

In Silicon Valley, Recruiting Clashes With Immigration Limits - jey
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/12immig.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

======
gamble
Considering how often Canada is mentioned in this article, they don't dwell on
why it was so much easier for the engineer and his wife to get into Canada. (A
fate worse than death, apparently.)

The key difference between our systems is that Canada issues residency visas,
not temporary work visas. Once you have your Canadian permanent residency visa
you can work for any employer. Immigrants aren't shackled to a sponsor, so
they don't have the same motivation as H1-Bs to accept below-market wages and
working conditions.

In addition, the Canadian system is biased in favor of skilled workers. The
vast majority of American immigrants are unskilled laborers allowed in through
the 'family reunification' program. Canada does have a similar program, but
the majority of our immigrants are skilled. There is even a fast-track
classification for US H1-B holders.

The problem with the immigration debate in the US is that it's fundamentally
dishonest. Employers lionize immigrants, but the last thing they want is a
system that treats them fairly.

~~~
chancho
"In addition, the Canadian system is biased in favor of skilled workers. The
vast majority of American immigrants are unskilled laborers allowed in through
the 'family reunification' program. Canada does have a similar program, but
the majority of our immigrants are skilled."

Care to speculate on the reason for this discrepancy, given that the US and
Canada have similar family reunification programs? I mean, you say that most
of the US's unskilled immigrants come through the family reunification
program, but then go on to say that Canada has a similar program so I don't
see how that explains the difference.

~~~
gamble
Canada doesn't have a quota system like the US, but priority is given to
skilled immigrants and their immediate relatives. A skilled immigrant can get
a permanent residency visa in 1-3 years, whereas a grandparent might need 5-10
years. In the US, the quota system is disproportionately biased in favor of
relatives - something like 70% of all immigrants. The only path for skilled
immigrants is H1-B, which has an annual cap of 65,000 visas.

For example, Canada issued about 250,000 PR visas last year. 150,000 went to
skilled workers and entrepreneurs, whereas only 65,000 went to family members.
(Of which, 44,000 were spouses)

The statistics are here if you're curious:
[http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2008/...](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2008/permanent/01.asp)

------
scott_s
_To Mr. Berry, 50 — who lives in Sacramento, where he was born — it is
unfathomable that Google, which receives one million résumés a year, cannot
find enough qualified Americans._

Drawing on my own personal experience, this is flawed reasoning. His argument
might hold for rank-n-file programming jobs, but the Indian native profiled in
the article does not fill a rank-n-file job. The second-best candidate for his
job is likely an order of magnitude less qualified.

I'm in a CS department at a large state university. I've done an internship in
the research division of a large company that depends on innovation to
survive. Most of my colleagues are foreign-born. In the case of the company,
if those colleagues weren't employed, _the work wouldn't get done_. These
people have unique skills and expertise - that was, not coincidentally, honed
at American universities. Filling their positions with the closest qualified
American you can find wouldn't result in a slight delay. The project they're
on would collapse.

~~~
geebee
I agree with you in the short term. But I think that the long term absence of
employable Americans may be caused, in part, by the programs that make it easy
to hire foreign nationals instead of Americans in engineering and science.

There are a lot of really smart Americans working in law, finance, medicine,
and so forth. Do you think these folks are too dumb to work in software? Or
are they just rationally responding to a market glut, driven in part by the
presence of the H1B program?

I think our policy has driven young Americans out of engineering. To just
consider the few Americans who did get these degrees is shortsighted. You have
to consider the eighth graders, high school students, and first year college
students who have been deterred from entering the field. Because we controlled
the wages of engineers with a visa program, but not finance or legal
professionals, we deterred our own from going into these fields (creating a
more severe shortage, necessitating more visas, creating an even worse
shortage, until we had finally reached the point where Americans were no
longer even remotely interested in this field).

Basically, America "foreignized" engineering to the point where we no longer
have a home grown, self sustaining engineering profession. This has left us
extremely vulnerable - even if we _do_ offer the visas, there's no guarantee
we can staff these jobs in the US anymore.

By the way, I do think that a robust home-grown engineering field would be
enhanced by the presence of many foreign born practitioners. But I think we
pushed it to the point where actively undermined the careers of young
Americans in engineering, and the next wave of students voted with their feet.

Yes, allow in talented engineers. No, don't leave the level so high that
Americans are deterred. A bit of a shortage that causes wage growth and
stimulates interest would be a good thing.

Just remember: once bitten, twice shy.

