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One of America's greatest assets is its brand as a place worth immigrating too. Much of the social capital is gained by high performing international hires who

by d_sem 1y ago

One of America's greatest assets is its brand as a place worth immigrating too. Much of the social capital is gained by high performing international hires who leverage the H-1B visa. We want methods for highly educated people to make the US their home. limiting this is short sighted and negatively impact the health of the country.

colechristensen 1y ago
We shouldn't be arguing yes or no, but instead "how much". Charging a yearly fee to offset how H1-B is abused for cheap labor instead of high performers makes sense. Making that fee $100,000 with arbitrary waivers for friends of the administration is absurd.
- amluto 1y ago
  Or maybe… make H-1B labor not be cheap. Give H-1B visa holders the same ability to change jobs and negotiate wages effectively that citizens and permanent residents have and give some teeth to the rules that sponsors may not underlay them.
  - Detrytus 1y ago
    The problem is: if you do that, then you need to create a big government agency that will interview the potential candidates, evaluating their value on the job market, in order to grant them a visa. Right now that job is done by their sponsoring employer, but if you give people ability to change jobs freely then employers lose any incentive to do so.
    - groceryheist 1y ago
      You can still require people to sustain employment in their field. Maybe companies can attest that a particular role classification requires a type of high-end talent. Auditing or otherwise verifying the attestation addresses the current allegations that H1-Bs are given for some jobs not requiring high-end talent.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
        Having managed people on H1Bs (and therefore been intimately involved with the process) the problems with switching jobs are not the requirements. You’re only allowed to switch to a similar job or a “better” job in a similar line of work. The problem is that the mechanics of the switching process is extremely cumbersome. Some of the relevant documents are held by your current employer and not with you. The new employer effectively needs to apply for a new application minus the lottery system. There are significant weeks to months worth of delays for the new employers to get approvals, so most H1B employees that transfer are actually working provisionally on the basis of their new approval still being pending. They are very limited in terms of traveling etc during this period. There are significant risks to changing your job when you’re approaching the end of your current H1B visa expiry. This was particularly bad for Chinese applicants who unlike most other nations’s applicants who got 3 year approvals, usually only got 1 year approvals. The real problem in switching jobs aren’t the policies but the extreme uncertainty and bureaucracy involved in doing so.
    - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
      Employers are still incentivized to sponsor people who they want to hire, because they want to hire that person, they want the job done, and they couldn't find anyone else to do the job. They just have to keep the compensation and working conditions competitive enough to retain their worker.
    - tracker1 1y ago
      $100k/yr fee could definitely cover the cost of people doing said interviews/research into if the company is complying with Da Rules so to speak. Not to mention posting jobs well below market rates.
  - steventhedev 1y ago
    No. The H1-B visa is intended for bringing specific technical expertise that does not exist in the US for a set period of time. This is why one of the requirements is that you must have interviewed US persons first. Its the same reason it's a nonimmigration visa. The rampant abuse of the visa has a remedy - criminal charges against the HR directors of any company who is found to have committed fraud, and capping the number of visas per company (setting up many shell companies is a strong signal that fraud is being committed). If an H1-B worker can't negotiate on a global level for their expertise - they should not be on that visa.
    - khuey 1y ago
      > This is why one of the requirements is that you must have interviewed US persons first. This is generally not a requirement for an H-1B. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruitment https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruit...
      - steventhedev 1y ago
        Reading through that I stand corrected. Thank you for sharing a link. At the same time, if a US person applies and is similarly qualified, they must be offered the job. Which is trivially abuseable by offering substantially less for the H-1B position. I'm not sure if there's an easy policy solution for that.
    - Saline9515 1y ago
      There are 85,000 visas emitted every year. Such measure isn't consistently enforceable as you can't really investigate each visa. As a result, it will be considered by the main offenders as a cost of doing business spread out across thousands of applications.
      - tick_tock_tick 1y ago
        > Such measure isn't consistently enforceable as you can't really investigate each visa You don't have to look at every single one lying on government forms is fraud start putting at the company who signed off and the person brought over (before they are deported) in jail for a couple of years and people will clean up their act real quick.
