Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

I think it's important to note that not all H-1B jobs are the same. There are many companies that abuse the system, and this is one of main reasons to revamp it.

But there are also companies that are just looking for talent that they can't easily find in the US. I had an H-1B working in Investment Banking and was paid a high salary after business school. Most of my classmates did not want to go into banking. I was ranked a top performer year after year, put in hundred-hour weeks and provided actual value to the bank, clients, and the US economy.

Economies generally want high-skilled, high-salary immigrants. The H-1B can and should be a program for that. Literally everyone benefits.

It should also enable a path to citizenship. Right now, those high-skilled workers get a lottery with ~30% odds, another try at 40% odds if they have a graduate degree, and then six years working for Uncle Sam before they're kicked out of the country.

There's no path to a green card unless your employer chooses to sponsor you, at which point you are even more at their whims than during your H-1B stint and obviously there's a massive imbalance in that relationship.

And because I believe offering solutions is more valuable than just criticizing, here's my relative non-controversial suggestion for the program:

• Country quotas

• Minimum salary of [$175-200k/year] (pick your number)

• H-1B workers should be allowed to easily switch jobs, so long as the job is still above the minimum salary. (Giving workers flexibility reduces the possibility of abuse. Currently you have 30-days to find a job or you have to leave the country.)

• Spouses of H-1B workers (H-4 visas) should get a work permit with no minimum salary (They're currently not allowed to work at all. They don't need a salary minimum because their visa is tethered to the H-1B already, and it's better (for everyone) to have them work some job rather than no job.)

• H-1B can self-petition a green card after X years working in the US (personally I'd say 3 years, but 5 may be more palatable to the general public)

• H-1B visas should be good for 5 years instead of the current 3. They should also be allowed to extend for another 5 years, so 5+5 instead of 3+3.

So your position is: make it an even juicier deal for Indian H1Bs and screw the unemployed and underemployed Americans.

How is that what you read from my suggestion? Do you really think putting a salary floor will make companies pay H-1B workers _more_ and not consider US applicants? That's literally the opposite of what would happen.

Did you also ignore the country quotas bullet?

Change quota to limit and put a small number on it. Uncouple that number from the foreign country’s population size and couple it to the unemployment and underemployment rate of the CS grads in the US instead. The rest of your points is just an Indian H1B person’s wishlist.

I think your bias is showing and clouding your judgment. You've made the same inaccurate and bigoted point several times on this thread and I'm not sure it's added much to the conversation.

I shouldn't need to say this, but I'm not Indian.

The point is to set the min pay to be top of market for the field. If there really are plenty of Americans available they should get hired first

Good luck with that approach. Indian tech managers in the US are some of the most biased people in the world. They will find all the missing-semi-colon reasons to not hire an American and hire an Indian H1B instead. Money is no object because it’s the company and shareholders’ money.

> • Minimum salary of [$175-200k/year] (pick your number)

How would this impact... say... Foreign Language Instructors? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=foreign+language+inst... or school teachers? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=teacher&city=&year=20...

I don't think school teachers need an H-1B. Plenty of people in the US willing to do that job. If anything, we need to restrict the supply of school teacher labor so that there's an upward pressure in salary.

As for Foreign Language Instructors, I would argue that should be a different visa category altogether. Probably an O-1C type visa (which doesn't exist today). Someone with a specific skill set that is unavailable in the US by definition.

But IANAL.

I would encourage to to look at the reports from https://tsa.ed.gov/#/reports - that's "Teacher Shortage Areas"

If it was the case that we needed to restrict the supply... those reports would suggest a different story.

The pressure on teacher salary is more often limited by state and local government rather than the availability of teachers.

There is a problem there with teacher salaries and the number of them available to hire - but making it so that it would be impossible for a school in a city in rural North Carolina to hire teachers ( https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=vance+county+public+school... ) that they're having difficulty with finding people to work there isn't necessarily the answer.

And to the "but they're only paying $40k - of course no one is going to work there. That's slightly above the median household income for the area (and almost twice the per capita income).

