Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

Basically all of the problems with the H1-B system could be fixed overnight by simply banning visa holders from working for consulting companies. 'No visa holder may be employed by a company whose main business is consulting for other firms, or staffing'. We'd keep the highly skilled folks who are going to the FAANGs, and at least letting the midmarket companies bid for everyone else. But there's no compelling national or economic interest in importing a class of Accenture/Cognizant/Wipro/Infosys workers who work on 6 month contracts at Wells Fargo or whatever.

I'd actually support more skilled immigration if we could get rid of the consulting firms

Edit to clarify slightly: if your concern is 'skilled immigration', I would like to gently but firmly state that most of the developers that work for the consulting firms are just not very good. Sorry. If you're in a hiring capacity at a tech company at all, everyone knows that the Wipro guys who work on 6 month contracts doing Java at Fortune 100 companies cannot pass even the simplest tech screen. Yes it makes me sound like a jerk to say this, but they're not 'highly skilled'

I agree on the principle but that condition would be specific enough to invite abuse.

Using pay as the article is mentioning would force a natural market clearing mechanism into the system (if you really want that person you may not get them if another company is willing to pay more for the H1B slot).

But most H1-Bs are brand new grads, so their salary is just not very high. You'd be kicking out every 22 year old graduate of Stanford, Harvard etc. if you enforced a pay scale. The US has had a public policy since the 60s of making it easy for foreign grads of our elite colleges to stay here, I wouldn't mess with that

That’s F1 visas. You get a couple years on the F1 in private industry before you have to convert.

Also, H1B began in the 90s.

I just don't think that salaries are high enough for engineers that have been working for 2 years, that we can employ a market-based model for just the highest paid ones. I guess to be fair you could lengthen the OPT visa period to like 5 years, but that just seems cruel to all of the OPT folks who don't make it

Yeah OPT is way too short after college (I think 2-3 years max). And it does make sense to expand it to 5 years and offer a time based path to a green card (which many other countries do employ).

But there is the risk people might game the system to take advantage of that framework (though that sounds like a higher hurdle than the H1B charade now).

There isn’t an easy answer but for sure what exists now isn’t working.

You get a single year of work authorization on an F-1. Only STEM graduates get an extra 2 years for a total of three. It's called OPT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_Practical_Training

OPT is mostly only useful to give you extra tries on the H-1B, since the current system is a lottery. Since that lottery is once a year, OPT also makes it easier for employers to hire you at any given time so that you can wait for the next lottery. But no employer is hiring an OPT with an expectation that they will leave in 1 or 3 years, so the H-1B is still what everyone anchors on.

There's basically no way to get a green card straight after an OPT. There's also no way to extend an H-1B past it's 3+3 years.

The culture that is brought over is definitely very prevalent in faang.

I think they shouldn’t be indentured servants and they should just charge a huge fee, discount it for US grads and then don’t allow someone here to easily switch so they can’t maintian a pay disparity.

I would also suggest not tying the visa to a particular employer. The current system makes H1Bs easier to exploit.

They're not tied to a particular employer, this is a myth that will seemingly never die. H1-Bs are transferrable between employers. I know multiple people in both my professional & personal life who have done so easily

https://immigrationhelpla.com/h1b-visa-transfer/

Having H1-B visa employees introduce overhead. Not all companies are willing to do it. We’ve recently decided to stop H1-Bs for anyone that isn’t a senior hire.

I think you're mixing in H-1B with L-1A/B. They're tied to a single employer.

Seriously. It’s slavery. I’ve seen people stay at staggeringly toxic environments because their visa was tied to a narcissist.

https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

> An eligible H-1B worker can change employers as soon as the new employer’s nonfrivolous H-1B petition is properly filed with USCIS.

That's harder to do than the sentence says. And not all employers are H-1B employers. H-1B workers should be able to sponsor themselves, they shouldn't need to do the whole paperwork through businesses. So long as they can prove they meet the requirements, they should be able to apply for the visa (or its renewal).

The current system works like if every tourist had to first ask Disney to apply for their visa before coming to Orlando.

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