- groceryheist 1y ago
  The huge fee won't solve the cheap labor problem, only shift the equilibrium. The USA Tech job market faces increasing competition from Canada and Eastern and Southern European countries with lower wages but competitive talent better than available from generalist outsourcing. The new policy accelerates this trend as companies will seek to transplant workers from the USA into other countries. This is bad for American workers whose status as the geographic center of the organization declines. In my view, the real problem with the H1-B program stems from the sponsorship system which ties each employee to a particular company and role. Unable to leave their position without threatening their residency, they are more willing to demand abuse (e.g., long working hours, poor leadership, subpar compensation) than the labor market requires. An improvement to the program would make it easier for people to change job. Perhaps the government could permit highly skilled individuals to qualify personally for the visa so long as they sustain employment in their field.
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago
    > Perhaps the government could permit highly skilled individuals to qualify personally for the visa so long as they sustain employment in their field. That is kind of how it works: when I was on a H1B I did look at switching jobs and had an offer from a company who would sponsor me. They need to file a Labor Condition Application to show that the position qualified for a H1B worker, but you can start working as soon as the LCA is approved if you already have the visa, while the I129 is processed.
    - lovich 1y ago
      That is mechanically different. All the leverage is in the hands of the companies seeking out cheap labor in that case. I actually don’t think it should be like the poster you replied to suggested where the immigrant employee in question needs to maintain employment. I would advocate that we structure employment visas like we do marriage visas which would mean we calculate whatever the total cost of the drain on our system would be if the new immigrant wasn’t working, charge the company that much to have them enter, and then the employee is free to quit immediately if they feel it’s in their interests
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  I don’t understand the logic behind why companies will be willing to pay an Indian $160k to work for them in the U.S. but will not be willing to pay the exact same Indian $50k to work from India. This may have an effect at the margins where the company is contractually or due to some rare product specific reason required to have the person be within the U.S. But the vast majority of H1Bs are working for major tech companies that have massive campuses all over the world.
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago
    It’s the same logic as RTO.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - xyzzy123 1y ago
    There are a few different scenarios but outsourcing firms / consulting (infosys, tcs, wipro etc) take up about 1/2 the tech h1bs. As a body shop you can charge a higher rate and get bigger margins on an on-shore body. I see your point about faangs and direct hires though. I suppose they must believe that something about being in the U.S. makes those people more productive or their output more valuable.
  - baq 1y ago
    time zone premium.
    - tracker1 1y ago
      +this ... it's already the reason there isn't more outsourcing than there already is. Product owners and project managers don't want to work odd hours or have to be embedded in overseas offices to be effective.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    Clients pay a premium to see the bodies, especially from the comfort of their own offices. I assume it's a fetish thing.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  The solution proposed elsewhere of doing it Dutch auction style, award the quota from highest salary bid to lowest, fixes the whole thing very straightforward. But people loathe common sense, so that wouldn't do. And it's not dramatic and aggressive enough for Trump.
827a 1y ago
We issue 85,000 H1-B visas every year. Last year, there were 442,000 applications. Its supply and demand. If you think any of these changes will cause fewer than 85,000 H1-B applications, then that is a good reason to believe that these changes might negatively impact the United States as a migration destination. However, with that added context and framing, I hope you'll agree that it won't; there's still going to be a smaller, but growing, number of people applying for the H1-B every year. Increasing the number of H1-B visas has very little support from both sides of the isle. The 65,000+20,000 number was set, if you can believe it, 35 years ago. There were one or two temporary increases, but since 2005 its stayed at that 85,000 number.
- claw-el 1y ago
  I believe the main ‘change’ of this $100,000 fee is the composition of labor. A doctor applies for H1B too and various other non-tech job applies for H1B too. Startups and hospitals have a much higher chance to not willing to pay for the fee and we will just end up with less ‘doctors’ in the 85,000 H1B visa approvals.
  - 827a 1y ago
