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I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field. While I do understand the bad practices of many tech compan

I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field. While I do understand the bad practices of many tech companies, I think the picture is very different when you look at careers in other STEM fields, such as biology, chemistry, and physics. H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. H1B visas are in fact a beacon of hope that brings many talented students to America, with the promise of finding a job here. As a matter of fact, many of these students go on to work on projects that are important for human health, e.g. COVID-19 research. It is convenient for the country to attract and retain their talent, of which there is currently a shortage. Not every H1B holder is an underpaid scrum master. Some are legitimately scientists doing on a postdoc in academia, and working to improve lives. For those of you rejoicing, I just want to ask you to do more research in how this rash policy change may impact the lives of real people.

ummonk 6y ago
If their projects are that important we should be spending more on them so they meet the minimum pay requirements.
- la6471 6y ago
  Did Covid not teach us anything? How long do you think it will take for your job to be offshored? Maybe few years? This will give incentive to increase offshoring to the companies. Mind you - offshoring is not equal to outsourcing. If you work for a Global company like Google or GE - good luck. Stopping immigration is like stopping oxygen ... this economy will slowly stagnate and be overtaken by other more efficient economies. Either you try to dial back time and go back to the 40s with no globalization OR you have to push forward with globalization to level the playing field for all countries wether it is a developed or emerging country and achieve a parity in salary which makes the American workers competitive in the Global scale. Do we have the guts to make the second choice because certainly we cannot go back to the 40s and aim for global dominance via WW3.
  - lmg643 6y ago
    Great logic - give up citizen jobs at home because they'll be offshored otherwise. Foolish logic for a country to operate under, and why should any citizens support that kind of policy? Lose either way.
    - la6471 6y ago
      No that is short term outlook. You need to look long term. But I agree the pain of losing a job is real and that’s where UBI comes in. UBI (Universal basic income) is a must because job losses are inevitable wether due to automation / offshoring / health issues or skill shortage. Where will the money from UBI come from? From the companies that profit because of these mechanisms. Tax them , tax the ultra rich folks. If humanity has to continue its progress in the current path this has to be the future. If you have an alternative in mind please share.
      - lmg643 6y ago
        more great logic - we need to outsource jobs so the companies can earn a higher profit to pay UBI to the citizens they displaced. This is the equivalent of a ponzi scheme if you think about it - unsustainable. US is a country, not a company - citizens are non-voluntary members - some of them have ancestors that served and died to make it what it is. US did not magically become an epicenter of innovation where Google could be created, it took the whole history of the country to get to this point. If "more efficient economies" were about to take over, people would stay home. folks continue to come to the US because it is still best here. some of the "more efficient economies" come from are growing by widescale industrial espionage, made easier by lax controls on intellectual property. People still come here. Other emerging economies have almost intractable demographic issues that only so much hope can address. The US would be well served to not blindly repeat the mistakes of other countries for the sake of short term economic gain.
        la6471 6y ago
        So to your first point you need to understand I am not taking about “needing” to outsource/offshoring to provide UBI to citizens. No, “offShoring” is “needed” by companies to be more efficient and profitable. It is a business decision. That is inevitable if US companies wants to stay competitive in the global market. If not outsourcing or offshoring there WILL be automation as time goes on and many skills will become older or stale. This is also inevitable. If you deny these trends you are living under a rock really. Now in your answer I do sense some frustrations around demographic changes , which is also real , but again that kind of thinking leads to stereotyping biases and sometimes making the wrong judgement, which I think we can all do without and definitely the United States constitution does not prescribe classes of citizens based on ancestry. But to all the other issues UBI is the answer not stopping the profitability of companies. Secondly the fact is most of the developed countries run on successful immigration policies. Countries like Japan which did not encourage immigration until recently had a stagnating economy for a very long time. Only recently they are loosening up immigration to help boost the economy. In fact the reason USA is a great place to come and work for many SKILLED immigrants is that immigrants has contributed greatly in the last three decades and helpers US companies to dominate in the global competition and increase their profit to stellar levels. Look at any of the global hi tech companies from IBM to Microsoft and you will see immigrants holding not only back office roles but also holding all kinds of positions from middle managers to being CEOs. Do you think these companies could have been so successful without the contribution of the immigrant communities? These companies success are America’s recent success and let us not deny this fact or take steps that will kill this glorious fountain of prosperity and innovation.
