90% of laid-off H1-B visa holders were able to find new work | Hacker News Reader

90% of laid-off H1-B visa holders were able to find new work

fortune.com

84 pointsrustoo138 comments

Fantastic. Now let’s fast track them to a green card and then citizenship. As someone born and raised in America, I appreciate immigrants (i.e. human beings) work ethic, innovation, and their continued contribution to keeping America at the technological and economic forefront.

It's always struck me as absurd that the H1B visa exists at all.

I mean, if an individual is such a valuable contributor to the economy, why would you want to bring them in as indentured laborers, let them accumulate even more value, and then send them away to create startups and value in their home country?

Just bring em in, say welcome, stay as long as you can, settle down if possible, have children here.

Better to bring in talent permanently rather than temporarily.

Of course, I'm not American so I might be missing something mething here...

Inertia.

Reforming H1B requires congressional intervention, and as such it's extremely difficult because of partisan bickering.

Also, a number of pressure groups on the Dems (eg. The EPI, AFL-CIO, and sometimes the SEIU) and the Republican (eg. NumbersUSA, ProjectUSA) sides are opposed to immigration.

Agreed, It's also worth remembering the recipients of work visas can't vote either, nor can green card holders, so not a constituency that rewards a political party at the ballot box for policy change, which also likely contributes to the inertia.

The earliest (generally speaking) an H1B holder could likely become a voter is often 10 years in the best cases, and decades in the worst. GC quota queue for countries like India is measured in decades, and you need a GC for something like 5 years before you can apply for citizenship and finally get a vote.

> recipients of work visas can't vote either, nor can green card holders

Exactly this - I worked on the Hill during the time period when immigration was the hot buzzword and this was a persistent undercurrent in all the convos going on back then. The RoI was questionable for a number of Congressional members, so we ended up in this weird equilibrium.

> The earliest an H1B holder could likely become a voter is 10 years in the best cases.

Not really, the earliest you can become a citizen is (1) get your H-1B and arrive in the US (2) get a green card, roughly 1.5-2 years if you're going employment route (3) wait 5 years for citizenship - 3 if you marry someone.

The fastest by the employment route is 6.5 years-ish, the fastest by marriage is probably 4.

Its generally approximately a decade in my experience, and your advice is not applicable to Indian citizens (of which there are many, many waiting in the quota line). Your fast example is possible but not the norm outside of marriage.

The point I was responding to is "the earliest an H1B holder could likely become a voter" - which I agree, the average is probably 10 years, but the earliest is much shorter if you and your employer are motivated. And of course, the shortest time it takes definitely doesn't apply to Indians. Even during COVID and having two RFEs (and not being super diligent at a few points) the GC process took me 3 years. That puts me on the 8 year clock should I pursue citizenship.

Hence my use of the word "likely" - it was never stated as fact. Your own personal example is 80 percent of the way there!

And besides voting and being able to leave the country for more than six months, there are no advantages to citizenship. A lot of people just stop at their green cards, especially if their origin country doesn’t support dual citizenship.

His example is true for Singaporean nationals and some other countries as well, but big picture Indian+Chinese+Mexican+Filipino born (H1B bucket is based on place of birth not citizenship, so I've had Indian citizen friends born in Singapore who got green cards in 2 years after their F1) people are screwed.

> I mean, if an individual is such a valuable contributor to the economy, why would you want to bring them in as indentured laborers, let them accumulate even more value, and then send them away to create startups and value in their home country?

Generally H-1B's can begin the green card process the moment they set foot in the US and it takes about 1.5-2 years (which is about 1y6m too long). The issue is not with the H-1B per se (quotas aside). The issue is that the green card process is too onerous and is subdivided by country of origin so some have to wait much longer than others.

Timeline:

1. Prepare PERM: 6 months.

2. File for DOL certification and get an approved ETA-9089: 120 days.

3. File for I-140 and I-485 concurrently assuming a current priority date with premium processing: 14 days for an approved I-140 and 6-12 months for an approved I-485 assuming no request for evidence. During this time you'll need to go in for biometrics appointment.

I hear some nationals have to wait for 20 years or more. which countries are those? any info around that?

Yeah, it's in the Adjustment of Status Visa Bulletin. [1]

Go down to Employment Based and look at the priority dates (the priority date for employment based petitions is generally when you file for PERM with the Department of Labor, but there's some complexity here - although that should give you a good idea).

