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I actually think there is a possibility that it could be easier to get into US as highly skilled migrant under Trump presidency because of his anti-immigrant po

I actually think there is a possibility that it could be easier to get into US as highly skilled migrant under Trump presidency because of his anti-immigrant polities. If he raises a minimum income bar for H1B to 150K and keep the same cap, then it would be much less qualified applicants for H1B visas and therefore there would not be cap overflow with annoying lottery process. Of course, I can't predict what Trump is going to do. He can also reduce cap significantly (which would be very stupid move). Let's admit current H1B requirements are stupid. For example, requirement to have bachelor degree instead of high salary. There are lots and lots very mediocre developers and almost all of them have degree. On the other hand, there are pretty strong developers who do not have degree (i.e. smart drop-outs). P.S. I like this article: http://paulgraham.com/95.html http://paulgraham.com/95.html

tomp 10y ago
> which would be very stupid move Why? Because the salaries of US-based programmers would rise? Because companies would be more motivated to train locals instead of importing foreigners?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  >Because the salaries of US-based programmers would rise? Because companies would be more motivated to train locals instead of importing foreigners? Or it just speeds up outsourcing.
  - janoc 10y ago
    Exactly. Salaries in western Europe are about half of US salaries, if you go to the East, while still within EU, a programmer could be paid as little as $15-20k/year. If you go even more to the East - Ukraine, Russia, China, India, etc. you can get very highly qualified people for even less, happy to work on a project for you. Software is one of the easiest things to outsource/offshore, unlike manufacturing or services. So protectionism is only going to end up harming US in this regard. Of course, that doesn't mean that the H1B "indentured servitude" system for importing cheap foreign workers shouldn't be fixed. But imposing minimal salary is not the way to do it, IMO.
    - BatFastard 10y ago
      Software is NOT easy to outsource. I have been part of many outsourcing projects over the last 15 years, and I can count on one hand the number of those that have been acceptable. Outsourcing requires a completely different style of management than of a local team of developers. I have had better luck outsourcing art and animation tasks. But even there cultural barriers pop up all the time.
      - rubber_duck 10y ago
        Sure it is, most of the problems I've seen described fall squarely in to "we went cost cutting all the way and got shit results - who could have guessed". If you hire cheap devs even by local standards then you get cheap devs, add to that the lack of proper management like you said because it would cost to do it properly and you get crap. Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. You can save money by outsourcing, but if you try to minimize expenses at all costs it shows in quality.
        sheepmullet 10y ago
        > Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. Having teams all over the world is a very different cost and business model from outsourcing. With overseas teams they tend to either be salary matched to market and the quality not so great or good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. Outsourcing is much more of a mess because markup is ~3x.
        rubber_duck 10y ago
        >good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. 60k$/year easily gets you top talent in places like eastern Europe and Asia - that's like entry level for the US, when you equate for skills I would guess it's almost always a 2x difference even in low cost US places. The biggest thing about US was that it offers highest wages and it's a center for tech globally so it's really easy to attract skilled immigrants and so top people often emigrate - if you crack down on that well you suddenly made outsourcing better both because cost and the top talent availability.
- hal9000xp 10y ago
  There are two cases why companies would hire foreigners: 1. Hiring foreign workforce despite big supply of local workforce at certain skill level. It should be mediocre skill level with mediocre salaries because otherwise there would not be big supply of local workforce. The only reason why employer would do this is to reduce expenses for paying salaries. Wages for local workforce will decrease as a result of increased overall supply of workforce (locals + foreigners). 2. Hiring foreign workforce because of very small supply of local workforce at certain skill level. It should be pretty high skill level because demand exceeds supply and employers are willing to go through complicated visa process. Often such companies (like Google) are very hungry for talent and constantly hiring. It means that they would hire both, local and foreigners, anyone who is capable to pass their challenging job interview. Those companies are happy to pay decent salary for those rare talents. So this is background. Now, I will answer to your questions: If you cut the cap on highly skilled migrants, then temporarily salaries for highly skilled locals would spike, but in the long term such companies could not grow. As a result of this, some companies would go bankrupt (high tech is risky business, if you can't grow, often it means you will be dead) and some companies would go overseas. So in this case, either locals have less job opportunities in their homeland or they fly abroad to countries who are realized that high quality human capital is everything in global economy of 21th century.
TAForObvReasons 10y ago
H1B allows for work experience to substitute for formal college degrees. It's easier to demonstrate competency with the degree but it is not compulsory: > The nature of the specific duties is so specialized and complex that the knowledge required to perform the duties is usually associated with the attainment of a bachelor's or higher degree. > education, specialized training, and/or progressively responsible experience that is equivalent to the completion of a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree in the specialty occupation, and having recognition of expertise in the specialty. https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupation/understanding-h-1b-requirements https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupati...
- Const-me 10y ago
  In practice, American companies who hire foreigners on H1B don’t bother. I’m guessing, evaluating a university diploma is a well-known routine. Proofing that work experience counts as equivalent is less common, and hence unknown to the lawyers/accountants who do that paperwork. If you don’t have an education but are exceptionally talented, O-1 “Extraordinary Ability” might be easier than H1B.
rurban 10y ago
150K is a bit unrealistic. The US is not only Silicon Valley. But 100K is realistic, and I would certainly appreciate that. Regarding the quota of 65.000-110.000/year: With a 100K salary cap the numbers could stay the same. What's clear is that the H1-B visa departments are not able to process even 50.000 per season. The ones who take the risk or can afford it not to travel are staying and waiting for the processing after the first 3 years. The others, esp. the ones who need to do business traveling and their visa was not processed (even with Priority) have to leave the country and the program, like me. Streamline the process, get more personal or raise the cap.
wkoszek 10y ago
You confuse skill with high salary. If you're a part of HN community and work for a startup with some seed funding, good luck with (a) finding people (b) paying them $150k. Not sure how you the want government to evaluate chemical, mechanical, aerospace etc. engineers. Right now it's formal education, since I think it's hard to do it objectively otherwise. For software engineers you expected USCIS will look at our ... GitHub accounts to evaluate it? H1B as it is OK. Unfortunately big firms figured you can DDoS the application system and flood it with applications, get some people, underpay them and use them to replace more expensive and more qualified US people. This is a problem and it needs to be solved. Read this article as an example: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b-visa-abuse-is-rampant-in-tech.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b...
- olalonde 10y ago
  > You confuse skill with high salary. Skill is too difficult to define objectively and it's probably not what you should be discriminating on anyways (in a purely economic sense). What you need to go for is "valuable" (scarce and in demand) engineers and salary is a decent proxy for that (more so than formal education). You also don't want the government to "evaluate" engineers because doing a good job at that would mean, pretty much by definition, selecting the very same engineers companies elect to hire.
  - ohyes 10y ago
    But unfortunately salaries fluctuate across the country. The same engineer might make 100k in Cleveland and 150k+ in Silicon Valley. What might make sense is having the h1b attached to the immigrant, no strings attached for 5-10 years. Firms would make sure to pay them market rate, because they don't want them to walk, and additionally would only hire actually necessary workers, because they're making the same as anyone else in the country. The real issue is that h1b establishes a time period of essentially indentured servitude to the employee.
- alexmlamb2 10y ago
  I would advocate for using standardized test scores. If you're a smart dropout, even high school dropout, you could take the tests within just a few weeks. Perhaps there does need to be some kind of flexibility for people who are not native English speakers. For example, a very high math score should be able to compensate for low verbal scores. Using degrees seems like the worst possible option, since the standards are so low these days, and the trend is for the standards to go even lower.
wallace_f 10y ago
>On the other hand, there are pretty strong developers who do not have degree (i.e. smart drop-outs). I think you might know better than I, but I don't think you have to drop out to be a great developer. Let's be honest, a degree by itself is almost meaningless outside the hard sciences, engineering, and perhaps whatever you would call the 'job-training' degrees (accounting, nursing, pharmacy, etc). There's degrees where you have to figure out how to get things done on your own, and there's degrees that are mostly about learning how to say what's politically correct.