    Its a fair point, but this $100,000 fee should not have been the flashpoint causing half the United States to care about this issue, and it being the flashpoint has got us arguing for the wrong thing. Immigrant doctors should have their own visa classification. There's no reason they should be competing in the H1-B lottery with Big Tech, especially now that its so expensive. That isn't on the table right now. Its possible that it could be, as sometimes you need to have a problem before people will feel incentivized to solve it. On the other hand: We've had a serious medical care provider shortage since, like, the early 2000s; over 20 years of Bush (R), Obama (D), Trump (R), and Biden (D) to have solved this obvious problem; and no one has. Chesterton's Fence sometimes exists for a reason.
    - claw-el 1y ago
      I want to clarify that I am not trying to argue but genuinely curious what is the ‘right solve’ here. If we create an exception for doctors, what about ‘medical lab technicians’, ‘wastewater treatment professionals’ or ‘air traffic controller’? All these jobs faces shortage in US right now. If we leave it up to the executive branch at the time to determine exceptions, we will just end up in a situation in exceptions going to the industry with the ‘best’ lobbyist. I am not in a position to decide a policy like this, but I have a wild idea. Why not lower the application fee for H1B (or make it free) or even make it super easy to apply. Right now, the companies that are willing to abuse the H1B system will do so because they know the higher the application fee, the less competition they have to get those 85,000 slots. If every doctor, speech therapist, medical lab technologist is applying for H1B, it would totally crowd out the H1B abusers and it might no longer be worth it for them to try to game the system. Just musing on ideas, not that I can implement any of these.
charcircuit 1y ago
>We want methods for highly educated people to make the US their home. Who is we?
- vkou 1y ago
  People who recognize that countries become wealthy when people do useful work in them. An educated, young person doing useful work that comes to your country is a massive gift, and a debit to the country they have left.
  - Saline9515 1y ago
    Highly educated US graduates currently experience difficulties in landing a first job[0]. Should they or the foreign workers be prioritized? [0] https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/jobs-unemployment-rise-young-people-ce4704d8 https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/jobs-unemployment-rise-youn...
    - vkou 1y ago
      Let me flip it around for you. Would the country benefit if skilled young people started fleeing it? People that you've invested decades of labour and education into? Surely, this would be great news for the ones who remained. Why shouldn't we pursue policies that result in just that? --- If net emigration of that demographic wouldn't be a net benefit, why do you think the reverse is a net harm?
      - Saline9515 1y ago
        A democratic State is supposed to work in the interests of all of its citizens. Degrading the economic environment to lead young graduates to "flee" is clearly against this mandate. The strategy that you mention is however used, with success by countries that are either dictatorships (e.g Algeria) or that have too many men, due to archaic sexist traditions of aborting females (e.g India). Maybe you'd prefer that the USA become more like those two examples?
sjzisjjsj 1y ago
> One of America's greatest assets is its brand as a place worth immigrating too Not really, no. That’s mostly propaganda that got pushed hard in the 60s - right around the time the wealth gap really started growing and hasn’t stopped ever since. The only reasonable argument for any immigration is if it equally enriches all us citizens. Given the ever increasing wealth gap this is obviously not the case. The alternative is: no immigration, focus on increasing native births by ensuring it’s easy to have a large family. Ensure our elites have a sense of “noblesse oblige” and are self sacrificing instead of chasing profit. Some minor level of immigration is fine (for the Werner von Braun types), but staffing companies that build iPhones and gambling websites is not a good use of our resources. All of my immigrant friends mention they’ll return to their home country if things get bad here. This is my home country, and I want my country filled with people who are here because they see it as their home, not a business transaction. I have nowhere else to go.
- sephamorr 1y ago
  In their defense, if "things get bad", they probably lose their job and will be forced to leave. It's hard to put down permanent roots if you can be kicked out in 90 days.
- macintux 1y ago
  > The only reasonable argument for any immigration is if it equally enriches all us citizens. Name any economic policy that will equally enrich all citizens. That seems like a ridiculous bar to meet. Immigration obviously dates back far, far before the 1960s. What in the world leads you to believe that it’s responsible for the current (admittedly massive) inequalities we face?
  - sjzisjjsj 1y ago
    > What in the world leads you to believe that it’s responsible for the current (admittedly massive) inequalities we face? It’s a symptom of the problem not the primary cause. Our real issue is elites that view us as cattle. Rulers that care about their people take a much more measured approach to immigration. And yes, obviously pedantic equality is not achievable. I want more roads, trains, healthcare etc and less IPOs.
mikert89 1y ago
