So...what's the front door to the green card ? How does one arrive legally to the nation with the highest [1] historic immigration rate of any nation in the world ?
Great comeback, except you completely ignore the point (its purpose is not meant to be a backdoor) and attack him for... being an American?
Instead of telling everyone else to check their privilege, maybe check your expectations. The world doesn't owe anyone anything. Claiming your desires are everyone else's problem is a deeply self-centered way to view the world.
H-1B is dual intent by definition, so it is not a backdoor. Any sane person who knows how green card application works understands that it is objectively hard, if not the hardest in the whole world.
> Instead of telling everyone else to check their privilege, maybe check your expectations.
Without such an expectation, who would pay tens of thousands a year to enroll in a random U.S. college, only to be told that there is absolutely no way they can work legally there?
Love how all your arguments boil down to 'I got mine.'.
We don't want illegal immigrants, get legal work authorization. No, don't use work authorized visas use other legal means. No, family based chain immigration should be illegal too. Oh wait there are no other ways to come here ?....good. We never wanted you anyway. This country is full, all 4 million sq miles. Always has always been.
It's not constructive to frame citizenship as "I got mine". People will fight - really fight - to preserve their homes and lifestyles, if they feel those are being threatened. It's obviously not impossible to welcome as many immigrants as we do without this extreme level of conflict, but our system demonstrably does not accomplish that. We simply aren't making use of our space, so why don't we focus on that problem? A tone like yours invites chaos.
I disagree. Better to be direct, than frame it in soft 'feel good' terms. It's a matter of people's livelihoods. My tone invites confrontation as a sincere reflection of the stakes. I don't make value judgements. Citizens are entitled to hypocrisy, cognitive-dissonance and selfishness. It being bad is a social judgement made by the observer.
Let's be clear. We're talking about the US here. Arguments based in nativism, isolation and crowdedness have thin ground to stand on. By percentage population, legal-immigration to the US is below the historic average. Yet threads on H1b quickly devolve into vapid arguments. The accusers are happy to sling unsubstantiated stereotypes towards immigrants, but hide behind soft language like 'we aren't used to making space' when immigrant commenters retaliate in kind.
Racists aren't irrational actors or evil people. They simply have higher affinity for their tribe, and that's okay. Sometimes it takes for self-interests to be threatened, for bigoted & tribal behaviors to manifest in a loud manner. Again, that's okay. Americans are the ones who gave a negative connotation to to words like bigot and racists. In the rest of world, tribal & bigoted behaviors are an accepted norm. We're all racists sometimes. But, American tech workers are definitely at their racist-est on h1b threads.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you are the land of free, that practices extreme meritocracy and thrives as a result of it. You're a nation built by migrant groups over the last 4 centuries, and the door is always open to the ambitious and hard working. A benevolent super-power for all. Or, you're just as tyrannical as any selfish group. You're a white majority people that found a pre-inhabited land of the greatest resources and size. You claimed it all for yourself. Killed the natives. You give lip serve to globalism and meritocracy as long as it gives you access to all markets of the world. Your relationship with the rest of the world is transactional, and you will continue to be a world superpower through military strong-arming and thinly veiled globally-egalitarian propaganda.
The reality ofc, is that neither extremes are true. But, it is a slider between the tribal-nativist and internationalist-meritocratic impulse. There are no right or wrong answers for what a nation's choice will be. But, if your slider is near the former while you claim to be the latter, then the hypocrisy is grating for the rest of us. For the lack of a better insult, it's Trudeau-esque.
Personally, I am a big fan of out-right selfish people. There is genuine honesty there. I also love the US (warts and all). Say what people might, it is the least racist nation of any out there. Lastly, I have a vested interest as someone who is on an H1b myself. (although I'd like to think I'm senior enough to be insulated from negative outcomes for h1b)
As I write this, I recognize that most people don't like harsh phrasing. I don't think our politicians or public speakers should adopt this language. But, a mostly civil pseudo anonymous forum of tech nerds is IMO, just right for this kind of directness.
Does America want smart people to come here and advance science/technology/economy or would she rather close the doors and watch other countries get ahead?