tomp 10y ago

> which would be very stupid move Why? Because the salaries of US-based programmers would rise? Because companies would be more motivated to train locals instead of importing foreigners?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rubber_duck 10y ago
>Because the salaries of US-based programmers would rise? Because companies would be more motivated to train locals instead of importing foreigners? Or it just speeds up outsourcing.
- janoc 10y ago
  Exactly. Salaries in western Europe are about half of US salaries, if you go to the East, while still within EU, a programmer could be paid as little as $15-20k/year. If you go even more to the East - Ukraine, Russia, China, India, etc. you can get very highly qualified people for even less, happy to work on a project for you. Software is one of the easiest things to outsource/offshore, unlike manufacturing or services. So protectionism is only going to end up harming US in this regard. Of course, that doesn't mean that the H1B "indentured servitude" system for importing cheap foreign workers shouldn't be fixed. But imposing minimal salary is not the way to do it, IMO.
  - BatFastard 10y ago
    Software is NOT easy to outsource. I have been part of many outsourcing projects over the last 15 years, and I can count on one hand the number of those that have been acceptable. Outsourcing requires a completely different style of management than of a local team of developers. I have had better luck outsourcing art and animation tasks. But even there cultural barriers pop up all the time.
    - rubber_duck 10y ago
      Sure it is, most of the problems I've seen described fall squarely in to "we went cost cutting all the way and got shit results - who could have guessed". If you hire cheap devs even by local standards then you get cheap devs, add to that the lack of proper management like you said because it would cost to do it properly and you get crap. Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. You can save money by outsourcing, but if you try to minimize expenses at all costs it shows in quality.
      - sheepmullet 10y ago
        > Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. Having teams all over the world is a very different cost and business model from outsourcing. With overseas teams they tend to either be salary matched to market and the quality not so great or good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. Outsourcing is much more of a mess because markup is ~3x.
        rubber_duck 10y ago
        >good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. 60k$/year easily gets you top talent in places like eastern Europe and Asia - that's like entry level for the US, when you equate for skills I would guess it's almost always a 2x difference even in low cost US places. The biggest thing about US was that it offers highest wages and it's a center for tech globally so it's really easy to attract skilled immigrants and so top people often emigrate - if you crack down on that well you suddenly made outsourcing better both because cost and the top talent availability.
hal9000xp 10y ago
There are two cases why companies would hire foreigners: 1. Hiring foreign workforce despite big supply of local workforce at certain skill level. It should be mediocre skill level with mediocre salaries because otherwise there would not be big supply of local workforce. The only reason why employer would do this is to reduce expenses for paying salaries. Wages for local workforce will decrease as a result of increased overall supply of workforce (locals + foreigners). 2. Hiring foreign workforce because of very small supply of local workforce at certain skill level. It should be pretty high skill level because demand exceeds supply and employers are willing to go through complicated visa process. Often such companies (like Google) are very hungry for talent and constantly hiring. It means that they would hire both, local and foreigners, anyone who is capable to pass their challenging job interview. Those companies are happy to pay decent salary for those rare talents. So this is background. Now, I will answer to your questions: If you cut the cap on highly skilled migrants, then temporarily salaries for highly skilled locals would spike, but in the long term such companies could not grow. As a result of this, some companies would go bankrupt (high tech is risky business, if you can't grow, often it means you will be dead) and some companies would go overseas. So in this case, either locals have less job opportunities in their homeland or they fly abroad to countries who are realized that high quality human capital is everything in global economy of 21th century.

