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The way the US treats Indian (and other large countries, but India has it worst) H1B holders is disgusting. You can work in the US for over a decade and start a
by opportune 4y ago
The way the US treats Indian (and other large countries, but India has it worst) H1B holders is disgusting. You can work in the US for over a decade and start a family, and still be on a visa which requires you to leave the country if you spend just a bit of time unemployed. And it makes it very hard to switch jobs.
I wish this weren't tied to getting just a PhD though. We are already over-incentivizing getting advanced degrees in the US for immigration purposes. While this technically exempts foreign degree holders from the GC quota, those people still need to get work authorization to begin with, so it does increase the incentive to do a PhD in the US for regular work immigration purposes since that also gives you work authorization via OPT.
I don't see any reason to keep per-country GC quotas in place. It punishes individuals for almost no reason - it doesn't actually prevent immigration (since we still grant work visas with temporary residence - that's a separate process from getting a GC), it just keeps immigrants in precarious positions for much longer than others purely on the basis of nationality. I can't think of a legit reason to do this that doesn't either boil down to racism/xenophobia or some kind of innumerate argument that it's unfair for countries with more immigrants to be given more GCs.
- Mikeb85 4y ago> You can work in the US for over a decade and start a family, and still be on a visa which requires you to leave the country if you spend just a bit of time unemployed. And it makes it very hard to switch jobs. Unfortunately that's the point. These visas aren't designed to make it easy to permanently settle, they're designed to provide lower-cost labour and remove employee bargaining power.
- opportune 4y agoEven so, it doesn't make sense to concentrate the pain on the basis of nationality.
- digianarchist 4y agoCountry of birth not nationality.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoNationality, not country of birth - you could be born in India but be a US citizen. PS: yep, seems I got that wrong
- dilippkumar 4y agoThe relevant law in question is explicitly country of birth. Nationality doesn’t apply.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoThey are like (e.g.) Man City in the Premier League (football). That is, suck up talent because you can so no one else can. The USA loves to pat itself on the back about immigration, but the side effect is that it weakens the source countries. Thank you for your best and brightest. They make us stronger. But we don't want to talk about the "unintended consequences" on the source country.
- hintymad 4y agoIt is supply and demand that eventually dominates the bargaining power of employees, right? Less supply yet increasing demand of tech talent actually drove up the package. Just look at the the crazy packages doted out by companies in the last few years. I'd venture to guess that many of them, if not most, were given to H1B holders.
- Mikeb85 4y agoJust imagine what comp would look like without all the foreign H1B holders...
- justahuman74 4y agoI shudder to think how low, I imagine all the H1Bs starting companies in their home countries making the US look like an also-ran in the tech scene.
- Mikeb85 4y ago> H1Bs starting companies in their home countries making the US look like an also-ran in the tech scene Everyone says this but no one does it. Startups abroad can't compete with US startups and it's not a talent problem... The US has the right combination of capital, willing investors, regulation (just the right amount; more than developing countries, less than most western countries), etc... There's no practical reason India couldn't compete yet their culture seems unable to produce startups on par with Google, Facebook, etc...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoTinfoil hat theory: The recent diversity push is a cover to hire more H1b
- unmole 4y agoThe overwhelming majority of H1B holders are Indians. Which diversity initiative is pushing for more Indians?
- usrn 4y agoTo most people "diversity" just means not White regardless if the "diverse" people are over represented by 6x while everyone else is underrepresented.
- ceras 4y agoAll major US tech company diversity initiatives I'm familiar with measure diversity as percent of the workforce that is black, Hispanic, or female. Asian men don't count toward these goals because they aren't under-represented relative to the US population.
- baybal2 4y ago
- FooBarBizBazz 4y agoI definitely knew people who got PhDs mostly because of immigration law. "Well, I'm not going back to Iran and the mullahs, but I can't get a work visa, so..." It distorts the incentives.
- xiaodai 4y agoWould Indian want to work in China instead? I rest my case. The thing is, that's the price you pay if you have to migrate to do well. I think India is changing, more Indian talent should focus their energy on making their country better. I get a feeling that "Indians" is just a nation concept, it's actually made up of many ethnic groups. It's like Korea and Japan, and China being one country. That's India. If India were to split up then it might be better for the country.
- baybal2 4y ago
- throwaway_1928 4y ago> I get a feeling that "Indians" is just a nation concept, it's actually made up of many ethnic groups. It's like Korea and Japan, and China being one country. That's India. If India were to split up then it might be better for the country. This comment is offensive.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoAnd is flauting ignorance with pride It is also bizzare coming an Amecian with their crazy polarisation - Like how well would it go down if I write something along the lines of: Shooting every week, what has to happen for them to understand that the incencious bible belt does not belong in one country with the woke multicultural coastal elites worshipping a geniatric leader. Each side can finally live in it's own little hell and we'll see how it turns out /s
- throwaway_1928 4y agoI agree the original commenter is ignorant but I don't believe that he is American.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoyeah I probably missed the mark there. Seems to have a history of badly intended comments though
- digianarchist 4y agoThe problem with removing the cap without a windfall to take care of backlog, is that nobody applying today will be getting a Green Card for the next 10-20 years. Green Card recapture mostly resolves this. It’s funny because on family immigration, the US is very liberal compared to Canada. You can sponsor parents relatively easily (lottery in Canada) and even siblings (not even possible in Canada).