Yeah, you have no idea of the process of getting green card via h1b works.
You can ditch the US, get permanent resident status in Canada, become Canadian citizenship, get TN visa to work in the US if you want to and someone who thinks that h1b is a backdoor to a green card will be just starting on green card paperwork. And that's if there are no issues with application.
This is all after participating in h1b lottery for years. Trust me, it's an extremely slow and painful way of getting a green card. If h1b is your way to a green card, it means either: you're already married, you have no idea what are you doing.
It's no a backdoor in any way, person move to the US for work and builds a life here, accumulate assets, I think it's pretty reasonable to give those people a way to settle in the US permanently in these cases.
The program needs to be revamped because it's not working in the way it's sold to voters.
Ah yes the classic "huwhite people and muh racism" gambit.
It's tired. H1Bs are gamed to the point of uselessness. Most companies internally post H1B job offerings so people are aware. I've yet to see one with a competitive salary. They are used to source cheaper labor and avoid paying actual Americans the fair wage they deserve. The last 15-20 years of tech has slowly seen the InfoSys-ization of the tech economy. I work with more contractors from Mexico, India, and Eastern Europe, and more H1Bs from India than literally anyone else. On my team I can count the number of Americans on one hand.
The program should be extremely limited. I am a fan of charging 2-3x the normal tax rate for H1Bs so companies have to actually justify hiring "talent you can't find in America". There are 300,000 unemployed tech workers. I find it hard to believe none fit the bill. Just that most won't take a 60% haircut for more work.
I have been on H1B forever now, and my salaries have been more or on par with the role. I tend to agree there is a lot of H1B misuse, especially by large Indian consulting firms. This needs to be curtailed.
But, there may be 300,000 unemployed tech workers. While I also find it hard to believe none fit the bill, I believe most don't. So many are out of random bootcamps, self proclaimed programmers who can't solve fizzbuzz. I also have not seen any H1B in my career that is good and willing to take a 60% haircut. In my own company, they are the highest paid and are grumpy we are not paying more. They are all really good engineers too. Heck, when I was looking to move to the US, I refused tons of low paying jobs. When we opened up backend programming jobs, only a handful American citizens even applied. We hired one of them, while we needed 4. The rest didn't make it through the interview process. We also rejected tons of H1bs because they didnt make it through the process. Same salary range offered to H1Bs. And we are a fully remote. So I wonder where are these 300,000 unemployed tech workers.
Cut the fraud and it automatically becomes a decent program. Now, if one is entirely against the program of attracting foreign talent, thats a different discussion.
Well, the way program exists now, it's utilized by two kinds of companies:
1) Someone like Verizon that uses it for cheap labor
2) Someone like Netflix that wants to hire good engineers
The way the program works now (before those changes?), it's much easier for group 1 to fill its positions via staffing agencies overseas. That's true even if a company from group 2 already know who they want to hire, since it's a lottery system.
Would be easier if this were two different visas (or program got revamped in a way that it actually works as it's sold to public), but we can't have "Cheap Human Labor Visa" for various reasons.
every problem has a solution except in America where what we THINK is a problem (and discuss ad naseum on HM) is there by design. Group 1’s lobbyist are paying A LOT more than Group 2 - hence they get the most benefit out of the program. it’ll be interesting to see next four years, I suspect the program will at minimum triple
I have a hard time hiring an American too, especially for backend jobs. But thats because they simply don't apply to the open positions we have. We don't disclose salary upfront, so the argument that "you pay less thats why" doesn't hold. We just don't get those resumes - through recruiters, direct channels, LinkedIn - even when we said we prefer citizens (due to legal costs).
The American people get to decide who they want to allow in and under what conditions. If the American people decide that they should get compensated more than non-American citizens for a role falling under American jurisdiction, they can do that. And other nationalities can retaliate or pound sand, but that's it.
Other countries are free to compete, nobody is arguing otherwise, but it is explicitly the right of any country to determine who is allowed to compete within their nation.
What people want or deserve is irrelevant. If you live elsewhere and feel you deserve more, then that's not America's problem.
