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Indian tech workers in Silicon Valley protest immigration discrimination

40 points by donsupreme 4y ago

atemerev 4y ago
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  You obviously didn't read the article. It's about national origin quotas which favour immigrants from less populated countries. Not discrimination against immigrants once they get to the US...
  - DanielHB 4y ago
    The article doesn't mention, but I can tell companies definitely use the visa as a way to keep your salary low and work you to the bone. It is extremely hard to change jobs if you are on a visa and the employers know it I am a tech immigrant to Sweden and even though the work-visa here is not as bad as the US (if we lose our jobs we got 3 months before we have to leave the country!) it is still quite atrocious
    - spritefs 4y ago
      > companies definitely use the visa as a way to keep your salary low and work you to the bone. Isn't this illegal? Aren't H1B required to be paid at least the same as domestic counterparts?
      - thenipper 4y ago
        What I’ve seen is they get hired at a junior level. Then the promotion opportunities are few and far between.
      - wildzzz 4y ago
        The DOL has salary brackets based on job title, experience, and location but I'm sure there's a way for employers to stick H1B workers into experience brackets below where they should be, locate their H1B workers in offices in cheaper locations, or just simply pay them less than their domestic coworkers while still meeting the salary requirements.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        spritefs 4y ago
        I don't know if discriminating against visa holders is illegal, but most visa holders are minorities so this would be a violation of the civil rights act
    - throw123123123 4y ago
      What do you think importing goods does to salaries?
      - amf12 4y ago
        Contrary to the popular myth, immigration hasn't led to salaries in the tech sector (which has the most immigrants) to go down. In fact, in the last decade they have increased due to an increased competition and high demand. Immigrants also lead to increased demand and job growth: "Contrary to popular belief, immigrants do not take away jobs from American workers. Instead, they create new jobs by forming new businesses, spending their incomes on American goods and services, paying taxes and raising the productivity of U.S. businesses. Immigrants are good for the economy, not the other way around." [1] "However, although immigrants increase the supply of labor, they also spend their wages on homes, food, TVs and other goods and services and expand domestic economic demand. This increased demand, in turn, generates more jobs to build those homes, make and sell food, and transport TVs." [2] "Most empirical studies indicate long-term benefits for natives’ employment and wages from immigration, although some studies suggest that these gains come at the cost of short-term losses from lower wages and higher unemployment. Standard economic theory implies that while higher labor supply from immigration may initially depress wages, over time firms increase investment to restore the amount of capital per worker, which then restores wages." [2] [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/immigrants-and-economy https://www.aclu.org/other/immigrants-and-economy [2] https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-effects-of-immigration-on-the-united-states-economy https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-e...
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    Yeah, because a 180 year wait for someone who already has an approved green card makes complete sense. And god forbid they have kids that they brought along with them completely legally because once those kids turn 18 they have absolutely no standing in the US and have to leave the country. That sounds absolutely reasonable. What makes this even more fascinating is that those kids would have been ok if their parents had come to the US as undocumented immigrants, as opposed to being documented immigrants with approved green cards.
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    It’s not about visas at all. The people discussed here are on employment visas which have a road to permanent residency. What we’re talking about here are people who have completed their permanent residency applications and have it approved. So it’s a discussion about permanent residency, not visas.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      Is the word visa in my comment?
