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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

This is an absolute farce.

I'm not so cold hearted or extreme to say 'shut it all down tomorrow', but it feels like at the very very least, in this job climate, we could suspend new entries?

But it just keeps humming along like everything is rosy.

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I’ve followed this issue for a long time, the thing is at the end of the day the average American just doesn’t care very much what happens to tech workers.

There’s an underlying attitude of “serves those entitled nerds right” on both the political left and the right.

They did nothing but push "STEM careers" as the way forward for 25 years! It's all been nothing but a lie the whole time!

I feel that 2 simple rules would capture all the value of H1-Bs but naturally limit their abuses:

1. H-1Bs applications are ranked by total comp. 2 years of that comp is unconditional (no PIPs, no performance management, no excuses). I can see an argument to bucket this by industry.

2. Only job codes where the YoY median pay and total employment are currently at a 3 year high are eligible to receive H-1Bs.

The comp requirements would devastate the body farms. The unconditional comp will put major pressure on the system of working H1-Bs to the bone, and not thoroughly vetting those hires. Companies that layoff in the thousands, or layoff their highest paid (oldest) employees are simply poisoning the H-1B well for that industry. Deep cuts can't be made up with H1-Bs for 3 years or until all the layoffs have been recouped industry-wide.

So only people who would work in high COL areas would be eligible?

That's not actually all that unreasonable, despite how it sounds on the surface. High COL areas are high COL because people working there are more productive. If it's worth it to import an H1-B worker even in the high COL area, they're contributing that much more to the economy than someone in a low COL area.

If this still sounds crazy, I think your objection is more to there being a cap at all. If there is going to be a cap, it makes sense to order it by total comp even notwithstanding the COL.

So do you expect someone to boot strap in a LCoL area without H1Bs

H-1Bs are rare at bootstrapped companies , rare outside major tech centers, and basically non-existent in bootstrapped companies in LCoL areas. It is a benefit that almost entirely accrues to big corporations with legal teams. It is big corporate welfare.

No, companies which are ready to pay high (above median) salaries would be able to hire H1Bs. No matter where the office is. Even now many companies offer compensation without regard to geography, when the compensation is high enough; if you live in Alabama but still qualify, the better to you.

I agree. The cap should be adjusted to unemployment surveys by sector. If there's high unemployment in tech at the moment there should be simply no quota to hire from foreign countries until the labor market recovers.

Employers already need to prove that they can’t hire an American to do the job.

Very loose definition of "prove". I would guess that there are many on HN who are overqualified for any H1B job and would take it for the right money. The talent is here, they just want to pay less.

This is false for H-1B - there is no "labor market test". Such a test is required for the PERM process in which an H-1B visa holder would seek a green card through their employer, although the definition of "prove" is up for debate [2].

[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruit... [2] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-immigration-h1b-vis...

H1-B applications must have a Labor Condition Application which requires a prevailing wage assessment and that hiring a foreign worker won't adversely affect US workers.

It is true that the LCA (and PERM!) processes are have grave flaws that leave them open to abuse.

Several FANGa companies have gotten in trouble for advertising in uncommon places like newspapers for jobs that also aren’t listed on their careers page in order to avoid qualified American applicants from applying in order to get approval for green cards or H1b

they do all the time, with all kinds of tricks that misrepresent reality. the H1B system is a scam.

This is easily subverted when the "proof" is conducting a subjective interview.

Clearly something has to be done here. It's going to all crash and burn pretty soon.

You should probably do some research on how many of those ended up starting their own companies. And how many jobs they created.

After that you may want to rethink suspending new entries.

I have not. Feel free to educate me/post numbers or links.

How impactful would a say, 1 year pause be to that? Is the number of jobs created by H1B each year > the number of H1B entries each year?

(not the parent, I don't have a specific number)

Generally speaking, the economy is not a zero sum game (by definition), or we would never have made it past the first 50 people in New Amsterdam. Every person here on a visa interacts with the economy (needs to buy groceries, etc). Presumably they create more wealth for the economy than they cost, or it would not be worth it for a company to hire them.

I think a more interesting question would be if, for the particular occupation (say software engineer), a person on an H1-B visa adds more than one jobs worth of demand for more software engineers. Even if they benefit the economy as a whole, it is still possible that a subset of the labor force sees extra competition. That opens up the question of is it better to suspend the program to protect a subgroup, or is it better to expand the economy as a whole.

In order for such a statistic to be useful, you'd not only have to demonstrate it, but also demonstrate evidence that companies they start add more non-H-1B jobs to the market than they add more H-1B jobs to the market.

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