1st Preference (EB1) - extraordinary abilities, etc - is current for everyone except India and China, who are backed up to February 2022 filings.

2nd Preference (EB2) - masters degree or bachelors + 5 years work experience + a job that requires 5 years work experience - is backed up to January 2011 filings for India.

3rd Preference (EB3) - bachelors degree - is backed up to June 2012 filings for India, November 2018 filings for China but is current for anyone else who wants one.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-pr...

How can EB2 be more backed up than EB3 for India? Isn't EB2 more qualified?

There is indeed a mechanism by which you can “downgrade” from EB2 to EB3, but I think there’s lots of complexity and inefficiencies in the system which keep the dates apart.

I think taking an average 1.5-2 years here is just bad statistics to under-estimate the real-world scenario. It is a heavly skewed where India and China have way extended wait time vs other countries (practically no wait time). The greencard process is provision by country and hence average = bad statistics

> The issue is that the green card process is too onerous and is subdivided by country of origin so some have to wait much longer than others.

I wasn't giving an average, I was giving current processing times for the various steps assuming a current priority date and I called out the specific criticism you levied.

Technically the process can be started before a candidate is even in the US or finished entirely before they arrive.

As someone going through the process right now, PERM is taking on average 12 months and the PWD has taken 6 months.

A request for evidence on PERM will extend that to 18 months on average and I-1485 is closer to 12 months but can be 18-24 months even if you are not from India/China.

Abolishing the country cap for Green Cards is something that should be done in tandem with either increasing the number of Employment Based Greencards or recapturing those that have been abandoned. Otherwise you just make the backlog everyone country's problem.

There are some steps they could take to make things easier like automatically sending EAP and AP when a I-140 is approved. It's ridiculous that these documents take so long to be issued.

Really though the United States should move to a points based system for Employment Immigration. If you look at EB3 it's a low bar compared to Canada/Australia. A points based system that is fast tracked like Canada's would be preferred to convoluted mess we have today.

Because the original intent of the H-1B was to facilitate highly specialized temporary workers doing highly specialized jobs that literally nobody in the US would be capable of. For example, suppose an American oil company wants to use an exotic drilling technique that has only ever been used in Norwegian oil fields, and thus only a few Norwegian petroleum engineers have any expertise in. As originally conceived, the H-1B would have allowed them to come to the US for a few years, set up the oil field, and then head back home.

Unfortunately, it has since been perverted into a mechanism for skilled (but nonspecialized) workers to be indentured, often with substandard wages.

This is literally false? Ever since the H-1B has been in law the requirement is that the person has a degree and is working in a speciality occupation related to that degree. The INA imposes no conditions like “occupations for which there are no US workers”.

I'm strictly referring to the intent of the H-1B program, not the actual letter of the law. The Department of Labor's website makes this intent explicitly clear:

> The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States. [0]

You are mostly correct that the actual Immigration Act has almost no legal teeth to enforce this. The only explicit provision in the law is that H-1B dependent companies (≥15% of the workforce is H-1B) must "take good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the job for which the H-1Bs are sought." [1] In practice, this almost never applies, but it is nonetheless token lip service towards the ostensible intent of the H-1B program as strictly a specialized visa program, which is the pretense under which it was passed in 1990.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/655.739

To me this seems to be an upside down view of US immigration law (and US law in general). The INA is the supreme immigration law of the land. DOL regulations and documents are downstream and subordinate to the INA. The true “intent” of the H1B program is whatever is in the INA.

The employer has to prove that they have tried and failed to hire a US worker qualified and willing to do the job for the prevailing wage. The complication is that some people think the existence of the H1B affects the prevailing wage, and the system is therefore skewed.

> The employer has to prove that they have tried and failed to hire a US worker qualified and willing to do the job for the prevailing wage.

No they don’t. You’re probably thinking about the requirements for employment based green cards, which do require a labor market test. The H1B does not.

Yes they do, H1B employer has to advertise the H1B job

Companies list the H1B eligible position and salary internally and externally specifically for compliance

No, they don’t have to advertise the position. They have to disclose that they are hiring H1B workers. It’s a huge difference. In particular, there is no mechanism by which the disclosure can lead to a US worker applying for the job and blocking the H1B hire.

For H1B there’s simply no labor market test.