    - ls15 4y ago
      From the article: > "We all have applied for a green card and it has been approved. Only thing is, we need to wait 150 years to get a green card," said Akhilesh Malavalli. "A hundred fifty years! I'll be dead. I'll be dead by the time we see a green card." > There is a cap on the number of skills-based green cards that can be issued to any one country of origin and there are so many workers from India, getting one has become practically impossible. So the problem seems to be that Indians are more affected by the quotas, because there are many Indians, but of course this puts them at a disadvantage against other nationalities. There is probably also a good reason to have country of origin quotas, but to me it seems a terrible idea to apply that quota after residency applications have already been approved.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        It sucks, but every country has the right to set their own immigration laws. If Indians don't like US laws, maybe they should emigrate to countries that don't put so many onerous restrictions on them. Lots of countries would be happy to have them.
        amf12 4y ago
        Sure, and immigrants have the right to ask for better laws. Do you think its wrong for immigrants to provide constructive feedback for better laws, to a country that allowed them to immigrate?
  - atemerev 4y ago
    Well, 150 years waiting list time for a green card (with a deportation looming if any of the long list of administrative conditions is violated) definitely looks like discrimination to me.
sirius87 4y ago
Can this really be termed as immigration discrimination? If everyone who applied magically got their green cards today, would it be a fair distribution? The issues they and their families face are totally valid, but surely they apply to a larger body of immigrants of other nationalities too?
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  I think they are talking about the "group by country_of_origin limit 7%" clause of the green card system. So tiny Monaco and China have the same cap of immigrants per year
  - baybal2 4y ago
  - amf12 4y ago
    nit: its "group by country_of_birth". A person's family could be Monaco citizens living in India, where the person was born, and that person too would have to wait decades.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  No they don’t. If you’re born in India and you get approved for your green card (note, this situation arises at the end of the process, after you’ve been approved for the green card), you have to wait 180 years to get it. About 50 years if you were born in China. And immediately if you were born anywhere else. Your citizenship doesn’t even matter.
  - sirius87 4y ago
    It's a bit of a stretch to claim "discrimination" based on the current volume of approved applicants and country-of-birth queues. A policy would have to take into consideration past approvals as well. If you go by past approvals, people born in countries ex India, China may very well make the case that approvals have been discriminatory against them. The ridiculously longer wait period is absurd though. It's equivalent to a rejection, but having it so probably allows a policy change in the future to fast-track them in queue order.
CommanderData 4y ago
If they are being targeted disproportionately among their foreign counterparts I see a case for this. Otherwise I don't see an issue, this is the case for all work visas in any country. Trying to change the immigration laws because you don't like them is one thing but this isn't a nationality issue.
refurb 4y ago
US immigration law limits immigrant visa (i.e. green cards) to no more than 5% of the annual total per year. It's an effort to add diversity to the immigrant population. Similar to how the green card lottery "discriminates" against immigrants from countries that already have a high immigrant population in the US. I mean it sucks if you're one of the people who are stuck waiting for a green card, and I agree it's dumb to allow people to start a process they can't reasonably finish, but I don't think the goal of the law is unjust.
- carlmr 4y ago
