
Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants - gadders
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-h-1b_us_5890d86ce4b0522c7d3d84af?
======
t1o5
ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is
right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers.
I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms.
These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's
topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited
and there is nothing we could do about it. We were bound to the employer with
no hopes of promotion and the long wait for GreenCard (10 years). H1B has
become a system to pay lower wages than a skilled visa. How can it be a
skilled visa, if the visas are allocated based on lottery ?

So we decided to do something about our situation. We started foraying into
the immigration systems of other countries and we decided to use the express
entry system of Canada. So we all applied for it ourselves, got evaluated for
our skills & degrees and now I am happily typing this as a permanent resident
from Canada.

Express Entry System -

[http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-
crs.asp](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-crs.asp)

~~~
davidf18
Of all of the political candidates, only Trump and Sanders spoke out against
H1-B visa abuse used to depress wages. (Former) Presidential Candidate Senator
Marco Rubio of Florida wanted to triple the number of H1-B visas to 250,000
from 85,000 and accepted $2 million donation from Disney.

Disney of Florida had recently replaced 250 US IT workers with foreigners on
H1-B. Trump especially spoke out against this move. Clinton was silent.

Clinton accepted $675,000 from Goldman for 3 talks. Wall Street banks like
Goldman hire lots of high tech computer programmers and it is in their
interest to depress wages as well as those firms in Silicon Valley. Trump was
right that Clinton was bought off (she could have donated the $675,000 for
charity as President Obama did with his Nobel Peace Prize Award money).

Incidentally, HP head and Republican Meg Whitman came out against Trump and
she mentioned other reasons, but her true motivation is that HP would have to
start paying market wages for all of its high tech workers if Trump won.

~~~
valuearb
The "depressing wages" point is dumb. These engineers will still be part of
the labor pool, they'll just be doing work for our foreign competitors. And HP
can still hire them, do you want them to just open up more space in Bangalore,
or would you rather those wages go to US based locations?

And it's not a zero sum game. One of my H!B hires had unduplicatable skills
and created about 20 high paid jobs in our company. Other H1B hires enabled a
contracting firm I worked for to get a large contract that kept 7 other people
employed.

~~~
davidf18
Did you read the article? Many tech jobs can't be done effectively in India or
overseas with low quality labor for any number of reasons. The 250 American
workers for Disney had their jobs replaced in the US, not by overseas workers.

> "These engineers will still be part of the labor pool, they'll just be doing
> work for our foreign competitors"

Well, let them work for Samsung instead of Apple then.

> "One of my H!B hires had unduplicatable skills and created about 20 high
> paid jobs in our company."

The point of the H1-B visa is precisely for those cases where there are no
Americans that can do the job, so your hire follows the law. But then if it
such a hard to find job, then the scarcity implies the person should get a
higher salary, especially if he/she created "20 high paid jobs for our
company."

~~~
valuearb
Letting them work for Samsung lowers our standard of living.

~~~
mjolk
Please explain.

------
nostrademons
It's worth putting in a shout-out to Lofgren's H1B bill:

[https://lofgren.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentI...](https://lofgren.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398125)

Far from "emasculating" it like the article suggests, the "bucketing" system
in Lofgren's bill is designed to put upward pressure on _all_ wages, including
those of American citizens. The way that it works is that positions paying in
the top 2/3 of the average wage for their geographical area will get priority
over those that pay only the average wage, regardless of how much they pay
their H1Bs. (And within the bucket, they get priority based on _how much more
than the prevailing wage_ they pay the H1B worker.) This prevents companies
from bidding up the price of their H1B workers only, and forces them to raise
wages for all of their American citizens as well in order to take advantage of
the market-based allocation of H1Bs.

~~~
verst
I'm a big fan of her bill for the above (market-based) approach and other
reasons:

\- F-1 student visa becomes dual-intent. This is huge! Essentially an employer
could now sponsor permanent residency directly out of a PhD program (or even
college assuming sufficient work experience for employment-based immigration).
No need to first get a H-1B.

\- It appears that switching employers while on the H-1B becomes easier (the
new employer must only submit the Labor Condition Application). This will
provide mobility to H-1B workers and therefore not suppress wages.

\- 20% of H-1B visas are set aside for startups and small businesses, and to
prevent these from becoming subsidiaries of outsourcing firms the H-1B holder
may not be working at a 3rd party worksite for more than 30 days.

\- H-1B dependent companies (8 H-1Bs if < 26 employees, 11 H-1Bs if 26-50, 15%
of workforce if 50+) either must prove that no US citizen is being displaced,
or they must pay at least the dependent company exemption minimum salary of
$130,000.

Note: I'm a former Math & Comp Sci (double major) international student (F-1
visa) from a top tier school, then H-1B, permanent resident, and this week (!)
will become a citizen.

Bill Summary:
[https://lofgren.house.gov/uploadedfiles/high_skilled_bill_sx...](https://lofgren.house.gov/uploadedfiles/high_skilled_bill_sxs_and_analysis_-1-2017__final.pdf)

~~~
garyfirestorm
this week* unless trump does something to this process ;) just kidding.
congrats!

~~~
verst
You joke, but that definitely has crossed my mind. I've been avoiding the
recent protests out of an abundance of caution.

But I'm prepared [1] for my first day as a citizen tomorrow.

[1]: medium.com/@BerndVerst/preparing-for-my-first-day-as-a-u-s-
citizen-2be7e4719317

------
frankydp
H-1B and J-1 consulting and labor firms are far more nefarious than people
probably think.

Most of my personal experience is with J-1 pimps. These "firms" import
seasonal labor and directly collect wages from the hiring company. The catch
is as old as markets, as they usually debit housing, food, and fees that are
grossly outside of true cost, but allow for just enough origin country
adjusted income to still make sense for students to keep signing on. I have
dealt with these firms from Eastern Europe and South America, with both
operating on the razors edge of indentured servitude. These exact same
practices dominate the H-1B program.

The most effective change to any of these programs, outside of just volume,
would be the direct to employee payment requirement or minimum percentage.
That change would force the either higher salaries in order to maintain the
labor firms margins, or the labor firms would have to eat the cost to keep the
prices down. Enforcement would have to be extreme. As the nature of the
relationship between the firm and the visa holder is already indebted, and
there would be lots of opportunity for harassment and coercion of the visa
holder to fork over more of their paycheck.

Addition: Another solution may be a visa marketplace that the government would
run, to connect employers and visa seekers directly and eliminate the middle
man.

~~~
danenania
How about simply allowing H-1Bs to change jobs if they get an offer from
another company, and giving them a sufficient window to find something new if
they leave their current company? The no-recourse indentured servitude
relationship that makes people dependent on a company for their residency
takes away all the employee's negotiating power. If we could change this, I
expect that wages would begin to even out.

~~~
tkahnoski
They can. It's just painful and depending on the competency of both companies
legal counsel, it can take months. We've had employees accept offers with a
start date, only the visa transfers weren't finished yet so they started
MONTHS after the expected start date.

~~~
mi100hael
The other problem is that AFAIK the 10-year-long Green Card clock resets if
they change jobs, so there's a strong incentive not to leave.