~~~
nostrademons
I went to a liberal arts college where 50% of students _never_ take a math or
hard science course. Many of them are lawyers or financiers (well, ex-
financiers ;-)) now.

I don't think this is at all a rational response to economic incentives. There
was just a thread among a bunch of young lawyers in the alumni network, giving
advice to another alum who was thinking of going to law school. They seem
significantly less satisfied with their jobs as lawyers than I do with mine as
an engineer. They don't make appreciably more money either. Many of them would
_love_ to do engineering - if it didn't involve math. If you ask them why they
didn't learn more math in high school & college then, almost all will say that
at some point, they fell of the train and just "didn't get" math.

I think the problem is more that good engineers are _too_ successful. They
have every incentive to remain an engineer and zero incentive to train the
next generation. This has gone on for about two generations, which means that
the pipeline of home-grown American talent is just about dry.

I would kinda like to teach. I come from a family with three generations of
teachers on my mother's side. I like working with kids. But there is no
possible way that I could rationalize giving up a six-figure Google job where
I can get in to work at 11:00, the feed me, I get cool data to play with, and
everyone sees my work, for a $30k/year teaching job where I work from 8:00 AM
to 4:30 PM, have homework, and deal with parents who threaten to sue me.

I think a major difference between Asian cultures and here is that teaching is
a high-status profession in Asia. Here, the assumption is that people become
teachers because they can't get hired anywhere else, and they're paid
accordingly. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as everyone who _can_
get hired elsewhere chooses to work elsewhere, and the only math/science
teachers you get are the ones that can't hack it in industry or academia (& a
couple saints that just don't want to work there, for any amount of money).

~~~
geebee
We'll see if the collapse of the financial industry encourages more young
Americans into engineering.

That said, I actually went to law school (Columbia) for one semester before
dropping out and enrolling in a PhD program in engineering (at Berkeley). The
law school is, of course, about 95% American, whereas in the Engineering
school, I became very accustomed to being the only person in the room who
spoke English as a first language.

I think it's great that Engineering is a profession where you are likely to
work alongside people from all over the world. But I think it's bad that it's
become(ing?) a profession where you're unusual if you're a native Californian
in graduate programs with names like "The University of California".

I'll say this - in spite of all the hand-wringing, I don't see even the
slightest commitment from Berkeley to bringing in more Americans. And as long
as they can wave the magic wand and get more students from overseas, neither
they or the employers who want to keep this pipeline will ever bother finding
ways to get more Americans into the field.

As for law: yeah, they may be unhappy, but I earned 75K/year my first year out
of Berkeley at Sun Micro. Kids from the law school were starting at
$125-150K/yr.

I actually disagree that the Americans you mentioned can't learn math. I
didn't take my first calculus class until I was 24 years old, and I got A's
all the way through. The incentives just aren't there _relative to other
fields_. And as long as we import hundreds of thousands of H1B workers ever
decade, it won't be.

Now, we're getting a good sense of what happens when you destroy a homegrown
profession and replace it with foreign nationals.

~~~
nostrademons
"Kids from the law school were starting at $125-150K/yr."

That's only for people coming out of top law schools and going into top
corporate law firms. The engineering analogue would be a Stanford or MIT grad
who works for Google for 3 years and then joins a well-funded startup.
Considering that it's not unusual for people with 3 years experience at Google
to pull in $130-140k including bonus, and someone else on-thread was saying
that he knows lots of firms that'll gladly pay $150K+ for top engineering
talent, and I don't think $125-150K is unreasonable for a top engineer.

The majority of law students - the ones that don't go to a big-name law school
- often end up setting up a private practice or working for a boutique firm
for much, much lower salaries. Small-town divorce attorneys often make only
about $50K/year, according to some of the alums on that thread, and it sounded
like lawyers at "boutique", non-big-name law firms pulled in about $80-90K.

~~~
menloparkbum
Are UCLA, Boston College and University of Minnesota top law schools?

Because I have family and friends who went to those schools and they made
$120K starting salaries. I also have a cousin who went to probably the worst
law school in the country and she made 80K straight out of school.

