7 ms·

This is actually smart. Many H1B visas are used to undermine fair labor wages for already local talent. We should ensure that H1B visas are for actual unique

• djohnston 1y ago
  The only way to do that (and preserve H1B) is to entirely disconnect the subcontinent from the application process. Their top companies exist only to scam immigration programs around the world, it is their raison d'être.
  • decremental 1y ago
    [dead]
  • truncate 1y ago
    So both people and companies from those countries?
    • djohnston 1y ago
      Yep.
      • truncate 1y ago
        >> The only way to do that (and preserve H1B) is to entirely disconnect the subcontinent from the application process. In that case, better to rephrase to "US should close borders for Indians (and China?) workers and companies". Why sugercoat it?
        • djohnston 1y ago
          I didn’t include China. I also don’t think there’s any reason to close the borders to Indians. Rather, simply close off access to their Frankenstein cottage industry of scammers.
          • truncate 1y ago
            I agree that H1B abuse should be fixed. Its also bad for other H1Bs which have the skill and didn't abuse the system (which many of them are). Maybe this 100k thing will fix it and maybe this wont. My main complain with this administration is always the chaos and impulsiveness which doesn't bring much confidence that they are actually capable of actually fixing the problem, as it always doesn't seem well thought through or executed. More like headlines to get some cheering from MAGA crowd.
            • famerica 1y ago
              > My main complain with this administration is always the chaos and impulsiveness which doesn't bring much confidence that they are actually capable of actually fixing the problem, as it always doesn't seem well thought through or executed. More like headlines to get some cheering from MAGA crowd. I think it could also be that they don't want to fix any problems, but they do want the chaos and media attention that provides catharsis to the voting base.
  • bhouston 1y ago
    I have met very talented people from the subcontinent. I think the issue is the H1B structure is open to fraud.
    • djohnston 1y ago
      Yeah exactly. And they embrace that fraud and turn it into a cornerstone of their economy. I too have worked with extremely talented people from the subcontinent and not one was on an H1B. The H1Bs I worked with were less competent than an undergraduate intern. Thankfully I only had to do that once during an on-prem install in Tyson’s Corner.
      • ojbyrne 1y ago
        I’m curious what visa the “extremely talented people from the subcontinent” were on. If they have a green card or are naturalized citizens, there are very few paths to those statuses that doesn’t involve an H1B.
      • throwaway7783 1y ago
        I'm against these top sweatshops, but is the answer to that is ban the entire subcontinent? Also, I don't know how many h1bs have you worked with. I have worked with many (hundreds), and it's the same spectrum of talent you'd find anywhere. This is probably not the intent of h1b, but banning a set of countries is not the solution. Changing the criteria is.
        • djohnston 1y ago
          The fact that it’s the same spectrum of talent (in your experience) is a glaring indicator that the system has been systematically abused by Indian WITCH to the point it’s no longer fit for purpose. Unfortunately systems constructed in high trust societies (1950s USA) must adapt with the arrival of low trust societies. Much like the European refugee conventions established in the echoes of WW2 and now gleefully exploited by these same low trust societies.
          • 1y ago
  • liquid_thyme 1y ago
    Thats complete bullshit. Nobody can "steal" a job. Americans are lining up to give them jobs.
    • djohnston 1y ago
      Why are you using quotes around steal as though I used that word somewhere? Read what I wrote, repeat it to yourself when you fall asleep, come back tomorrow.
      • liquid_thyme 1y ago
        Okay, you said scam, not steal. You didn't write much of anything except throw wild accusations.
        • djohnston 1y ago
          Yes, scam. Scam. India. Scam. India. You’ve never heard of these two together? Google is your friend. Diploma mills, good old fashioned racial discrimination, hiding job listings in obscure outlets to avoid domestic applicants, man they are truly talented in this endeavour. Maybe if they put so much muscle into improving the home country everyone would be better off.
          • liquid_thyme 1y ago
            So your employer's interview process isn't able to differentiate between a fake degree holding scammer and you? I'd focus on that first...
