This way the body shopping model breaks. Also in the current system workers tied to an employer have less leverage in terms of demands/wage negotiations, and tend to stick around for a long time, so this part of incentive from the hiring managers perspective will go away.

So Indian outsourcing companies get a visa in October 2010, do not send the person to US till June 2011, the person does a 6 month project then goes back, comes back 6 months later and spends some time and goes back again. At the end they file for lost days recapture and keep on extending the H1 for 8-9-10-12 years because the person has not spent 12 years employed. While this works for the outsourcing companies, the existence of this model creates perverse incentives for any employer as they have no obligation to pay a person simply because they can classify as being employed in different branch (India), on vacation (sometimes), on unpaid vacation (bench).

If the visa was given for 3 or 6 years (with renewal) but you had to a) pay the person or surrender the visa, maybe if you use only 80% for year 1 and the visa gets canceled, and b) there was no extension because of any sundry reasons : initial visa issued in October 2010 expires in September 2016 come what may, you could maybe fix it a little bit. Of course business cycles can bring in some uncertainty but then maybe we can not penalize a single H1 but if the company has deployed only 70% of its H1 staff on US salary, and is still asking for a visa in the next year, it is obviously a no no : if you are such a company then further visas are just not granted.

There are about 4 billion people waiting in line to enter the US if they could.

There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries, just as there is now infinite demand for healthcare services now that we are getting older.

The number of people in this or that queue is no longer a valid metric unless we're talking purely about bureaucratic wait times, in which case those should be short.

H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud.

If it came with a bigger fee, like 5K for approval, it might cover the cost of an 'inspector' popping into the office to check up on H1 status granted individuals.

If companies knew an inspector would pop in once a year without notice, they might be hesitant to go on with the fraud stuff.

I suggest the blatant fraud is done by bad actors outside normal operations but they're enabled ultimately by BigCos who turn a blind eye.

i.e. anyone hiring contractors for more than 6 months have to also back their residency status, i.e. Cisco hires from ABC consulting and the inspectors come in and it's fraud, Cisco is on the hook as well.

That would be one way to help clean it up.

I think there is truly quite a bit of real business demand for H1s - even outside of the scammy stuff and 'replace our engineers' stuff.

Honestly, you are over estimating the number of people who would like to come to the US. There are other wealthy countries which have a revamped immigration policy (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, some EU countries) which manage it well and don't get 4 Billion applications.

> H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud.

I think H1 also needs to be tweaked for easier transfer across different companies. This will make sure that people on H1 can easily switch if they feel they are getting paid less.

But I do agree with you overall on everything else.

“150 Million Adults Worldwide Would Migrate to the U.S.”

https://news.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-world...

There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries, just as there is now infinite demand for healthcare services now that we are getting older.

There is a limit to how much can be done to keep people alive.

That 150M number seems about right.

That's not remotely the number that would move if they could.

If you walked into a household in a poor country and just offered them zero-friction citizenship to the US/UK/CA/Europe for their whole family, with the promise of a decent job etc. - no strings attached ... the number would be extremely high.

We're not supposed to use anecdotes here on HN but frankly it's life experience that has exposed me to the nuances of the most important things. Visiting these places and one kind of get an idea.

It's not colonialist, arrogant, condescending or anything. It's just a simple pragmatic reality of people's will to just have stability, safety and a bit of aspiration.

And yes, the answer mostly lies in helping these countries get much richer, and as I posted below, it's hard ...

But we are making progress. The number of 'absurdly poor' people, living on like $1 a day has dropped dramatically over the last few decades as the industrial revolution of 'making stuff' has started working it's gears in more traditionally poor places ... though that has come with a lot of baggage as well, like pollution etc..

There is a difference between “people who want to move to the US” and “people who want to move to another richer country”.

I’ve asked people on HN why don’t they move from thier country in the EU with less opportunity to a country with more opportunity and they cited extended family and cultural differences as a reason.

Heck, it’s hard to get people in the US to move to different cities and states for the same reasons.

But if your argument is "Moving to the US + decent job" then just the "decent job" part would be attractive. Moving to the US and having to face the possibility of bankruptcy because a family member got sick does not sound exactly attractive.

Source: I am a non-American who was offered opportunity to migrate to US but decided against it because the US feels like a dog-eat-dog country. Would much rather move to Europe IF I wanted to move.