That was the context. Your post before this changed it to "want". I was responding to that. Nothing to do with non-americans feeling they deserve more either. It was about why americans feel they deserve
You may characterize it that way, and invite some pretty reasonable animosity; but if you do, then want!=deserve regarding the salary of foreigners, either.
I was paid between 400 and 600k a year while on an H1B.
> I am a fan of charging 2-3x the normal tax rate for H1Bs so companies have to actually justify hiring "talent you can't find in America".
This is extraordinarily racist if you spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it, and honestly you should question every one of your choices that have led to this point. It is time for you to re-examine your entire worldview.
Why write like this? It's antagonistic and pompous. I really don't like making light of racism by leaning on the "stop calling everything racist" trope response, but this is pretty extreme. I have no idea what's in the parent's heart, but you only need to give them an ounce of benefit-of-the-doubt to believe that the quoted sentence comes from a place of simple favor for one's own fellow citizens, and not petty racism. And on HN, you're supposed to be giving even more than one ounce of benefit-of-the-doubt.
To be clear, the actual proposal being made is "I am a fan of charging 2-3x the normal tax rate for H1Bs".
One interpretation is that workers should pay 2-3x the income tax, massively depressing net wages for people on visas.
Another interpretation is that employers should pay 2-3x the payroll tax (I guess Social Security and Medicare in the US?) which again means that (not immediately due to nominal wage rigidity, but over time) visa worker wages will be depressed. In any case, visa workers pay into social security, but will not be able to claim benefits unless they become green card holders.
There are already substantial fees employers have to pay, which already depress wages. The proposals suggest making it worse. There is no real thought behind them, no research, no data. Just pure naked nativism: workers must be punished even more than they are right now for daring to immigrate.
It is, in other words, extraordinarily racist. And if someone, through whatever life experiences, has come to believe that this is the way forward, then they absolutely should revisit their worldviews.
---
Neither of these come anywhere close to addressing the actual problem, which is that it isn't the case that workers on visas have the same labor rights as everyone else. Workers on visas are preferentially hired by some firms because they will silently deal with abusive bosses, long work hours and sexual harassment. Giving everyone full labor rights addresses this issue completely.
Do you want H1B worker wages to be depressed, or do you not? Do you care about your fellow workers being sexually harassed, or do you not?
> I have no idea what's in the parent's heart
I don't, either, but structural racism is a million times worse than some rando shouting a slur at me.
> This is extraordinarily racist if you spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it, and honestly you should question every one of your choices that have led to this point. It is time for you to re-examine your entire worldview.
No. Americans should look out for Americans first. This isn't "racism". It could be interpreted as "nationalism" but if Americans don't look out for Americans first - what's the point of even having a country or a flag? I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. Why shouldn't we make companies pay more if that foreign talent is really needed? It should be in desperation that you reach beyond your own countrymen to find what you need.
Second, I had no idea "Americans" were a race. Maybe it's you that should seek some help.
By offering wages appropriate for the economy your fellow citizens are accustomed to, as opposed to the economy citizens of other nations are accustomed to.
Saw a university (like 7 years ago) H1B'ing postdocs for like $30k, maybe $35k a year, by valuing the benefits at like $20k. It was kind of a joke IMO.
That is the prevailing wage for postdocs, domestic or foreign.
The abuse of postdocs and grad students exists, but is entirely unrelated to H1B and foreigners. They paid them poorly even before the country was flooded with foreign students.
Right, the desperate need for talent is the reason these programs are used so heavily. It's not discounted salary and cost savings in benefits, insurance, and other areas for non-permanent employees, or having leverage over immigrant employees in negotiations. Corporations only ever use these programs to get the absolute best of the best and they absolutely aren't abused to bypass the stricter regulations and requirements for citizen employees. /s
There's nothing wrong with brain draining other countries and incentivizing legal immigration for work visas and H1B style programs. We should want to be the best place in the world to work. This shouldn't come as a detriment to the citizens of the US. Legal immigration and jobs programs need to be better. The H1B program suppresses legal citizen wages as well as immigrant wages because companies are able to use the threat of deportation as an effective negotiation tactic. Companies use immigrants for cheap professional labor, and if the immigrant pipes up, they get let go. With everything in tech life being designed around pushing people into paycheck to paycheck lifestyles, this can wreck someone's life through no fault of their own if they do something like ask for a raise, or better health insurance.
