If a company can't find workers, it should pay more up until a level that puts the competitiveness of the economy under question. Below that level, it's the citizen's right to a fair salary without labour dumping from a poor country. Above that level, it's everybody's right to fairly priced services without professional rents.
You would price out people like me and make it virtually impossible for me to become a citizen eventually. But maybe that is by design and I don’t mind that opinion. All countries have nativist subsets of society so it is just a normal, natural stance.
Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically. But maybe now the populace believes the natives need to be protected from outside competition so that they can improve. Fair enough.
This is classic artificially divide the market and race to the bottom.
> You would price out people like me and make it virtually impossible for me to become a citizen eventually.
> Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically.
You are making the classic mistake of holding the macroeconomics constant. If we had sane immigration policies as proposed in this thread, the going rate might have been different.
Maybe you have been payed more, matching the coasts. Maybe we all would have been paid less, matching you. Maybe the incumbents wouldn't have had a competitive advantage such that you all had to be underpaid to be even ramen profitable.
The big point is given a skill set (projection of the labor market), residency status shouldn't be economically observable. Policy should be constrained to affecting the residency status distribution accross slices.
Off topic, but I hadn't heard this expression before so I looked it up and stumbled upon an interesting Paul Graham blog post derived from it: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html
Thanks for introducing me to a new phrase!
If you are valuable enough to work in US, you are valuable enough to do it as a full market participant without shackles or handicaps.
Asking the government to let in someone whose company might eventually make it big enough to pay "the going rate" is asking the government to take a risk -- it's like asking them to invest in the company on the promise that the payoff will be as good or better than the next person in line.
It's the only way a rich nation can function really, the alternative being open borders and a rapidly decreasing standard of living. They all do this in some convoluted way, despite any rethoric to the contrary.
Future potential tax payers. Like myself btw. I am giving so much money to Uncle Sam these days that it makes me sad. I could invest in multiple YC companies with that money.
A financial threshold is a nice way to limit that influx to manageable numbers, while guaranteeing they can mostly take care of themselves and become productive taxpayers and without exposing them to employer exploitation. The actual amount is debatable of course, it could be 2x the national average salary, 1x, 3x... or it could be dynamically allocated to fulfill an intake quota.
Cheers to the immigrants who battle the crappy system here with national origin quotas and prioritizing chain migration over the American educated and trained foreigners like us.
I do have my green card but I’ve been contemplating not getting the citizenship because of the anti immigrant sentiment from all sides. Alas, the American passport allows travel more easily so I might just cave - but never vote.
But I think the side-effect of this is that other industries & locales would not get as many workers as they currently do, which would put upward pressure on wages in those areas. Compare this to the current system, where wages for lower paying jobs and areas are kept lower than they would otherwise be by adding worker supply through this visa program.
Countries in Europe do precisely this but take it slightly further. Take Ireland[0] and Sweden[1], for prime examples. For those of you who don't want to read the links: The company has to have a minimum salary (oft above the standard cost of living) for the employee to obtain (and retain) the permit.
(On an aside, in Sweden, they go a step further in that the contract must also be approved by the relevant union that company has agreements with.)
[0] - https://dbei.gov.ie/en/What-We-Do/Workplace-and-Skills/Emplo...
[1] - https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...
The required salary quota, which is 15.000 swedish krona per month, is less than half of an average developer salary.
And that thing about union, is not as bureaucratic, as you make it sound. Company has to be part of a Union as a whole, to offer work-visa for immigrants. That's almost all there is to it. They dont really check each individual contract.
>It is not really a specialist salary enforced in that law.
To which law do you refer? The minimum stated on the original page that I referred? You would be correct that it's not a specialist salary; however, to suggest that it simply does not exist would be fool-hearty. Migrationsverket has documentation specific to that[0].
>The required salary quota, which is 15.000 swedish krona per month, is less than half of an average developer salary.
An average developer's salary, where? I can tell you that the average developer's salary in Östergötland, for example, is far less than in other places in Europe.
>They dont really check each individual contract.
A "check" is vastly different that an approval, yeah? You could've easily found this information[1] yourself, as it's freely available on Migrationsverket's site.
[0] - https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...
[1] - https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Other-operators-Engl...
[1] https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.as...
I don't think that's necessarily the case. A lot of people that work at a university do so because they're an international grad student who has no other way to stay in the country. They're barely scraping by, hoping they can finish and that an advanced degree will land them a job.
a) Getting talented entry-level employees who graduate from US schools to stay in the US
b) Getting talented experienced employees to move to the US
The H1B is actually rather bad for b) due to the long processing time (6 months) during which a candidate cannot work in the US and high chance of not winning the lottery. Revamping the O1 visa makes more sense for that case. So that leaves a) for which salary requirements based around experienced employees make little sense.
