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Comment by avidiax | Hacker News Reader

What I would like to see for the H-1B program:

* No more points, education requirements, etc. Application acceptance is sorted by total-comp for a minimum 2 year contract, highest wins. Bar is set at the 90th percentile, no more quotas.

* Once they are in, from day 1 they can leave their contract at any time, and they have 1 year to find any job that has at least 80% of the total comp. New company has no paperwork to file.

* No more country based green card quotas or backlogs. If they've been in the US in good standing for N years, they get the card.

This system would mean that employers actually have to provide great working conditions and compensation to H-1B's, which preserves the working conditions for local workers. It removes the "2nd class" treatment of what are very valuable additions to the country.

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What you're arguing for are more accessible immigrant visas ("green cards").

AFAIK there is nothing currently stopping a US company from hiring a person, sponsoring them for an immigrant visa, and then waiting for that immigrant visa to be issued before the person relocates to the US. The main issue with this approach is that it takes many years for immigrant visas to be issued and companies want people to relocate right away. If an individual could use a current I-140 to get an infinitely-renewable non-immigrant visa I feel like that would resolve most complaints that we see about the H-1B here on HN.

If the H-1B visa was changed like you describe above I think it would leave a gap in available US non-immigrant visas. I think that gap would end up being filled by a new type of non-immigrant visa functionally very similar to the current H-1B. The H-1B visa serves an important purpose[0] which has been wildly distorted by tech companies using them for permanent employees on the pathway to permanent residency.

[0] Its intention was to provide US firms unable to find specialist workers locally with a means to fill vacancies with temporary workers.

I think people outside of tech should be able to get h1-b visas.

Not every industry is paying tech workers wages, and places should still get librarians and nurses even if tech is willing to pay more

If librarians and nurses are really such critical high demand jobs then they should be paying Americans more for them rather than importing them from China and India for pennies. There is zero shortage of either if you are willing to pay more than the equivalent of minimum wage.

I would like to see the H-1B program abolished.

I hate knowing that every H-1B employee I see is filling a job that an American could have had.

Why is it necessarily always better that an American has a job in the US vs a non-American?

Better chance for wages to increase when the worker is not indentured.

This is a good point. I believe H1B as it exists today is abusive.

I would like to see the H-1B program dramatically expanded; because the people I have worked with who are using the program have been, without exception, fantastic additions to the team who brought unique and important ways of thinking with them.

The whole point of work visas is to address situations when there aren't enough qualified domestic workers for the open positions that are available. It's economically favorable to fill a position with a qualified foreign national than it is to just leave it open.

I don't think it's that simple. Open positions for which there "aren't enough workers" are effectively positions that companies don't want to pay market rates for. It's in their interests to always have such positions so they can bring in cheap workers. Labor shortages are mostly bullshit.

It depends on what market you're deciding to operate in, right? Global market vs domestic market. In an era of globalization, it's a huge loss for an economically well-off country to close itself off from the rest of the world. Remember that businesses don't have any obligation to operate in your country if the local labor market simply becomes too expensive. It also means that a business is far more likely to leave critical positions unfilled because an available person with the required skill set literally doesn't exist (or is extremely difficult to find). The only way to find talent is to poach from other companies, but this is a zero-sum game and offers no overall economic benefit to your country.

In principle a well-implemented visa program picks up people with required skills rather than just simply increasing the size of the available labor pool to suppress costs of labor. If the current program doesn't achieve this, then it certainly requires an overhaul. But abolishment (i.e. closing the labor market to domestic candidates only) doesn't do anything to further the economic health of your country.

Not really.

If employers need 1,000 neurosurgeons, but only 800 exist in the US, no amount of pay is going to magically create a new neurosurgeon.

That's not how economics works.

Please explain.

From what i understand it takes more than a decade to create a new neurosurgeon.

No amount of money can create one today.

The premise of a command economy where you top down specify you need N of something is faulty to begin with.

Huh? You're saying a command economy can create a new neurosurgeon instantly?

Ideally. But it’s de facto used to suppress domestic wages. An auction system would fix that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...

If you’ve ever been on the hiring committee at a tech company, you would know this is complete nonsense. We look for qualified candidates for years before we can find them, and immigrants working in tech probably pay more in taxes in a decade than most Americans in their lifetime.

If anything, the H-1B program should be augmented, and employment-based green cards should not be linked to how nice your employer is.

Eh people say the same about farm labor and illegal immigrants.

It makes far more sense to enforce basic employment laws than pretend employers aren't willfully negligent in their hiring practices

This is what an auction system would fix. If you cap the number of visas and make every employer bid on them, then the only visas will be for people making >$500,000/year.

