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This announcement means anyone who planned on beginning work under an H1B soon after perhaps months of job seeking and waiting for H1B approvals is suddenly shi

This announcement means anyone who planned on beginning work under an H1B soon after perhaps months of job seeking and waiting for H1B approvals is suddenly shit out of luck. Anyone about to be granted a green card after years on the wait list is shit out of luck. Another HN'ers comment about their sisters Irish boyfriend who now can't move and leaves their family living in different continents is already one example of all the life plans this kind of change disrupts. They have been making these sorts of life changing policy decisions at the drop of the hat for years now - no notice, no coherent long term plan whatsoever, only a year old tweet from Trump promising reforms. Even if you have spent 5 or 10 years in the country studying, working, paying taxes, building friends & family in the US, you have no more stability or value to the government than a fresh immigrant. The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else - in most places you get points based immigration and a STABLE visa & path to citizenship that won't fall out from under you.

amznthrowaway5 6y ago
> The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else Even with all the hassle, it is still worth it working for big tech. People won't make nearly as much elsewhere.
- sg47 6y ago
  Well, these big companies are willing to hire these people outside US which means the job in the US goes away.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rusticpenn 6y ago
  Money is not comparable to peace of mind. With a stable government ( like under Obama or even Bush), you can assume that your visa is safe and will be handles in a logical way. Now its just gambling.
  - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
    Worst case you go back to your home country, it's still a pretty good gamble for a lot of people.
    - hootbootscoot 6y ago
      What's the upside? Paying 1/4 of your salary for low-grade healthcare with a $10k deductible? Getting treated like a second class human being by even "liberal minded" folk simply due to an accent and the lack of hip phrasology "like, I KNOW! I CAN'T EVEN, OMG" Being kept at arms length for decades even after putting enormous amounts of money in escrow and submitting piles of paperwork just to get the slightest hope of a visa appointment at your local US consulate, let alone entering the Green Card Lottery? It's over-rated, over-ripe, and the "Land of Opportunity" is now the "Go away, we have self-inflicted problems we will likely blame you for" land. Flag this if you want, but I have direct personal experience in many many countries and I come from the states, so I'm not talking out of my behind. We are the meanest country on earth right now. That's why I left. (well, actually it was the Iraqi invasion, Guantanamo Bay, and the ongoing activities in central Asia coupled with the new-speak that even the Dem-aligned rags were pushing, NYT, WaPo "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and wars on emotions and such... but see, this is related: it's about being mean and making others pay with their lives for ones ideological comfort zone, etc.)
      - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
        I understand your concerns, although there is some hyperbole. I was just pointing that the reason a lot of skilled h-1bs still come and stay despite the issues is because the salaries at some companies are just really damn good compared to what they'd make at their home countries.
    - rusticpenn 6y ago
      Not really when their kids are US citizens while they arent.
- mFixman 6y ago
  Most Big Tech companies have offices in other rich countries like Britain or Canada. You will have a ridiculously high salary rather than a garangutan SV salary, but it's worth not getting stuck in a Bay Area traffic gridlock every day while worrying about whether you'll be allowed to go back to the country after renewing your H1-B. Years ago made the decision to stay permanently the European Big Tech office which I was going to stay temporarily, and I'm much happier for it.
- conanbatt 6y ago
  I find it funny that there is a cap to how many software software engineers could get to the US, but not how many domestic employees or nannies you could take. Hell, you can bring nannies as an H1B.
sg47 6y ago
I have spent 18 years in this country and am still on a H1 due to bad luck (was at a company that had layoffs which meant my GC application got audited) and terrible immigration laws (restricting green cards by country of birth). My friends who went to grad school with me are now citizens. Some folks that came on a L1 visa used a loophole to become citizens. And am still on a visa despite being valuable to my company and getting paid top dollar (top 0.5%). I can't make any long-term decisions (regretting my decision to upgrade my home 2 years back). My child is a US citizen and is old enough to realize that she wants to live here. Not sure why I have to be in this predicament. This is a rant. Not all H1-Bs are created equal. The law applies to everyone equally though.
- abc_lisper 6y ago
  Sorry, but your post has no information. I hope you have made some good dough. If push comes to shove, you may be able to move to Canada. FYI, I am in the exact same boat, but without kids.
digianarchist 6y ago
There are a few things I find really strange about the US immigration system. 1. The focuses on family reunification visas instead of skills which differs from other countries such as Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. 2. Visa applicants are tied to their employer and require their employer to sponsor their Green Cards. 3. Green Cards being issued based on country of birth. I think we can park the idea of "diversity" being a quality of an immigration system.
- xxpor 6y ago
  We haven't had a major immigration reform since the 60s, which drives a lot of the weirdness.
  - hootbootscoot 6y ago
    But that's funny, as my mother immigrated from Europe in the 50's and the naturalization process was rather straightforward. If you are referring to national immigration quotas then I agree that yes, it was quite unfair for awhile now. It's just a bit odd. There wasn't even a hard physical border with Mexico until the 1920's. There used to be a rather active workable "temporary farm worker visa" program that got sacrificed on the altar of pleasing xenophobic morons somewhere in the 70's or 80's I guess...
