56 ms·

Updates to H-1B

• jpollock 2y ago
  Allowing spouses to work on a H4 visa is a HUGE change. It was a big problem for our family.
  • itissid 2y ago
    And obama made that happen in his last days in office in Dec 2015/Jan 2016
    • jpollock 2y ago
      I thought that was specifically for when you were waiting for the residency permit, not a random H4.
  • vsskanth 2y ago
    Spouses on H4 cannot work unless the primary H1B has an approved I-140 immigrant petition. It's not automatic.
• Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  [dead]
• pseingatl 2y ago
  Cancel the program. It's not needed. It's used to game the system. It's not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card.
  • garyfirestorm 2y ago
    lmao, what do you mean by backdoor? how else would someone legally immigrate?
    • toast0 2y ago
      Some people get upset that someone on a 'non-immigrant' 'temporary employment' visa can apply for permanent residency, although that is allowed by the H1-B program. Otherwise, one could immigrate through a different visa; there are some employment visas that are explicitly intended for those with intent to immigrate. Or like a family or lottery visa, I guess. I think it's possible to have a permanent residency application sponsored by an employer from abroad, but especially if the candidate is from China, India, Mexico or the Philipines, the timelines make even less sense than H1-B timelines (submit your application in a two week window near the beginning of March, for the chance to start in October). I don't know too many places that want to commit to a hire that can't start for 7 months, although it's not unreasonable for those on post graduate visas with work eligibility.
      • ganeshkrishnan 2y ago
        It takes around 20+ years to go from H1b to permanent visa/green card. In the meantime your kids born in US have grown up, graduated, you have a house and everything could be yanked at the border when you are travelling. Meanwhile vast majority of them pay into taxes and social security and leave the US and never see a dime of that money. Immigrants are the easiest group to exploit by everyone because they have no voice and are vilified by vast majority of the people include the so called intellectuals in here.
        • newyankee 2y ago
          Yup, left US after years of working and doubt will ever see social security for self.
          • next_xibalba 2y ago
            I’m sure this is no consolation, but as a born-and-raised citizen who has paid into social security for 15 years now, I have serious doubts about seeing a positive return on those taxes myself.
  • ganeshkrishnan 2y ago
    The rabid chants went from: we need to stop illegal immigration and make sure everyone enters legally To: We need to make sure we only allow valuable immigrants that add to the economy To: Cancel this program. They are gaming the system. You can choose the game to play but you can't choose the rules of the game.
    • duped 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • zer8k 2y ago
        Ah yes the classic "huwhite people and muh racism" gambit. It's tired. H1Bs are gamed to the point of uselessness. Most companies internally post H1B job offerings so people are aware. I've yet to see one with a competitive salary. They are used to source cheaper labor and avoid paying actual Americans the fair wage they deserve. The last 15-20 years of tech has slowly seen the InfoSys-ization of the tech economy. I work with more contractors from Mexico, India, and Eastern Europe, and more H1Bs from India than literally anyone else. On my team I can count the number of Americans on one hand. The program should be extremely limited. I am a fan of charging 2-3x the normal tax rate for H1Bs so companies have to actually justify hiring "talent you can't find in America". There are 300,000 unemployed tech workers. I find it hard to believe none fit the bill. Just that most won't take a 60% haircut for more work.
        • geraldwhen 2y ago
          I haven’t hired an American in many years. It’s forbidden.
          • throwaway7783 2y ago
            I have a hard time hiring an American too, especially for backend jobs. But thats because they simply don't apply to the open positions we have. We don't disclose salary upfront, so the argument that "you pay less thats why" doesn't hold. We just don't get those resumes - through recruiters, direct channels, LinkedIn - even when we said we prefer citizens (due to legal costs).
  • dbbk 2y ago
    How do you propose hiring tech talent then
    • observationist 2y ago
      Right, the desperate need for talent is the reason these programs are used so heavily. It's not discounted salary and cost savings in benefits, insurance, and other areas for non-permanent employees, or having leverage over immigrant employees in negotiations. Corporations only ever use these programs to get the absolute best of the best and they absolutely aren't abused to bypass the stricter regulations and requirements for citizen employees. /s There's nothing wrong with brain draining other countries and incentivizing legal immigration for work visas and H1B style programs. We should want to be the best place in the world to work. This shouldn't come as a detriment to the citizens of the US. Legal immigration and jobs programs need to be better. The H1B program suppresses legal citizen wages as well as immigrant wages because companies are able to use the threat of deportation as an effective negotiation tactic. Companies use immigrants for cheap professional labor, and if the immigrant pipes up, they get let go. With everything in tech life being designed around pushing people into paycheck to paycheck lifestyles, this can wreck someone's life through no fault of their own if they do something like ask for a raise, or better health insurance. In turn, if citizen employees try to negotiate, the company can replace them with more immigrant workers unless or until they can hire local replacements at the company's preferred rate of pay. We need a cleaner, easier path to citizenship, without the endless bureaucratic nightmare that is the current system. We need better work visa programs, so that people who legitimately make the world a better place aren't penalized for arbitrary technicalities, while at the same time recognizing the sovereignty of the US and reasonably protecting borders. Sometimes countries need to be overthrown, and the US shouldn't act like a pressure release valve for dictators. We also shouldn't be in the business of regime management or perpetuating political nightmares that causes a lot of illegal immigration, as well. TLDR; There's no shortage of US tech talent. The problem is that we've painted ourselves into a regulatory corner - in order to be competitive, companies have to shortchange payroll by abusing migrant salaries. To fix it, we must strengthen migrant rights so companies can't hang the threat of deportation over employee's heads, and reduce the financial burden of hiring citizens, so you get the same bang for your buck regardless of the immigration status of the employee. Microsoft and Lumen and FAANG and all the tech industry titans shouldn't have penny pinching strategies designed to bump stock prices using methods that are fueled by human suffering. Get rid of those options and stop blindly implementing systems where the incentives are so obviously awful.
