Breaking up with America | Hacker News Reader

Breaking up with America

earth.li

82 pointsedward82 comments

Rough.

I know a handful of talented developers stuck at a large company because of visa issues. They are too afraid to look for a better job because of immigration.

The U.S. seems much like the late Roman Empire in this sense. Whereas the growth and expansion of the Roman Empire was fueled by its wars and conquests, which brought back slaves and material wealth, the American Empire's growth has been fueled by skimming off the top of the middle and upper classes wherever there's been socioeconomic troubles elsewhere.

The U.S. can get away with policy inefficiencies like this because there's so many people who want to get in right now, and it actually works in favor of the Powers That Be, because they can get decent talent that's easy to "keep them in their place" because of said policy inefficiencies.

That having been said, the U.S. doesn't going blowing stuff up in Europe to make this advantages happen. For a lot of people, it is a beacon of opportunity. It's not all blue skies and roses though.

no, they just blow stuff up everywhere else in the world.. either literally, or politically..

The US has done its share of economic imperialism as well, just not through colonies-in-name.

>That having been said, the U.S. doesn't going blowing stuff up in Europe to make this advantages happen.

No, just in the third and developing world.

In Europe they just push and abuse diplomatically lesser states (up to the point to having supported or even established specific goverments and even dictatorships over the last 60 years) to get the trade agreements and diplomatic support they want.

Every time I encounter the way our immigration policies treat various co-workers of mine, I'm ashamed and scandalized.

They are the last people to be a "drain on our economy" and they're effectively chained to their jobs, which seems so archaic.

"they're effectively chained to their jobs, which seems so archaic."

Not just archaic, but wrong. And even if we say "but they're choosing to be here, so it still must be better than what they came from" - which isn't entirely false, but ignores some things - it still means that the rest of us are competing with these extra-abusable workers which some companies might not mind paying a premium for on paper.

Reserve some blame for your company: the reason H-1B programs are so widely abused is because industry can't give up cheap labor.

That's an oversimplification since the valley is the leading proponent of immigration reform (yes since the companies there will get better access to foreign workers) but every other developed nation seems to have a more sensible policy like allowing "work status" and not tying it to a specific company. Green cards effectively do that but unless you're Bieber or can afford the $1M investment visa you don't get one on day 1.

Green card is not a work permit, it is a residency status. People focus on the work part, but with choosing the green card, one is choosing between the US and the rest of the world for a very long time.

First of all, it requires you to reside in the US, permanently (hence the official name). You don't move home for longer periods (e.g. years), as getting back in the US is not automatic. I understand that the US sees entering in the US as privilege, but these people usually help the US economy, and not burden it, so there is that.

Second, it really limits your options. Suppose you decide to go outside of the US in just a few years after the green card, giving it up, and suddenly, for the rest of your life, whenever you enter in the US, you need to tell you life's story to the immigration officer and why you have applied for immigration status and what happened with it.

And if you have connections, properties or investments in Europe, you will be always in limbo whether the European bank will decline business with you based on your US tax status.

Going for a green card is a no-brainer for everyone who is going for US citizenship. Everyone else, take a better look on it, before you go for it.

+1 to what you said. In addition, green cards take 6-12 years to process for those born in India or China (6+ years for EB-2, 10+ years for EB-3), so even if people want to get them, the wait duration is insanely long. And while your green card is being processed, you have significant restrictions in changing your company, job title or location, else you might be put back to the beginning of the queue.

> Going for a green card is a no-brainer for everyone who is going for US citizenship. Everyone else, take a better look on it, before you go for it.

So what's the alternative? I'm asking out of honest curiosity, because H-1B seems to have at least two serious drawbacks: 1) if you want to switch jobs, you have to go through the lottery again (as far as I understand), and 2) your dependents are on H-4 visa, which means that they aren't allowed to get a job (except as a volunteer).

I'm on H1B too with H4 spouse. My alternative is just to go back to Europe, and live there - and considering several factors, it may not be that different from the US (in terms of overall better vs. worse).

1) Is not true. If you change jobs you don't have to go through the lottery again. It is just paperwork. 2) Is true and it is a big issue. It is sad to see educated spouses wasting their time here in the US

I agree that the US badly needs immigration reform, and that stories like this are painful to read. I see nothing productive about keeping someone like the author of this post out of the US, and I see plenty of harm.

