15 ms·

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-count

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
akira2501 2y ago
> to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism. I always took it as a means of proving they still could return somewhere if necessary. Which is a reasonable thing to assure on a visa.
- kelnos 2y ago
  That's pointless. They need to prove they have somewhere to return to while regretting their visa that lets them... not return there? Dumb. Ultimately it just wasted time and money, and causes lots of stress, for no useful purpose.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    It's a visa. The whole point is that it's not permanent and you are ultimately expected to return home permanently. You may also be asked to leave at any time. It's reasonable for the host nation to want to ensure that outcome is still available and that someone hasn't actually fully emigrated here with no options for return. Ultimately it's known to anyone who applies for a visa that this will be the requirement, and so, if they don't want the economic opportunity of working in the US, they're free to avoid the stress and just stay in their home nation.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      > The whole point is that it's not permanent and you are ultimately expected to return home permanently. No. H1b is a "dual intent" visa. It's expected that you will file for a permanent residence while on this visa.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      > It's a visa. The whole point is that it's not permanent and you are ultimately expected to return home permanently probably do not have to tell you this but not all visas are created equal... this one is particular is a dual-intent visa so what you are saying applies to SOME visas, just not this one :)
- bubblethink 2y ago
pockmarked19 2y ago
[flagged]
- pavlov 2y ago
  When I was in the US with visas for my four-person family, we FedExed our passports to Finland where my parents put them in a different envelope and mailed them to the US embassy. Ten days later the embassy mailed back the passports with the new visas attached, and my parents FedExed them back to us in New York. Yeah, seems like this re-approval concept makes a ton of sense. FedEx at least got some business.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    This doesn’t sound remotely legal, but I’m not a lawyer. How were you expecting to comply with reasonable requests for your family’s passports and visas by the US while they were in transit? What if they were lost in transit or stolen? If your intent was to circumvent the process, that could constitute mail fraud and other violations that could result in loss of residency or in extreme cases loss of citizenship. Why would you or anyone ever do this?
    - pavlov 2y ago
      What reasonable requests? There isn’t (yet) a task force that goes door to door in Manhattan knocking on doors and checking immigrants’ papers. We are Finnish citizens and if the passports really had been lost, we could always get new ones at the Finnish consulate in New York to return home. I’ve held several types of visas, L-1 and O-1, and I also applied for a PERM whatever that I eventually abandoned because I didn’t want to stay in the country and with that employer. The American immigration system is incredibly poorly designed and frustrating for all parties. It drives honest legal immigrants like us to an “I don’t give a shit” mindset where we just did the minimum to get the paperwork while waiting to leave the country. Now I still get paid by an American company at the same rates as before, but I pay taxes to Finland instead. The immigrant-hostile system isn’t the success you imagine.
rbanffy 2y ago
> It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US I used the same argument in Brazil to support a strong free software preference in all government functions. Support from voters in Redmond wouldn’t get anyone re-elected in Brazil.
- fmeyer 2y ago
  Then we got RedHat using the same strategy to sell support for the government :D
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    They had a huge office in São Paulo back then. For all I know, it's bigger now. A good friend of mine spent so much time in airplanes between São Paulo and Brasilia that his skin was dry as a turtle's.
remarkEon 2y ago
>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. I want to pick on this point, because it's the general refrain about this topic. If there is some thing that American workers can't do in an in-demand field, and the government sets up a system to allow non-citizens to do those jobs, most people will say that this "helps" America. But does it? If the education pipeline is inadequately preparing Americans for being competitive in this in-demand field then perhaps that is the problem that should be addressed. Right now it feels like we have a (highly suspect) "labor shortage" that is addressed via immigration, which doesn't send a signal back to the educational/training infrastructure that they're doing something wrong.
- chabons 2y ago
  I don't have statistics, but given the student visa -> H-1B pipeline changes, it would seem there are a number of H-1B holders who are educated in US colleges (either at the undergrad or graduate level). This indicates that the problem is not entirely a training gap.
- hash872 2y ago
  The US is only 4% of the world's population, so there's an enormous number of extremely smart people who live outside its present borders. I don't think anyone believes that even the world's greatest educational system can bring all of its students up to an extremely high level of general intelligence. We should be letting very smart people born outside the US emigrate here, which is a win-win for everyone involved
  - remarkEon 2y ago
    Sure. But the government of the United States is, allegedly, there for the benefit of its citizens. I'm not really following where this "should" comes from. "Should" in what volume? "Should" over what time frame?
BJones12 2y ago
> The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies. Canada does not have that and it is going very poorly. Lots of people are calling for the implementation of the same policy.
- aylmao 2y ago
  How is not having a per-country cap going poorly in Canada?
  - focom 2y ago
    Have you heard of Brampton?
    - aylmao 2y ago
      Nope, what's that
      - AlexandrB 2y ago
        Brampton is a suburb of Toronto with a large Indian immigrant population. This is leading to tensions within Brampton as different Indian political factions attempt to influence Indian politics from Canada[1][2][3]. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/canada-khalistan-referendum-india-sikhs-b2173723.html https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/canada-khalistan-re... [2] https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/party-leaders-condemn-violence-at-hindu-temple-in-brampton-amid-india-consular-visit/article_3e7bcdef-469a-54e9-b271-acc24875edec.html https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/party-leaders-c... [3] https://tnc.news/2024/11/04/arrests-brampton-surrey-khalistan-protests-hindu-temples/ https://tnc.news/2024/11/04/arrests-brampton-surrey-khalista...
      - WorkerBee28474 2y ago
