5 ms·

Silicon Valley frets over foreign worker crackdown

44 points by chirau 10y ago

ddrum001 10y ago
There may be a paywall issue. Can someone please post another related story?
- deedree 10y ago
  https://t.co/ErBTm2HrTI https://t.co/ErBTm2HrTI
- notliketherest 10y ago
  Paste the URL into Google and enter from there.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    And in the Google search results, open it in an incognito/private window. This gets asked in comments for pretty much every FT/WSJ/whatever article.
Overtonwindow 10y ago
I don't have a problem with hiring workers from outside the country. My problem is when you lay off American workers and replace them with cheap foreign labor, while claiming you're doing so because you can't find qualified workers. That smacks of Silicon Valley doublespeak, and it's grossly unfair.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Increasing the supply of workers will ALWAYS drive down cost. So you can debate the minutia, but that is the trade off we make. Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor competing. Software devs do not.
  - mifreewil 10y ago
    > Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor competing. I'd be interested in reading more about this if you have a link handy.
    - jakebasile 10y ago
      Probably meant being admitted to the bar (for lawyers) or having a medical license (for doctors). You can't perform those professions without the right credentials.
    - pmorici 10y ago
      It really isn't that complicated. To be a lawyer or a doctor you need to be licensed. The number of people who are licensed is restricted because of the limited numbers of spots in medical and law schools and the high cost of attending. On the already trained immigrant side, you can't just show up from India and start practicing law or medicine in the US. Even if you did it in your home country and are unquestionably qualified there is a long process you have to go through. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog-for-foreign-doctors-to-practice-in-us.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog... Professional associations like the AMA (American Medical Association) for doctors and American Bar Association for Lawyers act as de facto unions w/o drawing the negative connotations that unions sometimes do in modern politics. The AMA even lobbies the government which sets the rates doctors get paid for medicare procedures and medicare is the largest payer in the healthcare system.
      - chimeracoder 10y ago
        > The number of people who are licensed is restricted because of the limited numbers of spots in medical and law schools and the high cost of attending For medicine, this is wrong. The bottleneck is residency programs, not medical school. We graduate more medical students each year than we have residency spots available. And for residency programs, the limit isn't artificial - it's funding-driven. Residency programs run at a loss for hospitals, so most residency programs are funded through Medicare. > Even if you did it in your home country and are unquestionably qualified there is a long process you have to go through. Yes, and that's not to artificially limit the supply, but because training differs by country, and just because you're qualified by one country's standards doesn't mean you're qualified by another. And for what it's worth, the residency process is oftentimes much shorter for people who are licensed to practice in other countries, so it's not like they're starting from scratch. > Professional associations like the AMA (American Medical Association)... act as de facto unions w/o drawing the negative connotations that unions sometimes do in modern politics. The AMA may be the most-hated organization in the medical field. People who don't practice medicine hate the AMA, largely because they aren't clear on what the AMA is and is not responsible for, and often misattibute things to the AMA[0]. And practitioners hate the AMA because they are actually aware of what it does, and because the AMA has a long history of siding with payers (insurers) over practitioners. > The AMA even lobbies the government which sets the rates doctors get paid for medicare procedures and medicare is the largest payer in the healthcare system. If you think the role of the AMA is to ensure doctors get paid well by Medicare, then they're clearly not doing their job. Medicare reimburses, in the aggregate, 7% less than COGS. This means that, in effect, for every Medicare patient a private practitioner treats, they would end up having to provide their services for free, and then still pay an additional 7% out-of-pocket for each Medicare patient they treat, to cover the costs that Medicare doesn't. This is the reason that private practices are a dying breed, and why it's actually very difficult to find small practices which will accept "vanilla" Medicare. [0] For example, people often blame the AMA for limiting the number of medical school spots that are available, which is wrong on three counts: (1) The AAMC was responsible for this, not the AMA, (2) The AAMC has changed their policy and is now aggressively lifting this cap year upon year for a long time now, and (3) as I explained above, the number of medical school graduates isn't the bottleneck, so the AAMC's policy has no effect on the supply of doctors entering the market each year.
xherberta 10y ago
Here's the full Kenneth Galbraith reference: He ridiculed the Reaganite trickle-down theory of wealth distribution, preferring the earthier phrase "the horse-and-sparrow theory" - "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows." From this interesting (long) overview of Galbraith's life and work: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialsciences.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialscie...
mc32 10y ago