"One of America's greatest assets is its brand as a place worth immigrating too" Rich people started playing this on repeat while they crushed the standard of living via immigration and low interest rates
- pjc50 1y ago
  Historical question: at what date do people think immigration started becoming a net negative to the US? The Mayflower?
  - sjzisjjsj 1y ago
    Hart cellar laid the groundwork and more recently the immigration act of 1990 and lack of southern border enforcement.
  - mikert89 1y ago
    1960s
    - trextrex 1y ago
      When people from outside Europe started migrating to the USA? What a coincidence.
AngryData 1y ago
I guess the question then is, does H1-B actually make people want to live in the US? Or is it just a good way to earn some money and experience while they are young and then move back home and start their own business with their capital that goes much farther there? Because that is what it seems like it is best setup for since you can be given the boot and deported on short notice by the whim of a corporate manager.
- foogazi 1y ago
  > does H1-B actually make people want to live in the US? Yes, H1-B is a dual intent visa that can be converted to a green card The visa holder enters as a temporary worker but is not penalized for having an intent to immigrate permanently- (as opposed to a travel visa where you must prove permanent ties to another country)
- pjc50 1y ago
  > does H1-B actually make people want to live in the US? People want to live in the US, and earn US wages. H1B is just one vehicle for that.
dentemple 1y ago
I was once brought in to a Fortune500 company to teach basic ENTRY LEVEL web development to a room full of supposedly "highly educated" H-1B Software Engineers. Much of my presentation included things that most of my unemployed American colleagues, all of whom were actively looking for work, already knew how to do implicitly. Because it literally was just basic, "This is how flexbox works"-type of stuff. Maybe the H-1B program is a great program for hospitals. For tech, it is 100% being used to import cheap, disposable labor in a way that harms U.S. citizens economically.
- trhway 1y ago
  > For tech, it is 100% being used to import cheap, disposable labor in a way that harms U.S. citizens economically. I'd argue with the 100% - we all know the companies that do it. They get about half of H1B visas. So 50% :) The blanket $100K (instead of say tiering it like raising fee $50K for each next 20K tier of visas with the $250K fee visas no subject to the cap - if only Tramp knew anything about business and specifically price differentiation :) would definitely revive interest for outsourcing to offshore. Managing AI agents have some similarity to managing offshore teams. This time the offshore teams will be using AI agents. May probably lead to much higher performance/output. Being rate limited, i'll answer to the commenter below here: The offshore teams are naturally assigned a well defined chunks of work, at least in a well managed situations. AI agents are also very suitable for that.
  - lucyjojo 1y ago
    > This time the offshore teams will be using AI agents. May probably lead to much higher performance. What do you mean exactly by that. I do not follow...
  - franktankbank 1y ago
    Ahh, so its as simple has having a well managed situation. Easy enough to outsource then. LETS GOOOO!
- roarcher 1y ago
  H1B workers are supposed to be people with qualifications that are in short supply in the United States. The unspoken part is that the "qualification" employers are so desperately searching for is usually the willingness to work for peanuts.
gadders 1y ago
There is a website called jobs.now which has collated all of the H1B jobs that get (quietly) advertised to so that companies can demonstrate that no suitable US person can do the job. Some are legitimately highly skilled, but you also see jobs like: https://www.jobs.now/jobs/164577823-lead-software-engineer https://www.jobs.now/jobs/164577823-lead-software-engineer >>Develop and implement next generation Human Capital Management (HCM) software. >>Requirements: >>Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Informatics, Computer Engineering or related field >>2 years experience in software development >>Develop and implement HCM software solutions for global enterprise >>Create applications on cloud platforms >>Work with Golang and NodeJS >>Participate in full product cycle from wireframes and database models to UI/UX development >>Home telecommute available >>Application Instructions: Send CV to: LS, EPI-USE America, Inc. 303 Perimeter Ctr N., Ste 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 When was the last time you had to post a CV to apply for a job? This blatantly designed to ensure no US person applies (and if anyone in the US is qualified and wants to apply to stop the visa abuse, please do).
- jalapenos 1y ago
  And I'm sure any CVs that do arrive at that address will get "accidentally" fed into a shredder.
jalapenos 1y ago
Very tautological - it's worth immigrating to due to immigration.
franktankbank 1y ago
So you are basically selling chips off the old American block every time you do this "one-weird trick".
insane_dreamer 1y ago
That’s not an accurate representation of H1B in practice. We have O1, EB1, EB2 for what you describe.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
During America's 1900s immigration boom as much as half of the people that came gave up and went back to their home countries, yet more people continued to come.

