> This is really bad. Families are going to get told to leave. I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong.

It's not a moral issue (except for the big H-1B mills that are gaming the system.)

But nothing has changed: these are not an offer of citizenship. They are temporary work visas with no guarantees: an opportunity to do temporary specialty work in the U.S.

If someone were to bring their family, they have done so with the explicit knowledge that the situation could change at any time.

> these are not an offer of citizenship

No one said that it was, but there is a difference between submitting for an extension X months ago and fully expecting to get it, and then the rules changing out from under you and being told "No. I understand you've been here for 10 years, but pack up all your shit and leave".

5 years ago it was technically "and leave tonight" (which I'm sure you understand is unreasonable). Luckily now there is at least a 60 day grace period to look for something else, but still.

You are being rather unsympathetic to people who find themselves in this situation.

They should change visas to be auctioned off, so people who wish to stay can do so.

I dont think an H1B holder can stay for 10 years, unless the rule changed since I had one, but 10ish years ago it was 6 years max.

AFAIK if you are a valid green card application with a valid priority date you are allowed to.

Considering the backlog for green cards if you're from india/china, there are _tons_ of people in this situation.

Good point, but then would you lose your status even if your h1b ended? Wouldn't the pending GC petition be enough to keep you in status?

It happened to me, I lost my h1b a few weeks after filling for my GC and I had no problem staying in the country. It was a GC via marriage though, rules ma be different for employer sponsored GCs

>It was a GC via marriage though, rules ma be different for employer sponsored GCs

Rules are indeed different for Employment based green cards. Marriage based green cards don't have a limit while the number of employment based Green cards that can be given out in a year is fixed ( in total and within that there is a 7% cap on how much each individual country can receive)

People stuck this way from India & China aren't even able to file for GC's. You can only file for a GC if your country's date is "current" (which is not the case for marriage based GC)

Their only legal basis to stay in the US is the H1-B which they can keep on renewing because they have an approved I-140. In my current situation, i have an approved immigrant petition and i will have to continue to get H1-Bs approved till i get current (which current projections are about 40-50 years). I've been in the US for a decade and it will be many many decades before i can remove the dependence on the H1.

The math is simple - there are about 400K Indians with approved immigrant petitions. And across 2 categories the maximum number of green cards that Indians can receive in a year is about ~6K. Each petition is roughly 2 green cards

So if an Indian gets an immigrant visa approved today in 2020 , they're looking at wait of 800/6 (133) years even be able to file for a green card.

One thing is a lot of Indians got GC's in EB-1 in the last decade(2000-2020). There were some Indian IT outsourcing firms that promoted people to higher roles for EB-1 GC purposes and then demoted them after they got GCs. Thousands of people got it(thanks to mind boggling levels of office politics), now the EB-1 queue is flooded due to his abuse(fraud?). EB-1 used to be current, now the wait is again in a few years(<10).

Part of the problem here seems to be at least to some extent everyone(us Indians) flooding these queue's while native population keeping these quotas fixed(to control they don't change their society too much).

One also needs to realize there will always be limits to these things. Now given every one wants to come to US, they can't accommodate everyone. There will be limits. Limits to number of H1B's, limit to yearly GCs. What should the limit be? 6K, 60K, 600K? How much?

Imagine India doing this. We recently passed laws to restrict immigration. For some reasons we expect to shut doors to everyone, while simultaneously expecting the whole world roll out red carpets for us.

You do loose status after 60 days in case of employment based green card applications which are approved but the so called priority date is not current. For 100s of thousands of people these priority dates will take literally decades to become "current".

I believe it is enough, as long as you have received an I-140, but I'm not sure. This is something that should be answered by an immigration attorney.

Edited to correct the form number

> If someone were to bring their family, they have done so with the explicit knowledge that the situation could change at any time.

I don't disagree - and I'm a US citizen, who previously was a greencard holder, who previously came here via the H1B process.

But look at it this way: the whole greencard approval process sometimes takes years, or even over a decade. When people spend 10 years in some place, the perspective changes a bit. It does become a complicated issue, with moral overtones too.

Make the goddamn greencard approval (or rejection) faster. If processing the papers took a few months, instead of years, after which you got your yea or nay decision, then the whole issue would be much simpler - and, indeed, as you say it would not be a moral issue at all.

