9 ms·

Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots. Decide on some number of business/talent based visas to be issued each yea

Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots. Decide on some number of business/talent based visas to be issued each year. Then do a rolling auction of the visas. If a person gets a visa, comes to America, but then does not like their job and goes home, the company gets a prorated refund. If the person stays more than five years, they get a green card automatically and are free to work wherever they please or start their own company. If a Facebook or YC want the talent, they can bid up the price and pay for the talent. The government doesn't have to worry about in which professions there is a "scarcity" or a talent shortage. If there is a real shortage of valued workers, businesses will bid for visas for those types of workers. It will work itself out. But this system will prevent the body shops from racing to the bottom by using H1-B's as disposable indentured servants.

hackerboos 12y ago
>Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots Sounds like a great way to skew immigration in favour of big business and completely screw over start ups and SMBs.
- tmorton 12y ago
  Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone.
  - teacup50 12y ago
    Pricing an artificially scarce resource does.
    - UK-AL 12y ago
      Its going to be a scare resource regardless of bidding. At least bidding will allocate to some correlation to real need since people pay more for critical skills.
  - forrestthewoods 12y ago
    Sure it does. At least when that scarce resource is artificially constrained. Now that doesn't mean it shouldn't have restraints. But it does mean there are winners and losers and it is perfectly fair and reasonable to call them out. (Edit: Who the hell is downvoting the artificial scarcity comments? That's absurd. Care to have an actual discussion?)
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      It's not artificial scarcity. The US doesn't have an unlimited capacity for immigration. We can argue around the edges of what the correct number is, but whatever number we pick, there are still going to be more people than that who want to be US citizens and we still need to choose between them somehow.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Of course it does Tata can rake the auction price up because even though their worker doesn't have a great salary, they're being billed a lot. 10k, 20k for a H1B? NO PROBLEM! You're just shutting the small players out. As an example, Red Hat hires a lot of H1Bs, now, since they know how to work remotely this is not such a big issue, still.
  - cousin_it 12y ago
    > Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone. Citation needed! For reference, here's a toy model where pricing a scarce resource screws someone over: - There are two people in the model, Alice and Bob. - Alice is very rich, Bob is very poor. - Each of them needs a loaf of bread per day to survive (100 utility), and would also enjoy eating a second loaf (1 utility). - Initially, each of them gets a loaf from the government for free. There are only two loaves available per day. - Now let's price the scarce resource, and have the government sell the loaves instead! Alice buys both loaves and enjoys life. Bob doesn't get anything and dies. Right?
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      Not being able to afford the market price of a resource is not "getting screwed" and you're just being inflammatory by making it a matter of life and death. H1B visas are not a matter of life and death; we're talking about people who want to make more money, not people seeking political asylum. Suppose we make your exact scenario about a rare/endangered species of caviar. Bob can still buy bread for one credit but you're arguing that the government should ensure the equitable distribution of caviar because the market price isn't fair to Bob who can't afford it. Bob is not getting screwed, Bob just can't afford caviar.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - LLWM 12y ago
      Pricing didn't screw Bob, being poor did.
ethbro 12y ago
Seems fair enough. However, this would also mean that startups would likely find it impossible to earn H1-B's in competitive fields, as a fair amount of the compensation is future-loaded. Or, to put it another way: who's going to win a bidding war for Employee X, Microsoft or {Startup Working to Become Microsoft}?
- blfr 12y ago
  Smaller companies benefit later, after the initial five years, when an employee brought in by Microsoft is free to join a startup. And also indirectly due to generally increased supply.
  - ethbro 12y ago
    Personally, if I were Microsoft, I'd kill for the opportunity to limit foreign startup talent hires to a five year perked timetable. Over time, yes, engineers are engineers, and those perking will be a continuous opportunity for startups to hire. However, it doesn't help at all if you want to hire the world's top talent in {insert new technology that didn't exist 2 years ago}. And isn't that ideally what this is about?
- trurl 12y ago
  Maybe there is something I'm missing due to having little knowledge about all the legal subtitles. It seems like startups could come out ahead by realizing that in the modern world, there is no reason for a talented developer to be on-site 365 days of the year. They could save money by not getting on getting an H1B by having the developer work remotely and only need to obtain more limited visas for occasional on-site visits?
  - pm90 12y ago
    Im afraid that is a different debate on remote v/s local. There are both advantages and disadvantages to either. In this specific case, it is quite clear they really wanted their team to be together (i.e. on site) and went to extraordinary length to do that. BTW there are few visa's (if any) for "limited" or occasional visits to the US.
bradleybuda 12y ago
The unstated premise behind your comment, and indeed this entire debate, is that there is only so much "room" for immigration in the US. This leads us to arguments about how large the quota should be, how it should be divided, etc. This is a flawed assumption. The US has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration, and on average every single immigrant we accept would increase the size of our economy. Immigrants are not a "drain on the system" that must be limited. Human brains are the single most valuable resource in the universe, and we should take as many as we can. Not only that, but the people who self-select to move their families across the world are the most motivated, entrepreneurial, and risk-seeking brains in the world. Our default assumption should be that the walls are down and the gates are open; only in extraordinary cases should we be sending anyone (regardless of skills) away at the border.