by d_sem 1y ago

colechristensen 1y ago

We shouldn't be arguing yes or no, but instead "how much". Charging a yearly fee to offset how H1-B is abused for cheap labor instead of high performers makes sense. Making that fee $100,000 with arbitrary waivers for friends of the administration is absurd.

amluto 1y ago
Or maybe… make H-1B labor not be cheap. Give H-1B visa holders the same ability to change jobs and negotiate wages effectively that citizens and permanent residents have and give some teeth to the rules that sponsors may not underlay them.
- Detrytus 1y ago
  The problem is: if you do that, then you need to create a big government agency that will interview the potential candidates, evaluating their value on the job market, in order to grant them a visa. Right now that job is done by their sponsoring employer, but if you give people ability to change jobs freely then employers lose any incentive to do so.
  - groceryheist 1y ago
    You can still require people to sustain employment in their field. Maybe companies can attest that a particular role classification requires a type of high-end talent. Auditing or otherwise verifying the attestation addresses the current allegations that H1-Bs are given for some jobs not requiring high-end talent.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
      Having managed people on H1Bs (and therefore been intimately involved with the process) the problems with switching jobs are not the requirements. You’re only allowed to switch to a similar job or a “better” job in a similar line of work. The problem is that the mechanics of the switching process is extremely cumbersome. Some of the relevant documents are held by your current employer and not with you. The new employer effectively needs to apply for a new application minus the lottery system. There are significant weeks to months worth of delays for the new employers to get approvals, so most H1B employees that transfer are actually working provisionally on the basis of their new approval still being pending. They are very limited in terms of traveling etc during this period. There are significant risks to changing your job when you’re approaching the end of your current H1B visa expiry. This was particularly bad for Chinese applicants who unlike most other nations’s applicants who got 3 year approvals, usually only got 1 year approvals. The real problem in switching jobs aren’t the policies but the extreme uncertainty and bureaucracy involved in doing so.
  - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
    Employers are still incentivized to sponsor people who they want to hire, because they want to hire that person, they want the job done, and they couldn't find anyone else to do the job. They just have to keep the compensation and working conditions competitive enough to retain their worker.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    $100k/yr fee could definitely cover the cost of people doing said interviews/research into if the company is complying with Da Rules so to speak. Not to mention posting jobs well below market rates.
- steventhedev 1y ago
  No. The H1-B visa is intended for bringing specific technical expertise that does not exist in the US for a set period of time. This is why one of the requirements is that you must have interviewed US persons first. Its the same reason it's a nonimmigration visa. The rampant abuse of the visa has a remedy - criminal charges against the HR directors of any company who is found to have committed fraud, and capping the number of visas per company (setting up many shell companies is a strong signal that fraud is being committed). If an H1-B worker can't negotiate on a global level for their expertise - they should not be on that visa.
  - khuey 1y ago
    > This is why one of the requirements is that you must have interviewed US persons first. This is generally not a requirement for an H-1B. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruitment https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruit...
    - steventhedev 1y ago
      Reading through that I stand corrected. Thank you for sharing a link. At the same time, if a US person applies and is similarly qualified, they must be offered the job. Which is trivially abuseable by offering substantially less for the H-1B position. I'm not sure if there's an easy policy solution for that.
  - Saline9515 1y ago
    There are 85,000 visas emitted every year. Such measure isn't consistently enforceable as you can't really investigate each visa. As a result, it will be considered by the main offenders as a cost of doing business spread out across thousands of applications.
    - tick_tock_tick 1y ago
      > Such measure isn't consistently enforceable as you can't really investigate each visa You don't have to look at every single one lying on government forms is fraud start putting at the company who signed off and the person brought over (before they are deported) in jail for a couple of years and people will clean up their act real quick.
groceryheist 1y ago
The huge fee won't solve the cheap labor problem, only shift the equilibrium. The USA Tech job market faces increasing competition from Canada and Eastern and Southern European countries with lower wages but competitive talent better than available from generalist outsourcing. The new policy accelerates this trend as companies will seek to transplant workers from the USA into other countries. This is bad for American workers whose status as the geographic center of the organization declines. In my view, the real problem with the H1-B program stems from the sponsorship system which ties each employee to a particular company and role. Unable to leave their position without threatening their residency, they are more willing to demand abuse (e.g., long working hours, poor leadership, subpar compensation) than the labor market requires. An improvement to the program would make it easier for people to change job. Perhaps the government could permit highly skilled individuals to qualify personally for the visa so long as they sustain employment in their field.
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  > Perhaps the government could permit highly skilled individuals to qualify personally for the visa so long as they sustain employment in their field. That is kind of how it works: when I was on a H1B I did look at switching jobs and had an offer from a company who would sponsor me. They need to file a Labor Condition Application to show that the position qualified for a H1B worker, but you can start working as soon as the LCA is approved if you already have the visa, while the I129 is processed.
  - lovich 1y ago
    That is mechanically different. All the leverage is in the hands of the companies seeking out cheap labor in that case. I actually don’t think it should be like the poster you replied to suggested where the immigrant employee in question needs to maintain employment. I would advocate that we structure employment visas like we do marriage visas which would mean we calculate whatever the total cost of the drain on our system would be if the new immigrant wasn’t working, charge the company that much to have them enter, and then the employee is free to quit immediately if they feel it’s in their interests
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
I don’t understand the logic behind why companies will be willing to pay an Indian $160k to work for them in the U.S. but will not be willing to pay the exact same Indian $50k to work from India. This may have an effect at the margins where the company is contractually or due to some rare product specific reason required to have the person be within the U.S. But the vast majority of H1Bs are working for major tech companies that have massive campuses all over the world.
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  It’s the same logic as RTO.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- xyzzy123 1y ago
  There are a few different scenarios but outsourcing firms / consulting (infosys, tcs, wipro etc) take up about 1/2 the tech h1bs. As a body shop you can charge a higher rate and get bigger margins on an on-shore body. I see your point about faangs and direct hires though. I suppose they must believe that something about being in the U.S. makes those people more productive or their output more valuable.
- baq 1y ago
  time zone premium.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    +this ... it's already the reason there isn't more outsourcing than there already is. Product owners and project managers don't want to work odd hours or have to be embedded in overseas offices to be effective.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Clients pay a premium to see the bodies, especially from the comfort of their own offices. I assume it's a fetish thing.
jalapenos 1y ago
The solution proposed elsewhere of doing it Dutch auction style, award the quota from highest salary bid to lowest, fixes the whole thing very straightforward. But people loathe common sense, so that wouldn't do. And it's not dramatic and aggressive enough for Trump.