- ravila4 6y ago
  Part of the problem is that in basic science, it is hard to measure the value of a project until years in the future. But we do allocate money on academic projects -- through federal grants.. nevertheless the base salary for a postdoc is pretty standard across the country, an subpar compared to industry. Hence, salary does not necessarily correlate with importance of the research.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
asabjorn 6y ago
The problem with how academic and science work is currently structured is that there is an oversupply of labor at basement-dwelling compensation. Post-docs work for decades before getting better opportunities, and people are cheap labor in industry labs for long periods of time. Foreign workers are partially compensated for low pay with a potential visa to stay, while this extra motivation is not there for Americans. Having a native pipeline of education to knowledge work is important for long term competitiveness and is hard rebuild. If the US falls upon even harder times the foreign pipeline will dry up.
- sjg007 6y ago
  This pipeline is already drying up due to covid.
yowlingcat 6y ago
> It is convenient for the country to attract and retain their talent, of which there is currently a shortage. I think this subtle misdirection is how the lie gets slipped in. It's not that there is a shortage for talent. It's that there is a shortage for talent available at the price point that corporations want. Does that mean we should create an indentured servitude system to make that available? The whole idea of artificially creating an immigration system expressly for those willing to get exploited is pretty distasteful to me and harkens back to a bunch of other distasteful ways this country used to procure its cheap labor. The bandaid has to be pulled off at some point. People will get hurt in the process. But if this isn't rectified now, even more suffering will occur in the future.
- ravila4 6y ago
  In my view, we can never not have a shortage of talent when it comes to scientific disciplines - at any pricepoint. The beauty of bringing more researchers to the country is that they eventually help create as many or more jobs than they "take".
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    What leads you to say that? I'd take the counterpoint. Much of what passes for "science" these days is glorified p-hacking for conference proceeding churn and sweatshop adjunct work to pump out a minimum amount of monetizable IP to underwrite an ever bloating university administration complex. It seems closer to scientism than to science for me. And I think that is the natural result of intellectual pursuit being diluted into a commodity.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ravila4 6y ago
      On the comment regarding "p-hacking". I think that is a separate issue altogether and irrelevant to the discussion. Universities have essentially become businesses and they push scientists to "publish or perish". If anything, it is a case for democratizing science even more.
WillPostForFood 6y ago
bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2020-H1B-Visa-Category.aspx?T=IN https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2020-H1B-Visa-Category.as... It isn't bias, just look at the H1B distribution, it heavily biased to the CS/IT space. Like for every possible biologist you are imagining, there probably 100 IT/CS guys coming in. I'd love to have the biologists and chemists come in, but the big IT consultancies are massively abusing the system, and that needs to get fixed first. Look at the top company sponsors, not STEM fields like biology, chemistry, and physics. It is entirely software.
- ravila4 6y ago
  Absolutely. But perhaps it is precisely for this reason that we need a comprehensive and thoughtful reform that takes into account the value added. I am worried that blanket-raising the requirements solves one problem and creates another.
  - sanxiyn 6y ago
    I think policy should be evaluated by whether it is better on net, not by whether it has any downside whatsoever. The latter is a sure way to be stuck in status quo.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Why? Are there more jobs for Biologists than Computer Scientists/Developers/Programmers? It looks like this is a response based on demand. Why in the world would you want more biologists when there isn't market demand for them? This is mostly wishful romanticization of particular "underdog" areas of studies. Makes no sense to me. Even more preposterous is the parent's profound claim: > I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field I don't understand why we are talking about bias? It's not like the market goes "Gee ... we are a software company, but only if we would abandon our biases and hire an archeologist from Columbia and sponsor an H1b visa for them. Not sure what would do with them, but we must hire them though. Hey Rob! You got any ideas man?"
