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Being able to switch jobs is critical; the existence of workers who are unable to quit is devastating to worker's rights. I would prefer if we had better visas

Being able to switch jobs is critical; the existence of workers who are unable to quit is devastating to worker's rights. I would prefer if we had better visas with higher salary requirements, designed to attract the world's best, but without making them jump through hoops. E.g. Someone making $250k = green card instantly. Someone making $80k = denied, try again when you are worth $250k.

flavius29663 3y ago
or just take the top N visas based on income (which is based on a solid work offer). Lottery makes no sense.
- amluto 3y ago
  This sounds like an auction. That seems kind of sensible, but I'm concerned it would prevent any but the highest paying industries from using H-1B visas. In theory, the purpose is to import specific skills and expertise that is unavailable locally. So if US company needs, say, a plastic tooling engineer, and only China and Taiwan trains enough people with the relevant experience [0], then they should be able to hire someone from outside the US and help them get a visa. Making them outbid the tech giants who are in entirely different industries could drive the cost up to absurd levels and deny the US the benefit of getting plastic tooling expertise. [0] I made this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    > deny the US the benefit of getting plastic tooling expertise If it's not a high paying job, does the US really need plastic tooling expertise? Unless by "plastic tooling" you mean something that is of national security, then yes. But in that case, they should issue more special visas, not put them in a pool for lottery. Why would you put in a lottery for important roles? Keeping a profession in a lottery system tells me it can't be too important for the US. If it's not so important, then why not implement an income based system and get the most out of it (get the best paid workers, not some random ones). This is the case for diversity visas, they are 50k lottery based visas. Income does not matter at all there, the US just wants diverse people coming in. Now we're treating doctors, nurses, software devs the same way, with a lottery? You can get a 60k wage slave or a 600k specialized worker in the same batch?
- shagie 3y ago
  Nurses and teachers are also under the H-1B umbrella for skilled jobs that require a college degree. By switching to an income based system, those other professions would have an even harder time. https://www.myvisajobs.com/Elementary-and-Secondary-Schools-6111-2022IN.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Elementary-and-Secondary-Schools-... https://www.myvisajobs.com/Medical-and-Clinical-Laboratory-Technologists-2022OC.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Medical-and-Clinical-Laboratory-T... ... And you'd have it dominated by doctors (rather than developers) https://www.myvisajobs.com/Offices-of-Physicians-6211-2022IN.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Offices-of-Physicians-6211-2022IN...
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    > And you'd have it dominated by doctors (rather than developers) Nothing wrong with that...it would probably reduce the cost of healthcare in the US. For nurses you can have special visas, because healthcare is so important. Why would you leave nurses and doctors up to lottery? I would say: get them in now, no lottery required.
    - shagie 3y ago
      My point was rather "moving from a lottery to an auction by itself would negatively impact a number of other professions that also use the H-1B process." It needs an overhaul. The visa fraud that this (and the previous) article is pointing out is indirectly making healthcare more expensive and contributing to a teacher shortage. Going to an auction would make these shortages in not-high-paying professions even worse. The entire H-x visa process has some significant issues that were ok when it was designed, but now are showing problems as they scale to much larger volumes than it was set up for. Things like the H-2A and H-2B (unskilled agricultural and non-agricultural) visas make it difficult for many small businesses to staff up to their needs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/10/26/another-study-concludes-immigration-critics-are-wrong/?sh=12282995389f https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/10/26/anoth... > “Our novel survey of a sample of the firms who participated in the 2021 lottery reveals little benefit, and substantial costs, due to restricting firms’ access to these visas,” write Clemens and Lewis. “Comparing firms that were able to hire more workers on these visas to those that were able to hire fewer—by random chance—we find that gaining access to immigrant hires raises firm revenues . . . and also weakly raises, rather than lowers, their employment of U.S. workers.” Recognizing that this represents a "not an easy change"... but it's a mess and it does need to get fixed. Other than noting that there are problems, I'm going to defer to "I'm not sure how to fix them nor am I familiar enough the the intricacies of the immigration and visa process to say if any fix that I could think of would run into some known existing (worse) problems that the current system avoids."
amluto 3y ago
Why is an income requirement even needed? If a visa holder got an at-will job at Tech Company A and that visa were fully portable, then the visa holder could look for a better offer from Company B on an equal footing with everyone else, which seems like it would naturally drive their salary toward parity. And this would also dramatically decrease the incentive for the employers to game the system, as H-1B visas would no longer be a source of cheap skilled labor. (I personally know visa holders who were dramatically underpaid by tech companies and who did not feel like they could shop around.)
- flavius29663 3y ago
  not op, but because you need to have a way to differentiate between more people applying than available visas. Today we are using a literal lottery to get the winner, why not use an income based approach, which will select the top participants instead? Why would you choose by chance someone that has a 60k salary versus someone that has a 1M salary?