Right, there’s a whole host of American workers that can do the H1B jobs that are lying around doing nothing, that’s why 90% of them got re-employed and software development salaries are among the highest in the country…

The only entity in the US that wanted and continues to lobby for H1B to continue is industry and their sole reason for doing so is keeping their salary expenses as low as possible. In the software industry it began with the fake premise that there was a shortage of qualified labor. Without a loophole like H1B, when a labor shortage occurs, you have to raise wages to attract people to the profession. With H1B, average wages (not FAANG) have been allowed to stagnate because the visa workers come from countries with a lower cost of living.

I'm all for immigration, but not sure it's humane to tie it to a profession - if someone is allowed to become a citizen because of their profession, are they not allowed to give it up and do something else in the future?

>>> The only entity in the US that wanted and continues to lobby for H1B to continue is industry and their sole reason for doing so is keeping their salary expenses as low as possible. In the software industry it began with the fake premise that there was a shortage of qualified labor. Without a loophole like H1B, when a labor shortage occurs, you have to raise wages to attract people to the profession. With H1B, average wages (not FAANG) have been allowed to stagnate because the visa workers come from countries with a lower cost of living. I'm all for immigration, but not sure it's humane to tie it to a profession - if someone is allowed to become a citizen because of their profession, are they not allowed to give it up and do something else in the future?

Some quick googling indicates there are around 65K H1Bs issued every year, and around 4.4 million software developers. So even assuming that most of those H1Bs go to software developers (they certainly don't all go there) it's still hard to imagine this having a serious detrimental effect on salaries, although I agree it's probably an incentive for the few companies that actually get H1B workers.

BTW, to answer your second question, yes if you become a US citizen you can generally abandon the career that led to your getting whatever visa you had before. In fact you can do that long before you become a citizen. You can do it once you have a green card, which in most of these cases is a minimum of 5 years before they become a citizen.

For most H1Bs it's going to be something like 3-6 years on the H1B during which time you're basically "indentured", followed by 5-6 years on a greencard, during which time you can do whatever you like for a living as long as you don't do anything that suggests your H1B sponsor was lying, followed citizenship.

> Some quick googling indicates there are around 65K H1Bs issued every year, and around 4.4 million software developers.

Well both of those numbers are wrong.

What are the correct numbers?

h1b is 85k + 20k usa stem degree = 105k . 4.4 mil number is from 2016.

Thanks!

One is a per year number and another is a total? Although you can only be on an h1B for six years, so theoretically there are only a max of 390k or so H1Bs at anytime.

> Although you can only be on an h1B for six years,

you can be on h1b for infinite amount of time. most h1b apply for adjustment of status for residency which lets them renew it indefinitely.

> Individuals who deplete this 6-year limit are not eligible for another 6 years until they have resided and been physically present outside the United States for one year, at which time their eligibility for a new 6-year period of H-1B status "restarts." Click here for more information.

https://isss.temple.edu/faculty-staff-and-researchers/intern....

> most h1b apply for adjustment of status for residency

maybe you missed this part?

https://www.uscis.gov/i-140

That's to become a permanent resident, not renew a H1B. You cannot renew a H1B indefinitely.

> You cannot renew a H1B indefinitely.

You can once uscis approves you i140, you can file h1b under cap exception. You can continue doing this as long as your 140 is pending with uscis, there is no upper limit.

At that point, you are just waiting for your green card.

So you are saying your i140 can be pending indefinitely?

yes because it depends of quota availability.

Thanks. On the contrary, we need to blame the companies not the people

Would you say the same for migrant workers? If so how long should they work cheap before citizenship?

H1Bs are pretty much guaranteed green cards after 6 years. Unfortunately, there are green card quotas for a few countries that could delay that, but it’s not a question of if but when if you make it to 6.

I'm really interested to know what there methodology here was. The article just states their finding without so much as a reference to how it is know.

Is this from surveying people? Derived from government numbers?

Frankly I don't have any confidence in this number at all.

This article is just an ad for Revelio Labs. I don’t trust the conclusion. Very little info on methodology

H-1B data is available for public view.

I think the whole reason articles like this are common is that one can easily calculate these numbers from visa statistics, i.e. number of people who didn't get a job within the grace period. Naturally these kinds of statistics can be a bit off, for example someone might transition to another type of visa instead of seeking work.

Not surprised. While yes the H-1B system is abused to a great degree, in general people that are brought over on the visa (especially those working for FAANG-equivalents) are incredibly talented.

And as the article points out, another reason for it is that they have to immediately find new work to stay in the country, as opposed to others who have the freedom to take a long vacation between jobs. Visa holders cannot afford to play hardball during negotiations or wait longer for the right opportunity.