Canada has a pretty sane skilled worker visa program that gives you points for academic achievement, proficiency in English, French, age and other factors. I see no reason the US couldn't have that.
Having said that, factors that would increase the wish to move to the US would be things like universal healthcare, a sane schooling system (with less inequality between school districts, easy access to higher education), better lablr laws, and overall social security. Without that, I don't think it's that much attractive.
Given that salaries can be something like 5x what you get in Europe for the same experience level with lower taxes there is a big reason. Probably even more compared to places outside of Europe. If you're working at a large tech company making good money then healthcare doesn't matter (since you got solid medical insurance), school district doesn't matter (since you can afford to live in the good district), labor laws don't matter (in fact their lack is probably why you're making 5x the money) and social security doesn't matter (that's what saving the decent chunk of money you make is for).
Earning 5x what I would earn (which is not what I observe on my compensation level) does not compensate for knowing there are people who were driven out of their homes and now live in tent cities because I could pay more. In fact, I would not want to live in a society that encourages that and, most definitely, don't want to raise my kids to think that's normal, or desirable.
What does that affect? All undergraduate students coming to the U.S. who spend $$$ on a 4 year college degree here and then try to find a job. You’ve just wiped that demographic out because they won’t get 150k salary.
Why would they be inclined to come to the US and spend all that money on an education here? They won’t.
And if the best talent doesn’t come here to compete intellectually with Americans in a classroom then Americans lose.
H1Bs comprise a big chunk of people who come here, get an education here, prove their competence and make the American economy grow.
You won’t get them to come here with a high salary cap like 150k.
That's not the purpose of the H1B visa. The purpose is to fill shortage areas with temporary workers; it's not some kind of college recruitment program.
That’s great... hire locals not foreigners just because they paid for a degree. I don’t care what they paid for. This is supposedly for specialized knowledge—-it shouldn’t be going to ANYONE entry level or undergrad...
$150k is at the 95th percentile of individual income for the entire US. I’d argue that if a company in any industry/profession isn’t upping their advertised pay to higher than what 1/20 us persons currently make, they aren’t trying sufficiently hard to attract a US person.
I generally favor looser immigration in the US, but H1-Bs as written unduly benefit the sponsoring company at the expense of labor generally.
The primary objection to this is crowding out the labor market, to which I'd say: protectionism doesn't work. If there are people in another country willing to do the same job for cheaper, the invisible hand will figure out how to move the jobs there, perhaps through competition. Fighting the free market isn't going to work: figure out how to work within it. (For instance, offer a UBI for citizens only.)
(Also as it happens I'm an American-born child of Indian immigrants, so I am actually a carrier of American culture and not Indian, so I have reason to question the implicit assumption that immigrants will destroy culture.)
Not sure what that has to do with anything, though.
But that was without throngs of Americans moving here
And that said, a culture does not deserve to live by virtue of existing. It's protectionism and xenophobia, founded purely because of fears that immigrants will somehow replace your culture with something you view as being lesser. This is a two-way street because I have seen people use it as an argument against letting in people that would destroy woman's rights or what now here in America...and I've heard it used in fears of immigrants fighting for minority rights or woman's rights in countries like Japan.
It's an argument born out of irrational fears and one I find not compelling at all.
And it’s not an irrational fear. It’s a very obvious fact that America with wide open borders would be a worse place for existing Americans to live, just look at the average country and ask if Americans would like to live there, and why not.
And I would imagine the converse is true: If you asked anyone in another first world country if they would like to live in America, I would bet you'd see the results end up rather negative. Especially after the past few years of nonsense we've exhibited to the rest of the world.
You don’t need studies and citations to figure this out, you need to hold in your head a model of reality. You need above average people, who give more than they take, in order to drive the quality of the country upward.
Not only that but by your own argument since we need 'above average people' who 'give more than they take', the end result should be forcing people out of rural areas (the dense metropolitan areas tend to be more economically powerful) while also ensuring they can't procreate. What I'm getting at is essentially using population growth as an excuse for restricting immigration is itself an excuse, because there are many ways in which the issues of population growth are stymied and more effective at doing so.
And yes, I do want studies and citations. You're essentially begging the question in lieu of actually providing evidence for your own claims. I want you to give me explicit citations for your claims and your 'model of reality', because you're assuming that your model of reality is correct without any factual basis.