Does SV really rely on undocumented workers for their skilled labor force? As far as I can tell Trump wants to thwart illegal immigration but wants to make hiring skilled foreign workers easier -i.e., if it's apparent we have a skills deficit, the administration would increase quotas to accommodate the demand. Examining demand/need and adjusting accordingly and cracking down on abuse of the system, if it does occur, would seem reasonable. Of course, that remains to be seen but, at the same time, I don't believe the intention is to cut off all immigration, only illegal unregulated immigration, the way most advanced economies do.
- skybrian 10y ago
  Rely on undocumented workers: probably not, but subcontractors maybe? What's going to happen to legal immigration: nobody knows. Trump has said a lot of things, and by the time a bill gets through Congress, it may be very different. Your line of reasoning is one of many plausible scenarios.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  But the headline "Newly elected President says he'll enforce the law" isn't nearly as provocative and scary.
  - davidw 10y ago
    This is one of those laws that's kind of like speeding in cars. To actually enforce it 100% of the time would require the sort of enforcement that people would not be very happy with. With immigration, it'd mean living in a "papers, please" kind of country. The best way to deal with immigration is to make it cheap, legal and easy for people who just want to work: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/economy/if-immigration-cant-be-stopped-maybe-it-can-be-managed.html?smid=tw-share http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/economy/if-immigr... No one would walk miles through the Arizona desert if it were easy to do things legitimately - the only people sneaking around would be actual criminals. And of course this one is a classic: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...
jackweirdy 10y ago
If there is wage manipulation via H1-Bs, it's because there's a pressure on the candidate to accept a lower salary, knowing it's the only way to get into the US to work. As I see it, raising that cap removes the employer's leverage to push for a lower wage.
- hangonhn 10y ago
  You think the pool of available talent to replace all those H1Bs is large enough to do it before many tech companies implode or start outsourcing?
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    The best argument for the H-1B is that the jobs would go to the same employee anyway, just back in their home country, but there is probably a sweet spot where you aren't actually incentivizing dumping current US workers and replacing them with H-1Bs.
  - jackweirdy 10y ago
    Not sure I understand you - my point is if you allow twice as many H-1Bs things would get better. Don't see where replacing H-1Bs comes into it?
skookum 10y ago
Oh look, yet another article talking about how our leading tech companies (aka "Silicon Valley") can't hire fast enough with an infographic clearly showing that the "highly skilled guest worker" visas are predominantly going to IT body shops (aka "not Silicon Valley"), the "H1-Bs on average make less" mostly being due to the same body shops, and no mention at all within the body of the article that this is the case. It should be obvious to anyone with even limited reasoning ability that the system is is not being used in the spirit* it was created in and that there are possible fixes that don't land at one of the extremes of close it down or leave it (mostly) wide open. (*or for the cynically inclined, replace "spirit" with "stated purpose")
- muad 10y ago
  I saw a 24 year old Indian programmer with a Phd get deported while $15/hour hacks that barely spoke english were being onboarded. This was 2 years ago at a company that was acquired for $1b in August.
- jensvdh 10y ago
  In fact cracking down on H1-B should be GOOD for silicon valley. As it will open a lot more slots for legit companies applying for real talent.
  - jasoncchild 10y ago
    I'm confused, how is a company who hires H1-B visa holders "illegitimate"? Maybe I'm taking this too literally...
    - mavelikara 10y ago
      Not the OP, but I read it meaning "companies applying with a legitimate need for talent". Here are few examples from the past few months where this was not the case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/couple-pleads-guilty-20-million-visa-fraud-involving-indian-workers https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/couple-pleads-guilty-20... https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/virginia-immigration-attorney-admits-visa-fraud-obstruction-justice https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/virginia-immigration-atto...
Senji 10y ago
A bad choice. A more appropriate choice would be a hellhole like Mexico.
- grzm 10y ago
  Why purposefully inflame the discussion? I suspect that's exactly why that choice was made.
- dang 10y ago
  Slurs like this are a bannable offense on Hacker News. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940754 and marked it off-topic.
supercanuck 10y ago
Silicon Valley companies are s small percentage of the H1-B pool. Focusing on the 10-15% of H1B's is not doing this issue justice, in my opinion. Wipro, Cognizant, Infosys and TCS are not Silicon Valley startups.
- hga 10y ago
  Case in point, his stated policy is the "Intel yes, Infosys no" one. However, how much do Silicon Valley startups eventually hire from the Infosys etc. pool of H1-Bs? Old line Silicon Valley companies like HP are notorious for doing this, although as I recall they've been cluefull enough to avoid the "train your own replacement" PR debacles that are most recently driving this, those are in companies where "IT" is a cost center, like that California electrical company and Disney.
bane 10y ago
Here's a disruptive idea for SV, open field offices in tech hubs that are all over the country, pay lower salary, get the same employees you would have moved out to SV anyway. (I know more than one person who works in SF/SV and works literally in the same department as half a dozen other people from their home cities, all moved out to SF and given enormous pay differentials to live there).