    - kls 6y ago
      > xenophobic morons As a person that lived thru it, it was not xenophobia, it was NAFTA that sent everyone scrambling to survive. Our farm lost viability due to it, as did most small family farms. You either conglomerated with the emerging mega-farms if you where big enough or you died. Organic was nowhere on the horizon at that time and was the only thing that brought back the viability of small plot farming. Xenophobia is an easy answer to reach for, but the reality is people where scrambling to save their livelihoods and kicking the legs out from under the big conglomerates via removing the migrant workforce they relied on was one of the efforts. It has more to do with surviving than a disdain for other people. Also there was no love loss for the big conglomerates as they where the very entities that pushed for NAFTA, so trying to remove their workforce was fair game. In the end I miss the family homestead but it worked out for me. I was a crappy citrus farmer (due to lack of passion) and while I appreciate my youth, I don't ever want to own a farm so I am glad my family got to reap the rewards of selling it, rather than me inheriting a farm that I would have to figure out what to do with.
olcor 6y ago
I agree. Noped out of staying in the US last year even after finally getting an H1B in my third attempt. All the dollars in the world aren't worth it if I have to leave at any random point just because a politician wanted to pander to his base, or I get laid off for any reason, or <insert any random twist of fate here>. The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them. This is mainly an image issue; in the Obama years, even though it was probably as bad as this today (just not overt), the risk-reward ratio of surviving all this was viewed as better than going somewhere else. All this changed with Trump being this transparent. There is going to be a lot of hesitation now for anyone who wants to immigrate. Anywhere except the US, and only if necessary.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them. Since getting them to do that is literally the purpose of the nonsense currently being executed, and which has been executed against immigrant and nobimmigrant aliens for the last several years, I think you are mistaken. It's not like that's been at all a secret.
  - olcor 6y ago
    You're exactly right, this is what I mean when I talk about the current government being this transparent. Immigrants tend to think of the risk-reward scenario, and a lot depends on image and perspective in their heads. This image now is a lot nearer to reality than it previously was. When this leads to people not having US-citizen children, or not buying houses, or just not jumping on the boat to reach the US come what may, or just not being too optimistic in general (essentially not tying yourself to a country when the country hasn't done the same with you in terms of citizenship), things will maybe get a bit more sane.
    - sg47 6y ago
      Sorry I disagree. The decision to make it a temporary visa has to be based on the employer's decision to continue their employment and not some politician's whim. Going by your logic, no one should be optimistic in life because the government could do some random thing and ruin your life. Tomorrow, if Trump decides that the dollar is worthless, you'll not be saying that 'Ah well, I shouldn't have been too optimistic in life'.
baby 6y ago
I have friends who are looking to renew their H1B. What happens to that? Another friend got fired from Uber a few weeks ago on an H1B. Does it mean she have to leave now?
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  As far as I can tell, this makes no particular difference to anyone currently in the US or who has a currently valid visa. It does not restrict issuance or renewal of visas on its face, only entry into the US based on as-yet-unissued non-immigrant visas in the relevant classes. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspending-entry-aliens-present-risk-u-s-labor-market-following-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation...
  - fsociety 6y ago
    Yes this is correct
bmitc 6y ago
I would like to provide a personal account as to how this has affected me. I am a U.S. citizen, and these draconian, ineffective, and political grandstanding policies have drastically changed my life. In short, I may need to leave my immediate family behind, my job, and restart in another country, almost by force because of these policies and the hidden policies, which are actually much worse than these official declarations. I am engaged to a Chinese citizen, who is an active H-1B visa holder working for a U.S. technology company. We were visiting China in January to both see her family and friends and to do the yearly renewal of her re-entry visa. This latter point is important because it is a mind bogglingly inefficient process that forces people to travel back to their home country to renew a visa they already have and are using to live and work in the U.S. just so they can be able to leave and re-enter. This is just so the U.S. can have the possibility of keeping them out when they want for whatever reason, just as they have in this case. Anyway, the U.S. Consulates shutdown during the outbreak in mid-January, halting her visa processing, needlessly in my mind because she had already accomplished her in-person interview. Then, the U.S. Consulate held her Chinese passport, which had valid visas to other countries, for over a month. This prevented her from going to another country and doing the visa processing there. (It is normally recommended to do the renewal in your home country, for reasons of being stranded wherever you're doing the renewal.) So the U.S. stopped processing her basically finished visa renewal, then held on to her non-U.S. passport preventing her to travel between two countries that aren't the U.S., and now they have kept her out of the country on the point of helping unemployed workers when she already has a job because she was the qualified candidate. This was all in January and February and some of March, long