In turn, if citizen employees try to negotiate, the company can replace them with more immigrant workers unless or until they can hire local replacements at the company's preferred rate of pay.
We need a cleaner, easier path to citizenship, without the endless bureaucratic nightmare that is the current system. We need better work visa programs, so that people who legitimately make the world a better place aren't penalized for arbitrary technicalities, while at the same time recognizing the sovereignty of the US and reasonably protecting borders.
Sometimes countries need to be overthrown, and the US shouldn't act like a pressure release valve for dictators. We also shouldn't be in the business of regime management or perpetuating political nightmares that causes a lot of illegal immigration, as well.
TLDR;
There's no shortage of US tech talent. The problem is that we've painted ourselves into a regulatory corner - in order to be competitive, companies have to shortchange payroll by abusing migrant salaries. To fix it, we must strengthen migrant rights so companies can't hang the threat of deportation over employee's heads, and reduce the financial burden of hiring citizens, so you get the same bang for your buck regardless of the immigration status of the employee.
Microsoft and Lumen and FAANG and all the tech industry titans shouldn't have penny pinching strategies designed to bump stock prices using methods that are fueled by human suffering. Get rid of those options and stop blindly implementing systems where the incentives are so obviously awful.
I didn’t believe it until I saw it, but look at the classified section of the San Francisco newspaper where big tech companies post job listing knowing that Americans won’t see them so they can say they tried to get domestic talent.
My neighbor is on a visa from mumbai working at Chase who was brought in as the lead frontend engineer (def can’t find Javascript devs in the US). Even he admitted it’s weird that his whole team is from India on visas. They just aren’t hiring citizens.
As a senior software engineer who was unemployed for over a year, I can confirm almost nobody is hiring USA Javascript and Python devs with 10+ years of experience with some big accomplishments. I got lucky with a backfill.
I find that diversity extremely rewarding. I learn new things, learn about other people’s traditions and learn different ways of thinking and organising. Approach the challenge with an open mind.
These are the fun, but token advantages of diversity in this specific context. There are lots of advantages and disadvantages to diversity - because it is an extremely generic term. I have first hand experience of teams completely losing all the original members, who were extremely talented and all born in the US, because they hired such a huge number of people who were from a different culture (India, in this case). It had nothing to do with racism - they just had nothing in common. It was fun to talk about their different religious celebrations and so on, but they were emotionally aliens. They were reasonably smart, yet there was zero intellectual spark in conversations between the two groups. They were just too different to thrive with each other. Different culturally, ideologically, intellectually, emotionally. Different in methods of communication, in treatment of the business hierarchy, in assumptions and expectations. We can blame the business for making an incompatible team, but the compatibility parameters were too tied to culture and race. It's hard to account for that without essentially being racist.
> We can blame the business for making an incompatible team
In my past few jobs I had many colleagues from India, and learning the cultural differences is extremely important. Teambuilding exercises are also a must - bring your cuisine to work is a stellar example: I brought both pão de queijo (a Brazilian thing) and sajtos pogácza (its Hungarian counterpart), and they brought some the best sweets I ever tasted. To our Turkish colleague's dismay, we all agreed Turkish Delight is not really a delight (but the Turkish colleagues recognized my Hungarian pogácza as some cross-cultural artifact coming from the Ottoman empire days).
You can always take interest in learning their language. You are the host and they are your guests, and, besides, their communication in their native language will be more efficient than if they translated to English for your benefit.
Different culture, but back when I was working on a project with Sony, when they introduced their internet enabled TVs in Brazil, just adding the "san" suffix to my contact's name made him instantly more open to negotiate.
I'm glad you've had good experiences - so have I. But I'm not sure where you're going. You can't advise everybody into happiness when they are stuck in a social group that makes them unhappy. There are immutable forces at work. We're humans. Learning a language is an enormous task, and it feels horrible to imply somebody should do it who is just trying to be comfortable in their own country. You should make that attempt when you visit other countries. Not to mention, it wouldn't solve this multi-dimensional social problem.
