8 ms·

Join the tech community in passing immigration reform

• khuey 14y ago
  A little light on the policy details.
  • jack-r-abbit 14y ago
    Agreed. I'm in favor of some immigration changes (call it "reform" if you wish) but my idea of what that means might very well be different than what yours or theirs is. I'm not that interested in getting involved in a group whose beliefs do not align with mine.
    • 13b9f227ecf0 14y ago
      My guess is they have really narrow elitist concerns about bringing high skilled foreigners into Silicon Valley, but they figured out they can't pursue that goal stand-alone. So they're hitching up with the broader suite of treason-lobby mass immigration and amnesty interests.
• ttrreeww 14y ago
  We need to eliminate the H-1B program and replace it with a point based green card program, similar to the one in NZ or Australia.
  • jedmeyers 14y ago
    Australia has both: point based PR program AND work visas that are similar to H1-B. However it does not help them - I have an Australian PR but still chose working in Silicon Valley on a work visa.
  • enraged_camel 14y ago
    Can you summarize how it works for those of us not familiar with it?
    • ttrreeww 14y ago
      Basically, if you have enough points, you apply for a green card and you get it. That's it :)
      • enraged_camel 14y ago
        Yes, but how do you gain points?
        • rdouble 14y ago
          You get points if you are skilled in a job the country needs, you have X years in your field, you have a bachelor's degree, you have a master's degree, you fit into certain age brackets, you have an Australian spouse, you have other family in Australia, you have a job offer, etc. http://www.isa.com.au/points-test http://www.isa.com.au/points-test
          • ttrreeww 14y ago
            Pretty much, if they want a flood of worker in a certain industry, then they give you points if you have exp in that industry.
      • rdouble 14y ago
        That is not exactly how it works in Australia. You get enough points, then you qualify for the visa, then some office worker arbitrarily decides if he feels like giving it to you.
• mynameishere 14y ago
  Join [a bunch of millionaires] in [reducing their labor expenses]. You're not fooling anyone. Just bribe congress in the standard way and get your monstrous evil done.
  • yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Join [a bunch of thousandaires] in [rising up from poverty].
    • googoobaby 14y ago
      Let them build their own new Jerusalem.
  • caseysoftware 14y ago
    Interesting.. this has little to do with the H1-B visa program but instead is mostly about the day to day immigration policies like Border Patrol, amnesty, and citizenship.
  • CleanedStar 14y ago
    From fwd.us: "program must also include an increase in the number of H-1B visas" There's no debate about this, like some theory of quantum mechanics. These are a bunch of people, many billionaires, who have banded together to push forward their class interests - to enrich their billions even further, at our expense - at a time when the unemployment rate is above what it was, from 1984 to 2009 (aside from two months in 1992). They are very well organized. This message is being typed on a web site of a wealthy person whose face is plastered on fwd.us. It talks of the "tech community" and shows that little weasel Mark Pincus as a supporter. Pincus who robbed employees of their options once the startup lottery was won. I guess we the people who actually work the long hours, Ron Conman, Pincus, Rabois and all the people featured all all together in one big "community" where we all want more H1-B visas. It's not a topic of debate, your statements on it just reflect which side your bread is buttered on. There are those of us who code and maintain servers and databases and routers, those of us who create all of the wealth. There are those - the VCs, the incubators, the angels, and especially the old aristocracy of money these middlemen get their money from, who are parasites on those of us who create wealth. There is no debate like whether BSD or Linux, or vi or emacs is better. People have a class interest, and their feelings about this are just another way to affirm that fact.
• Dirlewanger 14y ago
  Oh look, business people looking to open the floodgates of cheap labor. If this passes, get ready for all STEM wages to plummet. You think it's hard now for 40-something programmers to find work? Ohhh man...
• bhb916 14y ago
  So far I've already seen two comments dismissing this as an evil plot to drive down labor costs. I hear this argument a lot and I can't over emphasize my absolute disgust for it. It seems to cross both class and party lines. There are human beings who are willing to risk life and limb, to separate themselves permanently from their families, to endure unspeakable hardship and constant fear of being deported simply for the opportunity to work -- and the only thing us middle-class, educated, privileged people can think about is that these people might dare compete with us! Excluding them from opportunity simply because they were born on the other side of some arbitrary, imaginary line is cruelty and selfishness beyond belief. (This is not condoning the original link above or whatever it might stand for. It seems a little impossible to tell.)