before the "official" bans on visas. I have not seen my fiancee in over five months. It is unlikely I am to see her in 2020 and even 2021. I may eventually be able to travel to China to see her, but it is looking more and more that she will be unable to return to the U.S. any time soon. This is all complicated by the fact that her H-1B is time bound and the Green Card is a lost cause because it takes multiple years to be issued. This is a person who already has a U.S. job that she was more qualified for than U.S. citizens. Just because people are unemployed doesn't magically make them qualified for jobs they already lost out on. It also is unclear what companies who already employ H-1B holders are supposed to do. There is no policy or method to get the fiancee of a U.S. citizen who already holds a valid H-1B back into the U.S. right now, and it's not clear when one will open up. It also makes no sense, from the very beginning, why the U.S. prevented her from returning at any point unless you understand that the U.S. is literally at war with China, immigrants, and non-immigrant workers. All of this is vastly compounded by the inefficiencies, directed by our miserable administration, of the USCIS, because applying for a K-1 visa is not as straightforward as you would think. Even though the H-1B is a dual intent visa, applying for the K-1 visa could see the H-1B process incur delays or even denial. The U.S. government holds immigrants and non-immigrant workers hostage, and this is affecting U.S. business and citizens' personal lives. Right now, it is literally impossible to get someone who has a job in the U.S., has a current H-1B visa, a home, cars, and other assets in the U.S., is engaged to a U.S. citizen, and planned on immediately marrying a U.S. citizen after a "routine" vacation back into the U.S. any sooner than years. This is a pathetic situation. I am a tech worker who has worked for technology companies and national security labs. I am now being forced to think about leaving my parents and brother behind in the U.S. to consider moving outside of the U.S. so that I can continue my life with my fiancee and build my own family. People in this country wax on (whine) about freedoms, but what they are really wanting is to do whatever they want when they want it at the expense of literally anyone else but themselves, including their neighbor. It's nothing but extreme narcissism, and I cannot help but feel this country is a lost cause. The U.S. is an extremist state now, taken over by charlatans and textbook traitors.
mclightning 6y ago
> The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else Majority of talented people are doing that already for several years now. Besides US is not as attractive anymore.
GregoryVPerry 6y ago
That's not the reality of H1B. The reality of H1B is a recruiting industry completely dominated by Indian headhunters, who submit only Indians and not native U.S. citizens to their corporate clients. Followed by Indian H1B recipients then moving into two or three bedroom apartments they share with 10 - 15 H1B visa recipients, everyone splitting the rent and utilities, and sending the majority of their cash back to India. U.S. workers in the engineering and technical disciplines cannot compete with H1B visa applicants who are submitted at probably 30% market rates and wages, and openly discriminate in the work place if you're the token white dude U.S. citizen working in the same office. H1B is miserable, corporate welfare for Zuckerberg and Bezos.
- tracer4201 6y ago
  Some of this has some merit, but Zuckerberg and Bezos are actually paying the same salaries... 24 year olds making in excess of $200K, and senior engineering roles $300-$400k, with Amazon on the lower end. These aren’t 10 people living in one apartment to send all their money to India. That part of your post is misinformed.
  - GregoryVPerry 6y ago
    There is no question H1B visa holders can escalate through the ranks and make a bunch of cash in the United States. And that's exactly what is wrong with the entire thing. That entire teams of Indian H1B visa holders will immediately get whitey off the project, every single time, while making sure that the hiring manager and technical team leads are always Indian. This is the caste system, re-invented here the U.S. And you cannot get shit done if you are a competent engineer dealing with an offshore team or onshore H1B team. They will not do what you tell them to do. They will argue about every single point. They will trash your credibility and refuse to implement anything, using groupthink that controls the entire project. Managing a team of onshore H1B workers is nothing but interoffice politics that they completely control in all aspects. It's blatantly racist and has destroyed U.S. worker opportunity in the engineering fields, all of them. H1B is a complete scam, especially in the Beltway / Northern Virginia area where everything is a billable contract. Headhunters get their fee and/or a large chunk of the first year's hourly revenue. The company hiring the H1B worker is on some federal project or grant and is making the spread between what the headhunter charges and the hourly rate on the contract. The hiring company couldn't give a shit less about the quality of work provided by Indian H1B workers, nor is a college degree granted from an Indian university anywhere near what is required in the U.S. from an engineering perspective - there is no comparison in the quality of education, nor have I ever met a single H1B engineer that was better than anything but a limited segment of technology that they specialize in, by design, because that requires their team in order to complete the project. Makes total sense if you're the headhunter and hiring company, both of whom only care about having a warm body in a seat that is billable, and you can get three warm bodies in the seat for the price of one market rate position using H1B. It's complete bullshit, a scam on the taxpayer and attack on U.S. workers. Worthless 99% of the time, and the 1% of H1B engineers that actually do know what they are doing are not worth the damage the H1B program has done to the entire U.S. technical space.
twirlock 6y ago
This would have been more moving five or six years ago. Now though, after years of petulant "deal with it" politics from racists on the left, cry me a river.