chunky1994 6y ago
I fail to see the "problem" here. Most academia STEM jobs are incredibly competitive, postdocs less so than professorships but for fundamental science it is nearly indisputable that academia is flush with labour. If universities deem it too hard to raise postdoc wages across the board (or for specific foreign students) due to a lack of grant funding then they will still have ample choice of American students who go onto do the same research. Yes, it is unfortunate for students looking to move to the US that the path through the standard academic route is no longer easily viable but that does not mean important research does not get done. There are also plenty of other countries that are in fact seeking such talent that might actually look like better options for the now disenfranchised (for lack of a better word) foreign students.
- aspaceman 6y ago
  It's a "problem" if you hear this and think, "Wow I want more of those people". It's not a "problem" if you hear this and think, "Yeah, it should be hard for them". Ultimately, people explicitly disagree with your initial position and framing.
  - chunky1994 6y ago
    Did you mean to respond to GP? If not, that is a rather disingenuous reading of what I wrote. No one is saying it "should" be hard for foreign students to get a job in academia, my point was academia has ample domestic labour, so even if H1B salaries are raised, the research attempted is unaffected. Wanting more researchers is well and good, there just aren't enough jobs and funding for them in the current STEM academic market (which is completely separate from any H1B related issue), hence the rather large number of people who move to industry.
- davrosthedalek 6y ago
  It's very simple. If it's harder for foreign people to become postdocs/profs in the US, the quality of US research will fall. Quickly.
  - chunky1994 6y ago
29athrowaway 6y ago
No doubt that H-1B has brought many talented people to the US that have made enourmous contributions. But this has been out of random chance rather than design. The program needs calibration. The H-1B visa program currently requires to have a "bachelor's degree" or equivalent. When you open the door to any "bachelor's degree or equivalent" from anywhere in the world, results are pretty random. You can get a freaking genius, or a person that cannot implement fizzbuzz, and anything in between. I think the solution is to give priority to the most skilled applicants in the pool, in this way, the cheaper talent will be left behind and wage depression becomes harder to achieve.
throwawaygh 6y ago
> H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. Academia is a great example of how opening up a domestic job market to The Entire World suppresses wages and drives competition for relatively modest paying jobs through the roof. If every job market in the US worked like the Academic job market, the country would be hell on earth.
R0b0t1 6y ago
>H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. I don't care. It's not the US's job to educate the world. Until someone helps me get into university again I don't give a rat's ass about foreign students coming in. Those students are typically in the higher earning income brackets for their countries.
- swilliamsio 6y ago
  Student visas are essentially free money for the countries that provide them: unversities charge them more; the students tend to be rich and spend a lot; a lot of students immediately return home and don't actually take any local jobs. There's no downsides.
  - R0b0t1 6y ago
    There are limited seats. At the extreme end you have medical school, where foreign students likely are taking away a position from a capable citizen.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thowaway23413 6y ago
  Buddy, you gotta help yourself get into and pay for university. Why should a university give a "rat's ass" about you when a foreign student will pay more?
  - R0b0t1 6y ago
    Exactly the rub then, isn't it? I got the token half off 200% markup while I watched my graduating HS class get nearly free rides. I had similar grades, but was mostly straight A (but in harder honors classes) and was white and male.
    - thowaway23413 6y ago
dasudasu 6y ago
Postdocs are not even on H1B the vast majority of the time, because it's considered academic training. It's possible to get on a H1B if everything has been exhausted, but never the preferred option.
- slyfox 6y ago
  I did my Ph.D. in Physics on an F visa, and H1B was my only option when I became a postdoc. Already on the old system, I was paid significantly more than my US citizen colleagues due to the minimum wage. I’m worried about what this rule change will do to my field, where talented postdocs are hard to find. It also never made sense to me to invest many $100k in foreign Ph.D. students to then make it so hard for them to repay part of this investment to the country.
Eridrus 6y ago
I think we should be expanding the H1-B program, but it is already oversubscribed and if this can reduce applications to the point where the lottery is not needed or is much more certain, I think that would be an improvement.