But think of someone who spent here 10 years, brought their spouse here, had a couple kids (that clock doesn't stop ticking just because you're waiting for a rubber stamp to hit the paper), the kids go to school, and from a cultural perspective the kids are American - and then they are all told to get the hell out of here. That's terrible.

Speed up that stupid process. Then sure, tweak the rules any way you see fit.

How many years do you think is the limit to being temporary and still being honest?

If they were giving 50 year H1B visa that are not guaranteed to be renewed, would you still say that it is the visa holder's fault for bringing their family?

If not for 50 years, then when should we start blaming them? How many years is a reasonable amount to put someone at fault for putting down roots?

I don't think you can dismiss the moral issue. The fact that there may technically be no "guarantee" does not mean that people ought to be treated unreasonably. The fact that some people may not care about the effects American policies have on people who are not American is not the same thing as it not being a moral issue.

People oh H1B are either very friendly to constant moves or are banking on a path to citizenship through it. The latter category is the vast majority, let's be honest here.

> People oh H1B are either very friendly to constant moves or are banking on a path to citizenship through it

BY DESIGN, as H1Bs (as well as L1s and a couple others) are dual intent

Damn, your lack of tact is seriously depressing.

It's the rules!

The decision would be ok in most other countries, where the land is some ethnic group's birthright. America, however, is unique in that it's everyone's birthright. The only reason most educated people don't support totally open borders is because there's so much poverty outside the US, but H-1B holders are not poor.

On what basis are you deciding what someone's (or some group's) birthrights are?

I think they may have been referring to varying citizenship laws across the world. The USA has citizenship by soil and blood, meaning that the country belongs to the people born here and the children of it's citizens. (Let's set aside naturalization for a moment, as that is not a birthright.) Some other countries have citizenship by blood only, so in a sense, those countries belong to their ethnic groups, wherever they may be. So in essence, the USA is more inclusive in bestowing the birthright of citizenship, which befits a nation of immigrants.

I support the free movement of people, but also the sovereignty of individual nations to decide who that country belongs to. For a strange example, the UK belongs to the queen, but she's nice enough to let her subjects have the use of it.

And back to naturalization, these H1b changes highlight why naturalization is important and should be achievable for anywho who ties their life to the USA. Citizenship confers privleges and protections and asking people to make life altering investments into a country without offering citizenship in return is exploitative and immoral.

Boe is America everyones birthright more than Chile or australia?

Since remote work has become acceptable and they already know the ins and outs of the job, many of these folks losing their visa will just be allowed to work remotely from India or Canada where it's trivial to get a work visa if you have a job offer.

This means the US economy will lose all the taxes and local expenditure in the economy by the family like rent, food, travel, vacations, utilities, entertainment, cars, home sales, etc. etc. And if that works out, the next hire may just be directly hired in India or Canada itself.

If I were in the Canada govt, I'd immediately create a way around the travel ban for workers who's visas didn't get renewed to be able to move to Canada after following a strict quarantine protocol. If the worker was able to work remotely in the US using Zoom, why can't they do the same job remotely in the same time zone in Canada using the same remote working tools?

There is already a small industry in Canada where a company takes a few % of the billing rate in order to sponsor and hold a Canadian visa for people who lost their H1B visas due to increased and inconsistent rejections over the past few years, but whose employer is willing to allow them to work from Canada. This moves a lot of money to Canada.

Also, some tech companies have been outright moving jobs to Canada because they can hire from a global workforce and Canada has been welcoming them. This is going to intensify.

Is it that simple though? Maybe for companies that are incorporated abroad. Otherwise looks like international workers are subject to 30% withholding, unless there's some tax treaty https://www.irs.gov/businesses/international-businesses/us-w... .

That applies only to people physically within the US. A non resident alien is someone on a work visa or student visa or other authorization. A resident alien is someone on a green card. Those rules don't apply to people in Canada who pay Canadian taxes(otherwise there would be double taxation).

E.g of companies handing Canadian compliance and billing their US clients. https://syndesus.com/why-u-s-companies-need-a-peo-to-recruit...

This already happens with companies relocating people to Canada until they can reapply back to the US.

So this is amusingly similar to the argument against a minimum wage increase. People will lose their jobs, families will lose out. In either case, the employer is the actual baddie being forced to either raise the wage to an appropriate level or send the employee home (and then attempt to backfill the job with the local market, probably not easy). So if you are for an increased minimum wage, legislation at least in part intended to eliminate abusive employment practices across the low end labor market, (and I assume you are because of your rightful concern for the families) wouldn't it make sense to praise this legislation and focus your frustration on the inevitable corporations that are taking advantage of foreign labor? Or is there more nuance to this?

