Comment by 1024core

Comment by 1024core 5 hours ago

72 replies

View on Hacker News

A lot of these problems could be solved if H1-B's were given out in order of salary (I think there's such a proposal going around recently). And by that I mean: something like a Dutch auction. Give H1-Bs to the top 85K paying jobs (maybe normalized to SoL in the region, I'm sure the BLS has some idea on how to do it).

The lure of H1-Bs is the money savings, and the fact that if you're on an H1-B, you're practically an indentured servant (Yes, things have changed recently and it is easier on paper to switch jobs while on H1-B). It used to be that if you lost your job as an H1-B, you had 30 days to uproot your life and get out of the US otherwise you'd be in violation of immigration laws.

lumost 3 hours ago

It’s interesting that the U.S. picked an employer-driven model, which effectively outsources immigration selection to firms. That’s efficient for demand-matching, but it concentrates bargaining power in ways that a points-based model avoids.

The practical effect of an H1-B is to act as a non-compete, punitive termination clause, and a time bounded employment contract. These are very expensive terms to ask for in conventional US employment contracts - most of them are now effectively banned for standard W-2 workers. Forcing top wage earners to compete with illegal employment terms does not seem reasonable.

Reply View 2 replies
  • overfeed 3 hours ago

    > It’s interesting that the U.S. picked an employer-driven model...

    Health insurance, parental leave† and retirement are also employer-driven. This seems to be a US default that incidentally gives a lot of leverage to employers.

    † Yes there are government mandated minimums, but when compared to other developed countries, substantive parental leave is largely left to the generosity of the employer

    Reply View 0 replies
  • ambicapter 3 hours ago

    That's right. It is in fact advantageous in many ways for companies to prefer H-1B, they have far more control over those workers than they would over americans. They can even be worse than an american and you would prefer it if you were the type of employer who prioritizes control of their workforce over excellence.

    Reply View 0 replies
thephyber 4 hours ago

This conflates high education specialists with high earnings. It’s probably not completely uncorrelated, but only giving H1-Bs to the highest paying reqs which need them starves all of the other reqs of any possible candidates.

I understand that H1-Bs are currently likely to create an abusive relationship with the visa-ed employee, but just because you have identified a valid diagnosis doesn’t mean your suggested prescription would be much better.

Reply View 23 replies
  • Taek 4 hours ago

    That seems like a fair way for the free market to address things, no? If you need special carve outs, create a new type of Visa for those special cases.

    The immigrants are all going to be paying taxes on their earnings. If you can boost H1B salaries by an average of $20k/yr by doing a price auction, that brings govt revenue and maybe even gives opportunities to balance the budget by creating more H1B slots.

    Reply View 8 replies
    • thephyber 3 hours ago

      What do you mean “fair”? What happens in the years/decades between when this hypothetical system is enacted and when the US can train up sufficient workers to substitute the labor force we currently have with H1-B?

      Your proposal will mean 99% of all of the H1-B allocation will go to hedge fund quants and 1% maybe go to an AI researcher, but all of the materials science (eg. Cutting edge battery tech), semiconductor fabrication, neuroscience, pharmaceutical research etc will have to go without the skilled workers they currently get from visas. This is a recipe for the Boeingization of the US economy.

      Reply View 5 replies
      • Taek 3 hours ago

        Or... those other parts of the economy increase salaries for skilled labor?

        If we can only bring 85,000 people into the country on one type of visa, doesn't it make sense to prioritize those that will bring the most value (tax revenue, in this case)?

        And if that's not enough people... raise the limit? And be confident that a raised limit is still keeping a high quality bar on entrants?

        Reply View 1 reply
        • whatever1 2 hours ago

          Option 1: you give a visa to a quant with 2M/y today’s salary

          Option 2: you give a visa to a PhD to work for 150k/year in a small biopharma startup that thinks it has the solution to cancer.

          This salary stacked ranking optimizes for today’s worth of work. Not its potential.

