The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next, generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own business.
To date, as we all know, the H-1b system has primarily been used to arbitrage for lower wage by Indian companies and mostly non-tech big corporates, where they bring in $60k/yr "systems analysts" who are in fact doing $100,000+/yr software engineering roles.
The H1B as it is has many problems, but a big salary floor is not the way to go in my opinion. Remember H1B is not just for tech workers. If you want to hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be absurd.
They instead need to go after the companies that learned to game the system. I'm not sure what the solution is here. A point/demand-based system like other countries have is probably wise, but given the share of mind the US still has in potential emigrants worldwide, and the breadth of different positions available, it'd be a pretty complex (and likely unfair) one.
> If you want to hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be absurd.
Wow, that's a really important point. I'm so in the tech-news bubble that I'd never heard anybody say that before - thanks for pointing that out!
> If you want to hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be absurd.
Thats the POINT. Today it would be absurd, but a successful multipronged plan to bring both manufacturing as well as constricting supply of people with specialized skills, would raise the salary demands of the whole US population.
The H1B salary part of the system hasn't been modified since 1989. $60,000 in 1989 is equivalent to $120,000 in today's dollars. Does that influence your opinion at all?
Congress created a rationale back then, the industry merely used the tools available since then. Congress' rationale did not change, they are both adjusting for inflation as well as responding to the direction the industry actually went. The industry's adaptation is incongruent with the will of Congress.
In 1989 salary increases were still keeping up with the cost of housing. Or were still expecting to. For example. And a protectionist America really could do that again.
Why would that be absurd? A highly specialized skill in an area that we can infer is generally less desirable to live should command a higher than average wage. Much higher if the situation is so desperate that a foreign worker has to be sought.
Also: the majority (by far) of H1-B visas are for technology work. It may not technically be "tech only" but in practice it may as well be.
Many nations have special visa categories for native speakers of foreign languages working as teachers. If that's really a problem then having something like that would probably make more sense.
Usually when I here someone critique the salary floor it's in reference to poorly paid scientists or biologists, as if it's a law of nature that these people should be poorly paid.
It's not a salary floor - $130,000 would be a salary that exempts the application from from "non displacement and recruitment attestation requirements"[1].
For your example the employer could easily show a US worker was not being displaced and could not be recruited. Your example may also be exempt from the H1B numerical cap if the role is with a institution of higher education, a related or affiliated nonprofit entity, a nonprofit research organization, or a governmental research organization.
If the supply of those interpreters is so limited that you have to go outside of the U.S. to find them, then doesn't supply/demand indicate that they should have a high salary?
Agreed. The world is bigger than just tech. Take a look at all the other backgrounds that often get H1Bs. A big one is scientists.
If you made the floor $100K, say goodbye to non-PhD (and some PhD) scientists! And since the demand for PhDs isn't that high (you often have 2-3 non-PhDs reporting to a PhD), say goodbye to a lot of scientists using the H1B.
For example require the company bringing the worker in to post a bond, make it trivial for the imported worker to switch companies, and make the original company to pay the difference between what the worker's salary winds up being and what their new salary is after 2 years if they can't hold on to said worker.
If you're a company that really needs that skill, really can't hire it, and is paying above market wages, then this will not slow your hiring. But if you're trying to hire below market, it would backfire badly on you.
> They instead need to go after the companies that learned to game the system.
I'm not sure if there's a way to prevent global labor arbitrage. Multinational corporations will shift labor to countries with the lowest wages.
Perhaps they should put a multiplying factor on payroll taxes that's proportional to the total non-US labor wages paid (directly or indirectly) for producing a product. All expenses should be default considered as foreign labor-based unless proven otherwise. It would introduce a ton of paperwork initially, but then everyone will be incentivized to produce documentation showing US labor-produced products to prevent the increase in taxes.
With technology today, do we need interpreters in-situ (e-mail, voice, video, etc.)? Also, as we have Americans volunteer abroad for different missions, we too can look for overseas volunteers who could contribute to help in edge-case causes like this.
Hear hear, it was a nightmare getting teachers for my kid's German school in SV: so much H1 uncertainty and they usually all vanished at the wrong time (i.e. all taken before the time when teachers change jobs).
I think that's an edge case that is < .01% of what the H1-B visa is used for. The problem is that 99% of H1-B is being used as most people have described, which is undercutting the market value of engineers.
I think a minimum wage of 100K for all H1-Bs may not work for all roles, it should be a certain percentage above the prevailing market wage specific to that role.
Where I work, they're filling roles of what would have been called an engineering clerk, back in the old days. Jobs for which a BS is an over-qualification. The visa holders are vastly underpaid for their education level, while people who would be a better fit can't get their foot in the door, and get a huge boost to their income, because they don't have a degree.
I think the "as we all know" is that big corporations use the visa program to create, in essence, indentured servitude. People who work for far less than the market-clearing wage for the position, because are beholden to their corporate sponsor. I find it reprehensible, and particularly galling that it's all done in the name of "diversity."
Most visa holders are young and incredibly vulnerable. Combine this with my particular company's absolutely legendarily capricious hire-and-fire cycle (for 30+ years), and they can really stick it to immigrants working for them via subcontracting.
That's exactly it: indentured servants. I wonder if Canada's immigration policy that Microsoft is holding up is geared toward indentured servanthood, or citizenship?
I agree H1s should get Green Cards much faster. The visa employee should also have more flexibility in changing jobs, including when his GC is being processed.
I don't like the "staple a green card" proposals for anyone who gets a STEM masters degree though. Many US Universities have already turned into masters degree mills for people trying to get visas. If Universities were allowed to sell Green Cards the problem would become much much worse.
That sounds like a problem (if it is a problem) that should be addressed by limiting the number of student visas, not by allowing people to get a valuable US education and then telling them to go home.
I've worked with many people on H1Bs and student visas. Every single one of them was a valuable person to work with, and they should be citizens. Maybe universities are becoming green card mills, but in my experience everyone who goes to a US university gets exactly what they bargained for. The law may say otherwise, but in spirit they become Americans.
Again its astounding how many Americans dont realise how the GC process really works. Only 15% of the greencards are handed out to employment based categories, rest go for family reunification. That 15% additional has country of birth quotas etc.
Picking magic numbers is the antithesis of a free market approach for a free country. Make sure people aren't criminals, and tie certain visa types to being mostly self-supporting, but people don't come to the US for the vast social welfare programs. They come for the opportunities and to work.