~~~
mavelikara
H.R.392 - Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 [1] aims to fix the
green card backlogs by removing the per-country quotas.

[1]: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/392/...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/392/text?format=txt)

------
program_whiz
Ok what's the suprise here? If you give companies a chance to get cheaper
"mostly the same" labor without a downside, or maybe with the upside they
can't leave, they're going to take it. That's why I do believe globalization
and the availability of huge amounts of cheap unregulated labor does hurt
American jobs and industry. Its not xenophobia, its just common sense. I think
if you look past any ideas of racism, xenophobia, etc, you'll see that in
plain economic terms, Trump is right -- but it applies to every industry, not
just SV. Imagine how if this is applicable to something requiring the skills
of software development, how much more so it would be true of some low-skill
job.

~~~
projectramo
There have been many studies on this.

Conservatives usually use the phrase "at best, the impact is nil"

Liberals usually use the phrase "at worst, the impact is nil"

Because the study shows there is negligible impact. Every laborer is also a
spender. If the person saves, then every laborer is also an investor.

If you believe in the mainstream economic theory, more jobs are produced for
the ones that are "taken."

You might ask where are those jobs, and then people will say they are in new
fields and require training etc.

The debate goes on: why aren't tech jobs in short supply? A: They are. Q: I
don't see that, where? A: there isn't one "tech", there are many different
fields and they are in short supply in the important ones etc.

It is not as straightforward as you make it out to be.

~~~
tzs
> Every laborer is also a spender. If the person saves, then every laborer is
> also an investor.

What about laborers who send most of their earnings back to family in their
home country?

~~~
valuearb
How will a laborers family spend US Dollars in a foreign country? Hint: the
money always gets spent back in the US by someone.

------
chuckcode
My experience has been that my H1-B coworkers don't get paid as well as US
counterparts sand that there is significant friction for them to change
companies or even get a big promotion if they are in process of applying for
green card. Rather than adding more rules to an already difficult process
though I think the best solution would be to allow people with H1-B to easily
change jobs after some period of time at the original sponsoring company (e.g.
6-12 months). That way it would be harder to pay below market rates and would
be much more dynamic than having the government trying to estimate what the
prevailing wage should be.

I get really frustrated though with most articles on the H1-B visas which
either seem to be bashing immigrants or imply that somehow more government
regulation will help the situation. In my experience growing up in the US we
are incredibly lucky to have such talented people coming here to work and they
have contributed incredibly to the tech companies in the US which are really
one of the few bright spots in the US economy. Some of the smartest and
hardest working colleagues I have grew up in other countries and we are lucky
that they have come here to build the US economy.

~~~
thewhitetulip
True, I read somewhere that majority of scientists are immigrants, heck, even
Donald Trump's grandpa was a German Immigrant!

------
zzleeper
> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus
> that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false

There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent.
So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point
is still controversial.

> most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary
> visa, for U.S. permanent residency (green card) [...] sponsorship renders
> the workers de facto indentured servants; though they have the right to move
> to another employer, they do not dare do so, as it would mean starting the
> lengthy green card process all over again.

Then the problem might be with how long the gov takes to process these things,
and not with the H1B visas?

> the H-1B program is an enabler of rampant age discrimination in the tech
> industry [...] Almost all the H-1Bs are young

Younger people are more willing to move to another country. Also, many
students apply for an H1b after their F1 runs out, so of course you get
younger people.

And this is just from the first page. I feel like the author is just throwing
every possible argument against the H1B, instead of making one good coherent
point. =/

~~~
throwawaydbfif
The endless talent shortage is a farce. Every tech company I've worked at
rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that
would be considered insane in almost any other field.

I would say the opposite is true based solely on hiring practices. Look at
Google for example, who hire around 1/5000 people that apply.

The shortage is artificially maintained because it works in companies favor.
It makes engineers more willing to work for low salaries since they have to
work so hard to get an offer, and makes it possible for them to import
"talent" which is 95% of the time an excuse to import cheap foreign labor.

Look at what these H1B's are mostly used for. Yeah sometimes it's specialized
jobs but usually just generic "developer" or "consultant". Is it really true
that you need to hire an H1B because you can't find a "developer"?. The visa
process is meant to be used for skills you can't find in the US, and with this
in mind it's clearly failed its purpose

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Every tech company I 've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants
and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any
other field._

Joel Spolsky explains why this does not imply what you think it implies.

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-
guest.html](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html)

tl;dr; Imagine 1 low quality developer who applies to 9 places and gets
rejected. There's also 1 high quality developer who applies to 1 place and
gets accepted. Look, 90% of applications have been rejected!

~~~
throwawaydbfif
Inc.com is a really bad source for such information... As if they would be
expected to be neutral in such a situation.

If this was true you would see it across professions and at every level of
position, yet it's something fairly unique to software development.

~~~
crusso
Joel Spolsky makes important points in the article. Disregarding them because
you don't like the web site that they're posted on is fallacious reasoning.

~~~
throwawaydbfif
Inc is a publication targeted towards business owners. Nothing about the site
is meant to be neutral. It's like learning about Democrats from a Republican
website.

I wouldn't disregard it so quickly if the source was more neutral.

~~~
crusso
And that's how echo chambers of thought develop. Only listen to the sources of
information that you wish to and disregard others without evaluating what they
are providing.

Sorry, but Spolsky is normally extremely insightful and if you read the
article, he makes many excellent points that are worth considering no matter
which angle you're approaching the problem from.

------
mseebach
Every time the topic comes up, I wonder how many of the HN'ers who are cross
at H-1B workers because they are depressing wages are intellectually
consistent (and honest) enough to accept that this position is part and parcel
of the same system of nationalist thought that leads to a wall to Mexico and
steeply increased tariffs on chinese import; of "America First"?

If you find yourself reconciling the idea of protecting against wage
competition from H-1Bs, but are in favour of continued undocumented
immigration from Mexico (or at least opposed to taking any substantial
measures against it), in favour of NAFTA remaining in place and in favour of
continued trade with China under current conditions, I'd be very interested in
understanding how you model that?

(There is also a critique around the specific rules of H-1B being unfair to
the worker, mostly around restrictions on changing employers. I agree with
most of that and don't think it inherently incompatible with other views on
immigration and trade, pro or con.)

~~~
digler999
The way I saw it, the "build a wall" campaign was more about mobilizing the
frustration many felt about cultural changes and (perceived) social costs of
illegal immigration and less about "they're taking our jobs" (though I'm not
saying that argument was never made).

I think it was about people becoming upset at seeing their communities change
for the worse, seeing signs and publications coming up in spanish, seeing
mexican names in headlines about high-profile crime, seeing mexicans use EBT
(welfare) cards at the grocery, hearing anecdotal stories about traffic
incidents where "a mexican hit me and had no insurance..", and seeing mexican
gangs come to their town.