  • peejaybee 14y ago
    I'm an open-borders type, and I think it's designed to drive labor costs down too. I think the tell here is the desire to expand the H-1B program, which I believe tends to lock people into one job and reduce their negotiating power.
    • 127001brewer 14y ago
      "... tends to lock people into one job and reduce their negotiating power." I thought this was the case, too, but is this a false belief?
      • peejaybee 14y ago
        I don't think the belief is false, else I wouldn't believe it, but I like to think I'm open to evidence that it is false.
      • wavefunction 14y ago
        The H1-B visa is granted to a company, not the individual. Employing someone via H1-B means the individual faces deportation in addition to losing their "great job." In my not so humble opinion, the H1-B program is a way for the industry to suppress wages for all potential hires.
• jstrate 14y ago
  Where do these assholes get off on speaking for the entire "tech community"? As far as I can tell there are a few website developers and vc partners on the founder list.
• cletus 14y ago
  Whoever thinks this will open the floodgates to cheap labor has got it backwards: the current situation is creating a class of employees who are one step above indentured servitude. Not all H1Bs are created equal either. Some don't allow multiple reentry (or reentry beyond a 6-24 month period) due to some arcane reciprocity issue. So once here it can be a risk for many to even visit other countries and in the very least it's a hassle. Many come to the US with the intent of moving here permanently if they're able to. Frankly, considering some of the countries they come from, I can't really blame them. They simply want a better life for themselves and their families. In doing so they may end up separating themselves from their families for a significant period of time. The current process of getting a temporary wrok visa (specifically, an H1B) just creates artificial hoops to jump through of "proving" you can't find someone locally. This system is already completely compromised and has been thoroughly gamed. Now it simply enrichens lawyers who specialize in it. But the payoff for many temporary workers is immigration and here is where the indentured servitude comes in. For high-demand countries (China, India, Mexico and the Phillipines IIRC) the delay between making an application and getting approved is years. 6+ on EB3, 4+ years on EB2. The problem is that employers know this and can (and do) hold people hostage with artificially low wages (because the "prevailing wage" is far removed from reality) and those workers simply have to put up with it. I suspect most of these employers aren't startups but are corporate bodyshops who don't really care about the quality of their employees. They simply want someone to fill a seat because, hey, charging a huge markup on their labor to some contractor further up the line anyway. Large corporate outsourcing and particularly outsourcing from the government seems to be the main cause for this particularly racket. If someone is willing to employ them, then that largely should be the barrier that has to be met. It isn't quite that simple however as this could be used to bring people over with true indentured servitude much like what happens with illegal immigrants. People smugglers bring in people who then have to pay back the debt with much of their take home pay for years (this is how people smuggling into Australia works). So you have to somehow verify that the employment is legitimate and the worker isn't being exploited. The simplest way to do this is: 1. Make work authorization easily transferable; 2. Make such transfers not reset the immigration process (the current system does this; the new employer has to start again); and 3. Make immigration automatic after some period of time, say 3-6 years so people can't be held hostage with it. All this talk of "they're stealing our jobs" is horribly misguided and ill-informed about the reality of the incentives created by the current system.
• darwinosx 14y ago
  Why is this on Hacker News. Who has a vested interest in more of our jobs going to cheap Indian labor? Do people really think we don't know that's what this is about? Who funds this organization?
• optiminimalist 14y ago
  It's surprising that most commenters are concerned about immigrants from India who are taking away jobs from Americans at artificially low wages. What about skilled engineers from a less represented region such as Europe? There's plenty of us who are gladly hired/sponsored by Silicon Valley start-ups and paid the same wage as the American employees. In the current climate it feels that start-ups are hiring every skilled person they can find, no matter if US citizen or not. I, personally, really don't feel like I'm taking away anyone's job. Yet, we still have to compete for visas with the huge corporations that "import" cheap labor from elsewhere. Merely increasing the number of visa wouldn't help - the big corporations would just flood USCIS with even more applications. I think an H1B reform is absolutely necessary, but maybe in the form of a quota. Either on a per-country basis (such as the diversity greencard lottery) or, better perhaps, on a per-company basis so that only a certain proportion of visas can be allocated to a single company.