Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

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It's not as false as some might want to believe.

The issues are complex - but one of the side affects are indeed artificial suppression of wages for citizens.

We have software titans bursting at the seam with imported labor - yet our domestic universities are also churning out more CS graduates than ever before. Some of these graduates are indeed from foreign countries - but not all.

It's very hard to believe companies need to import labor for commoditized software engineering positions when there are plenty of available workers already here.

We should be importing top-tier talent - the types of folks that are working in complex fields, inventing new fields, developing things that haven't been done before, etc. We should not be importing basic CS graduates and filling basic SE jobs.

H1B's are often cheaper to hire, and do not enjoy the same mobility freedoms a citizen does. In some ways, they are beholden to their sponsor company, and whatever wages that company offers - which may not necessarily be market wages.

Clearly H1Bs are suppressing wages as proven by the fact that software engineers have seen wages rise more than any other job profile in the country for over the past decade.

Oh wait.

Imagine where those wages would be without a glut of H1B's...

Just as much reason to believe it would be lower than higher. There aren't a fixed number of jobs. A talented engineer who comes to America can go on to start up his own company (and there are many examples of this occurring), creating many more high-paying jobs for other engineers. A company that fails because they can't hire enough engineers puts the engineers they do have employed out of work.

I don't claim that H1Bs have the effect of increasing pay, but rather that their effect on pay is non-obvious, and any assertion that they do depress wages should be backed up by evidence.

> Just as much reason to believe it would be lower than higher.

That seems like some wild calculus. Fewer people willing to accept lower pay and be stuck at a specific company = higher pay. There's no other way to make the math work, particularly for extreme-demand positions like SE.

without H1Bs silicon valley would not exist in its current form (it would be more like in 80s-90s)

That's a lot like saying agriculture wouldn't exist in it's current form without importing cheap labor that can be (and is) abused. It's still wrong.

The H1B game, as it's played today, is a relatively modern invention, and was not used to build startups into mega corps anyway.

American agriculture would not exist without seasonal workers from Mexico, farmers love their H-2B visa for seasonal workers (oh, the irony)

Especially Americans working at John Deere, Dow Chemical and all the food processing

> I don't claim that H1Bs have the effect of increasing pay, but rather that their effect on pay is non-obvious, and any assertion that they do depress wages should be backed up by evidence.

there would be fewer/no startups and fewer jobs with less wages, as H1Bs themselves create jobs via startups and product development at traditional companies.

if you carefully look at silicon valley companies (even large ones) - most of product R&D and IP and innovation comes from immigrants. Native born americans are mostly working in admin jobs like HR, Admin, Sales, Operations, Finance, etc

R&D is exactly who H1B is supposed to be for - ie. highly skilled, specialized, and educated positions. Not regular SE jobs.

If you look at your Googles, your Facebooks, your Microsofts, you will find a glut of H1B's working regular SE jobs, such as maintenance and feature development. That's exactly who H1B's are not supposed to be for - and that is the issue.

Mega corps laying off huge engineering teams while simultaneously importing more H1B's tells you everything you need to know. Follow the money, as they say.

you are wrong because H-1Bs pay just as much as regular SWE jobs by law (companies file LCA)

This thread is about suppressing wages...

How is paying the same == suppressing?

Because you'd have to pay more to attract somebody local who's happy at another company.

You understand that immigration is fundamentally different from standard supply and demand? Immigrants create both supply and demand. Producing more eggs doesn't increase the demand for eggs.

Guarantee it's below average at most outsourcing firms. They may play games like advertising a position as a "junior engineer" but require 10 years of experience and then bill clients for a senior engineer but, knowing the billing rates for several vendors, there's absolutely no way they pay market rates.

I am all for cracking down on abusers and scammers, especially body shops.

but it is not the reason to get rid of the entirety of H-1B program, as some people advocate here.

Most companies call a significant amount of their SWE work as R&D. R&D isn’t always “inventing totally new things” but rather closer to “an investment of resources in which there is some amount of novelty and for which the outcome is uncertain”. A lot of SWE qualifies for that, even software that we’d consider fairly mundane and un-exciting.

H-1B is for regular skilled immigration, those with bachelors degrees or equivalent, e.g. regular software engineer jobs. For more highly skilled, specialized, and educated positions there exist O-1, EB-1, and EB-2 NIW visas.

>> most of product R&D and IP and innovation comes from immigrants.

Would love to see your source for this fact, genuinely curious.

Source: my eyes. Literally work day to day with immigrants in product R&D role.

Also you can check names on patents files by google or other tech firm

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