The flip side of it is that if/when the market improves they will be looking to jump ship again (which is a good thing).

This hasn’t really been my experience. They’ll take any job, and also (unfortunately) deal with abusive scheduling hours, because they know they have no other choice.

I think the difference between you and GP is more of H1Bs at random sweat shops and FAANG companies. FAANGs simply hire good people, regardless of whether they are on H1B. So if GP is working at FAANG, they will see highly talented H1Bs just like they see highly talented citizens.

not true for amazon. Amzn hires anyone too.

The relationship isn't complicated at all. It's one based on keeping things as uncertain as possible and giving corporates all the advantages of the talent and driving down wages. The 90% statistic if true only shows how less of a choice Immigrants have when everyone blames immigrants you chose this policy unfair or not and you can choose to leave.

Could it be that some companies are prioritizing hiring these folks over other candidates?

Could also be a happenstance correlation to places of employment. If a high percentage worked at FAANG and employers are trying to pick up all the available ex-FAANG talent for example.

Let's look at this through another lens.

More than 10000 people had to return to their country of origin on very short notice, because of decisions they had no control over. They likely lost money having to pay for travel costs, break leases and contracts, and will be without income. That is sad.

How do I get to that number? First, lets trust the 90% number in the headline. Because the top 30 H-1B employers laid of 85,000 visa holders in 2022 and 2023. So, it is not a stretch to say that there would be at least 10,000 people overall.

https://www.epi.org/blog/tech-and-outsourcing-companies-cont...

I concur, the factoid appears to be built upon self linking to other equally reliable articles published by Fortune and then citing they purchased the data, or possibly only insight, from a 3rd party data company. Without demonstrating methodology, equations, and sourcing in my opinion it's meaningless. The boilerplate for all of the articles, the 'this in an opinion piece' disclaimer at the end also inspires no confidence.

This seems like an article created to take advantage of the psychology behind the "we eat x amount of spiders in our sleep" sentiment. Even completely untrue, with no backing, getting the statement out subscribes people to believe it. I have to question why? Are the designs here to minimize H1B suffering from the layoffs? To get people to think, 'oh they are fine, 90% got a job quickly!'?

It just doesn't sit well with me.

If the statistics are 90% find new work, then by definition, it was not against all odds.

haha... yeah. Seems like the odds are pretty good?

Laid-off non-immigrant visa holders usually have only two weeks to find a new job.

So the comparison odds here are the percentage of the overall population that find new employment within two weeks of being laid off. I’m guessing that’s less than 90%.

Not a lawyer:

It's actually 60days, plus if the company gives you a notice (60days), it's actually 120 days.

Still not a lot, but way better than two weeks.

It's a 60 day window for another employer to file. So you need to have another job lined up with the new employer submitting paperwork within 60 days.

Not exactly, the H-1s are valid for 6 years from the date of issue, and you can re-capture all time spent outside the US. There's a 60 day grace period where you can do your job search from within the US (prior to 2017 I believe you had to get out immediately and do your job search from abroad) but you can file for a new cap-exempt H-1B for the remaining balance of time - plus recapture all time spent outside the US even on holiday - up to 6 years from the date you got it.

[edit] Actually as of 2017, there's no time limit to apply for recapture. So if you came to the US on an H-1B, worked for 1 year, then you can apply for a new cap-exempt H-1B for the balance of the 5 years remaining at any time in the future. [1]

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/11/18/2016-27...

it's about the speed in which they have to find new jobs

90% find new work sure, but it not rarely takes longer then what a H1-B visa would allow

All that demonstrates is that it is cheaper to hire the H1-B visa holder over a local developer with the same experience.

There is a salary requirement, as not to under cut local works. Of course if you working over 40 hours a week maybe the company gets it's pound of flesh!

You get paid higher if you rent your apartment on a month to month lease vs signing a 2 year lease.

Isn't the requirement for a H1-B visa that your skills can not be "easily" replaced with a local person (which doesn't mean that there aren't local people with the skill but that there are not enough "free"/"jobless" people with such skills).

In that case while 90% is still a surprising high number I would expect at least 80% or so. Especially if you consider that desperation might make take them jobs with a salary or other conditions worse then what they would normally accept.

