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Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a MAGA thing. H1-B is a bad program.

I have no problem with someone getting a green card, citizenship, TPS, etc in the US. I think there should be a lot faster routes for that. Let the software devs come in and become citizens or permanent residents, I don't care about that.

What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment. That means they'll accept lower wages and worse working conditions as they can't simply quit and switch jobs. The entire thing is designed to suppress wages in general.

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If you look at it in a vacuum sure. When the same administration is actually floating the idea of making the program more coercive by making it so you can be deported immediately after losing your job I think it’s pretty reasonable to recognize the coercive nature of the program isn’t their concern.

Exactly. My entire problem with H1-B is the coercive nature of it. That is the thing that is ultimately designed to suppress wages.

There's a bunch of levers you could pull to stop it from being such a huge negative, faster paths to citizenship, looser requirements for switching jobs, higher minimum salaries. All these things would improve conditions for the H1-B applicant.

That's why I call it a bad program.

Put another way I don’t think this policy is a good way to address the issues you’re talking about because it’s just moving jobs out of the U.S. altogether.

Jobs that Americans weren't getting because it was cheaper to hire an H1-B indentured servant instead. The current administration will no doubt find a way to make everything worse, but they didn't start with a good program to begin with.

Just because the status quo isn’t good doesn’t mean we should blindly support anyone changing it even if their results will be even worse.

I think I'm more likely to become a nun than blindly support anything from the current administration.

Well I’m not sure you will find many people who feel the program is perfect as-is but the natural interpretation of what you said in context seemed to be that we should at least temper our criticism.

> What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company

They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them. It may reset the timeline for applying for a green card, depending on the location and job type of the new job. Generally, if it's the same type of job in the same city, it doesn't reset.

People (including Indians) do it all the time.

Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?

In Japan, your work visa belongs to you. You’re free to quit your job immediately upon getting your visa. It’s mandatory to notify immigration of changes to your employment status within 2 weeks but they’re not deporting you just because you switched jobs.

I used to work as a contractor in the earlier stages of my career, that meant that sometimes jobs only lasted 3 months.

> They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them.

That's a much smaller pool of companies. The company already has to be participating in the H1-B program in order to sponsor someone.

> Do you know counterexamples?

Most of them happen under the likes of the EU where citizens of member nations have the freedom to migrate.

But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.

> Most of them happen under the likes of the EU where citizens of member nations have the freedom to migrate.

Yes, but this isn't the same. As a US citizen, I don't have that freedom in the EU, correct?

> But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.

True, but we're talking about employment visas. What the US has is likely standard in most countries when you don't have permanent residence.

Not to mention that many (most?) countries have a much more difficult path obtaining permanent residency compared to the US. You want to live there? Get an employment visa and stay on that visa forever.

> Yes, but this isn't the same. As a US citizen, I don't have that freedom in the EU, correct?

If you are from Cuba, you don't have access to the H1-B program. All nations have restrictions one which nations can and can't participate in their immigration and to what extent.

So yes, it is the same, the US just isn't a part of the EU. The relationship between EU nations is much closer to the relationship (pre-trump) between the US and Canada.

> True, but we're talking about employment visas.

No, actually what you specifically asked for was

> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?

A green card is not a visa, but it is a mechanism to go to a country for employment without having you legal status tied to a specific company.

> If you are from Cuba, you don't have access to the H1-B program. All nations have restrictions one which nations can and can't participate in their immigration and to what extent.

Yes, but the restrictions on which countries' citizens can be part of the H-1B program is tiny compared to the list of countries that cannot participate in the EU program you're mentioning. With the US, it's practically a rounding error (or was, at least pre-Trump).

> No, actually what you specifically asked for was

>> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?

Yes, I said "Going to a country for employment". If you have a green card, you are not going to the US for employment. You are in the US, or going to the US to receive the green card. Getting employment is incidental.

> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?

TN visa

By counterexamples, I meant other countries where you get in via an employment visa and don't have your presence tied to the employer.

TN visa is much more restrictive than H1B. Only for citizens of two countries, and only for certain professions. I know Canadians who have no hope of getting a TN visa (wrong profession), but have come on H1B.

Its an example right? now you are shifting goalposts to be easily available to everyone or something.

I guess I wasn't being clear. The original comment I was responding to was:

> What I do care about is the fact that H-1B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment.

I am merely pointing out that most countries lock employment visas to the employer. It's fine not to like it, but I'm highlighting that this is pretty normal - the US is not an outlier.

thats fine but what was your intention behind asking this

> Do you know counterexamples?

I answered that above:

> By counterexamples, I meant other countries where you get in via an employment visa and don't have your presence tied to the employer.

I remember when twitter was sold and Elon "Nazi" Musk fired like 4/5 of the staff, all that remained were H1B's

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