If I piss on your head and tell you it's raining, will you find some silver lining in that activity?
> You are the host and they are your guests
What? This logic doesn't track. If I were a guest in their country, then I might take interest in learning their local language. That's respectful.
Coming here on an H-1B and demanding people speak your niche language is more akin to invasion. (Here comes the "but.. but.. the United States has no official language!" tripe.)
Some people get upset that someone on a 'non-immigrant' 'temporary employment' visa can apply for permanent residency, although that is allowed by the H1-B program.
Otherwise, one could immigrate through a different visa; there are some employment visas that are explicitly intended for those with intent to immigrate. Or like a family or lottery visa, I guess.
I think it's possible to have a permanent residency application sponsored by an employer from abroad, but especially if the candidate is from China, India, Mexico or the Philipines, the timelines make even less sense than H1-B timelines (submit your application in a two week window near the beginning of March, for the chance to start in October). I don't know too many places that want to commit to a hire that can't start for 7 months, although it's not unreasonable for those on post graduate visas with work eligibility.
> Some people get upset that someone on a 'non-immigrant' 'temporary employment' visa can apply for permanent residency, although that is allowed by the H1-B program.
Becoming a permanent resident is explicitly allowed under the H1B visa. By contrast, if an immigration officer even had a suspicion that you intended to immigrate on any other visa, that would be sufficient grounds for them to disallow you from entering the country.
Further, the dual intent nature of the H1B visa means H1B employees pay social security and Medicare, even though they themselves are not eligible for it. Something you don’t have to do if you earn money on a non dual intent visa.
The H1B visa is indeed temporary. It lasts only 6 years. But it allows you, or your employer, to apply for your permanent residency on the basis of other categories while you’re in the U.S. on an H1B visa. IOW, the only real use of the H1B is that it lets an employer get to know an employee well enough that they’re willing to sponsor their permanent residency.
Also, the other reason the H1B appears overused and not “temporary” is because in a moment of brilliance Congress wrote laws so that there were an equal number of green cards handed out to people from Jamaica as those from China. As a result, when Indians and Chinese apply and get approved for a green card, they need to wait decades to actually get those green cards, whereas someone from Greece would get it instantly.
Since Congress hasn’t been able to write new immigration laws in 3 decades, extending thenH1B visa is the only way to allow folks who have essentially approved green cards to remain in the U.S., because they’re discriminated by their country of birth.
> The H1B visa is explicitly a dual intent visa. ... Becoming a permanent resident is explicitly allowed under the H1B visa.
I am aware that this is allowed. However, the DOL describes the program like this: [1]
> The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability. A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States.
So I understand why people would be confused or upset when nonimmigrant aliens with temporary employment authorization end up immigrating.
I also agree that allocating a limited number of residencies by country of birth is pretty bizarre. There are some countries where the whole population could get a green card in a single year (if they were all eligible), but people born in Mexico and India have a 20 year backlog in some categories. Some sort of population or land area factor should apply. The impacted countries may want to consider strategic division to improve their US immigration backlogs ;P and they could gain more votes in the UN General Assembly, too.
They should just get rid of the green card limit altogether.
There is already a limit on people who can get H1Bs and move into the country. Once they are actually living here on a semi-permanent basis, converting to actually permanent should be based on the person themself, not based on how many other people decided to become permanent residents.
> in a moment of brilliance Congress wrote laws so that there were an equal number of green cards handed out to people from Jamaica as those from China
It is largely by design and serves to preserve cultural diversity. Without immigration caps, half of the U.S. would be Indians and Chinese.
It takes around 20+ years to go from H1b to permanent visa/green card. In the meantime your kids born in US have grown up, graduated, you have a house and everything could be yanked at the border when you are travelling.
Meanwhile vast majority of them pay into taxes and social security and leave the US and never see a dime of that money.
Immigrants are the easiest group to exploit by everyone because they have no voice and are vilified by vast majority of the people include the so called intellectuals in here.