Not only that, but now you're attempting to twist the argument into something that it wasn't in the first place. Even if we did decrease immigration, that wouldn't fix the issues of traffic and pollution in America because those are born out of poor city planning combined with lax industrial standards. Unless you want to somehow argue that immigrants contribute more to pollution than corporations doing things like say, flaring in West Texas.
If you can't support your claims with evidence when called out on it, then you shouldn't make such bold claims period.
This doesn't at all seem obviously true to me. It rather seems obviously false: I find big cities more pleasant to live in than small towns, even though they have more of all three. More population seems like an inherent virtue to me. More traffic gets turned into more efficient traffic via public transit, or building denser and more walkable cities, or whatever, which I find more enjoyable than cars. More pollution is a side effect but a solvable one.
If your argument is the model of reality in your head, then you need to admit that the model of reality in lots of other peoples' heads is very different, and there's no reason that your model should win (unless you're claiming that your political opinions matter more than others'?).
This is untrue. I said the primary objection. Of course there will be a lot of other objections.
My immigration policy would be to let in the set and sequence of immigrants that makes this country as nice a place to live as possible. Approximated with a greedy algorithm, that means picking the individual that makes this country the most nicer place, letting them in, and then repeating the calculation until we’ve run out of people that make the country a better place for us to live. Culturally, that means cultural optimization, not preservation.
I’d happily stop 99.999% of noncitizens from moving here and working here while allowing Californians to move to Idaho. (I’d also remove the financial penalties California places on people that moved from Idaho to California.)
Specifically, I think that this country would be a nicer place to live for myself if I can hire whomever I want for my team regardless of citizenship and without big government second-guessing my decision, and if they can feel confident about their long-term future once they move, therefore making them a) more likely to accept and b) happier and more productive when they're here.
I also think that the number of people who have moved into the SFBA (myself included, I'll be honest—feeling uncomfortable with that is part of why I left) have made it a worse place to live. I think there are ways to solve that other than internal migration restrictions, and I have other philosophical objections to internal migration restrictions, but I do see their appeal. You, for some reason that I don't totally follow, either don't think that SFBA has become a worse place to live or that this isn't an important criterion in deciding internal policy; I'm curious which it is (or whether I've misinterpreted).
I'm not describing a policy, I'm describing an ideal. (A simple concrete policy proposal is below.)
You said:
> Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job.
So that doesn't describe your policy proposal either. Plenty of people can hold down a job and make the country a worse place for others, or a subset of others, simply by competing for resources, driving down wages in the sector they work in, by being a criminal, or by voting immorally.
I want to let everybody you'd let in, except for people whose immigration would make the country a worse place. Define that ideal as you will.
As a pretty good approximation, we could limit immigrants to those that could qualify for military service.
> myself included, I'll be honest—feeling uncomfortable with that is part of why I left
That's also a reason why I left. My policy as a national policy, is to make the country a nice place for all of its citizens (except criminals and slovenly degenerates) to live in. So that includes people that might like to move from Arizona to California. They're making their own lives better, which counts for something.
> I think that this country would be a nicer place to live for myself if I can hire whomever I want for my team regardless of citizenship and without big government second-guessing my decision
If you're like most employers, that means you're happier if you get to drive down working class wages, while you get to reap greater profits from your pre-established position in the market. That's good for you, but not good for the average American.
To make my goals a little more nuanced: Economically, I want only the smartest immigrants, which do advanced stuff like start companies, work for them, or work in healthcare, which drive up the demand for working-class labor, letting average Americans negotiate a better piece of the pie, while driving down the cost of their healthcare. Culturally, I want supply limited so that immigrants assimilate, and I want all the immigrants and their children to be crime-free pro-life Republican voters. :-)
One consequence of unlimited immigration to America would be a major setback in women's rights and practical freedom in many pockets of the country.
Wow, you need to learn how to distinguish between stuff your brain tells you and reality.
I can't say I agree at all this would be of benefit to any nation willing to do this.
So if you care about not making existing citizens lose out—which I do!—find a solution other than protectionism. Find a solution that works. A UBI, so that not finding a job doesn't ruin your life, is a good one. Fund it with income taxes on immigrants who come here and do well. (And on a UBI you can spend as much time as you want training in an advanced skill or learning a complicated profession so that you can compete in another segment of the labor market.)
No country is going to do this because no country wants to admit to their citizens that the "country" and "citizen" abstractions are powerless against the reality of the global free market. It's too politically incorrect; people would rather believe that protectionism works. But it's the right thing to do.
Not for all countries! Definitely an imbalance there, and US is already pretty generous with immigration numbers. We've also seen that cheap labor does not reduce cost of living in developed countries, so importing foreign cheap labor is a loss for not-rich folks.
