6 ms·
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job pe
by sinecure 1mo ago
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
- bakies 1mo agoIsn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa
- thatfrenchguy 1mo agoH-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.
- copperx 1mo agoH-1B is dual intent, isn't it?
- anvuong 1mo agoThat only means you won't be denied if you express immigration intent during interview. Besides that it's nothing special. There is no special path to GC/naturalization for H1Bs.
- Izikiel43 1mo agoIf you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy. They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.
- jameshart 1mo agoEmployment based and immigrant are not opposite categories of visa - these are orthogonal axes. There are employment-based nonimmigrant visas like H1B and L1. Being a nonimmigrant visa means it doesn’t grant you a right to immigrate but some (including H1B and L1) are ‘dual intent’ visas meaning you can apply for an immigrant visa while in the US as a nonimmigrant. There are employment-based immigrant visas, which have categories like EB1, EB2. Like all immigrant visas these are also known as ‘legal permanent residency’, LPR, or ‘green cards’. There are also non-employment-based visas that are both nonimmigrant (eg visitor visas, student visas) and immigrant (eg family based green cards)
- mc32 1mo agoRecently[1] Microsoft laid off several thousand domestic employees while simultaneously hiring a couple thousand employer-sponsored-Visa workers. [1]https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-visas-ai-jobs-12162205 https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-vis...
- jameshart 1mo agoThat is not actually what that article says. It’s a common pattern to say ‘company X laid off thousands of employees but then applied for thousands of H1B visas’ which very much gives the impression that the company has just fired a few thousand Americans and hired a few thousand foreigners. What actually happens is: a company has a global workforce of 100000 or so. 50000 of them are in the US. 5000 of them are in the US on H1Bs, 45000 of them are Americans. Company does a 10% layoff: 4500 Americans, 500 people who are in the us on visas, and 5000 people around the world. Headline: “Company X lays off 10000” Then the H1B renewal numbers come out and what do you know company X is applying for 4500 H1Bs, to retain their existing H1B staff who weren’t affected by the layoff. Headline: “After laying off 10,000 staff company x applies for 4500 H1B visas” Unstated in such a headline: 5500 of those layoffs were foreigners; the company still employs 40500 Americans. To bring it back to your point: you cited this article as evidence for the claim that Microsoft laid off ‘thousands of domestic employees’; the article does not say where the thousands of layoffs were and explicitly contains a quote from an MS spokesperson that says “H-1B employees were also impacted by job eliminations in the U.S.”
- altcognito 1mo agoOh cool, good thing labor isn't fungible and nobody ever outsources. What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!
- a2ff6eeb0 1mo agoAnd yet, they never applied the simple option of ranking the visa applications by salary, and approving in order of demand for the talent. That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages. But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.
- Izikiel43 1mo agoThey are doing that now too, however the problem is that h1b is used for roles outside of tech, believe it or not, and if you measure everything by Bay Area tech salaries a bunch of necessary but lower paying jobs will go unfilled
- rgbrenner 1mo agoIf it's truly necessary, the fact that it's unfilled would be directly related to it being low paid. And if the employer isn't willing to pay the cost of labor to fill the position, it directly raises the question of whether its "necessary".
- Izikiel43 28d agoSo rural people get screwed because most doctors won't go to a rural hospital, and the rural hospital doesn't have the budget of a fancy city, so it can't entice doctors, rural people get screwed.
- a2ff6eeb0 1mo agoThey can pay more, or hire American.
- Izikiel43 28d agoWhat about for rural hospitals whose budget won't allow it?
- doug_durham 1mo agoI was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.
- charcircuit 1mo agoThe idea is that the "same wage" you are talking about is too low to hire enough employees in the time needed that the company needed so they had to look abroad for people willing to work for that amount.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- 10000truths 1mo agoBeing paid the same as the other guy doesn't necessarily mean the wages themselves stayed the same. Adding H1B candidates to the talent pool exerts downward pressure on salary due to the law of supply and demand. I can't say for sure whether the allure of a green card or threat of deportation play a material factor in lowering the average salary that H1B immigrants are willing to accept. But in an environment where talent is treated as fungible (even if it isn't always so), any such downward pressure affects everyone.
