As a former H1B holder who walked away from a Green Card because being a bonded laborer for 10+ years to a large tech company wasn't my cup of tea

I agree 1000% with you on this -> H1B has been/is being abused by all companies (big and small) for a number of years at the cost of not only American workers but also the visa holders. The only ones benefiting are the companies that sponsor H1B visas by suppressing wages for everyone.

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It's bonded labor of people desperate to get into the western world and/or get into Silicon Valley/US tech scene

It only benefits large tech companies

A) US citizens have lower salaries (lucky ones) or don't get jobs (unlucky ones)

B) H1B workers are paid less and are bonded labor

C) US itself loses out because many of those people would have started companies

Do you want people starting PinDuoDuo, FlipKart, Meituan Dianping, Shopify type companies in US or in other countries?

Then why instead of letting these 'brightest people from around the world' become entrpreneurs in US

are you asking them to spend 22 to 35 being bonded labor for data surveillance companies like FB and GOOG???

Let me provide the counter

(A) The fact that silicon valley gets access to global talent which make sthe companies much more successful and massively increases the number of jobs available providing far more jobs for US citizens than if the visa program didn't exist

(B) The H1B visa holders are earning far more than they would get by remaining in their home country, and whilst they're bonded labour in the US they can always return to their home country leaving them at a minimum with a choice between a better job in the US or the same situation they had in their home country anyway.

(C) The US gains a bunch of highly intelligent, highly taxable employees who will likely eventually become citizens and can then create startups as well as providing a larger labour pool for the people who are starting companies.

All of your critiques are comparing H1B visas against some imaginary system where people can come to work in the US with no restriction, and let's remind ourselves these changes are from a thoroughly anti-immigration administratrion. The alternative to the H1B system is no H1B system, which is why it's been so difficult to reform. There is no law getting out of congress that reduces the restrictions on immigration.

I agree with some of your points.

If the alternative is no H1B that would be very bad for the US.

But I think there’s a middle ground where you can say let’s the keep H1B program but tweak it in a way that benefits the H1B visa holder and American citizens so corporations don’t take advantage of the talent shortage in tech

The only way to make it better - do away with H1B and government restrictions on labor of migrants. (Show your passport, geta job and pay taxes - done)

But xenophobia will not let that happen.

Point b, "if you don't like it go back to your country"... they might be earning more, but the cost of living is WAY more than in their home country, I agree that they might be able to save some to no go back empty handed or to send back to their family, but why should they suffer in the meantime?

Point C is like a slap in the face of entrepreneurship by making it seem that only after X years of 'bonded labour' will these people be worthy of starting up.

All companies started off by students who came for an MS/PhD & happened to be successful were borderline of the grey-area w.r.t. laws.

But that’s not what’s happening... every H1B holder I’ve personally worked with, while being incredibly nice people, required immense oversight to get any useful output from. 1 U.S. developer/manager to 5+ H1B hires seems to be common.

Shopify is canadian, Meituan Dianping and PinDuoDuo play in the chinese ecosystem and Flipkart is an indigenous solution for a global south country (it isn't that unique, there are ons of them and they dont bring value to the american economy except spotify). Also there is a huge moral assumption being made by many on HN: non-citizens have the right and a moral imperative to participate in the american economy. It's almost as if america's value as codify by their laws doesnt matter and these folks basically view the issue really not about respecting those laws but about the task of influence.

+1 on this. I have a CS masters degree from top UK university and was hired as Software Engineer, but company registered me as a Computer technician. When my H1b required renewal, DoL found out that I was a Software Engineer and company was forced to give a 20k yearly increase, not retroactive. This was Cisco. This is a.great move for people like me that I had no idea about salary ranges and US laws

I fail to see how your points are correlated to the changes. (As far as I grasped them, because wsj is paywalled...)

If a company lowered your wages by wrongfully registering you for a lower paid position, they could still do so, because the crux is comparing the salary to a different demographic. The problem wasn't with the law, but with them screwing you and you not carefully reviewing the visa laws of the country you immigrated to.

It actually sounds like the new visa regulations will make immigration for entry level positions much harder. So your alternative would've likely been not getting a job in the US to begin with.

Well, let me explain you that when you migrate to a new country, apart from dealing with your work Visa you need to deal with driving license, SSN registration, bank accounts, rental, car, new language, new work culture, new life...so yeah I should have known back in 2007 when there was no glassdoor, blind that I was underpaid by that much and company registering me as X when my company title was different.

