9 ms·

Workers in Silicon Valley Weigh in on Obama’s Immigration Order

48 points by gordon_freeman 12y ago

general_failure 12y ago
Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are? I have seen a lot of countries offer "entrepreneur" visas. And all of them are highly unrealistic and out of touch with reality. Standard requirements are masters, sometimes phd, have 500K euro funding and the like, able to employ 5 people within a year (!) and so on. Policy makes clearly don't understand what makes startups work. I think people should be allowed into a country as long as can show proof of funds, a business plan (more like a statement of intent) and the progress can be revisited every year for visa renewal. Anything else is absurd.
- gordon_freeman 12y ago
  there is a need to form a committee of such policy makers who can understand the startup culture, have funded startups in the past, or preferably have started startups themselves. Then only can they understand the kind of policy reforms we need to make it easy for foreign nationals to come US and start a start-up.
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    Is there any highly specialized policy decision that this isn't true of?
- jakozaur 12y ago
  Some countries try to fit "startups" in traditional investor capital-heavy visas, but there are plenty of good examples. E.g. Canada, UK, Ireland, Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Italy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_Visa#mediaviewer/File:Comparison_of_Entrepreneur_Visa_Schemes_Worlwide.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_Visa#mediaviewer/File:C...
  - desdiv 12y ago
    Gotta love how Canada surreptitiously took over half of the eastern seaboard.
    - xordon 12y ago
      It didn't, but that is probably one of the worst map projections I've ever seen.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  I don't see why "entrepreneurs" of any kind should receive special visa prioritization over all other categories of entrant.
  - kasey_junk 12y ago
    The standard argument against immigration is that it "takes jobs away" from local applicants. A successful business will typically generate new jobs. Thus, allowing in people who create jobs over those that take them is seen as a net positive.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      If I were to start Chris's Italian American bakery I'm likely taking some business away from Patel's Pure Ghee Sweets and possibly reducing the number of jobs he creates. So while I've generated 5 gross jobs, it's unclear that I generated any net jobs. (For the record I think "new jobs" is a moronic reason to do anything. A job is a cost, delicious rainbow cookies are the benefit.)
      - kasey_junk 12y ago
        Completely agree with all of that. But that is the standard reductionist argument.
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        This is true to the extent that different goods are economic substitutes for each other. But even if they are perfect substitutes and no net jobs are created, increased competition would reduce prices for consumers, resulting in a net aggregate economic benefit. I also think 'jobs' is a moronic reason to do things but immigration policy, more than most, is the focus of atavistic political passions rather than rational economic analysis.
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      There doesn't need to be any argument against immigration. Since immigration is something the state actively does and permits, immigration policies require active justification in terms of how they benefit the country.
- protomyth 12y ago
  > Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are? The basis of the "reforms"[1] is that the Administration will not enforce certain parts of immigration law. I don't think anyone can truthfully answer your question until the shakes out in court. 1) you really cannot call them reforms since they have no legislative backing to provide a foundation for new rule making or court decisions
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    This is inaccurate. The administration already has the legal discretion for this action by statute; it's just that up to now it has been employed on a case-by-case basis and basically subject to the whims of individual immigration officers, rather than pursuant to guidance from the Attorney-General.
    - protomyth 12y ago
      That's a bit inaccurate. Prosecutors have legal discretion on a case-by-case basis, but a President not enforcing large sections of the law has never been tested. This is going to be complicated and messy. If your belief is the truth, what happens when the next President decides not to enforce the laws they don't like?
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        Not so. The delegation of discretionary power to the agency (whose head serves at the pleasure of the President) is explicit in the statute. As I pointed out above, the President is not declining to enforce the law, but promulgating standards for how that discretion should be applied. Furthermore, this is not as novel a situation as some commentators claim, because such standards are regularly promulgated in other similar contexts, such as rules not to automatically exclude would-be immigrants who infected with HIV (instituted and terminated by executive fiat) or to grant refugee status to people from conflict/disaster zones, which are similar exercises of discretion. The only 'large' thing here is the number of people who might qualify for residential status under the newly-promulgated criteria for evaluation (eg 5 year continuous presence inside the US plus parental relationship to a US citizen/LPR plus absence of felony convictions). Here again is the DoJ's legal memorandum on the allowable scope of executive action in this context - you'll notice that it affirms the President's powers to act in some respects while denying it in others. I'd be glad to discuss it in depth but the document is necessarily long and technical. http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/attachments/2014/11/20/2014-11-19-auth-prioritize-removal.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/atta...
- chiph 12y ago
  > Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are? They are a lot less attractive, the more you read the details. While they're certainly an improvement, for the most part they are temporary in nature, and don't address the fundamental problems with immigration in the US. Which, TBH, needs to originate in the legislative branch. - Expands those eligible for the existing DACA program, for children under 16 that came here before 2010. Extends the period from 2 to 3 years. - Allows parents of legal immigrants to request deferment for 3 years. - Provisional waivers for sons & daughters of citizens and lawful residents are expanded - Lets applicants for naturalization use their credit cards to pay their fees http://www.uscis.gov/immigrationaction http://www.uscis.gov/immigrationaction
