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Personally, I think this is the right bill to support. H1-B and L-1 have become tools used by Indian outsourcing firms to inject cheap labor into US. Apart from

Personally, I think this is the right bill to support. H1-B and L-1 have become tools used by Indian outsourcing firms to inject cheap labor into US. Apart from taking away jobs from US citizens, this also has a negative side effect of increasing visa competition (since there are only 65k visas/yr) for students who are doing their higher education in US, often in the fields of STEM - which discourages foreign students from coming to US. This bill fixes this as it prioritizes H1-B and L-1 visas from candidates who have studied in US vs. those who are applying from outside US (which is the route outsourcing firms often take). So while there are more fixes to be made on the H-1B visa, at least ensuring students who have studied in US have the first dibs at it is a good first step.

ex3ndr 6y ago
Sorry, but do americans really hurt by H1-B/L-1? I never heard about lack of need for tech people anywhere in the world. Isn't world's universities produce like 3% of required amount of tech people needed? (Other points are valid though)
- makoz 6y ago
  Here's an example where Disney replaced their IT workers with people on H1B https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...
  - throwaway2678 6y ago
    Not to be insensitive to the people who lost their jobs at Disney, but "train" their replacement claim is a stretch (most likely were being to do Knowledge Transfer of the system/job function, but sorry to say won't quality as training their replacements). If anything, any restrictions on H1B force jobs to move out of the country rather than resulting in more "American workers" getting hired. With COVID forced WFH transition with no loss of productivity - even medium-size companies without prior experience in offshore employers are now willing to consider remote tech staff (anecdotal), and will be happy to pay 25%. Unless a very protectionist tax regime accompanies this legislation hard to see this going any other way. Full disclosure: I am on H1B, and am partial to the visa that helped me build my life and career in the US. Now its a real possibility that I, my ineligible to work spouse and my three "very much American" children will have to leave this country due to these attempts by law-makers to find a bogeyman to target their frustration against.
  - anonymousiam 6y ago
    Edison did the same thing several years ago.
- burnte 6y ago
  Yes. I’ve seen it personally. You can see the ridiculous ads all the time. It really is a problem, and frankly it hurts immigrants too, they become wage slaves with the threat of the visa being revoked.
  - ex3ndr 6y ago
    So, they can't find another job? You can be fired the same way and replaced with army of junior developers too.
  - davidw 6y ago
    So give them more freedom to move around so that companies will bid up the wages of people who are worth it, to levels comparable to those of people who wisely chose to be born in the US.
    - ma2rten 6y ago
      H1-Bs can already moved between companies quite easily in the current system. EDIT: I don't know why on earth I'm being downvoted. I'm speaking from first-hand experience as I have moved from one company to another on H1B and I know other people who did.
fuckyah 6y ago
why should studying in US be an advantage? The h1b specifically targets experienced specialists. If you're looking at European immigrants they often highly trained but don't have the financial ability or financial risk tolerance to study in the US.
quietthrow 6y ago
Fair point (and agree on the changes proposed) but this won’t matter anymore in the next few years. Most of the Indian outsourcing companies are going to allow their workforce to be wfh. (Eg TCS is doing that to 80% of its workforce in India). In way you don’t need to be in Bay Area anymore if you can do the same work in Montana or Madhya Pradesh. Yes time zones etc matter remote productivity will rise from what it has been so far. What will matter now is what you can deliver not necessarily where you are. I am not saying former will be the only thing that matters but it will matter more than the latter in tech software jobs. In way this is just capitalism doing its thing - businesses will get more efficient as soon as the opportunity arises. If they don’t they won’t survive as they They won’t be able to compete. Unless you are a monopoly which most business are not specially in a saturated market You will need to be cost efficient. WFH allow some parts of your businesses to be so. Update: I see I got downvoted not sure why but in any case this is the way world will most likely progress whether you like it or not or whether it’s fair or not. I say a lot more about this when I called the wfh being the norm before twitters and facebooks wfh announcement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558552
- slaymaker1907 6y ago
  Notice that there is 0 overlap between in the 9-5 time period between India and the US. Time zone problems like that are extreme and difficult to work with (I worked nearly a year in the US where the other half of the team was in India). I had to start work much earlier than I would have liked and they had to work late into the evening.
  - throwaway2678 6y ago
    What if "you" were not in the picture. I am assuming you are cutting out the work for offshore resources, presumably due to your role as a engineering manager or business liaison. When your company realizes they can be get the work done offshore cheaper (with or without "you" in the picture) they will find a way.
fmajid 6y ago
L-1 visas are the ones used in the sleazy "train your offshore replacement worker or lose your severance" kind of deals. The replacement comes into the US on a L-1 visa for a few months to get trained, then returns to India.

