"Body shops" like Infosys and Tata Consulting that import thousands of H1Bs under borderline fraudulent applications, and then underpay these employees.

Just a random link, but the contours of the problem:

https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr...

Sure, there are low paid H1B workers, but why is that necessarily a problem? Your link shows no evidence that they depress the wages or employment of native-born workers.

In fact, there are many proper economic analyses that show that native-born workers benefit from immigration:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/3pi8vo/highsk...

As a data point, a consultancy I used to work for competed directly with Infosys, Tata, and other H1B shops for tech contracts (mostly BA and PM work). I can personally guarantee you that hourly rates were artificially reduced as a result at multiple companies, which negatively impacted salaries and bonuses of American workers.

Keep in mind that most economic analyses of this topic ignore the direct competition aspect of the contract labor market impacted by H1Bs and instead focus on salaried FTEs at the businesses that contractors provide services to.

H1B here myself but someone who moved here during one of the years that had surprisingly lax demand for H1B visas. I moved here for a startup as the first engineer with a pay much lower than what I could have gotten in the market. It was purely because there was no demand for H1B that year that I got in. Every year since then has been the top 3 Indian companies stuffing the applications. However, the current rule change would shift the balance from consultancies to big tech companies. Startups do need talent too and there are people like me who are willing to take a pay cut in exchange for a reasonable equity. The winners of this rule change would be big tech companies - not necessarily the US in general.

What the US needs is a point based system with automatic green card in x number of years. This would allow the government to prioritize "desirable qualities" (education, age, salary and whatever you want to optimize for) and balance them out (e.g, I could get points for my education instead of my salary and still qualify). The automatic green card option would then open up the employees to work anywhere they want instead of the company that sponsored them thereby preventing wage suppression.

I'm fully supportive of massively more immigration - I believe it's a net economic positive and a moral imperative.

At the same time, if a program is designed to bring in 'exceptional talent' but is really just importing mediocre drones from a single country, that's not really serving the purpose of the program.

Let's fix H1Bs and then work on more equitable ways to allow other forms of beneficial immigration.

> At the same time, if a program

There's no "if" here.

So, draining talent from less successful countries with a desperate need of this talent is a ‘moral imperative’ to you?

Aside from all of the evidence that both countries benefit in these arrangements as people skill up and often move home later on, letting free citizens choose where to maximize their livelihoods is a moral imperative, yes.

>Aside from all of the evidence that both countries benefit in these arrangements as people skill up and often move home later on

Can you please provide this evidence? I want to be educated on that. I thought that returning home is really rare for these people, and it does not compensate negative effects of the "brain drain" at all.

>letting free citizens choose where to maximize their livelihoods is a moral imperative, yes

People should be free to pursue whatever they want, no questioning that. However, elites of the US create such conditions that the best career path for the people from less fortunate countries is to move out, break cultural bonds and, probably, make the countries that they moved from, even less fortunate in the end - is it really moral?

I think that the most moral option would be increasing investment and creating child companies in countries where these people move from, creating nice jobs outside of the US, so nobody would have to move anywhere.

Yeah if I could work in silicon valley for a few years then come home I think that'd be a net win all around.

H1B and immigration shouldn't be used interchangeably. I think immigration should be easier, but I highly doubt that when the company I work for uses hires junior web developers with H1B visas for low pay based on the area, that they couldn't find a single native to fill the position, especially since it's always been a fully remote position.

One issue is that the scattershot visa applications from body shops crowd out applications from employers who want one specific, highly skilled person.

> there are many proper economic analyses that show that native-born workers benefit from immigration

I actually read through two of the "proper economic analyses" in that reddit link since I am interested in this.

One of them wasn't an economic analysis but a summary article: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/contributions-high-.... Almost all of this article is talking about all of the problems with trying to identify the net effects of immigration and how difficult it is.

It has quotes that directly refute what you are saying such as:

"Immigration has complex, sometimes ambiguous impacts on natives. The benefits to the US economy from high-skilled immigration can be accompanied by negative effects for certain groups of natives and positive effects for other groups." Which is the opening summary of the section on effect on natives. Also,

"Borjas found that a 10 percent increase of immigrants with PhDs in a certain field lowered the wages of native born graduating with doctorates in those same fields around the same time by 3 percent"

"Researchers have also examined the degree to which high inflows of foreign-born students affect the educational opportunities of native students. Borjas finds some evidence that an inflow of foreign-born students displaces native, white male students in elite institutions"

The other main article https://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_207GPCC.pdf is more positive but there is no way you can call it a rosey picture.

Clearly, the biggest effect of immigration is on previous immigrants (currently 30% of California): "Foreign-born workers already here sustain the largest losses in real wages, losing between 17 and 20 percent of their real wage over 14 years."

It just so happens that natives (specifically who are college educated) tend to have complimentary skill sets in the years mentioned.

"Except for workers with some college education, whose real wage gain is around 6 to 7 percent, no other group experiences real wage gains or losses larger than 4 percent. This implies that even with the moderate costs of moving, in the range of 5 to 10 percent of their yearly income, native workers would not move (out of or into California) in response to immigration."