I'm very well aware of what you have to do as I immigrated to two countries myself.

My point was not that it's not understandable that you were not aware of that, but that this change in law has nothing todo with being unaware of the law.

Your underpayment happened in violation of the previous law and with the new regulation you might not have gotten the job to begin with.

> H1B has been/is being abused by all companies (big and small)

I don't see this exactly.

I have worked with multiple, brilliant visa holders. Many of them have moved on to bigger and better things. Presumably paying a huge amount in taxes for the privilege.

Most software developers I know are not making what I would deem suppressed wages, especially in the current conditions (and I don't have an SV job). Most firms I know would hire more people, but instead are contracting with firms and individuals outside of the US.

I suspect that's going to ramp up more.

I have worked with brilliant H1B holders and also with manifestly mediocre ones. And even a couple "net negative" employees.

To the best of my knowledge all of them played the game diligently and got their green cards, and many of them got their citizenship. Good for them, and in many cases good for us.

But I absolutely did not see any greater level of talent among the H1B's than any other cohort in SF/SV.

While I'm very happy to work with people from all over the world, I do think that H1B has been used to get a lot of people in who aren't any better than your local City College grads. In addition to that being radically against the national interest, it's also really unfair to the "brilliant visa holders" you have had the good fortune to work with.

The problem in the US, as I understood it, is that there is shortage of workers in IT [1]. To me, it sounds like turning off the stream of potential workers, without fixing the underlying issue. With the current rules (85k H-1Bs a year), it would take 10 years for immigrants to fill all the spots. There may be a lot of untapped talent left in the US (based on under-representation of women, that's a discussion for another time), but somehow, the vacancies are not getting filled - what gives?

In addition, it seems that even currently, H-1B program has rules to make sure the wages paid are fair [2] - if they are not, it sounds like a problem with enforcement, or with how prevailing wages are calculated. To me, based on [3], it does not look like calculating the prevailing wage is the problem.

[1] "In the past three months, U.S. employers had about 918,000 unfilled IT jobs, according to IT trade group CompTIA." - https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-got-talent-just-not-en... [2] "Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater." - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b [3] https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1...

You have to realize that there really isn't a "shortage" of workers in the computer science field. Companies like to pretend like there is, but really it's just about pressing salaries in the long run. I have a friend here where I live who is a well-qualified java backend dev, not completely socially inept but who couldn't find a job in two months now after his previous company didn't renew his contract. This is not an outlier, I have spoken with lots of software engineers who had trouble finding work even in the next big city here, despite 50+ "open" positions. In reality, most of those spots are either a) nonexistend, the company just wants a stream of new applicants in case they can get their hands on a cs master for like 2k/month or b) pro forma because they're required by some policy to open the position to outsiders to fulfill a quota. In my experience the lack of IT workers is bullshit and anyone perpetuating it is either unknowing of the real world or acting in malice.

"Here" we tend to say that there's always shortage of __specialists__(senior, ninja, shaman devs).

Isn't that nearly always the case, in every field? I know guys on landscaping who say the same about senior workers who know how to deal with more exotic plants. In education this phenomenon is a huge part of why poorer schools suck, experienced teachers move to the suburbs as soon as possible.

The problem is that it is anecdotal. I have been frequently approached by my skip level manager and asked if I know anyone that we could hire since we have headcount that's open for months (this was MSFT) and we won't be able to work on everything we wanted to. This is also something I heard from other people (managers) as well. So now how do we measure if the shortage is real or not? Your gut feeling?

There is no shortage. They just want geniuses for paltry wages.

They can already get geniuses for paltry wages, it's called "outsourcing". I feel that a lot of people operate with the assumption that a person needs to be in the USA to "steal someone's job" - that's not the case, and hasn't been for a while.

But, we don't have to argue about what we think is happening - there's data available at https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm. It should be possible to see how wage growth in tech compares w/ other sectors. My hypothesis is that without shortage, wage growth would not outpace other industries.

> I have worked with multiple, brilliant visa holders.