827a 1y ago

We issue 85,000 H1-B visas every year. Last year, there were 442,000 applications. Its supply and demand. If you think any of these changes will cause fewer than 85,000 H1-B applications, then that is a good reason to believe that these changes might negatively impact the United States as a migration destination. However, with that added context and framing, I hope you'll agree that it won't; there's still going to be a smaller, but growing, number of people applying for the H1-B every year. Increasing the number of H1-B visas has very little support from both sides of the isle. The 65,000+20,000 number was set, if you can believe it, 35 years ago. There were one or two temporary increases, but since 2005 its stayed at that 85,000 number.

claw-el 1y ago
I believe the main ‘change’ of this $100,000 fee is the composition of labor. A doctor applies for H1B too and various other non-tech job applies for H1B too. Startups and hospitals have a much higher chance to not willing to pay for the fee and we will just end up with less ‘doctors’ in the 85,000 H1B visa approvals.
- 827a 1y ago
  Its a fair point, but this $100,000 fee should not have been the flashpoint causing half the United States to care about this issue, and it being the flashpoint has got us arguing for the wrong thing. Immigrant doctors should have their own visa classification. There's no reason they should be competing in the H1-B lottery with Big Tech, especially now that its so expensive. That isn't on the table right now. Its possible that it could be, as sometimes you need to have a problem before people will feel incentivized to solve it. On the other hand: We've had a serious medical care provider shortage since, like, the early 2000s; over 20 years of Bush (R), Obama (D), Trump (R), and Biden (D) to have solved this obvious problem; and no one has. Chesterton's Fence sometimes exists for a reason.
  - claw-el 1y ago
    I want to clarify that I am not trying to argue but genuinely curious what is the ‘right solve’ here. If we create an exception for doctors, what about ‘medical lab technicians’, ‘wastewater treatment professionals’ or ‘air traffic controller’? All these jobs faces shortage in US right now. If we leave it up to the executive branch at the time to determine exceptions, we will just end up in a situation in exceptions going to the industry with the ‘best’ lobbyist. I am not in a position to decide a policy like this, but I have a wild idea. Why not lower the application fee for H1B (or make it free) or even make it super easy to apply. Right now, the companies that are willing to abuse the H1B system will do so because they know the higher the application fee, the less competition they have to get those 85,000 slots. If every doctor, speech therapist, medical lab technologist is applying for H1B, it would totally crowd out the H1B abusers and it might no longer be worth it for them to try to game the system. Just musing on ideas, not that I can implement any of these.