In reality the bar to clear this requirement is quite low. E.g. "We put an ad in the (physical) local newspaper one time for this job, with every single esoteric skill this individual has, listed as hard-requirements..." is typically sufficient to check the box and say "We've tried, nobody applied!".

just because you can cheat the system doesn't mean it's most times done

In my experience companies write out jobs with the requirements they would like to have, then see who applies including from people which doesn't quite fulfill the requirements, and then pick who fits best independent of where they come from (if they can).

I mean for them to intentionally come up with some trickery to allow someone _specific_ to get a H1-B visa often already means they want them enough so that they "conceptually" fulfill the requirements even if on paper for formal reasons they do no.

Sure, they are probably cases where companies come up with some trickery to "wild card wide spread" allow people without the full qualification to get a H1-B visa to then combine this with some form of laborer abuse, but assuming the whole FANG industries is basically only doing this all the time is really quite a stretch IMHO.

I was going to say that FANG companies don't make up a very large proportion of H1-B visas and that the majority go to Infosys, Tata, Cognizant and the like... But I just looked it up, and it turns out that trend has been reversed considerably in the past few years, which is great to see!

2016 numbers - https://h1bgrader.com/reports/sponsors/lca/2016 2022 numbers - https://h1bgrader.com/reports/sponsors/lca/2022

Does "local" mean people who are born in the US? If so, I'd ask: can they? STEM requires a supporting and an encouraging culture. I'm not sure the US had one (I understand many of people think the US does have one now, but I'm talking about 20 or 30 years ago). The pop culture berated nerds and geeks for years. The most popular kids in the school were cheerleaders and sports junkies and kids who could get their hands on alcohols and cigarettes -- this is just unfathomable in many other countries, especially Asian ones. And look at the pipeline! How many "local" kids went to STEM majors other than those who wanted to be doctors? How many kids thought first-year college maths and physics and organic chemistry are so-called weeder coursers? Heck, how many commenters on HN thought that they couldn't study well in high schools because XXX subject is all about rote memory?

When it comes to studying, oh man, "toil" is a four-letter word for American people. Oh, you study too hard. Oh you have a lost childhood. Oh solving math problems is not FaIr to other kids, for it shadows the true talent. But when it comes to sports? Oh man, the tone totally changes. "Toil" is da word! Mileage matters! If you train hard, you get better results! Have you seen LA of 4am in the morning? Do you know that the kid next door trains 5 hours every day, and breaks his bones at least 3 times and still does not give up? Mommy wants you to know the story of whoever practicing free throws a thousand times a day. Daddy will use all the retirement savings to hire a coach of this bullshit sport that you would never make it to the top of, but hey don't be like that Asian family who spends all their money hiring science tutors. What a nation of hypocrisy, and now we are wondering why there are not enough locals in STEM classes?

> Does "local" mean people who are born in the US

Local means US Citizens and Permanent Residents (Green Card).

> I'm not sure the US had one (I understand many of people think the US does have one now, but I'm talking about 20 or 30 years ago).

There always has been a culture around STEM in the US. Maybe the social background you grew up with wasn't part of that.

There are similar STEM hesitant groups within Asia as well (for example, the millions of Indian+Chinese students aiming for govt bureaucracy jobs, and the thousands going to business school/commerce)

> There always has been a culture around STEM in the US. Maybe the social background you grew up with wasn't part of that.

If so, I'll be happy that I was wrong. I truly wish that the US had a vibrant culture of encouraging STEM. I'm not so sure for two reasons: all kinds of shows and movies, with a few exceptions, make fun of geeks. Paul Graham wrote this: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html, and my geek friends and coworkers all confirmed similar experience.

Quoting https://thegeekanthropologist.com/2014/10/17/freaks-geeks-a-...: "For many years, geeks were ridiculed for their supposed lack of social graces and interest in obscure, weird or unusual forms of cultural and digital media. Once again, geeks were typified by their marginality and their difference. The representation of geeks in pop culture have replicated and almost cemented the validity of geek stereotypes. "

I mean, why, why the interests of STEM subjects are "obscure, weird or unusual forms"?

I'm much younger than you (in my 20s) and in my experience STEM has been normalized and heavily evangelized in American culture now.

Lots of younger SWEs, PMs, and SEs have entered the industry thanks to their experience playing around with mods in games like Minecraft, and even the stereotypical chad/jock is into gaming and technology now. And I say this as a former HS wrestler.

Also, STEM has been heavily evangelized since I was growing up in the 2000s.

> all kinds of shows and movies, with a few exceptions, make fun of geeks.