          Reply View 0 replies
      • throwawaymaths an hour ago

        exactly wrong. Americans are dissuaded from going into these highly skilled fields because anyone talented enough to do those things realizes they can make much more building SAASes or working on wall street.

        the Boeingization of the economy is mbas and bean counter middle management realizing that an H1-B is much cheaper than a citizen and opting to buy that labor, even if it's worse quality. as management, you put an ass into a seat, so job accomplished, here's your accolade.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • AbrahamParangi 20 minutes ago

        This is just an argument against allowing the market to set wages, which you could make if you wanted to but it is not a strong one.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • WillPostForFood 21 minutes ago

        "materials science (eg. Cutting edge battery tech), semiconductor fabrication, neuroscience, pharmaceutical research "

        This is a beautiful fantasy for H-1B, that is totally disconnected from reality. What is that 1% of the H-1Bs currently? It is mostly IT and software slop jobs.

        Here are the top 40 employers, it isn't going to hurt research in the US to cut them to zero.

        Amazon.Com Services

        Cognizant Technology Solutions

        Ernst & Young

        Tata Consultancy Services

        Google

        Microsoft

        Infosys

        Meta Platforms

        Intel

        Hcl America

        Amazon Web Services

        IBM

        Jpmorgan Chase

        Walmart

        Apple

        Accenture

        Capgemini

        Ltimindtree

        Deloitte Consulting

        Salesforce

        Qualcomm

        Tesla

        Amazon Development Center

        Wipro

        Fidelity Technology Group

        Tech Mahindra

        Compunnel Software Group

        Deloitte Touche

        Mphasis

        Nvidia

        Adobe

        Bytedance

        Goldman, Sachs

        Cisco

        Linkedin

        Pricewaterhousecoopers Advisory Services

        Paypal

        Ebay

        Servicenow

        Visa USA

        For non-slop jobs, give them a green card and fast track to citizenship. For an IT consultant, no thanks.

        source: https://www.myvisajobs.com/reports/h1b/

        Reply View 0 replies
    • _heimdall 3 hours ago

      Can we really consider it the free market when there are already so many regulations in place?

      Reply View 0 replies
    • [removed] 3 hours ago
      [deleted]
      Reply View 0 replies
  • tziki 4 hours ago

    Exactly this. Top 1% of artists earn about as much as the average software engineer. Ranking people purely based on salary is turning h1b into a visa for people in specific professions.

    Reply View 12 replies
    • handoflixue 3 hours ago

      Genuinely curious: why do we need H1B visas for artists? My understanding is that H1B visas are meant to cover highly-skilled work that can't be done by locals, and "art" doesn't seem like a field with a shortage of local candidates?

      Reply View 2 replies
      • AuthError 3 hours ago

        this also holds true for chemical, biomedical researchers, mechanical engineers working in deep tech, software engineering is such an anomaly that it's hard to do income based lottery without overindexing on swe market

        Reply View 1 reply
        • austhrow743 3 hours ago

          What does overindexing on the swe market mean?

          If these other professions don’t pay as much as swe, then doesn’t that indicate that domestic supply is meeting those industries needs better than it is swe?

          Reply View 0 replies
    • breadwinner 2 hours ago

      How about ranking on salary but by profession, so there should be a separate rank for software engineers vs. biomedical researchers.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • malfist 3 hours ago

      Does the US have such a shortage of artistic talent we have to hire abroad for it?

      Reply View 3 replies
      • thephyber 3 hours ago

        Why get hung out on the example profession and not the fact that some jobs pay drastically disproportionate rates?

        Linus developed Linux, but we wouldn’t be able to hire the next version of him because hedge funds would dominate the high salary reqs in this hypothetical system.

        Reply View 1 reply
      • fooker an hour ago

        Short answer - yes.

        There's no long answer.

        Reply View 0 replies
    • fakedang 4 hours ago

      Top 1% of artists have the O1 route, not the H1B route.

      Tying H1B to salary is imo a reasonable solution for most companies. Thing is, in that case, most companies would simply resort to bringing in more L1 employees.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • scheme271 2 hours ago

        L1 employees require that the company employ the person for a year at an international branch so this is only available to multi-national companies.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • fakedang 26 minutes ago

          Yes, and the usual suspects already abuse it to move jobs abroad. If you had observed, it's often multinationals, usually Indian consultancies or companies with Indian Capability Centers, which abuse the H1B. They'll just be forced to switch to the L1.

          The key difference here is that the L1 is a non-immigrant visa with a period of 7 years. The H1B isn't.

