone in this predicament, the place I see the most hiring for software developers is large non-tech companies like Walmart. They have 1379 job openings with “software” in the title. Many are in CA, WA or TX, and hundreds were posted in the past few weeks.

https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=r...

As someone who worked in US over 20 yrs ago on H1B... It was a great adventure in a great country with great people. However, the temporary nature of the visa, with having to leave swiftly if you lose your job, combined with being sponsored and therefore beholden to one's employer, really restricts your options and can give a feeling of limbo. It can affect friendships and everything, the feeling that ultimately you're likely to have to leave. Of course, in theory you can go for a green card. In practice I heard tons of horror stories of people sponsored for green card for years, and pressure to work weekends etc, and then laid off when they nearly got it. When I quit the last job I did in US, HR offered to sponsor a green card and acted like I was nuts and turning down a great opportunity when I said "Thanks but no thanks". My team lead totally understood though. Even if that company can be 100% trusted that they aren't just trying to get me to stick around a year or two, who knows the future. If they made less money and had to do layoffs, you're back to square one with the green card. I guess to a lot of Indians and Chinese, USA is sufficiently better than back home in certain ways, they feel its worth sticking it out and trying to get a green card. But my gosh, the stress, pressure, uncertainty, possible wasted years, inability to fully put down roots. Nowadays I'm surprised most Indians and Chinese don't just go for Canada or Europe - seems a lot better systems. And the daft thing about all this... if these H1B workers were given more permanent status sooner, they'd contribute to US economy by buying houses, furthering their career, perhaps starting companies and hiring people. Sure some people ultimately do that starting out from H1B, but it really is difficult. But it was a great experience working in USA and I'm thankful for the privilege. :)

> It was also used by American tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, to hire top talent.

Do these^ companies hire foreigners via H1B?

I don't know if this is true, but I've heard — because of the lottery/uncertainty involved — that these companies instead park foreigners who they want to hire in their offices in other countries (such as Canada/Europe) for a while and then bring them in via L1 visa.

Don't know if this is true or common though.

Definitely true, I had a few coworkers who spent a year in Germany as a pit stop to the US.

Definitely true. The Vancouver offices exist basically for that. But then, a lot of people give up on coming to the US and stay in Canada permanently.

You can change jobs while on H-1B (did it several times myself). There's certainly no lack of H-1B employees at these companies, but I don't know how many are hired directly from abroad.

1- Was the transfer a complicated process? 2- Unless you're extremely qualified, did the idea of a transfer discourage many potential employers during your job search(es)?

All this proves how broken the US education is.

I have worked with many Indian programmers over the years. I only ran into a very small amount who were not brilliant, but were average. The rest where brilliant, and a few I learned some cool tricks from. For young Americans, most were good but none approached the level of smarts most of the Indians I worked with.

The US should send observers over to India and study their education system :)

The secret is: you see Indians in the US after the huge gruesome filter

For real, as a person who had to sift through entry-level candidates for menial off-shore positions on occasion, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys holds true in pretty much any country

The Indian education system is spectacularly bad. Indian programmers do well despite the education system, not because of it.

You are seeing the best of the best who come over here and or have families with money to support it.

1. start with 1 billion people

2. of the smartest and most motivated people, consider those who are interested in moving to the US

3. allow a tiny percentage of these to do so

This is going to result in you encountering near-uniform brilliant people out of the starting population of 1 billion

This is like going to the bio tech department of a top university in the US and being so impressed with the people there that you conclude that all Americans are amazing at bio tech.

This message itself should be in the curriculum to teach people about selection bias.

Story time. I graduated into the recession (2009) and got a grueling EE job on my J-1, after about a year and some change I could not take it anymore. Hundreds of applications and many months later “you are pretty good but we aren’t going to bother with sponsoring your visa” was basically all I got.

I was facing the reality of having to go back to “my country”, but I had no surviving family, no money and no support system. I didn’t really have anywhere to go back to. It was scary. Ultimately I ended up having to get married to remain in the country where all my personal belongings were.

So I do agree, 60 days is not enough time, it should depend on how long you have been in the country.

Second time I felt that way was 2016 when trump became president, my coworker, canadian national of iranian background, also a GC holder was denied entry back to the US after he went to a conference in Canada, because Trump. It was mortifying, that someone could arbitrarily decide you are just not allowed to come back to the place you’ve been living in for years.

Folks know this can happen when they sign up for H1B visa.

It isn't automatically a path to a green card.

"Folks know this" is not an excuse for ANY harmful behavior.

These people clinging desperately to the US and trying every trick in the book to not go back to their native countries is exactly why the country they left is in shambles.

It's a self-fulfulling prophecy of the country not improving because the people who could improve it leave (and not for humanitarian reasons). They may not realize it, but they are actively contributing to the reasons that pushed them to move.

I know that it's hard to hear, but if you're not good enough as a programmer for the most wealthy and cut-throat market in the world, you have at least gained enough experience to be a good senior engineer or manager or even founder back home.

That's the 2nd reason why I don't consider leaving Brazil. Living in Brazil is a pain, but it's mine :D.

PS: the 1st reason is family.

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