  • VirusNewbie 2y ago
    no, just make it an auction system with compensation.
  • ritcgab 2y ago
    Guy who born with natural citizenship is too privileged to imagine how hard it is to get a green card.
    • carlosjobim 2y ago
      Everybody is born with natural citizenship.
      • petesergeant 2y ago
        You should take a moment to look up what “stateless” means
        • carlosjobim 2y ago
          God forbid somebody says that every dog has four legs and a hacker hears it...
      • ritcgab 2y ago
        Stephen Miller does not approve this.
    • lubujackson 2y ago
      Great comeback, except you completely ignore the point (its purpose is not meant to be a backdoor) and attack him for... being an American? Instead of telling everyone else to check their privilege, maybe check your expectations. The world doesn't owe anyone anything. Claiming your desires are everyone else's problem is a deeply self-centered way to view the world.
      • ritcgab 2y ago
        H-1B is dual intent by definition, so it is not a backdoor. Any sane person who knows how green card application works understands that it is objectively hard, if not the hardest in the whole world. > Instead of telling everyone else to check their privilege, maybe check your expectations. Without such an expectation, who would pay tens of thousands a year to enroll in a random U.S. college, only to be told that there is absolutely no way they can work legally there?
  • asdasdsddd 2y ago
    What is the correct pathway to green card for a worker immigrant?
    • throwawa14223 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • throwaway48476 2y ago
      America does not owe the world a green card.
      • mynameisvlad 2y ago
        That wasn't and has nothing to do with the question asked.
        • throwaway48476 2y ago
          A path needn't exist.
          • screye 2y ago
            Love how all your arguments boil down to 'I got mine.'. We don't want illegal immigrants, get legal work authorization. No, don't use work authorized visas use other legal means. No, family based chain immigration should be illegal too. Oh wait there are no other ways to come here ?....good. We never wanted you anyway. This country is full, all 4 million sq miles. Always has always been.
            • happytoexplain 2y ago
              It's not constructive to frame citizenship as "I got mine". People will fight - really fight - to preserve their homes and lifestyles, if they feel those are being threatened. It's obviously not impossible to welcome as many immigrants as we do without this extreme level of conflict, but our system demonstrably does not accomplish that. We simply aren't making use of our space, so why don't we focus on that problem? A tone like yours invites chaos.
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • 0x457 2y ago
    Yeah, you have no idea of the process of getting green card via h1b works. You can ditch the US, get permanent resident status in Canada, become Canadian citizenship, get TN visa to work in the US if you want to and someone who thinks that h1b is a backdoor to a green card will be just starting on green card paperwork. And that's if there are no issues with application. This is all after participating in h1b lottery for years. Trust me, it's an extremely slow and painful way of getting a green card. If h1b is your way to a green card, it means either: you're already married, you have no idea what are you doing. It's no a backdoor in any way, person move to the US for work and builds a life here, accumulate assets, I think it's pretty reasonable to give those people a way to settle in the US permanently in these cases. The program needs to be revamped because it's not working in the way it's sold to voters.
  • screye 2y ago
    > not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card So...what's the front door to the green card ? How does one arrive legally to the nation with the highest [1] historic immigration rate of any nation in the world ? https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/net-number-migrants-country-1950-2020-five-year-intervals https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/net...
• tartoran 2y ago
  Does anybody know what are the updates are in layman terms?
  • ganeshkrishnan 2y ago
    here it is https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/uscis-announces-strengthened-integrity-measures-for-h-1b-program https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/uscis-announces... I read through it and even asked chatgpt for summary and it looks like "passport is now required" and "one beneficiary one draw" that is if you put in multiple petitions it will only consider you once. I thought Elon was talking nonsense when he mentions frivolous government rules but reading these h1b changes makes me question my own sanity about the government "rules" which they aptly named it as "Final rule" (wtf?).
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• ganeshkrishnan 2y ago
  [flagged]
• impish9208 2y ago
  Some highlights from the Federal Register: > 2. Bar on Multiple Registrations Submitted by Related Entities DHS will not finalize the proposed change at 8 CFR 214.2(h)(2)(i)(G) to expressly state in the regulations that related entities are prohibited from submitting multiple H-1B registrations for the same individual. On February 2, 2024, DHS published a final rule, “Improving the H-1B Registration Selection Process and Program Integrity,” 89 FR 7456 (Feb. 2, 2024), creating a beneficiary-centric selection process for registrations by employers and adding additional integrity measures related to the registration process to reduce the potential for fraud in the H-1B registration process. In that final rule, DHS states that it “intends to address and may finalize this proposed provision [expressly stating in the regulations that related entities are prohibited from submitting multiple registrations for the same individual] in a subsequent final rule,” but that “[m]ore time and data will help inform the utility of this proposed provision.” 89 FR 7456, 7469 (Feb. 2, 2024). Initial data from the FY 2025 H-1B registration process show a significant decrease in the total number of registrations submitted compared to FY 2024, including a decrease in the number of registrations submitted on behalf of beneficiaries with multiple registrations.[1] This initial data indicate that there were far fewer attempts to gain an unfair advantage than in prior years owing, in large measure, to the implementation of the beneficiary-centric selection process.[2] Under the beneficiary-centric selection process, individual beneficiaries do not benefit from an increased chance of selection if related entities each submit a registration on their behalf. As such, DHS has decided not to finalize the proposed change pertaining to multiple registrations submitted by related entities. > C. Summary of Costs and Benefits DHS analyzed two baselines for this final rule, the no action baselines and the without-policy baseline. The primary baseline for this final rule is the no action baseline. For the 10-year period of analysis of the final rule, DHS estimates the annualized net cost savings of this rulemaking will be $333,835 annualized at a 2 percent discount rate. DHS also estimates that there will be annualized monetized transfers of $1.4 million from newly cap-exempt petitioners to USCIS and $38.8 million from employers to F-1 workers, both annualized at a 2 percent discount rate.
