5 ms·

When I was on an h1b, I was making around 60k in the middle of the country, working for an amazing startup where we were ramen profitable. My skill set was high

When I was on an h1b, I was making around 60k in the middle of the country, working for an amazing startup where we were ramen profitable. My skill set was highly specialized for the job. However, I couldn’t be a founder due to my visa status and we couldn’t pay each other even basic salaries. But we did some pretty amazing stuff for DARPA, DOD, and eventually some commercial enterprises. You would price out people like me and make it virtually impossible for me to become a citizen eventually. But maybe that is by design and I don’t mind that opinion. All countries have nativist subsets of society so it is just a normal, natural stance. Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically. But maybe now the populace believes the natives need to be protected from outside competition so that they can improve. Fair enough.

vinay427 8y ago
> ramen profitable Off topic, but I hadn't heard this expression before so I looked it up and stumbled upon an interesting Paul Graham blog post derived from it: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html Thanks for introducing me to a new phrase!
Ericson2314 8y ago
Yes there's nativism, but that's not the only thing here. In purely economic terms h1bn visa holders are potential employess that are extra attractive because they have less power; power they cannot get back and power other classes of residents cannot give up. This is classic artificially divide the market and race to the bottom. > You would price out people like me and make it virtually impossible for me to become a citizen eventually. > Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically. You are making the classic mistake of holding the macroeconomics constant. If we had sane immigration policies as proposed in this thread, the going rate might have been different. Maybe you have been payed more, matching the coasts. Maybe we all would have been paid less, matching you. Maybe the incumbents wouldn't have had a competitive advantage such that you all had to be underpaid to be even ramen profitable. The big point is given a skill set (projection of the labor market), residency status shouldn't be economically observable. Policy should be constrained to affecting the residency status distribution accross slices.
ReptileMan 8y ago
From my point of view - both excluding you from the job market or giving you general purpose work visa are better for the rest of the people in your industry(with second option better for you of course). Than work permit depending on sponsorship. If you are valuable enough to work in US, you are valuable enough to do it as a full market participant without shackles or handicaps.
- repsilat 8y ago
  Exactly. The reason startup salaries are low is that the companies don't have the cash to pay. If they had customers who believed in them they would have cash. If they had investors who believed in them they would have cash. Asking the government to let in someone whose company might eventually make it big enough to pay "the going rate" is asking the government to take a risk -- it's like asking them to invest in the company on the promise that the payoff will be as good or better than the next person in line.
  - vowelless 8y ago
    Actually, we were very proud of being bootstrapped and not selling stake to an investor. But perhaps that is not a big deal to other people, so I can see your point.
yholio 8y ago
Nativist implies a racial undertone. I would call it tax-payerist: regardless of your background, the state prioritizes the interests of current tax payers to the detriment of future potential citizens. It's true even for migrants on other types of visas, they should be protected from labour dumping. It's the only way a rich nation can function really, the alternative being open borders and a rapidly decreasing standard of living. They all do this in some convoluted way, despite any rethoric to the contrary.
- vowelless 8y ago
  > future potential citizens Future potential tax payers. Like myself btw. I am giving so much money to Uncle Sam these days that it makes me sad. I could invest in multiple YC companies with that money.
  - yholio 8y ago
    The problem with this is that "absolutely anybody in any country" can be a future potential tax payer, there are way more people willing to migrate into the US than there is economic capacity to integrate them all. Not to say that an excessive rate of migration, especially concentrated to certain hotspots, can have other political backlashes - see the Trump era. A financial threshold is a nice way to limit that influx to manageable numbers, while guaranteeing they can mostly take care of themselves and become productive taxpayers and without exposing them to employer exploitation. The actual amount is debatable of course, it could be 2x the national average salary, 1x, 3x... or it could be dynamically allocated to fulfill an intake quota.
ramraj07 8y ago
Wow finally someone thinking similarly. Never understood why people think the US owes immigrants (especially skilled ones) anything. If you are truly bright and gifted of course you can make a living in any country! On several occasions I've had my future immigration path clouded and people have always asked me "gosh I bet it's frustrating" but I'm like "not really". I do like the US and would love to continue being here but hey it's your country your rules do whatever. Im sure I'll be just fine in another nation too.
- vowelless 8y ago
  Yea it’s not worth fretting about the whims of the American political class and neither the American populace. Some people have advantages by accident of birth, but so what. Cheers to the immigrants who battle the crappy system here with national origin quotas and prioritizing chain migration over the American educated and trained foreigners like us. I do have my green card but I’ve been contemplating not getting the citizenship because of the anti immigrant sentiment from all sides. Alas, the American passport allows travel more easily so I might just cave - but never vote.

vinay427 8y ago

> ramen profitable Off topic, but I hadn't heard this expression before so I looked it up and stumbled upon an interesting Paul Graham blog post derived from it: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html Thanks for introducing me to a new phrase!

