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I went through the entire comment thread and feel like you guys are missing a lot of the H1B benefits by focusing just on tech and the effect of the Indian cons

• azinman2 9y ago
  I don't think that anyone is wanting people working on self driving cars to not get a visa. I think the bigger question is if H1Bs are being abused to get cheaper labor for not well skilled positions. Raising the minimum wage for H1B positions is a pretty good way to filter that out.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• tkt 9y ago
  I am glad that you are here, both doing your work, and commenting on HN! Thank you for your contributions, and you are appreciated.
• dmitrygr 9y ago
  Thing is, nobody wants that effect. We want the PhDs. What we do not want it companies that bring in cheap barely-qualified labour for cost-cutting. This hurts the people brought in (they are stuck in bad jobs with bad pay and no way out). This hurts the local workers who cost too much compared to this effectively-slave-labour. The hard part changing the rules such that PhDs and other productive uses of H1B do not suffer, but the companies exploiting the rules for slave labour do. I assure you nobody wants to make you feel unwelcome. In fact we are happy to have you here.
  • clairity 9y ago
    "This hurts the people brought in (they are stuck in bad jobs with bad pay and no way out)." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ i agree with everything you said except for this part. many of the indian workers are still better off economically than they might otherwise be, even if they are not as well off as their american counterparts. in any case, we should let every person seeking higher education in the US work indefinitely in this country, not just PhDs. in fact, anyone who wants to work hard should be allowed in. all such workers will accrue a net economic benefit, as the new workers will generate more value than they consume. the problem with this (playing my own devil's advocate) is that it neglects to account for the status disruption it generates for the incumbent workers. the current H1B visa program happens to account for this by it effectively being indentured servitude, which limits the status of these foreign workers. i don't like this fact, but i believe it's why the H1B visa program is actually palatable in the US.
    • rajathagasthya 9y ago
      > in any case, we should let every person seeking higher education in the US work indefinitely in this country This is the discussion that's always missing whenever H1B is discussed anywhere. It always gets hijacked by Indian IT companies abusing the system. Does the administration have a plan on how to deal with students who get their degrees from US universities, who also seek H1Bs to work? If they don't make this distinction and club every applicant together, I can assure you US universities will become extremely unattractive to foreign students. Guess who benefits then? Not the US.
      • beagle3 9y ago
        There is a F1 and J1 visas for studying (which allows on the job training and some work, at least one year following end of formal study etc). These could easily be extended to answer this - and I believe it should be independent of the H1B itself.
        • rajathagasthya 9y ago
• notyourwork 9y ago
  > (how easy is it to replace a CS PhD working on LIDARs for self driving cars?) I have no problem with specializations but how many are in the US doing full stack web or general application development. It seems to me the problem is not surrounding engineers who specialize in a minority field like LIDAR. The problem is when you have a team of 15 engineers building a web application platform and 13 are H1Bs. Also, don't take this the wrong way because I welcome you and any other H1B with open arms. I do however, personally feel there are a more companies taking advantage of the situation than not. Curious what you or any other H1B employee feels about this point of view?
  • vecinu 9y ago
    > doing full stack web Is there really an abundance of really qualified full stack web developers? I met a lot of incompetent US citizens claiming to be full stack devs.
    • flukus 9y ago
      What's your definition of full stack? Anyone that knows a back end language, sql, html and a bit of css and javascript is a full stack web developer.
      • Rumudiez 9y ago
        The going expectation for professional résumés is about honesty and modesty. What you say on that piece of paper should reflect what you would be able to come in the next day and be productive doing. I interviewed over 15 applicants for just front end development last week and not a single one of all the 6-page résumés from candidates who all apparently have their masters was honest: only 5 even knew what JSON is.
        • flukus 9y ago
          Are these graduates? Are they real developers or people that know html, css and photoshop thinking their front end devs? Have they spent their lives in big companies that are still in xml land? That's all the excuses I can think of. Some of them may be honest, just ignorant.
• 8ytecoder 9y ago
  I'm on an H1B too and I don't share your reading of the thread or even the executive order for that matter. I think there is a major hole with the current system. That Infosys and TCS can get away with stuffing applications and snatching so many visas clearly indicates it is an inefficient system. Hopefully, a better system balances academia, startups, entrepreneurs and corporations well. In addition, almost all of H1B is going to IT today. It should be possible for other industries to absorb talent too.
