3 ms·

As an H1B holder in tech without a masters degree, I'm conflicted. On one hand this may help industries other than tech to get more foreign applicants. But it d

As an H1B holder in tech without a masters degree, I'm conflicted. On one hand this may help industries other than tech to get more foreign applicants. But it does nothing to gauge talent or prefer talented people. Getting into a US college and continuing my higher education was always a dream for me but it never came to fruition because of my family background. If this process is left to market to decide - by way of say a bidding process by employers - I'm confident I'll be able to get in the top and beat out visa stuffing companies. But it'd be absolute chaos competing with them and advanced degree holders. Reduces the chance of people like me quite a bit. Getting a masters degree in the US is not that hard for someone with money and does not indicate talent at all in any way. I see this as just a way for upper middle class and rich people in India and China to migrate here and not based on talent.

prepend 8y ago
I think the reality is that the change will negatively impact you, and smart engineers without advanced degrees. That really stinks. The change doesn’t benefit everyone, but benefits foreign workers with advanced degrees looking to work (and hopefully immigrate) in the US, companies and local workers, because wages should increase at least a minor amount. But this means non-advanced degree workers lose out.
AkshatM 8y ago
I'm a prospective H1B applicant also without a US master's degree, and I think, while this does hurt people in our situation, the argument that the H1B must preferentially select talented people is flawed. The O1 visa category (for so-called aliens of extraordinary ability) is reserved for that purpose already, and is more stringent in terms of criteria. The H1B is a general-purpose skilled labour visa. It's designed to meet the needs of US companies who need to bring in specialized labour that the American labour pool cannot staff - not talented, but specialized. A master's degree at the least (and I don't recall the process needing it to be a master's degree from the States, though I could be misremembering and this would undo my point) is a good proxy for specialization. Outside of conforming to visa intent better, I think this change makes sense given the current caps on H1B issuance. If you're going to cap total H1Bs issued in an year to 85,000, why not favour the degree class that correlates better with talent (even if it's not a perfect predictor as has been pointed out)? I also doubt that this will affect that many people - raising the limit from 20,000 reserved entries for master's students (currenr case) to 25,000 means 5,000 fewer people without a master's get their H1Bs. In any given year, the chances of getting an H1B are 33% anyway (applications dwarf yearly caps by a factor of 3). It's a barely noticeable blip in what's already a painful immigration process. I would certainly like the US to have a progressive immigration policy. But I expect immigration policies to serve US interests, and this change does.
bitL 8y ago
Get an online MS in CS from either Georgia Tech ($10k) or UIUC ($20k) and you are set. Your degree will be exactly the same as on-site ones and you can do it in 2-3 years.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I totally agree. Instead of putting the focus on degrees, the H1B program should have a wage floor. If the minimum H1B salary was, say, 150k a year (dependent on local cost-of-living), it would ensure companies would only use high quality H1Bs for high value work.

prepend 8y ago

I think the reality is that the change will negatively impact you, and smart engineers without advanced degrees. That really stinks. The change doesn’t benefit everyone, but benefits foreign workers with advanced degrees looking to work (and hopefully immigrate) in the US, companies and local workers, because wages should increase at least a minor amount. But this means non-advanced degree workers lose out.

AkshatM 8y ago

I'm a prospective H1B applicant also without a US master's degree, and I think, while this does hurt people in our situation, the argument that the H1B must preferentially select talented people is flawed. The O1 visa category (for so-called aliens of extraordinary ability) is reserved for that purpose already, and is more stringent in terms of criteria. The H1B is a general-purpose skilled labour visa. It's designed to meet the needs of US companies who need to bring in specialized labour that the American labour pool cannot staff - not talented, but specialized. A master's degree at the least (and I don't recall the process needing it to be a master's degree from the States, though I could be misremembering and this would undo my point) is a good proxy for specialization. Outside of conforming to visa intent better, I think this change makes sense given the current caps on H1B issuance. If you're going to cap total H1Bs issued in an year to 85,000, why not favour the degree class that correlates better with talent (even if it's not a perfect predictor as has been pointed out)? I also doubt that this will affect that many people - raising the limit from 20,000 reserved entries for master's students (currenr case) to 25,000 means 5,000 fewer people without a master's get their H1Bs. In any given year, the chances of getting an H1B are 33% anyway (applications dwarf yearly caps by a factor of 3). It's a barely noticeable blip in what's already a painful immigration process. I would certainly like the US to have a progressive immigration policy. But I expect immigration policies to serve US interests, and this change does.

bitL 8y ago

Get an online MS in CS from either Georgia Tech ($10k) or UIUC ($20k) and you are set. Your degree will be exactly the same as on-site ones and you can do it in 2-3 years.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

I totally agree. Instead of putting the focus on degrees, the H1B program should have a wage floor. If the minimum H1B salary was, say, 150k a year (dependent on local cost-of-living), it would ensure companies would only use high quality H1Bs for high value work.