Those people are exactly what any red-blooded American should want immigrating here, lest we alienate them so that they go back to China and start the Jet Propulsion Laboratory there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen

Protectionism, Xenophobia and/or Racism actually costs a LOT economically. We’re much more affluent when we attract and retain the greatest talent in the world rather than block them from working here.

That requires an overhaul of the American education system to focus more on STEM and technical skills. What you're seeing is, however, a continuous regression to lower standards in Math and Science education.

Indeed. It's not clear to me how closing off visa programs while simultaneously divesting in education will do anything strengthen a country's economic position.

How about illegal emigrants getting free medical care, while Americans cannot afford? Everything is relative, I'd rather see more high skilled, law abiding immigrants. It's better for the country in general, and especially these days, when IT is a battleground.

I think you have a very simple idea of immigration as a financial transaction, but haven't put in a lot of thought towards cultural harmony or that when you "import" a person their culture comes with them.

What is the purpose of an H1-B? How does the H1-B holder benefit, how does the company benefit, and how do the citizens in the US benefit? What is the cost to US citizens, the cost to companies, and the cost to the H1-B holder? What are risks of the H1-B program?

How would you compare and contrast the import of serf/slave/unprotected/under-the-table labor, unskilled labor, skilled labor, and capitalist "labor"?

> Application acceptance is sorted by total-comp for a minimum 2 year contract, highest wins.

How might this be gamed?

> No more country based green card quotas or backlogs.

Why do you think this policy is in place? Do you think assimilation is important?

Are there elements of other cultures you do not like? Do you like the caste system? Do you like Gaunxi? Do you like islam? If war were to break out over Taiwan, do you trust Chinese? How do you feel about foreigners owning property? How do you feel about foreigners being a landlord? How do you feel about going to a restaurant in your own country and not seeing any English? How do you feel about going to a restaurant and the server not speaking any English? How would you feel about immigrants not going through public education? How do you feel about groups of co-workers speaking their own language to each-other and generally not being a part of the greater company/community?

I am not asking all these questions out of a sense of xenophobia, nor am I asking them because I think they have an obvious answer. I consider myself a deeply liberal person and I am a little dis-comforted by some of those.

I have Chinese friends (well, friends of fiends) on H1-B's that defend China's imprisonment of Hong Kong protestors, the idea that America Caused those protests, the idea that China should control Taiwan, the idea that Uygher genocide is American propaganda, that even if it isn't, it is not justified to question it because America genocided the Native Americans, think America is an evil colonial empire who caused Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine, and buy property to rent out to other people. As liberal as I am, I really would prefer those people not to be in America.

As a liberal how do you feel about hardcore conservatives? Are there no “out groups” of Americans within your own country who scare the shit out of you? If there are, what is the difference between them and a Chinese or Russian person? Regardless of your intent, it is a fear of the foreign and the effect they may have on your way of living.

> How do you feel about going to a restaurant in your own country and not seeing any English? How do you feel about going to a restaurant and the server not speaking any English?

There was a Ranch Market down the street from where I used to live in Phoenix where they didn’t even pretend they were located in the US — everything, and I mean everything, was in Spanish.

Which I didn’t mind too much as they had pretty good prices and I know enough Spanish to not starve to death. The deli was actually really good.

There was another Ranch Market that specialized in Chinese food. Never ventured into that one because I knew if they had Lucky Cats I’d have a Lucky Cat. Talked to one random guy who’s wife (think he said she was Vietnamese) would go there to buy live fish and other Asian delectables.

There’s certainly some room for improvement along the “cultural assimilation” lines you mentioned - but in historical context, I’m not too worried as the second generation seems thoroughly “Americanized”, for better or for worse.

Canada is the country that needs to be looking at pumping the brakes soon; they’re talking some wild immigration numbers given the size of their native-born population.

I think it’ll be fascinating to see how Canada comes out the other side of the “homogenous to multi-cultural” rapid immigration pipeline that the United States has been (badly) traversing since 1965.

But I’m mostly concerned about the apparent “reverse assimilation” happening throughout IT. I’ve personally witnessed multiple departments clearly adopt de facto racially discriminatory hiring practices that apparently can go beyond race into caste dynamics - I lack the cultural knowledge to determine the truth of the “won’t hire below a certain caste” thing, but have had multiple India-born acquaintances bring it up in unrelated casual conversation.

Edit: fwiw, I happen to agree with several of your Chinese dude’s example opinions - but I get what you’re saying as far as the whole “why are you even here if you feel that way?”

