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I don’t necessarily believe this position but not a single one of your points argues against the theory that H1b visas are bad for green card/citizen holders du

I don’t necessarily believe this position but not a single one of your points argues against the theory that H1b visas are bad for green card/citizen holders during times of layoffs. It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. My personal opinion is that liberalization of the visa process does more to protect local workers than our current system, but it’s perfectly reasonable to conclude big tech is currently using the visa system to blunt the tech labor market.

joshuamorton 3y ago
> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” Only from a particular nationalist sentiment that isn't aligned with capitalism and free-markets. It is fairly reasonable to believe that tech layoffs were used to blunt worker power. It's much harder to make that argument around h1bs, given the relatively small number of h1b employees, relative ease of employing foreign nationals, and (within the set of companies we're focused on) relative equality of visa holders (in terms of salary and growth opportunities).
arcticbull 3y ago
> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. Given these folks could be 10+ year long-term Indian residents of the US with approved I-140s waiting for their priority dates to come up, I'd say this would be incredibly inhumane. Generally sending people back where they came from because the company they work at made poor decisions feels like a bad idea, actually. Especially for a country as dependent on immigration as the US is to even come close to maintaining its population.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Inhumane would be beating the employees. 10 years at Google will open more doors than the applicant could ever go through
  - estebank 3y ago
    After living and working in a place for 10 years you no longer have "a place to go back," the new place is your home, regardless of whether USCIS and US immigration laws categorize you as a "non-resident alien." Uprooting people's lives, including that of US nationals (10 years is long enough to meet someone and have kids, even people that do not have a US citizenship or permanent residence either) is not humane. Visa holders have since 2017 a 60 days "grace period" in which H1B Visa holders have to find a new job, while L1 visa holders have that time to pack up and leave.
    - oceliker 3y ago
      Small nit, anybody who stayed in the US for 10 years is very unlikely to be a nonresident alien (which is mainly an IRS tax classification and doesn’t have much to do with having an immigrant visa) source: current resident alien
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - estebank 3y ago
        That wording is used both by the IRS and USCIS. Non-GC holders are non-resident aliens, but some visas are "dual intent" which allow you to become a resident alien/permanent resident/green card holder. For the IRS being a resident alien means that when you get kicked out of the country after (iirc) living in here for 7 years you have to pay taxes on any assets you own in the US as if you had sold them, just like Americans have to when renouncing their citizenship. Edit: Quick googling to double check myself and it seems you're right in that USCIS indeed doesn't use that wording, which I must be getting confused with some other term they use in some form, or some other agency, or I'm just plain wrong and got the IRS wording internalized with something else.
thatfrenchguy 3y ago
> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. This is really suboptimal though, what if you have a H1B worker that's a high performer in a key position that would make your company collapse if they left but say, they were born in India, and you're laying off folks in projects that failed / folks that are low-performing. It's pretty easy to fix the perverse incentives of H1B hiring: give folks a green card after being here for 3 years, that's basically how long it takes for ROW folks to get green-cards in good years.
- sbierwagen 3y ago
  If a company requires Indian nationals to function, then it seems like the best place to incorporate it is in India.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    This is a point of view that's new. They already have offices in India why not expand those instead of incorporating?
  - WeylandYutani 3y ago
    The US requires foreign labour to function. Which is why neither the Repubs or Democrats have ever been even remotely serious about tackling migration.
    - skeeter2020 3y ago
      >> The US requires foreign labour to function. Maybe at the service/entry level but certainly not for tech jobs. Tech visas have nothing to do with filling the millions of service jobs; they're about filling the corporations' pockets with millions.
      - confidantlake 3y ago
s1artibartfast 3y ago
Visas always are bad for citizen workers, full stop. They are always competition blunting the labor market. It is always good to be labor in a labor constrained market, and the lower supply, the better. I don't see how any liberalization could help local workers in the short term (I assume liberalization means expansion in this context).
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  It’s worse than that, it’s the citizenry subsidizing the business as the business can pay less by offering immigration as part of the package which is desirable due to the investments of the citizenry. The citizenry has to compete with a service they’re subsidizing.
  - JimmyAustin 3y ago
    Immigrants subsidize the citizenry. They pay enormous amounts of taxes, and consume no welfare.
    - cjbgkagh 3y ago
      I don’t believe those numbers, economics is terrible at measuring ‘but for’ conditionals. Statistics will tell you whatever you need if you torture it enough. As a former immigrant employee to the US I felt the intended wage suppression first hand. But for the large numbers of immigrants would a wage shortage lead to more taxes paid by citizenry? As I’m now an employer and not an employee I get the benefit of the wage suppression and it’s very real. It also prevents others from saving enough to do the same which is also of personal benefit for me but bad for society which I assume would be bad for me long term…
      - rhaway84773 3y ago
        So because data can be used to mislead, we should ignore data, and go by assumptions and feelings. Hmmm. I guess if all you have to go by is your own personal anecdote, one can understand why you might feel immigration is a net negative for the country you’ve immigrated to.
Aperocky 3y ago
> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first Elon Musk didn't get laid off in the 2000-01 tech bubble presumably because he was good? But maybe it should be perfectly "logical" to send him home. Incredibly short sighted take, the US have doubled the population in the past 60 years, are we running a 50% unemployment rate? The selective immigration have hugely benefited the US and its native population.
bloppe 3y ago
> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. Depends what you mean by "logical". Blindly preferring citizens over visa holders is bad for the company, bad for the visa holders, and bad for the economy in the long term, but it's good for the citizen workers in the short term. I guess logic is defined by your priorities.