I think it's $130K, which is 2x as much as before. It's senior level salary in IT (and I think for lawyers and MD's it's not starting salary either), in some cases/states Principal level. I would not invite H1B on that position, I would get one from local market for that amount of money. If you follow the line: it simply says do not use H1B more. Plus, what international student will do once he completes the college, and with quarter of million in debts (say Bachelor only) ? As is now, H1B. Will you hire college fresh grad for 130K ? Don't think so. So...who will come to the college from overseas to study and brig their passion and ideas on this land ? This is USA, this IS a country made, constructed and developed by excellence and hard work of immigrants with their hopes and dreams. Cutting that idea off, putting the country and society in the mood of "preservation", could result in dangerous outcome, as society is not ready for that. This is not Europe and will never be, the rules that work there are not applicable on this land. There is no a notion of "nation" in USA, there is no such thing. It's just a colony of immigrants moved away from their homes to build something they could not there. This is a dream land, this is an opportunity land and should remain such for everyone.
> I would get one from local market for that amount of money.
Wait, why? Are you implying foreign workers are not competent and can't be exceptional? Surely it isn't that?
Otherwise, sounds like then H1B will finally work as intended, you'd be able higher exceptional people from overseas who might not be available in your area? Maybe there is a distributed systems expert from Argentina or a compiler writer from Ghana. For you to reach out to another country, they'll obviously be very qualifies and demand a decent salary.
> Plus, what international student will do once he completes the college, and with quarter of million in debts (say Bachelor only) ?
Go home or get a $130k salary if he is qualified. International student acceptance doesn't somehow guarantee or imply a continuation of stay based on employment. There is (or was) an work program where they can work in the industry as co-op / intern for a year or two. That can probably be expanded.
> Will you hire college fresh grad for 130K ? Don't think so.
Yes I would! There can be exceptional graduates. I have seen and interviewed some. Google / Facebook / Microsoft already pays that much for good graduate and more.
> This is USA, this IS a country made, constructed and developed by excellence and hard work of immigrants with their hopes and dreams.
So if they do such good work we should reward them appropriately by paying them a competitive salary. H1B should not be a way to bring in cheap labor. You can argue there should be other visas for that but H1B shouldn't be that one. And somehow you are tying it to hopes and dream. What about the hopes and dreams of develops working in US?
> There is no a notion of "nation" in USA, there is no such thing.
That is completely bogus. There is a strong notion of a nation here precisely because there is ethnic, religious or other history. If anything Americans are criticized for over-emphasizing their "Americanism".
> It's just a colony of immigrants moved away from their homes to build something they could not there. This is a dream land, this is an opportunity land and should remain such for everyone.
Well if this is a dream surely we don't want ruin that dream for those who are here and suppress their wages.
"There is no a notion of "nation" in USA, there is no such thing."
Oh you mean other than the revolution we fought to be the first nation in the world to establish a secular government based on the principles of natural rights and natural law? This pisses me off something fierce to hear people want all the benifits of the country but not want to learn basic citizenship duties and responsibilities.
Our nation is the Constitution, and you don't know what you are talking about.
The minimum salary could be industry based. For example, 150% of the average wage for that field. If the point of these visas is to bring in talent that America doesn't have, that shouldn't be a problem. These people should be paid above average salaries if they are truly a scarce resource.
How do you prevent loopholes based on industry classification and job switching? Ex. what's going to stop a company from hiring a lower-minimum "design" worker and then having them do 10% design and 90% writing code? We have to assume that companies will attempt to abuse the system any way they can, so a simpler blanket setup for everyone is going to be much more effective than attempting a nuanced setup that would require even more oversight.
As others have pointed out, it would be better to create separate visas with stricter limits for industries that really need them, like high-level interpreters.
>To date, as we all know, the H-1b system has primarily been used to arbitrage for lower wage by Indian companies
This isn't really true, or it is, but only in high profile yet minority cases.
H1B abuse is more about hiring someone at near competitive wages and telling them they're working 60 hour weeks and slowly getting rid of native workers who won't stand for that. So now your IT department is 12 people instead of 20. That's significant cost savings even if you're matching salaries. H1B's aren't typically paid less, they're worked like dogs instead. They can't easily migrate to a new employer, thus the abuse. This is the problem that needs fixing the most. The salary issue is secondary and something of a red herring as you can raise salaries but still have this abuse and it will do nothing for American workers who have been victimized by H1B abusers.
I don't see Trump or anyone addressing the indentured servitude aspects H1B creates. Considering most H1B's are clearing 80-120k, codifying 100k or more will do next to nothing. Worse, the only H1B bill I see has a 130k suggested salary but which can be contested and you can bet every HR company will do that.
These bills are mostly smoke and mirrors. H1B needs to be either completely scrapped or be re-done under a new program to allow H1B holders to switch jobs easily. Ideallym, if these people are truly hard to find hires they should be put on a fast path to naturalization and all costs paid for by the employer instead of this weird middle ground H1B currently creates where you're supposed to be super valuable but naturalization is up in the air. If it costs, say, $250k or more per head to bring them as a flat-fee and to express naturalize them, that'll stop abusive hiring I imagine. Corporations really need to have more skin in the game here and H1B's need to be naturalized quickly to avoid second class status.
>H1B abuse is more about hiring someone at near competitive wages and telling them they're working 60 hour weeks and slowly getting rid of native workers who won't stand for that.
If the native workers won't stand for it, the wages for it aren't actually "near competitive".
Agreed 100%. People seem to be focused entirely on the salary aspect, but my observations match yours quite well. I've worked for almost 10 years in the industry and with numerous H1-Bs, and I can't recall anyone being underpaid in total comp (I've had discussions on pay with a good number of them). However, they were always the yes-men - working long into the night to meet some ridiculous deadline, remoting in on weekends because the boss needed something done etc etc.
near competitive wages and telling them they're working 60 hour weeks
"wage(s)" implies pay per hour worked. If you're spreading "near competitive" wages across a 50% longer workweek, the per-hour isn't actually competitive, is it?
It seems this is about to happen soon, a draft of this new executive order was leaked and viewed by Axios yesterday [1]:
"A draft of Trump's executive order viewed by Axios directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to consider ways to "make the process of H-1B allocation more efficient and ensure the beneficiaries of the program are the best and the brightest." That could mean replacing the current lottery system with one that prioritizes visas for jobs promising the highest salaries."
"What it means for tech: In theory, prioritizing by salaries means visas for more senior, higher-paying jobs will be granted first, and visas for lower-paying jobs (such as those being filled by Indian IT services firms) would fall to the back of line, perhaps not getting allocated at all if demand for the high-wage job visas is strong."
"But there's a catch: Wage-based hiring means companies may miss out on mid-level workers they still have trouble filling with qualified Americans. For example, software engineering jobs will be filled quickly, but jobs for network engineers or tech support that tend to skew lower on the pay scale could be tough to fill without H-1B visas. "The demand in the job market is not always captured by the highest salary," said one tech lobbyist. So tech companies are advocating for worker skill-set to be taken into account in addition to salary alone."