• blahblahgov 2y ago
  Yup, as expected. Not dealing with the effects of clustering. Great job GOV. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1fyx9hp/cognizant_discriminated_against_nonindian_workers/?rdt=44533 https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1fyx9hp/cognizant...
  • addicted 2y ago
    Looks like that’s going through the legal system so is already illegal? You can’t make a rule that says “hey don’t break the rules”. That seems logically fallacious.
    • lukeramsden 2y ago
      Can't read the full article due to paywall but ostensibly it's due to bias rules on race and not visa rules? Sounds like visas being abused and then backstopped by unrelated rules does not mean the visa rules shouldn't be fixed.
• r-johnv 2y ago
  Several positive outcomes, including expanding cap-exemption to non-profit and other research institutions, and stronger enforcement mechanisms.
• patrickhogan1 2y ago
  Ah, classic regulatory theater. The administration, after 4 years of not introducing these changes, is now suddenly scrambling to roll them out. They’re dropping them right before a major transition, with an implementation timeline conveniently set for after the transition. It’s a clever little maneuver. When the inevitable reversal happens, they can show up at fundraising galas telling donors, “We tried! We were so close! It’s just those baddies who always come along and pull the rug.”
  • laidoffamazon 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • lesuorac 2y ago
    Eh downvote. The USG has to go through a very length period of coming up with a proposed rule. Allowing comments to be made about it, adjusting (or not) the rule based on those comments, and then finally submitting the final rule. Nobody at USCIS wrote this document yesterday and published this today. This is the result of years of work. Do you seriously expect the USG to shut down anything they don't think they can finish under the current administration?
    • fasdfdsava 2y ago
      Maybe it's a total coincidence that this final rule takes effect the Friday, January 17 and Trump's inauguration is Monday, January 20th. But I sort of wonder.
    • akira2501 2y ago
      > has to go through a very length period Doesn't the bottom of this announcement describe a previous rule that was announced in January 2024 and then implemented in March 2024? Interesting that rules process was far more rapid than this one.
      • lesuorac 2y ago
        And? So a different related rule started its process awhile back and a second rule was in the works concurrently. Is the USG only allowed to do one thing at a time? The comment period for this rule ended last year to give you an idea of how long this has at least been in the works. All of this information is rapidly found via the submitted url at the top of the page. https://www.regulations.gov/docket/USCIS-2023-0005/document https://www.regulations.gov/docket/USCIS-2023-0005/document
• kylehotchkiss 2y ago
  I’m very happy for everybody on H1-B whose live this improves! Does this include renewal in USA? But as an American the “bonafide job requirement” makes me nervous. We have a massive ghost job problem that really needs to be a federal crime. Will this make that worse?
  • packetlost 2y ago
    Yeah, there really needs to be some worker protection legislation makes ghost jobs a crime.
    • lazide 2y ago
      It already is. It just isn’t enforced by the DOL/ICE. (Those offers need to actually be legitimate, or it’s fraud).
      • tartoran 2y ago
        Is this actually enforced? There are still ghost jobs being posted.
        • School-Cotton 2y ago
          The comment you're replying to already said it's unenforced.
        • lazide 2y ago
          Near as I can tell, it’s similar to ‘don’t talk about salary at work’ stuff - technically maybe if you can prove it and complain to the right person, but it’s everywhere.
  • vsskanth 2y ago
    they mean "bonafide job offer". What is happening right now is staffing agencies (mainly in India) mass file H1B applications for all their staff, and then once they get picked in the lottery, they find assignments in the US and file the entire petition after. This heavily disadvantages non-staffing companies who file H1Bs for their staff outside the country or those in the US on F1 visas for actual jobs. This change is meant to close that loophole. This used to not be a problem, because you had to file the entire petition BEFORE you enter the lottery, but now you just pay some nominal fee and get your name in, leading to a highly profitable situation for staffing companies.
• ziddoap 2y ago
  https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/18/2024-29354/modernizing-h-1b-requirements-providing-flexibility-in-the-f-1-program-and-program-improvements https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/18/2024-29... The tweet is a super brief summary, reproduced below. Founders can self petition (& spouses can work) - Own >50% of the entity, or have majority voting rights Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt - Organizations where fundamental research is a key activity now qualify - Startups can hire researchers (AI, health, hardware) year-round Students get seamless transition - Cap-gap work authorization extended to April 1 - Prevents employment gaps for F-1 OPT to H-1B switch Faster H1-B transfers for job changes - Flexibility to start working immediately upon petition filing Clarification of specialty role - Less strict on the direct link between degree/job responsibilities - Recognizes that AI may require multiple academic background Cracking down on fraud - Stricter compliance rules - Employers must demonstrate a bona fide job exists - Site visit codified: refusal to comply = petition denial
  • dang 2y ago
    (This was originally posted in the other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451271, but it's useful here too)
  • wooque 2y ago
    > Founders can self petition Wait, so I can just open LLC and get H1B visa for it? There have to be conditions and limitations, otherwise it will be misused.
    • tacker2000 2y ago
      Yea thats what I also thought. Opening an LLC is pretty easy.