I don’t disagree one bit. I think immigrants contributed and continue to contribute tremendously to the US economy. But at the same time policies should not be used to suppress wages by the “C” suite class. By paying low salaries it increases profits for the companies and contributes to income inequality

This isn’t going to have any impact on the number of H1B visas that are awarded. There’s a cap at 85k/year, and most applications get rejected. This is just going to result in the available 85k/year slots being awarded to the intended pool of high-skilled industry specialists, rather than those people being swamped out by a mass of applications from companies that see this as an opportunity to hire cheap labor. I have had a colleague who was probably making $200,000+/year sent back to his native country because all the king’s horses and all the king’s men (and all the king’s immigration lawyers too...) couldn’t secure them a continuation of their work visa.

Want to know how I know you work for a good company?

Be grateful! Not all of us are so lucky!

Curious, you didn't agree with the ME work that got 3 nobel peace prize nominations?

I don't think we disagree with it, it just isn't very significant. A couple of city states agreeing to recognize Israel? Ok, a nice step forward, but it doesn't seem very substantial or that a real solution is in the works.

How familiar would you rate yourself with Middle East politics? From people I know who are quite deep into it, it’s actually a very significant change to the geopolitical balance of the region that will likely have a lot of ramifications going forward.

Answers vary with whether someone is a Trump supporter or not, but again, these are city states, not Iran, not even "almost Israel ally at this point" Saudi Arabia. He also has made no progress with the Palestinians, and has gone plenty backwards on the front (forcing Serbia to move their embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, huh?).

All valid points, but at least the perspective I've heard is it's breaking up the "pro-Palestinian block" somewhat, so definitely changing the power dynamics, and impacting the Palestinian situation as they are losing potential allies. And as for Iran, it's pulling countries away from their sphere of influence.

Who knows whether it will be a positive push in the right direction, but it's certainly changing the dynamics of the region.

> I've heard is it's breaking up the "pro-Palestinian block" somewhat

If your goal is to screw the Palestinains, this is a good thing. Otherwise, they should have a voice.

> And as for Iran, it's pulling countries away from their sphere of influence.

This is a nonsensical statement: those Sunni countries are already deeply opposed to Shiite Iran even more than they are to Israel.

For context the UAE's population and GDP are both larger than Israel (though not by much, they are very comparable).

One of the nominators said:

"Trump has broken a 39-year-old streak of American Presidents either starting a war or bringing the United States into an international armed conflict."

Isn't this significant?

How low is your bar for peace medal worthy efforts? If not starting wars is an achievement there’s a bloody long line of heads of state ready to receive one. And yes I do realize the bar was set low by the previous president.

Sorry the discussion is about the commenter not agreeing with any previous policies of the president. If you don't think this quote marks an important shift in American policy I'm not sure you follow American policy.

Nobel peace prize nominations don’t mean much.

My question is then: what this changes? the company will just keep the indentured worker working longer to recoup. Am I missing something?

It would mean less downward pressure on wages for everyone.

H1B visa holders already require being paid more than the prevailing wage for the same SOC job in the same area.

And no, the consultant chop shops haven't been an issue for at least four years now since USCIS started cracking down on them.

> I finally agree with something this administration is doing.

As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

exactly. although there's more than one way to fix this. one controversial idea, but in line with capitalism is to just give (highly) skilled immigrants permanent residency (other countries do this already, and the H-1B process is also pretty rigorous). why? because right now with e.g. the H-1B, your employer has to petition for a green card. as you've said, it costs a lot of money to sponsor an H-1B. a reason some bad-faith companies do this is because they know the H-1B employee is tied to them (although an H-1B transfer is not too difficult). imagine if it was easier for visa holders to switch employees? i'm not holding my breath though.

in any case, having H-1B be a lottery was always weird. i just hope this doesn't impact any existing H-1B holders :(

So will my google interview now be easier?

Probably harder, actually. Google and other high-paying tech companies have been lobbying for this change for years. There are only 85k/year slots for H1B visas and they are awarded by lottery. High-paying tech companies generally have a high hiring bar and don’t find all that many candidates, so they don’t submit all that many applications to the lottery, and as a result their candidates get swamped out by the hordes of applications from body shops like Tata. This change will drive a lot of applications from low-paying companies out of the pool, and high-paying companies will be able to hire a larger share of the candidates they submit applications for each year.

They were lobbying for an increased quota, not for wage requirements for H1B workers.

Most people don't get this obvious fact. Blocking low paid neurosurgeons from coming into your country, never translates to allowing barbers to operate on your head.

It probably means you either go into a wait queue to get your operation done, or you fly to a different country where those doctors are present. Either way the operation will be more expensive, and your country will have less know-how at the end. You also have to now deal with the consequences of having awesome things getting done outside your country, which means the next generation of neurosurgeons won't be coming out of your country. At least not all of them.

