4 ms·

If they reduce H-1B visas, can't large companies just hire more people overseas? How would you make companies hire more Americans?

• learc83 10y ago
  It's already much cheaper to pay a programmer overseas than to hire someone on an H-1B. If the jobs companies are using H-1Bs for were easy to offshore, they would already be doing it. Obviously reducing the number of H-1Bs will change the math, so that a few jobs may move overseas, but there are many advantages to having employees in the US.
• sverige 10y ago
  Evidently, having devs live in SV is important enough that companies pay enough so that their employees can afford the hyperinflated cost of living in the Bay Area. So I don't think it's the case that anyone would be making them hire more Americans; rather, by limiting the ability for companies to hire people from overseas who will work for less, the theory is that they will hire the people who already live in the US, presumably people who already have citizenship. The interesting thing will be whether SV will be willing to absorb the (presumably) higher labor rates for these citizens. Their other options will be to outsource the jobs or to develop more infrastructure in less costly areas of the US. This is the most plausible explanation of the theory, unless of course you believe the version where the motivation for H-1B hires isn't purely economic, but rather that there just aren't enough Americans available who can do the work.
  • threeseed 10y ago
    > the theory is that they will hire the people who already live in the US, presumably people who already have citizenship Another option is that companies simply don't hire at all i.e. they wind back projects and reduce potential growth opportunities. I've actually seen this first hand so always a bit mindful of seemingly simple or obvious decisions. Especially since permanent staff who are OPEX and increase headcount are very different to contract staff who are CAPEX and don't. And many H1B visas are quite willing and happy to be contractors since the US may not be their life long home. That's very different for a US citizen.
  • scholia 10y ago
    A lot of US companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants including Google (Brin), Yahoo (Yang), eBay (Omidyar), PayPal (Levchin, Thiel, Nosek), WhatsApp (Koum), Tesla (Musk), Radioshack (Deutschmann), Comcast (Aaron), Nordstrom (Nordstrom), Colgate (Colgate), DuPont (DuPont), Kraft (Kraft), Pfizer (Pfizer), Procter & Gamble (Procter & Gamble) and AT&T (Bell). Apple was co-founded by the son of a Syrian from Homs, and Intel wouldn't be the company it is today without Hungarian-born refugee Andy Grove. Companies founded or co-founded by the children of immigrants include Walt Disney (from Canada), Oracle (Russia and Iran), IBM (Germany), Boeing (Germany), 3M (Canada) and Home Depot (Russia). More than 40% of the Fortune 500 in 2010 were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. If the US blocks immigration, it will be much worse off. If the best people go to other countries, those countries will probably end up much better off.
    • herbst 10y ago
      To be fair in my POV you are all just immigrants. When someone in europe knows about his 500 year history he also usually considers himself part of his origin culture and does not claim to be 100% whatever his passport says. Fucking 500 years. Most beers i like exist for longer.
      • refurb 10y ago
        To be fair in my POV you are all just immigrants. That argument gets us no where. If you go back far enough, everyone is an immigrant everywhere in the world except for a small group of sub-saharan africans. And even in that case, they probably migrated. It's adds nothing to the conversation.
        • herbst 10y ago
          If you think so ok. That exact thought you explain is something i like to keep in mind it is a easy objective thought to show that we are all just humans
    • sverige 10y ago
      Right, but I don't believe any of those people came here on an H-1B visa. And it seems like many of the best and brightest are still trying to get into the US, though right now perhaps fewer than previously. I'm not arguing against immigration. Heck, I don't even think that the current administration is against immigration. (Yes, I know this is not the popular view of the current administration here on HN.) My point was that the H-1B program is basically built on the hypocrisy that these are jobs that cannot be filled without bringing in immigrants because no one here has the skills. It seems pretty obvious that the reality is that the H-1B program is built to enable employers to bring in high-skilled workers at a steeply discounted rate, and to keep them steeply discounted by preventing the immigrants from looking for better jobs once they get here. If this were untrue, I wouldn't read so many comments and even articles about how people here on H-1B visas ought to have the right to find another job. In other words, make the program declare its real intentions. But that would never fly, because politically it would be unpalatable to people in any part of the political spectrum, with the possible exception of the <1% of those who profit from H-1B employees.
• scholia 10y ago
  At the moment, you have American IT workers training overseas workers to replace them. That's true of IBM and Disney that I know of, and there could well be more.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • stevetursi 10y ago
    Hertz, too. We had to train our overseas IBM replacements as a condition of receiving our severance.
• bdcravens 10y ago
  The same way SF companies aren't hiring developers in Houston at a lower cost. If employee cost is the issue, then a company is abusing the H-1B. It's for filling skill gaps, not lower costs.
• prostoalex 10y ago
  The outlook changes drastically depending on whether technology is a revenue driver or a cost center at your company.