  In Germany we had a lot of migrant workers from Turkey after the war. The lack of diversity in immigrant populations is still causing problems today. Because there were so many immigrants from the same place, a lot didn't learn German properly because they have enough of their own people to talk to. A parallel society formed. In the big cities you have 3rd and 4th generation children that still don't speak German properly, but probably also don't speak Turkish properly. Of course these youths don't feel at home here, don't get good jobs, and are overrepresented in crime statistics. This causes problems even for skilled immigrants from Turkey today, since the stereotypes that manifested from this are applied to them as well. On the other hand I do understand the individual issue here though. It is a bit unfair to never have a proper foothold in the country that asked you to be there. I think it would be better to limit the H1Bs more by the same country of origin metric, so that people aren't given hope only to crush it later on. And there should be a way to get a green card for those that are already here for 5+ years. It's inhumane to never allow them in properly after they spent so much time building a life in the US.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    The quota system was set up because of racial and eugenic concerns rather than some progressive notion of diversity. Though it should be noted that eugenics was considered progressive policy at that time. So it would be a very peculiar accident that it happens to resemble sane and forward thinking policy As to why countries instead of races, >The question will probably at once arise, why, if this legislation was a response to a demand for racial discrimination, was it expressed in terms of nationality? The answer is simple. As has already been shown, our actual knowledge of the racial composition of the American people, to say nothing of the various foreign groups, is so utterly inadequate that the attempt to use it as a basis of legislation would have led to endless confusion and intolerable litigation. So Congress substituted the term nationality, and defined nationality as country of birth. It is clear, then, that “nationality,” as used in this connection, does not conform exactly to the correct definition of either nationality or race. But in effect it affords a rough approximation to the racial character of the different immigrant stream https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#dillingham-commission-world-war-i-national-origins-act-1910-1930 https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigr...
Eumenes 4y ago
I think Indian tech workers have plenty of representation in Silicon Valley.
bluedino 4y ago
Simple question: Why don't they just stay? There are an estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, mostly from Central America.
- thegreenswede 4y ago
  Main reason I've heard from mostly Latin/south American people on visa who consider staying past the expiration is that you can then never leave to visit family or visit any other country. It's definitely common to just 'stay' but you better be prepared to stay the rest of your life. Note this is from talking to people who enter legally but then consider staying illegally, not those who enter illegally.
- amf12 4y ago
  Legal immigrants mostly in white-collar jobs. If you get out of status, you cannot be employed legally.
joenot443 4y ago
Marching for the right to citizenship in a country you weren’t born in is a funny 2022 development. I’m Canadian working and living in the US on TN, but I don’t think I’d be taken very seriously if I walked around holding a sign about how I’m discriminated against as an immigrant to have only residency and not citizenship.
- verdenti 4y ago
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  To be fair, your Canadian citizenship and passport offers you far more privileges in the US and around the world than people with Indian passports, so of course you don't understand their struggle, when you can just walz in anywhere with your Canadian passport, but I doubt you'd feel the same if you had the same restrictions of Indian nationals.
  - joenot443 4y ago
    What concrete, legislative privileges do I get as a Canadian immigrant living in the USA that an Indian immigrant living in the USA would not? That's unquestionably what's under discussion here, so please be as specific as possible, Chuck.
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      If you were to get an H1B visa you would have become a permanent resident within a few years, as opposed to 180 years for Indian born people. Also, this is a misconception. This has nothing to do with your passport. The separation is based on your country of birth. So if you were a Canadian citizen born in Canada, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency immediately. If you were a Canadian citizen born in India, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency approximately 180 years from now.

