H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation | Hacker News Reader

H-1B Visa Cap: The Imminent Threat to US Tech Innovation

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5 pointssunilkumarc13 comments

"Immigrants are a Big Force in Driving American Innovation" but h1b workers are not immigrants. They and their family have very little rights as workers in the US.

If the motivation is really to bring innovation to the US, cancel the h1b status and simplify the green card sponsorship via employment. But let's be real, that's not the goal. The goal is to bring servile underpaid peons to the valley to drag tech wages down.

I was an h1b for 4 years.

How about banning the biggest H-1B abusers (Infosys, TCS) from applying new visa for a few years? (They are also the biggest visa applier)

http://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pro...

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-visas-tech-w...

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-n...

Or, as proposed elsewhere, keep the cap and remove the lottery system. Grant visas to the top paid applicants. This removes allows companies with a need to great engineers to pay for them, and reduces the influx of lower quality H1-B's.

If quality is your concern, shouldn't you propose a point based system instead?

It's not specifically to address the quality, but the way in which those employees are valued. If a company wants to bring in a crappy engineer for $200k/year, I think that's their business. If we put in place a point system (education, years of experience, technologies), you'll simply end up with all out fraud and resume packing. It ultimately comes down to what a sponsoring company is willing to pay. Let the market decide which ones are most valuable, rather than a random lottery.

Quality is how employees are valued in a business. That's how salaries are made. Overpaying in an industry is just a big of a problem as underpayment, it's far from a free market as you think.

Point based systems work in many countries very well, I don't know why you think "paying" for citizenship is the answer. What's stopping anyone in the world to simply pay a troll company for guaranteed live and work status in the US?

That's an idea. But the problem is once the petition is accepted the employer could reduce the non-immigrant's salary. I'm not a lawyer but I don't think it's illegal.

The main issue is that H1B workers have very little rights. If they get let go, they technically have to leave the country in the next 24 hours - the 30 day grace period is a myth. They are very easy to bully and put up with a lot of shit from their employer simply to be able to stay in the country.

One solution would be to grant an H1B that would be valid even after termination/resignation - maybe for a certain amount of time like a month or two. This would allow a worker to leave an unreasonable employer and give him a chance to find a new gig.

However, I also believe that there is no talent shortage in tech and the H1B program is used to try to drag wages down.

Obviously there would need to be some level of enforcement to prevent "wage adjustment" once the applicant arrives.

The primary reasoning behind the suggestion is to prevent the H1B from being used as a mechanism for driving down wages.

Us companies can open offices overseas, and remote collaboration for me surpasses regular one nowadays.

Remote collaboration depends on so many variables that I think you are more likely a bigo.t who wants immigrant out of your country

I am not an US citizen so it is hard to call me bigot with relation to US dual intent visas. But H1-B is used to fuck both the foreigners and the domestic US programmers.

Bottom line is people are looking for a better lifestyle, not just a cool tech job. So yes we will continue to come, and maybe even marry local ladies. 'ALL YOUR JOBS ARE BELONG TO US'

You should use the right terminology. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa, though it allows the possibility of becoming an immigrant in the US.

A more accurate phrase is "guest workers", but given your context you probably meant to use the word "foreigners". Someone on the flip side might use the phrase "indentured servant".

In the larger debate, the criticisms are well known (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_pro... ), and many seem both of substance and disconnected to xenophobia. For example, some opponents to the current H-1B process want the H-1B visa holder to be able to change jobs without losing their place in line for the green card, which would benefit the ex-pat worker whose options are otherwise "grin-and-bear-it" at a hated job or leave the US.

As such, it's likely that your prediction of bigotry based on the information you read, has a high enough error rate, and a strong likelihood of poisoning the discussion, that it's not worthwhile to state.

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