8 ms·

This is why I strongly believe that H1Bs should be given out to employees that are offered the highest salary. Clearly there is no shortage if you are not will

by vostok 10y ago

This is why I strongly believe that H1Bs should be given out to employees that are offered the highest salary. Clearly there is no shortage if you are not willing to pay one of the highest salaries. Yea, this wouldn't be perfect, but it's much better than the significantly more gameable lottery system we have now.

hkmurakami 10y ago
In addition, I hope that we can somehow figure out a way to give visas to STEM graduate degree earners over ones employed by such shops. That segment seems significantly underserved by the current system and it's resulting in a reverse brain drain away from the country even though we are investing in their education.
- vostok 10y ago
  I'm not sure that it makes sense to target STEM graduates in this way. Most of them would receive visas based on their high salaries whereas an explicit rule would only serve to increase the number of low quality STEM degrees.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Yeah that did cross my mind, and now that it's been brought up, I'm inclined to think you are right. I just learned that a bunch of acquaintances lost out on their H1B lotteries and will be shipped out of the country to international offices once their OPT terms end in 1-2 months. Since they were employed by strong companies, their salaries likely would have been high enough to qualify them for H1B visas under a system you propose.
    - jacalata 10y ago
      Actually I wonder if entry level employees would be crowded out completely in an auction system - wouldn't it end up being all senior engineers?
- morgante 10y ago
  I don't like the idea of further endorsing and supporting credentialism. If you can get a high salary, then you're in demand and we should keep you. If you have a STEM degree but can't even get a good job, then I don't see any reason to grant a visa.
IndianAstronaut 10y ago
Having a bidding system for H1Bs would quickly resolve all these issues.
- eva1984 10y ago
  That will make company like MS/Google/FB/AMAZN, invincible. Startups are going to be starved. They will not have that much leverage to recruit desired talents.
  - fra 10y ago
    Are you saying startups could not compete without "cheap" H1B labor?! The H1B is explicitly not supposed to bring in cheaper labor.
    - michel-slm 10y ago
      I think what he means is, startups can't deal with the uncertainty and lead times the current H-1B system imposes. Large companies just project how many openings they would have in October next year, hire appropriately, and park them in offshore offices if they didn't make the lottery. And they can afford the application fee too
      - eru 10y ago
        An auction system would have far less uncertainty.
        eva1984 10y ago
        Big companies can afford to pay, startups are not.
        vostok 10y ago
        I don't work for a startup, but I do work for a small business. The current system does not work for us because there is a lot of uncertainty in the application process. An auction system would actually be an improvement for us and many other small businesses.
kolinko 10y ago
But then only H1Bs from Silicon Valley would get accepted, because that's where they pay the most. Other states, and even other cities in California (like Los Angeles) would suffer from the lack of opportunity to hire immigrants.
- vostok 10y ago
  If salaries in those areas are not as high as in the Bay Area, it means there is no shortage. It just means the salaries are too low to attract talent. There are plenty of companies outside the Bay Area that pay comparable salaries. I have first or very close second hand experience with LA, Chicago, Seattle, Colorado, and New York. If other companies want to hire foreigners they should be willing to pay more.
  - megablast 10y ago
    No it doesn't. San Fran has higher salaries across the board, to go with the higher cost of living. It doesn't mean other areas don't need devs.
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      Your causality is backwards. San Francisco doesn't pay high salaries because the cost of living is high; if that model obtained, San Francisco would immediately turn into a ghost town. The cost of living is high in San Francisco because of the high salaries.
      - Kinnard 10y ago
        I'm a big proponent of causality without directionality.
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        meaning?
CPLX 10y ago
You're aware that not every H1B is a developer right? Your proposal would change the whole basis of the program in a way that doesn't seem particularly thought out. What about people who are botanists, or harpsichord teachers?
- jedberg 10y ago
  Easy fix -- give the visas to the highest paid people in each job category. After you've gone through each category once, do it again for the next highest paid. Eventually you'll run out of harpsichord teachers and so the more popular categories would keep getting filled until the quota was reached. Then you get highly paid people and you get a nice cross section of skillsets, and it incentivizes the companies to pay the highest wage for that skill.
  - eru 10y ago
    Who decides on how to clump the categories? Why not just auction off the visas?
- jimbokun 10y ago
  You could have separate categories for non profit and academic positions. But for positions in private industry, I don't care. If you really, really need a foreign employee over a domestic one, you will need to pay the H1B premium, competing with everyone else. It's more fair than a system based on luck, or arbitrary criteria of review board or something guaranteed to be games and manipulated.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    But the goal of the system isn't fairness, it's to provide needed skills to American businesses. It sounds like you're looking at this from the perspective of a job-seeking foreign national, but that's not actually a constituency here, they aren't American, don't vote, and our government is not intending to help them with this program. The supposed point is to make sure American companies can compete. The idea of only allowing the very highest paid foreign workers in, and them all being software developers, has literally nothing to do with that goal.
bduerst 10y ago
This would make it easier to game, especially for wealthy immigrants who want to buy a visa to get a green card. Also the H1B visa is for hundreds of different job classifications at different prevailing wages - are you saying there should be an auction for each? How will visas be distributed fairly amongst them?
- mahyarm 10y ago
  Those people are a small portion of H1B visas, if at all, and all it means that instead of a %50 to %100 chance that they get it 'this year' doing it, it's a %100 chance. They also have other options like an L1 visa which is another %100 chance in a year and then can get a green card at the highest priority level as an international executive afterwards. Or they can open a mcdonalds franchise somewhere in a bad part of america and get a E visa for a $500k investment. The wealthy have many options to immigrate. And if they are wealthy they can do this with real corporations too since wealthy people have wealthy friends. Gamebility by the 'wealthy' would be the least of their worries in this case. Most H1-B abuse are body shops such as infosys. 'Price' auctions would be a good improvement for employees, although it would concentrate the visas into places like SF & NYC even further. On top of that, a US passport isn't attractive to the already wealthy. The US has high income tax rates relative to many other places and you can never escape it by moving out, unlike all other citizenships in the world. The already wealthy would move to london, monaco, switzerland or maybe dubai if their goal was wealth preservation.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Less than 7% of approved H1B visas last year were with Infosys, HCL, and Cognizant - the three major H1B abusers. The remaining 93% were legitimate hires that would be priced out by the wealthy if there were a way for the wealthy to buy their visas. Just because there is a problem that doesn't justify moving to a solution that destroys it. It's better strengthen enforcement so that fines can be used to make it expensive for abusers (like what happened in the article), rather than price out talent that isn't just in finance or high paying fields.
    - 10y ago
davidw 10y ago
This idea is still predicated on the 'magic number' that the government has more or less randomly picked to be the number of H1B visas in a year. This number is, of course, far smaller than the number of family and other types of visas. http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...
eru 10y ago
That's a start. But why not just give them to the highest bidder?
jon_richards 10y ago
How do you value equity? Are H1-Bs not allowed to join early stage startups then?
mavelikara 10y ago
Making it easy to switch jobs will also go a long way in making this system much better. Right now, the consultancy firms flood the application pool hoping to get few selected. They eat the cost of sending all the applications because they see it as an investment - they know that they can milk the few who get selected for many years and recoup many multiples of their initial investment. Tying the H-1B to the employee not the employer will put an end to such abuses.