- bokonist 12y ago
  Yes, that is the premise. In my comment, I take the assumption of restricted immigration as a given, and then propose how the quota can be most sensibly allocated. There is a completely separate debate over how high or low that quota should be, or if there should be a quota at all. But that would deserve its own long thread.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- davidw 12y ago
  Yes, see: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.it/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.it/2014/06/the-optimal-number-... But this is all politics, and as such it should probably be flagged.
- sigzero 12y ago
  "Our default assumption should be that the walls are down and the gates are open" Yeah, bull. Not even.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The U.S. has a fixed capacity to absorb immigrants while integrating them into our culture. In many places in the country, immigration is already too much, resulting in insular immigrant communities and tensions between immigrants and everyone else. Those are bad things. The unstated assumption underlying the assertion that "the U.S. has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration" is that culture, and institutions arising out of that culture, doesn't matter. That's false. Culture and institutions are what make the U.S. worth immigrating to in the first place. And I say this as an immigrant. My parents didn't leave their lives half a world away to come here for the weather.
mavelikara 12y ago
Along similar lines, the cost of sponsoring H-1Bs should grow exponentially with the fraction of the company's workforce that is on H-1B, beyond a small threshold.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  I like this idea. It allows for the super-talented to succeed across international lines while preventing cost-cutting at the expense of the locals.
  - bdamm 12y ago
    It is an interesting idea for changing how H1Bs are limited, although it doesn't take much thinking to come up with some ways to game such a system. It would get complex, and fast.
- lttlrck 12y ago
  That would unfairly target small specialist businesses unless you also take into account the revenue/workforce size. When I came to the US on H1B I made up 25% of the company, at the time the cost was already significant enough to prevent any "abuse".
- pyrophane 12y ago
  I'm imagining large companies spawning multiple smaller entities to game the system and get around this.
deskamess 12y ago
I would prefer a system where the candidate can leave the job immediately, or worst case, after 3-6 months of arriving in the US. The company that does the sponsoring should not have the power to hold on to the employee. If the candidate can stay employed in his/her field and average[1] the salary filled on the non immigrant application sheet for 4 out of the 5 year period, then, regardless of company, the green card should be reachable. It is certainly a risk for the sponsoring company but that is known ahead of time and not unlike the risk of hiring a local candidate. There certainly should be no compensation for losing an employee (local or via H1). Employee mobility should not be different just because of your visa status. Summary: Open work permits that segue into GC's are my preferred approach. [1] Verified via IRS filings. The applicant gives permission to DHS to check the IRS filings.
- gorbachev 12y ago
  Once you're on an H1-B visa, transferring it to another company is quite a bit easier, and NOT subject to the quotas. It's completely doable. The only downside is that processing the visa transfer takes time. Nowhere near the amount of time it takes to get a new visa, of course, but it's still longer than a two week notice.
  - geebee 12y ago
    You are also very limited in the kind of jobs you can take. I think that part of the appeal of the H1B is that it creates a pool of programmers who are only allowed to be programmers. Keep in mind, the biggest competition for programmers may come from outside the field. In my opinion, being a programmer is actually very difficult. Even the much derided "crud" apps require a substantial amount of reading of dense material, tremendous persistence in the face of strange and obscure bugs and errors, the ability to communicate with (and negotiate with) non-technical stakeholders under deadline pressure… really, people who can do this are able to take jobs that often pay better with more stability in other fields, provided that they are free to do so. For instance, registered nurses and dental hygienists in the bay area earn a bit more and a bit less than application developers, respectively. Under the H1B terms, it would be difficult for a programmer to become a physician, lawyer, nurse, dental hygienist, mortgage broker, or many other jobs. As a result a salary and prospects gap can emerge between programming and these fields - increasing the probability that those people with freedom and choice will avoid programming (and ensuring that the "shortage" continues decade after decade). Truth is, visa programs that are designed to target specific jobs or industries by allowing workers only to work for a specific employer or in a specific field are likely to end up badly distorting labor markets.
nojvek 12y ago
Why do people assume the H1-B's are always cheap. MS pays their H1B's incredibly well. Yes its true H1B makes the employee loyal to the company for a long time until greencard. Working crazy long hours are the very norm. But on the other side every good dev I know from my uni in Aus is sucked up by MS, GOOG or FB. They had offers before they even graduated. The most they could get in Aus was 50-80k AUD. In US 120k+ is easy. From the Australian side they legitimately have a talent issue as talent gets sucked to US. From the US side, I see a huge income gap. Tech pays so well the guys are buying big cars and being lavish with their inflated egos. The average american is still on 50k. They can't keep up with the rent rises. Careful what you wish for. I wish other parts of the world could achieve the size of tech the US west coast has.