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- akiselev 12y ago
  Has it been proven? Where? Did you even look at your link? Looking at [1] only two H1B employees received a wage offer of less than 103k, and in 2013 only one (Database administrator) received under 100k. In every single case the prevailing wage on the application was lower than the wage offer. [1] http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-by-companies-2014-yourpeople#.VHN-C_nF8To http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-by-companies-2014-yourpeople#.VH...
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    In what world is the prevailing wage for a software developer in SF $74k/year? http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-2014-I-200-14065-134617/software-engineer-yourpeople-inc-#.VHN_1XW9-V4 http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-2014-I-200-14065-134617/software...
    - akiselev 12y ago
      In this world, where San Francisco is but a tiny city in a country of more than 300 million people and job offers are 30-50% above national prevailing wage.
      - selmnoo 12y ago
        > job offers are 30-50% above national prevailing wage. Making $70k in some midwestern city will get you a better house, better access to education for your children, and generally better quality of life than what $200k will get you in the Valley. I know people who've lived in both worlds tell me exactly this. So, having offers at 30-50% is not a good thing, it's a bad thing. It should be much higher than that.
      - vonmoltke 12y ago
        What does the "national prevailing wage" have to do with the "prevailing wage for a software developer in SF", which is what I was talking about? San Francisco is a tiny city, and I am only talking about San Francisco since that is where the job I linked to is located.
supercanuck 12y ago
Look its no accident that the Top 3 H1-B Employers is on the low end of the salary scale. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx If these jobs are paying the $60-70K Range, to me there is no reason why a College Graduate from an American Computer Science or Information Systems cannot perform these jobs. IMO, end clients such as Fortune 500 are simply using the Cognizant's, Infosys etc. of the world, as a "Flexible Workforce" or "Onshoring Model" in lieu of actually hiring and training employees. In my view, they should allow these otherwise H1-B's access to a visa that isn't tied to an employer, so they can seek competitive wages and allow them to compete openly without the prospect them being deported be a drag on their salary, or cut down the H1-B's entirely. Either way, I believe is difficult for Americans to compete. We can talk special privileges for "startups" but as long as it takes $500 on incorporate.com to create a company, the system will be abused.
- ep103 12y ago
  And yet the word h1-B doesn't even appear in the article, sigh.
  - gregorias 12y ago
    Let me guess. You didn't even read the article and simply did ctrl+f h1-B, which didn't give you any results, because it's a typo.
    - ep103 12y ago
      I did read it, and I thought it doesn't even deserve to be called journalism. They only reference people currently going through the immigration process, and employers. What do you think their perspective is going to be? They even included a quote from an employer claiming that he hires 10 Americans for every immigrant, without any quantification, clarification or investigation, let alone analysis on whether or not that is common for technology firms (it isn't). For all we know, all 10 hired people don't make a combined salary of the single imported worker. They then left an unsourced quote as the very last line of the article claiming that the new measure would not in any way be related to wage suppression. When I worked for actual worker's rights, in another lifetime, whenever a PR firm hired out journalists to write a hit piece on our organization they would write articles of this quality. Selectively choosing interviewees to meet a predefined viewpoint, skipping over flashpoint words, presenting only one viewpoint without analysis, and then as a buried lead, dismiss potential opposition worries as far below the fold as possible.
bsder 12y ago
Sigh. Here we go again. Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ years. The H1-B quota empties out. Domestic tech folks aren't being undercut by Asian serfs. Companies get the tech workers they need. Of course, the tech companies don't want this. There is no tech worker shortage; there is a cheap tech worker shortage. Granting green cards would make tech workers more expensive.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ years. There is no INS; that government agency eventually became USCIS, part of the DHS. And this isn't a matter of changing things by administrative fiat; Congress would have to pass a law to this effect. The President's executive action last week leverages discretionary powers that are already written into the law (despite what political opponents claim about it being unconstitutional) but which apply only to specific fact patterns (which is why the action is limited to parents of US citizen/LPR children). Here's the legal explanation if you're interested, but it probably won't make any sense unless you're already familiar with title 8: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/attachments/2014/11/20/2014-11-19-auth-prioritize-removal.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/atta...
- jessaustin 12y ago
  The H1-B quota empties out. Is there a good reason to believe this would happen? It seems possible that the new green card holders would just find themselves in the same situation as native workers. How many hundreds of thousands of IT degrees are awarded every year in India?
  - curiousDog 12y ago
    The outsourcing companies (Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant etc) would have to be banned from getting H1-Bs as well for this to happen. American companies usually hire Indians who are here for a Masters in CS degree and there aren't that many of them.
disposition2 12y ago