"Wage-based hiring means companies may miss out on mid-level workers they still have trouble filling with qualified Americans."
This seems a bit ridiculous. Yea, they will miss mid-level workers at the current price point but if there is a lack of supply of mid-level works the price (salary) will rise for Americans and the supply of mid-level Americans will begin to increase. A win-win for mid-level Americans... not a win-win for the Tech Companies though
> "The demand in the job market is not always captured by the highest salary,"
I don't see how we can have the combination of low salary, high demand, and a deficit of supply. It sounds like the proper economic adjustment here is to increase salary. I imagine the only reason the adjustment hasn't happened is because wages are sticky.
Probably they have been doing well below 100kU$S in benefits, because surely if they cant land a 100k gig and can land a 60k one, they have lower skills.
Its reasonable to feel discontent with such companies, but if there were free movement of people working lawfully they would still be compelled to hire immigrants. Its only frowned upon because the government said so. If the government says you can get H1B's with 50k salary, we wouldnt be talking about it.
Unfortunately this salary requirement means immigration will turn even more into a pay-to-play kind of deal. If you have money (or skills/education) borders disappear and if you're broke you're stuck in a place that offers no decent opportunities.
America was built on "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", and this H-1B change is another step away from that.
Well H1-b is for temporary foreign workers, so the restrictions would be on the companies hiring foreign workers rather than the immigrants themselves. Personally I think H1-b visas for lower end workers are just an excuse for companies who want to treat their workers poorly by offering lower wages and benefits than they would get with American workers. And of course that contributes to unemployment among low income Americans who would otherwise have these jobs. By all means we can have a mechanism that is more indifferent to money when we look at other categories of immigration.
"Give me your tired, etc" is fulfilled through the DV lottery program, and support for refugees (now sadly suspended). Temporary Worker Visas have always been about providing foreign labor to American corporations to fix real or imaginary labor shortages.
I think, not refunding the application fee in the event of a denial might be a better solution. It acts as a rate-limit, disincentivising Indian companies from applying for many H1B's.
Also the diversity lottery based green card needs to be replaced. Those 50K/year slots would go a long way towards alleviating employment based green card shortages.
We're hiring massively (SF East Bay), have a really hard time finding suitable, qualified candidates (from Java backend to native apps on iOS, Android, Windows). And even our junior devs make more than your new floor in base pay, not even counting RSUs.
If I would start filtering out H1B transfers (and other visa types), my hiring pipeline would be empty.
Where are the former Pennsylvanian coal miners pouring into tech? Where are the great US coders willing to move to the CA Bay Area? I don't see them. Indians, Chinese, Russians, Ukranians, yes. 3rd generation mid-westerners? crickets. (
I did move my family, from Europe to the US. )
The US education system does not generate enough coders.
It's too bad before college, too expensive in college.
Decent to great public school systems in those other countries take up that slack.
You restrict foreigners joining tech and the sector grinds to a halt.
The US population on a macro level right now is simply too uneducated to run it.
Can we agree that the US citizens who are capable of becoming programmers are making a rational economic decision to do something else?
If so, why hasnt tech competed successfully for them? I think open offices, poor autonomy, career issues as you cross 40, and so forth, have played a big role here. Even salaries arent remarkable compared to what skilled and intelligent people can earn in other fields. I think that if tech is having trouble hiring, they should learn to compete.
I see no reason to create a program that allows tech companies to force an immigrant to study CS and work a a dev as a condition of living and working in the US.
Wow, such passive racism on HN. H1b is mostly targeted because it is associated with Indians. Are those sweet Canadians not stealing American jobs on TN visa ? Are your Australian mates not getting american jobs on E-3 visa ? Oh wait, they look white so no problem. But you see bunch of brown folks suddenly moving into your neighbourhood and think.. Geez.. These foreignours took'urrr'job.
Yes, like any government program, it is been abused but there are more than enough high paying jobs available in Tech. Indians are one of the richest demographics in USA. If Indians are such a low wage misers, what happens overnight ?
Only solution of h1b visa is to allow free movement of switching jobs. Right now a h1b worker is practically a slave of his/her employer which companies like TCS, Infosys exploits freely.
The tone of tech companies does not resonate with the electorate. The Bay Area basically says to America: We have foreigners here who founded some companies and got rich, so we don't want your visa restrictions.
How do tech executives motivate the average American to support this stance? Taxes? IT companies and their owners enjoy a very friendly tax treatment. Jobs? The largest IT companies employ only 20-60k people each (for comparison, Walmart employs 2mn). Product? Software is a tradeable good, so Americans can buy it from anywhere. Pumping GDP numbers? The industry is flat for the last 10+ years.
Tech companies must put something on the table to get better immigration laws.
It may not be the desired tone but essentially that's how America got populated in the first place, a place where foreigners with some disadvantage in their country of origin could get rich. And many did.
Kicking the door behind you closed once you've got yours or because you're afraid new immigrants will take your job is hypocrisy of a terrible kind for a nation that was founded on immigration.
>Kicking the door behind you closed once you've got yours or because you're afraid new immigrants will take your job is hypocrisy of a terrible kind for a nation that was founded on immigration.
What about immigration from Kansas to California? We all know these tech companies prefer to hire from Stanford, MIT, and each-other. Why not just hire the proverbial kid from Brooklyn if we're so concerned about migration and diversity?
I'm coming to this late, but I do want to point out that the US takes 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year, in a process that has essentially nothing to do with the H1B or employer controlled work visa programs.
These immigrants are free to choose what they study and where they work. High tech doesn't like that, because smart educated people who have the right to choose can find better options than staring at a computer screen looking at JIRA tickets in a big loud open office, in a field where they get elbowed out after age 40.
So high tech has lobbied for an alternative immigration system, that they control though their HR departments, where they get to decide who gets to come here and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain.
I'm honestly bewildered when I read arguments like the one you just made, that opposing the H1B visa means you're opposed to immigration.
I think that immigration has been a marvel for the US, but that pretty much every system we've tried for bringing in immigrants who are not free to choose their job has been an unmitigated disaster. The H1B is hardly the worst of these, but because it doesn't preserve the freedom of the individual, it is ultimately unfixable. It must be replaced by a system that allows the immigrant to decide what to study, where to work, how to live.
It actually turns out we have a system like that, it's called immigration, and we take 1.2 millions people a year under it. From the way Silicon Valley talked it, you'd think that entire path didn't even exist.
>Kicking the door behind you closed once you've got yours or because you're afraid new immigrants will take your job is hypocrisy
There's nothing hypocritical about it. It can sure be called selfish, but not hypocritical.
Hypocrisy is to pretend you support one thing, while doing another.