      • oldpersonintx 2y ago
        [dead]
    • 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• laidoffamazon 2y ago
  Expect this to be rolled back fully on January 20
  • KerrAvon 2y ago
    Unclear. They're not going to be consistent or competent, and the intent of everything they do will be to either part out the government to their friends, weaponize the US government against perceived enemies. And they might reward people who kiss the ring by granting exceptions. Really, given the premise, anyone sane should kill H-1B entirely for tech: "The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States" There is no shortage of qualified US software engineers. CS schools are full. The very concept is ridiculous. Kill this law, liberalize immigration instead.
    • KerrAvon 2y ago
      Also, there are going to be endless, endless lawsuits on everything, because everything they do is going to violate either the Constitution or existing US law. I'm not sure how much that will slow them down.
    • n144q 2y ago
      > CS schools are full I guess you never paid any attention to the nationality of students enrolled in CS classes.
      • DragonStrength 2y ago
        The undergrads at my university were mostly US-born. I believe that's the case most places, even elite universities. The more expensive universities are incentivized to take more international students for the money though -- and obviously there's enough wealthy people globally to fill whatever slots they offer. There are plenty of good engineers from the US who simply weren't lucky enough to be born to rich parents in CA. It turns out moving 2000 miles from home for a worse quality of life isn't super attractive to people born in the US when your whole family still lives in the same region. Of course, if you're born in India or China, the value proposition is a bit different. Perhaps geographic restrictions on H-1Bs would spread the wealth: force these companies to prove they can't find engineers in the US by looking outside the wealthiest enclaves in the country, where even FAANG engineers complain about cost of living. We'd ease the Bay Area housing crisis, lift up other regions of the country, and provide more domestic-born citizens a path to good jobs while maintaining their own communities.
• School-Cotton 2y ago
  What does this change, if anything, for software engineers at FAANG and similar companies?
  • Cerium 2y ago
    This is key: "Flexibility to start working immediately upon petition filing" Currently workers are often abused since the system puts intense pressure to keep a job and don't move around.
• throwaway48476 2y ago
  I expect a lot of H1B applicants creating shell corporations.
  • roughly 2y ago
    Well, they’ve passed the “culture” part of the citizenship test, then
    • throwaway48476 2y ago
      H1B isn't citizenship.
      • roughly 2y ago
        I’m aware.
  • binarymax 2y ago
    From what I understand you also need to be able to pay yourself a $60,000 salary minimum, from that LLC. If people can do that, then power to them and let them stay! If you're worried about people shortcutting a line to get a visa by injecting money into the US economy, again by somehow getting 60K into the LLC to pay the salary of the recipient, this is also a win. So what is the problem here exactly?
• slackfan 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • neofrommatrix 2y ago
    Sure.
• fakedang 2y ago
  Seems like the current admin trying to stuff all the laws right in time for the next admin to dismantle... Oh no, the 50% rule won't be exploited sir.
  • autoexecbat 2y ago
    I hope it says that they remain above 50%
• frgtpsswrdlame 2y ago
  Regarding this part: Clarification of specialty role - Less strict on the direct link between degree/job responsibilities - Recognizes that AI may require multiple academic background You really won't need to clarify whether the role is a specialty one or not if you just increase the minimum wage for H1Bs. I really don't know why we don't have some rule that pins H1B wages to like the 90th percentile wage.
  • bombcar 2y ago
    It would be exceptionally easy to solve the "H1B problem" by making sure that H1Bs are more expensive than local talent; then they really only would be used when local talent doesn't exist.
• richwater 2y ago
  Yet even more ways for corporations to underpay native, domestic workers.
  • physhster 2y ago
    How so?
    • hgs3 2y ago
      It's supply and demand economics: if there is a low supply of workers and a high demand for them, then employers are supposed to compete for them with more pay, more benefits, training/education, etc. When the supply of workers is artificially increased, then companies have less incentive to compete. It becomes a buyer's market for employers.
      • ritcgab 2y ago
        > if there is a low supply of workers and a high demand for them Employers outsource all those works to overseas.
        • throwawa14223 2y ago
          Then throw them in prison?
          • syndicatedjelly 2y ago
            For what?
        • bradlys 2y ago
          They've said this for decades and SV engineers still pulling down $500k+/yr while someone in Hyderabad isn't making anywhere close to that.
          • JackYoustra 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• nosequel 2y ago
  > Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt And in comes a flood of "Research Software Engineer" roles
  • cflewis 2y ago
    Yeah, I wonder what that is going to ground out to. With the AI race, basically anything tangential is research, at least in the definition of "doing something scientific-looking that's not been done before". That could include a _lot_ of companies from massive to tiny.
  • rorytbyrne 2y ago
    As a working scientist, this is a hugely underserved category in academic/industry science. This would be very welcome.
• crmd 2y ago
  It’s never been clear to me why this program exists in the first place, other than to put downward pressure on US STEM wages. What am I missing?
  • creer 2y ago
    You are missing that it is used a lot in spite of that process (1) being a major administrative headache for the users, both employees and employers, (2) costly compared to hiring "locals" although that's moderated by perhaps lower salary with not a huge amount of evidence, and (3) rather unpredictable and risky for both employees and employers. You don't see the need but perhaps the users do.
  • whatshisface 2y ago
    Hypothetically it exists to allow companies to hire singular overseas experts like von Braun or Einstein that don't have domestic equivalents. It has become totally accepted to lie on the application though and now it is used to hire Java developers.
    • mportela 2y ago
      I believe that's the O-1 visa, not the H-1B.
      • whatshisface 2y ago
        That's a sign of how accepted it has become to say that you can't find any local workers that know Python when filling out the H1-B forms. The requirement is there but it's normally overlooked. "The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce [...]" https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b
        • rbanffy 2y ago
          At some point it becomes “couldn’t obtain the required talent at the prices the business was willing to pay”.