I do think the US needs a skilled immigration system (perhaps a points based system like Australia), and perhaps we should increase the allotment (the US currently takes in about 1.2 million immigrants a year through a fairly byzantine system that makes it difficult for someone with no close US citizen relatives to immigrate here).

That's where my agreement with the lobbying efforts of large silicon valley companies ends, though. I'm not in favor of granting the HR departments of large silicon valley corporations control over the immigration system under the guise of immigration "reform". And while I do favor general skilled immigration, I don't think it should be specifically based on the notion of a tech or stem worker shortage, as I don't think the evidence supports this claim.

This was not the case 6-7 years ago in Canada. US-ians entering on a NAFTA visa were tied to their particular employer. They were able to apply for Permanent Resident status on this visa, which was helpful. The only change I am aware of is a shift from 1-year to 3-year visas. PR applications require multi-year time-in-Canada (and Quebec Selection if applying from Quebec).

While I've heard this argument over and over again that H1Bs are cheap labor, there is little hard evidence to support this. And while I agree, that there are cases of US visas (any visa, not just H1s) that are abused, generalizing the H1Bs as cheap labor is going too far. I speak from my own personal experience.

It's not always cheap labor, but when perusing the publicly listed wages for engineers on h1-b visas, they seem on average lower than the offers I've received for the same title at the same companies. It's hard to make any strong conclusions however, since most salaries are not published and just a job title does not say too much about how someone was hired into a company.

I agree generalizing it as cheap labor is not fair, but I do feel sorry for my friends just starting their careers with a serious lack of job mobility.

I have spoken to HR people that say H1Bs's are 15 to 20k/year cheaper on average. The trick is disconnecting what they do from what their job title is. After that you just pay them less for the same job.

That's not pure savings as there are plenty of paperwork costs etc, but you still end out ahead after ~1 year of work. O and just submit a lot of names to the lotto.

The salaries of the average H1B worker compared to the average American worker are probably relatively close.

But when I say H1B workers are "cheap labor" I'm claiming this on aggregate. If we take a charitable view that an H1B worker is paid $5K less than a non-H1B worker per year - and that's very charitable based on the numbers I've heard thrown around - a company like Tata or Accenture is looking at tens of millions of dollars in savings.

Note also my characterization was not on the quality of the work produced by H1B workers: I've seen some good and some bad, just like everyone else really. But having artificially cheap labor is inherently bad, both for the laborers that can't negotiate something better & workers in the rest of the industry whose wages are deflated to match.

Indeed, cheap labor is really only good for one group: the one that's constantly pushing to increase the H1B cap.

There is also the matter which was discussed in the original post: there are countless ways for employers to take advantage of immigrant workers. This makes them more desirable than native workers, who have more options.

So many engineers/professionals with H1B are hired by Microsoft, Google, Facebook and many others. Are you saying those programmers are getting paid lower than their non-H1B counterparts?

I can't speak to specific companies.

On aggregate, H1B workers are being paid less than non-H1B workers. It doesn't take long to see this in action: http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#s... -- click around and ask yourself if those average wages look right. My state's average wage was what you'd pay a person coming straight out of college.

I'd definitely wager that if you compared all Microsoft H1B software engineers to all non-H1B MS SE's, you'd see a drop in wages. But I don't have a reliable indication of non-H1B salaries at MS, so I can't say for sure.

> I'd definitely wager that if you compared all Microsoft H1B software engineers to all non-H1B MS SE's, you'd see a drop in wages.

Why would you think this?

That information is publicly available; e.g. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Microsoft/356252_Sala...

I'm not sure what the "average salaries" for non-immigrants are, but you can get an idea here:

http://www.salarylist.com/company/Microsoft-Salary.htm

It doesn't look that different.

> Why would you think this?

Because that's been the pattern for most businesses. I doubt Microsoft is any different - why do you think it would be?

> It doesn't look that different.

The two pages you present compare "all MS salaries, globally" to "all MS H1B salaries, globally" - that's a meaningless comparison. A software engineer H1B is going to make more than a non-H1B tester.

Note again, I'm not trying to indict MS for anything here: I'm simply betting that MS is enjoying lower worker costs by employing H1B workers, just like many IT companies do.

I hope that's not the case, both for the H1B worker AND non-H1B workers.

From my limited experience, H1Bs seem to make as much as non-H1Bs. But then I work in China as an American on a work visa.