By 'decent job' - I mean something that actually pays, and has healthcare. And by that I mean working in a factory, or Wallmart or serving coffee.

People from poor countries also want just a safe and credible environment to live in, as opposed to being harassed, and challenged in a system rife with corruption.

Have you even been to America?

The US is not 'dog eat dog' and the overwhelming majority have good health insurance. There are many options for those who even don't have it.

The US spends more per capita on public health insurance initiatives, then most European countries! I couldn't believe this when I found out, but Medicare, Veterans hospitals etc. is about $5K per citizen while Canada spends only $4K per citizen for socialized medicine. My number may be a little off but the ratio is about correct.

You can come from anywhere and have great success in America. In Canada, you will probably be more stable, but you won't have great success.

If you are not European, or 'white' - the Europeans will never, ever accept you into their society. In Germany, even if you are Polish, it's very evident - there is a huge line between Germans and everyone not German. You will always be 'foreign'.

If you expect to have a massive house, boat and gold plated insurance and retirement, then you're expecting too much, but if you're expectations are 'a job' and an abode, with acceptable health insurance, general safety and the rule of law then you'll find this in America. Outside of SF, NYC, LA etc. things are quite affordable.

We spend more but we don’t have better health outcomes by any measurable statistic.

For instance, the federal government is not allowed to negotiate drug prices for Medicare - unlike every other country. Some amount of the money we spend for “healthcare” goes to line the pockets of the private insurance company.

If you are not European, or 'white' - the Europeans will never, ever accept you into their society. In Germany, even if you are Polish, it's very evident - there is a huge line between Germans and everyone not German. You will always be 'foreign'.

Have you been following American politics for the past two years? The president just put out an additional that was too racist for Fox News.

The real REAL solution to this is to raise up the living conditions of people living in poor countries. At that point even if we had open borders not everybody would move to USA/Europe/Canada/Australia any more than everybody from Louisiana moves to California.

Besides the fees are already up there. I was on an O-1 for a while and IIRC it was roughly $8000 all in between lawyers and processing fees.

What percentage of Africans living in poverty, corruption, dysfunction do you think would like to migrate to Europe, the US or Canada? It's 'most'.

1/2 of Chinese would emigrate according to a few surveys [1].

Since everyone has the internet - they can now see that people elsewhere live in considerably higher material standards of living, why would they want to stay? Basically, family and culture ... but most people would trade that for a decent job and stable governance.

Yes - totally agree the solution is to help poor countries have some wealth, but what can we do to help? They mostly have systems of total corruption. Any real attempt to try to fix underlying problems would be utterly destroyed by leadership who wants to maintain their status. Either governmental or non-governmental.

Most African countries run on bribery. All the way up and down. So if a US Agency comes in and starts exposing this, how is the leadership going to react? With massive anti-American sentiment is how.

This is happening right now as China is greasing government figures to buy up land on the cheap. They're bringing in their own workers in lieu of hiring Africans. Why? Because they can, and they are paying off who they need to to keep it that way. [2

Finally - even if countries were wealthier - there would still be massive emigration.

Poland has a GDP/capita of about $14K US, but in PPP it's much higher. Poland is 'poor' for a rich country, but they are not poor. They have stuff. They have industry, they have regular clothes, housing, highways, governance that mostly resembles ours. None of it is UK/US standard ... but it's still pretty good. They are 'rich' compared to Nigerians, easily.

And yet, there's a massive exodus of Polish labour into other places, particularly the UK, which has caused calamity in Europe. That's a different kind of migration, because I think many Poles return at some point, but nevertheless, it's big.

So no, open borders would be a migration disaster by any stretch, even in some distant future where Central South American countries are hopefully much more 'caught up', it still can't work very well.

I think a NAFTA type arrangement for all of the Americas is within reason though: no visa requirement, and possibility of easy work for a few years, then apply for citizenship.

I think the fee for an H1 could be $1.5K a year. Maybe even a hint of a higher tax bracket, why not? $8K for an O1 sounds about right. You're supposed to be 'world class genius/talent' so that's not out of range.

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/17/half-of-china-s-mil...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2015/11/05/wh...

I'm hinting at a 'system' that I think might work for North America.

I guess I'm saying NAFTA is a better model for the Americas than the EU, and even then, only when there is more economic parity.

No, there aren't, and most of the people who would if they could can't for reasons beyond border policy.