- ytoawwhra92 1mo agoThe prevailing wage for H1B software engineers is a very good salary for most software engineers in the world. It's common for the prevailing wage to be double what that person could earn in their country of origin.
- jagged-chisel 1mo agoAnd still exert downward pressure on wages. Just by virtue of having more people in the pool.
- 1mo ago
- yodsanklai 1mo agoI work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same. I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better. If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
- overfeed 1mo ago> I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same. For some visa classes, the law says you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job - not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz. > If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar Does it really matter? To a point, obviously, but a lot of people are good enough for the role without being the world's best. The bar for getting into Google has dropped since its early days, and Google keeps breaking profit records quarter after quarter. This entire "hire the best or nothing" mindset has led to a dysfunctional hiring process that's a pain to both employers and employees, and is prima facie unachievable.
- yodsanklai 1mo ago> not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz. As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates. I have my set of questions, some candidates solve them, others don't. You can argue that it's the bar to do your job properly. Should politicians tell big tech companies what's the bar for being a successful SWE? > When it comes to national interest, the argument for "meritocracy" falls apart quickly. A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
- overfeed 1mo ago
- wasabi991011 1mo agoHow does companies hiring h1b-holders (a non-immigrant visa) relate to a pause on immigrant visa applications?
- dyauspitr 1mo agoAs a hiring manager no one tells you who is an immigrant and who isn’t when you interview them.
- ApolloFortyNine 1mo agoAs an interviewee I've read "we're not sponsoring visas at this time" a million times.
- dyauspitr 1mo agoAt the HR/JD level, not at the actual interview.
- bottlepalm 1mo agoActually they get normal wages now. H1B’s get hired because H1B’s are now in hiring, recruiting, HR, etc.. they stack the candidate pool with their own shamelessly. I’ve seen it first hand.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- ShinyLeftPad 1mo agoThe news is about immigrant visas and H1B is temporary non-immigrant visa...
- puppymaster 1mo agoOP and you are obviously on different end of the spectrum. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
- IAmBroom 1mo agoNot all opposing opinions are reasonable, nor "symmetrically unreasonable". When a reasonable human being and a xenophobe or racist argue, the truth is not somewhere in the middle.
- grahar64 1mo agoThe problem is the H1B visa is a lottery not a points based system. As someone who applied for an H1B 5 times and never got it, despite being highly skilled and having a PhD and a well paying job. The only way in was on an intern visa or an Einstein visa. Insane system
- iLoveOncall 1mo agoThere are minimum salary requirements for H1-B visas which are actually above market rate. Be careful, your racism shows.
- gcanyon 1mo agoThen fix that. This administration is eager to point out problems and propose "just don't do that" as a solution. The problem is that to them, pretty much everything is a problem, so they're proposing we do nothing.
- IAmBroom 1mo agoNonsense. Job applicants at the H1B level are all highly competitive, well-educated specialists of some sort. You can't hire scab helicopter blade design engineers. Not even from abroad. You have a small pool of those who qualify looking for work (or actively keeping their ears alert for new work), muddied by many people tangentially quasi-qualified who want a job. After you filter (imprecisely, but as well as you can), the pool is small, and you don't have enough qualified applicants to routinely work one group against another.
- tech_ken 1mo agoIt’s wild to me that the US tries to resolve labor issues with immigration control rather than just having good unions. Back in the 80s we decided we wanted free commerce at the expense of all else. Well guess what, that means you’re competing with the global labor pool. This shit is like trying to have your cake and eat it to; we want only the upside of the global neoliberal order, and try our damndest to outsource all its downsides.