amznthrowaway5 6y ago

> The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else Even with all the hassle, it is still worth it working for big tech. People won't make nearly as much elsewhere.

sg47 6y ago
Well, these big companies are willing to hire these people outside US which means the job in the US goes away.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rusticpenn 6y ago
Money is not comparable to peace of mind. With a stable government ( like under Obama or even Bush), you can assume that your visa is safe and will be handles in a logical way. Now its just gambling.
- amznthrowaway5 6y ago
  Worst case you go back to your home country, it's still a pretty good gamble for a lot of people.
  - hootbootscoot 6y ago
    What's the upside? Paying 1/4 of your salary for low-grade healthcare with a $10k deductible? Getting treated like a second class human being by even "liberal minded" folk simply due to an accent and the lack of hip phrasology "like, I KNOW! I CAN'T EVEN, OMG" Being kept at arms length for decades even after putting enormous amounts of money in escrow and submitting piles of paperwork just to get the slightest hope of a visa appointment at your local US consulate, let alone entering the Green Card Lottery? It's over-rated, over-ripe, and the "Land of Opportunity" is now the "Go away, we have self-inflicted problems we will likely blame you for" land. Flag this if you want, but I have direct personal experience in many many countries and I come from the states, so I'm not talking out of my behind. We are the meanest country on earth right now. That's why I left. (well, actually it was the Iraqi invasion, Guantanamo Bay, and the ongoing activities in central Asia coupled with the new-speak that even the Dem-aligned rags were pushing, NYT, WaPo "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and wars on emotions and such... but see, this is related: it's about being mean and making others pay with their lives for ones ideological comfort zone, etc.)
    - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
      I understand your concerns, although there is some hyperbole. I was just pointing that the reason a lot of skilled h-1bs still come and stay despite the issues is because the salaries at some companies are just really damn good compared to what they'd make at their home countries.
  - rusticpenn 6y ago
    Not really when their kids are US citizens while they arent.
mFixman 6y ago
Most Big Tech companies have offices in other rich countries like Britain or Canada. You will have a ridiculously high salary rather than a garangutan SV salary, but it's worth not getting stuck in a Bay Area traffic gridlock every day while worrying about whether you'll be allowed to go back to the country after renewing your H1-B. Years ago made the decision to stay permanently the European Big Tech office which I was going to stay temporarily, and I'm much happier for it.
conanbatt 6y ago
I find it funny that there is a cap to how many software software engineers could get to the US, but not how many domestic employees or nannies you could take. Hell, you can bring nannies as an H1B.