40 points by donsupreme 4y ago

Mikeb85 4y ago
You obviously didn't read the article. It's about national origin quotas which favour immigrants from less populated countries. Not discrimination against immigrants once they get to the US...
- DanielHB 4y ago
  The article doesn't mention, but I can tell companies definitely use the visa as a way to keep your salary low and work you to the bone. It is extremely hard to change jobs if you are on a visa and the employers know it I am a tech immigrant to Sweden and even though the work-visa here is not as bad as the US (if we lose our jobs we got 3 months before we have to leave the country!) it is still quite atrocious
  - spritefs 4y ago
    > companies definitely use the visa as a way to keep your salary low and work you to the bone. Isn't this illegal? Aren't H1B required to be paid at least the same as domestic counterparts?
    - thenipper 4y ago
      What I’ve seen is they get hired at a junior level. Then the promotion opportunities are few and far between.
    - wildzzz 4y ago
      The DOL has salary brackets based on job title, experience, and location but I'm sure there's a way for employers to stick H1B workers into experience brackets below where they should be, locate their H1B workers in offices in cheaper locations, or just simply pay them less than their domestic coworkers while still meeting the salary requirements.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - spritefs 4y ago
        I don't know if discriminating against visa holders is illegal, but most visa holders are minorities so this would be a violation of the civil rights act
  - throw123123123 4y ago
    What do you think importing goods does to salaries?
    - amf12 4y ago
      Contrary to the popular myth, immigration hasn't led to salaries in the tech sector (which has the most immigrants) to go down. In fact, in the last decade they have increased due to an increased competition and high demand. Immigrants also lead to increased demand and job growth: "Contrary to popular belief, immigrants do not take away jobs from American workers. Instead, they create new jobs by forming new businesses, spending their incomes on American goods and services, paying taxes and raising the productivity of U.S. businesses. Immigrants are good for the economy, not the other way around." [1] "However, although immigrants increase the supply of labor, they also spend their wages on homes, food, TVs and other goods and services and expand domestic economic demand. This increased demand, in turn, generates more jobs to build those homes, make and sell food, and transport TVs." [2] "Most empirical studies indicate long-term benefits for natives’ employment and wages from immigration, although some studies suggest that these gains come at the cost of short-term losses from lower wages and higher unemployment. Standard economic theory implies that while higher labor supply from immigration may initially depress wages, over time firms increase investment to restore the amount of capital per worker, which then restores wages." [2] [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/immigrants-and-economy https://www.aclu.org/other/immigrants-and-economy [2] https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-effects-of-immigration-on-the-united-states-economy https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-e...
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  Yeah, because a 180 year wait for someone who already has an approved green card makes complete sense. And god forbid they have kids that they brought along with them completely legally because once those kids turn 18 they have absolutely no standing in the US and have to leave the country. That sounds absolutely reasonable. What makes this even more fascinating is that those kids would have been ok if their parents had come to the US as undocumented immigrants, as opposed to being documented immigrants with approved green cards.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  It’s not about visas at all. The people discussed here are on employment visas which have a road to permanent residency. What we’re talking about here are people who have completed their permanent residency applications and have it approved. So it’s a discussion about permanent residency, not visas.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    Is the word visa in my comment?
  - ls15 4y ago
    From the article: > "We all have applied for a green card and it has been approved. Only thing is, we need to wait 150 years to get a green card," said Akhilesh Malavalli. "A hundred fifty years! I'll be dead. I'll be dead by the time we see a green card." > There is a cap on the number of skills-based green cards that can be issued to any one country of origin and there are so many workers from India, getting one has become practically impossible. So the problem seems to be that Indians are more affected by the quotas, because there are many Indians, but of course this puts them at a disadvantage against other nationalities. There is probably also a good reason to have country of origin quotas, but to me it seems a terrible idea to apply that quota after residency applications have already been approved.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      It sucks, but every country has the right to set their own immigration laws. If Indians don't like US laws, maybe they should emigrate to countries that don't put so many onerous restrictions on them. Lots of countries would be happy to have them.
      - amf12 4y ago
        Sure, and immigrants have the right to ask for better laws. Do you think its wrong for immigrants to provide constructive feedback for better laws, to a country that allowed them to immigrate?
- atemerev 4y ago
  Well, 150 years waiting list time for a green card (with a deportation looming if any of the long list of administrative conditions is violated) definitely looks like discrimination to me.

Can this really be termed as immigration discrimination? If everyone who applied magically got their green cards today, would it be a fair distribution? The issues they and their families face are totally valid, but surely they apply to a larger body of immigrants of other nationalities too?

cuteboy19 4y ago
I think they are talking about the "group by country_of_origin limit 7%" clause of the green card system. So tiny Monaco and China have the same cap of immigrants per year
- baybal2 4y ago
- amf12 4y ago
  nit: its "group by country_of_birth". A person's family could be Monaco citizens living in India, where the person was born, and that person too would have to wait decades.
rhaway84773 4y ago
No they don’t. If you’re born in India and you get approved for your green card (note, this situation arises at the end of the process, after you’ve been approved for the green card), you have to wait 180 years to get it. About 50 years if you were born in China. And immediately if you were born anywhere else. Your citizenship doesn’t even matter.
- sirius87 4y ago
  It's a bit of a stretch to claim "discrimination" based on the current volume of approved applicants and country-of-birth queues. A policy would have to take into consideration past approvals as well. If you go by past approvals, people born in countries ex India, China may very well make the case that approvals have been discriminatory against them. The ridiculously longer wait period is absurd though. It's equivalent to a rejection, but having it so probably allows a policy change in the future to fast-track them in queue order.