• chrisper 9y ago
  Even Melania Trump came on H1B to the US. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39632182 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39632182 But H1B abuse needs to stop. It would even help you if there was a proper alternative​.
  • JorgeGT 9y ago
    H-1B3 are specific for fashion models, so it makes sense that she got one, no? https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-dod-cooperative-research-and-development-project-workers-and-fashion-models https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-worker...
• bingomad123 9y ago
  I also do not understand why Indian consultancies need to be demonized so much. Their practices might be a bit shady but then as the complexity of law grows the value of pushing the limits of law also goes up. 1. Indian consultancies have provided valuable labor in large quantity to US firms. 2. This has helped US firms remain competitive in the world. From ATT or Bank of America to Toyota and Sears everyone has super large outsourcing centers in India which help them keep costs low for American consumers. 3. Cheap labor with high skills coming to USA is a good thing. It makes the economy get more efficient and grows the size of pie where everyone gets employed. 4. US Tech sector has outperformed all sectors in terms of both growth and employment numbers. Most of the H1Bs goes to tech companies and guess what ? They have the lowest unemployment rate. There are no job losses because of H1B. If H1B program is completely shut-down US economy would take a pretty bad hit and total number of jobs in USA will go down and more jobs will simply move to India.
  • timewarrior 9y ago
    I disagree with this post. I am originally from India and used to be on H1. I have worked at companies like LinkedIn and Dropbox - so also know this from the point of view of supposedly highly qualified H1 candidates. I also was in leadership role at a Fortune 15 where we had a big team of low quality contractor on H1 and L1. So kind of have an experience on both the extremes. The consulting company used to send really low quality candidate. The kind who might not clear high school maths and have some worthless degree from a remote college in India. Then I asked them to get their best people. Their best people were pretty bad. I mean the kind who would get rejected on telephonic screen within 10 minutes. Eventually the model that worked is that I would find great candidates and then this company would bring them on contract (some people prefer working on contract vs full time). The amount of money waste on such consultancy projects was unbelievable. Companies prefer this because of some tax savings of CapEx vs OpEx. There would be a huge team of people doing near clerical work. I am confident that there are other citizens available who can do that job, at probably an higher cost.
    • bingomad123 9y ago
      > Companies prefer this because of some tax savings of CapEx vs OpEx. May be that is where the value of these candidates lies. But hey they are valuable in that sense else no one would have hired them in first place.
• AnAnonyCowherd 9y ago
  > Now, what happens if you kill the H1B? Companies all start paying the premium for these most-sought-after and most-specialized technologists, as they should, which then causes more native-born people to pursue these jobs, knowing they won't be arbitrarily undercut by the lottery, and reaping the benefits of a top-dollar US-based education. To me, it's a national investment argument. Does a nation NOT want perfectly capable native citizens to get these lucrative types of jobs, and US-based academic institutions to get the tuition to educate them? No, it wouldn't happen overnight, but we don't have to cut it off all at once, either. The market can, and would, adjust. My problem is that I see a lot of H1B's doing clerical jobs that don't require anything more than a 12th-grade education. Some even have MS degrees, but they're doing things that, at their most-technical, would take a trade school programming intern to do. I also know several under-employed people, who don't have college degrees, but who would be GREAT at those jobs, but can't get them because of the H1B system. None of this makes sense to me. You think only Ph.D.'s can deal with LIDAR systems? Fine. But dozens of H1B's working around me are doing their jobs without the need for even an Asscociates degree's worth of education. It seems like blatant abuse to get overqualified people on the cheap who can't leave.
  • raverbashing 9y ago
    Or, they offshore more of it (which for TCS "Java developer" type of work is just fine and dandy)
• hiram112 9y ago
  There has always been an O-1 visa for super-specialized and talented PHDs.
  • axoltl 9y ago
    I came to the US on an H1-B. I work in embedded security (think silicon, PCB level attacks, bootloaders, kernels) which is a field that has, by my best guess, less than a 1000 individuals in it. For whatever reason they are largely European and while there are some that hold PhDs (mostly on the silicon side, some of the attacks there require lots of math) most while barely have finished a bachelors degree (Yours truly included). The US desperately needs these people to secure all the devices you use on a day-to-day basis. They likely do not qualify for O-1's, as their research isn't done in the context of academia and largely done under assumed names for fear of prosecution. Do we simply not bring these talented people to the US?
    • stereobit 9y ago
      O-1's are not exclusively for academia. You can have extraordinary ability or achievement in many ways. You just need to be able to prove that.
