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“ Because those required wage increases take effect this week, existing H-1B holders looking to renew their visas might not qualify unless their employers raise

• muzaffarpur 6y ago
  That's not the kind of families HN cares about. Only the right kind /s.
  • fernandotakai 6y ago
    let's be honest, HN does not care about H1B workers. i've seen so many damn comments saying shit like "only low skill indians come here on h1b". it got to a point where i couldn't discern between right wing "they took our jobs".
    • nicoburns 6y ago
      Eh. I think that's a little unfair on us HNers. I have seen comments like that. But I've also seen a lot of comments about how the H1b visas should be more flexible and widely available so as to give visa holders more freedom.
      • fernandotakai 6y ago
        the problem is that those comments are never downvoted. they are ALWAYS upvoted. so is it unfair to say a community that mostly upvotes plain xenophobic comments has an issue? and it's not from now -- i've been here for a while and every single time h1b is mentioned, there are upvoted comments saying weird stuff that is never removed.
        • dang 6y ago
          > those comments are never downvoted. they are ALWAYS upvoted That's far from the case. You might be running into the notice/dislike bias, which unfortunately tends to distort perceptions and leads to false feelings of generality. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... From there it leads to painful feelings about the community, which is particularly unfortunate. I wrote about this earlier today in a different context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24701584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24701584.
          • aerovistae 6y ago
            Hi, I'm just commenting here because I don't know any alternative way to reach the moderation of hacker news. There was a thread earlier today on the topic of "Ask HN: what do you consider to be essential to being a good programmer" and it vanished in the middle of me having typed out a long response. I couldn't find it afterwards. Do you know where it went or why it was removed?
            • tomhoward 6y ago
              It’s currently at the top of the “ask” page - https://news.ycombinator.com/ask https://news.ycombinator.com/ask It also appears via this search: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=false&query=essential%20programmer&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...
            • dang 6y ago
              > I don't know any alternative way to reach the moderation of hacker news This is explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, which is something everyone posting here should be familiar with. There is also a Contact link in the footer.
            • deleted 6y ago
              [deleted]
• curiousllama 6y ago
  Oof, here's the catch. This is bad. A non-retroactive raise of the wage scale isn't bad per se - it cuts down a lot of the incentive to flood the system, and prioritizes employees who will add the most value. But I have a sneaking suspicion that this surprise kick-out is a feature, not a bug.
  • zo1 6y ago
    I definitely think it's a feature, as it has a "corrective" effect. But yes it does uproot people and they should at least allow a grace period to allow the visa holders time to address their family/living situation.
• kingnight 6y ago
  I find this really sad. Knowing a lot of people who work in the US who aren't citizens and have more and more been stressed about their access to return home and back for a variety of reasons, this just adds to a pile of depressing realities people in America are facing.
• tshaddox 6y ago
  > I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong. Existing H-1B holders should clearly be grandfathered in, but those aren't the only people who have done nothing wrong. What about the would-be future H-1B holders who would have benefited from working while making less than the new requirements? In other words, the vast majority of people who are going to be affected by these new rules.
  • flurben 6y ago
    American visa programs are run for the benefit of americans. Whether or not the visa holder benefits is incidental and not the point of US law.
    • tshaddox 6y ago
      I don't approve of seamlessly replacing "people" with "Americans," and the idea that Americans should not care about whether people from elsewhere are harmed by American policies is vile.
      • flurben 6y ago
        Nothing vile about it, it is how all governments around the world operate, for the benefit of their citizens. Does the Indian government care about americans? How about the Chinese?
        • pm90 6y ago
          This isn’t a good comparison, due to differences in population and wealth of different countries. Just because Governments are required to take care of only their citizens interests doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they need to do. Especially considering the people in question here are immigrants who contribute to the economy and society of the US, and are likely to be citizens themselves in the future.
          • 6y ago
• belltaco 6y ago
  Since remote work has become acceptable and they already know the ins and outs of the job, many of these folks losing their visa will just be allowed to work remotely from India or Canada where it's trivial to get a work visa if you have a job offer. This means the US economy will lose all the taxes and local expenditure in the economy by the family like rent, food, travel, vacations, utilities, entertainment, cars, home sales, etc. etc. And if that works out, the next hire may just be directly hired in India or Canada itself. If I were in the Canada govt, I'd immediately create a way around the travel ban for workers who's visas didn't get renewed to be able to move to Canada after following a strict quarantine protocol. If the worker was able to work remotely in the US using Zoom, why can't they do the same job remotely in the same time zone in Canada using the same remote working tools? There is already a small industry in Canada where a company takes a few % of the billing rate in order to sponsor and hold a Canadian visa for people who lost their H1B visas due to increased and inconsistent rejections over the past few years, but whose employer is willing to allow them to work from Canada. This moves a lot of money to Canada. Also, some tech companies have been outright moving jobs to Canada because they can hire from a global workforce and Canada has been welcoming them. This is going to intensify.
  • hoka-one-one 6y ago
    Is it that simple though? Maybe for companies that are incorporated abroad. Otherwise looks like international workers are subject to 30% withholding, unless there's some tax treaty https://www.irs.gov/businesses/international-businesses/us-withholding-agent-frequently-asked-question https://www.irs.gov/businesses/international-businesses/us-w... .
    • belltaco 6y ago
      That applies only to people physically within the US. A non resident alien is someone on a work visa or student visa or other authorization. A resident alien is someone on a green card. Those rules don't apply to people in Canada who pay Canadian taxes(otherwise there would be double taxation). E.g of companies handing Canadian compliance and billing their US clients. https://syndesus.com/why-u-s-companies-need-a-peo-to-recruit-canadian-workers/ https://syndesus.com/why-u-s-companies-need-a-peo-to-recruit...