~~~
nostrademons
Interesting. I wouldn't have thought so. I could be misinformed.

------
makecheck
What bothers me about the immigration caps is that they appear to be
completely _arbitrary_ , as opposed to being in tune with the industries they
"serve" or based on some up-to-date metrics. At the very least, they are not
rechecked frequently enough.

Is it really good for the economy when a company is unable to hire 10 people,
because of a "cap" that sounds like it was pulled out of a congressman's left
ear? They market these restrictions as trying to "save U.S. jobs", but
ironically the caps will kill U.S. jobs when whole companies fail to remain
competitive.

~~~
lutorm
They are indeed arbitrary. Moreover, there is no ranking of the applications;
Apart from requiring they meet the minimum requirements they are just
processed in the order received.

Since the minimum requirement for an H1B is just a bachelor's degree, it seems
hard to motivate that all those are essential. It seems the process could be
improved by either ranking the applications by merit or instead of a quota
establishing a higher minimum standard such that those accepted are really
outstanding. Another alternative would be to simply uncap the category for
those with US advanced degrees -- that cap truly makes no sense. (I should
disclose that I'm biased here -- I was denied an H1B last year because of the
quota.)

That said, none of that would help the person in the article. The simple
change of letting H1B dependents work would fix that.

~~~
furburger
_there is no ranking of the applications; Apart from requiring they meet the
minimum requirements they are just processed in the order received_

okay, all H1-B holders who want their applications held up for a year while a
reasonable basis for comparison is accumulated, raise their hands

~~~
potatolicious
Canadian immigration does do ranking in a fairly efficient way: applicants
must support documentation on a wide array of subjects, such as educational
background, linguistic capability, etc. This is backed up by verification
during the (later) interview process.

The idea is that each applicant is scored based on things such as
English/French fluency (bonus points for both), educational background, field
of expertise, etc.

You don't need to carefully pore over every case to do _some_ reasonable level
of ranking.

------
wallflower
I work with many Indian co-workers, each in various statuses of their
citizenship process from H1-B/green card/naturalized. I can honestly say that,
as someone born in the U.S., I don't truly appreciate what it means to hold
U.S. Citizenship, even after seeing the paperwork/"identured-servitude" to
sponsoring company stuff I've seen. In America, the freedom to quit your job
and find a new one, does not necessarily translate to those of H1-B status.

~~~
makecheck
Those on visa:

\- Typically do not quit their jobs (and fear losing them), because their next
employer must be found quickly _and_ be willing to sponsor their stay. If they
cannot find such an employer, they must leave the country.

\- Run a (small) risk _every single time they travel_ that they will not be
allowed back into the country, to some extent at the discretion of a border
guard.

\- Must jump through hoops just to have family members present, and there have
been cases where stupid things happen (like wife is allowed in, but one of two
children is not; or, the family members are granted entry at completely
different times that may be months apart).

\- Are charged huge fees for government forms and by the lawyers who are often
necessary to prepare forms (costs which might be covered by their company, if
they're lucky).

\- Can wait years...and years...and years...for a green card, for no apparent
reason. The government can be silent for many months, and only periodically
ask for more information when the application reaches the next stage. Oh, and
the information prepared in advance for each stage, such as a medical exam,
can expire if they don't reach it soon enough.

Most of these steps, in my opinion, are not really "helping", they are just
adding bureaucracy and causing unnecessary frustration for human beings who
are trying to live their lives.

~~~
potatolicious
Your second point is the most salient for me - I've worked in the US on a J-1
visa and will be returning soon on a TN... going home to see my folks is a
concept that scares the bejeesus out of me.

Something most Americans don't fully appreciate is just how bad their border
situation is - power-tripping customs officers who will turn a non-citizen
around for no reason at all. Unreasonable searches, rudeness, and downright
being an asshole.

I cannot recall a single instance of crossing the US border where the customs
officer was courteous. When I crossed via Vancouver airport, there was an
elderly gentleman who had trouble walking, and was shuffling slowly up to the
counter when called. The officer in charge berated him as he walked to the
counter, and insulted his inability to walk.

This is what we, non-Americans, deal with when we visit your country. FIX
THIS.