• h1bgamer 2y ago
  This H1B program is gamed so hard its a joke at this point. I personally witnessed someone that submit multiple applications that this person won the H1B lottery. This person even had fake office, fake business address, etc for the fake entities. I already reported it, but no action has been taken. This person is now happily employed in the US using H1B. Unethical life pro tips but work: for those of you trying to get H1B, just submit multiple applications to multiple "companies". There are services like this out there, just need to find out where. Good luck. This nation is for plunder.
  • mksreddy 2y ago
    Didn’t the rule change last year where all applications by same person is considered as one?
    • h1bgamer 2y ago
      Yup but they actually can't check.
      • ashconnor 2y ago
        Erm they can. They are looking at passport numbers now.
      • n144q 2y ago
        Dude that's just not true. You need to submit almost every single detail about yourself before the lottery, including information on your passport. In fact this has dramatically decreased the duplicate entries to H1B lottery.
        • h1bgamer 2y ago
          You are free to believe what you want. I myself witnessed it. Fake address, fake office. Apply to "4" "companies". You have no idea what good lawyer can do :) It works.
          • 2y ago
• AcerbicZero 2y ago
  [flagged]
• 999900000999 2y ago
  I'd rather have H1-B visas be a 5 year unrestricted work permit. America needs to keep attracting the world's best and brightest, but linking it to a specific employer is problematic. Opens up employees to mistreatment. I'd say charge a straight up fee, 500k upon approval. That gets you 5 years, if your wiz making 400k a year it's a great deal.
  • daveguy 2y ago
    If you're trying to get the best and brightest why would you charge 500 thousand dollars?! I don't care what kind of wiz you are, that's prohibitive.
    • 999900000999 2y ago
      You need to already have means otherwise your out competing the lower end of the tech sector.
  • mksreddy 2y ago
    I thought it is a terrible idea from first sentence. Last paragraph completely changed my mind.
  • jandrese 2y ago
    I hate that it is time restricted at all. Just make it a green card program with a path to citizenship outright. Brain drain the rest of the world. Instead we are providing work experience to our future competitors.
    • aylmao 2y ago
      I worked many years under H1B, but moved out of the USA. Unsure if I'll come back, technically I still have time on my H1b, but man, it's just so stressful to lay roots knowing they're conditional on all sorts of ticking clocks and hoops to jump. I like working at early stage startups— works pretty well with H1B but it makes the process of getting a green card via work complicated. Some people can deal with all that stress, I just rather not.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• hparadiz 2y ago
  The biggest loop hole for not being allowed to hire non citizens or permanent residents is not the H-1B. It's actually B2B contracts that have absolutely no restrictions what so ever. At least the H-1B lets us keep some tax revenue.
• 29athrowaway 2y ago
  The new administration will likely reform USCIS around eligibility criteria rather than speed of processing and these reforms will be undone as quickly as Mayorkas is gone.
• DataDaemon 2y ago
  I wonder how many people will move from socialism & bureaucracy Europe to the US.
  • varjag 2y ago
    Approximately none on top of the usual migration patterns.
  • Eumenes 2y ago
    Vast majority of H1bs are from India, and China. Only a few hundred per year from EU countries.
• kqgnkqgn 2y ago
  Seem like sensible changes, though more is still needed. Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism. The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies. Re: the concerns over "immigrants taking our jobs!". As a native-born American working in a large tech company today - the threat is very clearly not from H1B's and other visas. The threat to American tech jobs is when US tech companies choose to build out offices in lower cost of living countries (and I'm very much including Europe in that, I think that's even a bigger problem). It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and that money stays within our economy. Versus employing workers elsewhere, where American's can't easily be hired, and those resources leave the US. If we want to keep opportunities here - that's the issue we should be focus on fixing. What regulatory steps could we advocate for that would address this risk? Immigration is the wrong problem, and the focus on that in certain populist circles really demonstrates they are rather out of touch from what's actually happening in the industries that are driving the US economy today.
  • Threadbare 2y ago
    Following the sun is a win, faster project delivery and lowered cost of development
    • rbanffy 2y ago
      It brings its own set of communication and cross-cultural challenges.
    • kelnos 2y ago
      Follow the sun is great for on-call rotations, but I'm my experience, for regular project work, the need for a handoff each day ends up being too much overhead. The teams in vastly different time zones wind up working mostly independently on completely different projects.
    • pdntspa 2y ago
      That's for stuff that requires 24/7 support, not some harebrained project management technique that will make all your teams hate you
• HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
  • toomuchtodo 2y ago
    There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. If it is taking more than 30-60 days for workers to find a role, there are enough workers domestically.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      > There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. That and companies are just hilariously bad at finding workers they want to hire for nebulous reasons. I have no doubt even if my company hired 95% of the workers it had marked down as "no hire" they'd be able to squeeze a salary's of value worth out of each of them (well, if management is competent, which it tends to not be). I'm sure those of us who've been around long enough can all attest to some side of seeing form of this dysfunction. I'm more than happy to reject them for selfish reasons, of course, like "I don't want this person on my team" or "this person seems like an asshole" or "I don't want to teach this person their third language after java and typescript". Etc. I mean there are terrible interview candidates out there, but the people who literally can't code at all tend to be easy to filter out. I'm curious if there's any way to observe the salary margins that separate the top of the labor market from the bottom. Surely there are. That would probably give a big signal as to how much undue attention is given to, e.g., Senior vs Junior developers and American workers vs H1Bs. I'd put money that some of this complaining about lack of labor is actually not wanting to hire fresh grads and eat the cost of training when they'd be just fine. (Also the H1B thing, but that's already discussed to death)
• FL33TW00D 2y ago
  Surprised by all the negativity here. The USA benefits enormously from skilled immigration: "doubling the size of the US H1B visa program increases US and EU growth by 4% in the long-run" From a recent paper here: https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/qje/qjae040/7912563 https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10...