ummonk 6y ago

If their projects are that important we should be spending more on them so they meet the minimum pay requirements.

la6471 6y ago
Did Covid not teach us anything? How long do you think it will take for your job to be offshored? Maybe few years? This will give incentive to increase offshoring to the companies. Mind you - offshoring is not equal to outsourcing. If you work for a Global company like Google or GE - good luck. Stopping immigration is like stopping oxygen ... this economy will slowly stagnate and be overtaken by other more efficient economies. Either you try to dial back time and go back to the 40s with no globalization OR you have to push forward with globalization to level the playing field for all countries wether it is a developed or emerging country and achieve a parity in salary which makes the American workers competitive in the Global scale. Do we have the guts to make the second choice because certainly we cannot go back to the 40s and aim for global dominance via WW3.
- lmg643 6y ago
  Great logic - give up citizen jobs at home because they'll be offshored otherwise. Foolish logic for a country to operate under, and why should any citizens support that kind of policy? Lose either way.
  - la6471 6y ago
    No that is short term outlook. You need to look long term. But I agree the pain of losing a job is real and that’s where UBI comes in. UBI (Universal basic income) is a must because job losses are inevitable wether due to automation / offshoring / health issues or skill shortage. Where will the money from UBI come from? From the companies that profit because of these mechanisms. Tax them , tax the ultra rich folks. If humanity has to continue its progress in the current path this has to be the future. If you have an alternative in mind please share.
    - lmg643 6y ago
      more great logic - we need to outsource jobs so the companies can earn a higher profit to pay UBI to the citizens they displaced. This is the equivalent of a ponzi scheme if you think about it - unsustainable. US is a country, not a company - citizens are non-voluntary members - some of them have ancestors that served and died to make it what it is. US did not magically become an epicenter of innovation where Google could be created, it took the whole history of the country to get to this point. If "more efficient economies" were about to take over, people would stay home. folks continue to come to the US because it is still best here. some of the "more efficient economies" come from are growing by widescale industrial espionage, made easier by lax controls on intellectual property. People still come here. Other emerging economies have almost intractable demographic issues that only so much hope can address. The US would be well served to not blindly repeat the mistakes of other countries for the sake of short term economic gain.
      - la6471 6y ago
        So to your first point you need to understand I am not taking about “needing” to outsource/offshoring to provide UBI to citizens. No, “offShoring” is “needed” by companies to be more efficient and profitable. It is a business decision. That is inevitable if US companies wants to stay competitive in the global market. If not outsourcing or offshoring there WILL be automation as time goes on and many skills will become older or stale. This is also inevitable. If you deny these trends you are living under a rock really. Now in your answer I do sense some frustrations around demographic changes , which is also real , but again that kind of thinking leads to stereotyping biases and sometimes making the wrong judgement, which I think we can all do without and definitely the United States constitution does not prescribe classes of citizens based on ancestry. But to all the other issues UBI is the answer not stopping the profitability of companies. Secondly the fact is most of the developed countries run on successful immigration policies. Countries like Japan which did not encourage immigration until recently had a stagnating economy for a very long time. Only recently they are loosening up immigration to help boost the economy. In fact the reason USA is a great place to come and work for many SKILLED immigrants is that immigrants has contributed greatly in the last three decades and helpers US companies to dominate in the global competition and increase their profit to stellar levels. Look at any of the global hi tech companies from IBM to Microsoft and you will see immigrants holding not only back office roles but also holding all kinds of positions from middle managers to being CEOs. Do you think these companies could have been so successful without the contribution of the immigrant communities? These companies success are America’s recent success and let us not deny this fact or take steps that will kill this glorious fountain of prosperity and innovation.
ravila4 6y ago
Part of the problem is that in basic science, it is hard to measure the value of a project until years in the future. But we do allocate money on academic projects -- through federal grants.. nevertheless the base salary for a postdoc is pretty standard across the country, an subpar compared to industry. Hence, salary does not necessarily correlate with importance of the research.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

