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Comment by lokar | Hacker News Reader

For people saying "they should have had the right visa", no one does this.

Any day of the week all of the big tech companies will have dozens of overseas engineers in the US attending meetings, and gasp working on-site (writing code, etc). They all have either tourist visas or visa waivers.

And it's the same thing when the US engineers visit the remote sites in other countries.

Regardless of what the letter of the law is, this has long been the practice, because it's the only workable solution and is clearly within the spirit of the law.

In this case LG was fitting out a new batter factory. That is a very complex setup with highly specialized machines. The ONLY way that was ever going to happen was with LG specialists coming over to do the setup and get the line working. And it's almost certain that getting "correct" visas for all these people would have been practically impossible, and has not been the actual practice for many decades.

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What you are describing - going to a remote site, sort out something with client and going back - is a business meeting and that falls under visa waiver / tourist visa in any country, because the worker who is doing the job is not paid by the local company, but by his employer in his home country.

With this logic it would be illegal to have a vacation and also write a code in a free time.

Ianal but my understanding is you can’t do any work , even coding, debugging, if you are in the us on a non work visa.

It does not matter who is funding you.

I could be wrong though. I have personally seen companies abuse this. I’m glad it’s be cracked down on.

I agree, it's probably the law (not just in the US, but most places). But, IME, it's almost universally ignored, and has to be.

I've never worked in fab/manufacturing, but I assume if you buy a bunch of gear from ASML (100s of millions of $), they are going to send a team out to help set it up and get it working for you. How else could that work? Some story for advanced batteries.

And a similar story for large (multi-national) tech/software companies. People need to travel back and forth between sites. Getting "work" visas for these short visits would be impractical.

Why are you happy to see a crack down? How do you think this should work?

The solution is to hire and train people inside the country. To build the knowledge base and skills within the country.

I totally understand that it is universally abused. I’ve seen it abused in white collar work. Companies need to adjust economically and plan their budgets accordingly.

Honestly, in many parts of the country there is no hope, no jobs, and just drugs. It’s time to invest in the U.S. citizen again.

I’m happy there is a crackdown because I have seen U.S. jobs lost due to this behavior. It’s actually the only reason I voted for trump.

In terms of very long term policy, you could try to train people to be able to do this. But, for advanced industrial processes (eg batteries) the way to do that is to establish a bunch of production lines. And that will NEVER happen in the US today without bringing in overseas experts to spend months starting them up.

Sure, but bring them over on the proper visa! Have them train — not compete against the U.S. worker on wages!

There is no practical visa to get. If they had to follow the letter of the law there would be no plant. They are not competing against US workers, there are no US workers to do the job.

And, FWIW, when I worked for big multi-national tech firms, it was the same thing having people from the EU offices visit. They were not doing jobs that Americans could do. We already hired all the Americans we could, and these people worked 50 weeks a year in the EU.

There are plenty of diverse visas available. Arguing that specific visa is not available and therefore you do not have to follow the law is not an argument I can follow. In my mind that is tantamount to fraud.

America is a very large country and I’m sure if you paid enough, and took the time to train the workers you can find people to do the work. If you have planned your budget and timeline around not taking this path then it seems unethical to me.

I’ve witnessed tech jobs done where there are plenty of capable people in the us available to do the work. They just cannot afford to post us wages and train the workers in the us.

I completely understand that some projects are different, and you need a specific skillset. But if you are going to do work on us soil you have to follow the law.

And I've interviewed many many hundreds of people for jobs at big tech companies, and there is no easy source of US people to fill these jobs. The non-US people brought over to fill them, and the people hired in overseas offices were dramatically better qualified than the US people we declined to hire.

I've also experienced this, and I completely agree. The reality is that you have to pay a very high salary in the US if you want someone to do a very good job. You probably have to recruit from the top universities, or the top candidate from other universities. Also, for a fraction of a US salary you can hire the very best bands in other countries, which is obviously a logical decision for any company to make.

That does not, however, excuse anyone from following the law.

I could be wrong, but the intent of the law is to encourage companies to train candidates to make them ready for the job. If you are just bringing in workers from other countries to work on us soil, even though there are us workers that can you do the job, in my mind you are essentially circumventing the intent of the law. This weakens the country for everyone.

Part of the problem right now with regards to skills is that there is essentially a threshold that has been crossed for outsourcing where the skills are just more prevalent in other countries. That's obviously not a great look for the United States.

Not surprising, but since when is something being hard or expensive a valid excuse to break the law?

There is nothing impractical about getting a business visa, in fact it's the same process as getting a tourist visa and some consulates issue just a generic B-1/2 visa, which can be either, depending on the purpose of your visit. And these visas are usually multi-entry, so you don't need to get one for every visit. Same for visa waiver - it can be used for either business or tourism, you just need to declare the purpose.

The problem in the topical case, is likely, that it was not a short visit but people being employed in the US illegally.

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