The byzantine US immigration system absolutely is an impediment to people coming and staying here, and in my (admittedly anecdotal) estimation is a major competitive disadvantage, and a big part of the reason the UK, EU, Canada and China are making progress towards becoming tech hubs.
Canada is not making any sort of progress towards becoming a tech hub. Canadian engineers' dream is to work for a US company. Canadian investment landscape is just sad, but that's a different conversation all together.
Those particular cases have benefited by the shortcomings of the USA actually. I know some big tech companies send workers who weren't able to secure US immigration specifically to offices in Canada, the UK or the EU. For example Meta and Google [1][2].
One can expect the company then grows an interest in developing full engineering teams in these sites. One can also expect some people might simply decide to not come back to the USA.
With the general rise of China's tech scene, recently there's been a trend by which the USA doesn't retain Chinese international students and they instead opt to return home. One has to imagine the very, very long immigration process they have to go to has to do with this [4].
Outcomes aren't binary. For any marginal increase in immigration difficulty for skilled tech workers, there is a marginal decrease in US tech competitiveness relative to other countries.
20 years only if you're born in India married to someone born in India. Not great either way though, but it's really affecting the Indian community because of their particular norms.
If your spouse is a US citizen or permanent resident on their own, great. But if you're on H1-B and your spouse is on H-4, I don't think their country of birth makes a difference?
If you're both on H1-B, then sure, having a different country of birth can help.
It does make a difference. When filing for adjustment of status, you can request USCIS to consider both you and your spouse as chargable to your spouse's country of birth, and therefore be placed in a more favourable GC queue. This is called cross-chargeability [1].
Because of this, the "100-year green card queue" problem only really applies for a couple who are both born in India/China, with kids who are not born in the US. If even one child was born in the US, they would be able to sponsor both parents for an immediate green card when they turn 21 years old. In the meantime, the H1-B beneficiary can extend their visa indefinitely and port their approved I-140 whenever they switch jobs, with a 6-month grace period. The spouse also has full working rights.
21 years is a long time, but while working, both parents will accumulate social security credits and will be eligible to recieve benefits upon retirement (if they've secured a green card by then).
I’m sure this is no consolation, but as a born-and-raised citizen who has paid into social security for 15 years now, I have serious doubts about seeing a positive return on those taxes myself.
If only they just used the current 'investors' money to pay the retirees. They actually use the social security taxes to pay for "whatever" and hope they can come up with the rest when they need it.
>I’m sure this is no consolation, but as a born-and-raised citizen who has paid into social security for 15 years now, I have serious doubts about seeing a positive return on those taxes myself.
Look at the bright side though: You get a chance to get conscripted for a war against Iran/Russia/China and also get to blow up windowless mudhouses in the desert to protect democracy and freedom back in the states.
That's not how social security works. You're not supposed to get a positive return. You directly pay a basic income to retired people (minus administration costs). When you retire, workers pay a basic income to you.
The issue is that, for me and anyone else who reaches retirement age after 2034, only about 80% of that basic income will be available. For reasons I'm not super clear on, this idea tends to get coded as a conspiracy theory in many circles, despite being uncontroversially true and widely reported on.
That's a perennial Boogeyman. Policymakers have a wide array of tweaks they could make (from adjusting the cap to adjusting retirement age) at any time that could push that out by another century. https://www.epi.org/blog/a-record-share-of-earnings-was-not-...
Asking for a positive return on social security is like asking for a positive return on welfare. The positive return comes from not having so many homeless old people all over the country. It's not a personal investment vehicle.
It could be that OP expects Social Security to be kaput by the time he gets to be old.
Looking at the population graph, that’s a valid concern. There’s a ton of boomers and a ton of millenials, but very few babies to pay for our retirement.
(This phenomenon could invalidate even individual stock investment retirement plans as well. We need a future generation of workers, investors, entrepreneurs, consumers).
You are confusing what he is calling for. He is not advocating for people who are already citizens to lose their citizenship. He is saying, going forward, people who are born here will not automatically be given citizenship.
It's not needed.
It's used to game the system.
It's not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card.