
Silicon Valley frets over foreign worker crackdown - chirau
https://www.ft.com/content/b42f40c2-a6df-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1
======
mc32
Does SV really rely on undocumented workers for their skilled labor force? As
far as I can tell Trump wants to thwart illegal immigration but wants to make
hiring skilled foreign workers easier -i.e., if it's apparent we have a skills
deficit, the administration would increase quotas to accommodate the demand.
Examining demand/need and adjusting accordingly and cracking down on abuse of
the system, if it does occur, would seem reasonable.

Of course, that remains to be seen but, at the same time, I don't believe the
intention is to cut off all immigration, only illegal unregulated immigration,
the way most advanced economies do.

~~~
pgeorgi
There's one issue in Trump's current ideas: That he wants to "punish"
countries that don't take back illegal immigrants by limiting visa access to
their citizens.

So if the Trump administration at some point considers Liechtenstein to be not
in compliance with Trump's ideas of handling illegal immigrants, fully
compliant H1-Bs from Liechtenstein might get in trouble the next time they
need to renew their paperwork.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Is that really an issue? Why would Liechtenstein refuse to take back one of
their citizens?

~~~
grzm
I believe Liechtenstein was chosen for rhetorical purposes.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Yes, fill in whatever country name you want. Most H-1Bs go to India, so use
that as an example. Why wouldn't India take back deported citizens?

~~~
DrScump
I'd say that _most_ countries would be happy to not have to take back their
nationals that have committed violent felonies.

For a specific example, Vietnam refuses to take back their nationals who
entered after 12 July 1995. We recently had a case regarding Viet national in
the US illegally who, upon serving that sentence, was released among the US
public because he had originally entered the US illegally before that 1995
date, and Vietnam refused to allow him back in.

He went on to commit another homicide this year.

------
xherberta
Here's the full Kenneth Galbraith reference:

 _He ridiculed the Reaganite trickle-down theory of wealth distribution,
preferring the earthier phrase "the horse-and-sparrow theory" \- "If you feed
the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."_

From this interesting (long) overview of Galbraith's life and work:
[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialscie...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialsciences.highereducation)

------
bane
Here's a disruptive idea for SV, open field offices in tech hubs that are all
over the country, pay lower salary, get the same employees you would have
moved out to SV anyway.

(I know more than one person who works in SF/SV and works literally in the
same department as half a dozen other people from their home cities, all moved
out to SF and given enormous pay differentials to live there).

------
supercanuck
Silicon Valley companies are s small percentage of the H1-B pool.

Focusing on the 10-15% of H1B's is not doing this issue justice, in my
opinion. Wipro, Cognizant, Infosys and TCS are not Silicon Valley startups.

~~~
hga
Case in point, his stated policy is the "Intel yes, Infosys no" one.

However, how much do Silicon Valley startups eventually hire from the Infosys
etc. pool of H1-Bs?

Old line Silicon Valley companies like HP are notorious for doing this,
although as I recall they've been cluefull enough to avoid the "train your own
replacement" PR debacles that are most recently driving this, those are in
companies where "IT" is a cost center, like that California electrical company
and Disney.

------
skookum
Oh look, yet another article talking about how our leading tech companies (aka
"Silicon Valley") can't hire fast enough with an infographic clearly showing
that the "highly skilled guest worker" visas are predominantly going to IT
body shops (aka "not Silicon Valley"), the "H1-Bs on average make less" mostly
being due to the same body shops, and no mention at all within the body of the
article that this is the case. It should be obvious to anyone with even
limited reasoning ability that the system is is not being used in the spirit*
it was created in and that there are possible fixes that don't land at one of
the extremes of close it down or leave it (mostly) wide open.

(*or for the cynically inclined, replace "spirit" with "stated purpose")

~~~
jensvdh
In fact cracking down on H1-B should be GOOD for silicon valley. As it will
open a lot more slots for legit companies applying for real talent.

~~~
jasoncchild
I'm confused, how is a company who hires H1-B visa holders "illegitimate"?
Maybe I'm taking this too literally...

~~~
mavelikara
Not the OP, but I read it meaning "companies applying with a legitimate need
for talent". Here are few examples from the past few months where this was not
the case:

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/couple-pleads-
guilty-20...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/couple-pleads-
guilty-20-million-visa-fraud-involving-indian-workers)

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/virginia-immigration-
atto...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/virginia-immigration-attorney-
admits-visa-fraud-obstruction-justice)

------
Overtonwindow
I don't have a problem with hiring workers from outside the country. My
problem is when you lay off American workers and replace them with cheap
foreign labor, while claiming you're doing so because you can't find qualified
workers. That smacks of Silicon Valley doublespeak, and it's grossly unfair.