> "Mr. Srini said the American visa restrictions had also crimped his ability to hire talented engineers. Because the primary visas used to hire software workers, known as H-1B visas, run out in a few days when the lottery is opened every April, he really has one chance a year to hire foreigners. And if they don’t win the lottery, they have to wait another year, often forcing Zenefits to find someone else." I don't disagree with the article in regards to easing the ability for entrepreneurs to come to the States and open a business but it has been proven time and again that most of the "we lack talented engineers, we need more H1-B's" is in fact "we don't want to pay the going rate in the States, we need more H1-B's"
- aristidb 12y ago
  The going rate being $9000/mo for an intern?
  - selmnoo 12y ago
    Some of them should be getting $20000/mo, since they're doing work that really full employees are expected to do. But that aside, you're totally misrepresenting the situation here - $9000/mo is not the pay for an average intern. Consider the controversy only a few months back about interns working for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg not getting paid at all.
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  This part of the article really stuck out to me too. Are we supposed to feel bad for Zenefits here? If Zenefits is able to find someone else, then they didn't need the H1B to begin with... Not that it matters in the grand scheme, but I'm willing to write off Zenefits as a potential employer if this is the attitude of the founders.
  - saalweachter 12y ago
    I think there is something weird going on. At least for tech, I think there's a mentality that our hiring pool isn't just "people who show up at our office with a resume" or even "people in the same country" but "the entire goddamn world". I don't know if this is good or bad, but I think it's definitely different from the way things used to be, and probably different from the way things still are in a lot of industries. So it seems reasonable to say that the current US immigration policies were not written with the whole-world hiring pool mentality in mind.
supercanuck 12y ago
>Right now, the law is so Kafkaesque that Mr. Srini, who is from India, had to get his American co-founder, Parker Conrad, to officially hire him as Zenefits’ database administrator simply to transfer his visa from his previous employer so they could create the company If it is so easy, imagine all the intelliteks, computeks, etc abusing this to suppress wages.
eyeareque 12y ago
H1B visas are an excuse to pay less for high tech workers IMO. That is what I've always seen as American workers aren't chosen for those jobs because they can make more money else where. Why isn't this more well known?
- Dirlewanger 12y ago
  Simple answer: because it's not politically correct to ask about it. Merely questioning anything anything benefiting immigrants and you're instantly labeled an ignorant xenophobic backwoods dweller. Who cares about finding jobs for Americans? Companies wants the cheapest and most expendable resources they can find. Zuckerberg doesn't give a shit about immigration reform, it just so happens that pushing for it aligns with reducing Facebook's human capital costs. Money rules all.
  - pyre 12y ago
    It would benefit immigrants too if the immigration process were structured in a way that didn't relegate them to serfs to a single company.
  - geebee 12y ago
    The US currently takes about 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year, and of course Facebook is more than welcome to hire these new citizens, just as it would hire any UC citizen regardless or immigration status or national origin. I'm not really surprised Facebook wants to change the composition of immigrants coming to the US. Except for some very narrow programs, immigrants to the US aren't really chosen based on skills and education. So Facebook would much rather support a program where they get to decide who does and does not get to live and work in the US, screening for the kind of worker they'd like to employ. There is also the appeal of an indentured worker, as many people have pointed out. You don't have to be especially cynical to think this is a huge selling point to the corporations that rely heavily on the H1B visa. What would Facebook rather have - a free citizen immigrant who wasn't selected for any particular interest or ability in programming, or an immigrant who is granted the right to live and work in the US provided he or she lives where Facebook says he or she should live? For me, my misgivings come from two main sources. First, I am solidly opposed to corporate control over the immigration system. I don't like the idea of Facebook's HR department deciding who will and who won't become a US citizen, green card holder, or resident. Second, while I certainly think programmers are valuable workers (some of them, anyway), I don't think that there's sufficient evidence of a shortage relative to other knowledge based fields. Out here in SF, software developers earn (at the median) a bit more than dental hygienists, a bit less than registered nurses. I'm not complaining about that, it's fine by me that nurses are paid better than programmers. I just think it suggests that there's really no critical shortage or programmers that the government needs to get involved in resolving by tinkering with the kind of immigrants who get to come to the US. I would be ok with a skilled immigration points system like Australia has, and sure, programming counts as a skill, though I wouldn't put any unusual emphasis on programming vs plumbing, nursing, dental hygiene, or any number of other jobs requiring specialized skills and training.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
I think we really need another SV but in a jurisdiction that makes sense. At least I do, neither a resident of USA nor wanting to be there. Unfortunately, while finance centers are aplenty, tech centers are much more sparse.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  These centers are developed by capital willing to invest in risky technology start ups. That is the first-step oxygen that is required to have a SV-style tech hub. You can import the talent in afterwards. I left Canada because it's mostly resource wealth that makes the money there. There isn't nearly as much capital available for software in Canada as SF. SF has more $30mm+ net worth families/individuals than all of Canada combined. And a 1/3rd of those Canadian families made money from resources.
etaty 12y ago
Why not just apply basic of economy to visa ? I mean every day you match X visas to the highest salaries! So salaries doesn't go down, and people can apply all year. And you check the salary is really paid.
ep103 12y ago
This is an important topic, and the NYTimes should be ashamed of this "journalism". The article is called Workers in Silicon Valley, but it only mentions quotes from Employers and people currently going through the immigration process. I wonder what their perspective is going to be?

Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are? I have seen a lot of countries offer "entrepreneur" visas. And all of them are highly unrealistic and out of touch with reality. Standard requirements are masters, sometimes phd, have 500K euro funding and the like, able to employ 5 people within a year (!) and so on. Policy makes clearly don't understand what makes startups work. I think people should be allowed into a country as long as can show proof of funds, a business plan (more like a statement of intent) and the progress can be revisited every year for visa renewal. Anything else is absurd.

gordon_freeman 12y ago
there is a need to form a committee of such policy makers who can understand the startup culture, have funded startups in the past, or preferably have started startups themselves. Then only can they understand the kind of policy reforms we need to make it easy for foreign nationals to come US and start a start-up.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  Is there any highly specialized policy decision that this isn't true of?
jakozaur 12y ago
Some countries try to fit "startups" in traditional investor capital-heavy visas, but there are plenty of good examples. E.g. Canada, UK, Ireland, Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Italy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_Visa#mediaviewer/File:Comparison_of_Entrepreneur_Visa_Schemes_Worlwide.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_Visa#mediaviewer/File:C...
- desdiv 12y ago
  Gotta love how Canada surreptitiously took over half of the eastern seaboard.
  - xordon 12y ago
    It didn't, but that is probably one of the worst map projections I've ever seen.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
I don't see why "entrepreneurs" of any kind should receive special visa prioritization over all other categories of entrant.
- kasey_junk 12y ago
  The standard argument against immigration is that it "takes jobs away" from local applicants. A successful business will typically generate new jobs. Thus, allowing in people who create jobs over those that take them is seen as a net positive.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    If I were to start Chris's Italian American bakery I'm likely taking some business away from Patel's Pure Ghee Sweets and possibly reducing the number of jobs he creates. So while I've generated 5 gross jobs, it's unclear that I generated any net jobs. (For the record I think "new jobs" is a moronic reason to do anything. A job is a cost, delicious rainbow cookies are the benefit.)
    - kasey_junk 12y ago
      Completely agree with all of that. But that is the standard reductionist argument.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      This is true to the extent that different goods are economic substitutes for each other. But even if they are perfect substitutes and no net jobs are created, increased competition would reduce prices for consumers, resulting in a net aggregate economic benefit. I also think 'jobs' is a moronic reason to do things but immigration policy, more than most, is the focus of atavistic political passions rather than rational economic analysis.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    There doesn't need to be any argument against immigration. Since immigration is something the state actively does and permits, immigration policies require active justification in terms of how they benefit the country.
protomyth 12y ago
> Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are? The basis of the "reforms"[1] is that the Administration will not enforce certain parts of immigration law. I don't think anyone can truthfully answer your question until the shakes out in court. 1) you really cannot call them reforms since they have no legislative backing to provide a foundation for new rule making or court decisions
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  This is inaccurate. The administration already has the legal discretion for this action by statute; it's just that up to now it has been employed on a case-by-case basis and basically subject to the whims of individual immigration officers, rather than pursuant to guidance from the Attorney-General.
  - protomyth 12y ago
    That's a bit inaccurate. Prosecutors have legal discretion on a case-by-case basis, but a President not enforcing large sections of the law has never been tested. This is going to be complicated and messy. If your belief is the truth, what happens when the next President decides not to enforce the laws they don't like?
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Not so. The delegation of discretionary power to the agency (whose head serves at the pleasure of the President) is explicit in the statute. As I pointed out above, the President is not declining to enforce the law, but promulgating standards for how that discretion should be applied. Furthermore, this is not as novel a situation as some commentators claim, because such standards are regularly promulgated in other similar contexts, such as rules not to automatically exclude would-be immigrants who infected with HIV (instituted and terminated by executive fiat) or to grant refugee status to people from conflict/disaster zones, which are similar exercises of discretion. The only 'large' thing here is the number of people who might qualify for residential status under the newly-promulgated criteria for evaluation (eg 5 year continuous presence inside the US plus parental relationship to a US citizen/LPR plus absence of felony convictions). Here again is the DoJ's legal memorandum on the allowable scope of executive action in this context - you'll notice that it affirms the President's powers to act in some respects while denying it in others. I'd be glad to discuss it in depth but the document is necessarily long and technical. http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/attachments/2014/11/20/2014-11-19-auth-prioritize-removal.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/atta...
chiph 12y ago
> Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are? They are a lot less attractive, the more you read the details. While they're certainly an improvement, for the most part they are temporary in nature, and don't address the fundamental problems with immigration in the US. Which, TBH, needs to originate in the legislative branch. - Expands those eligible for the existing DACA program, for children under 16 that came here before 2010. Extends the period from 2 to 3 years. - Allows parents of legal immigrants to request deferment for 3 years. - Provisional waivers for sons & daughters of citizens and lawful residents are expanded - Lets applicants for naturalization use their credit cards to pay their fees http://www.uscis.gov/immigrationaction http://www.uscis.gov/immigrationaction