I think a lot of those voters felt unheard and tired of the politically
correct excuses used to defend them. And when someone finally stood up and
said "I'm going to fight this [ one precursor that enabled these changes] ",
they were immediately sold.

(I'm not going to put an "I'm not a racist" disclaimer here, you all should be
mature enough to interpret whether or not I actually endorse those stances or
whether I am explaining the motivations of others who do)

~~~
angry-hacker
And I would add that people saying they are racist live in nice neighborhoods
somewhere in SV with smart people and say but look at these engineer friend of
mine who is so smart, intelligent and cultural.

Zuck building walls and buying islands to live alone and peace, without having
slightest idea what is it to live in average neighborhoods who get to taste
the immigrations bad (and good!) sides, while preaching no walls, no borders,
mass immigration is good.

------
tejasd
I do believe H1-Bs were used to pay lower wages (more so because of being tied
to the employer for long periods of time in the Green Card Process).

However, in my observations and experiences, the last few years (i.e. the
years when H1-Bs were allocated by lottery), due to the scarcity of H1-B
visas, employers started paying a premium for employees who already had an
H1-B visa and the skills necessary, because they could switch jobs immediately
(as opposed to having wait 1+ year to hire someone from abroad and wait/hope
for them to get through the lottery).

What made it even better was that thanks to legislation by the Obama
administration, your spot in the Green Card line was now portable, i.e. even
if you switch employers, as long as the new employer files a green card
application, you still retained your position in the line.

As you can see, the theme has been giving more leverage to H1-B employees as
opposed to the employers - and that is what the American immigration system
desperately needs. In the end it's only going to protect American workers.

------
ansy
Could H-1B be more effective? Yes. It could definitely be more fair to the
visa holder and do a better job of attracting and retaining the most skilled
workers.

But I also think it's totally wrong to say we don't have a technology labor
shortage. The best evidence of this are the salary numbers for people with
math and science degrees. It's not because physics and math suddenly got more
valuable. It's because tech is so starved for labor it's hiring people from
different disciplines to do the job and it's actually brought the average
salaries in line with CS and engineering graduates.

Also, even if we had an adequate national labor supply, the job opportunities
are not distributed proportional to population density. The density of
technology jobs is highly concentrated in a few parts of the country, but we
are producing qualified engineers everywhere. And not everyone is willing or
able to move.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
There is a luxury yacht shortage. I say this because I want to run a luxury
yacht business and I'm unable to buy a luxury yacht for the $10 that I have in
my pocket.

There is a Ferrari shortage because I want to start a "Uber With Ferraris"
business, and I'm unable to buy a Ferrari with the $10 that I have in my
pocket.

There is a developer shortage because I want to start a software business and
I am unable to buy a developer with the $10 that I have in my pocket.

There are no shortages. There is capitalism and the market. If salaries rise
so that My Brilliant Idea Co is unable to hire a software developer, that just
means that My Brilliant Idea Co isn't valued by VCs or Angels such that they
can afford to hire the necessary people.

My company was unable to hire people. When it increased offers by _40%_ ,
suddenly it could hire people.

~~~
ryandrake
Thank you. The supply of employees is only constrained by employers'
willingness to pay. At the current prevailing wages, supply is not meeting
demand. This does not necessarily mean there is a shortage.

~~~
nostrebored
I know tons of people my age who wanted to go into computer science. They
failed out, lacked the dedication it took to make up for missing skills, etc.

The wages are making people try, but the field is difficult.

~~~
ryandrake
Increased wages could also pull people back into software engineering who are
skilled but left for more lucrative fields (or careers with better upward
paths).

------
Apocryphon
The title is a bit overly-polarizing; Prof. Matloff has been an outspoken
critic of H-1Bs for quite some time, and only mentions the president once in
the article. The actual EO isn't even out yet.

~~~
ones_and_zeros
Since it is an OpEd, the title is chosen by the editor not the author.

~~~
jordanb
Since it's huffpo they're probably AB testing several headlines to find the
one with the most clickbait.

------
okreallywtf
Trump may be "right" about this topic but he's massively wrongheaded about the
solution. Making America the place the worlds best and brightest used to want
to go is not going to solve this problem - regulation to protect visa workers
is. I have a number of friends I went to school with now working on H1B Visas
who want to make a life here and worked very hard to get here and I hate to
see them indentured to their sponsors. I don't know anyone I went to school
with that was even remotely competent that couldn't get a job even in my home
state, let alone nationwide (and this isn't even from a big or well known
program).

Maybe the demand for H1B visas would go down if the playing field was leveled
but who knows? This doesn't validate his actual ideas whatsoever, many people
see this issue as a problem but I would like to see some actual reform instead
of just pouring gasoline on the problem and lighting a match.

------
t1o5
Whoever argues that H1Bs are paid handsomely, have a look at this data
disclosure for 2016 H1B wages (137 MB) from DOL. You can find all the details
of companies that exploits the workers with some MS Excel wizardry.

[https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/docs/Performance_Dat...](https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/docs/Performance_Data/Disclosure/FY15-FY16/H-1B_Disclosure_Data_FY16.xlsx)

The companies exploit a loop hole called "Pay Ranges" if you see the excel
columns - WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_FROM & WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_TO, rather than a single
absolute WAGE, the companies can legally pay any salary in that range.

That's where Mr Trump needs to "patch" the system, raise the minimum
WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_FROM.

------
yummyfajitas
I'll just suggest that it's probably a great time for tech companies to open a
Bangalore or Gurgaon office. Bangalore in particular is a good choice - the
people are smart, the infrastructure is good, and it's a very pleasant place
to visit. Perfect weather all year and the best breakfast in India. Also a
very strong tech culture; second in the world to SF, in my view, and without
many of the social pathologies [1] that seem to be threatening SF.

Rather than fighting with the legal system to replace one or two of your
overpaid employees, you can replace entire divisions. It's certainly an
investment of effort but it's well worth it.

Plus if you need foreign talent, as long as you pay $25k/year the visa is more
or less guaranteed.

If the US wants to be uncompetitive, leave the US.

[1] Meritocracy is still considered a core value and a great thing. There's a
lot less xenophobia - while many in US tech harbor negative feelings about
immigrants "who took our jorbs", I've literally never seen the same negativity
in the Indian tech scene.

~~~
pscsbs
You must be joking about the infrastructure. Moving even a few kilometers can
take hours due to all the traffic and lack of public transportation.

~~~
dominotw
>can take hours

Bunch of my friends suffer from a chronic cough and throat irritation from
being exposed to traffic everyday. Not to mention the psychological fatigue
that totally saps you before you even get to work.

