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Myself personally? Parents immigrated on H1B a long time ago. Some of my teammates got their citizenship through their own H1B much more recently (with about an

Myself personally? Parents immigrated on H1B a long time ago. Some of my teammates got their citizenship through their own H1B much more recently (with about an even split of having graduated from a US college vs abroad). Others, typically older ones, got to the US as refugees from the late days of soviet union. Another common story I frequently encounter is a TN visa from Canada or the Australian equivalent (forgot the visa name, but it works similarly to TN). Or families where one parent is american and another one is foreign, they live in the other parent's country during childhood, and then move to the US later in life.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Myself personally? Parents immigrated on H1B a long time ago. Some of my teammates got their citizenship through their own H1B much more recently So attributing your presence as foreign born immigrants to the H1B program would be... correct?
- filoleg 5y ago
  That's literally the case for almost every single american, if you are willing to go far enough down the rabbithole. Are you willing to question some americans about their presence in the US being, generationally, dependent on colonizing native american land? I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion at hand at all. Given I am a US citizen not bound by visas or anything like that, how am I even theoretically able to "suppress wages"? Your point about this just seems like the most pedantic "technically correct" statement that has zero relevancy. I disputed the fact that the 74% foreign-born number has anything to do with suppressing wages, as a lot of them are US citizens and can choose to work wherever they want (note: they dont even need to be US citizens for that, as green card allows that, along with a bunch of other visas). And your retort is that some of them used to be non-US citizens at some point? That doesn't address the point that the 74% number is useless in the context of this discussion.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    >>>>> That "74%" you tout is useless as a number, unless you know exactly how many of them are on H1B and how many out of that subset are "depressing wages" > I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion at hand at all. Given I am a US citizen not bound by visas or anything like that, how am I even theoretically able to "suppress wages"? You're suppressing wages by working in the industry. "Suppressing wages" and "being present" are the same thing. And, as you note, you're present as part of the H1B program. > Your point about this just seems like the most pedantic "technically correct" statement that has zero relevancy. I disputed the fact that the 74% foreign-born number has anything to do with suppressing wages, as a lot of them are US citizens and can choose to work wherever they want This is your problem; you don't understand what suppressing wages involves.
    - filoleg 5y ago
      > you don't understand what suppressing wages involves. Please tell me what it involves then, because throughout my entire career, all I've been seeing is heavily increasing salaries for software devs all across the board, from juniors to seniors. 5-10 years ago, $200k/yr starting salary out of college was either extremely rare or almost unheard of. These days, it is pretty commonplace at bigger tech companies or unicorns. Also, I don't see how one can suppress wages at the same time as the entire industry is struggling with hiring competent people. At the previous company I worked at, we had to interview about 50 people to fill 1 position on my team. It wasn't limited, if all 50 qualified, we would have hired them all, just spread them out to other parts of the company. They weren't competing for one single spot against each other. And yet, it took us around 50 people just to find a single qualified person. And that's not counting those who got filtered out at the resume stage. Cannot comment on other industries, but in tech, imo H1B tends to fulfill its intended purpose by addressing the shortage of qualified candidates (exceptions apply where fraud and abuse is involved, like in the OP or certain consultancy places like Infosys).

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> Myself personally? Parents immigrated on H1B a long time ago. Some of my teammates got their citizenship through their own H1B much more recently So attributing your presence as foreign born immigrants to the H1B program would be... correct?

filoleg 5y ago
That's literally the case for almost every single american, if you are willing to go far enough down the rabbithole. Are you willing to question some americans about their presence in the US being, generationally, dependent on colonizing native american land? I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion at hand at all. Given I am a US citizen not bound by visas or anything like that, how am I even theoretically able to "suppress wages"? Your point about this just seems like the most pedantic "technically correct" statement that has zero relevancy. I disputed the fact that the 74% foreign-born number has anything to do with suppressing wages, as a lot of them are US citizens and can choose to work wherever they want (note: they dont even need to be US citizens for that, as green card allows that, along with a bunch of other visas). And your retort is that some of them used to be non-US citizens at some point? That doesn't address the point that the 74% number is useless in the context of this discussion.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  >>>>> That "74%" you tout is useless as a number, unless you know exactly how many of them are on H1B and how many out of that subset are "depressing wages" > I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion at hand at all. Given I am a US citizen not bound by visas or anything like that, how am I even theoretically able to "suppress wages"? You're suppressing wages by working in the industry. "Suppressing wages" and "being present" are the same thing. And, as you note, you're present as part of the H1B program. > Your point about this just seems like the most pedantic "technically correct" statement that has zero relevancy. I disputed the fact that the 74% foreign-born number has anything to do with suppressing wages, as a lot of them are US citizens and can choose to work wherever they want This is your problem; you don't understand what suppressing wages involves.
  - filoleg 5y ago
    > you don't understand what suppressing wages involves. Please tell me what it involves then, because throughout my entire career, all I've been seeing is heavily increasing salaries for software devs all across the board, from juniors to seniors. 5-10 years ago, $200k/yr starting salary out of college was either extremely rare or almost unheard of. These days, it is pretty commonplace at bigger tech companies or unicorns. Also, I don't see how one can suppress wages at the same time as the entire industry is struggling with hiring competent people. At the previous company I worked at, we had to interview about 50 people to fill 1 position on my team. It wasn't limited, if all 50 qualified, we would have hired them all, just spread them out to other parts of the company. They weren't competing for one single spot against each other. And yet, it took us around 50 people just to find a single qualified person. And that's not counting those who got filtered out at the resume stage. Cannot comment on other industries, but in tech, imo H1B tends to fulfill its intended purpose by addressing the shortage of qualified candidates (exceptions apply where fraud and abuse is involved, like in the OP or certain consultancy places like Infosys).