        Canada's center of bad driving, fraud, and temporary worker abuse.
  - BJones12 2y ago
Hilift 2y ago
> leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism Not really. This is really Customs and Border Patrol/Immigration way of saying, you can always do the default/what everyone else does. You can leave and return six months of the year. The key is leave (which they do), they are already declared non-immigrant, and are self-sufficient.
- outworlder 2y ago
  Not sure what you are talking about. This is about H-1B, aka dual-intent visas. You can have immigrant intent. Also, if you leave for six months, how are you even working in the US? Which is the point of the visa.
cute_boi 2y ago
The per-country caps is very important. Otherwise, you will see flood of same people which makes everything biased.
- xtreme 2y ago
  It's a policy based on unsound reasoning. Why is India treated as a monolith when it is more diverse than the EU in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity? If tomorrow India magically broke off into 30 separate states, all the same people who have been waiting for decades would be immediately eligible for green cards. How does it make any sense?
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    H1B program is also diversity program, much like green card lottery…
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Diversity based on country of origin doesn't make much sense, though.
      - bdangubic 2y ago
        That is exactly what diversity is when it comes to immigration, the freaking yearly green card lottery has diversity in the name of the program https://www.usa.gov/green-card-lottery https://www.usa.gov/green-card-lottery
    - cudgy 2y ago
      And yet the tech industry is far from diverse. It is predominantly male, white, and Indian. Did the US H1B program have an effect on this? Were some groups squeezed out even more from the tech industry due to H1B? For example, would there be more Black people in the tech industry without the H1B? More women?
  - cute_boi 2y ago
a13n 2y ago
To some extent this is what Section 174 is about. If you hire US-based engineers working on R&D (most software engineers) then you amortize their pay over 5 years. Foreign-based engineers working on R&D get amortized over 15 years. You get to expense 3x as much for domestic engineers compared to foreign engineers. This means you need to pay more taxes upfront for having a foreign R&D team, which is bad for cashflow. Your company could be losing money (unprofitable) but still owe corp income taxes because of Section 174. If the gov charged "tariffs" on foreign labor or services provided, especially for certain countries that labor is typically outsourced to, or certain types of labor/services (e.g. support, engineering, etc), that'd probably be an effective way to discourage offshoring.
mlindner 2y ago
Per-country caps remains an absolutely good idea. The goal of immigrants should be to integrate into the society they are joining. Without per country caps you can start creating strange enclaves and you get some of the issues Canada is having.
- i18nsoftware 2y ago
  Having people who have been living in the country for decades, but have the threat of leaving anytime they get fired from job or due to visa issues doesn't encourage them to "integrate into the society they are joining". If anything, the way the country caps work in the US right now make integration harder, because no matter how much they try to integrate and be part of the local community, they could be kicked out at any time. That just encourages people to have one foot out the door at all times.
  - mlindner 2y ago
    To be clear, I'm saying too many from one place shouldn't be allowed in in the first place. If they're let in the path to citizenship should be straight forward.
- alienallys 2y ago
  India has roughly twice the population of Europe and is just as diverse. Treating India as a single, homogeneous entity because it's one country overlooks its vast cultural, linguistic, and demographic diversity—comparable to that of Europe. If diversity justifies country caps, it doesn't apply to India. Clinging to such policies seems outdated. If India were divided into smaller countries like Europe, the same South Asian population, culture, and diversity would persist, but the artificial constraints tied to the name "India" would disappear.
  - tiznow 2y ago
    I believe this is part of the problem/perception -- Indian immigration via policies like H-1B and whatever Canada does disproportionately offers people from a handful of Indian states (and the highest castes) the chance to be North American tech workers. Even if you say "well, the Indian tech industry is centered on a few states" it in essence is the same problem or perceived problem. Specific to North America, most people actually like the idea of someone coming from halfway around the world to try to be a citizen of their nation. They do not exactly like the idea of being "carpetbagged" or being "flooded with people who do not integrate" and those perceptions exist not wholly out of imagination.
maeil 2y ago
> 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. Makes me wonder how many people gladly support this while at the same time clamoring against the EU's DMA and other regulations and fines it imposes on SV companies. What you're saying is of course absolutely true! I like how plainly you've stated it, because the directness makes clear to people just how awful of a deal it is for the EU and other countries where US tech companies make enormous profits without hiring any significant number of locals. I've lived in both the EU which suffers from the above, as well as a place where protectionism and barriers helped strongly restrain US tech and "artificially" give opportunity to local players. The latter has worked out so much better for every party involved except US tech.
newsclues 2y ago
Per county caps are good protection for your culture. Canada suffered because a lack of caps. It leads to a concentration that can be overwhelming.
grecy 2y ago
> Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism FWIW every country requires you leave and come back to change or renew visa status. The computers and processes are all setup at points of entry and just aren’t designed for people that don’t physically leave/enter. It’s so common the guys at the us/Canada land border call it “flagpoleing” because you literally drive a u turn around the flagpole and go back. I’ve done it a dozen times, even driving 4 hours each way in a gnarley winter storm into Alaska and back to Canada at -45.
- maowtm 2y ago
  Not the UK at least, as someone who has done a completely in-country switch from student to skilled worker. In fact you are not allowed to leave the country when your application is in progress (leaving would cancel it).
- workfromspace 2y ago
  > every country requires you leave and come back to change or renew visa status Not true for EU, either. In fact, how it works in EU is (for non-EU citizens): - Get a D visa (for residency) - Get into the country - Get a temporary residence permit which is for up to 5 years - Renew residence permit when it's about to expire or basis (employment, study) is changed - WHILE being in the country.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

