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Comment by kachurovskiy | Hacker News Reader

In Germany visa applicants are evaluated based on merit without a lottery for decade and it's working well. US could do something similar instead of using a hole in the fence but it doesn't look like the decision making system is capable of making hard decisions like that.

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The US system combines both merit and lottery. The lottery is maintained because it's an effective bottleneck on the volume of applications, which is substantially higher than what Germany is receiving.

When companies only have a 25% chance of approval they'd just submit 4 applicants per position. Most of this volume wouldn't be present if there was no limit.

Decisions in the US are made by big tech lobbyists, who want the supply of semi-indentured labor who can't jump jobs at a moment notice to continue as usual.

what numeric metric do you use to assess that it is "working well" in Germany?

https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/Statistik/BlaueKarteEU/blaueka...

I haven't heard of any discontent with the program from locals or applicants. It's growing, too.

Did you know that you could have 15 years of working in the Bay Area experience and still be refused a German blue card because you majored in Physics or EE instead of CS? But mere work visas were easily obtainable a couple years ago with a signed contract.

There are two options to get Blue Card. One is education, but second is professional work for I think 10 years above certain threshold salary (very low threshold for IT, even by EU means). So that 15 YOE IT engineer can certainly apply and get Blue Card. The only nuance is that it needs to be full employment, self employment doesn't count or is problematic iirc.

the locals aren't upset about salaries? German programmer salaries seem to be on par w/ unskilled labor.

If I was a local I would want to stop immigration until supply + demand equilibriated around USA levels.

EU citizens always had an option to come and work so work visas only apply for non-EU. Also, the debate in Germany is mostly about asylum seekers and not skilled migration. I haven't heard the thesis "less people, more pay" but instead "more workers, more taxes". https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAGerman/comments/178iy0w/questio...

As per by neighbor: "Not the semiconductor industry. We are looking for qualified engineers everywhere. I don't see this having any impact on salaries."

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