>they're effectively chained to their jobs

Any restriction on the movement of free labor puts us all down. Their employers are less likely to treat them well because they know how dependent they are on the job just for the visa.

Where are they located?

It seems like the author is a Briton.

As a Swiss citizen I don't understand how anyone from a first-world country would like to move to the USA. It's a downgrade in every aspect.

Giving up democracy, social-security, the practical absence of crime for a job in a country where every other Tuesday someone goes on a killing-spree, where people go to the doctor for moar Vicodine, where police will kill you for a donut. Nope.

Edit: changed englishman to briton. Thank you, commenters.

> It seems like the author is an Englishman.

A UK citizen, probably, but I'd not assume that a guy named "McDowell" from Belfast is English.

As a Canadian who's lived in many parts of the world, including the US, it's the unbridled friendliness, optimism, hustle, and (generally speaking) caring only what you can do and not where you're from that made living in the US preferable to other countries.

The downside, of course, being the trade-offs you mention.

> It seems like the author is an Englishman.

Northern-Irish, so technically a Briton, but not an Englishman.

I had a friend of mine who had emigrated from Iran to England, (obtaining English citizenship). After 6 years in England, he came to the US and eventually got citizenship here. I asked him the same question, "Why would someone move to the US from a first world country?" I found his response interesting: "Because in Europe, you stay where they put you."

Heard the same about a co-worker from China who'd first moved to Germany and then to Canada. Moved to Canada because no matter how long you are in Germany, you will always be a foreigner.

I am an American who has a pretty strong desire to leave, at least for a few years. But your post is such a laughable caricature.

Maybe they want to live somewhere that people have the freedom to build mosques with minarets and where nearly every women born in the country had suffrage for their whole lifetime?

Switzerland is pretty special, but so are the swathes of America that aren't on the coasts.

Only from flyover America comes this constant trickle of reports of yet another female principal standing at the school door checking the hemlines of her charges. As for mosques with minarets, I saw this mosque (a big one) in a large Southern city that looked vaguely like a church, didn't have a minaret, didn't even mention that it was in fact a mosque, it just had a three-letter acronym on the side in green letters. This is a strong statement for a religion that actively seeks converts. John 8:7 please.

What do you mean about giving up democracy? It's unclear what you're referring to.

You don't get to vote.

Technically, we do get to vote. The way our votes are counted makes them less valuable, and our votes aren't as strong as special interests, though.

But, the US is a democracy by name. I'm not sure where you're coming from by saying it isn't.

A foreigner working in the USA doesn't get to vote for the laws they live under. That's what I'm trying to communicate.

Does a foreigner working in Switzerland get to vote in any election? It's my impression that all countries restrict voting to their own citizens.

I'm sure the Swiss do, but just an aside that plenty of EU countries allow members from other countries to vote in their elections. E.g. here in Ireland I think we only restrict constitutional referenda to Irish citizens.

It seems it does vary heavily by country [1]. My country (Romania) does not give any voting rights to foreigners (AFAIK), and I thought the US didn't either.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_foreigners_to_vote

> for a job in a country where every other Tuesday someone goes on a killing-spree

As a European living in California (Orange County currently, but have spent some time in Silicon Valley too), I strongly disagree with that. Most parts of California are safer than my home country, and people definitely do not shoot each other "every Tuesday" (I know you were exaggerating, but still...)

Does Switzerland have any restrictions to people for work permits or immigration?

Redmond. ;)

If you were born in Northern Ireland, you are eligible to apply for the Diversity Visa lottery, if you want to try that route. 'Winning' nets you a green card (yes, this is a real thing; the US immigration system is crazy). There's a low chance of success - looks like 1.25-2% for Europeans, according to Wikipedia.

https://www.dvlottery.state.gov http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/dive... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa

Britons born in other parts of the UK are not eligible.

The next lottery takes place next year, applications can be made from October. The only qualifications needed, other than nationality, are a high school education and two years work experience (http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/dive...).

Question: How do "free market" proponents support the free flow of (financial) capital across borders but not the free flow of (human) capital across borders?

I appreciate any insight/references regarding this topic.

EDIT: I know this is a loaded question but I think it hits to the heart of this immigration issue. I trust there are many smart (and civil) members of this community from across the politecon spectrum who could provide more insight on this or related debates.