by vostok 10y ago

hkmurakami 10y ago

In addition, I hope that we can somehow figure out a way to give visas to STEM graduate degree earners over ones employed by such shops. That segment seems significantly underserved by the current system and it's resulting in a reverse brain drain away from the country even though we are investing in their education.

vostok 10y ago
I'm not sure that it makes sense to target STEM graduates in this way. Most of them would receive visas based on their high salaries whereas an explicit rule would only serve to increase the number of low quality STEM degrees.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Yeah that did cross my mind, and now that it's been brought up, I'm inclined to think you are right. I just learned that a bunch of acquaintances lost out on their H1B lotteries and will be shipped out of the country to international offices once their OPT terms end in 1-2 months. Since they were employed by strong companies, their salaries likely would have been high enough to qualify them for H1B visas under a system you propose.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    Actually I wonder if entry level employees would be crowded out completely in an auction system - wouldn't it end up being all senior engineers?
morgante 10y ago
I don't like the idea of further endorsing and supporting credentialism. If you can get a high salary, then you're in demand and we should keep you. If you have a STEM degree but can't even get a good job, then I don't see any reason to grant a visa.

IndianAstronaut 10y ago

Having a bidding system for H1Bs would quickly resolve all these issues.

eva1984 10y ago
That will make company like MS/Google/FB/AMAZN, invincible. Startups are going to be starved. They will not have that much leverage to recruit desired talents.
- fra 10y ago
  Are you saying startups could not compete without "cheap" H1B labor?! The H1B is explicitly not supposed to bring in cheaper labor.
  - michel-slm 10y ago
    I think what he means is, startups can't deal with the uncertainty and lead times the current H-1B system imposes. Large companies just project how many openings they would have in October next year, hire appropriately, and park them in offshore offices if they didn't make the lottery. And they can afford the application fee too
    - eru 10y ago
      An auction system would have far less uncertainty.
      - eva1984 10y ago
        Big companies can afford to pay, startups are not.
        vostok 10y ago
        I don't work for a startup, but I do work for a small business. The current system does not work for us because there is a lot of uncertainty in the application process. An auction system would actually be an improvement for us and many other small businesses.