flavius29663 3y ago

or just take the top N visas based on income (which is based on a solid work offer). Lottery makes no sense.

amluto 3y ago
This sounds like an auction. That seems kind of sensible, but I'm concerned it would prevent any but the highest paying industries from using H-1B visas. In theory, the purpose is to import specific skills and expertise that is unavailable locally. So if US company needs, say, a plastic tooling engineer, and only China and Taiwan trains enough people with the relevant experience [0], then they should be able to hire someone from outside the US and help them get a visa. Making them outbid the tech giants who are in entirely different industries could drive the cost up to absurd levels and deny the US the benefit of getting plastic tooling expertise. [0] I made this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
- flavius29663 3y ago
  > deny the US the benefit of getting plastic tooling expertise If it's not a high paying job, does the US really need plastic tooling expertise? Unless by "plastic tooling" you mean something that is of national security, then yes. But in that case, they should issue more special visas, not put them in a pool for lottery. Why would you put in a lottery for important roles? Keeping a profession in a lottery system tells me it can't be too important for the US. If it's not so important, then why not implement an income based system and get the most out of it (get the best paid workers, not some random ones). This is the case for diversity visas, they are 50k lottery based visas. Income does not matter at all there, the US just wants diverse people coming in. Now we're treating doctors, nurses, software devs the same way, with a lottery? You can get a 60k wage slave or a 600k specialized worker in the same batch?
shagie 3y ago
Nurses and teachers are also under the H-1B umbrella for skilled jobs that require a college degree. By switching to an income based system, those other professions would have an even harder time. https://www.myvisajobs.com/Elementary-and-Secondary-Schools-6111-2022IN.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Elementary-and-Secondary-Schools-... https://www.myvisajobs.com/Medical-and-Clinical-Laboratory-Technologists-2022OC.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Medical-and-Clinical-Laboratory-T... ... And you'd have it dominated by doctors (rather than developers) https://www.myvisajobs.com/Offices-of-Physicians-6211-2022IN.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Offices-of-Physicians-6211-2022IN...
- flavius29663 3y ago
  > And you'd have it dominated by doctors (rather than developers) Nothing wrong with that...it would probably reduce the cost of healthcare in the US. For nurses you can have special visas, because healthcare is so important. Why would you leave nurses and doctors up to lottery? I would say: get them in now, no lottery required.
  - shagie 3y ago
    My point was rather "moving from a lottery to an auction by itself would negatively impact a number of other professions that also use the H-1B process." It needs an overhaul. The visa fraud that this (and the previous) article is pointing out is indirectly making healthcare more expensive and contributing to a teacher shortage. Going to an auction would make these shortages in not-high-paying professions even worse. The entire H-x visa process has some significant issues that were ok when it was designed, but now are showing problems as they scale to much larger volumes than it was set up for. Things like the H-2A and H-2B (unskilled agricultural and non-agricultural) visas make it difficult for many small businesses to staff up to their needs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/10/26/another-study-concludes-immigration-critics-are-wrong/?sh=12282995389f https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/10/26/anoth... > “Our novel survey of a sample of the firms who participated in the 2021 lottery reveals little benefit, and substantial costs, due to restricting firms’ access to these visas,” write Clemens and Lewis. “Comparing firms that were able to hire more workers on these visas to those that were able to hire fewer—by random chance—we find that gaining access to immigrant hires raises firm revenues . . . and also weakly raises, rather than lowers, their employment of U.S. workers.” Recognizing that this represents a "not an easy change"... but it's a mess and it does need to get fixed. Other than noting that there are problems, I'm going to defer to "I'm not sure how to fix them nor am I familiar enough the the intricacies of the immigration and visa process to say if any fix that I could think of would run into some known existing (worse) problems that the current system avoids."

amluto 3y ago

Why is an income requirement even needed? If a visa holder got an at-will job at Tech Company A and that visa were fully portable, then the visa holder could look for a better offer from Company B on an equal footing with everyone else, which seems like it would naturally drive their salary toward parity. And this would also dramatically decrease the incentive for the employers to game the system, as H-1B visas would no longer be a source of cheap skilled labor. (I personally know visa holders who were dramatically underpaid by tech companies and who did not feel like they could shop around.)

flavius29663 3y ago
not op, but because you need to have a way to differentiate between more people applying than available visas. Today we are using a literal lottery to get the winner, why not use an income based approach, which will select the top participants instead? Why would you choose by chance someone that has a 60k salary versus someone that has a 1M salary?