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

akira2501 2y ago

> to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism. I always took it as a means of proving they still could return somewhere if necessary. Which is a reasonable thing to assure on a visa.

kelnos 2y ago
That's pointless. They need to prove they have somewhere to return to while regretting their visa that lets them... not return there? Dumb. Ultimately it just wasted time and money, and causes lots of stress, for no useful purpose.
- akira2501 2y ago
  It's a visa. The whole point is that it's not permanent and you are ultimately expected to return home permanently. You may also be asked to leave at any time. It's reasonable for the host nation to want to ensure that outcome is still available and that someone hasn't actually fully emigrated here with no options for return. Ultimately it's known to anyone who applies for a visa that this will be the requirement, and so, if they don't want the economic opportunity of working in the US, they're free to avoid the stress and just stay in their home nation.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > The whole point is that it's not permanent and you are ultimately expected to return home permanently. No. H1b is a "dual intent" visa. It's expected that you will file for a permanent residence while on this visa.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    > It's a visa. The whole point is that it's not permanent and you are ultimately expected to return home permanently probably do not have to tell you this but not all visas are created equal... this one is particular is a dual-intent visa so what you are saying applies to SOME visas, just not this one :)
bubblethink 2y ago

pockmarked19 2y ago

[flagged]

pavlov 2y ago
When I was in the US with visas for my four-person family, we FedExed our passports to Finland where my parents put them in a different envelope and mailed them to the US embassy. Ten days later the embassy mailed back the passports with the new visas attached, and my parents FedExed them back to us in New York. Yeah, seems like this re-approval concept makes a ton of sense. FedEx at least got some business.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  This doesn’t sound remotely legal, but I’m not a lawyer. How were you expecting to comply with reasonable requests for your family’s passports and visas by the US while they were in transit? What if they were lost in transit or stolen? If your intent was to circumvent the process, that could constitute mail fraud and other violations that could result in loss of residency or in extreme cases loss of citizenship. Why would you or anyone ever do this?
  - pavlov 2y ago
    What reasonable requests? There isn’t (yet) a task force that goes door to door in Manhattan knocking on doors and checking immigrants’ papers. We are Finnish citizens and if the passports really had been lost, we could always get new ones at the Finnish consulate in New York to return home. I’ve held several types of visas, L-1 and O-1, and I also applied for a PERM whatever that I eventually abandoned because I didn’t want to stay in the country and with that employer. The American immigration system is incredibly poorly designed and frustrating for all parties. It drives honest legal immigrants like us to an “I don’t give a shit” mindset where we just did the minimum to get the paperwork while waiting to leave the country. Now I still get paid by an American company at the same rates as before, but I pay taxes to Finland instead. The immigrant-hostile system isn’t the success you imagine.