~~~
furburger
border guards are one step up from prison guards. just hold your nose, blow
some sunshine up their asses, and move on.

~~~
potatolicious
That's what you have to do in America - that's not what you have to do in any
other country. My coworkers in the US have remarked on this also - they visit
Canada often and have never been given shit by a border guard; even when
hassled, Canadian border guards are always polite.

Consider that for many people this will be their first interaction with an
American at the beginning of their trip, it should be a higher priority that
these people behave themselves.

~~~
menloparkbum
You get shit all the time from Canadian border guards if you're under 25 and
driving across the border.

------
varun
This is a great article. And thanks to jey for posting this. On a side note,
reading it I found out that Sanjay is based in Toronto currently, which is
where I am, so I just reached out to him and would be chatting with him a bit
more about startups, immigration, etc soon. Small world, and thanks HN! :)

------
mahmud
Stories like these are often a pretext for pushing laws that flood the U.S.
market with cheap foreign labor. If you're hurting for a niche expertise and
can't "find" someone here, fine, open an office in wherever you think the
grass is greener talent-wise. Google can afford that, right?

I think I have a better use for my startup capital than an immigration lawyer;
plenty of good people here, I mean, after all, they only built the greatest
economy in the world.

If any American wants to down-vote me for this, just go ahead and try to get a
_job_ overseas. Your ass will be chewed by local taxes, foreigner taxes and
nationalist laws. And I say this as a _recent_ U.S. national; I came here with
just a carry-on bag and $50 when I was 16.

~~~
potatolicious
"If any American wants to down-vote me for this, just go ahead and try to get
a _job_ overseas."

The failings of other, less-wise countries is not an excuse to fail along with
them. They are xenophobic and protectionist, and turn away talent that can
increase their nation's competitiveness... the US should not make that same
mistake.

And keep in mind that a disproportionate number of big players who "built the
greatest economy in the world" are themselves immigrants. Your argument that
home-grown talent alone will suffice holds no water - historically the US has
always relied on heavy talent import, and there is nothing wrong with this.

------
pj
There are lots of great programmers in the United States, they just want to be
paid more than immigrants, so the companies lobby congress to allow them to
import more cheap softare factories.

It's the same at every level of society.

~~~
jamiequint
This is pretty much true at _any_ level of supply (increase supply and the
price will drop). You could just as easily argue that if more students study
engineering its hurts those currently in the industry, that alone is not a
reason to be against it.

From talking to my other friends with startups in the Bay Area it is apparent
that there are not enough good engineers here. I had a conversation last
weekend with one of my friends who always struggles to find good Ruby
engineers, even at above market prices, and using every recruitment method
available.

As the founder of a company originally started to help companies hire
technical talent I've seen this firsthand. Everyone is frustrated with
recruiters piping them lots of unqualified resumes, Dice, Monster, and
Craigslist also provide high volume, but often low quality. Even the niche
boards are underperforming.

If there are really "lots of great programmers" in the US where are they? I
know a lot of companies around here who would _gladly_ pay $150k+ for a truly
"great" programmer, if they could only find them.

Maybe part of the problem is the vast difference between "decent" and "great"
in terms of on-the-job performance and the unwillingness of many companies
around here to settle for less.

~~~
owkaye
"I had a conversation last weekend with one of my friends who always struggles
to find good Ruby engineers ..."

Well then, doesn't it see that perhaps he is creating his own limitation by
focusing on Ruby?

Just because a particular language may have too few experts in the USA does
not mean there's a shortage of qualified programmers in other languages! I'm
an exceptional programmer in the language I know best, but it is not Ruby.
Your friend would not consider hiring me because of this too I'll bet -- yet I
could probably build his site twice as fast as the best Ruby programmer.

You live with the limitations you impose upon yourself.

~~~
potatolicious
Wait wait wait. You expect your employers to tailor their required skill set
for you, instead of following market trends and acquiring new, relevant skills
for yourself?

I really have a hard time telling if you're trolling or serious.

~~~
ShardPhoenix
It seems to me that businesses need to adapt to the nature of the labor market
as much as vice-versa. Complaining about the lack of X programmers isn't going
to generate any.

~~~
jamiequint
Perhaps, but that is a decision that has to be made with foresight, because
even though it may be hard to find a developer in X language, its probably a
lot more work (and cost) to migrate an established product from one language
to another.