So if you're in any of these fields, you're competing with people around the world. You're not competing directly—the playing field is still quite bumpy—but it's becoming more level.
So if the actual goal you have is "I want citizens to not starve and be homeless," which is certainly my goal, protectionism is a temporary patch holding back a storm. One day it will stop working. Better to prepare for that day instead of denying it.
(Unless you plan on dying before then and don't care about your kids' future, but I assume all the people in this thread saying "culture" care about that....)
But not everyone in any country can "get X from anywhere" is part of my point.
A bonus of that amendment is that if you want to bring family, you must all in sum earn a living wage for your family, but you can split that however you want, so e.g. you can legally bring children who aren't going to work or legally take more than 90 days to raise a child.
(Also it might embarrass the government into raising the minimum wage for citizens to a living wage.)
Now under your rules you cannot do that. What do you do? You've created your life in the US, you have friends, perhaps a girlfriend, maybe even a house. Now you have to leave?
That's part of the deal. Any immigrant arriving on a visa knows what they've signed up for, and it doesn't involve taking a sabbatical. It also really should not involve buying a house, if you're being sensible. Being fired 100% sucks, but you can transfer an H1B to a new employer. H1B is at least a dual intent visa, so after some years you can apply for a green card, get one, then take all the sabbaticals you want.
(Also, if your life is settled enough to have friends and a girlfriend you don't want to leave, US immigration does offer an answer: marry her!)
In addition, USCIS has formalized the general practice that you have 60 days to find another job or leave the country: https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-publishes-fin...
I'm glad to hear the 60 days had been codified. I just hope it's a binding decision.
I'll definitely be upset if things don't work out in my current home, but I'm prepared for the possibility. If anyone out there expects their new country to bend over backwards for them and try to keep them from returning to their old country, they're either not fit for the difficulties they'll inevitably face or they're incredibly wealthy.
Particularly to the H1b, the discussion is about cost of transaction (I.e.: changing jobs). There is no bending over in the US labor market.
1) Qualified job candidates are scarce? Just... what? The only difference between here and there is when people lie and say they're qualified, the company is willing to pass this lie on to the government to say "the qualified candidates are over there". There are people who can do the work, and there are companies who want to pay less in total compensation. I feel like my entire generation was raised on a CS/SE pathway. How are there no qualified candidates? What decade will we be fit do to the work? Maybe I'll move to the third world and get rehired back. That's the entry-level job.
2) H-1B is not an loophole to get "loyal" employees. Again, you keep employees with competitive wages & benefits.
3) Companies should be shamed as much as the government for an exploitable process. The government must change for the people it serves. Companies can be dissolved if they're not supporting the area they base themselves out of (and benefit from).
This is ultimately what it's about.
I work as a software engineer in the Bay Area and the number of H1Bs doing the same grunt work coding that I do is astounding. H1Bs were supposed to be for some sort of super specialized work no?
It would make companies be more serious about looking for talent elsewhere - such as in their own country.
The trick is when you H1B employer also offers to sponsor your green card. That isn't transferrable, and if you're from certain countries (like India) it can take up to ten years to get one.
Yes but the priority date itself is transferable. This allows you to job hop as many times as you want, without losing your place in line. If you have to wait 10 years for your green card, you might as well take advantage of this option and only worry about your green card 9 years down the road.
The H1B program itself is not a problem and in-fact is a big positive contributor to the US economy; but it definitely has issues like the one you highlighted (e.g. harder for employees to switch jobs) that should be addressed by the government to make it more viable.
If companies aren't really looking for local talent, or aren't really paying prevailing wages, they have been defrauding the government, and hurting the labor market. When large scale abusers of h-1b are prevented from getting future visas, it gives room for other companies to use the visas, and hopefully they follow the rules.
The practice of hiring someone "because it is harder for them to switch jobs" so the company "can lock these employees for longer" and "can pay them less" sounds like unlawful wage discrimination.
If the existence of a governmental program helps a company in pursuing an unlawful practice should that be relevant in determining the wrongfulness of the practice?
That seems like a very weak argument.
It seems reasonable that a company should see the program as intended to make H1-B candidates attractive because of their skills, not because it will be "harder for them to switch jobs" and the company can "lock" them for longer and "pay them less".
If there are citizens or permanent residents that have the same skills then what legitimate reason exists why companies should be filling them with H1-B candidates instead?
The entire point of the H1B visa is to create a pool or workers who are not free to choose their professional path, but are allowed to live in the US only under the work conditions determined by their employer.