Here they just stop supporting immigration after they themselves got in (and usually decades after they themselves got it -- it's not like some 2-years fresh American citizen is asking for a stop in immigration).
I've never understood how it qualifies as hypocrisy to take an opportunity (e.g. get into a country), then shut other people out. If you found a pile of money in the street, is it hypocrisy to shut other people out?
Keep hammering the fact that these people are job producers, not consumers. If you can prove that one skilled H1B results in additional two jobs being created in the region, then it becomes an easier pill to swallow.
I work in a rural region with a high number of H1Bs because one of the biggest companies in the area is a tech giant. Most people I've talked to (outside of tech) realize that these people bring in a lot value to the area and without them, 10s of millions of dollars would disappear from the local economy.
I straight up tell people, when asked about H1Bs, that I wouldn't have a job if not for them. I've worked at too many companies where the star of the team was on an H1B.
And as a counterpoint to your anecdata, I've worked with H1B co-workers whose only redeeming quality was the ability to provide CO2 for the plants in the office. They were net-negative contributors.
without them, 10s of millions of dollars would disappear from the local economy
The positions would disappear, and the company fold, rather than the company offer enough to attract domestic talent (including Resident Aliens)? That's odd.
Many of the tech companies create employment opportunities far larger than their own staff. eBay and Amazon both have huge markets of merchants. Apple, Google and Microsoft have all created massive markets for application developers. Uber, AirBnB and Lyft have all created lots of part-time and full-time income from underutilized personal assets.
You didn't provide any hard numbers. As far as I know the tech industry is an important contributor to the American economy and if they decide or are forced to move those jobs to another country it would hurt America more than it would them.
Do you have ideas of what a tech company could put on the table?
I have a bit of an idea, and also a way to frame the problem that may sound a little ridiculous, but hopefully is helpful to someone.
I propose tech, free-trade, outsourcing, and other forces have impacted the US job market similar to the problem laid out in The Innovator's Dilemma [1].
Apple - and Steve Jobs - have been applauded for figuring out ways to solve the innovator's dilemma; specifically, Apple lets newer products with a greater profit potential cannibalize older products' smaller profits.
1. The iPod classic and iPod nano were great products that had solid profits.
2. The iPod Touch ate into iPod classic and iPod nano profits. However, it also eclipsed the profits that the earlier iPods could have achieved, since it was much more than just a music player.
3. The iPod classic and iPod nano did not mind that they sold less, and Apple changed their expectations for sales from each product line accordingly as one product took sales away from other products.
Here's how I see the US addressing a similar dilemma, but involving people's jobs:
1. Career tracks in manufacturing and energy production (coal, especially) had solid salaries and career prospects.
2. Market forces (e.g. trade deals, technology) reduced need for US manufacturing and energy production jobs. Computer programming, technology in general, and design of things rather than the manufacturing of things all have better profits for the companies involved than the building of things.
3. The people who had manufacturing and energy production jobs DO mind that they do not have a job. Government and society did NOT recalibrate goals by saying something like, "sorry your coal job experience is no longer relevant, we're going to give you basic income / job training / some other job prospects."
Apple can make the iPod classic, whose qualities are outdated, simply go away from stores without a tear shed.
The US cannot make people whose skills are outdated simply go away, though. Those people need, at a minimum, some way to pay the rent, food, and aspire to something greater than they have now.
How should the US best address this?
It makes as much sense to re-introduce the iPod classic when the iPod Touch is already out there as it does to go back to dirty energy production when clean energy production already out there, and has great qualities like an endless, easily accessible energy source in the sun and less pollution and land destruction.
However, that very thing has been proposed, and I have not seen any other plans. What about, for instance, ensuring solar panel production facilities are built near where coal jobs went away? Or perhaps big wind farms, sun farms, etc?
The places where coal is buried is not where wind or sun is best captured, but giving some kind of hope to people in those areas - whether in the form of subsidies, training, moving people, etc. It may mean some changes to those impacted, but with every big shift in technology and labor, some jobs simply are no longer necessary like they used to be.
Hm, maybe. It's always been uncertain, though. I know plenty of international students when I was at MIT who weren't sure how the visa situation would play out and if they'd have to go back home or what.
I'm a little hopeful that the discussed H1-B reforms may actually help countries obtain particularly niche talents more than the outsource-lottery played now.
But I think the real threat to our tech dominance is privacy concerns. The U.S. owns the cloud with AWS, GCP, and Azure, but if other countries can't use their services due to US government overreach, then I'm sure strong competitors will pop up elsewhere.
If you think US owns the cloud, you're not paying attention to China. China owns China's cloud. The US has little to no visibility into these fleets, but they're huge (multiple million-server farms) and they have tons of national customers.
This development is politically interesting. National clouds are now a strategic interest. The EU is basically far, far behind in their internal development of national clouds.
> The U.S. owns the cloud with AWS, GCP, and Azure, but if other countries can't use their services due to US government overreach, then I'm sure strong competitors will pop up elsewhere.
This is a very good point. Add on to this, tech industry among some of the businesses that benefits most from an open global economy, and would hurt most from Trump's protectionism.
For example, Google has over 90% market share in certain european countries, and EU is viewing the new administration more and more as a threat, isn't that dangerous to have someone you don't trust control your entire internet industry? I believe both European governments/society will now be more motivated to push the agenda to grow local competitors that works better for them.
Things that a student coming to US faces from a developing or under-developed country:
1. Undergo TOEFL and GRE and apply to various universities
2. Save up enough money or even mortgage parents property to pay for tuition and even buy flight tickets
3. Adapt to a new culture, study hard while working part time
4. Finding a job (While its definitely easy for a CS graduate its not the same for other majors) but yet, cannot be eligible to many companies that don't want to sponsor visa in long term, not eligible for small startups with no e-verify.
5. Make sure you do all the paper work with OPT, be updated on travel requirements and other stuff
6. Cannot switch jobs easily and should find an employer that has offices outside USA in case of no luck in lottery
7. Apply for H1B twice or even thrice just to find out that you did not get it!
So much of hard work and planning just to find out that it all comes down to luck in the literal sense.
I am on an F1 visa in the US. When I first came to the US, I was excited to become part of this country and stay here and go the H1B route. As I learned more and more about this program over the years being here, I got more and more disappointed even to the point that I just gave up on H1B altogether and will be going back after I am done studying.
It really is just not worth my time investment and trouble, if I have a great alternative at home. Sure, this might be different from people who are from poor countries, but in my case I weighted the pros and cons between H1B and going back, and my home country "won."
>Undergo TOEFL and GRE and apply to various universities
Which is an expensive scam, imho.
>Adapt to a new culture, study hard while working part time
Working part time might not be worth it for certain majors. In my case, I'd have to take 1 less class each semester to have more time to work. However, at the lousy wage it would end up being more expensive in the end than not working.
