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Comment by raz32dust | Hacker News Reader

I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa. Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? People buy homes because it is a reasonable belief that they are going to be living here permanently and it has historically been true.

In any case I don't see the point you are making. Should America be treating immigrants poorly because whichever country you're in makes you slightly uncomfortable to buy a home there? It's not an excuse for all this pain and cruelty. America should hold itself to higher standards.

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There is a very common pattern of people who go to work to some other, richer country for a set period of time with the sole purpose of making enough money to achieve an objective back home (provide for family, buy a house, retire, etc). I don't know how common this is between H-1B applicants, but it's extremely common in the EU for example.

in the EU there is no need for any visa (within member states) and essentially it's a desired feature of the EU.

Another point is that speaking the local language in a richer country of the EU is less likely than speaking English (with English being official only in Ireland and Malta), so it's harder to settle - esp. with kids and school.

I am well aware that no visa is required, but that's beside the point. The point is that at least here, it's a common occurrence.

It used to be common in the US too. My great-grandfather, for instance, planned to go to the US and work for five years to afford a farm back home. He had earned enough in three (and also contracted tuberculosis, and also the elderly couple whose farm he had agreed to buy weren't ready to sell yet, so he invested the money in bank shares, but the bank was fraudulent and went under...)

> Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency?

I agree with your overall point but the answer here is money. The earning potential in the US vs. e.g. India is drastic.

It's not really money. Frankly, no 20 year old thinks that much about money. They do things that they like, whether that is going to school, working at a job, or starting up. And you don't know about the broken immigration system from the outside. The reason this problem is unique to India is due to country caps/DEI which prevents people from India on H-1B from getting a green card.

I disagree that no 20 year old thinks that much about money.

If you're lucky enough to have had rich enough parents to not have to worry about money too much, yes, you'll probably optimize for doing things you enjoy, but people who spend a lot of their younger years with money issues will sometimes obsess about it and really focus their lives around 'getting rich'.

I've noticed have similar phenomena with people who are deprived of certain important needs in their youth - people who are starved of a certain type of parental affection overcompensating by orienting their lives around getting more of it (eg women with daddy issues who are very promiscuous), people who feel disrespected and downtrodden who become obsessed with social status, people who get bullied and get into martial arts...

If you've ever read Gone With The Wind, there's a line where Scarlett O'Hara says "with God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again". I suspect that many people who have similar experiences will react by orienting their lives in a similar manner. "I was deprived of something important, so I will react by over-indexing on that important thing I was deprived of, to avoid the future pain of being again deprived of it".

* If you're lucky enough to have had rich enough parents to not have to worry about money too much, yes, you'll probably optimize for doing things you enjoy, but people who spend a lot of their younger years with money issues will sometimes obsess about it and really focus their lives around 'getting rich'.*

I think you’re in the right ballpark, and I have seen it play out exactly that. However, I think it is even more common for rich kids to obsess about getting richer.

In my experience, as long as their needs are being met, most people get used to whatever lifestyle they are raised in, and stick with it. if they grew up in a family that chases wealth, and equates income with self worth, then they tend to keep doing that.

Yes but if you are worth that money to any company why would you assume one day it will all just end? That's not typical or normal for most careers

I think that in general, expecting a 'career for life' with one company, as was common in the 1950s, is a bit naive today. Companies change, needs change, people change, just because you like the job now doesn't mean you will in ten years. To give a tech industry example, right now you could be working for a cool startup, in a few years the startup gets acquired by a large tech company, they change the management style, it's not fun anymore. Like imagine you got hired at Github around 2010, would you definitely still be there today? Or even in 2020?

Also, you have plenty of people who will have career plans like "work in finance in NYC for 5-10 years, amass a fat pile of cash, and retire to a small farm in the middle of nowhere". If I were living in China or India, I might see "spending 5-10 years in the US earning large piles of money and returning to my homeland to retire and live a life of leisure" as a valid career path.

It's not that naive I work with tons of people who have had decades long careers at one big tech company. Immigrants and citizens alike

> Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency?