hackerboos 12y ago

>Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots Sounds like a great way to skew immigration in favour of big business and completely screw over start ups and SMBs.

tmorton 12y ago
Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone.
- teacup50 12y ago
  Pricing an artificially scarce resource does.
  - UK-AL 12y ago
    Its going to be a scare resource regardless of bidding. At least bidding will allocate to some correlation to real need since people pay more for critical skills.
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  Sure it does. At least when that scarce resource is artificially constrained. Now that doesn't mean it shouldn't have restraints. But it does mean there are winners and losers and it is perfectly fair and reasonable to call them out. (Edit: Who the hell is downvoting the artificial scarcity comments? That's absurd. Care to have an actual discussion?)
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    It's not artificial scarcity. The US doesn't have an unlimited capacity for immigration. We can argue around the edges of what the correct number is, but whatever number we pick, there are still going to be more people than that who want to be US citizens and we still need to choose between them somehow.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  Of course it does Tata can rake the auction price up because even though their worker doesn't have a great salary, they're being billed a lot. 10k, 20k for a H1B? NO PROBLEM! You're just shutting the small players out. As an example, Red Hat hires a lot of H1Bs, now, since they know how to work remotely this is not such a big issue, still.
- cousin_it 12y ago
  > Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone. Citation needed! For reference, here's a toy model where pricing a scarce resource screws someone over: - There are two people in the model, Alice and Bob. - Alice is very rich, Bob is very poor. - Each of them needs a loaf of bread per day to survive (100 utility), and would also enjoy eating a second loaf (1 utility). - Initially, each of them gets a loaf from the government for free. There are only two loaves available per day. - Now let's price the scarce resource, and have the government sell the loaves instead! Alice buys both loaves and enjoys life. Bob doesn't get anything and dies. Right?
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    Not being able to afford the market price of a resource is not "getting screwed" and you're just being inflammatory by making it a matter of life and death. H1B visas are not a matter of life and death; we're talking about people who want to make more money, not people seeking political asylum. Suppose we make your exact scenario about a rare/endangered species of caviar. Bob can still buy bread for one credit but you're arguing that the government should ensure the equitable distribution of caviar because the market price isn't fair to Bob who can't afford it. Bob is not getting screwed, Bob just can't afford caviar.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - LLWM 12y ago
    Pricing didn't screw Bob, being poor did.

ethbro 12y ago

Seems fair enough. However, this would also mean that startups would likely find it impossible to earn H1-B's in competitive fields, as a fair amount of the compensation is future-loaded. Or, to put it another way: who's going to win a bidding war for Employee X, Microsoft or {Startup Working to Become Microsoft}?

blfr 12y ago
Smaller companies benefit later, after the initial five years, when an employee brought in by Microsoft is free to join a startup. And also indirectly due to generally increased supply.
- ethbro 12y ago
  Personally, if I were Microsoft, I'd kill for the opportunity to limit foreign startup talent hires to a five year perked timetable. Over time, yes, engineers are engineers, and those perking will be a continuous opportunity for startups to hire. However, it doesn't help at all if you want to hire the world's top talent in {insert new technology that didn't exist 2 years ago}. And isn't that ideally what this is about?
trurl 12y ago
Maybe there is something I'm missing due to having little knowledge about all the legal subtitles. It seems like startups could come out ahead by realizing that in the modern world, there is no reason for a talented developer to be on-site 365 days of the year. They could save money by not getting on getting an H1B by having the developer work remotely and only need to obtain more limited visas for occasional on-site visits?
- pm90 12y ago
  Im afraid that is a different debate on remote v/s local. There are both advantages and disadvantages to either. In this specific case, it is quite clear they really wanted their team to be together (i.e. on site) and went to extraordinary length to do that. BTW there are few visa's (if any) for "limited" or occasional visits to the US.

bradleybuda 12y ago

The unstated premise behind your comment, and indeed this entire debate, is that there is only so much "room" for immigration in the US. This leads us to arguments about how large the quota should be, how it should be divided, etc. This is a flawed assumption. The US has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration, and on average every single immigrant we accept would increase the size of our economy. Immigrants are not a "drain on the system" that must be limited. Human brains are the single most valuable resource in the universe, and we should take as many as we can. Not only that, but the people who self-select to move their families across the world are the most motivated, entrepreneurial, and risk-seeking brains in the world. Our default assumption should be that the walls are down and the gates are open; only in extraordinary cases should we be sending anyone (regardless of skills) away at the border.