>Finding a job (While its definitely easy for a CS graduate its not the same for other majors) but yet, cannot be eligible to many companies that don't want to sponsor visa in long term, not eligible for small startups with no e-verify.
My experience has been that it is not easy to find a job, even as a CS graduate if you are not an American. Could be different if I went to Stanfrod or MIT, but with a regular school, I feel like being an American (i.e. not requiring sponsorship) is a huge advantage. I think that at this entry level companies rather choose Americans than people who would need sponsorship. Maybe this would be different if it wasn't a lottery
> Make sure you do all the paper work with OPT, be updated on travel requirements and other stuff
They even recently increased the fees of applying for OPT to $410.
So all in all, H1B is just too much uncertainty for a way too long time for me to be worth it.
8.If you are lucky enough to get H1 and grow important enough in your role so that your employer files for your green card, tough luck if you are born in India or China. Be ready to wait for 10+ years.
The current system is in dire need of reform. I was fortunate enough to get a visa to live/work there for a year, but now I remote work from London, and I strongly prefer it to living in the Bay Area. The immigration process was consistently unreliable and unpleasant. Would rather not have a lottery dictate my future plans, and as the article says, remote working is on the up - a lot of people I know who were in my position agree and are doing the same. American bureaucratic faff aside, the tech sector always finds a way!
Immigration has been uncertain for a long time. YCombinator founders have been working on their startups on 3-month visitor visas. Top graduate students can stay in the US for a year, then they need to enter a lottery to be allowed to stay for another few years. Trump changes barely anything.
in the past it was assumed that the USA would honor visa once they were issued
What do you mean by "honor"? A visa don't guarantee entry. It simply gives you a path to enter the country which includes inspection by immigration control. They make that very clear on the USCIS website and all the visa forms.
A U.S. visa in his/her passport gives a foreign citizen permission to apply to enter the United States. A visa by itself doesn’t authorize entry to the U.S. A visa simply indicates that your application has been reviewed by a consular officer at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate, and that the officer determined you’re eligible to travel to a U.S. port-of-entry for a specific purpose.....
At the port-of-entry, a U.S. immigration officer of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decides whether to allow you to enter and how long you can stay for any particular visit, as part of the Admission process. Only the U.S. immigration officer has the authority to permit you to enter the United States."
It is not a breach of contract. A visa is not a guarantee of entry even though many people assume it is.
[Edit: Please don't interpret my comment as suggesting I think this is a good idea. If you check my posting history, you'll discover I'm an outspoken proponent of open borders.]
> Look at the way the Chinese do it. When they have friends they make sure that they are a friend for a long time and they make sure you know it. And there is no doubt about their intent and their ability to sustain a policy over many General Secretaries. They consider it an advantage they have over you. Each time a new team takes over, there is continuity, if they need to adjust, they adjust, but they do not start from scratch and have a new learning curve each time. If America is not able to play the same game in the same league, then your friends will say, I want to be friends with the US but to what extent can I depend on the US?
> in the past it was assumed that the USA would honor visa once they were issued
Not true. Having a visa was never a guarantee of entry into the US. Entry was always at the discretion of the border agent at the port of entry [1].
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/general/frequently...
I think we could afford to soak up as much high caliber talent as is willing to emigrate from the rest of the world, without raising the bar to the lofty level of "genius". The brain drain from the rest of the world to the US is a big factor in our ongoing economic competitiveness.
> then they need to enter a lottery to be allowed to stay for another few years
There is a separate pool allocated for people with US degrees. Your chances are much more favorable and you are not competing against outsourcing firms.
But $130K for a talented but inexperienced graduate is tough...
Meh. I doubt it. The US has huge advantages: a large internal market, large numbers of early adopters, an appetite for risk, an innovative mindset, excellent research institutions, plenty of world-class cities, lots of cash...
I mean, yeah, the current furore is "not good", but it doesn't cancel out the combined effects of all those advantages (and I've only listed a few!)
Well the excellence of the research institutions (as far as CS and STEM in general are concerned) is pretty heavily dependent on immigration...
Also remember that people aren't completely rational actors, and an action like this carries a lot of symbolic significance for both proponents and opponents. Would you want to stay at a party your friend was rudely kicked out of for no reason just because the booze is good?
Wherever there are big risks there are also great opportunities.
As a Canadian, I wonder how/if Canada can benefit from Trump's lack of vision.
We already have the same time zone, language, almost same culture, similar economic regulations, tight economic integration with the US, a very skilled and educated workforce, some good centers of technological excellence and an immigration policy regarded as the best in the world.
If only we could convince more American companies to open branches in southern BC, Ontario and Quebec...
How exactly are they supposed to afford to live there? A ramshackle crack house in Vancouver costs $1M+. Silicon Valley is dirt cheap by comparison. Toronto is also quite expensive these days.
Also, Canada does not have the same language if you're talking about Quebec (which you mentioned).
The only way Canada makes any sense is if somehow Calgary and/or Edmonton suddenly become fast-growing tech hubs. But have fun with the cold. Most tech immigrants are not going to be too enthusiastic about that, considering most of them come from very warm parts of the world like India.
Tech salaries in Canada are mediocre at best, with southern BC being the most perverted relative to cost of living. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Readit News
To date, as we all know, the H-1b system has primarily been used to arbitrage for lower wage by Indian companies and mostly non-tech big corporates, where they bring in $60k/yr "systems analysts" who are in fact doing $100,000+/yr software engineering roles.
They instead need to go after the companies that learned to game the system. I'm not sure what the solution is here. A point/demand-based system like other countries have is probably wise, but given the share of mind the US still has in potential emigrants worldwide, and the breadth of different positions available, it'd be a pretty complex (and likely unfair) one.
Wow, that's a really important point. I'm so in the tech-news bubble that I'd never heard anybody say that before - thanks for pointing that out!
Thats the POINT. Today it would be absurd, but a successful multipronged plan to bring both manufacturing as well as constricting supply of people with specialized skills, would raise the salary demands of the whole US population.
The H1B salary part of the system hasn't been modified since 1989. $60,000 in 1989 is equivalent to $120,000 in today's dollars. Does that influence your opinion at all?
Congress created a rationale back then, the industry merely used the tools available since then. Congress' rationale did not change, they are both adjusting for inflation as well as responding to the direction the industry actually went. The industry's adaptation is incongruent with the will of Congress.
In 1989 salary increases were still keeping up with the cost of housing. Or were still expecting to. For example. And a protectionist America really could do that again.
Also: the majority (by far) of H1-B visas are for technology work. It may not technically be "tech only" but in practice it may as well be.
Usually when I here someone critique the salary floor it's in reference to poorly paid scientists or biologists, as if it's a law of nature that these people should be poorly paid.