We already have that (or similar) with other visas like O-1 or the EB-1 green card.

> Application acceptance is sorted by total-comp

Trump implemented this but the courts rolled it back because of a technicality. The secretary of the department hadn't yet been confirmed by Congress, or something.

Source? I'd like to read more about that.

Sure, the cite is: Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. v. United States Department of Homeland Security, et al., No. 4:20–cv–07331 (N.D. Cal. March 19, 2021)

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califor...

> Because Mr. Wolf was not lawfully appointed as Acting Secretary at the time the Final Rule was approved, the Court concludes the rule must be set aside

H1-B should be only allowed in circumstances where foreigners are paid the same wage as their American counterparts, and the employer should have to front a sizeable fee to bring them in to disincentivize replacing American workers and incentivize training Americans instead.

It's absurd that every other nation is allowed to prioritize the employment of their own people but the US should just bring foreigners in to do the job for less. H1-B is a total scam as it stands.

H-1Bs actually tend to get paid higher wages than their American counterparts as per this 2017 Glassdoor study: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/

Why are we using self reported data from a company known for deleting unfavorable information instead of it being published by the Department of Labor from official filings that have legal consequences for falsifying?

Folks on H1B/L-1 tend to be paid more

H-1B employees are required to be paid what similar employees in the specific geographic area are paid or at least as much as similar non H1B employees within the same company are paid.

I’m not sure where this idea that H1B employees are underpaid comes from. When you consider the wage requirements, and the fact that a company is required to cover most of the costs of the H1B process, an H1B worker almost certainly costs more to the company than a non H1B worker, with additional risks (such as their visa being declined at any point requiring the company to spend potentially tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to intervene).

The one advantage that H1B workwrs provide companies vs non H1B employees is that they cannot switch jobs easily, because the constant renewals mean they would need to justify the expenses to each new company, and many companies simply do not accept H1Bs because of the costs and complications involved.

The difficulty in moving jobs is also evidence of the fact that companies arent just dying to hire H1Bs for the sweet low wages.

Edit: What’s actually absurd is that the US has the highest wages in the world by far for industries in which H1B employees can work, and people think that this is bringing down their wages. Oh, also the people who do think this have absolutely no idea about how the program works, what costs are involved, how employers actually think about hiring an H1B worker (avoid unless absolutely necessary), and how much H1B workers contribute to the economy.

They also can’t seem to make the obvious connection that if the H1B program didn’t exist, the people doing those jobs wouldn’t stop existing. They would go back to their countries where they will do the same work at a fraction of the salary they were being paid in the US and still enjoy a dramatically higher standard of living. As opposed to being paid more than their colleagues, while paying US taxes and receiving absolutely 0 benefits from the government.

Every H1B employee paid taxes to fund the government handing out free money to Americans over COVID. 0 H1B employees received a penny from that money even as their American colleagues who did the same work, and paid the same taxes, got hundreds of dollars back.

I want to acknowledge that I know many people who have H1B visas because they legitimately could not be replaced by any worker with a US residency. I wish nothing but the best for them and I hope that any visa reform makes it easier for them to stay and work in the US as long as they'd like.

But as the source article touches on, most H1B visas are sponsored "staffing firms", whose business model pretty straightforwardly involves cheating the system. Could Disney World lay off their tech workers, then turn around and sponsor H1Bs at a lower rate? As you correctly identified, no, that's not allowed. But what they can and famously did do in 2015 is:

* Lay off their tech workers.

* Pay Cognizant and HCL, two staffing firms, to provide substitutes at a lower cost.

* Allow Cognizant and HCL to sponsor H1Bs at a lower rate, arguing (perhaps honestly!) that they've tried and failed to recruit American residents.

Given the prevalence of this business model, and how openly contemptuous it is of the intent of the H1B program, it seems fair to wonder how above-board the program is in general. If you ask a lawyer for help running your H1B recruitment program, are they going to walk you through how to avoid hiring H1Bs unless absolutely necessary? Or are they going to help you figure out all the tricks to get more people so you can hit your headcount goals?

Murder is illegal and yet it still happens.

It’s the reason we’re so entrepreneurial. Four out of ten unicorns are started by first gen immigrants originally on the H1B with Indians leading the pack and Israel in second.

It not absurd, they’re the reason we have over half our jobs. Your thinking is too short term and ultimately very destructive.

Agreed. Foreign labour visas should be for hiring the tech-equivalent of Lionel Messi/Serena Williams/Kobe Bryant (pick your sport). 99% of the time it's just used to get someone to write CRUD apps for 60% of what you would need to pay a local hire.

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