11 ms·

As an American from an immigrant family, I think the US is really losing here. We should be giving visas out liberally to any skilled professional who wants one

• hunterb123 4y ago
  The US allows more immigrants than any other country. What exactly is the criticism?
  • nine_zeros 4y ago
    > The US allows more immigrants than any other country. What exactly is the criticism? The system is unbelievably cruel. People die (or see their loved ones die) before they get greencards. It is not a numbers game. If you can attract the best, you need to let them thrive instead of enslaving them.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • outside1234 4y ago
      Are you referring to the 7% cap on the number of people that can get a green card from any one country in a calendar year?
      • nine_zeros 4y ago
        > Are you referring to the 7% cap on the number of people that can get a green card from any one country in a calendar year? No. I am talking about the constant asking for paperwork, processing times that vary from 2 months to over 2 years and preventing people from traveling to their home countries, lest they get locked out. This is how criminals are treated.
        • hunterb123 4y ago
          What is the processing time for European countries? What would your ideal processing time be that wouldn't be "criminal"?
          • nine_zeros 4y ago
            > What is the processing time for European countries? EU is not one country. Some countries have better timelines than others. > What would your ideal processing time be that wouldn't be "criminal"? My ideal would be asap. Make the decision quick. If you want to deny most applications, deny it. But do it quick.
            • hunterb123 4y ago
              My point was to compare European countries as they were suggested by the GP to be better. Go ahead and choose one or so and come back with numbers to compare. You'll find the US is very good in comparison.
              • manuelabeledo 4y ago
                Germany offers a shorter and significantly cheaper path to citizenship, for instance.
                • hocuspocus 4y ago
                  Plus incredibly easier paths to immigration on a skilled work permit and access to permanent residence. Like most EU countries.
    • hunterb123 4y ago
      > The system is unbelievably cruel. People die (or see their loved ones die) before they get greencards. People die before many things, that's not really relevant and it's just an emotional statement. Compare the length and rate to other countries for an actual assessment. A lot countries I've looked into take 5-10 years for citizenship, the US is 14.5 months on average. I'm talking about the amount of immigrants taken in vs other countries. Yes the US is large and can take in a lot of immigrants, and we do, by far.
      • nine_zeros 4y ago
        > Most countries I've looked into take up to 10 years. The set of countries you want to compare with are the countries that claim they want to welcome immigrants. You don't want to compare with countries that you like but are hostile. America claims to be immigrant friendly but compared to other immigrant friendly nations, the process is brutal and eats away entire lives. > A lot countries I've looked into take 5-10 years for citizenship, the US is 14.5 months on average. This is misinformation as citizenship petition N-400 is merely the last step. This does not count the time for green card before this. Getting a green card could take 3-10 years. Then, they'd need to remain a permanent resident for 5 years before they can even apply for citizenship.
        • hunterb123 4y ago
          No 14.5 months is the average for naturalization. https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-citizenship-after-applying/ https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/how-long-doe... Total time is 18.5-24 months to wrap up everything, but the 14.5 months you're able to be in the US which is what matters. How does that compare to other countries? What's your ideal country that has the best immigration times? - edit - Green card from nil is also just a year or so on average, in which case you are living in the US and able to work. These numbers are very comparable and much better than most countries. Please provide your ideal country so we can compare numbers.
          • ra7 4y ago
  • lotsofpulp 4y ago
    The criticism is tying visa status to employer. No reason to do that unless you want to suppress wages for US residents.
    • ROTMetro 4y ago
      That is why there are other visa types. You are talking about a type of visa specifically intended as a mechanism to fill a specific seat at a specific company. For other forms of immigration, there are other types of visas.
      • isatty 4y ago
        Like what? I went over the USCIS page and Wikipedia and there does not seem to be very many options for skilled workers besides H and L, both of which are tied to employers.
        • fooker 4y ago
          O1 visas are for skilled workers without getting tied to a company. But you have to be really skilled!
          • kareemsabri 4y ago
            You don't have to be all that skilled (depending on the field). You do need the money to self-petition though. Many pretty average people use the O-1.
            • screye 4y ago
              I don't know of a single tech worker who could get an O-1 without a top PhD.
              • kareemsabri 4y ago
                I know many who got it with a bachelors degree. Advanced degrees are not even a part of the eligibility criteria. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-2-part-m-chapter-4 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-2-part-m-chapter-...
  • curious_cat_163 4y ago
    I don't think absolute numbers tell the story. Also, it is not a complaint, really. I think the citizens in the US have a right to decide as a polity how they want to structure their immigration policies. However, in order to make a good decision, it is important to start with the full context. Here are some facts: US has 46.6 million in foreign born population and a total population of 333 million. [1][2] That makes about 13.9% of the total population to be foreign born. Australia has 29.1% of its population that is foreign born. [3] A little over 20% of the population of Canada is foreign born and it is projected to grow. [4] [1] https://cis.org/Camarota/ForeignBorn-Population-Hits-Record-466-Million-January-2022 https://cis.org/Camarota/ForeignBorn-Population-Hits-Record-... [2] https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_Aus... [4] https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/dai/btd/othervisuals/other006 https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/dai/btd/othervisuals/other006
  • manuelabeledo 4y ago
    Discounting non immigrant visas, I’m not sure that this is true.