rbanffy 2y ago

> It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US I used the same argument in Brazil to support a strong free software preference in all government functions. Support from voters in Redmond wouldn’t get anyone re-elected in Brazil.

fmeyer 2y ago
Then we got RedHat using the same strategy to sell support for the government :D
- rbanffy 2y ago
  They had a huge office in São Paulo back then. For all I know, it's bigger now. A good friend of mine spent so much time in airplanes between São Paulo and Brasilia that his skin was dry as a turtle's.

remarkEon 2y ago

>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. I want to pick on this point, because it's the general refrain about this topic. If there is some thing that American workers can't do in an in-demand field, and the government sets up a system to allow non-citizens to do those jobs, most people will say that this "helps" America. But does it? If the education pipeline is inadequately preparing Americans for being competitive in this in-demand field then perhaps that is the problem that should be addressed. Right now it feels like we have a (highly suspect) "labor shortage" that is addressed via immigration, which doesn't send a signal back to the educational/training infrastructure that they're doing something wrong.

chabons 2y ago
I don't have statistics, but given the student visa -> H-1B pipeline changes, it would seem there are a number of H-1B holders who are educated in US colleges (either at the undergrad or graduate level). This indicates that the problem is not entirely a training gap.
hash872 2y ago
The US is only 4% of the world's population, so there's an enormous number of extremely smart people who live outside its present borders. I don't think anyone believes that even the world's greatest educational system can bring all of its students up to an extremely high level of general intelligence. We should be letting very smart people born outside the US emigrate here, which is a win-win for everyone involved
- remarkEon 2y ago
  Sure. But the government of the United States is, allegedly, there for the benefit of its citizens. I'm not really following where this "should" comes from. "Should" in what volume? "Should" over what time frame?

BJones12 2y ago

> The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies. Canada does not have that and it is going very poorly. Lots of people are calling for the implementation of the same policy.

aylmao 2y ago
How is not having a per-country cap going poorly in Canada?
- focom 2y ago
  Have you heard of Brampton?
  - aylmao 2y ago
    Nope, what's that
    - AlexandrB 2y ago
      Brampton is a suburb of Toronto with a large Indian immigrant population. This is leading to tensions within Brampton as different Indian political factions attempt to influence Indian politics from Canada[1][2][3]. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/canada-khalistan-referendum-india-sikhs-b2173723.html https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/canada-khalistan-re... [2] https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/party-leaders-condemn-violence-at-hindu-temple-in-brampton-amid-india-consular-visit/article_3e7bcdef-469a-54e9-b271-acc24875edec.html https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/national/party-leaders-c... [3] https://tnc.news/2024/11/04/arrests-brampton-surrey-khalistan-protests-hindu-temples/ https://tnc.news/2024/11/04/arrests-brampton-surrey-khalista...
    - WorkerBee28474 2y ago
      Canada's center of bad driving, fraud, and temporary worker abuse.
- BJones12 2y ago

Hilift 2y ago

> leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism Not really. This is really Customs and Border Patrol/Immigration way of saying, you can always do the default/what everyone else does. You can leave and return six months of the year. The key is leave (which they do), they are already declared non-immigrant, and are self-sufficient.

outworlder 2y ago
Not sure what you are talking about. This is about H-1B, aka dual-intent visas. You can have immigrant intent. Also, if you leave for six months, how are you even working in the US? Which is the point of the visa.

cute_boi 2y ago

The per-country caps is very important. Otherwise, you will see flood of same people which makes everything biased.