            • djohnston 1y ago
              That’s a cute ad-hominem but ultimately off base because that’s not how the diploma mills scam works. I really encourage you to research those topics a bit - it is genuinely fascinating how complex the scams get. There’s also a bit of self-reflection that arises when you learn that these people don’t understand why scamming and cheating is wrong - they’re genuinely incapable of comprehending this. It makes you appreciate people who aren’t like that, including yourself! (hopefully)
• softwaredoug 1y ago
  OTOH many H1Bs come with the intent of moving to the US and permanent residence eventually. Which makes our workforce stronger.
  • wonderwonder 1y ago
    Unless you are an American tech worker looking for a job
    • yodsanklai 1y ago
      Economy isn't a zero-sum game. Foreign talents were the enabler of the growth in this field.
      • AngryData 1y ago
        Over a long enough time-span it isn't zero-sum. Under any sort of limited time span, which is what people with limited amount of life live deal with, it is zero-sum. It doesn't matter how much money you spend, the economy has material and man power limits than cannot be exceeded no matter what someone manages to pull out of their butt. On top of that, the value of money IS affected by the total amount of currency in circulation as history has shown many times over, and only in a theoretical economic vacuum where customers are infinite does one guy holding a trillion dollars not devalue someone else's $1.
    • breadwinner 1y ago
      Why does America have all the tech jobs in the first place? It is because of people like Elon Musk immigrating to the US and building the tech industry.
      • ungreased0675 1y ago
        Because US companies like Bell Labs invented it.
        • 1y ago
• epistasis 1y ago
  This is very short term thinking, in that it assumes a constant amount of work and ignores the global competition for labor. If the US loses its massive lead in the network effects of a large labor pool, the amount of work in the US will shrink, both by moving to other countries and less overall innovation. This is not a beneficial move for most software engineers.
  • ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
    There is not a global competition for talent. How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale. There is a global competition for coming to Western Europe, Canada, and the US
    • Seanambers 1y ago
      Exactly, and especially SV and the US has seemingly been almost entirely locked down by Indians.
    • AceJohnny2 1y ago
      > How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries Hi! I know I'm just a datum, but I gotta represent myself.
      • Fordec 1y ago
        Same, three actually, none of which the US. A closer representation for the US brain may be who is considering between different states? Here is the thing, other countries do not necessarily work exactly the same way as the US or individually have large enough local markets to contain all aspects of the overall tech industry, just locally.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    • epistasis 1y ago
      Not yet. The slate of policy choices in the US is removing it from that list of countries, and will strengthen those countries' labor forces. Right now SV salaries command a huge premium, because all of SV is predicated on increasing productivity, increasing the economic pie, and rewarding those who do so with a fraction of that gain in GDP. Treating SV labor like plumbing or construction labor fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics and the creation of wealth.
• truncate 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • bhouston 1y ago
    Trump is following mostly the Project 2025 plan that was put together but others: it called for greatly reducing H1-B visas. And supposedly a lot of his power grab moves are being run by Stephen Miller: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/stephen-miller-trump-terror-ice-immigration-military-1235426023/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/step...
• mikeryan 1y ago
  This is idiotic. We’re already pushing China and India into a partnership with Russia. The sheer volume of people in those countries mean “on average” more brilliant people than we do. The US competitive advantage is built on us being a destination for the best and brightest. Between this and the crackdown foreign students at US Universities why would the anyone want to come here? The misuse of H1Bs is a small problem compared to the value it provides.
  • calvinmorrison 1y ago
    maybe they're occidentalists at heart?
  • rxyz 1y ago
    The best and brightest are worth the extra $100k tax, no?
    • breadwinner 1y ago
      $15K extra per year? Absolutely. $100k pre-payment? No. That's impractical since the visa holder may get hit by a truck or return home due to an emergency, etc.
    • vasilipupkin 1y ago
      why not just hire them in Canada or literally in any offshore office and not pay the 100k tax?
    • hdjrudni 1y ago
      Doubtful. Not sure I'd be hired. I was hired at like $160k/yr. Would my employer have paid over half my wages to import me? I'm not so sure. Am I not bright enough? Do ya'all not want me here? It's possible. I'm no genius but I think I'm pretty good at my job and I dare say above average, and I don't think my employer could fill all the positions they have with equal or greater talent with only American citizens.