          Reply View 0 replies
      • [removed] 3 hours ago
        [deleted]
        Reply View 0 replies
  • bsder an hour ago

    > but only giving H1-Bs to the highest paying reqs which need them starves all of the other reqs of any possible candidates.

    Then they need to pay better?

    There are not 85,000 quant PhDs jobs paying a megabuck+ in spite of what many vocal people claim (and if they really wanted someone at those prices--they're more likely to just open a satellite site wherever the candidate already is and avoid the whole immigration issue). Any decent engineering salary would almost certainly qualify.

    And if you can't qualify for an H1-B because the engineering salary isn't high enough, then I don't have much sympathy.

    Reply View 0 replies
pandaman 5 hours ago

Can you expand how exactly this particular problem (advertising jobs for PERM to comply with the law yet making sure that no applications will be received) can be fixed with a different order of issuing H-1B visas?

PERM has nothing to do with H-1B, it's a part of the employment-based immigration process. The reason companies do this shit is because they claim to the US that there are no willing and able citizens or permanent residents for a commodity job such as "front end" or "project management". I.e. committing fraud.

Reply View 16 replies
  • darth_avocado 3 hours ago

    This keeps coming up every so often and most commenters on HN are completely ignorant of how the immigration system works, but have strong opinions about it, therefore it seems that everything is nefarious.

    The real problem here is that the way the current system is set up, you have to prove that there are no citizens available for a position by listing a job and interviewing candidates. The problem with that is that you will never be able to prove that by this method. Say you have 1000 jobs for a specific role in the economy and 700 US citizens qualified to do that job and are already employed. The minute you try to file PERM for the 1 foreign national, if you list the job out, the chances of at least 1 person applying out of the 700 are very high because, you know, people change jobs. This puts companies and immigrants in a very difficult position because you literally cannot prove the shortage at an industry level on your own using this method. So they just have to resort to working within the laws to make it work.

    This all would be completely unnecessary if congress fixes the immigration laws and asks BLS to setup market tests that are data driven to establish high demand roles.

    Reply View 7 replies
    • pandaman 2 hours ago

      I am not sure if your comment is directed at me but I immigrated to the US. In my case there were probably no more than 1000 people in the whole world willing and able to do my job. It was advertised in the industry job boards along with required by law newspapers. Very few people applied and none of them had been a US citizen or LPR. This is what EB immigration is for. You are welcome to lobby for another EB category based on data and tests, but you should not be allowed to commit fraud in lieu of such a category in the meantime.

      Reply View 4 replies
      • darth_avocado 2 hours ago

        EB system is pretty broad. If you really were in a position that only 1000 people in the world were able to do your job, you should’ve applied through EB1, which is designed for such people and also does not require the PERM process and therefore the job listings. EB2 and EB3 are designed for labor gaps in the industry which isn’t the same as extraordinary talent such as yours, and requires the PERM process. EB3 in fact also allows completely unskilled workers to file for permanent residency. Like I explained in the parent comment, the congress put a system to evaluate labor gaps, which is flawed. Following the rules set up by the system isn’t fraud.

        Reply View 3 replies
    • mjevans 2 hours ago

      TL;DR I don't want to compete with under-priced outsourced labor. I gladly accept peers and betters who expand the market by bringing the best and the brightest to the same national team.

      ~

      I'm all for immigration reform in ways that empower the workers.

      Want to bring in the best talent from elsewhere? Fine, Make sure they cost the company MORE than you'd pay a US worker, with the government getting the excess as a tax on hiring non-local labor.

      That worker should also be either a guest worker OR on a pathway to citizenship at their own discretion.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • darth_avocado 2 hours ago

        The job adverts that are being talked about are part of the PERM process that is required for the “pathway to citizenship” for workers that are already here for an extended period of time.

        What is also part of the process, is the requirement that you pay more than the median wages. Undercutting wages will get this petition denied and the process itself costs thousands of dollars on top of the thousands of dollars it takes to file for the underlying visa.

        Again, the immigration system doesn’t work as you think it does. Yes there are abuses and those need to be addressed and I’m fully onboard with reforms that fix it. But the first step would be to understand the system and how it works.