  • hocuspocus 4y ago
    Mostly through family reunion which is completely irrelevant to the issue discussed here. The US has the most nonsensical immigration laws for skilled workers of the developed world. Even Japan or Korea are pretty straightforward in comparison.
• aidenn0 4y ago
  What always boggled my mind is we allow students to come study in the University system, but then when they graduate send them away. I suspect a platform of "We will train foreigners to enrich their homelands" wouldn't get much popular support, but it's the de-facto rule we live under.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    What do you mean we send them away? Should we hold them against their will? If they want to stay there are ways to stay.
    • dataexporter 4y ago
      I am not sure if you are responding with actual information or just anecdata. There are hundreds of thousands of students who actually want to work in the US but are unable to (and are sent back) because of H1B Visa lotteries and archaic green card processes.
      • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        I'm not saying the US immigration system is perfect but there were apparently 855,000 new naturalized citizens in 2021. Somebody is figuring it out. Also- the US doesn't owe everybody a citizenship.
        • thisoneworks 4y ago
          Majority of them are family based as opposed to employment based, so your point is invalid
          • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
            How much of a majority?
            • amf12 4y ago
• thehappypm 4y ago
  It’s tough because many of our societal problems are only exacerbated by population growth, especially in the areas where these types of workers tend to congregate. Highly skilled workers don’t go to the Midwest or the deep south. They go and drive up rental prices in New York and San Francisco, where the jobs are. Well the first order effects of having a more skilled in competitive work for us are good, the second order effects can be very very negative and we got to be careful about that
  • jimmaswell 4y ago
    > Highly skilled workers don’t go to the Midwest or the deep south. This is certainly changing. I myself am moving to a rural area to work remotely and farm.
    • thehappypm 4y ago
      The statistics don’t really bear that it’s happening at scale, but it’s great for you to make that change.
  • jedberg 4y ago
    I work with a bunch of highly skilled immigrants. They live in Texas, Kentucky, Colorado, and a bunch of other places. Now that remote work is prevalent, people are moving to all sorts of places.
    • fshr 4y ago
      There's also a lot of great wine and delicious pizza in TX, KY, and CO, but I bet if I throw a dart in the dark 9 times out of 10 I'm going to land on a name from CA or NY.
      • jedberg 4y ago
        The data is publicly available: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/29/h-1b-visa-approvals-by-us-metro-area/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/29/h-1b-visa-a... But if you don't want to click, you'll find the highest share of H1B per capita in Texas, namely College Station.
• jimmaswell 4y ago
  Alternate viewpoint, we have more than enough students graduating in Computer Science and other STEM fields, many of whom have a hard time finding a job because most companies don't want to invest in training anyone up anymore, and they're enabled by the H1B program. If we incentivized/forced companies to build people up from basic college graduate again, it would be even better than finding skilled immigrants.
  • mywittyname 4y ago
    H1B employees cost a lot more to employ than fresh grads. On top of having to pay above average wage, companies have to employ lawyers to handle a lot of paperwork. > most companies don't want to invest in training anyone up anymore The past four companies I've worked for had training programs for new employees and internship programs to funnel college students into jobs after graduation. Maybe bad experience on your part?
    • atwood22 4y ago
      Do H1Bs really earn above average wage? Haven’t seen that. Overall, H1Bs increase the labor supply, which decreases the price of labor.
      • yieldcrv 4y ago
        depends on the field but its a bad and outdated assumption to make, at least for tech department of labor forces companies to submit compensation data someone aggregates this on h1bdata.info (the data is not uniform though, as some companies are including total compensation and this is normalized as “salary”)
      • outworlder 4y ago
        In tech? Absolutely.
        • atwood22 4y ago
          They earn above the tech average wage, or they earn above average wage in the country? If they work in tech, but earn below the average tech wage, then they’d actually be bringing the average wage down when you consider the opportunity cost.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  What is stopping people from becoming citizens?
  • Taniwha 4y ago
    These days an H1B is the first step towards getting a green card, which in turn is the step towards citizenship
    • dudul 4y ago
      It is possible to petition for a green card without an h1b. Actually I wonder why in this story, Microsoft didn't sponsor an employment based GC.
      • raitom 4y ago
        Because sponsoring an employment based GC takes considerably more time than filling for an H1B. We're talking at best less than a year for an H1B (filling in April and you receive it in October of the same year) vs 18 months minimum for an European (10+ years for an Indian). I actually got my H1B at my 2nd try. I did not get pick at my 1st try and had to wait until next year but it went quite smoothly. However for my GC, it took 4 years between the initial conversation with my employer and getting it in my hands. The actual process itself, from the moment the lawyers received all the documents, took 2 years.