- qaq 4y agofor siblings the wait time is decade+
- digianarchist 4y agoTrue but no other western country I know of allows it at all.
- klipt 4y agoSponsoring elderly parents to retire in the US seems prohibitively expensive in terms of healthcare cost. Maybe that's why Canada disallows it, since their healthcare is covered by taxpayers unlike US healthcare.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoBut then what do you do, return to your home country when you parents need help? Abandon your new life and job, which you built over 20 years?
- rhexs 4y agoYes.
- throwaway_1928 4y agoJeff Sessions, is that you?
- 4y ago
- CyberRabbi 4y agoWhat’s India’s policy for American tech immigrants? Do they have the equivalent of an H1B? Is it easier to become a resident with fewer strings attached after a fewer number of years?
- opportune 4y agoIndia allows naturalization after 11 years of residence, all of which can be on time-limited visas. India also appears to grant work/business visas as renewable on a 5 year basis https://www.startupindia.gov.in/content/sih/en/international/go-to-market-guide/indian-visa.html https://www.startupindia.gov.in/content/sih/en/international.... So you can become a resident after 11 years and ~3 visa renewals - you don't need to become a permanent resident first, and indeed, based on a cursory search India only grants permanent residence (without citizenship) for a few reasons that don't seem related to work-immigration. But you still have a clear path to permanent residence through naturalization. In the US you can be naturalized only if you are already a permanent resident. The issue I'm mentioning is from converting from a temporary visa (like H1b) to a permanent residence (Green Card). It's subject to something called the Green Card quota. If you have an H1b and technically qualify for getting a GC, you can become subject to the quota and remain on the H1b indefinitely. More info: https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa/h1b-visa-extension/ https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa/h1b-visa-extension/ Effectively this means you can stay in the US forever on H1b as long as you keep getting the visa renewed, but it's hard to switch jobs because of all the bureaucracy involved, and you don't have a path to citizenship until you get a GC.
- klipt 4y ago> But you still have a clear path to permanent residence through naturalization. At the cost of your existing citizenship, since India doesn't allow dual citizenship. One nice thing about permanent residence e.g. green card is that it can coexist with a citizenship that doesn't allow dual.
- rajup 4y agoYou forgot to also ask, how many Americans actually want to immigrate to India? I'll answer that for you since you seem to have more questions than answers: close to zero.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoThe idea is to get the most productive years out of someone then send them home.
- WalterBright 4y agoThat immigrants would put up with this shows how advantageous life in the US is.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jmyeet 4y ago> it just keeps immigrants in precarious positions for much longe That is entirely the point of the system. Let's say if anyone could get a GC, X people would. Let's say you need a work visa and it takes 3 years, Y people would. If you need a Masters+ and it takes 15 years then Z people would. X > Y > Z. The system is designed to discourage certain people and/or just have them drop out of the system out of frustration or ill fortune. It is arbitrary, capricious and punitive. By design. > I don't see any reason to keep per-country GC quotas in place. The US is a country founded on white supremacy (eg [1]). The fact that the system makes it harder for some countries is not an accident. It's by design. Take the green card lottery (which, again, Indian nationals aren't eligible for by design). It was invented largely to benefit the Irish [2]. > it doesn't actually prevent immigration (since we still grant work visas with temporary residence - that's a separate process from getting a GC), It's exactly what it does. Children age out of the immigration system. Others fall out of the pipeline for other reasons and have to leave the country. That's the definition of preventing (certain) immigration. [1]: https://qz.com/904933/a-history-of-american-anti-immigrant-bias-starting-with-benjamin-franklins-hatred-of-the-germans/ https://qz.com/904933/a-history-of-american-anti-immigrant-b... [2]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/01/diversity-visa-irish-history-215776/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/01/diversity...
- MisterMower 4y agoRacist US immigration policy is not evidence that the country was founded on white supremacy. The article you linked to describes how Benjamin Franklin disliked Germans because they were Catholic, not white. It wasn’t until decades later that the US Supreme Court ruled that race was a criteria for determining eligibility for naturalization.
- dhruval 4y agoLet me preface by saying, America is a sovereign country and can do as it pleases with regards to immigration, college admissions or anything else. But to me this is basically 'de facto' discrimination against immigrants born in Asian countries (which tend to have large populations) especially Indian and Chinese origin people. Which does seem hypocritical given current American rhetoric on racial equality. Further to this Asian / Indian Americans that make it past these filters do quite well socio economically because they are highly selected relative to other groups. So then their American born kids are over-represented in colleges relative to their overall population, and so they end up getting discriminated against in admissions etc. But the college overrepresentation is a downstream effect of the immigration policy.
- refurb 4y agoThe intent of the country limitations is to promote diversity of immigrants. Is that a bad thing now?
- rayiner 4y ago> Further to this Asian / Indian Americans that make it past these filters do quite well socio economically because they are highly selected relative to other groups Some asian American groups are, and some aren’t. Japanese Americans mostly came here at a low socioeconomic status back when Japan was quite poor. Korean immigration was heavy in the 1970s and 1980s, and had a lot more to do with the Korean war and family reunification than high skill immigration. Remember the modern H1B didn’t exist until 1990.
- masonic 4y ago>The way the US treats Indian (and other large countries, but India has it worst) H1B holders is disgusting. Describe for us the equivalent process by which those in the US can come to India to compete for jobs there.