> There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries

No, there's not. There aren't infinite people outside of wealthy countries to start with, and not every person outside of wealthy countries would move to them if they could (as we know, because many who would be most able to—notably local elites—don't.)

> H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud.

H1B is a bad program designed to inhibit wage growth and needs to be abolished.

You really should stop listening to the politicians and learn more about the world.

This quota should be removed.

I think maximum percent limits make sense. But, 7% might be a bit aggressive.

After all, a country's borders aren't necessarily the best indicator of cultural diversity brought by those people. India (the biggest contributor to the H1B) is internally a lot more diverse than more ethnically homogeneous, yet highly populated countries such has Bangladesh, Russia, UK, Japan or France.

  racial quotas (or per-country quotas)

If they didn’t have those, 90%+ of the immigrants would be of Chinese or Indian origin. Is that what we want?

If a law-abiding person lives and works here for a decade, they should be allowed to stay.

Yes, we'd want the 14% of skilled immigrants we allow to be skilled, irrespective of their nationality.

Of course, many more millions who haven’t applied would immediately join the new queue ...

I’m not sure even the US could deal with a sudden population increase of 30-40 million.

https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/indians-w...

Where did you get the 30-40 million number from?

The 30-40 million comes from the fact that there are lot more people who would come to the US that haven't bothered to apply. If you relaxed the criteria the number of applicants would expand.

I'm not anti-immigration (I'm Canadian and we're slightly more relaxed about immigration) but there needs to be some controls in place.

If there are 600K people of Indian descent waiting for Green Cards, then it seems rational there are a few million waiting overall.

You need to be able to "onboard" those immigrants.

Disclaimer: I'm a former L1, although I'm pretty sure I would've also "made it" under H1-salary-system above.

Cities are more expensive than small town, and wages go up. Software is a lot more profitable per capita, and thus give higher wages. Then again, there is the startup problem you mention.

I am in favor of a point based system, over the mess we have now, but a trivial.implementation could do more harm than good.

Companies should have to make clear distinction between contracting jobs and full time positions. Salaries should be normalized by COL/Taxes. My unpopular opinion, is that there should be standardized testing (or reuse GRE, TOEFL). In my experience, it id a good proxy for a person's capabilities. Points on education attaintment are obvious, but they should also take into account the country where they received their education, the course itself and the standing of the university. ( in broad strokes like R1,R2)

I am strongly in favor of allowing easier Visa transfer . Should stop any Corp. from underpaying an immigrant, because they know the employee is stuck with them.

Absolutely.

No question there.

Employers in California will win, employers in say Tennessee will lose out. If comp is being considered, then they should also consider the COL.

I think a point system is a good way to go, but it isn’t necessary to end the disparate access that those from India, China, the Philippines, and Mexico face. All that would take is a small amendment to section 202 removing the per country caps.

On a separate but related topic, given how large tech employers treat job applicants I don’t believe them when they say the face a shortage of qualified workers. Actions speak louder than words.

they face a shortage of qualified, but willingly-accept-low-pay workers.

Don't tell me you never knew the H1B who knowingly accepted a low salary because that was their chance to move to the US, get their food in the door, and hopefully move up. I've known many, from both Asia and Europe, who told me exactly this.

Companies knowingly use this to keep wages lower than the US-based supply would otherwise demand. At one level, I support this -- it maintains a competitive edge.

So what's wrong? Unlike a citizen or permanent resident, H1Bs feel indentured. They are even more risk averse. If you believe in free trade, then the freedom of both parties must be protected. Both H1Bs and undocumented immigrants feel far from protected. There are both moral and economic problems with the arrangement.

This happens in skill sets with high demand and short supply where free agent shopping between a multitude of offers between gigs in the $200+/hour range is viable because supply is so constrained. I guarantee you will not see this uniformly happen in big companies where skill sets are in high demand and even moderate supply, not to speak of high supply. Otherwise, Disney would not be able to use the vendor-supplies-staffing-for-outsourcing-entire-department-contract loophole via HCL and Cognizant, a situation particularly susceptible to that loophole, explaining its popularity among companies big to small.

Even that I don't buy. Even if a company were only looking for people it could lowball it still doesn't make any sense to be so hostile and negligent in how it treats applicants it is purportedly struggling to hire.

I've lived in NYC long enough to have seen renters' markets and landlords' markets. Despite all the claims of a tight hiring market, google, amazon, etc. act like they are in a market where they have the upper hand. And actions speak louder than words.