  • tokioyoyo 2y ago
    It’s a slowdown in tech recruitment, so it is fair for citizens to think for themselves first. There are quite a lot of candidates that can fulfill most of the roles, and it has bad optics when the government tries to prioritize others. Disclaimer: I don’t live in the states, but I can understand the frustration.
    • ponty_rick 2y ago
      That would work in the short term. In the long term, jobs would leave the USA so companies won't have to deal with immigration uncertainties.
      • tokioyoyo 2y ago
        Doesn’t really matter. People won’t care about long term consequences if they’re experiencing hardships right now. It’s easy to say this when we have jobs, but if I didn’t have one, I would never want my government to prioritize others.
    • hx8 2y ago
      Tech isn't a zero sum game, it's a growth market. If some H-1B talent helps grow a company faster, then they can increase their own citizen employee count faster.
      • simoncion 2y ago
        > ...it's a growth market. Not when it's in fashion to perform large traditional layoffs and "stealth" layoffs via RTO mandates and other unpleasantness. Maybe things will substantially change within a year or two, but I'm skeptical.
• Glyptodon 2y ago
  Are they accepting them in descending order of total compensation yet?
  • ashconnor 2y ago
    This would be a great way to starve every industry outside of tech of H1B workers.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• bradlys 2y ago
  The working conditions for Americans suck due to this fucking program. People come here to live subservient lives and bring along a toxic culture of submission. The level of ass licking that I see on the regular is akin to a well known Korean airline going into the side of a mountain. It is insane the level of deference you will find. All this hype about the "smartest, brightest, etc." is nonsense. I've worked with hundreds of engineers in SV who are all on H1B. They are no better than anyone else. My main complaint with them is that their work is fine but the culture they bring is insanely toxic and does not allow for any psychological safety at all. I know enough people in industry for a long period of time to know that it wasn't always this way. There were always problems but it has hit a level that is insane. The fact that an American is a minority nationality when in almost any US tech company is bonkers.
  • sfblah 2y ago
    I'm in favor of immigration generally, but I actually agree with the cultural argument here. The toxic culture really shows up in interviewing. Recently I've repeatedly had to deal with interviewees obviously cheating with AI tools. Also, while I agree that folks on H-1 visas are around the same qualification-wise as citizens, I also agree that their primary interest is always their visa, not doing a good job as an employee.
    • JackYoustra 2y ago
      Yeah, I think that the solution here is to make the visa easier though? If they don't worry about it then they won't be so focused on it.
      • bradlys 2y ago
        I don't know what the solution is but I don't feel like making it easier is going to be helping either. I'm not entirely sure if this toxic culture would go away as soon as people have green cards. After all, this culture is alive and well in the countries these people are from. The bad culture isn't just due to being locked into a job or it being hard to get a new job. It is a core component of their belief system. I see this as soon as people from these places get promoted to a manager - they literally turn into the thing they hated the most on the first day! It seems to me to be completely cultural.
• cute_boi 2y ago
  I wish USCIS was very strict about those guys who is coming in H1b from India incapable of doing anything and hire guy from india to do all their work.
• asoneth 2y ago
  I wonder if switching from a lottery to an auction would help curtail some of the abuse? That is, for each position a company wants to fill with a non-citizen they also have to bid on the visa fee they're willing to pay. The highest ~7,000 bids that month are accepted and paid to the government in exchange for a visa. We could debate things like sealed-bid versus open auction and uniform-price versus paying your bid but whatever details we pick I suspect this would allow us to discover which companies are actually desperate for skills and which primarily use it as a cost-savings measure. (I'm also curious how much H-1B visas would cost if there was a market: thousands of dollars? tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? more?)
  • punksatoni 2y ago
    Yes it would. This would prevent abuse of foreigners who are underpaid. It would also allow most of the applicants to go to good jobs (FAANG) which can pay premiums salaries. Reverse auction is the best way to go. Good for foreigners, good for top companies, economically the best option.
  • huevosabio 2y ago
    Probably hundreds of thousands. A big reason master programs can command such a massive price tag is that they are tickets to enter the US labor market. It also has the benefit of giving the government an incentive to increase the quota to get more revenue.
  • cheriot 2y ago
    This is the simplest way to improve the H1-B system!
    • dragonwriter 2y ago
      The simplest way to improve the H-1B system is to abolish it. The better but slightly less simple way is to abolish it (and a bunch of other employment-related visa categories), but also allow individuals who aren’t personally barred from entry because of past misconduct, etc., but who are not eligible (or wish to bypass wait times) for admission under other existing visa categories to pay an fee (which others, including employers, can subsidize if they wish, but gain no special power over future status by so doing) for a limited term, renewable employment-eligible status that becomes eligible to transition to permanent residency automatically after a set time in status. (This also fixes a number of other problems in the immigration system beyond the H-1B.)
• testfrequency 2y ago
  Honestly insane how much racist rhetoric I’m reading online (and surprisingly now HN) regarding this news... I suppose 2025 is starting early. edit: case in point, downvoted for simply saying I’m noticing a lot of racism from the (you know who) crowd - as all the comments against this are often followed with “trump will fix this” or “your country needs birth control” or “india shouldn’t be allowed to get visas”
  • _yb2s 2y ago
    I am slowly coming to grips with the fact that this is a genuine widespread hate movement, and the average person that supports it deeply feels this hatred, and personally blames their problems on anyone from another country, culture, or skin color- and doesn't believe those people deserve to be treated as human. I couldn't be more disappointed, angry, and terrified about what comes next.