There is no way to escape constant air and sound pollution.

~~~
kamaal
>>Not to mention the psychological fatigue that totally saps you before you
even get to work.

I doubt this is because of pollution, noise or dust. Most people are stressed
for the same reasons why any millennial traveling between Mountain View and SF
is stressed- Rents, High home prices, Home expenses etc etc.

------
at-fates-hands
Having worked in a ton of different large corporations that have large H1-B
employee populations, I can say this is completely true from my experience.

In the last three places (including my current employer) there were huge
swaths of H1-B's from India. After some long lunches and happy hours, I found
out that a) they're being paid significantly less than I was and b) two of the
three companies wouldn't sponsor them to stay at the company and come on as an
FTE.

This meant several trips and back and forth between the states and Bangalore
to get a new visa, then turn around and try and find a new gig somewhere. For
the developers who were single it wasn't a problem. Those workers with
families, it was quite stressful to have their families moving back and forth
on a regular basis and not having the stability of knowing they had a gig
lined up or not.

Toss in the fact getting these visa's are _incredibly_ competitive and I can
only imagine the stress involved.

~~~
untog
Just as a counter-point (not saying your experience is incorrect at all), I've
worked in the US on an H1B and was compensated very well, as were my co-
workers. The system allows abuse, but doesn't guarantee it.

I do wonder if the employees you mention know that an H1B is transferrable
between employers. It's a time consuming process, but I'd love to see more
people take advantage of those who abuse the visa by getting one, then
immediately transferring it to an honest company that pays a fair salary.

~~~
t1o5
> H1B is transferable between employers

Its not easy as it sounds. Being a single that time, I have transferred my H1B
myself and it was a nightmare. I had sleepless nights and uncertainty. My
GreenCard process was reset. Any H1Bs who knows about the system really well
will not risk transferring because of the risks to their green card process.

There is no honest company which pays a fair salary for H1Bs. If you see the
data from here:

[https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm](https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm)

I have a huge circle of friends in many companies. We discuss our salaries and
issues openly. Not one of them says that they are paid equal to their American
colleagues. Moroever the promotions and salary raises goes to American
colleagues, while the H1Bs bears it all to support the family with the income
where his/her spouse is not allowed to work (H4 visa)

~~~
mavelikara
I agree with your general point here.

> There is no honest company which pays a fair salary for H1Bs.

..

> I have a huge circle of friends in many companies. We discuss our salaries
> and issues openly. Not one of them says that they are paid equal to their
> American colleagues.

I am not your friend, just a random person on internet. But I am on H-1B, and
if this offers any solace, I know that I am paid par with my American
colleagues. My boss is on H-1B; both he and I have American and H-1B employees
reporting to us.

~~~
t1o5
and you are one of those random H1B employee in the top percentile & we were
not.

------
thecardcheat
> The industry lobbyists’ ace-in-the-hole argument is that if they can’t hire
> more H-1Bs, they’ll ship the work overseas. But for projects on which H-1Bs
> are hired in the U.S., face-to-face interaction (between themselves and
> their American coworkers) is crucial. That is why employers bring H-1Bs to
> the U.S. in the first place rather than sending the work abroad, where the
> wages are even cheaper.

Considering the growth of tools that facilitate working remotely, and the
flexibile schedule pursued by many software engineers, the willingness to ship
jobs overseas is hard to merely cast aside.

Visa workers should absolutely be paid a fair wage, and it seems a realistic
side-effect that there may be a shift in the type of roles offered to visa
employees vs. overseas when the cost of in-house now represents a premium on
the foreign employee.

~~~
mdorazio
Keep in mind, though, that a lot of H1Bs are being used as replacements for a
typical IT department, not as the type of staff you could easily offshore,
even with remote working technology. For example, at a Fortune 100 company I
did quite a bit of consulting for, fully 60% of their IT staff was Infosys and
Congnizant H1Bs. You could make the argument that some portion of those
positions could be offshored, but realistically no large company would do that
- they want people on-site too much. I don't think the rise of tools is really
changing this mentality fast enough to make remote/offshore work a real
possibility here in the near term.

------
myf01d
Trump asks the right questions: the danger of globalism, incredibly high
global debt, the danger of radical islam, the overestimation of Russia's
danger on the US and EU, the questionable usefulness of NATO, the economic
manipulation by China, he just has the wrong answers.

~~~
valuearb
Trump forgot that the USSR once had a massive superiority in military forces
in the European theatre (over 2-1 vs. NATO). The breakup of the USSR made
Europe tremendously safer. Now Trump is going to let Putin recapture the
Ukraine and restore much of his missing military edge, while undercutting
NATO.

It's like he's inviting Putin to just invade Poland. How is that going to end?

~~~
throw2016
This is like saying the breakup of the USA will make the rest of Americas
safer. Maybe but military strength does not directly translate to 'threat'
without intent. Some states by their geography, history and technology are
naturally more 'powerful'. Does that automatically translate into a threat or
the idea that they should be broken up. Who gets to decide this?

This is like positioning Russia creating a SATO with South American States to
defend against 'US aggresiveness' and trying to actively break up the US as a
'defensive action'.

Yet this is the kind of foreign policy routinely adopted by the US and 'the
west' and yet it's others that are 'aggressive'.

------
rhapsodic
The hubris and self-righteousness of SV billionaire bully-boys has reached the
point where I'll favor practically anything that takes them down a peg. I'd
love to see the Republican controlled federal government treat them the way
the Democrats have treated, for example, the gun and coal industries.

If a gun manufacturer should be held liable for the results of people misusing
a gun, then why shouldn't Airbnb be held liable for harm people may suffer as
a result of renting or leasing through Airbnb?

~~~
cujo
>If a gun manufacturer should be held liable for the results of people
misusing a gun

They aren't.

~~~
rhapsodic
> They aren't.

But many say they should be. Simply because they want to drive the gun
industry out of existence and outlaw private ownership of guns in the U.S.

And FTR, I normally would not favor regulating Airbnb out of existence. But
I've had such a bellyful of Airbnb CEO Brian Chevsky's self-rightousness, that
I would love to see him and his investors take a multi-billion dollar haircut.

The Democrats weaponized the federal government against their political
enemies. I'd love to see them, and their supporters, get a taste of their own
medicine.

~~~
Z1nfandel
So you want to enact sweeping legislation that covers an entire industry
because you feel that the CEO of a single company has a poor attitude and you
want to spite him?

I'm at a loss for how naive and petty that viewpoint is, and how drastic the
unintended consequences could be. But hey, you stuck it to the man, good job!

~~~
rhapsodic
_> So you want to enact sweeping legislation that covers an entire industry
because you feel that the CEO of a single company has a poor attitude and you
want to spite him?_

Yep.

 _> I'm at a loss for how naive and petty that viewpoint is, and how drastic
the unintended consequences could be. But hey, you stuck it to the man, good
job!_

Thanks!

------
diebir
Anecdotally, as a former H1-B worker, I would not say I was underpaid or the
employer ever exploited the fact that I was on H1-B. From my standpoint it has
always been a fair deal.

