This is my exact argument against h1b, but something tells me you didn't mean it that way.

The fact is if we want to truly attract the best and brightest we need to give them citizenship and pay them for their superior skills.

As it is now we aren't attracting the best and brightest but the slightly skilled and willing to take a gamble and endure the cruelty of our immigration system. These are typically young people which exacerbates the agism problem in tech.

The downside is that they have no bargaining power because their continued stay in the US is at the whim of their employer.

That good for the employer, not good for workers.

That’s a consequence of the US’s particular implementation of talent visas (H1B being tied to employer), not an argument against attracting high skilled workers.

(I think most people on this forum would agree H1B needs reform ?)

As an H1B, while there is employer tie in at some level, I am free to change jobs. What I am not free to do is to stop working. That fear certainly does indirectly result in lesser job mobility.

For example, opportunities like say going to Recurse Center, or having the freedom to have a decently long sabbatical etc. even with a 6 month emergency fund are not available. The other thing is no freedom to pursue any other job, i.e working on a startup idea during the evenings or weekend, or writing a technical book etc. for money is not allowed.

There are certainly issues with the H1b system, i.e. the lottery, low salary cap, multiple applications per person to game the system etc, but employer stickiness is not one of them, at least for people who are qualified.

The major problem is due to long wait for green card for people from China, and almost impossible wait for people from India. My friends who were not born in these two countries have been able to get a green card within about a year, after getting an H1B, while I am looking at a more than 20-30 year wait.

That is still better for the workers than not having such opportunities and working in their home countries. Isnt that a Win-Win situation?

The whole concept of "top talent" is a myth.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myt...

Yes, but you're not addressing the point that immigrant workers can be paid less for the same work.

That is irrelevant. They get paid more compared to what immigrants would get in their home countries. And if you had to pay them as much then they would lose the edge during hiring - it is part of why they are also chosen.

However wage arbitrage is specifically against the intent and the letter of visa programs. It’s to fill actual shortages. If you can’t find a Python dev at $70k per year but you could find one at $100k per year, that isn’t a “shortage” — yet such “shortages” are what gets used to rationalize H1-B expansion.

I'd like to add that part of the factor that's driving down wages is the fact that workers from countries with cheap/subsidized higher-level education can get a bachelor's degree for under $5000 (total), meaning that a student from a foreign country getting a master's degree from an American university graduates with around 1/3 the total debt that an American student would. That advantage makes it more feasible to take lower paying jobs in the first place, thus broadening the talent pool, which inherently drives wages down.

That also means other countries subsidize the education of the US workforce, which from US perspective is not a bad thing.

By that definition there is never a shortage of any labor of any kind.

Thats not how salaries are negotiated. Any worker picks the job that suits him best. If you have A and B in the US, and C in your home country, you will pick the best of the three, not "not C".

I agree — the typical path is the abusive H1 system, which is dangled as a carrot by outsourceds in India to retain talent in hopes of getting an assignment here.

It’s a form of indentured labor that should be forbidden.

My grandparents were all skilled blue collar workers who needed a sponsor and a medical exam to enter and eventually get citizenship in the 1940s. There’s no reason that skilled labor from anywhere should not be able to immigrate here on the same terms.

That's great except that H1B is not supposed to be used to suppress domestic salaries or replace existing workers (Disney IT). This is openly happening and the government won't do anything to correct this illegal behavior. It's 2018 and Trump's executive order has amounted to nothing.

Consider these 2016 numbers from USCIS [1] (Can't find 2017 data. Wonder why). All of the Indian body shops pay sub-$90K as their average salary whereas all of the top domestic sponsors are paying significantly more. I'm sure the medians are even worse. So all a US company has to do is play the contractor shuffle and get cheaper labor. Also note that there are no listings for people with master's or doctorate degrees. H1B is clearly not being used for its intended effect.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...

I’m on an iPad so I can’t check, but i think the underlying data for H1-B info comes from here: https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm (click ‘Disclosure data’, download enormous PERM spreadsheet)

The effect on wages is inconclusive based on the salary of the people that come in. Its possible the 90k range puts more downward pressure on salaries than the 150 that come about. They all have effects on wages but also create value for the whole. The more immigrants come the more total salaries paid for the workers is, even if the mean is lower.

If they are actually “brilliant.” Some Windows sysadmin a year out of school working for Infosys is typically not your future Google founder. If they are actually brilliant, there are visas for that and it isn’t H1-B.