    • notar 9y ago
      I am an American citizen and work in the exact same field. I would describe the field as much larger than you believe it to be (but certainly still rather small) and have lost jobs in this area to H1Bs. While I'm sure you are exceptionally talented, there's more to the story than "Americans just can't do the job!" The h1b narrative is exactly what you just described. I would say that your company has recruiting issues if you truly can't find qualified Americans to work on embedded security. (Is this a Big 4 company with a crazy hiring bar? That might make sense) There's always more to the story.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• ThomPete 9y ago
  Couldn't they come in on an O1? Thats what I did.
• nullnilvoid 9y ago
  H1B will not be killed. It will be changed. The loophole will be fixed so that Indian outsourcing body shops will not be able to abuse the system. Currently, the vast majority of the H1B visas are hoarded by Indian outsourcing companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro etc. The real highly skilled workers such as US-educated PhD graduates cannot even get one at all. The new system hopefully will keep US-educated graduates and prevent those Indian consulting body shops.
  • candiodari 9y ago
    Sorry but it's big business writing the rules. It's not American programmers that have seats in congress. So let me just correct you: "H1B will not be killed. It will be changed. The loophole will be fixed so that Indian outsourcing body shops will be able to completely flood the market without any restrictions at all. Currently, not all of the H1B visas are hoarded by Indian outsourcing companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro etc, for the purposes of depressing wages in the US. The real threats to low wages, such as US-educated PhD graduates must never be allowed a visa, unless they sign in blood a contract to work for bread, water and a single bed for at least a decade, after which they'll be required to leave the US. Companies will be allowed to provide bonuses such as a weekly slice of cheese or a bed sheet for software developers, or those who put in more than the customary 252 hours of work per week. The new system hopefully will keep wage depressing suckers and prevent those "educated" upstarts from claiming more of congress' profits".
• warcher 9y ago
  The essential problem, as I see it, is that the H-1B is being explicitly used to depress wages for US citizens in the vast majority of cases. The solution (which we'll never see) is just to de-couple the H1-B from a particular employer. Go on the open market, get a job at market rates, but don't play the indentured servitude game they're forcing you into now. That's all.
• coygui 9y ago
  You are misleading people here. Top CS PHD or other PHDs won't go through H1B; they are most likely going through EB1 which is more efficient. You don't need to wait years to get a green card. Also, people from countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, don't need H1B. Only people from Iran, India, and China need H1B. The better solution, as I talked to variety people and many people suggests, is to raise the salary bar from 60k-ish to 100k-ish, and filter out the unequaled candidates.
  • walshemj 9y ago
    I think limiting heavily the use of h1b by body shops make it direct hire only no w2 contractors
  • taway_1212 9y ago
    How come people from Germany don't need a H1B visa?
  • user5994461 9y ago
    FYI: People from Germany, Austria, France, italy, Spain need a H1B. It's preventing lots of extremely qualified European to join the USA.
  • jpatokal 9y ago
    Incorrect: people from most all countries do use H1-Bs to work in the US. (Australia is a rare exception, because there's a special visa just for them, thanks to some paid-in-blood Gulf War horse trading.). However, there's a per-country quota, which is why Chinese and Indians have a hard time getting them and most Europeans don't.
    • cgh 9y ago
      Canada is also an exception (TN visa).
