
Don't Give Silicon Valley More H1B Visas - altstar
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/01/14/dont_give_silicon_valley_more_h1b_visas_132795.html
======
elihu
I think one of the main problems with the H1B visa program is that foreign
workers are kept too long in a state of precarious residency.

I work for a tech behemoth that imports an enormous workforce from overseas.
My overall impression of my foreign colleagues is that they are very
competent, hardworking people and the United States is better off for having
them here. However, I'm uncomfortable with the kind of leverage my employer
has over them. If my boss asked me to work 60 hour weeks or work through the
weekends or something, I'm able to say "no" because if they fire me, it's not
really that big of a deal. I'll just go work for someone else. I'm not going
to get kicked out of the country. For the H1B holders, it's a different story.

Even if the employer never deliberately exploits that situation (and I have no
reason to believe that my employer does), there's still that implicit threat
in the background.

So, I think we shouldn't leave H1B visas in limbo for extended periods of
time. If they've been here for a year or more, they should be able to quit
their jobs if they want to without repercussions.

~~~
untog
> If they've been here for a year or more, they should be able to quit their
> jobs if they want to without repercussions.

To clarify: you absolutely can do that on an H1B. The problem is that you need
to have a new job lined up to replace it, and that job needs to have gone
through visa approval processes that can take up to three months (there is a
grace period, I believe, of 30 days, soon to be extended to 60). This also
costs the company money in legal fees, so people tend to get jobs with large
corporations rather than startups, who are less willing to swallow the cost.

So, it's possible, just very irritating to do. And if you're also applying for
a green card sponsored by your company then you have additional issues - you
can get shunted back to step one when you change employers if you haven't
already reached a certain stage.

~~~
mavelikara
> And if you're also applying for a green card sponsored by your company then
> you have additional issues

If you don't apply for Green Card sponsored by your company, you will have to
leave after 6 years anyway - so these additional issues are almost always
relevant too.

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untog
It's unfortunate that the title doesn't match the article content here. The
article correctly identifies that nearly half of H1B don't go to Silicon
Valley, they go to the outsourcing firms that hire foreign workers (usually
Indian) and hold them as indentured servants (for a decade or more before they
can get a green card) and hire them out to US companies as "consultants". It's
a total scam, and it needs to be shut down.

~~~
zer00eyz
I would rather see reform in the process of making HB1 candidates citizens.
Its a group of people that want to be here and many want to stay but the
process is exceedingly painful. HB1 should be a faster path to becoming a
citizen not a longer one.

~~~
untog
AFAIK H1B is not a longer path to becoming a citizen - it just allows you to
apply for a green card alongside renewing your current visa status. The
problem is that green cards are allocated according to country, and India has
a huge backlog of a decade or more. Workers from other countries do not face
this issue. I agree that it should be reformed, but I'm not optimistic.

~~~
trustfundbaby
Workers from other countries do not face this issue

\--------------

That hasn't been correct until very recently to be very fair. It used to be a
wait of years in the EB3 category, the lane most h1bs qualify for, and has
only recently (2014 or so) shortened to a few months. And to clarify, this is
just to get a green card.

it still takes 5 years _after_ that green card to become a citizen.

~~~
verstaen
Absolutely correct, it takes five years to be able to apply for citizenship
for a green card holder. But a green card holder can move from job to job the
way a US citizen does. So ince you have a green card, you are not submitted to
the constraints of a visa.

------
zer00eyz
As an american (born and raised) I dislike what has come of the HB1 program
for many of the reasons that the author points out.

I have quite a few friends on HB1 who have a hard path to citizenship, we need
to make it easier for these talented people to get out from under the HB1
thumb and stay here as well. Attracting and keeping talent needs to be a
bigger priority than it is.

~~~
sean_patel
You lost me at HB1.

It's H1B, not HB1, bruh.

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baytrailcat
You cannot, as a culture, simultaneously underplay the importance of science
and math education (nerds!!!) and complain when immigrants come in to occupy
the high tech jobs. There is a big outrage about lack of high-paying jobs, yet
there is rampant anti-intellectualism and discouragement of critical and
analytical thinking which is needed for those jobs.

~~~
untog
I actually don't think "nerds!!!" is much of a thing any more - much of our
cultural output is based around comic books and fantasy stories, the likes of
which were regarded as nerdy persuits when I was a teenager.