For your example the employer could easily show a US worker was not being displaced and could not be recruited. Your example may also be exempt from the H1B numerical cap if the role is with a institution of higher education, a related or affiliated nonprofit entity, a nonprofit research organization, or a governmental research organization.
[1] https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/FactSheet62/whdfs62Q...
If you made the floor $100K, say goodbye to non-PhD (and some PhD) scientists! And since the demand for PhDs isn't that high (you often have 2-3 non-PhDs reporting to a PhD), say goodbye to a lot of scientists using the H1B.
For example require the company bringing the worker in to post a bond, make it trivial for the imported worker to switch companies, and make the original company to pay the difference between what the worker's salary winds up being and what their new salary is after 2 years if they can't hold on to said worker.
If you're a company that really needs that skill, really can't hire it, and is paying above market wages, then this will not slow your hiring. But if you're trying to hire below market, it would backfire badly on you.
I'm not sure if there's a way to prevent global labor arbitrage. Multinational corporations will shift labor to countries with the lowest wages.
Perhaps they should put a multiplying factor on payroll taxes that's proportional to the total non-US labor wages paid (directly or indirectly) for producing a product. All expenses should be default considered as foreign labor-based unless proven otherwise. It would introduce a ton of paperwork initially, but then everyone will be incentivized to produce documentation showing US labor-produced products to prevent the increase in taxes.
ex: PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS LLP
TAX ASSOCIATE - 200 Records, Median Salary $56,181
ASSOCIATE - 243 Records, Median Salary $53,000
ASSURANCE ASSOCIATE - 700 Records, Median Salary $59,000
What exactly do these associates do?
Dead Comment
I think the "as we all know" is that big corporations use the visa program to create, in essence, indentured servitude. People who work for far less than the market-clearing wage for the position, because are beholden to their corporate sponsor. I find it reprehensible, and particularly galling that it's all done in the name of "diversity."
Most visa holders are young and incredibly vulnerable. Combine this with my particular company's absolutely legendarily capricious hire-and-fire cycle (for 30+ years), and they can really stick it to immigrants working for them via subcontracting.
I don't like the "staple a green card" proposals for anyone who gets a STEM masters degree though. Many US Universities have already turned into masters degree mills for people trying to get visas. If Universities were allowed to sell Green Cards the problem would become much much worse.
I've worked with many people on H1Bs and student visas. Every single one of them was a valuable person to work with, and they should be citizens. Maybe universities are becoming green card mills, but in my experience everyone who goes to a US university gets exactly what they bargained for. The law may say otherwise, but in spirit they become Americans.
http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...
Are you suggesting that a $130k floor for H1B workers would undermine the practice of undercutting local workers?
Wait, why? Are you implying foreign workers are not competent and can't be exceptional? Surely it isn't that?
Otherwise, sounds like then H1B will finally work as intended, you'd be able higher exceptional people from overseas who might not be available in your area? Maybe there is a distributed systems expert from Argentina or a compiler writer from Ghana. For you to reach out to another country, they'll obviously be very qualifies and demand a decent salary.
> Plus, what international student will do once he completes the college, and with quarter of million in debts (say Bachelor only) ?
Go home or get a $130k salary if he is qualified. International student acceptance doesn't somehow guarantee or imply a continuation of stay based on employment. There is (or was) an work program where they can work in the industry as co-op / intern for a year or two. That can probably be expanded.
> Will you hire college fresh grad for 130K ? Don't think so.
Yes I would! There can be exceptional graduates. I have seen and interviewed some. Google / Facebook / Microsoft already pays that much for good graduate and more.
> This is USA, this IS a country made, constructed and developed by excellence and hard work of immigrants with their hopes and dreams.
So if they do such good work we should reward them appropriately by paying them a competitive salary. H1B should not be a way to bring in cheap labor. You can argue there should be other visas for that but H1B shouldn't be that one. And somehow you are tying it to hopes and dream. What about the hopes and dreams of develops working in US?
> There is no a notion of "nation" in USA, there is no such thing.
That is completely bogus. There is a strong notion of a nation here precisely because there is ethnic, religious or other history. If anything Americans are criticized for over-emphasizing their "Americanism".
> It's just a colony of immigrants moved away from their homes to build something they could not there. This is a dream land, this is an opportunity land and should remain such for everyone.
Well if this is a dream surely we don't want ruin that dream for those who are here and suppress their wages.
So you're saying the incentives would work as intended..
Oh you mean other than the revolution we fought to be the first nation in the world to establish a secular government based on the principles of natural rights and natural law? This pisses me off something fierce to hear people want all the benifits of the country but not want to learn basic citizenship duties and responsibilities.
Our nation is the Constitution, and you don't know what you are talking about.
Sounds like the effect is exactly whats intended then
Yeah ok, buddy. Try that line when you don't wanna pay taxes.
I think you need to get out of the Valley. It's come up on HN before how $125K+ salaries might be common in SV, but not in other areas of the US.
Make the salary floor $130K and only SV will get to hire H1-Bs.
As others have pointed out, it would be better to create separate visas with stricter limits for industries that really need them, like high-level interpreters.
This isn't really true, or it is, but only in high profile yet minority cases.
H1B abuse is more about hiring someone at near competitive wages and telling them they're working 60 hour weeks and slowly getting rid of native workers who won't stand for that. So now your IT department is 12 people instead of 20. That's significant cost savings even if you're matching salaries. H1B's aren't typically paid less, they're worked like dogs instead. They can't easily migrate to a new employer, thus the abuse. This is the problem that needs fixing the most. The salary issue is secondary and something of a red herring as you can raise salaries but still have this abuse and it will do nothing for American workers who have been victimized by H1B abusers.
I don't see Trump or anyone addressing the indentured servitude aspects H1B creates. Considering most H1B's are clearing 80-120k, codifying 100k or more will do next to nothing. Worse, the only H1B bill I see has a 130k suggested salary but which can be contested and you can bet every HR company will do that.
These bills are mostly smoke and mirrors. H1B needs to be either completely scrapped or be re-done under a new program to allow H1B holders to switch jobs easily. Ideallym, if these people are truly hard to find hires they should be put on a fast path to naturalization and all costs paid for by the employer instead of this weird middle ground H1B currently creates where you're supposed to be super valuable but naturalization is up in the air. If it costs, say, $250k or more per head to bring them as a flat-fee and to express naturalize them, that'll stop abusive hiring I imagine. Corporations really need to have more skin in the game here and H1B's need to be naturalized quickly to avoid second class status.
If the native workers won't stand for it, the wages for it aren't actually "near competitive".