asabjorn 6y ago

The problem with how academic and science work is currently structured is that there is an oversupply of labor at basement-dwelling compensation. Post-docs work for decades before getting better opportunities, and people are cheap labor in industry labs for long periods of time. Foreign workers are partially compensated for low pay with a potential visa to stay, while this extra motivation is not there for Americans. Having a native pipeline of education to knowledge work is important for long term competitiveness and is hard rebuild. If the US falls upon even harder times the foreign pipeline will dry up.

sjg007 6y ago
This pipeline is already drying up due to covid.

yowlingcat 6y ago

> It is convenient for the country to attract and retain their talent, of which there is currently a shortage. I think this subtle misdirection is how the lie gets slipped in. It's not that there is a shortage for talent. It's that there is a shortage for talent available at the price point that corporations want. Does that mean we should create an indentured servitude system to make that available? The whole idea of artificially creating an immigration system expressly for those willing to get exploited is pretty distasteful to me and harkens back to a bunch of other distasteful ways this country used to procure its cheap labor. The bandaid has to be pulled off at some point. People will get hurt in the process. But if this isn't rectified now, even more suffering will occur in the future.

ravila4 6y ago
In my view, we can never not have a shortage of talent when it comes to scientific disciplines - at any pricepoint. The beauty of bringing more researchers to the country is that they eventually help create as many or more jobs than they "take".
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  What leads you to say that? I'd take the counterpoint. Much of what passes for "science" these days is glorified p-hacking for conference proceeding churn and sweatshop adjunct work to pump out a minimum amount of monetizable IP to underwrite an ever bloating university administration complex. It seems closer to scientism than to science for me. And I think that is the natural result of intellectual pursuit being diluted into a commodity.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ravila4 6y ago
    On the comment regarding "p-hacking". I think that is a separate issue altogether and irrelevant to the discussion. Universities have essentially become businesses and they push scientists to "publish or perish". If anything, it is a case for democratizing science even more.

WillPostForFood 6y ago

bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2020-H1B-Visa-Category.aspx?T=IN https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2020-H1B-Visa-Category.as... It isn't bias, just look at the H1B distribution, it heavily biased to the CS/IT space. Like for every possible biologist you are imagining, there probably 100 IT/CS guys coming in. I'd love to have the biologists and chemists come in, but the big IT consultancies are massively abusing the system, and that needs to get fixed first. Look at the top company sponsors, not STEM fields like biology, chemistry, and physics. It is entirely software.

ravila4 6y ago
Absolutely. But perhaps it is precisely for this reason that we need a comprehensive and thoughtful reform that takes into account the value added. I am worried that blanket-raising the requirements solves one problem and creates another.
- sanxiyn 6y ago
  I think policy should be evaluated by whether it is better on net, not by whether it has any downside whatsoever. The latter is a sure way to be stuck in status quo.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Why? Are there more jobs for Biologists than Computer Scientists/Developers/Programmers? It looks like this is a response based on demand. Why in the world would you want more biologists when there isn't market demand for them? This is mostly wishful romanticization of particular "underdog" areas of studies. Makes no sense to me. Even more preposterous is the parent's profound claim: > I feel like this thread has a lot of bias coming from bad experiences in the computer science field I don't understand why we are talking about bias? It's not like the market goes "Gee ... we are a software company, but only if we would abandon our biases and hire an archeologist from Columbia and sponsor an H1b visa for them. Not sure what would do with them, but we must hire them though. Hey Rob! You got any ideas man?"