        • dudul 4y ago
          I'm not an immigration lawyer but you don't need to have the GC in hands to start working for your employer. You usually get a work permit quickly after the petition is filed. I used to work with someone whose visa was about to expire so the company just filed a GC to keep her. That being said, I feel like these things change all the time. When people describe the current H1B process it always seems completely different from the one I went through.
          • 4y ago
• sngz 4y ago
  as another American from an immigrant family. I think getting an H1-B should be easier, not tied to a company, and require companies to pay them more than a citizen. This prevents a lot of the abuse I see right now to people on H1-B's, staying with jobs that they hate, and prevents wage suppression in the industry for others.
  • digianarchist 4y ago
    Why would a H1-B stay in a job they hate? The visa is actually portable unlike TN, E3 or L1.
    • Ao7bei3s 4y ago
      H-1B is portable in theory, and many H-1B's to switch. However it is tedious and risky for many reasons. For example: - There are many restrictions. H-1B is still coupled to a particular occupation (type of job). Any new job has to remain >50% similar. People on H-1B can also only go to companies that will sponsor their H-1B going forward (so self-employment and most smaller companies are out), and one would not want to go to a company that would not also sponsor the greencard. Transfers in the same company are possible, but even just changes to the job description (e.g. becoming a manager, or switching from devs to ops) or worksite usually require a new PWD (Prevailing Wage Determination) and LCA (Labor Condition Application). - The processing of H-1B transfers has recently taken around 6 months for some. Theoretically you can switch before the government approves the transfer; practically if the transfer is rejected for whatever arbitrary reason or government error you want to be able to fallback to the existing H-1B. And so it is advisable to wait for the transfer to go through. How many potential new companies are fine with that? (What is the damage to previous companies from people quietly just coasting and waiting for the H-1B transfer to go through due to such delays?) - Any change also increases the risk of rejections during the next renewal (and people from greencard backlogged countries have to renew every year, for decades at the current rate). How big the risk is depends a lot on federal politics (for example, the prior deference rule was withdrawn during the previous administration, and reinstated during this administration) and can change fast. - Switching jobs while on H-1B during certain stages of the immigration/greencard process (PWD, PERM, I-140 plus 6 months for AC21 portability) resets that process, and restarting it incurs potentially years-long delays and large expenses (for the company, which is worse). PERM itself may have become harder recently due to changes in the legal landscape and one would not want to give up a successful PERM. - The risk of layoffs is perceived as greater for new hires than for established engineers. A person on H-1B who is laid off has 60 days to find a new job, or the H-1B ends. So during an economic downturn giving up a solid position is a risk.
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• deepdriver 4y ago
  As an American from a non-immigrant family, I think stamping visas is easier than fixing a broken education system, so that’s what corporate leaders would rather do to fill seats. We have over 330 million Americans in this country, many seeking good jobs and salaries like those found in tech, yet we struggle to produce enough qualified STEM grads and resort to importing other countries’ elites. The programming and computer science education in most US high schools is near zero. It’s a national embarrassment. And frankly, the more US companies are helmed by new arrivals who retain strong ties to the mother country, the less they feel a kinship to the majority of Americans and the less likely they are to invest in those Americans’ futures. I’ve seen this preference play out firsthand inside Google and other places. I expect disagreement from many who’d flip viewpoints if the shoe changed feet.
• honkdaddy 4y ago
  (I'll preface this by noting that I'm Canadian and will never vote in an American election) One of the reasons that immigration and green cards has always been such a hot-button political issue in the US is that first and second generation immigrants tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat. You end up with this awkward feedback loop where D's are objectively politically motivated to increase immigration, while for R's it's the opposite. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying, that's just how it was explained to me once.
  • bergenty 4y ago
    It’s because legal immigrants are overwhelmingly well educated so they vote like the average well educated American does. It also doesn’t help that the current GOP is more or less openly racist so a vote for them goes against basic self preservation.
    • mbg721 4y ago
      Saying "Republicans are just uneducated racists, so immigrants don't like them" may be convenient, but it's an oversimplification at best. It doesn't explain voter dynamics in Florida, for instance.
      • bergenty 4y ago
        That’s not what I said at all if you read my comment. I said immigrants, who are educated, vote like the rest of the educated do. I also said because the GOP has racist policies, it’s actively hostile to immigrants. Your oversimplification is a straw man.
      • kyawzazaw 4y ago
        It does explain some, no? How much of the Cuban immigrants that vote republican immigrated with visas like H-1B (employer sponsored)?
    • honkdaddy 4y ago
      Right, but you should be able to see that the “why” doesn’t really make any difference here, the effect is still the same. D’s remain motivated to keep immigration high, R’s remain motivated to bring it down.