Not anymore, especially with the media people my age (12-30) watch. For example, Anime, KDramas, and Youtube+TikTok+IG Influencers are much more popular than American shows now in my age demographic and all treat STEM with deference.

> I mean, why, why the interests of STEM subjects are "obscure, weird or unusual forms"?

Even your stereotypical "jocks" and "Barbies" major in STEM now and work in STEM. For example, most of my classmates when I studied CS were Fratbois (as am I) and Sorority Chicks, and STEM is viewed as a degree that will get you a white collar job with less grind and more money.

I can’t be happier to learn this :-)

quires a supporting and an encouraging culture. I'm not sure the US had one (I understand many of people think the US does have one now, but I'm talking about 20 or 30 years ago). The pop culture berated nerds and geeks for years. The most popular kids in the school were cheerleaders and sports junkies and kids who could get their hands on alcohols and cigarettes -- this is just unfathomable in many other countries, especially Asian ones. And look at the pipeline! How many "local" kids went to STEM majors other than those who wanted to be doctors? How many kids thought first-year college maths and physics and organic chemistry are so-called weeder coursers? Heck, how many commenters on HN thought that they couldn't study well in high schools because XXX subject is all about rote memory?

You don't know anything about other countries. You think China and India with > 1 billion people each are all tech savants and scientists? It is the opposite. Theres 270 million people in poverty in India alone. The population of US is 330 million. Statistically of course there is a larger amount of STEM than US by population. It's a numbers game that also has to do with the advancement of the country and economic goals of its citizens, not 'culture'. It's literally determined by economics

Companies can get indentured servants who are loyal and will work against toxicity and long hours that they can get rid of whenever they want. There is plenty of talent in America. The reason they are not utilized is for business and economic reasons. ie revenue/profitability/growth

> Theres 270 million people in poverty in India alone.

I don't deny that. Poverty is different from culture, though. By culture I mean so many scientists and engineers, male or female, were household names in China. Are they in the US? By culture I mean teachers work hard to come up with questions that really help students understand fundamental concepts. How many US teachers do that? By the culture I mean this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8296195/Chinese-gir.... This created national sensation in China. In contrast, did people in the US give a fuck about the average median GPA in Baltimore was 0.6 or something (some people did, of course, but I'm talking about a nation)? Did people give a fuck about physics teacher in grade 8 giving exam questions like "which one is heavier, pound or kilogram"? Did the nation give a fuck about we can't attract enough talents to become teachers? Or in general, did people give a fuck about the issues raised in the documentary Waiting for "Superman"?

"By culture I mean teachers work hard to come up with questions that really help students understand fundamental concepts"

This is not a part of the culture in any asian country. There is no culture around teachers working hard to come up with questions that help students understand fundamental concepts.

Teachers in the US are struggling from economic situation. They are underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked which leads to poor performance. It is not students and families fault that America is so developed you can get by with lower quality education exceptionally well. The 'culture' , a word you are obsessed with and think is a solution rather than another form of bias, is that you dont need to have brains to be successful in the US.

More and more asian people are leaning away from this. In fact look at this data from 2019 in India

At undergraduate level the highest number (35.9%) of students are enrolled in arts/humanities/social sciences courses followed by science (16.5%), engineering and technology (13.5%) and commerce (14.1%), the All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) report revealed.

Hmm...seems just like USA... not everyone in these countries is obsessed with becomining an engineer/doctor/lawyer. You are making conclusions through a small lens of what you see, ie anecdotal

> Isn’t the requirement for a H1-B visa that your skills can not be "easily" replaced with a local person

No, that is not the requirement. That is a common misconception, though. What you described is the requirement for an employment based green card.

For H-1B the requirement is that you have a degree and are working in a “speciality occupation” related to that degree. It is formally independent of the current state of the job market, though companies are required to at least pay the “prevailing wage” which sort of encodes some information about the job market.

> Isn't the requirement for a H1-B visa that your skills can not be "easily" replaced with a local person

No, that's for green card. That's part of the "PERM" step in EB2. Not for H1B.

H1B is completely abused and can be seen by anyone paying attention.

Just another scheme to pay people less money.

Frankly, I'm way more concerned that citizens get jobs after a layoff than foreign workers.

That’s based on the false assumption that a State is purposed with acting in the interests of its current citizens. It’s an observable fact that western States at least prioritize acting in the interests of “the economy” which is a term I won’t attempt to unpack beyond pointing out that the old question “who benefits” is germane as always.