There's a big difference between requiring a minimum wage for anyone and specifically requiring a higher wage for existing H1-Bs. In particular, the fact that H1-Bs will have to emigrate if it isn't increased.

It’s an H1-B temporary work visa. They are required to emigrate back regardless after 3 years or less.

The H1B can be and does get renewed by 100s of thousands of people. AC21 provision allows for an H1B to be renewed in perpetuity (even beyond 6 years) until an approved green card petition is pending. The approved green card petition can stay pending for a really long time due to country based immigration queues which disadvantage people from large population countries.

H1-B is a dual intent work visa an you're not required to emigrate. You shave the option to extend your work permit for 6 years or pursue permanent residency.

There is nothing amusing about families being ejected. That's the nuance.

He didn't say families being ejected is amusing. His point is that the argument that increasing minimum wage will result in people getting fired (made often by the right) is practically identical to the argument that increasing the wage requirements for H1B visas will result in people getting fired (now made by the left).

The amusing part is that both sides now look like hypocrites. The outcomes for individuals and their families is obviously tragic either way.

Oof, here's the catch. This is bad.

A non-retroactive raise of the wage scale isn't bad per se - it cuts down a lot of the incentive to flood the system, and prioritizes employees who will add the most value.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that this surprise kick-out is a feature, not a bug.

I definitely think it's a feature, as it has a "corrective" effect. But yes it does uproot people and they should at least allow a grace period to allow the visa holders time to address their family/living situation.

I find this really sad. Knowing a lot of people who work in the US who aren't citizens and have more and more been stressed about their access to return home and back for a variety of reasons, this just adds to a pile of depressing realities people in America are facing.

> I’m surprised that there is no discussion on this thread about the impact to people who haven’t done anything wrong.

Existing H-1B holders should clearly be grandfathered in, but those aren't the only people who have done nothing wrong. What about the would-be future H-1B holders who would have benefited from working while making less than the new requirements? In other words, the vast majority of people who are going to be affected by these new rules.

American visa programs are run for the benefit of americans. Whether or not the visa holder benefits is incidental and not the point of US law.

I don't approve of seamlessly replacing "people" with "Americans," and the idea that Americans should not care about whether people from elsewhere are harmed by American policies is vile.

Nothing vile about it, it is how all governments around the world operate, for the benefit of their citizens.

Does the Indian government care about americans? How about the Chinese?

> Nothing vile about it, it is how all governments around the world operate, for the benefit of their citizens.

USA is also part of a larger community of countries, treating their citizens with less dignity is not a smart policy.

This isn’t a good comparison, due to differences in population and wealth of different countries. Just because Governments are required to take care of only their citizens interests doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they need to do. Especially considering the people in question here are immigrants who contribute to the economy and society of the US, and are likely to be citizens themselves in the future.

So precisely what level of national wealth does it become a moral imperative to sacrifice the interests of your own people?

Americans are constantly being fired and replaced with cheaper h1bs.

Americans lost more manufacturing jobs to China.

Americans lost jobs to Europeans after the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe and kickstarted the European economy.

Americans lost jobs when Japan industrialized and dominated the semiconductor industry.

Despite Americans losing jobs, the United States Government continued to support other nations on their path to development. Despite losing all those jobs, America continued to prosper, is still the wealthiest nation by far, and most advanced and militarily powerful.

Americans are not constantly being fired and replaced by cheaper h1bs. Some are. There is little evidence to support that h1bs have contributed to any kind of large scale wage depression in the technology sector. In fact, wages continue to grow, and most companies are still hiring lots of software engineers.

If you don’t have your facts straight, I don’t know what to tell you. You can look at localized instances of job losses caused by companies abusing the system. I can point to localized instances of immigrants on h1bs starting new companies and hiring many Americans. This gets us nowhere.

There is no evidence that H1b abuse is causing anywhere near the amount of wage suppression that would cause massive shift in wages across the US tech industry.

What about the Americans that do get a job, are they all privileged? Sounds like the real reason some Americans dont have a job is either they didn't have the skill or not willing to work for lower wage?

There is a thing called career progression. Many people are underpaid earlier in their career but if they are any good it gets better at some point or they at least still get a low paying job. In software if you are a citizen you have great mobility to job hop and get a huge pay bump until limited by your ability.

