H-1B Visa Holders Disappear from US Housing Market | Hacker News Reader

H-1B Visa Holders Disappear from US Housing Market

newsweek.com

32 pointsthelastgallon28 comments

All the people gloating about more domestic jobs forgot that corporations are now outsourcing more than ever. It’s a lose lose for employees.

> All the people gloating about more domestic jobs forgot that corporations are now outsourcing more than ever.

Further action needs to be taken against that. Personally I think offshoring is a far worse problem for workers than H1-Bs, but a harder one to solve.

H1-Bs should be limited to people significantly better than average, and some innovative regulation needs to be concocted to discourage and punish offshoring.

"Personally I think offshoring is a far worse problem for workers than H1-Bs".

Yes, it's complicated. Arguably, when foreigners buy American made software eg, Microsoft products, they are offshoring software development to America.

So... if you start limiting software "imports" aka offshoring, other countries will do the same. So Microsoft will sell a lot less.

> So... if you start limiting software "imports" aka offshoring, other countries will do the same. So Microsoft will sell a lot less.

1. You don't really have to target software "imports," especially since software is only part of the offshoring problem. It makes more sense to go directly after certain kinds of employment and labor contracting agreements.

2. Also, you really only have to target India and you solve most of the problem.

Did they proofread this at all?

> the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that non-permanent residents ... would no longer be eligible for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)

> The reason why the number of FHA loans going to non-permanent residents has dropped in recent months, according to Thomas, is mostly that they are not buying anymore.

What? No, the reason why the number of FHA loans going to non-permanent residents has dropped is that they are not eligible for them. It literally says so at the beginning of the article.

No more foreign talent for the US of A. You are on your own now :)

That's not necessarily what this means though. Is it.

I bought a house while on H1B in 2014.

If the climate was like it is now back then, I would have waited for my GC or, for everything to calm down.

But I wouldn't have left...

Edit: BTW it was far far from a low-risk venture in 2014.

Oh, no, the horror! Reduced supply and increased wages - who could possibly want that!?

How awful that I'll never have to field another recruiting call asking about my 25 years of React experience.

exactly. the talent was already here! Just more expensive.... less billions for CEOs the horror!

> the talent was already here

Yeah, the talent shaped over many years by experience brought to you from near and far.

The question is, can your talent remain competitive and can you make new one?

> The question is, can your talent remain competitive and can you make new one?

I've worked with tons of H1-Bs: their talent distribution isn't any better than native-born Americans and companies aren't any more selective when hiring them. Also, almost all of them were US-educated.

agree. E pluribus unum, for sure

Considering how aggressively the industry has been outsourcing _before_ this change, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion this is going to end in a renaissance for US tech workers.

Bye

The U.S. has almost no skilled immigration until 1990, with the exception of German scientists fleeing the country in World War II. Yet it became a world power.

Hey now, my ancestors came over in the 1700s and there were pretty skilled!

The US definitely had lots of skilled immigration before 1990. For example, almost the entire Avro Arrow development team moved from Canada to NASA in the 1960's.

> The U.S. has almost no skilled immigration until 1990,

Where did you get this statistic?

The immigrants before 1990 had all kinds of skills, including people like Einstein, Von Neumann, Fermi, the data wasn't collected, probably because immigration was open. They didn't need special visas.

Immigration decidedly was not "open" when Einstein immigrated.

That's not all.

This is even before the HIRE Act.

This is only for FHA loans, in which you can put down less than 20%. They can still get traditional mortgages.

People on a temporary visa should not be given mortgages anyway. Are the banks dumb? If they leave you're never going to recoup the balance.

It’s secured by an asset - the house - and if you put 20% down, the bank should be able to get its money back assuming there isn’t a housing crash

it's collateralized debt. Definitionally they will recoup the balance.

House prices in Austin have dropped 20%.

It sounds like if you put down less than 20% that part is insured by somebody else so the government doesn't need to re-coup the full 100% to be even as they can get 10+% from somebody else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FHA_insured_loan#Mortgage_insu...

Why would an H-1B holder even be eligible for a program like that? Makes no sense.

> People on a temporary visa should not be given mortgages anyway.

Uh did you think that through?

> Are the banks dumb? If they leave you're never going to recoup the balance.

Maybe you believe someone will pack a house into a suitcase when they leave or that foreclosure isn't a thing.

From a capitalist perspective, encouraging guest workers to take on fixed collateralized debt is an excellent anchor to reduce turnover, in addition to holding their workers' visas hostage and nudging them to start families. The result is cheaper, compliant workers who won't unionize, strike, or complain about abuse. As long as it's kept secret and doesn't make it to social media or the legacy news. It's similar to students loans and personal debt in that way because it keeps people tethered to a job they might hate.

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