That is the support you have that "native-born workers benefit from immigration". It helped college educated natives and the rest of the population wasn't negatively affected enough to leave California. And that's based on migration data ending in 2004 and Californians have been leaving in record droves since then.

Of course, it doesn't mention any thing about the rest of the effect on natives such as cost of living increases due to crowding, strain on institutions (do you want to send your kids to an average California school?), unwanted changes in culture and politics, decrease in social cohesion, decreases (or lack of improvement) in working conditions, increases in inequality or any of the other consequences.

The average US male wage has barely moved since the 1970s during a time of unprecedented levels of immigration. If immigration is such a net benefit to native-born worker, where did those improvements go?

50k-60k is pretty normal in many places in US. Were they bringing staff in SF or NYC?

H1B visas are in theory intended to be awarded only when there is a shortage of some specialized labor and it is not possible to find enough qualified candidates within the country. If a person hired under that premise ends up making a “pretty normal” wage it’s a pretty clear sign that the process is being abused.

I work for a company that's about 30th in terms of H1B's. All around me, I see degreed engineers -- many with their Masters -- doing clerical work that a sharp high-school graduate could do. I'm not talking about a few. I'm talking about dozens. There's nothing about what they're doing that requires specific engineering knowledge. They only have to be conversant about what the actual engineers are doing. So the effect is 2-fold: the fact that his arrangement exists puts downward pressure on wages for the skilled jobs, but it also takes great opportunities away from people who would have gotten those jobs a few decades ago.

A majority of H1B visas are currently issued to relatively low paying consulting firms, who are then hired by big enterprises in place of their more expensive technical employees. This isn't supposed to be legal - you're not allowed to hire H1B employees if an equally qualified American could have filled their role - but due to the specifics of how the program is administered you can often pull it off with that kind of arms-length deal.

Check this out: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/Appr...

Contrast that with the previous year: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/Appr...

You can see that the outsourcing firms have fewer and fewer approvals. Of course with this latest change it will decline more.

This happens to US workers too.

"Bottom" performing FTE's are let go as part of annual stack ranking, only to be hired by staffing agencies, and contracted back to large tech companies.

It's a way for tech companies to retain people who are necessary to perform the work, but at reduced wages.

You're bound to the employer that sponsors your visa. Lose your job? You're effectively deported.

Your employer has... well, a power imbalance over you, to put it nicely.

I'm not sure how the proposed changes will play out for American workers. Theoretically, treating H1B workers better could benefit American workers: there is less incentive to callously replace them with underpaid H1B workers. On the other hand, American workers will face increased competition, it seems to me.

> Your employer has... well, a power imbalance over you, to put it nicely.

I can't help but think of this any time I see an HN comment about some questionable surveillance-ad-tech, usually saying that engineers should just refuse to build that stuff.

If you can find another employer to take over the sponsorship, you can transfer (without having to deal with the visa quota gantlet).

Do you think the possibility of finding a new job makes H1B workers feel any more capable of standing up for their beliefs at work and maybe saying "No" when asked to build something evil?

It may not eliminate it, but I'm sure it improves the situation compared to not being able to change jobs at all. I originally came to the US on an H-1B, and had no trouble transferring the visa to a new employer.

and for that you had to

find a job

get/consult a lawyer to make sure everything was good

do the whole change

and end up in the exact same situation

Situation: You are tied to ONE employer and if something goes wrong they can just end your job and kick you out

I've done the change so let's not pretend it is some super easy, doesn't matter thing

Also, if you have to leave US where do you have to go?

If you have to go back to UK or Canada that is no big loss

If, on the other hand you have to go back to China or India or AFrica then your entire family is #$@$#$%

    If you have to go back to UK or Canada that is no big loss

    If, on the other hand you have to go back to China or India
    or AFrica then your entire family is #$@$#$%

Canada and the UK are nice places, but it's still a huge blow to have to pick up your family and move back to another country.

Source: I'm American, so I don't know this pain personally, but I was very close with a Canadian co-worker who was here on a work visa. He uprooted his wife and kids from Canada to come and work here. When our workplace soured, he had to do it all over again. Uproot his wife and children again, tell his children to say goodbye to their friends again, buy a house again, etc. Not easy!

There's lots of articles if you google for "h1b visa abuse", but this will get you started: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/proof-that-h-1b-vi...

There are lots of articles on how vaccines cause autism also.

Correlation is not causation, but maybe you should read them.

The abuse is that the H1B program is supposed to be for truly distinctive skills. But the "body shops" bring people with very low skill.

Nope. There's a self sponsored immigrant visa.

H1B is just your regular temp.

It's inherently abusive.

You're tied to a pool of employers and have to get government permission to transfer employment. Your employer has an enormous power over you, with little recourse on your side.... as if employers didn't have enormous power over their employees as is.

> What's the abuse?

That's probably about the handful of consulting companies doing shady stuff. Not the overall program as a whole.