joshuamorton 3y ago

> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” Only from a particular nationalist sentiment that isn't aligned with capitalism and free-markets. It is fairly reasonable to believe that tech layoffs were used to blunt worker power. It's much harder to make that argument around h1bs, given the relatively small number of h1b employees, relative ease of employing foreign nationals, and (within the set of companies we're focused on) relative equality of visa holders (in terms of salary and growth opportunities).

arcticbull 3y ago

> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. Given these folks could be 10+ year long-term Indian residents of the US with approved I-140s waiting for their priority dates to come up, I'd say this would be incredibly inhumane. Generally sending people back where they came from because the company they work at made poor decisions feels like a bad idea, actually. Especially for a country as dependent on immigration as the US is to even come close to maintaining its population.

ipaddr 3y ago
Inhumane would be beating the employees. 10 years at Google will open more doors than the applicant could ever go through
- estebank 3y ago
  After living and working in a place for 10 years you no longer have "a place to go back," the new place is your home, regardless of whether USCIS and US immigration laws categorize you as a "non-resident alien." Uprooting people's lives, including that of US nationals (10 years is long enough to meet someone and have kids, even people that do not have a US citizenship or permanent residence either) is not humane. Visa holders have since 2017 a 60 days "grace period" in which H1B Visa holders have to find a new job, while L1 visa holders have that time to pack up and leave.
  - oceliker 3y ago
    Small nit, anybody who stayed in the US for 10 years is very unlikely to be a nonresident alien (which is mainly an IRS tax classification and doesn’t have much to do with having an immigrant visa) source: current resident alien
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - estebank 3y ago
      That wording is used both by the IRS and USCIS. Non-GC holders are non-resident aliens, but some visas are "dual intent" which allow you to become a resident alien/permanent resident/green card holder. For the IRS being a resident alien means that when you get kicked out of the country after (iirc) living in here for 7 years you have to pay taxes on any assets you own in the US as if you had sold them, just like Americans have to when renouncing their citizenship. Edit: Quick googling to double check myself and it seems you're right in that USCIS indeed doesn't use that wording, which I must be getting confused with some other term they use in some form, or some other agency, or I'm just plain wrong and got the IRS wording internalized with something else.

thatfrenchguy 3y ago

> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. This is really suboptimal though, what if you have a H1B worker that's a high performer in a key position that would make your company collapse if they left but say, they were born in India, and you're laying off folks in projects that failed / folks that are low-performing. It's pretty easy to fix the perverse incentives of H1B hiring: give folks a green card after being here for 3 years, that's basically how long it takes for ROW folks to get green-cards in good years.

sbierwagen 3y ago
If a company requires Indian nationals to function, then it seems like the best place to incorporate it is in India.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  This is a point of view that's new. They already have offices in India why not expand those instead of incorporating?
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  The US requires foreign labour to function. Which is why neither the Repubs or Democrats have ever been even remotely serious about tackling migration.
  - skeeter2020 3y ago
    >> The US requires foreign labour to function. Maybe at the service/entry level but certainly not for tech jobs. Tech visas have nothing to do with filling the millions of service jobs; they're about filling the corporations' pockets with millions.
    - confidantlake 3y ago

s1artibartfast 3y ago

Visas always are bad for citizen workers, full stop. They are always competition blunting the labor market. It is always good to be labor in a labor constrained market, and the lower supply, the better. I don't see how any liberalization could help local workers in the short term (I assume liberalization means expansion in this context).

cjbgkagh 3y ago
It’s worse than that, it’s the citizenry subsidizing the business as the business can pay less by offering immigration as part of the package which is desirable due to the investments of the citizenry. The citizenry has to compete with a service they’re subsidizing.
- JimmyAustin 3y ago
  Immigrants subsidize the citizenry. They pay enormous amounts of taxes, and consume no welfare.
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    I don’t believe those numbers, economics is terrible at measuring ‘but for’ conditionals. Statistics will tell you whatever you need if you torture it enough. As a former immigrant employee to the US I felt the intended wage suppression first hand. But for the large numbers of immigrants would a wage shortage lead to more taxes paid by citizenry? As I’m now an employer and not an employee I get the benefit of the wage suppression and it’s very real. It also prevents others from saving enough to do the same which is also of personal benefit for me but bad for society which I assume would be bad for me long term…
    - rhaway84773 3y ago
      So because data can be used to mislead, we should ignore data, and go by assumptions and feelings. Hmmm. I guess if all you have to go by is your own personal anecdote, one can understand why you might feel immigration is a net negative for the country you’ve immigrated to.

Aperocky 3y ago

> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first Elon Musk didn't get laid off in the 2000-01 tech bubble presumably because he was good? But maybe it should be perfectly "logical" to send him home. Incredibly short sighted take, the US have doubled the population in the past 60 years, are we running a 50% unemployment rate? The selective immigration have hugely benefited the US and its native population.

bloppe 3y ago

> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. Depends what you mean by "logical". Blindly preferring citizens over visa holders is bad for the company, bad for the visa holders, and bad for the economy in the long term, but it's good for the citizen workers in the short term. I guess logic is defined by your priorities.