ex3ndr 6y ago

Sorry, but do americans really hurt by H1-B/L-1? I never heard about lack of need for tech people anywhere in the world. Isn't world's universities produce like 3% of required amount of tech people needed? (Other points are valid though)

makoz 6y ago
Here's an example where Disney replaced their IT workers with people on H1B https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...
- throwaway2678 6y ago
  Not to be insensitive to the people who lost their jobs at Disney, but "train" their replacement claim is a stretch (most likely were being to do Knowledge Transfer of the system/job function, but sorry to say won't quality as training their replacements). If anything, any restrictions on H1B force jobs to move out of the country rather than resulting in more "American workers" getting hired. With COVID forced WFH transition with no loss of productivity - even medium-size companies without prior experience in offshore employers are now willing to consider remote tech staff (anecdotal), and will be happy to pay 25%. Unless a very protectionist tax regime accompanies this legislation hard to see this going any other way. Full disclosure: I am on H1B, and am partial to the visa that helped me build my life and career in the US. Now its a real possibility that I, my ineligible to work spouse and my three "very much American" children will have to leave this country due to these attempts by law-makers to find a bogeyman to target their frustration against.
- anonymousiam 6y ago
  Edison did the same thing several years ago.
burnte 6y ago
Yes. I’ve seen it personally. You can see the ridiculous ads all the time. It really is a problem, and frankly it hurts immigrants too, they become wage slaves with the threat of the visa being revoked.
- ex3ndr 6y ago
  So, they can't find another job? You can be fired the same way and replaced with army of junior developers too.
- davidw 6y ago
  So give them more freedom to move around so that companies will bid up the wages of people who are worth it, to levels comparable to those of people who wisely chose to be born in the US.
  - ma2rten 6y ago
    H1-Bs can already moved between companies quite easily in the current system. EDIT: I don't know why on earth I'm being downvoted. I'm speaking from first-hand experience as I have moved from one company to another on H1B and I know other people who did.

fuckyah 6y ago

why should studying in US be an advantage? The h1b specifically targets experienced specialists. If you're looking at European immigrants they often highly trained but don't have the financial ability or financial risk tolerance to study in the US.

quietthrow 6y ago

Fair point (and agree on the changes proposed) but this won’t matter anymore in the next few years. Most of the Indian outsourcing companies are going to allow their workforce to be wfh. (Eg TCS is doing that to 80% of its workforce in India). In way you don’t need to be in Bay Area anymore if you can do the same work in Montana or Madhya Pradesh. Yes time zones etc matter remote productivity will rise from what it has been so far. What will matter now is what you can deliver not necessarily where you are. I am not saying former will be the only thing that matters but it will matter more than the latter in tech software jobs. In way this is just capitalism doing its thing - businesses will get more efficient as soon as the opportunity arises. If they don’t they won’t survive as they They won’t be able to compete. Unless you are a monopoly which most business are not specially in a saturated market You will need to be cost efficient. WFH allow some parts of your businesses to be so. Update: I see I got downvoted not sure why but in any case this is the way world will most likely progress whether you like it or not or whether it’s fair or not. I say a lot more about this when I called the wfh being the norm before twitters and facebooks wfh announcement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558552

slaymaker1907 6y ago
Notice that there is 0 overlap between in the 9-5 time period between India and the US. Time zone problems like that are extreme and difficult to work with (I worked nearly a year in the US where the other half of the team was in India). I had to start work much earlier than I would have liked and they had to work late into the evening.
- throwaway2678 6y ago
  What if "you" were not in the picture. I am assuming you are cutting out the work for offshore resources, presumably due to your role as a engineering manager or business liaison. When your company realizes they can be get the work done offshore cheaper (with or without "you" in the picture) they will find a way.

fmajid 6y ago

L-1 visas are the ones used in the sleazy "train your offshore replacement worker or lose your severance" kind of deals. The replacement comes into the US on a L-1 visa for a few months to get trained, then returns to India.