Okay, the gist of the article is that H1-B should require higher salaries (in
the 75th percentile). This would have the effect of cutting off younger and
less experienced workers. The problem here is that more experienced and older
people are less likely to want to move. In other words, this would mean that
the US tech would lose out on the potential talent. Again anecdotally my
current tech org is 60-80% foreign born. It is also one of the most selective
places around. Would it be like it is without H1-B program? I doubt it.

So perhaps the system needs tweaking, specifically in the area of making the
system work faster and being less arcane. I highly doubt this is what's going
to happen. Ten years from now we'll be having the same conversation, as we
were ten years ago (I have been watching this since '99).

------
ryanmarsh
The thing that kills me about this whole debate is the flyover states are full
of smart hard working people who had the misfortune of ... I shouldn't have to
explain this.

These people could be trained too. Every enterprise client I've had for the
past 5 years has H1B's doing minimal coding tasks on enterprise COTS software
like PEGA or Informatica. Those skills don't take 4 years to train people for
and they pay a liveable wage.

------
DVassallo
H1-Bs are not unfair to Americans, even when abused. All this talk about
protectionism and fairness is really bizarre to me.

Thought experiment: Imagine if Canada found a cure for cancer but chose to
sell it to Canadians only. Would that be fair? Would it be fair to Americans
that can't get access to it?

Job protectionism makes some people entitled to jobs based on random
circumstances at birth. How can rational people think that _this_ is fair?

------
deepnotderp
Silicon valley companies rarely bring in H-1Bs as a cheap replacement, the
consultancies like Accenture, Tata, Disney, IBM, etc. do, but hey f*ck it,
blame silicon valley....

------
TheRealDunkirk
To me, this seems related to the 97 IT companies filing an amicus brief in the
travel ban court case...

------
relics443
I think an issue lost in the discussion is that citizens are losing jobs
because of this. I'm all for the plight of the immigrant, but as an American,
my concern is first and foremost with my fellow countrymen.

~~~
d--b
You really think there is not enough jobs for American software developers?

~~~
CodeSheikh
If you are a decent software developer there is a guaranteed job for you,
unless you code in COBOL or FORTRAN. Heck, people are jumping ships and we
hire people from English or Humanities background who go and do 6 months
intensive coding boot camps. Wake up and go find opportunities for yourself.
Jobs don't come to you. Get yourself out there and be known. Put your hobby
projects on Github. Attend Meetups and network with people. People hire a lot
at tech meetups.

~~~
Apocryphon
I thought that COBOL devs have guaranteed jobs, given the startlingly number
of legacy systems out there that urgently need people to maintain them and
prevent our nation's aged banking databases from collapsing.

------
afastow
> EB sponsorship renders the workers de facto indentured servants; though they
> have the right to move to another employer, they do not dare do so, as it
> would mean starting the lengthy green card process all over again.

Increasing H-1B pay would be a step in the right direction but I think the
green card policy is the biggest thing that needs to be fixed. H-1B workers
should be fast tracked for green cards instead of having road blocks put in
front of them. By definition they are skilled workers that the US doesn't have
enough of so why would we ever want them to leave?

~~~
convolvatron
idk, if you have an underclass thats forced to work for you for substandard
wages due to externalities, that seems worth hanging on to.

i think the most dangerous ideas distorting the software market is the fiction
that every team is the best that was ever fielded, and that development takes
such unique skills. you're hiring a web dev - stop turning people down because
they aren't Guy Steele.

------
dleslie
"We have a Talent Shortage" is industry slang for "We are unwilling to train
paid apprentices."

------
dhruvrrp
The discussion about H1Bs is getting dominated by SV. The brunt of the changes
are gonna affect other industries, for example, someone i know is currently
doing a masters in biotech at a really good research university, and she is
really scared about the 130k lower limit for H1B applicants. According to her,
even postdocs in her field don't make that much! If the new H1B system passes
as is, then its gonna cause a massive brain-drain in most fields that are not
SV tech related.

~~~
xamuel
Ever tried hunting for a job in academia? There are hundreds of super-
qualified U.S. candidates for every opening. If your friend's so amazing she
beats all of them, 130k is a steal.

~~~
dhruvrrp
You do realize that the average salary of a tenured professor in the US is
around $100k right? It goes up to $200k for some private universities but I
would say 100-150k is what most top public universities pay. So 130k is a
shitton of money in academia.

Ignoring all of that, average salary of a senior biomedial engineer is 90k.
The rest of the USA doesn't live in the 100k++ bubble that is SV.

------
e40
I think big companies do abuse the system, but I manage a small company and in
30+ years we've used H-1B's 3 times. Each time it was to get someone that we
could not find in the US. Yes, we are a small company (~30 people) and in a
niche market, but each time, the person we found was 10x better than the
nearest candidate. And each time we paid the person as well as we paid US
employees.

------
scottlocklin
People seem to have arguments about this based on

1) H1Bs depressing the prevailing wage (true if you believe in classical
supply and demand)

2) overall economic utility; aka the economy does better/worse because of more
H1Bs (I don't really care, but I guess someone might)

One thing which gets left out: H1Bs are more compliant employees, because
their employers have them over a legal barrel. They have a much harder time
leaving their employer than a citizen does, and they're a lot less likely to
complain if they're abused. Turnover is hugely expensive to a software
company; between that and the "costs" of having an employee with civil rights;
well, not all employers are bad actors, but the temptation has to be there.
I've certainly seen this at work in various places. It's pretty rotten. I
mean, obviously many consider it a good trade, but it isn't exactly humane.
Social costs like this are often left out of economic considerations. Who
cares if your GDP goes up if we end up living in a dystopia as a result?

------
CodeSheikh
"..the company can’t prevent the departure of Americans.." this is part of the
problem. I have seen people (especially young ones) jumping ships in less than
six months from startup to startup in SV because of the competitive market
salary. Even though larger companies can take this hit but for a startup of
<10 employees this can prove to be very detrimental. I agree that Indian
consultancies have been abusing the H1B program for a while now, and even
though American companies pay them same or actually more (consultant hourly
rates are always on the higher end), these consultancies keep the lion share
to themselves and pay minimum to the consultant. The problem is not just with
immigrants (both educated from US colleges and brought in by the Indian
consultancies) but also nomadic nature of young American tech labor. Should
there be some sort of collateral such as one year contract? Probably not a
welcoming idea in a free market of USA.

~~~
mavelikara
> Should there be some sort of collateral such as one year contract?

It would be a fair deal if employers also agree to let go of employee only
with many months of severance payment.

Also, startups using vesting schedules to incentivize people to stay.