sg47 6y ago

I have spent 18 years in this country and am still on a H1 due to bad luck (was at a company that had layoffs which meant my GC application got audited) and terrible immigration laws (restricting green cards by country of birth). My friends who went to grad school with me are now citizens. Some folks that came on a L1 visa used a loophole to become citizens. And am still on a visa despite being valuable to my company and getting paid top dollar (top 0.5%). I can't make any long-term decisions (regretting my decision to upgrade my home 2 years back). My child is a US citizen and is old enough to realize that she wants to live here. Not sure why I have to be in this predicament. This is a rant. Not all H1-Bs are created equal. The law applies to everyone equally though.

abc_lisper 6y ago
Sorry, but your post has no information. I hope you have made some good dough. If push comes to shove, you may be able to move to Canada. FYI, I am in the exact same boat, but without kids.

digianarchist 6y ago

There are a few things I find really strange about the US immigration system. 1. The focuses on family reunification visas instead of skills which differs from other countries such as Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. 2. Visa applicants are tied to their employer and require their employer to sponsor their Green Cards. 3. Green Cards being issued based on country of birth. I think we can park the idea of "diversity" being a quality of an immigration system.

xxpor 6y ago
We haven't had a major immigration reform since the 60s, which drives a lot of the weirdness.
- hootbootscoot 6y ago
  But that's funny, as my mother immigrated from Europe in the 50's and the naturalization process was rather straightforward. If you are referring to national immigration quotas then I agree that yes, it was quite unfair for awhile now. It's just a bit odd. There wasn't even a hard physical border with Mexico until the 1920's. There used to be a rather active workable "temporary farm worker visa" program that got sacrificed on the altar of pleasing xenophobic morons somewhere in the 70's or 80's I guess...
  - kls 6y ago
    > xenophobic morons As a person that lived thru it, it was not xenophobia, it was NAFTA that sent everyone scrambling to survive. Our farm lost viability due to it, as did most small family farms. You either conglomerated with the emerging mega-farms if you where big enough or you died. Organic was nowhere on the horizon at that time and was the only thing that brought back the viability of small plot farming. Xenophobia is an easy answer to reach for, but the reality is people where scrambling to save their livelihoods and kicking the legs out from under the big conglomerates via removing the migrant workforce they relied on was one of the efforts. It has more to do with surviving than a disdain for other people. Also there was no love loss for the big conglomerates as they where the very entities that pushed for NAFTA, so trying to remove their workforce was fair game. In the end I miss the family homestead but it worked out for me. I was a crappy citrus farmer (due to lack of passion) and while I appreciate my youth, I don't ever want to own a farm so I am glad my family got to reap the rewards of selling it, rather than me inheriting a farm that I would have to figure out what to do with.