charcircuit 1y ago

>We want methods for highly educated people to make the US their home. Who is we?

vkou 1y ago
People who recognize that countries become wealthy when people do useful work in them. An educated, young person doing useful work that comes to your country is a massive gift, and a debit to the country they have left.
- Saline9515 1y ago
  Highly educated US graduates currently experience difficulties in landing a first job[0]. Should they or the foreign workers be prioritized? [0] https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/jobs-unemployment-rise-young-people-ce4704d8 https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/jobs-unemployment-rise-youn...
  - vkou 1y ago
    Let me flip it around for you. Would the country benefit if skilled young people started fleeing it? People that you've invested decades of labour and education into? Surely, this would be great news for the ones who remained. Why shouldn't we pursue policies that result in just that? --- If net emigration of that demographic wouldn't be a net benefit, why do you think the reverse is a net harm?
    - Saline9515 1y ago
      A democratic State is supposed to work in the interests of all of its citizens. Degrading the economic environment to lead young graduates to "flee" is clearly against this mandate. The strategy that you mention is however used, with success by countries that are either dictatorships (e.g Algeria) or that have too many men, due to archaic sexist traditions of aborting females (e.g India). Maybe you'd prefer that the USA become more like those two examples?

sjzisjjsj 1y ago

> One of America's greatest assets is its brand as a place worth immigrating too Not really, no. That’s mostly propaganda that got pushed hard in the 60s - right around the time the wealth gap really started growing and hasn’t stopped ever since. The only reasonable argument for any immigration is if it equally enriches all us citizens. Given the ever increasing wealth gap this is obviously not the case. The alternative is: no immigration, focus on increasing native births by ensuring it’s easy to have a large family. Ensure our elites have a sense of “noblesse oblige” and are self sacrificing instead of chasing profit. Some minor level of immigration is fine (for the Werner von Braun types), but staffing companies that build iPhones and gambling websites is not a good use of our resources. All of my immigrant friends mention they’ll return to their home country if things get bad here. This is my home country, and I want my country filled with people who are here because they see it as their home, not a business transaction. I have nowhere else to go.

sephamorr 1y ago
In their defense, if "things get bad", they probably lose their job and will be forced to leave. It's hard to put down permanent roots if you can be kicked out in 90 days.
macintux 1y ago
> The only reasonable argument for any immigration is if it equally enriches all us citizens. Name any economic policy that will equally enrich all citizens. That seems like a ridiculous bar to meet. Immigration obviously dates back far, far before the 1960s. What in the world leads you to believe that it’s responsible for the current (admittedly massive) inequalities we face?
- sjzisjjsj 1y ago
  > What in the world leads you to believe that it’s responsible for the current (admittedly massive) inequalities we face? It’s a symptom of the problem not the primary cause. Our real issue is elites that view us as cattle. Rulers that care about their people take a much more measured approach to immigration. And yes, obviously pedantic equality is not achievable. I want more roads, trains, healthcare etc and less IPOs.

mikert89 1y ago

"One of America's greatest assets is its brand as a place worth immigrating too" Rich people started playing this on repeat while they crushed the standard of living via immigration and low interest rates

pjc50 1y ago
Historical question: at what date do people think immigration started becoming a net negative to the US? The Mayflower?
- sjzisjjsj 1y ago
  Hart cellar laid the groundwork and more recently the immigration act of 1990 and lack of southern border enforcement.
- mikert89 1y ago
  1960s
  - trextrex 1y ago
    When people from outside Europe started migrating to the USA? What a coincidence.