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

akiselev 12y ago
Has it been proven? Where? Did you even look at your link? Looking at [1] only two H1B employees received a wage offer of less than 103k, and in 2013 only one (Database administrator) received under 100k. In every single case the prevailing wage on the application was lower than the wage offer. [1] http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-by-companies-2014-yourpeople#.VHN-C_nF8To http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-by-companies-2014-yourpeople#.VH...
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  In what world is the prevailing wage for a software developer in SF $74k/year? http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-2014-I-200-14065-134617/software-engineer-yourpeople-inc-#.VHN_1XW9-V4 http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-2014-I-200-14065-134617/software...
  - akiselev 12y ago
    In this world, where San Francisco is but a tiny city in a country of more than 300 million people and job offers are 30-50% above national prevailing wage.
    - selmnoo 12y ago
      > job offers are 30-50% above national prevailing wage. Making $70k in some midwestern city will get you a better house, better access to education for your children, and generally better quality of life than what $200k will get you in the Valley. I know people who've lived in both worlds tell me exactly this. So, having offers at 30-50% is not a good thing, it's a bad thing. It should be much higher than that.
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
      What does the "national prevailing wage" have to do with the "prevailing wage for a software developer in SF", which is what I was talking about? San Francisco is a tiny city, and I am only talking about San Francisco since that is where the job I linked to is located.