For the same reason I temporarily resided elsewhere: An opportunity to expand my horizons, experience another culture, and oh yeah... the money. In fact, through much of history it was common for skilled workers to go abroad and bring skills home, this was how industry got kickstarted in many places and there were even various formal programs for this. This is even the case for skilled labor that doesn't qualify for an H1-B visa. It's commonplace for aspiring chefs to work in kitchens around the world under the tutelage of well-regarded chefs to learn from them and then apply the same techniques and operating models to their own restaurant at home.

You are mentally applying reasoning that assumes permanency to a situation that explicitly says it doesn't include permanency.

> I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant"

I'm curious as a non-American - labelled by who? People who want to talk tough on immigration but benefit from H1Bs in their companies? Or the system itself in some way?

By the government: "This nonimmigrant classification..." [1]

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/h-1b-spec...

i think people are missing here that it is non immigrant because it’s temporary. but it is dual intent so you can intend to become an immigrant (permanent resident) on this visa. there are other nonimmigrant visas that are not dual intent such as B-1/B-2 or F-1. To get those visas you cannot have intent to immigrate.

It's a non-immigrant visa, because the law uses "immigrant" as a technical term that does not match the common usage. For international comparisons, it makes more sense to say that H-1B is an initial immigrant visa that grants you a temporary residence and work permit. Most countries expect you to immigrate and live several years as a temporary resident before you can apply for permanent residency.

My personal rule of thumb is that any non-citizen who becomes a tax resident due to hitting the six-month rule is an immigrant.

> I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa.

The fundamental problem is people spreading this lie. It has a path to permanent immigration, but it is a non immigrant visa, it is very clearly define and describe as such.

It is idiotic to build a life in a country where you only have a temporary visa. I've lived in 4 countries and I never assumed I would forever be allowed to stay in any of them.

The US do not owe a path to permanent residency to anyone.

Curious how long have you lived in 4 countries beyond college? No kids, marriage, social life?

Grew up in one for ~25 years, lived in 2 for roughly 1.5 years each, then moved to the fourth for the past ~15 years. Married with 2 children. What's your point?

I never even thought of buying a house or "build a permanent life" in a country before I was given permanent residency with no condition. And even then, I worked as fast as possible to get citizenship. When you are a guest in a country you don't assume they'll keep you around forever.

So you're claim of 4 countries isn't applicable to most people buying homes while on visa. Nobody on visa is buying a house in 1.5 years. People buy homes when they've been here for several years and have a permanent residency application in progress. So that's more like the last country where you've been.

Whole point of this thread is that it isn't unreasonable to have kids and family and a house and social life when you've lived somewhere for 10+ years. So any action on part of the government should at least give the space to get things in order or find alternatives. This is a fair and humane expectation.

Duration has nothing to do with it. One should not buy a house while on a temporary visa, period. You should not feel entitled to stay in a country just because you've been there X years on a temporary visa.

If someone gets permanent residency in a country I see no problem if they want to buy a house after 6 months, more power to them.

The abnormality is this idiotic 10+ years time that people are allowed to stay on a temporary visa. This is what needs to end. This is what makes people entitled - understandably I would even say. People are foolish, but I still blame the game, not the players.

The question isn't about entitlement at all. It's about decency. I agree, better to not allow people to stay too long on temporary status. But it was and is allowed today. So there are people who have been on temporary status for 15, even 20 years. Fully legally. If your policies require them to just leave one fine day without any recourse, it is not decent.

An example might be someone who is renting your house. If you allowed them to live in your house for 10 years, would you ask them to leave without notice or with just the minimum 1 month notice? Yes they are not entitled to anything more than what was in the contract but would you do that? I wouldn't. Most people I know would work with the tenant and give them more time to figure things out. And if all of this was done with that decency, I am fine with it.

"Decency" is subjective so I don't really see the point of debating it. The rules were 1) clear from the beginning when it comes to a status being temporary and 2) always potentially subject to change since countries change their policies all the time. To be honest, that's the only objective thing to look at.

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