Hacker News Reader

Comment by lgleason | Hacker News Reader

I updated my comment to clarify what I meant by PERM, which is a green card application.

"The H1B visa is a visa for a worker on a position for which a company fails to hire a worker in the US."

The H1B visa application has no requirement to try to recruit US workers which makes it easier to game the system to pay the lowest wage possible.

View on HN

so, you believe that the H1B worker shouldn't get a greencard?

If there are qualified American workers who are looking for work and applying for these positions then no, they should not. Legally they cannot either. Now on the flip side, if there is an actual shortage of qualified workers then sure. But right now, there is no shortage of qualified workers in most of these slots, especially if companies are willing to pay a competitive wage.

I think you need some context here, most of the time, these folks have already gone through the PERM process (at least the legitimate ones, ignoring the fraud for a second), and gotten to the next step, but USCIS will reset them back if they switch jobs. If the candidate is from India, they'll probably do this multiple times in their career because the green card wait time is very long for them. I have a colleague who's not from India, and they got through the process and even got their citizenship in 6 years, for Indians, that it'd take 12 years on average to go from finishing the PERM and getting a greencard (let alone applying for citizenship, which would need 3 more years)

If there is an American than can do the job then absolutely not the worker should NOT get a green card

I think you need some context here, most of the time, these folks have already gone through the PERM process (at least the legitimate ones, ignoring the fraud for a second), and gotten to the next step, but USCIS will reset them back if they switch jobs. If the candidate is from India, they'll probably do this multiple times in their career because the green card wait time is very long for them. I have a colleague who's not from India, and they got through the process and even got their citizenship in 6 years, for Indians, it'll take 12 years on average to go from finishing the PERM and getting a green card (let alone applying for citizenship, which would need 3 more years)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com