supercanuck 12y ago

Look its no accident that the Top 3 H1-B Employers is on the low end of the salary scale. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx If these jobs are paying the $60-70K Range, to me there is no reason why a College Graduate from an American Computer Science or Information Systems cannot perform these jobs. IMO, end clients such as Fortune 500 are simply using the Cognizant's, Infosys etc. of the world, as a "Flexible Workforce" or "Onshoring Model" in lieu of actually hiring and training employees. In my view, they should allow these otherwise H1-B's access to a visa that isn't tied to an employer, so they can seek competitive wages and allow them to compete openly without the prospect them being deported be a drag on their salary, or cut down the H1-B's entirely. Either way, I believe is difficult for Americans to compete. We can talk special privileges for "startups" but as long as it takes $500 on incorporate.com to create a company, the system will be abused.

ep103 12y ago
And yet the word h1-B doesn't even appear in the article, sigh.
- gregorias 12y ago
  Let me guess. You didn't even read the article and simply did ctrl+f h1-B, which didn't give you any results, because it's a typo.
  - ep103 12y ago
    I did read it, and I thought it doesn't even deserve to be called journalism. They only reference people currently going through the immigration process, and employers. What do you think their perspective is going to be? They even included a quote from an employer claiming that he hires 10 Americans for every immigrant, without any quantification, clarification or investigation, let alone analysis on whether or not that is common for technology firms (it isn't). For all we know, all 10 hired people don't make a combined salary of the single imported worker. They then left an unsourced quote as the very last line of the article claiming that the new measure would not in any way be related to wage suppression. When I worked for actual worker's rights, in another lifetime, whenever a PR firm hired out journalists to write a hit piece on our organization they would write articles of this quality. Selectively choosing interviewees to meet a predefined viewpoint, skipping over flashpoint words, presenting only one viewpoint without analysis, and then as a buried lead, dismiss potential opposition worries as far below the fold as possible.

bsder 12y ago

Sigh. Here we go again. Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ years. The H1-B quota empties out. Domestic tech folks aren't being undercut by Asian serfs. Companies get the tech workers they need. Of course, the tech companies don't want this. There is no tech worker shortage; there is a cheap tech worker shortage. Granting green cards would make tech workers more expensive.

anigbrowl 12y ago
Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ years. There is no INS; that government agency eventually became USCIS, part of the DHS. And this isn't a matter of changing things by administrative fiat; Congress would have to pass a law to this effect. The President's executive action last week leverages discretionary powers that are already written into the law (despite what political opponents claim about it being unconstitutional) but which apply only to specific fact patterns (which is why the action is limited to parents of US citizen/LPR children). Here's the legal explanation if you're interested, but it probably won't make any sense unless you're already familiar with title 8: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/attachments/2014/11/20/2014-11-19-auth-prioritize-removal.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/atta...
jessaustin 12y ago
The H1-B quota empties out. Is there a good reason to believe this would happen? It seems possible that the new green card holders would just find themselves in the same situation as native workers. How many hundreds of thousands of IT degrees are awarded every year in India?
- curiousDog 12y ago
  The outsourcing companies (Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant etc) would have to be banned from getting H1-Bs as well for this to happen. American companies usually hire Indians who are here for a Masters in CS degree and there aren't that many of them.

disposition2 12y ago

> "Mr. Srini said the American visa restrictions had also crimped his ability to hire talented engineers. Because the primary visas used to hire software workers, known as H-1B visas, run out in a few days when the lottery is opened every April, he really has one chance a year to hire foreigners. And if they don’t win the lottery, they have to wait another year, often forcing Zenefits to find someone else." I don't disagree with the article in regards to easing the ability for entrepreneurs to come to the States and open a business but it has been proven time and again that most of the "we lack talented engineers, we need more H1-B's" is in fact "we don't want to pay the going rate in the States, we need more H1-B's"

aristidb 12y ago
The going rate being $9000/mo for an intern?
- selmnoo 12y ago
  Some of them should be getting $20000/mo, since they're doing work that really full employees are expected to do. But that aside, you're totally misrepresenting the situation here - $9000/mo is not the pay for an average intern. Consider the controversy only a few months back about interns working for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg not getting paid at all.
djb_hackernews 12y ago
This part of the article really stuck out to me too. Are we supposed to feel bad for Zenefits here? If Zenefits is able to find someone else, then they didn't need the H1B to begin with... Not that it matters in the grand scheme, but I'm willing to write off Zenefits as a potential employer if this is the attitude of the founders.
- saalweachter 12y ago
  I think there is something weird going on. At least for tech, I think there's a mentality that our hiring pool isn't just "people who show up at our office with a resume" or even "people in the same country" but "the entire goddamn world". I don't know if this is good or bad, but I think it's definitely different from the way things used to be, and probably different from the way things still are in a lot of industries. So it seems reasonable to say that the current US immigration policies were not written with the whole-world hiring pool mentality in mind.