AngryData 1y ago

I guess the question then is, does H1-B actually make people want to live in the US? Or is it just a good way to earn some money and experience while they are young and then move back home and start their own business with their capital that goes much farther there? Because that is what it seems like it is best setup for since you can be given the boot and deported on short notice by the whim of a corporate manager.

foogazi 1y ago
> does H1-B actually make people want to live in the US? Yes, H1-B is a dual intent visa that can be converted to a green card The visa holder enters as a temporary worker but is not penalized for having an intent to immigrate permanently- (as opposed to a travel visa where you must prove permanent ties to another country)
pjc50 1y ago
> does H1-B actually make people want to live in the US? People want to live in the US, and earn US wages. H1B is just one vehicle for that.

dentemple 1y ago

I was once brought in to a Fortune500 company to teach basic ENTRY LEVEL web development to a room full of supposedly "highly educated" H-1B Software Engineers. Much of my presentation included things that most of my unemployed American colleagues, all of whom were actively looking for work, already knew how to do implicitly. Because it literally was just basic, "This is how flexbox works"-type of stuff. Maybe the H-1B program is a great program for hospitals. For tech, it is 100% being used to import cheap, disposable labor in a way that harms U.S. citizens economically.

trhway 1y ago
> For tech, it is 100% being used to import cheap, disposable labor in a way that harms U.S. citizens economically. I'd argue with the 100% - we all know the companies that do it. They get about half of H1B visas. So 50% :) The blanket $100K (instead of say tiering it like raising fee $50K for each next 20K tier of visas with the $250K fee visas no subject to the cap - if only Tramp knew anything about business and specifically price differentiation :) would definitely revive interest for outsourcing to offshore. Managing AI agents have some similarity to managing offshore teams. This time the offshore teams will be using AI agents. May probably lead to much higher performance/output. Being rate limited, i'll answer to the commenter below here: The offshore teams are naturally assigned a well defined chunks of work, at least in a well managed situations. AI agents are also very suitable for that.
- lucyjojo 1y ago
  > This time the offshore teams will be using AI agents. May probably lead to much higher performance. What do you mean exactly by that. I do not follow...
- franktankbank 1y ago
  Ahh, so its as simple has having a well managed situation. Easy enough to outsource then. LETS GOOOO!
roarcher 1y ago
H1B workers are supposed to be people with qualifications that are in short supply in the United States. The unspoken part is that the "qualification" employers are so desperately searching for is usually the willingness to work for peanuts.

gadders 1y ago

There is a website called jobs.now which has collated all of the H1B jobs that get (quietly) advertised to so that companies can demonstrate that no suitable US person can do the job. Some are legitimately highly skilled, but you also see jobs like: https://www.jobs.now/jobs/164577823-lead-software-engineer https://www.jobs.now/jobs/164577823-lead-software-engineer >>Develop and implement next generation Human Capital Management (HCM) software. >>Requirements: >>Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Informatics, Computer Engineering or related field >>2 years experience in software development >>Develop and implement HCM software solutions for global enterprise >>Create applications on cloud platforms >>Work with Golang and NodeJS >>Participate in full product cycle from wireframes and database models to UI/UX development >>Home telecommute available >>Application Instructions: Send CV to: LS, EPI-USE America, Inc. 303 Perimeter Ctr N., Ste 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 When was the last time you had to post a CV to apply for a job? This blatantly designed to ensure no US person applies (and if anyone in the US is qualified and wants to apply to stop the visa abuse, please do).

jalapenos 1y ago
And I'm sure any CVs that do arrive at that address will get "accidentally" fed into a shredder.

jalapenos 1y ago

Very tautological - it's worth immigrating to due to immigration.

franktankbank 1y ago

So you are basically selling chips off the old American block every time you do this "one-weird trick".

insane_dreamer 1y ago

That’s not an accurate representation of H1B in practice. We have O1, EB1, EB2 for what you describe.

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

During America's 1900s immigration boom as much as half of the people that came gave up and went back to their home countries, yet more people continued to come.