According to this article, about 20% die prior to age 65, and some percentage of those will not have a spouse to provide benefits to:

http://home.bt.com/lifestyle/wellbeing/did-you-know-20-of-me...

>>At the end of 2014, the Trust Fund contained (or alternatively, was owed) $2.79 trillion, up $25 billion from 2013.

>>Trust Fund obligations are considered "intra-governmental" debt, a component of the "public" or "national" debt. As of June 2015, the intragovernmental debt was $5.1 trillion of the $18.2 trillion national debt.

Its still a huge total net negative on the government. And you still desperately need those immigrants to be working 20 hour days doing start ups and build tax paying companies, so that some where some one in mid west can buy an iPhone using SS handouts and scold the immigrants for the very value they provide using that iPhone.

The current L1 is a visa for transferring from a branch of a company in another country to a branch of the same company in the US. I get that you're not talking about the L1 in its current form, but it's far from being a general mechanism for dealing with short term labor needs.

Also being used by body shops to ship in people who otherwise couldn't get into the US. The process is they open up a marginal nexus in a nation with relatively more lax immigration laws to their origin nation, then transfer via L1 into the US from branch to branch. Identification and enforcement against this kind of abuse is very time-consuming, as there are legitimate situations used by legitimate companies. AWS was pitched/started by guys in South Africa, they legit could come to Seattle Amazon HQ on L1.

You could probably lump quite a few visa programs together into that, actually.

Having multiple, smaller groups of people inside the USA also assists integration - instead of being able to fall back on a parallel society, migrants will be forced to integrate and learn English.

Plus, just like the Olympics, diversity makes things interesting. Having (qualified) people from Belgium, Poland, Kenya, Thailand, Japan, Colombia, Mongolia (for example) is more interesting than just India, India, India, China, China, China.... A broader pool of migrants also helps US businesses expand worldwide.

Finally, the schemes should also include a minimum 55% quota of women, from each country. This ensures that any visa scheme does not become completely dominated by men, and addresses past imbalances.

There's also value in having the world's 20 top OCaml developers (15 of them are likely French) as well as the world's top 20 server-side ARM multicore guys (who are also likely French) vs. 40 top OCaml people (where there may be more French people.)

The easiest way to address all of this is for financial value to be the main factor. You can bring in people if they pay something like 200% of the US average wage as a surtax above their regular income tax and other costs. There could be explicit charities to subsidize things other than direct wage income value -- maybe an arts charity covers the $100k/yr to bring in a brilliant artist who is paid an additional $50k/yr in income and pays 5k/yr tax on that.

Why? So you are okay with a guy who does not speak English, doesn't have moderate-high skills, will probably drive Uber or work in some restaurant over a moderately-skilled Indian/Chinese who understands and speaks relatively decent English, just because that guys is an Indian or Chinese? This is the definition of racism.

> Having multiple, smaller groups of people inside the USA also assists integration

No. Knowing the local language, understanding the local culture, knowing some people from a similar culture living in the country (a.k.a having a fallback - so as to not depend on government aid) helps in integration.

> Plus, just like the Olympics, diversity makes things interesting.

Absolutely. But that should depend on the skills and not on the nationality. Skilled people from Belgium-Mongolia would still get in regardless of "diversity lottery visa". What US needs is a point based system which rewards quality over just diversity.

I don't understand why you would say this. Doesn't it make more sense to reserve "racism" for discrimination based on the perception of inferiority of a particular genetic race? And instead use "culturist" or "nationalist" to talk about discrimination by culture or national origin? I realize you aren't the only person to use the term this way, but calling it the "definition of racism" to discriminate on something other than race seems likely to water down the term.

My landlord and the owner of the company I work for both came to the US from Iran in exactly this way and now they both own successful businesses built up from busting their asses driving cabs.

That has been The American Dream™ for generations and not the virtual indentured servitude I always hear about in these discussions.

For one example of success there are 100s if not 1000s of examples where they failed and relied on government handouts.

Also, how did "diversity visa" help in this case? Those guys succeeded because they were smart and hardworking. Clearly their country of origin did not make them successful.

I'm not sure I understand the rationale behind this? Why does it matter what country applicants are from as long as they have the skills the economy needs?

The Olympics are a performance competition- the guy from “Eastern Rhodesia” might make it but he won’t get any extra help when running against Usain Bolt.

Now you are saying that companies that want to make money will be saddled with less competent talent because of diversity?