    • testfrequency 2y ago
      Right there with you. Also now seeing my comment is shadowbanned. HN has really been pretty strong in silencing “counterpoints” as of late. No idea why the moderation team would read a comment like mine and feel compelled to hide it, for simply saying there’s a lot of hate speech regarding this topic. There’s still tons of comments on this thread that are very accusatory of foreigners abusing a fully legal system and logical path towards becoming an american citizen.
      • _yb2s 2y ago
        It's not the moderation team, your post was flagged dead by regular users, and is vouched for and back (for now). I agree it is very disappointing that even labeling hate speech for what it obviously is wouldn't be acceptable. I'm curious what peoples reasoning could possibly be for why your comment shouldn't be allowed. In general HN is supposed to encourage civil, not provocative, and non inflammatory discussion based around good faith arguments. However, there is no way to sugarcoat or steel man hate speech that isn't fundamentally dishonest- hate speech itself would seem to violate HN guidelines, and pointing it out should not.
• souvlakee 2y ago
  If you're interested in judging others' work in hackathons for your O1 or EB1a, email me at halloumee [at] proton [dot] me.
• nojvek 2y ago
  They still left the multiple applications for one person rule. Seems the lobby was strong to allow consultancies like Tata and wipes to continue what they are doing to get most of cap.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• jmspring 2y ago
  If there are US Citizens available (even if not local), H1s should not be a consideration. Period.
  • JackYoustra 2y ago
    Frictional unemployment exists, so this effectively bars H1s.
  • JasserInicide 2y ago
    Sentiments like this make someone automatically racist/xenophobic now. God forbid someone care about their fellow countrymen over foreigners...
• rayiner 2y ago
  Why is this dropping the week before Christmas.
• sashank_1509 2y ago
  I always see a lot of people arguing that H1bs are taking away jobs from qualified Americans by willing to work long hours and work cheaper. That may be true, but in my brief exposure to the tech industry it does not feel true because the salaries and perks are so high, it doesn’t seem like tech companies are exploiting workers and hiring “cheap H1b labour”. A lot of my batch (all H1b masters) when to Meta and Amazon. All of them were paid 200k+ right out of masters, one was even paid 430k. So is the claim that if these H1bs did not exist, companies would pay 250k+ to those out of masters? And 500k+ to exceptional candidates? If OpenAI was legally allowed to hire anyone from India, China etc, would they stop providing 800k+ salaries? In fact, we know from experience that this is not true because if you go to OpenAI’a website they explicitly mention apply from wherever you want and they will handle immigration. And you also see that they did successfully hire some folks from remote countries with exorbitant salaries. A much simpler explanation, is that in tech companies employees are not a cost center but a profit generation center. And so tech companies are not looking to save costs by paying H1bs less, but are simply looking to hire the best and pay whatever is needed to keep them. Market competition tends to determine salaries far more than employee labour pool, especially when talent is always in short supply. This theory also seems more correct to me, in that it predicts places where H1b labor would shortchange existing tech workers. It would be wherever employees are a cost center, legacy businesses that need software but would like to just get it done as cheaply as possible. By definition most of these companies would not be FAANG adjacent, but would instead be companies like say Target that needs simple software that works reasonably well at a low cost. An equitable solution then would be to put a flat minimum salary on H1b’s, say 200k, that would remove most of the cases where H1bs are hired to short change Americans, and not affect much of the talent hiring that big tech does. It’s only negative affect would be on startups, which generally pay low salaries, but would now have to pay high salaries for immigrants.
  • basiccalendar74 2y ago
    this is a well-studied tradeoff with immigration. high-skilled immigration helps US economy and innovation but low-skilled immigration depresses wages for citizens. you are making this distinction for a narrow case i.e. tech.
• schappim 2y ago
  It's encouraging to see DHS attempting to update the H-1B program in ways that address longstanding pain points like the unpredictability of transferring jobs, the complexity around defining a "specialty occupation," and the painfully slow application processes. The US economy benefits when companies can more easily hire and retain the talent they genuinely need, rather than having the system incentivise questionable staffing practices or endless guesswork over whether a given degree is "close enough" to the job description. However, this final rule doesn't magically solve the deeper structural issues. For example, the per-country caps on green cards still leave many H-1B workers stuck in decades-long queues if they're from certain countries. That reality discourages risk-taking, entrepreneurship, and long-term roots,something that runs counter to the very idea of welcoming skilled people. While allowing spouses to work and making it easier to switch roles will improve day-to-day life for some, the broader immigration pipeline remains complicated and slow. The real test will be in implementation and enforcement. Will the new definitions and stricter oversight actually reduce abuse by staffing firms who've flooded the lottery with dubious registrations? Will the simplified criteria for specialty occupations translate to smoother hiring and fewer headaches for workers and employers alike? In short: good steps, but we're still a long way from a truly balanced system that reliably identifies, welcomes, and retains global talent without leaving them in extended legal limbo. It's progress, but the ultimate success depends on how these rules play out in the real world,and whether future administrations build on these changes instead of rolling them back.
• moosedman 2y ago
  Well I'm never voting for a Democrat ever again. Doesn't matter what the GOP does.
  • JackYoustra 2y ago
    how about an insurrection? Would the fake electors scheme do it for you?
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• janalsncm 2y ago
  The number one issue software engineers should care about is using foreign talent to undercut wages. A cursory look at H1B salaries shows this is rampant. There’s a big difference between “we can’t find any talent” and “we can’t find any talent at our price point”. The former should be granted an H1B. The latter is abusing the system.
  • rm_-rf_slash 2y ago
    Is a startup that has to make do with the funding it has abusing the system by hiring an H1B? “Raise more money” is not an acceptable or reasonable answer.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • valicord 2y ago
    > A cursory look at H1B salaries shows this is rampant. Where does one get a cursory look at H1B salaries? If you're referring to various websites that publish H1B petition data, then you might be interested to know that they don't show actual salaries, only the minimum amounts that the company is required to pay by law. The actual salary can and often is higher, based on the specific employee negotation/performance/etc, same as any regular non-H1B job.