~~~
brianwawok
Increasing the supply of workers will ALWAYS drive down cost. So you can
debate the minutia, but that is the trade off we make.

Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor
competing. Software devs do not.

~~~
mifreewil
> Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor
> competing.

I'd be interested in reading more about this if you have a link handy.

~~~
pmorici
It really isn't that complicated. To be a lawyer or a doctor you need to be
licensed. The number of people who are licensed is restricted because of the
limited numbers of spots in medical and law schools and the high cost of
attending. On the already trained immigrant side, you can't just show up from
India and start practicing law or medicine in the US. Even if you did it in
your home country and are unquestionably qualified there is a long process you
have to go through.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-
slog...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog-for-
foreign-doctors-to-practice-in-us.html)

Professional associations like the AMA (American Medical Association) for
doctors and American Bar Association for Lawyers act as de facto unions w/o
drawing the negative connotations that unions sometimes do in modern politics.
The AMA even lobbies the government which sets the rates doctors get paid for
medicare procedures and medicare is the largest payer in the healthcare
system.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The number of people who are licensed is restricted because of the limited
> numbers of spots in medical and law schools and the high cost of attending

For medicine, this is wrong. The bottleneck is residency programs, not medical
school. We graduate more medical students each year than we have residency
spots available.

And for residency programs, the limit isn't artificial - it's funding-driven.
Residency programs run at a loss for hospitals, so most residency programs are
funded through Medicare.

> Even if you did it in your home country and are unquestionably qualified
> there is a long process you have to go through.

Yes, and that's not to artificially limit the supply, but because training
differs by country, and just because you're qualified by one country's
standards doesn't mean you're qualified by another. And for what it's worth,
the residency process is oftentimes much shorter for people who are licensed
to practice in other countries, so it's not like they're starting from
scratch.

> Professional associations like the AMA (American Medical Association)... act
> as de facto unions w/o drawing the negative connotations that unions
> sometimes do in modern politics.

The AMA may be the most-hated organization in the medical field. People who
don't practice medicine hate the AMA, largely because they aren't clear on
what the AMA is and is not responsible for, and often misattibute things to
the AMA[0]. And practitioners hate the AMA because they are _actually_ aware
of what it does, and because the AMA has a long history of siding with payers
(insurers) over practitioners.

> The AMA even lobbies the government which sets the rates doctors get paid
> for medicare procedures and medicare is the largest payer in the healthcare
> system.

If you think the role of the AMA is to ensure doctors get paid well by
Medicare, then they're clearly not doing their job. Medicare reimburses, in
the aggregate, 7% _less_ than COGS. This means that, in effect, for every
Medicare patient a private practitioner treats, they would end up having to
provide their services for free, and then _still_ pay an additional 7% out-of-
pocket for each Medicare patient they treat, to cover the costs that Medicare
doesn't.

This is the reason that private practices are a dying breed, and why it's
actually very difficult to find small practices which will accept "vanilla"
Medicare.

[0] For example, people often blame the AMA for limiting the number of medical
school spots that are available, which is wrong on three counts: (1) The AAMC
was responsible for this, not the AMA, (2) The AAMC has changed their policy
and is now aggressively lifting this cap year upon year for a long time now,
and (3) as I explained above, the number of medical school graduates isn't the
bottleneck, so the AAMC's policy has no effect on the supply of doctors
entering the market each year.

~~~
pmorici
Whether or not the intent was to artificially limit the supply the effect is
the same. Barriers to entry prevent an influx of labor from pushing the price
down.

Here is an article from fortune on the AMA...

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2014/09/03/the-
docto...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2014/09/03/the-doctors-
union/)

------
ddrum001
There may be a paywall issue. Can someone please post another related story?

~~~
notliketherest
Paste the URL into Google and enter from there.

~~~
ptaipale
And in the Google search results, open it in an incognito/private window. This
gets asked in comments for pretty much every FT/WSJ/whatever article.

------
Senji
A bad choice. A more appropriate choice would be a hellhole like Mexico.

~~~
dang
Slurs like this are a bannable offense on Hacker News. Please post civilly and
substantively, or not at all.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940754)
and marked it off-topic.

------
jackweirdy
If there is wage manipulation via H1-Bs, it's because there's a pressure on
the candidate to accept a lower salary, knowing it's the only way to get into
the US to work. As I see it, raising that cap removes the employer's leverage
to push for a lower wage.

~~~
hangonhn
You think the pool of available talent to replace all those H1Bs is large
enough to do it before many tech companies implode or start outsourcing?

~~~
WillPostForFood
The best argument for the H-1B is that the jobs would go to the same employee
anyway, just back in their home country, but there is probably a sweet spot
where you aren't actually incentivizing dumping current US workers and
replacing them with H-1Bs.