I think people are happy to describe science and math education as important,
they're just not happy to pay for it. Decades of underinvestment in public
education results in undereducated people, but no-one wants to actually deal
with the issue.

~~~
karthikb
Agree - "nerds" today may not necessarily be the coolest kids in the room, but
they aren't typed as social outcasts either. This is of course location
dependent.

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vostok
It needs to be much easier to switch employers on H1B so that workers are not
abused.

There are also needs to be a bidding process. It's absurd that a small company
that is desperate to hire someone for $400k needs to participate in the same
lottery as a megacorp paying $60k that doesn't really care whether or not they
can hire a particular candidate.

It is, supposedly, a program for highly skilled workers and not a low wage
worker program.

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powera
[http://www.emergedigital.com/](http://www.emergedigital.com/) is a parked-
website landing page.

I _think_ the company was actually an ad agency rather than a "technology"
company. But I can't even tell. Regardless, I don't see any reason to think he
has actual success, or that his success would make him a credible authority on
how Silicon Valley companies function.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Aren't _all_ tech companies now effectively ad agencies?

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kartayyar
What does "Cutting-edge digital advertising professionals" mean?

The article is very skim about the specifics of what the folks did.

The article mentions that some tech firms tried to recruit employees at this
company, but that's no indicator of if this is the class of employee that
companies recruit on H1Bs.

There is a wide variance in talent of people on H1Bs too, though this article
has a very simplistic view which goes: "we didn't have access to H1Bs, so
people were forced to learn and get better" without any understanding of what
H1Bs do.

Your "cutting-edge digital advertising professional" is not an engineer.

Fully agree that the path forward to solving a tech talent shortage in the US
is for the US to be internally competitive, but just learning on the job
doesn't have the same rigor as pursuing 4 year and/or advanced STEM degrees.

Also, this company on LinkedIn has no information. Just 4 employees showing
up, i.e. very hard to see if they have people doing engineer caliber work.

[https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=2467546&trk=rr_conne...](https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=2467546&trk=rr_connectedness)

Till as such point there is some evidence about the quality of work being done
here being comparable to what a software engineer does as, I'm going to call
BS on this article.

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ebbv
The H1-B visa program sucks. It indentures the immigrant to their employer. If
their job sucks their options are really limited.

~~~
guyzero
There's virtually no other path to get a skilled worker into the US.

~~~
vostok
L1, H1B1, O1, etc.

~~~
guyzero
Unless you already work at the company you can't get a L1.

And H1B1s are for Singaporean and Chileans only. Hardly a meaningful impact on
the US immigration system.

TN for Canadians & Mexicans are not visa and don't allow immigration intent.

Getting an O1 visa is non-trivial (otherwise all the people who don't get
H1B's would get one)

The wait for getting a green card based on a job application is very long -
practically no one goes that way.

The US doesn't have a points-based skilled worker immigration system like many
other countries do.

~~~
partycoder
Also:

\- L1 is non-transferable

\- H1B1 also does not lead to a green card. To get a green card you need to
switch to H1B

------
albertTJames
It is more difficult to see the positive effects of expert workforce in large
economies such as the US, but it is easier to observe how smaller but rich
economies rely on foreign experts to compete: Switzerland and Singapour being
two of such example. Those countries create strong incentive for expert
immigration, in various fields, financials, engineering, academia, healthcare.
A large portion of the workforce was not train in the country, and innovation
both in academia and the private sector is often lead by multi-national teams.
It is a classic pulsion of conservatism to try and severe the ties prone to
increase the flux of information and people, but in the long run it will hurt
the economy. Because if you are not doing it, others will do it and reap the
benefits of freely trained experts and innovators. One key example is the
migration of scientists during WW1 and WW2, which benefitted the US immensely
and insured its supremacy over the second part of the 20th century.

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dannypgh
This seems like it plays into a false dichotomy between increasing tech
education/training programs and increasing permissive immigration.

At the top of the industry- people who are advancing the state of the art-
there is significantly more to be done than there are qualified people to be
hired. It's not a zero sum game.

I do think we should ensure that immigrants have the mobility to easily change
jobs, so they don't get locked in with below market pay. Having people chained
to their employers lowers wages for everyone. Increasing paths to citizenship
is an easy way of ensuring we aren't undercutting market rates for skilled
labor by having people afraid to try to change jobs (or start a business) but
in the current climate... we'll see.

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hatsix
I don't understand H1B visa program. Shouldn't we be _forcing_ the H1B
grantees to become citizens? Instead, we're training them on how to be a
modern tech worker, and then shipping them back to where they came once the
job is over (assuming that they can't line up another company to foot the
legal bills of taking over their visa).

Why? We have 700,000 new citizens every year. Let's make H1B part of the path-
to-citizenship... either they're a citizen within 2 years, or they're done.
It'll add 10% increase to citizens every year, but these will be high-salary,
well-trained, employed citizens.

~~~
FabHK
Excuse me. The USA have a ridiculous system of world wide taxation (like
Eritrea). Sufficiently qualified people might want to work there for a while,
but not become citizens.