• laptopdev 2y ago
  Shoe horn-y
• SaintSeiya 2y ago
  Great, as if we needed more outsourcing, I cannot even get a single interview despite being an ex FAANG software developer, unemployed for more than a year. Not even for entry level jobs. The final nail in the coffin.
• cadamsau 2y ago
  For everyone who thinks H-1B and its ilk make it possible to hire foreign workers at below what citizens are paid - have a look on your favorite search engine for: “Prevailing wage condition” It’s a requirement that’s part of the Labor Condition Application wherein based on the location you’ll work (the “Metropolitan Service Area” or MSA) to be granted a visa your employer must prove they’ll pay you above publicly available and published minimum wages for each job title. These wages are public. If you have a problem with what they’re permitted to pay H-1B workers, the published prevailing wages are what you have a problem with. Spoiler though: they’re actually pretty accurate. Here is one example of how hard it is to underpay workers on visas: during the pandemic, workers on visas were not legally allowed to be furloughed, because they would run the risk of not meeting the prevailing wage that year, putting the employer out of compliance with the LCA and subject to fines in the event of an audit. So what happened in practice was negotiated unpaid leave or in most cases the US gov covered wages via programs like PPP. Now this is all out the window if the published prevailing wage for a given occupation is too low or the employer somehow sneaks one by the consular officials approving petitions - by selecting a title too junior for the applicant’s years of experience, for example. There will always be anecdata that makes this seem like a huge problem so be wary because one story does not a trend make. As mentioned above, by and large the prevailing wages are pretty on point with what American citizens are paid. The reality of the way this system works is it’s WAY more technical than fearmongerers would have you believe. Visa holders are very much NOT undercutting anyone and the H-1B is not a completely broken system - even though the lottery and the fraudulent applications cause hell for applicants and employers it does basically do what it’s intended to do. So besides the exploitative situation these changes seem to proactively address, it mostly works and alongside the O-1 and a few other visa categories, has played a key role in the US’ ongoing supremacy in AI and many other industries. Source: Australian citizen spent over 6 years working in SF on an E-3 visa which is very similar to H-1B.
  • willcipriano 2y ago
    Hire junior aerospace engineer with senior aerospace experience. Subject engineer to working conditions and long hours that domestic labor wouldn't tolerate. Get 1.5 - 3 senior aerospace engineers for the price of 1 junior.
• JackYoustra 2y ago
  let them all in! People can earn three times more just by being in the US and we benefit by lower inflation. EDIT: I encourage people to read two stories Qian Xuesen - what happens when you deport skilled laborers https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf - one of the first studies on immigration econ effects on wages. A good starting point
• michaelson62 2y ago
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• darkhorse222 2y ago
  No offense to the very hardworking H1B guys I've worked with, but I'm not a fan because they'll do anything the company says. They are used as scabs to undermine developers leverage. This was especially clear during RTO. It's the same issue of manufacturing stuff in china. Of course an H1B will be a good puppet, if you threaten to fire them you're sending them back home to another country!
  • webninja 2y ago
    100%.
• ggm 2y ago
  Maybe it's just me, but the vast amount of illegal and semi legal migrant workers being exploited suggests what the US needs is a visa system for unskilled labour, not for skilled. Why does everyone think the cure to the worlds ills is to have more doctors and not more toilet cleaners? People can die from dirty hands on doorknobs faster than from smoking: Basic sanitation work, food work is important. If current US residents won't do this stuff, pick food, clean up, then isn't the answer to bring them in or do we really prefer to have them live in a twilight, semi-illegal world? Really?
• ein0p 2y ago
  Biden (or whoever actually runs the country, since it's most definitely not Biden) is trying to undermine Trump's plan to turn H1-B into an auction, which is how it should be run, IMO. That's all there is to it. This will be canceled next year.
• gadders 2y ago
  This is just the result of lobbying by big business so they can import cheap labour to suppress wages.
• zeroc8 2y ago
  I'm a highly specialized software developer with 30 years of experience. I could save our customer, a huge US entity, a lot of money by moving to the states for the duration of the project. I don't have a college degree though, which seems to be a requirement for the H1-B. What a bummer.
  • xpl 2y ago
    There is L1 visa that does not require a degree. And there is no quota/lottery. It requires you to work for a U.S. employer overseas for at least a year though.
• JCM9 2y ago
  Will probably get undone in the first 10 minutes of the next administration.
• rednafi 2y ago
  H-1B is a terrible visa. I went through it with a few of my peers. Working in the US is great, but it’s not the only option. I moved out after two years and settled somewhere that values stability over the churn-and-burn culture. Couldn’t be happier.
• witnesser2 2y ago
  I can say sth: - particularly in SC market, the computer science or related areas (almost all JDs have this sentence). The 'related areas' brought in so many in-qualified that even can not answer what is a truth-table (we are not the DOJ). - The whole thing has been abused for decades "."
  • witnesser2 2y ago
    Also many anxious parents with children graduated from UC etc with absolute CS,CE degrees staying at home.
  • witnesser2 2y ago
    The companies hiring H-1x should publish all job hiring process (interviews, exams questions) at least at closing to all candidates. Thus it is subject to "objective" review.
    • witnesser2 2y ago
      I mean it won't be difficult to use gen ai to analyze where a candidate is compared to the peers. So it is a 'objective' offer or rejection.
    • witnesser2 2y ago
      Particularly for public-list companies (no security clearance needed etc), they should 'open-source' or 'wiki' their hiring process to 0-opacity.
• wisdomalfred 2y ago
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• Eugeneoregon 2y ago
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