chunky1994 6y ago

I fail to see the "problem" here. Most academia STEM jobs are incredibly competitive, postdocs less so than professorships but for fundamental science it is nearly indisputable that academia is flush with labour. If universities deem it too hard to raise postdoc wages across the board (or for specific foreign students) due to a lack of grant funding then they will still have ample choice of American students who go onto do the same research. Yes, it is unfortunate for students looking to move to the US that the path through the standard academic route is no longer easily viable but that does not mean important research does not get done. There are also plenty of other countries that are in fact seeking such talent that might actually look like better options for the now disenfranchised (for lack of a better word) foreign students.

aspaceman 6y ago
It's a "problem" if you hear this and think, "Wow I want more of those people". It's not a "problem" if you hear this and think, "Yeah, it should be hard for them". Ultimately, people explicitly disagree with your initial position and framing.
- chunky1994 6y ago
  Did you mean to respond to GP? If not, that is a rather disingenuous reading of what I wrote. No one is saying it "should" be hard for foreign students to get a job in academia, my point was academia has ample domestic labour, so even if H1B salaries are raised, the research attempted is unaffected. Wanting more researchers is well and good, there just aren't enough jobs and funding for them in the current STEM academic market (which is completely separate from any H1B related issue), hence the rather large number of people who move to industry.
davrosthedalek 6y ago
It's very simple. If it's harder for foreign people to become postdocs/profs in the US, the quality of US research will fall. Quickly.
- chunky1994 6y ago

29athrowaway 6y ago

No doubt that H-1B has brought many talented people to the US that have made enourmous contributions. But this has been out of random chance rather than design. The program needs calibration. The H-1B visa program currently requires to have a "bachelor's degree" or equivalent. When you open the door to any "bachelor's degree or equivalent" from anywhere in the world, results are pretty random. You can get a freaking genius, or a person that cannot implement fizzbuzz, and anything in between. I think the solution is to give priority to the most skilled applicants in the pool, in this way, the cheaper talent will be left behind and wage depression becomes harder to achieve.

throwawaygh 6y ago

> H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. Academia is a great example of how opening up a domestic job market to The Entire World suppresses wages and drives competition for relatively modest paying jobs through the roof. If every job market in the US worked like the Academic job market, the country would be hell on earth.

R0b0t1 6y ago

>H1B visas are very important for foreign students in these fields particularly those hoping to pursue careers in academia. I don't care. It's not the US's job to educate the world. Until someone helps me get into university again I don't give a rat's ass about foreign students coming in. Those students are typically in the higher earning income brackets for their countries.

swilliamsio 6y ago
Student visas are essentially free money for the countries that provide them: unversities charge them more; the students tend to be rich and spend a lot; a lot of students immediately return home and don't actually take any local jobs. There's no downsides.
- R0b0t1 6y ago
  There are limited seats. At the extreme end you have medical school, where foreign students likely are taking away a position from a capable citizen.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thowaway23413 6y ago
Buddy, you gotta help yourself get into and pay for university. Why should a university give a "rat's ass" about you when a foreign student will pay more?
- R0b0t1 6y ago
  Exactly the rub then, isn't it? I got the token half off 200% markup while I watched my graduating HS class get nearly free rides. I had similar grades, but was mostly straight A (but in harder honors classes) and was white and male.
  - thowaway23413 6y ago

dasudasu 6y ago

Postdocs are not even on H1B the vast majority of the time, because it's considered academic training. It's possible to get on a H1B if everything has been exhausted, but never the preferred option.

slyfox 6y ago
I did my Ph.D. in Physics on an F visa, and H1B was my only option when I became a postdoc. Already on the old system, I was paid significantly more than my US citizen colleagues due to the minimum wage. I’m worried about what this rule change will do to my field, where talented postdocs are hard to find. It also never made sense to me to invest many $100k in foreign Ph.D. students to then make it so hard for them to repay part of this investment to the country.

Eridrus 6y ago

I think we should be expanding the H1-B program, but it is already oversubscribed and if this can reduce applications to the point where the lottery is not needed or is much more certain, I think that would be an improvement.