• TheBobinator 9y ago
  So the arguments for H1B break down to brain-drain and bringing in talent. Here are some opinions bound to be unpopular on HN. Brain-drain is a myth. I'm taking an x64 assembler course at an accredited institution right now; the 2 Indian foreign transfer students were worse than the 1 kid in class that literally plays WOW during lecture. They didn't pay attention, they didn't work, they tried to cheat their way through, and eventually dropped. Literally, I have teachers who randomize and change their assignments to catch people like them, and while I'm not going to hang the entire institutions cheating problems on those 2 kids, I will be willing to bet dollars to donuts most of the kids we are getting are rich kids with similar problems. When I, as an American who's family goes back to before the war for independence, hear of "Rich Foreigners Kids" I think either Russian Mob or some corrupt Russian businessmen, or an Afghani Opium farmer, or some Indian Kshatriya. Call me jerk all you want, but facts are facts. Poor Geniuses from India don't have the resources to come here are foreign transfer students. Recently I had an assignment from my boss to go stalk a Chinese railroad construction company who was putting down roots in the US. Turns out all the people they are hiring state-side are, surprise surprise, Chinese foreign transfer students or people disgruntled with US institutions they want to steal technology from. If poor kids make it into US educational institutions, that is how they get in. Some foreign Government's interest in something in the US. Either way, their background is diametrically opposed to what it is to be American. Being American is not about drawing a nice paycheck; it's fundamentally about fighting for your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Take a 2nd Generation Mexican down to the gun range sometime, all of a sudden they realize they aren't 2nd class citizens anymore once you explain to them if the cops take your guns and arrest you for your skin color that's a great pay day for you., They understand, intrinsically, because their home country, Mexico, is unbelievably messed up, why firearm ownership is meaningful. If everyone has an AK47, the drug gangs are incentivized to be extraordinarily polite, mass graves do not happen. You will never, ever get the poor kids who work their way up through their education system or business magnates who persevered without a college degree coming here as transfer students; that is what H1B is for. No Business magnate from Russia is ever going to come to the US to participate in our Ideology; whatever area they are in, they own it lock stock and barrel. The poor kids have to be financed by someone; business magnate or government, pick one. Both of those expect loyalty. That is what H1B is for. Business managers will argue that they need "IT Geniuses" and honestly, they have zero capability to tell the difference between an entry level "Genius" and a bonafide professional. H1B is not for bringing in entry level people. What it is there for, fundamentally, is when you get the 3rd Reich starting up and they begin burning the Jews, typically, educated people see that coming a-ways off. Economic calamity often leads to political instability; If you're going to get into a war, best to grab as many educated people as possible from that foreign country as you can get. Maybe they get the ideology while they are here, maybe they like it and stay. Who knows. Moving away from your family and friend requires some serious motivation. Indians by and large do not come here through H1B because India is a horrible hitler-esque dystopia. They do not come here because they urn to be free. They come here to scam, it's an empirical fact, Plain and simple. Let me prove it. Wipro, TaTa, WNS. Whenever Americans are being outsourced, it's one of those companies doing it, it is a scam, it is dishonest, it is asset stripping people's paychecks. We, like idiots, encourage that scamming blinded by these fantasies about foreigners thinking so highly of of our technology, money, and world power that they want to come here from their whatever shazbot-hole country they come from; it's as if everyone has been infected by the thinking of King George of England. Nowhere anywhere in Mainstream Media, do you ever see anyone quoting an immigrant these days who wants to come here to share in our Ideology. That Ideology is the reason for the economy, capital, and technology and military, and we forget that. In Summary. If you're here for the economic incentive, Get the F@##$!@$k out. I don't have time for your kind. If you're here to be American and contribute, Welcome. We've got a lot of idiots here. Buy them booze and get them hammered. Do that a few times, you'll find friends willing to bury a body with you.
• castratikron 9y ago
  I'll throw my potatoes into the pot: I don't know of any serious active effort to kill the H1B. I think that would be a disaster for the tech industry as large companies like the ones you mentioned rely on foreign talent. The only effort I'm aware of is to raise the minimum salary to qualify for an H1B. Right now, the minimum is $60k, which, in the US, is very low for a legitimate programming job. I'm certain that H1B workers at Boeing or Amazon are getting paid more than the minimum right now. However, there do exist shops out there who exploit H1B visas for cheap labor; I've experienced them firsthand. They aren't as uncommon as you might think. There is talk of raising the minimum to something like $120k. Surely, a PhD trained researcher at Boeing or Amazon is worth at least that. They are probably already getting paid the prevailing wage for their labor, which is a legal requirement of an H1B. In these cases, raising the minimum will not affect them at all. Recall that the original purpose of the H1B was to fill a demand for high tech, specialist roles. Is there any high tech, specialist role that is only worth $60k these days? I don't think so.
• ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
  ... on the flipside though you shouldn't be competing for H1Bs with bodyshops which hopefully will be the case once the dust settles, so in the long run (hopefully) the changes that are being proposed will be beneficial to you.
• beefsmoke 9y ago
  That's hardly the discussion here... The current administration isn't trying to remove the H1B, but to prevent low-skilled workers from getting the H1B so that these higher degree graduates looking for work can secure a job in the US. Indian outsourcing firms are notoriously spamming the H1B with low-salary petitions completely offsetting the chances of these post-grads looking for work. What you end up getting is doctors and engineers not being able to work in the US and you have some low level programmer that can't even do their work well without you babysitting through the work they are supposed to be qualified to do.