kolinko 10y ago

But then only H1Bs from Silicon Valley would get accepted, because that's where they pay the most. Other states, and even other cities in California (like Los Angeles) would suffer from the lack of opportunity to hire immigrants.

vostok 10y ago
If salaries in those areas are not as high as in the Bay Area, it means there is no shortage. It just means the salaries are too low to attract talent. There are plenty of companies outside the Bay Area that pay comparable salaries. I have first or very close second hand experience with LA, Chicago, Seattle, Colorado, and New York. If other companies want to hire foreigners they should be willing to pay more.
- megablast 10y ago
  No it doesn't. San Fran has higher salaries across the board, to go with the higher cost of living. It doesn't mean other areas don't need devs.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    Your causality is backwards. San Francisco doesn't pay high salaries because the cost of living is high; if that model obtained, San Francisco would immediately turn into a ghost town. The cost of living is high in San Francisco because of the high salaries.
    - Kinnard 10y ago
      I'm a big proponent of causality without directionality.
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        meaning?

CPLX 10y ago

You're aware that not every H1B is a developer right? Your proposal would change the whole basis of the program in a way that doesn't seem particularly thought out. What about people who are botanists, or harpsichord teachers?

jedberg 10y ago
Easy fix -- give the visas to the highest paid people in each job category. After you've gone through each category once, do it again for the next highest paid. Eventually you'll run out of harpsichord teachers and so the more popular categories would keep getting filled until the quota was reached. Then you get highly paid people and you get a nice cross section of skillsets, and it incentivizes the companies to pay the highest wage for that skill.
- eru 10y ago
  Who decides on how to clump the categories? Why not just auction off the visas?
jimbokun 10y ago
You could have separate categories for non profit and academic positions. But for positions in private industry, I don't care. If you really, really need a foreign employee over a domestic one, you will need to pay the H1B premium, competing with everyone else. It's more fair than a system based on luck, or arbitrary criteria of review board or something guaranteed to be games and manipulated.
- CPLX 10y ago
  But the goal of the system isn't fairness, it's to provide needed skills to American businesses. It sounds like you're looking at this from the perspective of a job-seeking foreign national, but that's not actually a constituency here, they aren't American, don't vote, and our government is not intending to help them with this program. The supposed point is to make sure American companies can compete. The idea of only allowing the very highest paid foreign workers in, and them all being software developers, has literally nothing to do with that goal.

bduerst 10y ago

This would make it easier to game, especially for wealthy immigrants who want to buy a visa to get a green card. Also the H1B visa is for hundreds of different job classifications at different prevailing wages - are you saying there should be an auction for each? How will visas be distributed fairly amongst them?

mahyarm 10y ago
Those people are a small portion of H1B visas, if at all, and all it means that instead of a %50 to %100 chance that they get it 'this year' doing it, it's a %100 chance. They also have other options like an L1 visa which is another %100 chance in a year and then can get a green card at the highest priority level as an international executive afterwards. Or they can open a mcdonalds franchise somewhere in a bad part of america and get a E visa for a $500k investment. The wealthy have many options to immigrate. And if they are wealthy they can do this with real corporations too since wealthy people have wealthy friends. Gamebility by the 'wealthy' would be the least of their worries in this case. Most H1-B abuse are body shops such as infosys. 'Price' auctions would be a good improvement for employees, although it would concentrate the visas into places like SF & NYC even further. On top of that, a US passport isn't attractive to the already wealthy. The US has high income tax rates relative to many other places and you can never escape it by moving out, unlike all other citizenships in the world. The already wealthy would move to london, monaco, switzerland or maybe dubai if their goal was wealth preservation.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Less than 7% of approved H1B visas last year were with Infosys, HCL, and Cognizant - the three major H1B abusers. The remaining 93% were legitimate hires that would be priced out by the wealthy if there were a way for the wealthy to buy their visas. Just because there is a problem that doesn't justify moving to a solution that destroys it. It's better strengthen enforcement so that fines can be used to make it expensive for abusers (like what happened in the article), rather than price out talent that isn't just in finance or high paying fields.
  - 10y ago

davidw 10y ago

This idea is still predicated on the 'magic number' that the government has more or less randomly picked to be the number of H1B visas in a year. This number is, of course, far smaller than the number of family and other types of visas. http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...

eru 10y ago

That's a start. But why not just give them to the highest bidder?

jon_richards 10y ago

How do you value equity? Are H1-Bs not allowed to join early stage startups then?

mavelikara 10y ago

Making it easy to switch jobs will also go a long way in making this system much better. Right now, the consultancy firms flood the application pool hoping to get few selected. They eat the cost of sending all the applications because they see it as an investment - they know that they can milk the few who get selected for many years and recoup many multiples of their initial investment. Tying the H-1B to the employee not the employer will put an end to such abuses.