supercanuck 12y ago

>Right now, the law is so Kafkaesque that Mr. Srini, who is from India, had to get his American co-founder, Parker Conrad, to officially hire him as Zenefits’ database administrator simply to transfer his visa from his previous employer so they could create the company If it is so easy, imagine all the intelliteks, computeks, etc abusing this to suppress wages.

eyeareque 12y ago

H1B visas are an excuse to pay less for high tech workers IMO. That is what I've always seen as American workers aren't chosen for those jobs because they can make more money else where. Why isn't this more well known?

Dirlewanger 12y ago
Simple answer: because it's not politically correct to ask about it. Merely questioning anything anything benefiting immigrants and you're instantly labeled an ignorant xenophobic backwoods dweller. Who cares about finding jobs for Americans? Companies wants the cheapest and most expendable resources they can find. Zuckerberg doesn't give a shit about immigration reform, it just so happens that pushing for it aligns with reducing Facebook's human capital costs. Money rules all.
- pyre 12y ago
  It would benefit immigrants too if the immigration process were structured in a way that didn't relegate them to serfs to a single company.
- geebee 12y ago
  The US currently takes about 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year, and of course Facebook is more than welcome to hire these new citizens, just as it would hire any UC citizen regardless or immigration status or national origin. I'm not really surprised Facebook wants to change the composition of immigrants coming to the US. Except for some very narrow programs, immigrants to the US aren't really chosen based on skills and education. So Facebook would much rather support a program where they get to decide who does and does not get to live and work in the US, screening for the kind of worker they'd like to employ. There is also the appeal of an indentured worker, as many people have pointed out. You don't have to be especially cynical to think this is a huge selling point to the corporations that rely heavily on the H1B visa. What would Facebook rather have - a free citizen immigrant who wasn't selected for any particular interest or ability in programming, or an immigrant who is granted the right to live and work in the US provided he or she lives where Facebook says he or she should live? For me, my misgivings come from two main sources. First, I am solidly opposed to corporate control over the immigration system. I don't like the idea of Facebook's HR department deciding who will and who won't become a US citizen, green card holder, or resident. Second, while I certainly think programmers are valuable workers (some of them, anyway), I don't think that there's sufficient evidence of a shortage relative to other knowledge based fields. Out here in SF, software developers earn (at the median) a bit more than dental hygienists, a bit less than registered nurses. I'm not complaining about that, it's fine by me that nurses are paid better than programmers. I just think it suggests that there's really no critical shortage or programmers that the government needs to get involved in resolving by tinkering with the kind of immigrants who get to come to the US. I would be ok with a skilled immigration points system like Australia has, and sure, programming counts as a skill, though I wouldn't put any unusual emphasis on programming vs plumbing, nursing, dental hygiene, or any number of other jobs requiring specialized skills and training.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

I think we really need another SV but in a jurisdiction that makes sense. At least I do, neither a resident of USA nor wanting to be there. Unfortunately, while finance centers are aplenty, tech centers are much more sparse.

mahyarm 12y ago
These centers are developed by capital willing to invest in risky technology start ups. That is the first-step oxygen that is required to have a SV-style tech hub. You can import the talent in afterwards. I left Canada because it's mostly resource wealth that makes the money there. There isn't nearly as much capital available for software in Canada as SF. SF has more $30mm+ net worth families/individuals than all of Canada combined. And a 1/3rd of those Canadian families made money from resources.

etaty 12y ago

Why not just apply basic of economy to visa ? I mean every day you match X visas to the highest salaries! So salaries doesn't go down, and people can apply all year. And you check the salary is really paid.

ep103 12y ago

This is an important topic, and the NYTimes should be ashamed of this "journalism". The article is called Workers in Silicon Valley, but it only mentions quotes from Employers and people currently going through the immigration process. I wonder what their perspective is going to be?