That's a loaded question :) most of what I read by libertarians is supportive of free immigration, e.g. http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/tag/immigration/

This is economic, not political, but there is a good Planet Money on the economic perspectives on immigration:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/02/298383246/episode-...

What free market proponents are in favor of free trade but against free immigration? In my experience part of the libertarian ethos is about opening up immigration.

The only way I can imagine a free-market proponent who is in favor of free trade holding consistent beliefs which are also against immigration is if they are for immigration from a trade perspective, but against it on some other grounds such as national defense or national identity. You can imagine that the justification for at least the national defense reasoning is that if you let in a lot of people, you'll end up allowing some sort of fifth column or something to develop in the heart of the nation. Frankly, I don't buy any of the objections I've seen to basically unlimited immigration, but there are at least some that are intellectually consistent with a free-market position.

You can find a laundry list of anti-immigration positions (many of which are at least intellectually consistent with a free market philosophy), alongside their specific refutations over at http://openborders.info

Thanks, http://openborders.info looks like a great starting point.

A nation is in a sense an extended family. Members feel some duty to look out for each other beyond simple self interest. This breaks down when too many foreigners crash the party. They don't have skin in the game or ties to the soil. They will leave at the first sign of serious trouble. They will be less inclined to think about the long term.

As a pragmatic libertarian, I'm fine with the free flow of capital across borders, but people are not mere capital. We are agents with opinions about how the world should be, who reserve the right under certain circumstances to back up those opinions with force. Unless you're willing to have a nightmare police state like North Korea, you can't maintain a civilized society by fiat. You have to have consensus among the governed. Hence nationalism: the principle that political borders should coincide with cultural ones. If you break that, if you try to impose a single state on people of different cultures who have different ideas about how things should be, you end up with, as has been demonstrated over and over again, misery at best and genocide at worst. How many times does history have to teach us that lesson before we learn it?

The real solution is to move on from this 19th-century idea that having a job has to mean locating your body in physical proximity to your employer. The round-trip delay for a lightspeed signal across the Atlantic is less than a tenth of a second. Being located in Belfast should not be an obstacle to working for an American company.

While personally I am generally for both free markets and open borders I think most people make these judgements based on their understanding of their own self-interest - as they probably should. Depending on your specific situation you can easily be for both of these seemingly contradictory positions.

Imagine you are an electrician working on a foreign funded construction project. Your pay comes from foreign investment while your wage rate is boosted by reduced competition from foreign workers.

Or imagine you are a politician who is supported by multinational manufacturers and investors but know immigrants don't tend to vote for you. I bet you will be pro-free market and anti-immigration (and your opponents will hold the opposite views).

Or imagine you run a US based tech business with international ambitions. You will likely be for free international investment and more immigration for high tech workers.

I find it much more useful to try to understand people's incentives than their professed philosophy if you want to explain their behavior. While people hold all kinds of views about things that don't directly affect them. Philosophy often gets left behind when it's implications start to actually matter to them.

> I find it much more useful to try to understand people's incentives than their professed philosophy if you want to explain their behavior.

Sure, but if you want to change their behavior then it helps to be able to show that it contradicts their stated beliefs.

Good question. Here's my attempt at a 'free market' answer:

When you import capital, the cost of that capital is borne by a single individual. When you import labour, the cost is spread amongst society.

Consider a US farmer who sells part of his farm for UK pounds. The price is paid by the farmer and no-one else. But now imagine the farmer wants to import a rural Indian laborer to work on his farm. The farmer pays wages but other US citizens must either (a) provide hospitals, schools, and roads for the labourer; or (b) bear the costs of letting the laborer live in abject poverty (eg. slums, higher crime rates, environmental damage). In true 'free market' fashion US citizens may decide that those costs outweigh the benefit of slightly cheaper farm produce, and so the labourer is denied entry into the US. This is not a restriction on free trade but simply the result of supply not matching demand.

Perhaps a purely free market approach would be to charge an 'immigrant fee' which equals the present value of (a) the expected cost of providing social services and infrastructure to the immigrant; less (b) the total expected tax receipts from the immigrant. An Indian labourer might not be able to pay the fee, but a computer programmer from the UK probably could. In fact, if the expected tax receipts were larger than the expected costs to society, the US might pay the programmer to immigrate!

>Question: How do "free market" proponents support the free flow of (financial) capital across borders but not the free flow of (human) capital across borders?