• hal9000-tng 6y ago
  > This is really bad. Families are going to get told to leave. I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong. It's not a moral issue (except for the big H-1B mills that are gaming the system.) But nothing has changed: these are not an offer of citizenship. They are temporary work visas with no guarantees: an opportunity to do temporary specialty work in the U.S. If someone were to bring their family, they have done so with the explicit knowledge that the situation could change at any time.
  • hoka-one-one 6y ago
    The decision would be ok in most other countries, where the land is some ethnic group's birthright. America, however, is unique in that it's everyone's birthright. The only reason most educated people don't support totally open borders is because there's so much poverty outside the US, but H-1B holders are not poor.
    • chmod600 6y ago
      On what basis are you deciding what someone's (or some group's) birthrights are?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • dougmwne 6y ago
        I think they may have been referring to varying citizenship laws across the world. The USA has citizenship by soil and blood, meaning that the country belongs to the people born here and the children of it's citizens. (Let's set aside naturalization for a moment, as that is not a birthright.) Some other countries have citizenship by blood only, so in a sense, those countries belong to their ethnic groups, wherever they may be. So in essence, the USA is more inclusive in bestowing the birthright of citizenship, which befits a nation of immigrants. I support the free movement of people, but also the sovereignty of individual nations to decide who that country belongs to. For a strange example, the UK belongs to the queen, but she's nice enough to let her subjects have the use of it. And back to naturalization, these H1b changes highlight why naturalization is important and should be achievable for anywho who ties their life to the USA. Citizenship confers privleges and protections and asking people to make life altering investments into a country without offering citizenship in return is exploitative and immoral.
• tardismechanic 6y ago
  Many of them aren’t white though. So shouldn’t matter as much right? /s
• ethagknight 6y ago
  So this is amusingly similar to the argument against a minimum wage increase. People will lose their jobs, families will lose out. In either case, the employer is the actual baddie being forced to either raise the wage to an appropriate level or send the employee home (and then attempt to backfill the job with the local market, probably not easy). So if you are for an increased minimum wage, legislation at least in part intended to eliminate abusive employment practices across the low end labor market, (and I assume you are because of your rightful concern for the families) wouldn't it make sense to praise this legislation and focus your frustration on the inevitable corporations that are taking advantage of foreign labor? Or is there more nuance to this?
  • Cherian_Abraham 6y ago
    There is nothing amusing about families being ejected. That's the nuance.
    • meekmind 6y ago
      He didn't say families being ejected is amusing. His point is that the argument that increasing minimum wage will result in people getting fired (made often by the right) is practically identical to the argument that increasing the wage requirements for H1B visas will result in people getting fired (now made by the left). The amusing part is that both sides now look like hypocrites. The outcomes for individuals and their families is obviously tragic either way.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • AQuantized 6y ago
    There's a big difference between requiring a minimum wage for anyone and specifically requiring a higher wage for existing H1-Bs. In particular, the fact that H1-Bs will have to emigrate if it isn't increased.
    • webinvest 6y ago
• lefrenchy 6y ago
  Especially in the midst of a global pandemic, seems a little callous.
• hiram112 6y ago
  H1Bs were never supposed to have been immigration visas. Congress set the law to two 3-year stints - max of 6 years and then you're gone. Somewhere in the last 20 years, they began rubber stamping renewals for anybody who'd paid a few thousand dollars to get into the Green Card line, which is absurd because the Green Card line for Indians is at about 100 years due to their population. You didn't do anything wrong except assume the corruption would go on forever and Americans wouldn't eventually notice they were being replaced by foreign workers, and vote accordingly.
  • doingmyting 6y ago
    H1-B visas are dual intent visas. What you're saying isn't quite accurate.
  • sisama 6y ago
    One does not pay a couple thousand $ get into an eternal line. You need to have an approved I-140 i.e. an approved green card application to remain in line. To do this a company must (1) hire you; (2) decide to sponsor you for a long, expensive process; (3) interview broadly and prove it couldn't not find an American to fill the role. Not to speak of a number of hoops an applicant has to go through.
  • redditmigrant 6y ago
    Rubber stamp? Have you ever tried applying for an H1b renewal? There is constant anxiety over ever changing rules and RFEs. Not to mention the run around to get a visa stamp every 3 years. Few thousand to get into green card line? Have you ever tried doing this? There is an elaborate over a year long process to get into this line. and even then its a broken broken system that stipulates that queues are country based, which mean a Lithuanian who enters the queue today will get a green card before an equally qualified chinese or indian person who has been in the queue for 10 years!
• spongepoc 6y ago
  We are facing record unemployment so people are having this happen to them across the board. The people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic but are struggling to find work because of the abundance of H-1B holders also "haven't done anything wrong". The question now is do we continue that flow of labour while jobs are scarce, or stem that flow while we get back on our feet again? On this, the Trump administration appears to have made a tough, but rational choice.
  • pembrook 6y ago
    > people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic but are struggling to find work because of the abundance of H-1B holders That’s a straw man. Those people do not exist. Look at the data. There’s currently 18 million unemployed Americans. The majority of pandemic related job losses are low wage retail, hospitality and restaurant workers. There’s a total of 500k H1b visa holders in the US, the vast majority of which are in IT. There is very little (if any) overlap between those groups. You aren’t suddenly going to make more money by kicking out all the immigrants. That’s not how the economy works. Those H1b holders are also consumers who spend a majority of their salaries on taxes and products/services in the US. Kicking out 500k people would further hurt unemployment in sectors hit most by the pandemic.