~~~
CodeSheikh
Agree. It should be a two way street.

~~~
mavelikara
My point is that we got where we are today when employers started violating
their end of the contract and employees slowly got wiser of the shift. To
unsettle the status quo, the employers have to do some _disproportionate_ show
of good faith and win the trust of the employees.

------
DesiLurker
former H1B & like any red blooded liberal, a Trump critic. However, on this
particular matter I agree with the man. H1B is basically indentured servitude
for employer. Its not just that you get paid less salary & bonuses it also
reduces the bargaining ability when looking for potential opportunities as
there is a lengthy transfer process that requires new employer to spend money.

Another practice that I have seen happen lately is (atleast common in
employers like amazon etc) is that the younglings that get hired on H1B get a
fairly low level position like engineer-I. they are then told that they are
ineligible for green card processing until they get to next level. so in
effect they are either working 60+ hours a week eyeing for that promotion or
just burning their early years out of scarce 6 years limit. Honestly I dont
know how is this legal. then there is matter of green card processing and prio
date regression which is a whole another can of worms. IMHO at the salaries
most young indians are coming to valley and given the rise of startup
ecosystem in india, its almost not worth it especially if you look at cost of
living here.

One more thing, often immigrant managers who themselves have hone through the
process or are aware of intricacies are the worst exploiters as they know when
employees are most vulnerable. Lastly, Dont even get me started on the
'consulting' micro body shops that do shit thats clearly illegal & would land
the employee is fair bit of trouble if detected.

I definitely have to applaud trump for doing something about this even if
under the guise of xenofobia. that said 130k limit will definitely have effect
on the small body shops that are exploitative as hell.

there is one positive thing that happened in last few years which should be
preserved, its the ability for dependent spouse (H4) visa to find employment.
the wifes that come over here are fairly well educated & have carriers of
there own. they often fall into isolation and get depressed due to lack of
social circle & opportunities. I wish that still remains viable.

------
darioush
Another category of immigrants who'd benefit from such a situation is the
"grad student visa" students.

The US academic system (in STEM) has for too long relied on "free labor" of
hard working, poorly treated grad students from countries like India, China,
and Iran (paid minimum wage, often not adjusted for high living costs of
cities like LA or Seattle). US students often don't go to grad school because
as engineers they'd earn a lot of money and are less susceptible to being
poorly treated by their boss. The visa is technically non-immigrant, but
students often then get H1B jobs (yay for more abuse).

The whole thing is a travesty. This is pretty much exploiting other countries
for natural resources, except instead of resources we exploit them for talent.

------
sulam
Speaking as someone who has hired H1-B's in the past, there really do seem to
be two tiers. There's the companies/organizations that are truly abusing the
system and then there are the traditional tech companies who are happy to hire
anyone qualified, no matter where they are from, and pay and promote them the
same as other employees. They also sponsor green cards. Competition between
these employers has gotten to the point where they mostly all do the
sponsorship immediately, too, reducing the time the person is "stuck" in the
job to around a year (not great, but not horrible -- most people are "stuck"
in their job that long so that they will at least vest some of their stock-
based compensation).

One example: I hired an engineer who I'm going to anonymously name Bob. Bob
was at Yahoo and on an H1-B. Yahoo was his first employer in SV, he had gone
to CMU. He interviewed reasonably well, not amazingly, but had experience and
interest in a specialty that many people aren't interested in. At the time we
were trying to take a team of these people from 2 or 3 engineers to 20, so we
were pretty excited. Bob also got an offer from Netflix. Netflix, if you don't
know, gives offers that are basically "all-in" \-- you can take the entire
offer as cash, or you can parse it out and use some of it for health care,
stock, etc -- your choice. The end result is that matching Netflix offers is
very expensive. We mostly matched the Netflix offer (we felt our stock was
going to have more upside -- which ended up being very true). I had to do
extra work for this person to get them hired above and beyond what I'd have to
do for an American. Then I had to do even more work to get the employer part
of the green card process started. I had to help them navigate getting
required documentation from Yahoo. Bob got promoted on a similar schedule to
other people and as far as I know is still happily employed, now with a green
card application that will transfer with them to any other employer they move
to.

I would have _happily_ hired locally, and in fact most of the people I hired
for that team were US citizens, Bob was one of 3 H1-Bs. He was from India,
another was from Singapore, and the third was from France. They were all very
talented engineers and any company would hire them in their specialty in a
heartbeat.

I find it hard to say the workers in either of the two camps are particularly
exploited (at least once they're in the country -- I've read ugly things about
how they go into debt to be able to get these positions in the first placed).
They are being paid fair market value for the work they are doing. The money
they're making is far in excess of what they earn elsewhere -- that's why they
go through the lengths they go through to get these jobs in the first place.
If they have the ability to get hired at a more traditional tech company, that
company will take over sponsorship of their H1-B with very little complication
-- demand is effectively infinite for good engineers who are happy to work.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
They are only being paid fair market value because the H-1Bs are suppressing
the fair market value. Without the H-1Bs you would have had to pay more, and
that "more" would have been the fair market value.

You say "matching Netflix offers is very expensive": again, no, matching
Netflix offers is the fair market rate, and without H-1Bs, the rate would be
higher. Indeed, unless you are a well known company, you should expect to have
to pay more than Netflix, since Netflix's offer also prices in the stability
and prestige of working at Netflix.

Which is to say, the "expensive" Netflix wage is actually _less_ than fair
market value.

~~~
sulam
Arguing with strangers on the Internet is not something I enjoy, so I'll just
point out some details of this that I either didn't cover or that were
apparently overlooked.

1) We actually did match Netflix's offer in total comp, by offering Bob a mix
of base salary and stock that exceeded the total value of their Netflix offer
significantly. The difference is that Netflix's offer was all cash. It is very
hard to compare a Netflix offer to a pre-IPO Twitter offer except in
hindsight. Bob, a market participant, ended up picking the better offer.

2) I truly question whether H1-B's are lowering the fair market value at the
tech companies I've worked at, have had offers from, or have had to counter
offers from. Via these three means I've gotten a good handle on what people
pay at the top tech companies in SV, and as far as I have been able to
determine the supply of H1-Bs who can get through an interview process is so
greatly outstripped by the demand for such engineers, there is effectively no
impact to salaries. H1-Bs are a very small proportion of SV hiring, and are
probably even smaller outside SV, _except_ for the companies that I called out
in my initial post on this thread who I agree are abusing the system.
Engineers working at those firms aren't showing up in my recruiting pipeline,
much less getting offers, so they have zero impact on the market for top
engineering talent.

If you're trying to say that the addition of even a single qualified candidate
into the hiring pool lowers what we pay a developer, you don't understand how
engineering hiring works at tech companies.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
I applaud you for paying H1B the same as your other employees. I was an H1B
myself in SV. My experience, and those of my peers, differs greatly from your
experience.

To answer some of your points here:

> It is very hard to compare a Netflix offer to a pre-IPO Twitter offer except
> in hindsight.

No, its not hard. There's overwhelming evidence that the expected future value
of a pre-IPO start-up is zero. Its a lottery. Might as well contract "we'll
buy you a lottery ticket every week you are an employee".