Now Google or any other company isn't going lower the bar for hiring, they'll just happily open offices outside US to get the cream of the those countries. The fact that it could hurt your feelings is just irrelevant here.

Its very much like getting hired to Navy SEALs or some into some other elite unit. They have their criteria, they really don't mind rejecting you if you don't measure up.

The new administration will absolutely roll back these changes to kowtow to pro immigration groups and wage sensitive Silicon Valley. Obama administration expanded the coverage of H1B to their spouses (H4 dependents) who previously were ineligible to work. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

Obama administration allowed Employment Authorization for dependents of H-1B visa holders who applied and were chosen for permanent residency and were stuck in the backlogs. Many of these people - women, mostly - have been unable to participate meaningfully in the economy of many years. What is the problem with allowing them to work while they wait for their turn to be permanent residents?

< What is the problem with allowing them to work while they wait for their turn to be permanent residents? Why have immigration quotas. Why do you have to stand in line at Starbucks? You can go straight to the counter and holler. Happens all the time in India right ? Why stand in line at all.

The original idea of the H1-B Visa was these were high paying jobs where the spouse wouldn't need to work. It appears the pay rate has not kept with with inflation and/or cost of living.

Apologies for bringing up the obvious.

But just because "the spouse" doesn't need to work, doesn't mean they don't want to work.

"The spouse" shouldn't be denied the right to work just because their partner has an H1-B.

For shame.

They are not denied the right to work, but they are not given the right by default. The spouse can still apply to work via other means, but should not be given a work Visa by default. These restrictions on spouses are the same of every other country I have heard of, the US is the only one that had a special Visa just for spouses.

Mr Dork:

Given vs denied is a weird dichotomy. If you read the US constitution, you will see how it's about re-affirming rights rather than giving them.

Anyway. Needing to apply to work still admits that the default case is not being able to work.

> The original idea of the H1-B Visa was these were high paying jobs where the spouse wouldn't need to work.

Wow, that's a bit regressive view that high earning people must marry unaspirational spouses.

Nothing is preventing spouses from applying for H1B or other Visas, they key debate with the H-4 Visa is the spouses needed to work to afford to live in the areas. This just highlights the absurdity of the income levels in the H1B program. H1B is a temporary work Visa, everyone that has applied should understand there might be restrictions for yourself or your dependents until your family has a green card.

Expanding H1B coverage to allow spouses to live and work is just basic human decency.

> The only ones benefiting are the companies that sponsor H1B visas by suppressing wages for everyone.

... and those of us (perhaps sufficiently few) who work on H1B legally, for the visa's purpose (insufficient American expertise).

I do think it’s strange that HN has a supposed stance against political discussion, but allows discussion of the one popular policy from a very unpopular administration. Seems like a double standard leaning to the right.

Exactly this. It has been frustrating watching basically any other news about this administration get flagged to death (or at least shoved off the front page) because "politics isn't allowed on HN." Then, we get an article like this and are expected to pretend that it isn't politics when it's happening in the context of the election being weeks away and while people are literally at the polls casting their votes as we speak.

There's loads of interesting news coming from the administration each day, but when only the items that least offend people's sensibilities make it through the flagging brigade, it acts as a politically biased filter.

Discussing policies and discussing politics is hardly the same thing.

Then there are plenty of equally-or-more pertinent policies that should also be discussed. Immigration is the 6th most important topic to American voters this election [0,1]. Trump has unpopular stances on the top 5 topics [2] but headlines related to that are not allowed on HN because they are political. This is the double standard.

Finally, Trump’s legal immigration policy is very anti-immigration [3]. This is a stunt to get an uptick in votes. The reality is that this policy sounds nice on paper but will make it even harder for people to immigrate to the US.

0. https://news.gallup.com/poll/276932/several-issues-tie-impor...

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/13/important-is...

2. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/where-president-trump-...

3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/08/26/fact-...

Pertinent how? H1B visas are exceptionally relevant to Silicon Valley/Y Combinator, and the topic is understandably treated exceptionally.

How are changes to H1B's a political issue in the same vein as say the president going to the hospital? H1B's are huge in the tech industry and so of course of huge interest to the tech community directly.

My point is that no presidential policy ratified a month prior to a general election is apolitical, even in normal times.