"A draft of Trump's executive order viewed by Axios directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to consider ways to "make the process of H-1B allocation more efficient and ensure the beneficiaries of the program are the best and the brightest." That could mean replacing the current lottery system with one that prioritizes visas for jobs promising the highest salaries."
"What it means for tech: In theory, prioritizing by salaries means visas for more senior, higher-paying jobs will be granted first, and visas for lower-paying jobs (such as those being filled by Indian IT services firms) would fall to the back of line, perhaps not getting allocated at all if demand for the high-wage job visas is strong."
"But there's a catch: Wage-based hiring means companies may miss out on mid-level workers they still have trouble filling with qualified Americans. For example, software engineering jobs will be filled quickly, but jobs for network engineers or tech support that tend to skew lower on the pay scale could be tough to fill without H-1B visas. "The demand in the job market is not always captured by the highest salary," said one tech lobbyist. So tech companies are advocating for worker skill-set to be taken into account in addition to salary alone."
[1] https://www.axios.com/h1-b-salaries-2228205505.html
This seems a bit ridiculous. Yea, they will miss mid-level workers at the current price point but if there is a lack of supply of mid-level works the price (salary) will rise for Americans and the supply of mid-level Americans will begin to increase. A win-win for mid-level Americans... not a win-win for the Tech Companies though
I don't see how we can have the combination of low salary, high demand, and a deficit of supply. It sounds like the proper economic adjustment here is to increase salary. I imagine the only reason the adjustment hasn't happened is because wages are sticky.
Dead Comment
Its reasonable to feel discontent with such companies, but if there were free movement of people working lawfully they would still be compelled to hire immigrants. Its only frowned upon because the government said so. If the government says you can get H1B's with 50k salary, we wouldnt be talking about it.
America was built on "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", and this H-1B change is another step away from that.
Dead Comment
We're hiring massively (SF East Bay), have a really hard time finding suitable, qualified candidates (from Java backend to native apps on iOS, Android, Windows). And even our junior devs make more than your new floor in base pay, not even counting RSUs.
If I would start filtering out H1B transfers (and other visa types), my hiring pipeline would be empty.
Where are the former Pennsylvanian coal miners pouring into tech? Where are the great US coders willing to move to the CA Bay Area? I don't see them. Indians, Chinese, Russians, Ukranians, yes. 3rd generation mid-westerners? crickets. ( I did move my family, from Europe to the US. )
The US education system does not generate enough coders. It's too bad before college, too expensive in college. Decent to great public school systems in those other countries take up that slack.
You restrict foreigners joining tech and the sector grinds to a halt. The US population on a macro level right now is simply too uneducated to run it.
If so, why hasnt tech competed successfully for them? I think open offices, poor autonomy, career issues as you cross 40, and so forth, have played a big role here. Even salaries arent remarkable compared to what skilled and intelligent people can earn in other fields. I think that if tech is having trouble hiring, they should learn to compete.
I see no reason to create a program that allows tech companies to force an immigrant to study CS and work a a dev as a condition of living and working in the US.
Considering that SF is the most expensive place to live, why would anyone want to move there? especially if you have family?
Dead Comment
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Yes, like any government program, it is been abused but there are more than enough high paying jobs available in Tech. Indians are one of the richest demographics in USA. If Indians are such a low wage misers, what happens overnight ?
Only solution of h1b visa is to allow free movement of switching jobs. Right now a h1b worker is practically a slave of his/her employer which companies like TCS, Infosys exploits freely.
How do tech executives motivate the average American to support this stance? Taxes? IT companies and their owners enjoy a very friendly tax treatment. Jobs? The largest IT companies employ only 20-60k people each (for comparison, Walmart employs 2mn). Product? Software is a tradeable good, so Americans can buy it from anywhere. Pumping GDP numbers? The industry is flat for the last 10+ years.
Tech companies must put something on the table to get better immigration laws.
Kicking the door behind you closed once you've got yours or because you're afraid new immigrants will take your job is hypocrisy of a terrible kind for a nation that was founded on immigration.
This isn't 1910. We are the top 5 in the world in population. We don't need as much immigration as we used to.
Americans should benefit from the American system before foreigners, like, you know, how every other country works.
What about immigration from Kansas to California? We all know these tech companies prefer to hire from Stanford, MIT, and each-other. Why not just hire the proverbial kid from Brooklyn if we're so concerned about migration and diversity?
These immigrants are free to choose what they study and where they work. High tech doesn't like that, because smart educated people who have the right to choose can find better options than staring at a computer screen looking at JIRA tickets in a big loud open office, in a field where they get elbowed out after age 40.
So high tech has lobbied for an alternative immigration system, that they control though their HR departments, where they get to decide who gets to come here and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain.
I'm honestly bewildered when I read arguments like the one you just made, that opposing the H1B visa means you're opposed to immigration.
I think that immigration has been a marvel for the US, but that pretty much every system we've tried for bringing in immigrants who are not free to choose their job has been an unmitigated disaster. The H1B is hardly the worst of these, but because it doesn't preserve the freedom of the individual, it is ultimately unfixable. It must be replaced by a system that allows the immigrant to decide what to study, where to work, how to live.
It actually turns out we have a system like that, it's called immigration, and we take 1.2 millions people a year under it. From the way Silicon Valley talked it, you'd think that entire path didn't even exist.
There's nothing hypocritical about it. It can sure be called selfish, but not hypocritical.
Hypocrisy is to pretend you support one thing, while doing another.
Here they just stop supporting immigration after they themselves got in (and usually decades after they themselves got it -- it's not like some 2-years fresh American citizen is asking for a stop in immigration).
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says /
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death /
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard
Dead Comment
I work in a rural region with a high number of H1Bs because one of the biggest companies in the area is a tech giant. Most people I've talked to (outside of tech) realize that these people bring in a lot value to the area and without them, 10s of millions of dollars would disappear from the local economy.
I straight up tell people, when asked about H1Bs, that I wouldn't have a job if not for them. I've worked at too many companies where the star of the team was on an H1B.
I have a bit of an idea, and also a way to frame the problem that may sound a little ridiculous, but hopefully is helpful to someone.
I propose tech, free-trade, outsourcing, and other forces have impacted the US job market similar to the problem laid out in The Innovator's Dilemma [1].
Apple - and Steve Jobs - have been applauded for figuring out ways to solve the innovator's dilemma; specifically, Apple lets newer products with a greater profit potential cannibalize older products' smaller profits.
1. The iPod classic and iPod nano were great products that had solid profits.
2. The iPod Touch ate into iPod classic and iPod nano profits. However, it also eclipsed the profits that the earlier iPods could have achieved, since it was much more than just a music player.
3. The iPod classic and iPod nano did not mind that they sold less, and Apple changed their expectations for sales from each product line accordingly as one product took sales away from other products.