Ericson2314 8y ago

Yes there's nativism, but that's not the only thing here. In purely economic terms h1bn visa holders are potential employess that are extra attractive because they have less power; power they cannot get back and power other classes of residents cannot give up. This is classic artificially divide the market and race to the bottom. > You would price out people like me and make it virtually impossible for me to become a citizen eventually. > Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically. You are making the classic mistake of holding the macroeconomics constant. If we had sane immigration policies as proposed in this thread, the going rate might have been different. Maybe you have been payed more, matching the coasts. Maybe we all would have been paid less, matching you. Maybe the incumbents wouldn't have had a competitive advantage such that you all had to be underpaid to be even ramen profitable. The big point is given a skill set (projection of the labor market), residency status shouldn't be economically observable. Policy should be constrained to affecting the residency status distribution accross slices.

ReptileMan 8y ago

From my point of view - both excluding you from the job market or giving you general purpose work visa are better for the rest of the people in your industry(with second option better for you of course). Than work permit depending on sponsorship. If you are valuable enough to work in US, you are valuable enough to do it as a full market participant without shackles or handicaps.

repsilat 8y ago
Exactly. The reason startup salaries are low is that the companies don't have the cash to pay. If they had customers who believed in them they would have cash. If they had investors who believed in them they would have cash. Asking the government to let in someone whose company might eventually make it big enough to pay "the going rate" is asking the government to take a risk -- it's like asking them to invest in the company on the promise that the payoff will be as good or better than the next person in line.
- vowelless 8y ago
  Actually, we were very proud of being bootstrapped and not selling stake to an investor. But perhaps that is not a big deal to other people, so I can see your point.

yholio 8y ago

Nativist implies a racial undertone. I would call it tax-payerist: regardless of your background, the state prioritizes the interests of current tax payers to the detriment of future potential citizens. It's true even for migrants on other types of visas, they should be protected from labour dumping. It's the only way a rich nation can function really, the alternative being open borders and a rapidly decreasing standard of living. They all do this in some convoluted way, despite any rethoric to the contrary.

vowelless 8y ago
> future potential citizens Future potential tax payers. Like myself btw. I am giving so much money to Uncle Sam these days that it makes me sad. I could invest in multiple YC companies with that money.
- yholio 8y ago
  The problem with this is that "absolutely anybody in any country" can be a future potential tax payer, there are way more people willing to migrate into the US than there is economic capacity to integrate them all. Not to say that an excessive rate of migration, especially concentrated to certain hotspots, can have other political backlashes - see the Trump era. A financial threshold is a nice way to limit that influx to manageable numbers, while guaranteeing they can mostly take care of themselves and become productive taxpayers and without exposing them to employer exploitation. The actual amount is debatable of course, it could be 2x the national average salary, 1x, 3x... or it could be dynamically allocated to fulfill an intake quota.

ramraj07 8y ago

Wow finally someone thinking similarly. Never understood why people think the US owes immigrants (especially skilled ones) anything. If you are truly bright and gifted of course you can make a living in any country! On several occasions I've had my future immigration path clouded and people have always asked me "gosh I bet it's frustrating" but I'm like "not really". I do like the US and would love to continue being here but hey it's your country your rules do whatever. Im sure I'll be just fine in another nation too.

vowelless 8y ago
Yea it’s not worth fretting about the whims of the American political class and neither the American populace. Some people have advantages by accident of birth, but so what. Cheers to the immigrants who battle the crappy system here with national origin quotas and prioritizing chain migration over the American educated and trained foreigners like us. I do have my green card but I’ve been contemplating not getting the citizenship because of the anti immigrant sentiment from all sides. Alas, the American passport allows travel more easily so I might just cave - but never vote.