>If you're trying to say that the addition of even a single qualified
candidate

Is that what I said tho? What about 80,000 candidates? What about 30,000
candidates that are hired by contracting organizations with the express
purpose of moving US jobs offshore? Isn't that the antithesis of H1B visas?
Isn't that perjury?

~~~
sulam
Your last example is an instance of the other class of employer I mentioned.
They are clearly abusing the system. I would love for the H1-B to be fixed so
that they aren't able to take advantage, although I think the law of
unintended consequences may well kick in. The proximate thing that would do
for the H1-Bs I've known is make it so that they aren't sweating bullets to
see if they got lucky in the lottery.

Re: future value being zero, um, no. You can argue that the expected value is
low, but it's certainly not zero. I personally am financially independent
because of Twitter's IPO, and I've been through another IPO since which has
made me money. People at Google did well in their IPO, Facebook people also
did well. Some IPOs people didn't do so well (Box is the most well-known
recent example, but there are many where people ended up with 10's or maybe
100's of thousands of dollars when they were hoping for millions -- still not
zero tho).

And speaking of lotteries -- lottery tickets generally have lower expected
value, but even in this example there are exceptions.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-
invests-5-million...](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-
invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html)

Then there are the startups where you don't go public, but get acquired by a
public company. Those often net the staff something meaningful tied to hitting
a post-acquisition milestone. They may not be directly tied to stock (common
shareholders get wiped out), but it is correlated. So even in some significant
percentage of the failure cases you aren't wasting time negotiating for more
stock.

At any rate, if you truly believe stock is worth nothing and should be
completely discounted, fine. You're not Bob. Bob believed differently, behaved
according to his belief, and most importantly Bob did better financially
because of his decision -- and in a relatively short time frame.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
And here's Lloyd [0]. Lloyd won $5m. Does Lloyd's experience inform us about
buying lottery tickets any more or less than Bob's? Is Bob representative?

Hey, look, if you can get a full salary, benefits _and_ stock, then you're not
losing anything. But anyone who sacrifices salary in the expectation that the
stock options are going to be bigger is just playing the lottery.

[0] [http://www.calottery.com/media/press-releases/press-
release?...](http://www.calottery.com/media/press-releases/press-
release?Item={1987F4CC-291F-4A70-8C00-01E441A12CE5})

~~~
sulam
My point is simply calculating expected value. If you can't actually do that
calculation, there are a lot of activities you should stay away from. The
lottery, poker, and startups all immediately come to mind. You may also want
to reconsider getting in a car or crossing the street. Low probability of an
event multiplied by a large outcome is not zero. It may be low (I do get in
cars and cross the street) but people do regularly win the lottery, make money
from stock, hit a straight on the river, and get hit by cars.

------
Chris2048
Cheap labor isn't the only issue here.

Wage theft in the form of _capping competition_ is the big issue.

Assume the rate of salary change dS(t)/dt is propotional-to/a-function-of
(average_labor_demand - average_labor_supply)

Now, if you keep topping up supply from overseas, salary never increases as
much as it might, as such it is limited - as such, salary rate increase is
also capped; and it's not employees can have any relief from a lack of demand,
other than maybe fewer visas, but I doubt there would be many lobbyists for
that... complaints about unemployment or lack of jobs falls on deaf ears -
ears stuffed full of money by happy employers...

~~~
okreallywtf
Just to play devils advocate, wouldn't it eventually even out then because
high demand and lower wages here would mean that other countries with a tech
sector would have high wages and would then be more appealing, which would
encourage H1B visa seekers to consider going elsewhere or would even lure more
talent from the US overseas.

Granted, like many market-based arguments I make a lot of assumptions about
how easily people can move around. Immigrating is hard and once you've
immigrated successfully you may not be willing to take the risk of ending up
back in the repressive regime you came from (hence, a lot of the issues we
have right now) and people in the US may not be nearly as willing to leave the
US and go elsewhere. But theoretically (if not in reality) more mobility and
access to labor is a good thing.

~~~
Chris2048
This would work if all countries were equally desirable, and capable of
supporting the same economy. Maybe the US is competing with Europe? But at the
moment US salaries are considerably higher.

------
ChicagoDave
I can't count how many colleagues I've talked to that are in a stuck-employer
situation. Some are happy, but some are miserable. I'm also aware that some of
the people with H1-B's are family members that actually don't know anything
about technology and don't belong in any job anywhere in technology.

I'm also aware (being 53) that my livelihood is directly tied to the number
and type of H1-B visas in the U.S. I can't stand Trump, but on this issue he
has a valid beef.

It's all a cluster-F and the system should be changed to treat foreign workers
well and to make sure U.S. workers have opportunities.

~~~
rarec
When you've got a few bad actors abusing the system, all pay for it. There's a
reason we can't have nice things.

------
ocschwar
We can discuss the economics of the H-1B visa program at such a time as we
have a president who's capable of discussing the economics of the H1B visa
program.

Right now, however, we have an administration that's intent on ratcheting up
ethnic tensions, and there's 100% probability that they will use the H1B
debate as a pretext for casting aspersions at the entire Indian nation,
including Indian-descended natural born Americans.

I'd rather keep on earning my H1-B depressed wage rate for my job than risk
yet another hit against my country's credibility thanks to president banana's
divide and rule strategy.

------
patrickg_zill
It's not only SV, it is also the firms that supply telecom engineers under
contract to the big mobile operators and related, such as Nokia, Ericsson,
T-Mobile/ATT/Verizon/Sprint etc.

------
Nano2rad
Indian companies start subsidiaries in US so that they can send invitation to
workers in India so they get H-1b visa. The companies requesting H-1b visas
have to be American, Indian companies or companies working for contract to US
companies should not be allowed to request H1-b visas. THe US IT workers also
have to change; they have to accept some work will be outsourced and their job
is now more like participating and controlling outsourcing for their employer.

------
vpl0512
These are witch hunting cases. Why didn't government took action against these
companies who are buying services from companies like TCS, HCL? Why demonizing
younger and talented foreigners and enforcing hypothesis based on these 5%
wrong cases? Where is your study when these people get selected in touch
interviews at places like FB, Google, Linkedin? Branding H1B people as "Cheap
Labor" is an old fashion and the saga continues at alarming rate.

------
Johnny555
The author seems to disregard studies that don't back up the claim:

 _Academics with industry funding claim otherwise, but one can see how it
makes basic economic sense..._

------
joeblau
I actually saw this with a few of my colleagues that worked at Amazon. There
was one superb engineering — one of the best Android developers I've ever
worked with. Our project ended and, I had the freedom to leave Amazon and jump
to another company (which I did), but he was stuck. He ended up having to move
his family from SF to Seattle just to keep his job all in hopes that he didn't
screw up his H-1B visa process.

------
HillaryBriss
Part of the compensation is the possibility of permanent residency in the US.
This is quite valuable. The employer does not actually pay for that benefit.

------
valuearb
When the SuperCollider project shut down I was fortunate enough to be able to
use H1B hire a japanese physicist who worked on it. Cost $20K IIRC. One of
best hires I ever made, his work ended up creating about 20 high paid
permanent jobs in our company.

I would have happily given him citizenship, was just glad he didn't end up
working for our over-seas competitors.

------
brendangregg
The article mentions reseting the green card clock as a way to render workers
de facto indentured servants, but unfortunately that's not the only way. One
immigration lawyer explained this all to me as "cost effective employee
retention". Fixing salaries is good, but I wonder about fixing immobility as
well.

------
MaysonL
Of course, Trump hired quite a few H1-B workers himself:
[http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/18/news/economy/trump-
maralago/...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/18/news/economy/trump-
maralago/index.html)

~~~
ojbyrne
Just to be precise, those are H-2B visas (it says that right in the article)
which is a different program.