xtreme 2y ago
It's a policy based on unsound reasoning. Why is India treated as a monolith when it is more diverse than the EU in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity? If tomorrow India magically broke off into 30 separate states, all the same people who have been waiting for decades would be immediately eligible for green cards. How does it make any sense?
- bdangubic 2y ago
  H1B program is also diversity program, much like green card lottery…
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Diversity based on country of origin doesn't make much sense, though.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      That is exactly what diversity is when it comes to immigration, the freaking yearly green card lottery has diversity in the name of the program https://www.usa.gov/green-card-lottery https://www.usa.gov/green-card-lottery
  - cudgy 2y ago
    And yet the tech industry is far from diverse. It is predominantly male, white, and Indian. Did the US H1B program have an effect on this? Were some groups squeezed out even more from the tech industry due to H1B? For example, would there be more Black people in the tech industry without the H1B? More women?
- cute_boi 2y ago

a13n 2y ago

To some extent this is what Section 174 is about. If you hire US-based engineers working on R&D (most software engineers) then you amortize their pay over 5 years. Foreign-based engineers working on R&D get amortized over 15 years. You get to expense 3x as much for domestic engineers compared to foreign engineers. This means you need to pay more taxes upfront for having a foreign R&D team, which is bad for cashflow. Your company could be losing money (unprofitable) but still owe corp income taxes because of Section 174. If the gov charged "tariffs" on foreign labor or services provided, especially for certain countries that labor is typically outsourced to, or certain types of labor/services (e.g. support, engineering, etc), that'd probably be an effective way to discourage offshoring.

mlindner 2y ago

Per-country caps remains an absolutely good idea. The goal of immigrants should be to integrate into the society they are joining. Without per country caps you can start creating strange enclaves and you get some of the issues Canada is having.

i18nsoftware 2y ago
Having people who have been living in the country for decades, but have the threat of leaving anytime they get fired from job or due to visa issues doesn't encourage them to "integrate into the society they are joining". If anything, the way the country caps work in the US right now make integration harder, because no matter how much they try to integrate and be part of the local community, they could be kicked out at any time. That just encourages people to have one foot out the door at all times.
- mlindner 2y ago
  To be clear, I'm saying too many from one place shouldn't be allowed in in the first place. If they're let in the path to citizenship should be straight forward.
alienallys 2y ago
India has roughly twice the population of Europe and is just as diverse. Treating India as a single, homogeneous entity because it's one country overlooks its vast cultural, linguistic, and demographic diversity—comparable to that of Europe. If diversity justifies country caps, it doesn't apply to India. Clinging to such policies seems outdated. If India were divided into smaller countries like Europe, the same South Asian population, culture, and diversity would persist, but the artificial constraints tied to the name "India" would disappear.
- tiznow 2y ago
  I believe this is part of the problem/perception -- Indian immigration via policies like H-1B and whatever Canada does disproportionately offers people from a handful of Indian states (and the highest castes) the chance to be North American tech workers. Even if you say "well, the Indian tech industry is centered on a few states" it in essence is the same problem or perceived problem. Specific to North America, most people actually like the idea of someone coming from halfway around the world to try to be a citizen of their nation. They do not exactly like the idea of being "carpetbagged" or being "flooded with people who do not integrate" and those perceptions exist not wholly out of imagination.

maeil 2y ago

> 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. Makes me wonder how many people gladly support this while at the same time clamoring against the EU's DMA and other regulations and fines it imposes on SV companies. What you're saying is of course absolutely true! I like how plainly you've stated it, because the directness makes clear to people just how awful of a deal it is for the EU and other countries where US tech companies make enormous profits without hiring any significant number of locals. I've lived in both the EU which suffers from the above, as well as a place where protectionism and barriers helped strongly restrain US tech and "artificially" give opportunity to local players. The latter has worked out so much better for every party involved except US tech.

newsclues 2y ago

Per county caps are good protection for your culture. Canada suffered because a lack of caps. It leads to a concentration that can be overwhelming.

grecy 2y ago

> Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism FWIW every country requires you leave and come back to change or renew visa status. The computers and processes are all setup at points of entry and just aren’t designed for people that don’t physically leave/enter. It’s so common the guys at the us/Canada land border call it “flagpoleing” because you literally drive a u turn around the flagpole and go back. I’ve done it a dozen times, even driving 4 hours each way in a gnarley winter storm into Alaska and back to Canada at -45.

maowtm 2y ago
Not the UK at least, as someone who has done a completely in-country switch from student to skilled worker. In fact you are not allowed to leave the country when your application is in progress (leaving would cancel it).
workfromspace 2y ago
> every country requires you leave and come back to change or renew visa status Not true for EU, either. In fact, how it works in EU is (for non-EU citizens): - Get a D visa (for residency) - Get into the country - Get a temporary residence permit which is for up to 5 years - Renew residence permit when it's about to expire or basis (employment, study) is changed - WHILE being in the country.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]