        Reply View 0 replies
  • yunyu 4 hours ago

    Prevents infosys/wipro slop from overwhelming the system, and filters down the incoming roles to only those that can't be filled by a US citizen (i.e. specialist technical jobs, top engineers commanding $500k/yr)

    Reply View 7 replies
    • pandaman 4 hours ago

      It's not just Infosys doing PERM fraud, around 2020 Meta had been barred from filing PERM due to overwhelming fraud. And are there really 85K unique and impossible to find in the US individuals every year? If these exist they will take a small fraction of H-1B allocation and the rest will go to the fresh grads, as it's now.

      Reply View 6 replies
      • lovich 3 hours ago

        I’d be fine, as a citizen competing against migrants for jobs, if h1bs were structured so that they

        A: were the top end pay, so they pushed the pay scale up

        B: were uncoupled from employment. A company could pay the cost to let someone enter, but that person should be able to jump jobs day 0.

        I’m not suggesting the specific implementation but I feel like if those two guiding directives were kept, both society and the individual workers would benefit from brain draining the rest of the planet while simultaneously pushing worker comp higher.

        Has anyone suggested a significant change to the h1b system like this beyond just a close it all/open it all binary?

        Reply View 5 replies
_heimdall 3 hours ago

I can't help but expect throwing yet more bureaucratic rules and control at the problem will only make it worse.

We often get into these problems when we start down a path of control, find it isn't working, and layer even more control onto it. See: the history of diesel engines since emission control systems were required.

Reply View 0 replies
[removed] 5 hours ago
[deleted]
Reply View 0 replies
franktankbank 2 hours ago

Visas coming from India are semi-non-consensual and kickback heavy, I'm not sure the incentives work out the way you expect. Fuck H-1B into the ground and fuck green cards while we're at it.

Reply View 1 reply
kccqzy 5 hours ago

The lure of H-1B is not really the money savings. Go look at the graduating class of computer science students at large universities. A large fraction are international students. Universities thrive on them since they pay the most tuition and are generally not allowed any financial aid. Companies want to hire them in addition to U.S. citizens. That's it. No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis.

The difficulty of switching jobs on H1-B has always been a myth. Voluntary job switches are just as easy as U.S. citizens. You just line up things well without the possibility of taking a long break in between jobs. Dealing with unexpected job terminations (fired or laid off) is the problem.

Reply View 23 replies
  • PhantomHour 4 hours ago

    It's not strictly about the money. (Though it is absolutely also about that)

    > Dealing with unexpected job terminations (fired or laid off) is the problem.

    Herein lies the problem. This gives employers absolutely massive leverage over the employees, which lets them coerce things like ridiculous unpaid overtime and downright abuse.

    Even if you pay the same nominal salary, the H-1B is "cheaper" if you can force them to work 60-80h whereas a top-class American is just going to demand 40h weeks. (Though in practice, those extra hours rarely see increased productivity, so whether it's actually cheaper for outputs obtained is up for debate.)

    Contrast: Europe. Tech salaries are low by US standards, but you don't see as much of the outsourcing & migrant worker hype around it. European labour laws mean you can't set up a sweatshop in your branch office, and European migrants to the US won't put up with labour abuses as much.

    Reply View 1 reply
    • fakedang 3 hours ago

      > Contrast: Europe. Tech salaries are low by US standards, but you don't see as much of the outsourcing & migrant worker hype around it. European labour laws mean you can't set up a sweatshop in your branch office, and European migrants to the US won't put up with labour abuses as much.

      Europe actually has had more direct export of the jobs. No need of specialist visas when the jobs were already exported away to EE. The EU allowed for companies to arbitrage away tech jobs to relatively poorer countries in the EU. And there's very little need for native top talent as there's very little native innovation happening within the EU in software - it's only a fraction of the amount happening in the US. And that's why those who can often tend to work for American companies in the EU, or migrate if they can.

      Reply View 0 replies
  • echelon 4 hours ago

    > Voluntary job switches are just as easy as U.S. citizens.

    Then why did my wife's friends that lost their H-1B jobs have to leave America?

    American citizens don't face deportation with job loss.

    Also, as a US citizen, I'm free to quit my job anytime I want. If I don't like putting up with my job because of some bullshit my employer pulls, I can easily leave. That is absolutely not the case for sponsored workers.

    H-1B workers are stressed out and paranoid about their employment. They'll put up with far more, for far longer, with less compensation.

    Reply View 0 replies
  • willmadden 5 hours ago

    Econ 101: increased supply lowers prices (wages).