44 points by chirau 10y ago

ddrum001 10y ago

There may be a paywall issue. Can someone please post another related story?

deedree 10y ago
https://t.co/ErBTm2HrTI https://t.co/ErBTm2HrTI
notliketherest 10y ago
Paste the URL into Google and enter from there.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  And in the Google search results, open it in an incognito/private window. This gets asked in comments for pretty much every FT/WSJ/whatever article.

Overtonwindow 10y ago

I don't have a problem with hiring workers from outside the country. My problem is when you lay off American workers and replace them with cheap foreign labor, while claiming you're doing so because you can't find qualified workers. That smacks of Silicon Valley doublespeak, and it's grossly unfair.

brianwawok 10y ago
Increasing the supply of workers will ALWAYS drive down cost. So you can debate the minutia, but that is the trade off we make. Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor competing. Software devs do not.
- mifreewil 10y ago
  > Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor competing. I'd be interested in reading more about this if you have a link handy.
  - jakebasile 10y ago
    Probably meant being admitted to the bar (for lawyers) or having a medical license (for doctors). You can't perform those professions without the right credentials.
  - pmorici 10y ago
    It really isn't that complicated. To be a lawyer or a doctor you need to be licensed. The number of people who are licensed is restricted because of the limited numbers of spots in medical and law schools and the high cost of attending. On the already trained immigrant side, you can't just show up from India and start practicing law or medicine in the US. Even if you did it in your home country and are unquestionably qualified there is a long process you have to go through. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog-for-foreign-doctors-to-practice-in-us.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog... Professional associations like the AMA (American Medical Association) for doctors and American Bar Association for Lawyers act as de facto unions w/o drawing the negative connotations that unions sometimes do in modern politics. The AMA even lobbies the government which sets the rates doctors get paid for medicare procedures and medicare is the largest payer in the healthcare system.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > The number of people who are licensed is restricted because of the limited numbers of spots in medical and law schools and the high cost of attending For medicine, this is wrong. The bottleneck is residency programs, not medical school. We graduate more medical students each year than we have residency spots available. And for residency programs, the limit isn't artificial - it's funding-driven. Residency programs run at a loss for hospitals, so most residency programs are funded through Medicare. > Even if you did it in your home country and are unquestionably qualified there is a long process you have to go through. Yes, and that's not to artificially limit the supply, but because training differs by country, and just because you're qualified by one country's standards doesn't mean you're qualified by another. And for what it's worth, the residency process is oftentimes much shorter for people who are licensed to practice in other countries, so it's not like they're starting from scratch. > Professional associations like the AMA (American Medical Association)... act as de facto unions w/o drawing the negative connotations that unions sometimes do in modern politics. The AMA may be the most-hated organization in the medical field. People who don't practice medicine hate the AMA, largely because they aren't clear on what the AMA is and is not responsible for, and often misattibute things to the AMA[0]. And practitioners hate the AMA because they are actually aware of what it does, and because the AMA has a long history of siding with payers (insurers) over practitioners. > The AMA even lobbies the government which sets the rates doctors get paid for medicare procedures and medicare is the largest payer in the healthcare system. If you think the role of the AMA is to ensure doctors get paid well by Medicare, then they're clearly not doing their job. Medicare reimburses, in the aggregate, 7% less than COGS. This means that, in effect, for every Medicare patient a private practitioner treats, they would end up having to provide their services for free, and then still pay an additional 7% out-of-pocket for each Medicare patient they treat, to cover the costs that Medicare doesn't. This is the reason that private practices are a dying breed, and why it's actually very difficult to find small practices which will accept "vanilla" Medicare. [0] For example, people often blame the AMA for limiting the number of medical school spots that are available, which is wrong on three counts: (1) The AAMC was responsible for this, not the AMA, (2) The AAMC has changed their policy and is now aggressively lifting this cap year upon year for a long time now, and (3) as I explained above, the number of medical school graduates isn't the bottleneck, so the AAMC's policy has no effect on the supply of doctors entering the market each year.

xherberta 10y ago

Here's the full Kenneth Galbraith reference: He ridiculed the Reaganite trickle-down theory of wealth distribution, preferring the earthier phrase "the horse-and-sparrow theory" - "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows." From this interesting (long) overview of Galbraith's life and work: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialsciences.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialscie...

mc32 10y ago

Does SV really rely on undocumented workers for their skilled labor force? As far as I can tell Trump wants to thwart illegal immigration but wants to make hiring skilled foreign workers easier -i.e., if it's apparent we have a skills deficit, the administration would increase quotas to accommodate the demand. Examining demand/need and adjusting accordingly and cracking down on abuse of the system, if it does occur, would seem reasonable. Of course, that remains to be seen but, at the same time, I don't believe the intention is to cut off all immigration, only illegal unregulated immigration, the way most advanced economies do.

