H-1B for top talent in fields like AI makes sense. But in most cases it's not being used for that. It's just being used to fill generic software jobs that can be filled by US citizens/residents.

Even more basic IT jobs, no programming at all

Those top tier researchers are the kind of people the program is legitimately meant for, but for every one of those there are probably 10 or 100 H-1B contractors being paid below-market wages resulting in underemployment of US citizens, especially early career graduates.

The program is also used to employ people that won’t quit when they are mistreated because their family’s existence in the country depends on continued employment.

I’ve worked with a lot of backend and mobile devs that are on H1-B. They were solid for the most part but they aren’t exactly niche skills.

I don't disagree with you, but:

If the supposed benefit of H-1B is getting top researchers from other fields, why do we allow body shops to fill the annual quota with low skill workers?

Like, shouldn't we be in favor of rules will which will shift the balance of H-1B recipients towards the highest skilled (and probably highest paid) workers, instead of a lottery that rewards spamming the system with the greatest number of people who technically have a bachelor's degree?

It seems like a rules change could actually increase the number of very highly qualified people coming to America.

The EB1 visa exists for these "top researchers", the H1B is being used to suppress wages by increasing labor supply for basic software engineering roles a fresh college grad can easily complete.

I have worked with many very smart engineers at big tech firms. We were constantly searching, never hitting hiring goals. The H1B people were not displacing anyone and were paid top of market.

Indeed, but so many in the field of AI have followed this route:

Student -> regular dev/engineer -> promoted to lead/researcher/manager (or jump to another company for those positions).

If they didn't come to the US on a student VISA, or H1-B to begin with, they wouldn't have been able to follow the path they did.

> look at all the top researchers in AI, and count how many of them came here through H-1B. Gotta be something like 70%-80%

What’s your source?

Would you say the bulk of the H-1Bs are cream of the crop?

By and large the majority of our H1Bs are from India. Why isn’t China fighting tooth and nail for these hires if they’re so valuable? Additionally, why isn’t India fighting tooth and nail to keep them home and help their own country? Last I checked, Modi is working to facilitate these hires.

Higher comp in the US, because that's where the capital is. More freedom, too. Especially if you're religious (compared to China).

Indians are already very integrated in tech, so networking benefits. If Indians prefer to hire Indians, makes sense that more Indians want to give it a shot.

I’m saying there’s no effort from China to get these workers and there’s an effort from India to facilitate these workers out of India and to America.

If these were high value workers neither of these things would be true.

This is complete BS. There are plenty of good candidates all over the world including the US. To make it fair, just put a 1000 limit per country per year.

My understanding is that the specifically set limits per country are actually somewhat unfair in the status quo. It means that applicants from smaller countries are way more likely to get in just based on where they were born rather than based on merit or employers’ talent needs.

That makes no sense. Are you saying just because India has more people than Thailand, more Indian should be able get this Visa? That’s completely unfair Thai men, women, and the ones in between.

Should India be able to send more soccer teams to the World Cup also?

I think setting limits per country at all is probably dumb. Should just be a global limit or maybe no limit at all and, perhaps making the program far more stringent about qualifications if needed.

Let’s say hypothetically India has 10,000 A+ candidates, and Thailand has 1,000 A+ candidates. India’s limit is 5,000 candidates and Thailand’s limit is 500 candidates based on population difference or other factors like diplomatic relations.

Half of India’s most qualified aren’t getting in while all of Thailand’s most qualified candidates are getting in plus 500 less qualified candidates.

So all else being equal if you’re very qualified you’ll have a better chance to win the lottery just by being born in a different country.

You know what the most important people should be when considering what is fair? Americans. Why should American policy care if fewer qualified Indians don’t get in? If less qualified Thais are available then fewer than the limit will be issued. The limit is not there to serve Indians.

The limit should be there to prevent the industry from further concentration and becoming a subsidiary of a foreign government like India. There is a national security element to this also.

The H-1B program is meant to fill jobs that otherwise would not be filled because qualified American candidates don’t exist. It’s a win-win situation and I’ve never seen anyone on either side of the aisle dispute the value or desirability of that.

You can argue that it’s been perverted and that’s fine but several intelligent people in this thread have already suggested foolproof methods for ensuring we only fill unfillable positions. That is to say, it’s a noble program that everyone supports and is fully capable of fulfilling its intended goal.

H1B is a noble program to help support the economic development of India from Indian perspective. From an American perspective it’s robbing Americans of well paying jobs right in our own country.

But if Indians or any other immigrants become naturalized citizens then your argument is just racism.

What makes you think that immigrants don't participate in the economy? Jobs aren't a zero sum game.

When someone gets a job they don't just take your job and then you don't have one. They now have a job and money to spend in the economy. They start businesses and patronize other businesses.

A productive working immigrant is an asset. You are thinking about this backwards: when someone like that immigrates to your country, wealth is being transferred from the home country to yours.

Based on your response, all Indians are just future Americans waiting to become one and any policy against the interest of India and its people now is racism. Perfectly logical but completely absurd.

It’s really nice to hear the perspective of a Native American. What tribe is your family from?

1. In the hypothetical scenario I outlined, a smaller amount of qualified people come in because of the arbitrary per-country limits.

2. I agree, let’s prioritize Americans. Immigrants create a net positive of jobs and economic activity for native-born American citizens. How many businesses that you patronize or work for would never exist if immigrants didn’t start them? Do you think America would be better off economically and have more jobs if companies like Apple, AT&T, Disney, and Qualcomm didn’t exist? Because those companies wouldn’t exist without immigrants and children of immigrants who founded them. Would you instead prefer a declining population?

3. It sounds like you’re suggesting that we use a comprehensive threat model [1] to decide whether immigrants are allowed in from a country so that their country doesn’t take over this country. As you know we have already failed this mission once by allowing British, Italian, Irish, Spanish, French, and other European immigrants to take over the US and we can’t have it happen again. Next thing you’ll know even the First Lady will be an immigrant who abused visa regulations to become a citizen!

4. It doesn’t seem like the US financial system has much of a problem with foreign ownership of companies in the status quo, so why is this suddenly a problem when it comes to individuals immigrating? No individual human being physically immigrated to the US when Budweiser got bought by a foreign company. The issue is entirely detached from immigration. Of course, once you become a citizen the concern of foreign ownership vanishes by definition since you are no longer foreign.

[1] https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/044/241/ski...

The beautiful thing about being an American is that we don’t segregate ourselves into tribes and castes anymore. I know some countries still have separate castes but fortunately we don’t.

Answer to 1-4: yes fewer H1Bs is a good thing. Everything else you said is just hot air and not worth a respond. While we are at it, let’s have fixed equal per country limit it so that no single country could hijack our tech industry anymore.

Paragraph 1: we don’t separate ourselves into tribes and castes

Paragraph 2: we can’t let the other tribes and castes hijack our stuff

Learn what a country is.

If they truly have extraordinary talent in AI, there is the O1 visa. Bigger hurdle, but considering how Zuck is paying 100mil for some of these people, a low bar relatively.

> Yeah...look at all the top researchers in AI, and count how many of them came here through H-1B. Gotta be something like 70%-80%.

It's funny how easily the argument flips between that and "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.", so long as it leads to the desired conclusion.