TAForObvReasons 10y ago

H1B allows for work experience to substitute for formal college degrees. It's easier to demonstrate competency with the degree but it is not compulsory: > The nature of the specific duties is so specialized and complex that the knowledge required to perform the duties is usually associated with the attainment of a bachelor's or higher degree. > education, specialized training, and/or progressively responsible experience that is equivalent to the completion of a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree in the specialty occupation, and having recognition of expertise in the specialty. https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupation/understanding-h-1b-requirements https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupati...

Const-me 10y ago
In practice, American companies who hire foreigners on H1B don’t bother. I’m guessing, evaluating a university diploma is a well-known routine. Proofing that work experience counts as equivalent is less common, and hence unknown to the lawyers/accountants who do that paperwork. If you don’t have an education but are exceptionally talented, O-1 “Extraordinary Ability” might be easier than H1B.

rurban 10y ago

150K is a bit unrealistic. The US is not only Silicon Valley. But 100K is realistic, and I would certainly appreciate that. Regarding the quota of 65.000-110.000/year: With a 100K salary cap the numbers could stay the same. What's clear is that the H1-B visa departments are not able to process even 50.000 per season. The ones who take the risk or can afford it not to travel are staying and waiting for the processing after the first 3 years. The others, esp. the ones who need to do business traveling and their visa was not processed (even with Priority) have to leave the country and the program, like me. Streamline the process, get more personal or raise the cap.

wkoszek 10y ago

You confuse skill with high salary. If you're a part of HN community and work for a startup with some seed funding, good luck with (a) finding people (b) paying them $150k. Not sure how you the want government to evaluate chemical, mechanical, aerospace etc. engineers. Right now it's formal education, since I think it's hard to do it objectively otherwise. For software engineers you expected USCIS will look at our ... GitHub accounts to evaluate it? H1B as it is OK. Unfortunately big firms figured you can DDoS the application system and flood it with applications, get some people, underpay them and use them to replace more expensive and more qualified US people. This is a problem and it needs to be solved. Read this article as an example: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b-visa-abuse-is-rampant-in-tech.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b...

olalonde 10y ago
> You confuse skill with high salary. Skill is too difficult to define objectively and it's probably not what you should be discriminating on anyways (in a purely economic sense). What you need to go for is "valuable" (scarce and in demand) engineers and salary is a decent proxy for that (more so than formal education). You also don't want the government to "evaluate" engineers because doing a good job at that would mean, pretty much by definition, selecting the very same engineers companies elect to hire.
- ohyes 10y ago
  But unfortunately salaries fluctuate across the country. The same engineer might make 100k in Cleveland and 150k+ in Silicon Valley. What might make sense is having the h1b attached to the immigrant, no strings attached for 5-10 years. Firms would make sure to pay them market rate, because they don't want them to walk, and additionally would only hire actually necessary workers, because they're making the same as anyone else in the country. The real issue is that h1b establishes a time period of essentially indentured servitude to the employee.
alexmlamb2 10y ago
I would advocate for using standardized test scores. If you're a smart dropout, even high school dropout, you could take the tests within just a few weeks. Perhaps there does need to be some kind of flexibility for people who are not native English speakers. For example, a very high math score should be able to compensate for low verbal scores. Using degrees seems like the worst possible option, since the standards are so low these days, and the trend is for the standards to go even lower.

wallace_f 10y ago

>On the other hand, there are pretty strong developers who do not have degree (i.e. smart drop-outs). I think you might know better than I, but I don't think you have to drop out to be a great developer. Let's be honest, a degree by itself is almost meaningless outside the hard sciences, engineering, and perhaps whatever you would call the 'job-training' degrees (accounting, nursing, pharmacy, etc). There's degrees where you have to figure out how to get things done on your own, and there's degrees that are mostly about learning how to say what's politically correct.