olcor 6y ago

I agree. Noped out of staying in the US last year even after finally getting an H1B in my third attempt. All the dollars in the world aren't worth it if I have to leave at any random point just because a politician wanted to pander to his base, or I get laid off for any reason, or <insert any random twist of fate here>. The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them. This is mainly an image issue; in the Obama years, even though it was probably as bad as this today (just not overt), the risk-reward ratio of surviving all this was viewed as better than going somewhere else. All this changed with Trump being this transparent. There is going to be a lot of hesitation now for anyone who wants to immigrate. Anywhere except the US, and only if necessary.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them. Since getting them to do that is literally the purpose of the nonsense currently being executed, and which has been executed against immigrant and nobimmigrant aliens for the last several years, I think you are mistaken. It's not like that's been at all a secret.
- olcor 6y ago
  You're exactly right, this is what I mean when I talk about the current government being this transparent. Immigrants tend to think of the risk-reward scenario, and a lot depends on image and perspective in their heads. This image now is a lot nearer to reality than it previously was. When this leads to people not having US-citizen children, or not buying houses, or just not jumping on the boat to reach the US come what may, or just not being too optimistic in general (essentially not tying yourself to a country when the country hasn't done the same with you in terms of citizenship), things will maybe get a bit more sane.
  - sg47 6y ago
    Sorry I disagree. The decision to make it a temporary visa has to be based on the employer's decision to continue their employment and not some politician's whim. Going by your logic, no one should be optimistic in life because the government could do some random thing and ruin your life. Tomorrow, if Trump decides that the dollar is worthless, you'll not be saying that 'Ah well, I shouldn't have been too optimistic in life'.

baby 6y ago

I have friends who are looking to renew their H1B. What happens to that? Another friend got fired from Uber a few weeks ago on an H1B. Does it mean she have to leave now?

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
As far as I can tell, this makes no particular difference to anyone currently in the US or who has a currently valid visa. It does not restrict issuance or renewal of visas on its face, only entry into the US based on as-yet-unissued non-immigrant visas in the relevant classes. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspending-entry-aliens-present-risk-u-s-labor-market-following-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation...
- fsociety 6y ago
  Yes this is correct

bmitc 6y ago

I would like to provide a personal account as to how this has affected me. I am a U.S. citizen, and these draconian, ineffective, and political grandstanding policies have drastically changed my life. In short, I may need to leave my immediate family behind, my job, and restart in another country, almost by force because of these policies and the hidden policies, which are actually much worse than these official declarations. I am engaged to a Chinese citizen, who is an active H-1B visa holder working for a U.S. technology company. We were visiting China in January to both see her family and friends and to do the yearly renewal of her re-entry visa. This latter point is important because it is a mind bogglingly inefficient process that forces people to travel back to their home country to renew a visa they already have and are using to live and work in the U.S. just so they can be able to leave and re-enter. This is just so the U.S. can have the possibility of keeping them out when they want for whatever reason, just as they have in this case. Anyway, the U.S. Consulates shutdown during the outbreak in mid-January, halting her visa processing, needlessly in my mind because she had already accomplished her in-person interview. Then, the U.S. Consulate held her Chinese passport, which had valid visas to other countries, for over a month. This prevented her from going to another country and doing the visa processing there. (It is normally recommended to do the renewal in your home country, for reasons of being stranded wherever you're doing the renewal.) So the U.S. stopped processing her basically finished visa renewal, then held on to her non-U.S. passport preventing her to travel between two countries that aren't the U.S., and now they have kept her out of the country on the point of helping unemployed workers when she already has a job because she was the qualified candidate. This was all in January and February and some of March, long before the "official" bans on visas. I have not seen my fiancee in over five months. It is unlikely I am to see her in 2020 and even 2021. I may eventually be able to travel to China to see her, but it is looking more and more that she will be unable to return to the U.S. any time soon. This is all complicated by the fact that her H-1B is time bound and the Green Card is a lost cause because it takes multiple years to be issued. This is a person who already has a U.S. job that she was more qualified for than U.S. citizens. Just because people are unemployed doesn't magically make them qualified for jobs they already lost out on. It also is unclear what companies who already employ H-1B holders are supposed to do. There is no policy or method to get the fiancee of a U.S. citizen who already holds a valid H-1B back into the U.S. right now, and it's not clear when one will open up. It also makes no sense, from the very beginning, why the U.S. prevented her from returning at any point unless you understand that the U.S. is literally at war with China, immigrants, and non-immigrant workers. All of this is vastly compounded by the inefficiencies, directed by our miserable administration, of the USCIS, because applying for a K-1 visa is not as straightforward as you would think. Even though the H-1B is a dual intent visa, applying for the K-1 visa could see the H-1B process incur delays or even denial. The U.S. government holds immigrants and non-immigrant workers hostage, and this is affecting U.S. business and citizens' personal lives. Right now, it is literally impossible to get someone who has a job in the U.S., has a current H-1B visa, a home, cars, and other assets in the U.S., is engaged to a U.S. citizen, and planned on immediately marrying a U.S. citizen after a "routine" vacation back into the U.S. any sooner than years. This is a pathetic situation. I am a tech worker who has worked for technology companies and national security labs. I am now being forced to think about leaving my parents and brother behind in the U.S. to consider moving outside of the U.S. so that I can continue my life with my fiancee and build my own family. People in this country wax on (whine) about freedoms, but what they are really wanting is to do whatever they want when they want it at the expense of literally anyone else but themselves, including their neighbor. It's nothing but extreme narcissism, and I cannot help but feel this country is a lost cause. The U.S. is an extremist state now, taken over by charlatans and textbook traitors.