      • nwienert 1y ago
• huevosabio 1y ago
  Strong disagree. This is a dumb move in that the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people. There are big issues with the h1b, particularly how strongly tied to the employer the employee is and how few of these we give away. But this basically closes the door for hiring foreign talent to anyone but BigCo. It is a sad shotgun shell on the right foot on a long streak of the US feet shooting it's way out of relevance.
  • fastball 1y ago
    Student visas still exist. O1 visas still exist. Other routes I can't remember off the top of my head exist. The door is not closed. Indeed, even H1B visas still exist, assuming that young talented person is worth $100k more than a US citizen. > the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people. I personally lean towards this being true, but it is a claim that needs to be demonstrated comprehensively for your argument to hold water. It is not trivially true.
    • adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
      you know what's really stupid? when we give someone a student visa and then don't have a easy to keep them in the country on a work visa
      • fastball 1y ago
        Indeed, though if you make that route too easy (or with limited oversight), you end up with diploma mills that aren't actually educating anyone. Incentives are hard to align well.
        • marticode 1y ago
          It wouldn't be hard to select and accredit at least the better universities. Giving an automatic work visa to every foreign Ivy graduate should be a no-brainier. You could take the top 30% or 50% ranked US News universities and accredit those, or some similar heuristics.
• vasilipupkin 1y ago
  this is not smart. If you want to reform an H1B program, reform it. This is not a reform, this is a bizarre attempt to do what? stop companies from hiring foreigners? they will simply hire them in their foreign offices or offshore.
  • fastball 1y ago
    What is reform and what is not reform? This is a change, not a cancellation. That sounds like reform to me.
    • vasilipupkin 1y ago
      reform is a type of action that tries to identify a concrete set of issues and fix those issues, implies a positive change. this is a change in the direction of significantly reducing hiring of foreign workers by American companies, which is bad for everyone. It's bad for American companies, because it will reduce their growth. It's bad for American workers because when our companies don't grow, neither does our economy and that hurts Americans. So it's a change, but it's a dumb change.
      • fastball 1y ago
        Could you give an example of the type of reform would be a positive change?
    • throwaway89201 1y ago
      In other democratic countries, reform is mostly proposed in parliament. Experts and other government institutions are publicly consulted. Reform is seldomly passed under emergency grounds, and H1B rules are an unlikely area for emergency executive action that has a transition period of not more than 2 days.
      • AngryData 1y ago
        Of course in other democratic countries their parliaments haven't purposefully and willingly seceded their powers to the executive branch and spent the last 50 years completely ignoring the entirety of the people's will, needs, and desires as they gathered and concentrated as much additional power as possible.
• freetime2 1y ago
  I believe that the United States has long benefited from being able to attract talented people from other countries. They pay taxes, they participate in the economy, and they make the US more innovative and competitive in the world. If there are abuses, then let’s fix them. But this is too heavy handed, and may have an impact on US competitiveness for generations to come.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    << But this is too heavy handed Is it really? Given the current salaries for AI talent ( or whatever future most desired skill sets are ), 100k seems like a decent enough spot to do the following: - keep the program limited to what it was intended to do ( bring in the best people in, keep US competitive -- on tech, not on low wages ) - keep populace in a state, where they don't see a reason for a leadership change Unless, of course, that is not what the program is used for ( and anecdotally, that take does not seem that far fetched ). So my overall response is: good. Frankly, this made Trump's election worth it.
    • freetime2 1y ago
      Having learned more about the details, it's honestly not as heavy-handed as I originally thought. The Reuters article linked said it was "$100,000 fee per year" - but it has now been clarified to be a one-time fee per new H1-B petition. I also thought initially that it would apply to existing H1-B holders, but it does not. And I've learned is that it's structured as a temporary change lasting for 12 months (of course it could be extended in the future). So - it's less heavy-handed than I thought. Given recent layoffs and the current state of the job market, I could maybe even be convinced that it's a good thing in the short term. I do still have concerns about US comptetiveness in the longer term though if we incentive companies to hire in other countries vs bringing talent to the US.
• jrockway 1y ago
  Are H1B visas undercutting wages significantly? I haven't really looked since the zero interest rates era, but back then H1Bs were getting paid the same as everyone else. I got the impression that companies would like to hire citizens (for their own convenience), but there were more jobs than people. The economy kind of sucks right now but it ain't H1B visa holders that are the problem.