    Reply View 5 replies
    • BenFranklin100 4 hours ago

      A healthy labor pool increase business growth that in turn can push average industry wages higher however.

      It’s real phenomena too - US developer wages are so high in part due to the business ecosystem which depends on part on recent graduates and a flexible labor pool.

      That is, your analysis is only true in the static case. Starve US startups of talented junior developers and you might kill the next Facebook in the process.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • zer00eyz 4 hours ago

      Thats some Wealth of Nations every worker can move the same number of bricks reductive thinking.

      I have been in the valley for 25+ years, and worked with a ton of visa holders.

      The majority of them were better educated and all well compensated for the work they did. The fact that many of them stayed for green cards and citizenship says a LOT. There is a reason that the boss of both google, and MS came through these programs.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • remarkEon 3 hours ago

        No it isn’t.

        There are two instances on this website where supply and demand seemingly do not apply. Wages in tech engineering, and housing costs. Specific carve outs are always made to make the conclusion that, for some reason, this positive supply (workers) and demand (housing) shock has no or marginal impact on wages and housing respectively. It’s very odd since most here work in roles where supply and demand of course apply so it’s not like people are unfamiliar with the math here.

        Reply View 2 replies
  • nyolfen 5 hours ago

    > No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis.

    larger pool means lower wages. this is so fundamental and obvious that it feels like i'm being gaslit when i see shit like this.

    Reply View 8 replies
    • mpyne 4 hours ago

      Well it's because by this logic we should just stop Americans from studying for computing jobs as well, that way those who remain will have higher wages. Just as the Luddites tried to stop the rise of industrialization that threatened to bring the skills they used to employ to the wider public at lower costs.

      The real answer is that immigrants create enough economic demand to be net positive even for Americans, for much the same reason as Americans are generally more prosperous when there's more of us.

      Seriously, you live in some dumpy parts of the country and you can have the exclusive rights on being the town cloud guru locked down and in principle get higher wages in a smaller labor pool, but for some strange reason few of us want to do that.

      Reply View 2 replies
      • aleph_minus_one 4 hours ago

        > Well it's because by this logic we should just stop Americans from studying for computing jobs as well, that way those who remain will have higher wages.

        At least if these other Americans are from a different "tribe" than your own, this does not sound like a dumb strategy if people from your own "tribe" are deeply ingrained in programming jobs. :-D

        Reply View 0 replies
    • [removed] 5 hours ago
      [deleted]
      Reply View 0 replies
    • dyauspitr 4 hours ago

      The US needs immigrants. We need the best and the brightest. Those are the folks starting the new job creating companies. That’s what keeps us so innovative. The H1B is a good gauntlet through which we can get those immigrants. Ended it is shortsighted.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • DaSHacka 3 hours ago

        > The US needs immigrants.

        At the expense of the citizenry?

        Reply View 1 reply
        • abenga an hour ago

          It is not a zero sum game (long term). Immigrants and their children have founded companies that have employed thousands of American citizens and created trillions of dollars of wealth. Stopping what has worked for your country because "…reasons…" is extremely shortsighted.

          Reply View 0 replies
  • dgfitz 5 hours ago

    > Companies want to hire them in addition to U.S. citizens. That's it.

    As opposed to the rest of the graduating class that is already considered a legal citizen?

    Your logic doesn’t make sense. “In addition to every option available that doesn’t have additional legal framework attached, these specific people are also desirable.”

    Why?

    Reply View 4 replies
    • kccqzy 5 hours ago

      In addition to the U.S. citizens in that graduating class.

      Basically large tech companies want to hire whomever passes their interviews, regardless of whether they are citizens or not. The hiring process is intentionally blind on their immigration status.

      Small companies will ask you in the application form "will you now or in the future require sponsorship to work in the U.S." and larger companies simply don't ask.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • ajcp 4 hours ago

        > The hiring process is intentionally blind on their immigration status.

        You can't be serious. On every job application I've ever filled out the last question is always a variation of: "Do you now or will you in the future require employer sponsorship to work in this country?"

        Reply View 0 replies
      • dgfitz 5 hours ago

        > The hiring process is intentionally blind on their immigration status.

        This might be the most amusing thing I’ve read all day.

        Reply View 1 reply