Comment by volkadav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by volkadav | Hacker News Reader

We already have visas specifically targeted at letting in exceptional talent: the O (temporary) and E (permanent) series. Of course, the tech industry lobbying is not generally speaking around those visas, but rather H1-B. So I don't think it is entirely correct to assert that industry wants more "genius visa" types, they want more journeymen (gender-neutral; the kind of staff that are competent but not exceptional, or else they would be here on an E-series). Why ever would they spend lobbying dollars unless there was an expectation that spending $X on Congress today will save them $Y (Y > X) in wages in the future?

Don't get me wrong, I've greatly valued the talented non-US folks I've had on my teams over the years. But I'd rather we gave them an easy path to citizenship if they want to be here rather than giving more of them the opportunity to be borderline indentured servants. Then they could fully enjoy the benefits of the society they're contributing to, including labor flexibility and the ability to bargain for a fair market wage. I'm sure the free-market enthusiasts running large tech companies or venture capital firms love that idea.

The allocation of visas for exceptional talent is surprisingly skewed. Only about 6% of 1 Million green cards issued each year are issued to people who are here for their skills. Rest goes to family based immigration.

This specially hurts engineers on H1B from India and China the most, because of per country limits, they have to wait for close to a decade. e.g., someone from India, who qualifies for the definition of "Exceptional" for EB2 bucket, should have applied in 2005 to get visa this month.

The problem with employment based 2nd and 3rd priority are the per country quotas, especially for people that count against the Indian quote. The EB2 quota is currently in 2005 for Indians.

As for EB1 (alien of extraordinary ability), it isn't a terrible good fit for programmers. The rules require an alien to meet 3 of 10 categories, but many of them are either wholly inapplicable to the industry, or only cover a narrow subset of it.

The O visa for all practical purposes is impossible to get. It can take years to get an EB visa. Most talented/skilled workers come here on an H1 or L1, and eventually get permanent residency via the EB visa.

For a company that's hiring and unable to find good programmers, the H1 is really the only visa available to them.

No they're not. You have to higher a lawyer and spend some money, but my dad got one coming from Canada and he was a middle manager at best (at the time).

It's become more difficult.

H1B does offer a path to citizenship, and I've never known an H1B not to at least get a greencard (some choose not to take the next citizenship step for good reasons). Contrast this to my Chinese working visa, which has no path to being a citizen (not that I would want that being a U.S. citizen).

> Why ever would they spend lobbying dollars unless there was an expectation that spending $X on Congress today will save them $Y (Y > X) in wages in the future?

Because those X lobbying dollars could make it possible for them to get people that allow them to create things that are much more valuable than $X (after subtracting wages) that they wouldn't have been able to create otherwise.

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