If you force the green card or even citizenship onto H1B employees, they might
not want to come.

Furthermore, if you're on a green card (or a citizen), you're subject to the
exit tax. On an H1B, you can avoid it for a few years at least.

~~~
dasil003
Some people do, some people don't, but US policy should be concerned primarily
with what's good for the US, not what foreigners would prefer.

~~~
ggame
It's a two way street. I had to leave the US as my US tax bill on foreign
income exceeded my US income. I would have prefered to stay but I draw the
line at paying to work.

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theshadowmonkey
The author gets most of the things wrong in this article. Even though H1B is
not an immigration intent visa, most H1Bs come with an intention to stay here.
If you give them a chance to stay in the United States, they'll happily stay
here. Right now the time to get a greencard is anywhere between 7-15 years for
citizens of India and China. H1Bs include students who got their graduate
degrees at a lot of good universities and want to work, start a family here,
just not people who move exclusively for jobs. Even with a lot of wait, people
are rady to wait so long to get their greencards. H1B is not indenture. With
little hassle, you can easily move employers if you are smart. Make the
regulations strict on consulting companies who abuse the process. They play a
volume game where they apply so many visas to improve their probability. A lot
of small companies looking to hire engineers and ready to pay market wages
miss out since their chance of getting a H1B is less.

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davidw
[http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-
number...](http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-
immigrants.html) is the best short bit of writing on the subject.

------
partycoder
Economy follows the path of least resistance and cheaper labor through H-1B is
that path now.

But taking away visas does not mean everyone will happily employ local
computer science graduates. This is what is more likely to happen:

\- Coding camps have lower requirements (notably cost), graduate people
faster, and are proliferating quickly. Those will drive wages down.

\- Investment will start going to other countries.

If one company doesn't do it, another one does and prevails in the market.

As an engineer, the only way to stay competitive is to demonstrate added
technical value or actual technical leadership.

~~~
theshadowmonkey
H1Bs do not work for minimum wage jobs. Why then is the minimum wage not
rising ? If you do not consider the Indian consulting companies, H1B get paid
higher or on par with most Americans and most have graduate degrees.

~~~
partycoder
I was implicitly referring the context of technology.

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gvd
If companies are really in it because there is a shortage they should pay H1Bs
the same wage. If not, limit H1Bs. I'm pretty sure Thiel will prevent this
from happening

~~~
trustfundbaby
H1b salaries are on par if not higher with their peers with the huge exception
of the outsourcing firms that grab a lot of the available H1B slots in the
lottery. Those need to be shut down.

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jecjec
The H1B program needs to be ended immediately. It's an outrageous giveaway to
corporations. It represents deliberate attempt to reduce the relative price of
labor in the American economy.

~~~
hatsix
But that hasn't happened. Tech jobs have only increased in value. We still
need more tech workers, and can't train them fast enough.

Instead, we should be forcing citizenship on workers, encouraging them to stay
here, start a family, etc. These are among the smartest and well-educated
people in their former countries, and we have space for them.

~~~
MR4D
I find it odd that "we" can't train them fast enough but India can. (Ignoring
other countries, as India is by far the biggest share here).

What is so magical about a developing nation with a billion people living in
poverty that allows them to solve them problem and prevents us from solving it
too?

Further, why is nobody asking this question, instead of just saying we can't
do it?

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serge2k
> Those are the federal waivers handed out to highly trained workers in fields
> such as technology who don’t plan to immigrate here.

Actually large numbers of people on the H-1B do immigrate. It's a dual intent
visa, you can start the green card process while on it.

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btian
People living in big cities in China and India can't breathe. Let's deny them
the opportunity to contribute to the US economy.

Next up - "don't let anyone import anything from other countries because I
didn't raise any venture capital".

~~~
ArkyBeagle
While I am sympathetic, perhaps those countries should solve these problems
rather than emitting emigrants. The interval between opening new coal fired
plants in China is on the order of days.

If it wasn't possible to confuse H1B status with indentured servitude and
wages were rising in the US, it would be a different thing. H1B makes feasible
a lousy management style that perpetuates bad practice, which results in lousy
products.

~~~
btian
That is ridiculous. It's trivial for a someone on H1B to switch employers.

~~~
guitarbill
Trivial? Not quite. Possible? Definitely, if you're competent and well
rounded.

I'm not sure, but I suspect the outsourcing firms filter more by hard-working
(i.e. hours put in) and not quality. After all, that's what people who hire
outsourcing firms want. So then, when these poor people want to change jobs,
there's not that many roles available. Contrast this to visa holders who work
for big tech companies. With that on your CV, getting another role isn't hard.