  • bhouston 1y ago
    Please read the Bloomberg article I linked in my original post. It says that half of the H1-B visas are taken by staffing companies and they pay their staff significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing.
  • markmark 1y ago
    Any addition of labor will push down wages just be increasing competition for jobs, even if they are all paid the same.
  • trgn 1y ago
    you're not applying for .net analyst at midwest regional bank corp.
• keeda 1y ago
  Crossposting from elsewhere: Looking at it solely from a perspective of competition between labor glosses over the fact that insufficient labor is also bad because it keeps companies from growing and hiring more people. So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall. Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis. I elaborated more here (along with a couple of relevant empirical studies about how H1B actually impacted employment and wages of native workers): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308311
  • bhouston 1y ago
    Did you look at the Bloomberg article I linked in my original post? It says that half of the H1-B visas are taken by staffing companies and they pay their staff significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing.
    • vidro3 1y ago
      How is that possible ? Doesn't h1b have to pay within a set range of wages? Every h1b role I see posted at my bank pays more than I make so I don't get the lower paid comments
      • SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
        H1B holders have to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage or their employer's normal wage for similarly employed workers. So if a contracting company can ensure that the position their employees have is sufficiently different than the position a parent company is seeking to replace, there's an arbitrage. (This famously happened at Disney in 2014-15, with some workers directly training their H1B replacements.)
• throwaway89201 1y ago
  > This is actually smart. The policy topic is irrelevant. This is not normal reform. Looking from the outside, the United States is clearly democratically backsliding and is imposing decree upon decree of emergency measures, without a functioning parliament, with a sand-in-wheels judiciary, along with an enormous cult of personality, without any empathy towards the victims of sudden policy changes and black-bag jobs.
• comp_throw7 1y ago
  The trivial way to fix that issue would've been to ORDER BY offered_salary DESC LIMIT $h1b_cap, not this.
  • bhouston 1y ago
    not a bad idea.
  • petesergeant 1y ago
    That moves all H1Bs to software though, which I’m not sure is right.
    • yyhhsj0521 1y ago
      GROUP BY profession
• bmitc 1y ago
  > This is actually smart. Do you personally know any H-1B visa holders? I can only assume that by your comment that you do not. The ones who play by the system have their entire livelihood and home held over their head while under an H-1B visa. Punish the companies and staffing firms abusing the H-1B visas instead of creating a blanket, anti-immigration policy that will only bolster those abusing the H1-B visa, because those already abusing are the ones who have the funds to pay this fee. Companies who do things legitimately will not be able to easily absorb this fee. I will lose friends and colleagues because of this imposed fee. This will kick out all the good people we actually want working in this country. This will further reduce good people wanting to come to this country.
  • mempko 1y ago
    Exactly, it's not lime the visa holders get this 100k. The state does.
• rinon 1y ago
  If we’d fix the green card caps so that Indian workers could get green cards we wouldn’t see as much abuse. The system is broken, so you’re suggesting break it further? The US benefits from a lot of smart immigrants, we should be making it EASIER, not harder, to attract and retain the best talent from all over the world. The United States is ceding its leadership here and we’re going to pay for that for generations.
• thisisit 1y ago
  As always with this administration using a cannon to kill a mosquito for the right reasons. And then people debating the reason rather than the cannon. The logic from this administration and it’s supporters is opposite of Benjamin Franklin. Rather than thinking that it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer. They think it is better a hundred guilty persons be punished than one innocent person’s suffering. We have seen this from the South Korea detainees debacle and here too. There is fraud in H1B system. People do take advantage of it. People do suffer from ghost jobs. But the question at the heart of the matter is what is the basis for a flat 100k fee? Because lots of numbers from this administration seem to be pulled out from thin air. There are reasons fines are set low in comparison to a company revenue but POTUS doesn’t seem to know.
• ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
  It can be a cheaper source of human resources without direct outsourcing. This will just offshore jobs, not foster recruiting of citizens. The intent is obvious, but the foresight into potential outcomes is shortsighted. Labor is expensive, more competition will rise overseas, as it will become more expensive to operate. It also crushes the opportunities of a gigantic number of individuals who are here today who had a plan in place to exist in this ecosystem. Additionally the institutions that supported them will also be hurt. Although, they might have been aware of the writing on the wall over the past year.