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Without H-1B the tech industry would not be a major industry in the US. Think about it: Yahoo would be a Taiwanese company, Google would be a Russian company, T

Without H-1B the tech industry would not be a major industry in the US. Think about it: Yahoo would be a Taiwanese company, Google would be a Russian company, Tesla would be a South African Company, eBay would be a French company, Sun Microsystems would be an Indian company and so on. And that list is just founders. Then there are rank and file employees and inventors in tech companies that came from various parts of the world, that made these founders' dreams into real products. Then there are CEOs and executives that ran these companies. Immigration restrictionists assume a zero-sum math for workers: A job gain for a foreigner is a job loss for an American. By that logic every college graduate who enters the job market would be cause for mourning. But that's backward, given that skilled individuals create, not take away, jobs. This doesn't mean abuse isn't happening. But the abuse doesn't detract from the fact that the tech industry wouldn't be so big in this country without H-1B.

hartator 8y ago
I don’t disagree with your point about immigration being an immigrant myself. However you can’t create a company and work for it under H1-B visa. You need E2, L1-A, or an investor green card.
comicjk 8y ago
To go further, I suspect that many of those companies would not have been founded at all, reducing the innovation of the world as a whole. Even all countries, put together, are not a zero-sum game: freer movement of people can increase total opportunities for human achievement.
htormey 8y ago
The H-1B visa is not designed to encourage people to start new companies. It’s for people coming to America who want to work for existing ventures. If you are from India or China you will likely spend a decade or more on this visa before you can get a green card and be able to start your own company. Europeans have it a little better as visa quotas are based on geographic regions. I know all this because I was on a H1B for 6 years. I really wanted to start my own company but I couldn’t do so until I got my green card. I think it’s wrong to conflate arguments in favor of immigrant founders with H1B workers. H1B visa holders are easier to exploit than US citizens as they have no real job security. This is the main point of contention with the visa and as a former H1B holder I feel inclined to agree with this critique. I wish the companies and individuals who call for more H1B visas would instead call for comprehensive visa reforms which would enable qualified immigrants to start companies immediately.
prostoalex 8y ago
Neither Jerry Yang nor Sergey Brin were H1-B holders at any point in their lives.
diebeforei485 8y ago
You cannot generally start companies on an H-1B. Yours is a good argument in favor of making it easier to get a green card, though.
porpoisely 8y ago
H-1B has nothing to do with Yahoo, Google or Tesla. Stop it. Blatantly lying doesn't add anything to the debate. Jerry Yang and Sergei Brin immigrated to the US when they were children and they became citizens before they co-founded yahoo or google. Also, you leave out the fact that two of the founders of Google and Yahoo ( david filo and larry page ) were native born americans. As for Elon Musk, his grandfather was american and he became an american citizen in 2002 before he founded tesla. In other words, Yahoo, Google and Tesla were founded by american citizens. You are intentionally conflating immigration with h-1b visas and lying about the founding of yahoo, google and tesla to push an agenda. That's disappointing.
- rmdoss 8y ago
  He might be defending the value of immigration (and immigrants), not much the h1b. So I wouldn't accuse him or pushing an agenda because of that comment.
- geofft 8y ago
  What visas did Lily Yang or Mikhail and Yevgenia Brin enter on? I think there's a fairly sound argument that we should be encouraging those, at least. Elon Musk had Canadian citizenship and moved to Canada in order to enter the US on a student visa, with the goal of getting an H-1B. By the time he founded Tesla he had citizenship but he was certainly not a citizen when founding his first companies. There's no public documentation of what his status was, but it was likely either H-1B or TN. (He may also have overstayed his visa at some point.)
  - peteradio 8y ago
    Well Elon undercut a home grown All American CEO by about $1B and suppressed CEO wages across the board so I don't know why you are so happy about it... \s
  - pandaman 8y ago
    >What visas did Lily Yang or Mikhail and Yevgenia Brin enter on? Not H1-Bs for sure, H1-B was introduced in 1990. As for Musk founding Tesla on H1-B : he founded it by investing his PayPal money in some startup so it's highly unlikely he had been on H1-B at the time (or ever). AFAIK you cannot get H1-B sponsored by a company you own and you have to work for the sponsor to remain in status. So who would have sponsored his hypothetical H1-B in 2003?
mc32 8y ago
Immigrants have indeed contributed to the tech industry, no doubt. We want more of these, but H-1Bs don’t found companies. Also, is the implication of SoftBank being Japanese or Alibaba being Chinese, or AirBus being European, Spotify Scandinavian a bad thing? Should we seek to syphon all innovation to ourselves? Should those be American companies?