The extent to which this is true, is severely overestimated. Both by citizens and by the h1b holders themselves. I have a close friend who has switched companies 4 times while on a h1b, and it was a breeze.
https://www.prideimmigration.com/can-you-change-jobs-h1b-vis...
The only complicating factors are Trump-era changes such as suspension of premium processing and greater risk of rejections. Combined, these do have a chilling effect on job transfers, which ironically leads to h1b abuses like mentioned in the article. But even then, these are easily surmountable hurdles.
If US companies don't like/trust the talent coming out of US colleges, they should have a stake in improving those programs. But if their solution is just to hire immigrants, it cheats colleges out of feedback from industry.
Colleges really need more practical courses, at least starting in upper years, that set developers up for success in the workforce. How many devs today come out of college needing 3-6 months of learning just the basics? That shouldn't be happening.
I.e., whom does a country's government serve?
Not on your own. You need to find a country willing to accept you as a citizen. For the vast majority of people in the world, the only countries that would accept them are those where they would be worse off. So the countries that do (successfully) prioritize prosperity of their citizens also effectively lock out most people from elsewhere. The trickle of immigration is just that, a trickle - it is deliberately constrained with various rules and requirements, and it would be a much bigger stream if anyone who wanted to change their citizenship could apply (even if you filtered out, say, people with criminal records and such).
You know that's not true, and other countries have much more strict citizenship processes, some not even allowing full citizenship.
Imagine I'm a cab driver in Pakistan and want to become a cab driver in the US. Can you point me to what form I would fill out in order to apply for a visa?
As far as I'm aware, no such process exists.
Are you arguing that two human attributes in particular, race and birthplace, should for some reason be subject to the same level of discrimination in hiring?
Or are you asking a more abstract question? I.e., given any human attribute ${attrib}, what are the principles a government should use when deciding if ${attrib} is a legally protected class?
Also, I think there is a big difference between allowing discrimination (which is only wrong if you belong to a protected class) and requiring discrimination, which is pretty much always wrong.
So its one thing to argue about whether employers should be allowed to discriminate against foreigners (or blacks). There are some good arguments on both sides. But I don't think there are any good arguments in favor of requiring that employers discriminate against foreigners (or blacks).
Edit : Sorry addicted, I interpreted your comment as a justification, not as historical account. My bad.
Two parties disagree and eventually one says to the other "if you don't stop it I'll make you stop it."
This is a truth claim that can be honestly verified through physical struggle. If they win, then their might did make them factually correct. If the other side was mightier than the other side proved themselves correct when they said "no you won't."
No?
Edit: human beings since forever have never stopped warring with each other over stuff. It's almost like our M.O. is Argumentum ad hominem, ad baculum, ad infinitum - "argument by beating a man with a stick for eternity"
I think GP was giving a causal explanation in terms of political history.
Given that certain forms of discrimination are unacceptable, why is okay for any group to discriminate against any other group? Why is it ok for a nation to enforce borders, a company to keep the proceeds of a new idea to themselves, or for a wealthy family to favor their own children?
Many people have asked that and tried to create systems that forbid such discrimination. Unfortunately the result is always disaster. It's simply so counter to human nature that it cannot be imposed without a totalitarian government and the problems that come with totalitarianism are far worse than the problems of inequality that come with freedom.
But perhaps a moral person should still seek to follow such a policy of their own volition? That might be viable, if dealing only with other people who follow a similar policy. But how many people are willing to work for such a system, rather than merely using "equality" as an argument only when it serves their own self interests? How many are willing to make the sacrifice when it's their turn to do the dirty job, to work hard without keeping the proceeds, to share their home with strangers, to fight criminals and tyrants with nothing to gain for themselves?
That's an empirical question and many experiments have been conducted on communes, kibbutzim, ashrams, etc. Experience has shown that the answer is: far too few to make such a system viable. Even voluntary societies of this type are plagued by freeloaders and cliques, and must impose borders to prevent being overrun by outsiders.
So while it certainly seems like a good moral position, and has seemed so to many, many people throughout history, it simply fails to work in practice, over and over and over again.
Same reason you take care of your own kids first. Would that imply that you are discriminating against kids that aren't yours?
Then go to a Ghana forum and critique the right of return law for any black people who want to emigrate to Ghana.
In the Bay Area, qualified job candidates are so scarce that it's quite common for citizens/permanent-residents to change jobs frequently. H1-B candidates are attractive for companies because it is harder for them to switch jobs. Companies can lock these employees for longer, and they can pay them less.
Rather than going after the companies, shouldn't we be focusing on fixing the H-1B visa process instead? It almost seems like the government has set up a broken process for companies to take advantage of, and instead of fixing things, they blame the companies.