CommanderData 4y ago

If they are being targeted disproportionately among their foreign counterparts I see a case for this. Otherwise I don't see an issue, this is the case for all work visas in any country. Trying to change the immigration laws because you don't like them is one thing but this isn't a nationality issue.

refurb 4y ago

US immigration law limits immigrant visa (i.e. green cards) to no more than 5% of the annual total per year. It's an effort to add diversity to the immigrant population. Similar to how the green card lottery "discriminates" against immigrants from countries that already have a high immigrant population in the US. I mean it sucks if you're one of the people who are stuck waiting for a green card, and I agree it's dumb to allow people to start a process they can't reasonably finish, but I don't think the goal of the law is unjust.

carlmr 4y ago
In Germany we had a lot of migrant workers from Turkey after the war. The lack of diversity in immigrant populations is still causing problems today. Because there were so many immigrants from the same place, a lot didn't learn German properly because they have enough of their own people to talk to. A parallel society formed. In the big cities you have 3rd and 4th generation children that still don't speak German properly, but probably also don't speak Turkish properly. Of course these youths don't feel at home here, don't get good jobs, and are overrepresented in crime statistics. This causes problems even for skilled immigrants from Turkey today, since the stereotypes that manifested from this are applied to them as well. On the other hand I do understand the individual issue here though. It is a bit unfair to never have a proper foothold in the country that asked you to be there. I think it would be better to limit the H1Bs more by the same country of origin metric, so that people aren't given hope only to crush it later on. And there should be a way to get a green card for those that are already here for 5+ years. It's inhumane to never allow them in properly after they spent so much time building a life in the US.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  The quota system was set up because of racial and eugenic concerns rather than some progressive notion of diversity. Though it should be noted that eugenics was considered progressive policy at that time. So it would be a very peculiar accident that it happens to resemble sane and forward thinking policy As to why countries instead of races, >The question will probably at once arise, why, if this legislation was a response to a demand for racial discrimination, was it expressed in terms of nationality? The answer is simple. As has already been shown, our actual knowledge of the racial composition of the American people, to say nothing of the various foreign groups, is so utterly inadequate that the attempt to use it as a basis of legislation would have led to endless confusion and intolerable litigation. So Congress substituted the term nationality, and defined nationality as country of birth. It is clear, then, that “nationality,” as used in this connection, does not conform exactly to the correct definition of either nationality or race. But in effect it affords a rough approximation to the racial character of the different immigrant stream https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#dillingham-commission-world-war-i-national-origins-act-1910-1930 https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigr...

Eumenes 4y ago

I think Indian tech workers have plenty of representation in Silicon Valley.

bluedino 4y ago

Simple question: Why don't they just stay? There are an estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, mostly from Central America.

thegreenswede 4y ago
Main reason I've heard from mostly Latin/south American people on visa who consider staying past the expiration is that you can then never leave to visit family or visit any other country. It's definitely common to just 'stay' but you better be prepared to stay the rest of your life. Note this is from talking to people who enter legally but then consider staying illegally, not those who enter illegally.
amf12 4y ago
Legal immigrants mostly in white-collar jobs. If you get out of status, you cannot be employed legally.

joenot443 4y ago

Marching for the right to citizenship in a country you weren’t born in is a funny 2022 development. I’m Canadian working and living in the US on TN, but I don’t think I’d be taken very seriously if I walked around holding a sign about how I’m discriminated against as an immigrant to have only residency and not citizenship.

verdenti 4y ago
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
To be fair, your Canadian citizenship and passport offers you far more privileges in the US and around the world than people with Indian passports, so of course you don't understand their struggle, when you can just walz in anywhere with your Canadian passport, but I doubt you'd feel the same if you had the same restrictions of Indian nationals.
- joenot443 4y ago
  What concrete, legislative privileges do I get as a Canadian immigrant living in the USA that an Indian immigrant living in the USA would not? That's unquestionably what's under discussion here, so please be as specific as possible, Chuck.
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    If you were to get an H1B visa you would have become a permanent resident within a few years, as opposed to 180 years for Indian born people. Also, this is a misconception. This has nothing to do with your passport. The separation is based on your country of birth. So if you were a Canadian citizen born in Canada, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency immediately. If you were a Canadian citizen born in India, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency approximately 180 years from now.