There does need to be a larger discussion about the funding of education. Making it so that the schools can't hire anyone who would need a visa because they're having difficulty hiring there - I don't believe that is the right answer.

The H-1B visa should not be designed as a solution for teacher shortage in America.

I still think the core problem is low salaries. Comparing to median household or per capita income isn't necessarily accurate because jobs don't all place the same demands on workers, so workers don't choose solely based on income.

The H-1B visa is not a solution to the shortage of teachers in the US. Rather, it is a tool that some school districts are using to try to fill in the gaps where they have a shortage.

My point is one of "if fixing of H-1B abuse is solved by changing it to be an auction based on compensation, it will negatively impact all of the companies that use the H-1B for roles other than those that can compete with Big Tech software developers for compensation."

There are a lot of people out there on a H-1B visa working for companies that have gone through the process of trying to hire a US citizen first and failed to find anyone for that role (that isn't a software developer).

There are classifications for companies that employ a lot of H-1B visa holders. It is known as a H-1B-dependent employer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer

If the goal is to limit the fraud and abuses ( here's how to report https://www.uscis.gov/scams-fraud-and-misconduct/report-frau... ) then further regulating and auditing companies in that classification would be the first place to start rather than trying to change the visa itself.

Yes, this is playing whack-a-mole with "shut down one fraudulent consultancy and another one pops up."

However, a significant component of this is that companies have difficulty managing projects and staff outside of their core competencies. We need to migrate from one ERP system to another - you get the professional services for the ERP company which in turn brings in a consultancy to do the project. It isn't entirely reasonable for the original company to try to staff up FTEs to do it (and them lay 3/4ths of them off when the project is complete and it goes to a maintenance level of work).

Low salaries - by themselves - are not the problem. There are fields that don't pay as well as Big Tech software developer. There are also companies that have much lower revenue per employee than Big Tech companies ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=revenue+per+employee+%2... ) and trying to match Big Tech compensation would bankrupt them.

> There are a lot of people out there on a H-1B visa working for companies that have gone through the process of trying to hire a US citizen first and failed to find anyone for that role (that isn't a software developer).

Yes, but I still think those positions are better solved by increasing the salary for those positions.

Even if you don't believe that, the H-1B as it exists today is trying to do too many things at once and it's failing at most of those. My specific policy proposal is on fixing it for the use case of finding high-skilled workers for high-paying jobs US citizens do not want to do today.

I'm not at all against having other visa programs to solve other needs, including temp workers for tech consulting gigs, teachers or anything else, for that matter. I'm 100% pro immigration, as is anyone who understands Economics.

Consider a different approach then.

Instead of (what I consider would be) breaking the H-1B for everything that isn't tech, create another H-1 category visa. The Immigration act of 1990 split the H-1 visa into the H-1A (nurses) and H-1B (everything else). In 1999, the H-1C was created for nurses shortages (which expired in 2009).

Would having a H-1D visa that is limited to jobs that are classified under the BLS 15-xxxx ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes_stru.htm#15-0000 ) and have a different criteria (compare how the TN visa limits to specific occupations that align with the BLS occupational profiles - https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-2-part-p-chapter-... - which means that the classification is either a computer system analyst or engineer for someone from Canada or Mexico to get a technical job in the US). This would change the the other H visas to prohibit people from getting a visa for a position that would otherwise require a H-1D visa to be authorized to work.

At that point, one could have an auction for those candidates and highest wage compensation wins. Might want to have something with a US masters degree again (as that's an important part of many graduate program income for universities). I still believe there are a number of second order effects that need to be considered in this suggestion (this would likely exacerbate the "immigrants are getting paid more than me" problems that one also sees with "juniors are getting paid more than me" - and yes, those are problems, but I think that this may make it worse).

The thing is to not break the rest of the H-1B visas when trying to fix the problems caused by H-1B-dependent employers.

If US army truly needs to hire some foreigners I don't think they would have issues either modifying H1B rules so they are exempt or getting their own visa category for their own needs. I don't think either party would truly be against that even if Congress needed to pass the law since DOD is asking it.

Of course they could also just hire them with higher wage and tell Congress that they have option to make a small dent in the defense budget by passing that law.

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