Here's how I see the US addressing a similar dilemma, but involving people's jobs:
1. Career tracks in manufacturing and energy production (coal, especially) had solid salaries and career prospects.
2. Market forces (e.g. trade deals, technology) reduced need for US manufacturing and energy production jobs. Computer programming, technology in general, and design of things rather than the manufacturing of things all have better profits for the companies involved than the building of things.
3. The people who had manufacturing and energy production jobs DO mind that they do not have a job. Government and society did NOT recalibrate goals by saying something like, "sorry your coal job experience is no longer relevant, we're going to give you basic income / job training / some other job prospects."
Apple can make the iPod classic, whose qualities are outdated, simply go away from stores without a tear shed.
The US cannot make people whose skills are outdated simply go away, though. Those people need, at a minimum, some way to pay the rent, food, and aspire to something greater than they have now.
How should the US best address this?
It makes as much sense to re-introduce the iPod classic when the iPod Touch is already out there as it does to go back to dirty energy production when clean energy production already out there, and has great qualities like an endless, easily accessible energy source in the sun and less pollution and land destruction.
However, that very thing has been proposed, and I have not seen any other plans. What about, for instance, ensuring solar panel production facilities are built near where coal jobs went away? Or perhaps big wind farms, sun farms, etc?
The places where coal is buried is not where wind or sun is best captured, but giving some kind of hope to people in those areas - whether in the form of subsidies, training, moving people, etc. It may mean some changes to those impacted, but with every big shift in technology and labor, some jobs simply are no longer necessary like they used to be.
Thoughts?
[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Ch...
I'm a little hopeful that the discussed H1-B reforms may actually help countries obtain particularly niche talents more than the outsource-lottery played now.
But I think the real threat to our tech dominance is privacy concerns. The U.S. owns the cloud with AWS, GCP, and Azure, but if other countries can't use their services due to US government overreach, then I'm sure strong competitors will pop up elsewhere.
This development is politically interesting. National clouds are now a strategic interest. The EU is basically far, far behind in their internal development of national clouds.
This is a very good point. Add on to this, tech industry among some of the businesses that benefits most from an open global economy, and would hurt most from Trump's protectionism.
For example, Google has over 90% market share in certain european countries, and EU is viewing the new administration more and more as a threat, isn't that dangerous to have someone you don't trust control your entire internet industry? I believe both European governments/society will now be more motivated to push the agenda to grow local competitors that works better for them.
1. Undergo TOEFL and GRE and apply to various universities
2. Save up enough money or even mortgage parents property to pay for tuition and even buy flight tickets
3. Adapt to a new culture, study hard while working part time
4. Finding a job (While its definitely easy for a CS graduate its not the same for other majors) but yet, cannot be eligible to many companies that don't want to sponsor visa in long term, not eligible for small startups with no e-verify.
5. Make sure you do all the paper work with OPT, be updated on travel requirements and other stuff
6. Cannot switch jobs easily and should find an employer that has offices outside USA in case of no luck in lottery
7. Apply for H1B twice or even thrice just to find out that you did not get it!
So much of hard work and planning just to find out that it all comes down to luck in the literal sense.
It really is just not worth my time investment and trouble, if I have a great alternative at home. Sure, this might be different from people who are from poor countries, but in my case I weighted the pros and cons between H1B and going back, and my home country "won."
>Undergo TOEFL and GRE and apply to various universities
Which is an expensive scam, imho.
>Adapt to a new culture, study hard while working part time Working part time might not be worth it for certain majors. In my case, I'd have to take 1 less class each semester to have more time to work. However, at the lousy wage it would end up being more expensive in the end than not working.
>Finding a job (While its definitely easy for a CS graduate its not the same for other majors) but yet, cannot be eligible to many companies that don't want to sponsor visa in long term, not eligible for small startups with no e-verify.
My experience has been that it is not easy to find a job, even as a CS graduate if you are not an American. Could be different if I went to Stanfrod or MIT, but with a regular school, I feel like being an American (i.e. not requiring sponsorship) is a huge advantage. I think that at this entry level companies rather choose Americans than people who would need sponsorship. Maybe this would be different if it wasn't a lottery
> Make sure you do all the paper work with OPT, be updated on travel requirements and other stuff
They even recently increased the fees of applying for OPT to $410.
So all in all, H1B is just too much uncertainty for a way too long time for me to be worth it.
F-1 visa students are not allowed to work at all, except in a part-time position at their current school.
Deleted Comment
Unpaywalled: http://archive.is/BHfyN
Essentially this is breach of contract.
What do you mean by "honor"? A visa don't guarantee entry. It simply gives you a path to enter the country which includes inspection by immigration control. They make that very clear on the USCIS website and all the visa forms.
A U.S. visa in his/her passport gives a foreign citizen permission to apply to enter the United States. A visa by itself doesn’t authorize entry to the U.S. A visa simply indicates that your application has been reviewed by a consular officer at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate, and that the officer determined you’re eligible to travel to a U.S. port-of-entry for a specific purpose.....
At the port-of-entry, a U.S. immigration officer of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decides whether to allow you to enter and how long you can stay for any particular visit, as part of the Admission process. Only the U.S. immigration officer has the authority to permit you to enter the United States."
[1]https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/general/visa-expir...
[Edit: Please don't interpret my comment as suggesting I think this is a good idea. If you check my posting history, you'll discover I'm an outspoken proponent of open borders.]
Trump has altered the deal. Pray he doesn't alter it any further.
http://www.pmo.gov.sg/newsroom/pm-lee-hsien-loongs-interview...
That's Trump's MO it seems. In other news today that fit this pattern: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/01/512928851/...
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There is a separate pool allocated for people with US degrees. Your chances are much more favorable and you are not competing against outsourcing firms.
But $130K for a talented but inexperienced graduate is tough...
I mean, yeah, the current furore is "not good", but it doesn't cancel out the combined effects of all those advantages (and I've only listed a few!)
Also remember that people aren't completely rational actors, and an action like this carries a lot of symbolic significance for both proponents and opponents. Would you want to stay at a party your friend was rudely kicked out of for no reason just because the booze is good?
As a Canadian, I wonder how/if Canada can benefit from Trump's lack of vision.
We already have the same time zone, language, almost same culture, similar economic regulations, tight economic integration with the US, a very skilled and educated workforce, some good centers of technological excellence and an immigration policy regarded as the best in the world.
If only we could convince more American companies to open branches in southern BC, Ontario and Quebec...
Also, Canada does not have the same language if you're talking about Quebec (which you mentioned).
The only way Canada makes any sense is if somehow Calgary and/or Edmonton suddenly become fast-growing tech hubs. But have fun with the cold. Most tech immigrants are not going to be too enthusiastic about that, considering most of them come from very warm parts of the world like India.