bokonist 12y ago
Yes, that is the premise. In my comment, I take the assumption of restricted immigration as a given, and then propose how the quota can be most sensibly allocated. There is a completely separate debate over how high or low that quota should be, or if there should be a quota at all. But that would deserve its own long thread.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
davidw 12y ago
Yes, see: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.it/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.it/2014/06/the-optimal-number-... But this is all politics, and as such it should probably be flagged.
sigzero 12y ago
"Our default assumption should be that the walls are down and the gates are open" Yeah, bull. Not even.
rayiner 12y ago
The U.S. has a fixed capacity to absorb immigrants while integrating them into our culture. In many places in the country, immigration is already too much, resulting in insular immigrant communities and tensions between immigrants and everyone else. Those are bad things. The unstated assumption underlying the assertion that "the U.S. has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration" is that culture, and institutions arising out of that culture, doesn't matter. That's false. Culture and institutions are what make the U.S. worth immigrating to in the first place. And I say this as an immigrant. My parents didn't leave their lives half a world away to come here for the weather.

mavelikara 12y ago

Along similar lines, the cost of sponsoring H-1Bs should grow exponentially with the fraction of the company's workforce that is on H-1B, beyond a small threshold.

cryoshon 12y ago
I like this idea. It allows for the super-talented to succeed across international lines while preventing cost-cutting at the expense of the locals.
- bdamm 12y ago
  It is an interesting idea for changing how H1Bs are limited, although it doesn't take much thinking to come up with some ways to game such a system. It would get complex, and fast.
lttlrck 12y ago
That would unfairly target small specialist businesses unless you also take into account the revenue/workforce size. When I came to the US on H1B I made up 25% of the company, at the time the cost was already significant enough to prevent any "abuse".
pyrophane 12y ago
I'm imagining large companies spawning multiple smaller entities to game the system and get around this.

deskamess 12y ago

I would prefer a system where the candidate can leave the job immediately, or worst case, after 3-6 months of arriving in the US. The company that does the sponsoring should not have the power to hold on to the employee. If the candidate can stay employed in his/her field and average[1] the salary filled on the non immigrant application sheet for 4 out of the 5 year period, then, regardless of company, the green card should be reachable. It is certainly a risk for the sponsoring company but that is known ahead of time and not unlike the risk of hiring a local candidate. There certainly should be no compensation for losing an employee (local or via H1). Employee mobility should not be different just because of your visa status. Summary: Open work permits that segue into GC's are my preferred approach. [1] Verified via IRS filings. The applicant gives permission to DHS to check the IRS filings.

gorbachev 12y ago
Once you're on an H1-B visa, transferring it to another company is quite a bit easier, and NOT subject to the quotas. It's completely doable. The only downside is that processing the visa transfer takes time. Nowhere near the amount of time it takes to get a new visa, of course, but it's still longer than a two week notice.
- geebee 12y ago
  You are also very limited in the kind of jobs you can take. I think that part of the appeal of the H1B is that it creates a pool of programmers who are only allowed to be programmers. Keep in mind, the biggest competition for programmers may come from outside the field. In my opinion, being a programmer is actually very difficult. Even the much derided "crud" apps require a substantial amount of reading of dense material, tremendous persistence in the face of strange and obscure bugs and errors, the ability to communicate with (and negotiate with) non-technical stakeholders under deadline pressure… really, people who can do this are able to take jobs that often pay better with more stability in other fields, provided that they are free to do so. For instance, registered nurses and dental hygienists in the bay area earn a bit more and a bit less than application developers, respectively. Under the H1B terms, it would be difficult for a programmer to become a physician, lawyer, nurse, dental hygienist, mortgage broker, or many other jobs. As a result a salary and prospects gap can emerge between programming and these fields - increasing the probability that those people with freedom and choice will avoid programming (and ensuring that the "shortage" continues decade after decade). Truth is, visa programs that are designed to target specific jobs or industries by allowing workers only to work for a specific employer or in a specific field are likely to end up badly distorting labor markets.

nojvek 12y ago

Why do people assume the H1-B's are always cheap. MS pays their H1B's incredibly well. Yes its true H1B makes the employee loyal to the company for a long time until greencard. Working crazy long hours are the very norm. But on the other side every good dev I know from my uni in Aus is sucked up by MS, GOOG or FB. They had offers before they even graduated. The most they could get in Aus was 50-80k AUD. In US 120k+ is easy. From the Australian side they legitimately have a talent issue as talent gets sucked to US. From the US side, I see a huge income gap. Tech pays so well the guys are buying big cars and being lavish with their inflated egos. The average american is still on 50k. They can't keep up with the rent rises. Careful what you wish for. I wish other parts of the world could achieve the size of tech the US west coast has.