Lots of free market proponets, especially those in the higher echelons, are also full in favor of immigration. For them it means the availability of cheaper, less demanding, employees willing to work for worse working conditions for them, without having to go to China to find them.

I think that proponents of the "free market" come in two flavors: poor idealists that really believe in the thing, and rich people who are its greatest advocates only to use the notion as they see fit to influence policy in their favor. For the latter group, it's all about their bottom line.

If they have an oligopoly, they want laws and regulations to block the entrance to the market to newcomers.

If they produce something that has competition from abroad they ask for subsidies, tarrifs and bailouts.

If they want to take on something that's free or communal and make a business out of it, they want "deregulation" and "freer market".

If they make their money out of human capital, either skilled or unskilled, they want more immigrants and less labor protections, to have more access to cheaper workers.

You could always try for the O-1 visa. When everything else failed me, that's the route I went. I've now obtained an O-1 twice. It costs more, and the requirements are more stringent; but if you are able to get it, it's extremely efficient. The entire process only takes ~a month.

Hey! I'm actually going down this route as well. I'd love more information and maybe chat if you have a few minutes. Any chance you could shoot me an email? I'm chintan@capp.io.

Guys, don't go private. Do request and share in the comments please :)

What constitutes as "exceptional" ? I'm worried I wouldn't qualify for that criteria.

The criteria are outline on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa

http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers...

I'm in the exact same situation. I wasn't selected for the H1-B lottery twice in a row, and have to leave after seven years in the US. Oh well, I hear Vancouver is nice :)

Are H-1B extensions also subject to lottery?

No, but there is a 6-year limit to being under the H-1B status.

Can't it be extended for a year at a time as long as a permanent residency application is pending?

I think so, but you can't apply for permanent residence if you came to the US to study. You have to first transition to a diffenrent visa status, usually H1-B. However if, for example, the cap has been full since you graduated college...

Yes. They are subject to a lottery when te number of applications exceeds the number of available spots. This has been true for the last couple years, and last year was almost three times over.

Why not an L1 if you have a job with the same company? Seems relatively easy.

Man, I would love to work in some other country than the US, but getting approval to work elsewhere is apparently harder than getting approval for people elsewhere to get approval to work here.

Why isn't the author getting another L-1 Visa? Since his company has a base in SF and Belfast, that should be possible, right?

L-1 visas are non-immigrant visas, and they require certain periods of absence from America in order to renew them, as well as lengths of employment at the company before you are eligible.

He has to have worked at the overseas company for one year out of the last three years for an L-1.

I'm not sure this is particularly interesting for Hacker News?

Not trying to troll, and I apologize if I'm way off the mark on this. I don't intend to cause offence.

Hi! thanks for contributing to Hacker News.

If you don't think an article is HN-material, please use the "flag" link on the post, rather than posting a comment to that effect. You may not see the flag link if you don't have a high enough Karma score yet.

Personally, I've seen advanced discussion on US visas on here before, and I would assume that this would be of interest to many in this community.

Thank you for the welcome. :-)

It's not really an advanced discussion or even jumping off point. It's just one person saying they don't live in the US anymore.

And yah, I don't have enough karma. Though it appears I lost a point for positing my original comment. :-) C'est la vie.

Because HN has a built-in balance of "more upvotes than downvotes," it shouldn't be difficult to get upvotes.

It's not an 'advanced discussion' in terms of technology but we have to face the fact that there are many people who work here in the States and want to work in the states that get hampered by immigration rules. My girlfriend is working on her PhD in CS and has faced huge uphill battles to get into for internships simply because of where she's from. She just wants to work on tech, but the hurdles she has to go through are ridiculous compared to what citizens or even immigrants from other countries have to face.

Definitely relevant for any non-US citizens reading HN.

Why? There is no immigration policy discussion, nor notable deviation from immigration status quo for the past decade at least.

The why is: if it's within a general relevancy, and is upvoted enough, then it's relevant to Hacker News. That's vague, but it's not far off base. A lot of the value created in that scenario, is in the discussion that typically occurs here, where people are able to share their knowledge and experiences related to the initial link that acts as a spark.

For example, in this thread, SeoxyS discusses the O-1 visa, which is a situation timtamboy63 is going through at the moment. That kind of connection and knowledge sharing can be very valuable.

Don't make the mistake of thinking most of the value comes from the linked story. Most of the value here is generated by the community itself.

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