skybrian 10y ago
Rely on undocumented workers: probably not, but subcontractors maybe? What's going to happen to legal immigration: nobody knows. Trump has said a lot of things, and by the time a bill gets through Congress, it may be very different. Your line of reasoning is one of many plausible scenarios.
caseysoftware 10y ago
But the headline "Newly elected President says he'll enforce the law" isn't nearly as provocative and scary.
- davidw 10y ago
  This is one of those laws that's kind of like speeding in cars. To actually enforce it 100% of the time would require the sort of enforcement that people would not be very happy with. With immigration, it'd mean living in a "papers, please" kind of country. The best way to deal with immigration is to make it cheap, legal and easy for people who just want to work: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/economy/if-immigration-cant-be-stopped-maybe-it-can-be-managed.html?smid=tw-share http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/economy/if-immigr... No one would walk miles through the Arizona desert if it were easy to do things legitimately - the only people sneaking around would be actual criminals. And of course this one is a classic: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...

jackweirdy 10y ago

If there is wage manipulation via H1-Bs, it's because there's a pressure on the candidate to accept a lower salary, knowing it's the only way to get into the US to work. As I see it, raising that cap removes the employer's leverage to push for a lower wage.

hangonhn 10y ago
You think the pool of available talent to replace all those H1Bs is large enough to do it before many tech companies implode or start outsourcing?
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  The best argument for the H-1B is that the jobs would go to the same employee anyway, just back in their home country, but there is probably a sweet spot where you aren't actually incentivizing dumping current US workers and replacing them with H-1Bs.
- jackweirdy 10y ago
  Not sure I understand you - my point is if you allow twice as many H-1Bs things would get better. Don't see where replacing H-1Bs comes into it?

skookum 10y ago

Oh look, yet another article talking about how our leading tech companies (aka "Silicon Valley") can't hire fast enough with an infographic clearly showing that the "highly skilled guest worker" visas are predominantly going to IT body shops (aka "not Silicon Valley"), the "H1-Bs on average make less" mostly being due to the same body shops, and no mention at all within the body of the article that this is the case. It should be obvious to anyone with even limited reasoning ability that the system is is not being used in the spirit* it was created in and that there are possible fixes that don't land at one of the extremes of close it down or leave it (mostly) wide open. (*or for the cynically inclined, replace "spirit" with "stated purpose")

muad 10y ago
I saw a 24 year old Indian programmer with a Phd get deported while $15/hour hacks that barely spoke english were being onboarded. This was 2 years ago at a company that was acquired for $1b in August.
jensvdh 10y ago
In fact cracking down on H1-B should be GOOD for silicon valley. As it will open a lot more slots for legit companies applying for real talent.
- jasoncchild 10y ago
  I'm confused, how is a company who hires H1-B visa holders "illegitimate"? Maybe I'm taking this too literally...
  - mavelikara 10y ago
    Not the OP, but I read it meaning "companies applying with a legitimate need for talent". Here are few examples from the past few months where this was not the case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/couple-pleads-guilty-20-million-visa-fraud-involving-indian-workers https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/couple-pleads-guilty-20... https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/virginia-immigration-attorney-admits-visa-fraud-obstruction-justice https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/virginia-immigration-atto...

Senji 10y ago

A bad choice. A more appropriate choice would be a hellhole like Mexico.

grzm 10y ago
Why purposefully inflame the discussion? I suspect that's exactly why that choice was made.
dang 10y ago
Slurs like this are a bannable offense on Hacker News. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940754 and marked it off-topic.

supercanuck 10y ago

Silicon Valley companies are s small percentage of the H1-B pool. Focusing on the 10-15% of H1B's is not doing this issue justice, in my opinion. Wipro, Cognizant, Infosys and TCS are not Silicon Valley startups.

hga 10y ago
Case in point, his stated policy is the "Intel yes, Infosys no" one. However, how much do Silicon Valley startups eventually hire from the Infosys etc. pool of H1-Bs? Old line Silicon Valley companies like HP are notorious for doing this, although as I recall they've been cluefull enough to avoid the "train your own replacement" PR debacles that are most recently driving this, those are in companies where "IT" is a cost center, like that California electrical company and Disney.

bane 10y ago

Here's a disruptive idea for SV, open field offices in tech hubs that are all over the country, pay lower salary, get the same employees you would have moved out to SV anyway. (I know more than one person who works in SF/SV and works literally in the same department as half a dozen other people from their home cities, all moved out to SF and given enormous pay differentials to live there).