Therefore it follows that if employing foreign immigrants instead of citizens is better for the economy then the State must set policies to support and encourage that.

Why the downvotes people?

I was tempted to downvote for the lack of empathy for people who are threatened with being kicked out of the country if they don’t immediately find new work, often after spending years or decades building a life here.

Maybe you have never emigrated to anywhere else in your entire live. But other people had and it's not because they are opportunists trying to "steal" work from other citizens. Many times it's not even about the money. Being a little empathic does not hurt anyone.

You conflated 'immigration bad' to 'immigrants bad' in dishonest way.

Lots of countries have 'immigration bad' as their core policy like south korea, japan ect. Are you blaming whole countries as lacking empathy?

I'm going to guess that someone in that person's ancestry immigrated to the US in search of a better life.

The point being, IMO, is that trying to pull the drawbridge up on new people immigrating is kind of ugly. We are not 'full' in the US.

The only reasons that citizens have such lucrative opportunities is that there is (to a greater or lesser degree) free flow of capital across borders. To me it seems unfair that there is not a corresponding free flow of workers across borders. These two should come hand in hand.

Oh citizens can get jobs, alright. Record low unemployment. Wage inflation through the roof. We need citizens to get off their butts and take the jobs that are out there.

Asset price inflation is and for many decades has far outpaced wage inflation.

Combined with the widespread social destruction it's not really worth participating for most people.

Which ones? The retired ones? Disabled?

only if you are below 45, in tech.

Citizens do get the jobs. By design visa workers need to find a new job asap, while citizens can take their time to find something. From personal experience with recent layoffs, pretty much all the citizens took a break before resuming job search. Everyone has been burnt out since covid started. Companies milked record high profits from employees by making them work hard only to lay them off once they were burnt out. If given an opportunity most visa workers would also take a break.

On a side note, it must have been really painful for the 10%.

If 90% were able to find new work, then it's not really "against all odds" is it?

I think by definition the fact that 90% could do it meant the odds were in their favor. This tells us something about the narratives floating around in our environment.

I was talking to a recruiter who told me H1Bs were taking almost any offer. Which is what crashed the tech compensation. Why these people are even allowed to stay in the event of mass layoffs is beyond me. So many american college graduates cannot find a job

Because these people built a life in the US and benefitted the US tremendously. The solution isn’t to kick them out, it’s to give them permanent residence so they don’t constantly live with the sword hanging over them.

But even in that case we should reduce NEW H1B applications for the next couple of years, right? Is that being done?

no but there are several proposals to increase the cap.

It seems very analogous to scabs during a strike.

As of May 2023 there are[0] over 300,000 tech job listings open and unfilled across the country.

There are an additional 65,000 H1B visas available each year to applicants with bachelor's degrees in STEM, and an additional 20,000 degrees available for those with masters degrees in STEM. So those +85,000 individuals wouldn't even cover one third of the currently open positions (and notably, more positions are opening every day right now, where the cap is only renewed annually).

[0] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-...

Raise wages. Don't import cheap labor.

Why not both? They don't have to be mutually exclusive!

For example - I'd be in favor of abolishing the current H1-B lottery in favor of taking in the first 85,000* applicants with the highest paying job offers. Maybe have some carve-outs based on sector, weighted by demand, so eg academics aren't competing with SV-tech salaries. Not a perfect solution, but solves a lot of the major problems we have today.

*I also think we should increase the cap

Are you sure those 300,000 are not “ghost jobs”, etc? I know several people who are highly skilled and have been looking for work for a long time.

So stop diluting our power against the owners.

Don't bother. I knew this guy from Solo and to say he's a company simp is putting it mildly.

Does this confuse the topic a bit?

I have two tech jobs available, but can not hire H1B, and even if I could, it wouldn’t know how.

Shouldn’t we consider how many of the tech jobs available that H1B holders could fill?

Getting highly skilled crème of the crop people into the US increases the pie for everyone. We should allow more such people in.

That's a reason based on being empathetic to immigrants. IOW, it's not very convincing to people of a certain mindset.

There's a better reason for not kicking talented and rare skills out of a country: you're losing expensive talent.

> Why these people are even allowed to stay

"these people" are our peers and coworkers. They have families, friends, houses and possessions. Booting them out of the US with little to no warning is just plain cruel.

How is it cruel to enforce the laws that are on the books? Surely H1-Bs are aware of the terms and conditions of their visa.