hartator 8y ago

I don’t disagree with your point about immigration being an immigrant myself. However you can’t create a company and work for it under H1-B visa. You need E2, L1-A, or an investor green card.

comicjk 8y ago

To go further, I suspect that many of those companies would not have been founded at all, reducing the innovation of the world as a whole. Even all countries, put together, are not a zero-sum game: freer movement of people can increase total opportunities for human achievement.

htormey 8y ago

The H-1B visa is not designed to encourage people to start new companies. It’s for people coming to America who want to work for existing ventures. If you are from India or China you will likely spend a decade or more on this visa before you can get a green card and be able to start your own company. Europeans have it a little better as visa quotas are based on geographic regions. I know all this because I was on a H1B for 6 years. I really wanted to start my own company but I couldn’t do so until I got my green card. I think it’s wrong to conflate arguments in favor of immigrant founders with H1B workers. H1B visa holders are easier to exploit than US citizens as they have no real job security. This is the main point of contention with the visa and as a former H1B holder I feel inclined to agree with this critique. I wish the companies and individuals who call for more H1B visas would instead call for comprehensive visa reforms which would enable qualified immigrants to start companies immediately.

prostoalex 8y ago

Neither Jerry Yang nor Sergey Brin were H1-B holders at any point in their lives.

diebeforei485 8y ago

You cannot generally start companies on an H-1B. Yours is a good argument in favor of making it easier to get a green card, though.

porpoisely 8y ago

H-1B has nothing to do with Yahoo, Google or Tesla. Stop it. Blatantly lying doesn't add anything to the debate. Jerry Yang and Sergei Brin immigrated to the US when they were children and they became citizens before they co-founded yahoo or google. Also, you leave out the fact that two of the founders of Google and Yahoo ( david filo and larry page ) were native born americans. As for Elon Musk, his grandfather was american and he became an american citizen in 2002 before he founded tesla. In other words, Yahoo, Google and Tesla were founded by american citizens. You are intentionally conflating immigration with h-1b visas and lying about the founding of yahoo, google and tesla to push an agenda. That's disappointing.

rmdoss 8y ago
He might be defending the value of immigration (and immigrants), not much the h1b. So I wouldn't accuse him or pushing an agenda because of that comment.
geofft 8y ago
What visas did Lily Yang or Mikhail and Yevgenia Brin enter on? I think there's a fairly sound argument that we should be encouraging those, at least. Elon Musk had Canadian citizenship and moved to Canada in order to enter the US on a student visa, with the goal of getting an H-1B. By the time he founded Tesla he had citizenship but he was certainly not a citizen when founding his first companies. There's no public documentation of what his status was, but it was likely either H-1B or TN. (He may also have overstayed his visa at some point.)
- peteradio 8y ago
  Well Elon undercut a home grown All American CEO by about $1B and suppressed CEO wages across the board so I don't know why you are so happy about it... \s
- pandaman 8y ago
  >What visas did Lily Yang or Mikhail and Yevgenia Brin enter on? Not H1-Bs for sure, H1-B was introduced in 1990. As for Musk founding Tesla on H1-B : he founded it by investing his PayPal money in some startup so it's highly unlikely he had been on H1-B at the time (or ever). AFAIK you cannot get H1-B sponsored by a company you own and you have to work for the sponsor to remain in status. So who would have sponsored his hypothetical H1-B in 2003?

mc32 8y ago

Immigrants have indeed contributed to the tech industry, no doubt. We want more of these, but H-1Bs don’t found companies. Also, is the implication of SoftBank being Japanese or Alibaba being Chinese, or AirBus being European, Spotify Scandinavian a bad thing? Should we seek to syphon all innovation to ourselves? Should those be American companies?