[https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
worker...](https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
workers/h-2b-temporary-non-agricultural-workers)

------
myrandomcomment
So logically I can agree with this however in practice at my startups this is
just not true. Maybe it is because we never got that big before I went to do
the next startup. I left at around 500 people in the last big one that IPO'd.
(They are now over 3K - I was in the 1st 30). At my current startup we are
~50.

In both startups finding qualified engineers was the issue always. We did not
care if where they came from, just that they could pass the interview process.
We would interview 250 and maybe find one person. The goal was top 1%. I once
asked the VP of Software if we could make it the top 5% and he said "can you
tell me how to tell the difference between the top 1% the top 5% vs the rest?
1% is simple, anything below that you make mistakes."

For the 1st ~250ish people the difference between top 1% and the rest was huge
and those top people made a world of difference to the success of the company.

I guess if you are a company with 1000s then the H1-B money game makes more
sense. For a small startup, it is the talent that counts, not where they are
from.

------
gcb0
trump is rigth and wrong.

the visas are abused. seen it first hand.

but it can also be fixed by removing the artificial wait for some
nationalities. doesn't he want to repel tons lof laws. here's an opportunity
to solve both at the same time.

creating yet more legislation and rules will make the problem worse.

------
plandis
It's not all of tech companies. Even if you bump up the minimum without proof
to $130,000, the biggest tech companies are already paying over that to
H1-B's.

------
tn13
H1B employees being exploited works in Murica's favor. It means American
companies are more competitive at the expense of some Rajesh from Chennai.
This is something Trump should love.

Even if American companies are paying lower wages I don't see the problem. It
helps American companies make more profit and lower prices for American
consumers. Something that we all must cheer.

Some people argue that it lowers the wages of neo-native people. It is good
too. We all would love a cheaper electrician, cheaper plumber, cheaper burger
flipper, cheaper doctor what is so wrong with cheaper coder ? It benefits the
entire society.

~~~
reddytowns
If Rajesh from Chennai is sending all his money back to Chennai, Americans
won't have the funds to benefit from the lower prices. You can see a just
released Hollywood movie in the theatre for $3 in Indonesia, that doesn't mean
it's better to live there.

~~~
tn13
> If Rajesh from Chennai is sending all his money back to Chennai, Americans
> won't have the funds to benefit from the lower prices.

LOL! That is mistaking money for value. If Rajesh sends the money back to
Chennai it will very likely increase the value of money for Americans which
affects the poorest of poor in a very good way.

I would however worry more about Rajesh maxing out his credit cards and then
catching flight to India. :P

------
hfourm
foreign service markets become more attractive, americans again lose jobs to
outsourcing, will be interesting to see how this plays out. I certainly think
in the short term it will be better for the American worker (in terms of
employment, mobility, higher wages), but long term?

------
Qub3d
HuffPo says trump is right? People must be having a snowball fight in hell
right now...

------
pmoriarty
Oh that vicious liberal media. They're really sticking it to him, aren't they?

~~~
buckbova
Find another positive story out of the two dozen Trump hit pieces
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/).

------
lgleason
wanna know why tech companies are anti-Trump and against his immigration ban?
Because they actually care about immigrants and human rights or because it
will affect their bottom line. Hint, follow the money.....

------
ehosca
just make the H1-B visa transportable (not tied to an employer) and the
problem fixes itself.

------
niceperson
Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to ~~ Pay Low Wages to Immigrants ~~ give
immigrants jobs

------
spoiledtechie
The HP is reporting on something positive about Trump?

I just saw a Unicorn! Wow.

------
master_yoda_1
I totally agree with the article.

------
general_ai
The real news here is that HuffPo agrees with Trump. I thought their editorial
policy was to interpret everything Trump says in the most low-IQ and paranoid
way possible. Someone needs to call them and ask if everything is OK.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
> overestimation of Russia's danger on the US and EU

Depends what you mean by “EU”. Western Europe? Sure, Russia maybe isn't a big
deal for them. But the Baltic states, which are EU and NATO member states,
understandably consider their next-door neighbour a huge threat.

~~~
myf01d
What would a big country benefit from invading its weak neighbor in the 21st
century? Putin isn't an angle but he is surely not Europe's or US' enemy like
the liberal media is trying hard to push that narrative. Many of the Baltic
states are inexplicably pushing the west towards a pointless conflict with
Russia. It's just like Georgia in 2008 or maybe even like Poland with Nazi
Germany in late 1930s.

~~~
tdeck
> What would a big country benefit from invading its weak neighbor in the 21st
> century?

You're asking this as if it didn't already happen in Ukraine.

~~~
Simaramis
Isn't it true that Ukraine has never been an independent state except since
the fall of the USSR? In its history? Except for 2 weeks after WWII? It has
always been a fertile land, agrarian, impossible to defend due to no natural
boundaries, its people of fiercely independent mind, yet, having been rolled
over by Poles, Russians, Vikings, Norsman repeatedly and periodically
throughout history? That would be the context. I would even go as far as
saying that Donbass and Crimea are not to be counted as Ukraine, historically?

~~~
steevenwee
Most of your claims are false. And for argument sake if they were true, let's
face it: Ukraine not only was independent since 1991, but it's territory
integrity was guaranteed by Russia and USA.

~~~
Simaramis
I would only request that it should be viewed in context of its history.
Especially if we might decide to enshrine the world in more war over it. It is
in its current state a construct, without a foundation. To reach peace, a
compromise must be reached.

~~~
steevenwee
'I would only request that it should be viewed in context of its history.' THE
context of its history is that Ukraine was independent longer than the USA
exists. And even despite that fact, the post-soviet era requires borders to be
intact in order to reach peace. If we'll let this go, that would mean that it
is 'ok' to invade countries and we would fall down back into world wars times.
*And by invading countries, I mean grabbing someone's else land and declaring
it your own.

------
youdontknowtho
Blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes...

~~~
ars
So when he does something you disagree with, he's evil?

When he does something you agree with he's still evil, he just did it
accidentally?

And this is your chosen approach regarding people who disagree with you?

~~~
tomtheelder
You're really putting words in their mouth, they never called him evil, not by
a long shot. They were just pointing out that this is only one potentially
positive facet of a whole series of deeply questionable policies on trade and
immigration.

Not a hugely productive comment, but not worthy of the scorn you gave it.

~~~
ihsw
I don't find his efforts to secure the country's borders questionable in the
least, as a matter of fact I find it refreshing that a political leader
follows through on his campaign promises.