Laws can be cruel.

There are many H1Bs who would file for asylum if they were forced to leave the US (eg outspoken atheists from theocratic countries, queer and trans people, etc). Do you want to burden the asylum system even more?

What is "many" because most don't come from countries anywhere near that.

Most H1Bs are from India (due to backlogs), and many are in queer relationships and marriages which aren't recognized there. Iran is another country from which many accomplished people are openly against the Islamist regime.

again, zero quantifiable. Just "many".

Biden hugged Modi less than a week ago. There are gay hangouts in Bangalore. Nearly every major company tech company has office in India. Saying that people need to claim asylum from India is insulting.

I don't have hard numbers, just people I know personally who are part of networks. Discrimination against queer and trans people is rampant in India, especially against people from conservative families where there's a significant threat to their life if they go back. A bunch of gay hangouts in Bangalore doesn't solve the basic fact that conservatism is a pox on society.

I'm a citizen but if I lost my job, I too would take almost any offer. Having a job is infinitely better than no job and holding out for a much higher offer.

H1B visa rules require a minimum salary based on location. It’s not that they can take ‘almost any offer’. The offer also has to satisfy the Labor Condition Application.

The minimum salary really should be increased these days.

Given the current income percentiles in the US (https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...). The current H1B min-salary is $60k, which is below the median household wage in the US.

The min-salary should instead be pegged to the p90, which is currently at $130k.

That way foreign workers (which includes myself and many friends) should absolutely be held to the highest standard and be the best and the brightest and pushing the bar higher for 90% of US citizens.

> The current H1B min-salary is $60k, which is below the median household wage

Why is household even relevant here?

Its above the annualized amount of the median full-time weekly pay.

Until recently spouses of H1-B visa holders were not allowed to work (I don't think they should either). You can reasonably expect a college educated person to want to start a family, and would expect them to be able to provide for their family if they have an in demand job.

> Until recently spouses of H1-B visa holders were not allowed to work (I don't think they should either).

FWIW, I disagree with this one point. I know a lot of partners of H1Bs and there is a large psychological toll to not being allowed to "contribute to society" if you are able and wanting to. There is also a large psychological toll to moving to a new country, a lot of America's adult friendships are created in the workplace. Finally there is a large psychological toll to not having independence in making some side money to be able to spend it the way you want (even if the money earner "gifts" that freedom - because why wouldn't they - there can be a guilt associated with using the money).

Therefore, I do think its overall worthwhile for partners of H1Bs to be allowed to work if they so choose.

That said, I do feel like the minimum household salary for getting an H1B should be high enough to compensate for potentially both people working in the US, in a way that helps uplift wages for US citizens. That might mean using p91 or p95, I'm not qualified to pick the exact value, but I do think the general strategy would be best for "the best and brightest" immigrant families(or individuals) and for citizens.

If you check the data for San Fransisco you can still find many people taking jobs well below 100k a year.

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=san+francisco&y...

Low income in some areas of San Fransisco is roughly ~$95k a year for a family of 4. Minimum wage for the area $37k a year. Some of these H1B jobs are roughly 2x to 3x Minimum wage (in jobs that require 40-70 hours per week). These are not pay levels for in demand with no local availability of employee jobs, these are people taking poverty level jobs.

Sadly this is gameable.

American college graduates can absolutely find jobs. Unemployment at record lows. They just need to be competitive in terms of their salary and role expectations vs others in the market.

BTW the real competition here for American tech workers is not the h1b worker who will take any job - it's the LATAM / Eastern European worker with 15 yrs of experience available for $100k, no payroll tax, no benefits.

An American company can't hire those workers without either an H1B or moving the company from American to LATAM / Eastern Europe.

They do this all the time by opening an office in those countries

What office?

LOL what world do you live in? What do you think half of startups do these days?

The LATAM worker doesn't exist.

The competition is the Eastern European+Asian+Israeli developer with 15 yrs of experience available for $100k.

I hired 20 of them. Trust me they exist.

Yea. I was being a bit dramatic tbh. Like ik there's a budding developer community in San Jose, CR thanks to VMWare and Brazil has always had a decent technical base!

H1Bs taking almost any offer is the fault of the visa system, not the fault of the immigrants.

"Why these people are even allowed to stay in the event of mass layoffs"

Because those are the terms of their visas.

The compensation crash might be averted by giving h1bs better rights in the form of a longer time to find a new job - then they could negotiate their salaries the same as you do.

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