mclightning 6y ago

> The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else Majority of talented people are doing that already for several years now. Besides US is not as attractive anymore.

GregoryVPerry 6y ago

That's not the reality of H1B. The reality of H1B is a recruiting industry completely dominated by Indian headhunters, who submit only Indians and not native U.S. citizens to their corporate clients. Followed by Indian H1B recipients then moving into two or three bedroom apartments they share with 10 - 15 H1B visa recipients, everyone splitting the rent and utilities, and sending the majority of their cash back to India. U.S. workers in the engineering and technical disciplines cannot compete with H1B visa applicants who are submitted at probably 30% market rates and wages, and openly discriminate in the work place if you're the token white dude U.S. citizen working in the same office. H1B is miserable, corporate welfare for Zuckerberg and Bezos.

tracer4201 6y ago
Some of this has some merit, but Zuckerberg and Bezos are actually paying the same salaries... 24 year olds making in excess of $200K, and senior engineering roles $300-$400k, with Amazon on the lower end. These aren’t 10 people living in one apartment to send all their money to India. That part of your post is misinformed.
- GregoryVPerry 6y ago
  There is no question H1B visa holders can escalate through the ranks and make a bunch of cash in the United States. And that's exactly what is wrong with the entire thing. That entire teams of Indian H1B visa holders will immediately get whitey off the project, every single time, while making sure that the hiring manager and technical team leads are always Indian. This is the caste system, re-invented here the U.S. And you cannot get shit done if you are a competent engineer dealing with an offshore team or onshore H1B team. They will not do what you tell them to do. They will argue about every single point. They will trash your credibility and refuse to implement anything, using groupthink that controls the entire project. Managing a team of onshore H1B workers is nothing but interoffice politics that they completely control in all aspects. It's blatantly racist and has destroyed U.S. worker opportunity in the engineering fields, all of them. H1B is a complete scam, especially in the Beltway / Northern Virginia area where everything is a billable contract. Headhunters get their fee and/or a large chunk of the first year's hourly revenue. The company hiring the H1B worker is on some federal project or grant and is making the spread between what the headhunter charges and the hourly rate on the contract. The hiring company couldn't give a shit less about the quality of work provided by Indian H1B workers, nor is a college degree granted from an Indian university anywhere near what is required in the U.S. from an engineering perspective - there is no comparison in the quality of education, nor have I ever met a single H1B engineer that was better than anything but a limited segment of technology that they specialize in, by design, because that requires their team in order to complete the project. Makes total sense if you're the headhunter and hiring company, both of whom only care about having a warm body in a seat that is billable, and you can get three warm bodies in the seat for the price of one market rate position using H1B. It's complete bullshit, a scam on the taxpayer and attack on U.S. workers. Worthless 99% of the time, and the 1% of H1B engineers that actually do know what they are doing are not worth the damage the H1B program has done to the entire U.S. technical space.

twirlock 6y ago

This would have been more moving five or six years ago. Now though, after years of petulant "deal with it" politics from racists on the left, cry me a river.