Btw complains about low paying job in software in the US are bs. US software job market is massively overpriced comparing to the rest of the world, it needs correction to drive real innovation. This is not sustainable at all for start-ups.

IMO the software industry is one of the least innovative industries in the world, constantly reinventing the wheel with its copycat programming languages and database software.

H1B holders are not immigrant, and it is very hard to get a green card from an h1b.

It’s a dual intent visa. Most skilled immigration does happen via the h1b route today.

And that doesn't mean that most h1b holders become immigrants or citizens, as claimed in the parent.

For every job that's done by an immigrant, there are 10 that are moved overseas. Politicians have taught people here to look at the immigrant as the boogeyman while they silently kill regulations that prevent jobs being offshored.

We are facing record unemployment so people are having this happen to them across the board. The people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic but are struggling to find work because of the abundance of H-1B holders also "haven't done anything wrong".

The question now is do we continue that flow of labour while jobs are scarce, or stem that flow while we get back on our feet again? On this, the Trump administration appears to have made a tough, but rational choice.

> people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic but are struggling to find work because of the abundance of H-1B holders

That’s a straw man. Those people do not exist. Look at the data.

There’s currently 18 million unemployed Americans. The majority of pandemic related job losses are low wage retail, hospitality and restaurant workers.

There’s a total of 500k H1b visa holders in the US, the vast majority of which are in IT.

There is very little (if any) overlap between those groups.

You aren’t suddenly going to make more money by kicking out all the immigrants. That’s not how the economy works. Those H1b holders are also consumers who spend a majority of their salaries on taxes and products/services in the US. Kicking out 500k people would further hurt unemployment in sectors hit most by the pandemic.

Especially in the midst of a global pandemic, seems a little callous.

Eh. I think that's a little unfair on us HNers. I have seen comments like that. But I've also seen a lot of comments about how the H1b visas should be more flexible and widely available so as to give visa holders more freedom.

the problem is that those comments are never downvoted. they are ALWAYS upvoted.

so is it unfair to say a community that mostly upvotes plain xenophobic comments has an issue?

and it's not from now -- i've been here for a while and every single time h1b is mentioned, there are upvoted comments saying weird stuff that is never removed.

> those comments are never downvoted. they are ALWAYS upvoted

That's far from the case. You might be running into the notice/dislike bias, which unfortunately tends to distort perceptions and leads to false feelings of generality.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

From there it leads to painful feelings about the community, which is particularly unfortunate. I wrote about this earlier today in a different context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24701584.

Hi, I'm just commenting here because I don't know any alternative way to reach the moderation of hacker news. There was a thread earlier today on the topic of "Ask HN: what do you consider to be essential to being a good programmer" and it vanished in the middle of me having typed out a long response. I couldn't find it afterwards. Do you know where it went or why it was removed?

It’s currently at the top of the “ask” page - https://news.ycombinator.com/ask

It also appears via this search:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...

> I don't know any alternative way to reach the moderation of hacker news

This is explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, which is something everyone posting here should be familiar with. There is also a Contact link in the footer.

H1Bs were never supposed to have been immigration visas. Congress set the law to two 3-year stints - max of 6 years and then you're gone.

Somewhere in the last 20 years, they began rubber stamping renewals for anybody who'd paid a few thousand dollars to get into the Green Card line, which is absurd because the Green Card line for Indians is at about 100 years due to their population.

You didn't do anything wrong except assume the corruption would go on forever and Americans wouldn't eventually notice they were being replaced by foreign workers, and vote accordingly.

One does not pay a couple thousand $ get into an eternal line. You need to have an approved I-140 i.e. an approved green card application to remain in line.

To do this a company must (1) hire you; (2) decide to sponsor you for a long, expensive process; (3) interview broadly and prove it couldn't not find an American to fill the role. Not to speak of a number of hoops an applicant has to go through.

Rubber stamp? Have you ever tried applying for an H1b renewal? There is constant anxiety over ever changing rules and RFEs. Not to mention the run around to get a visa stamp every 3 years.

Few thousand to get into green card line? Have you ever tried doing this? There is an elaborate over a year long process to get into this line. and even then its a broken broken system that stipulates that queues are country based, which mean a Lithuanian who enters the queue today will get a green card before an equally qualified chinese or indian person who has been in the queue for 10 years!