What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world? (In other words, why is that successive sessions of Congress can basically count on lots of people desiring to live in the United States, thus setting up an environment in which immigration regulation is restrictive rather than open?)
(I'm genuinely curious about this, as an American who has lived overseas--with the proper visas of course--for three years in the 1980s and for three years spanning the turn of the last century. I've only lived long-term in one other country, so I still could learn a lot more from all of you who participate here on HN about why people leave their country of birth, which is surely disruptive, to go to another country to live. What's the big deal about living in the United States?)
I live in Northern Europe. It's arguably superior to the US in many ways, but there are some things which we cannot get here.
One thing is size. The US has 300+ million people, whereas my country only has a few million. All communities are smaller here; interesting things get here later or not at all (with bad localizations) because the market is too small. Things are tinier, quieter and get less traction.
Another thing is that there is something of a cultural identity crisis going on. We cannot match the enormous cultural influence of the US, and so a lot of our culture is American. If you've ever talked to someone from Northern Europe and wondered "why does s/he speak English so well?" it's not because of school. One half of our cultural identity is located on the other side of the Atlantic, and we keep in touch with it mostly through backlit screens.
The deluge of information and entertainment that has come from the US since it became a superpower has served as a really efficient marketing strategy. We're not terribly interested in moving to Oklahoma. We have been sold on New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other metropolises in the US, because that's what we read and hear about. These places are perhaps not better than Northern Europe to settle down and start a family in, but they certainly seem more exciting.
> ...and wondered "why does s/he speak English so well?" it's not because of school.
As an American, I've always been surprised when conversing with people from other countries considering their usage of English is not bad and is far better than those that are American natives. However, also as an American, I'm not surprised by the lack of skill in regards to the English language that is present amongst the population here (I'll use 'amongst' if I want, Chrome) due to the general disregard for the language (as if using the wrong form of your/you're is really that difficult or unimportant).
Edit: As is inevitable when one comments upon improper usage of a language, they tend to screw it up themselves. I have done just that. I will leave my mistake to commemorate it: "As an American, I've have always been..."
The key distinction here is that native English speakers speak with whatever dialect that they grow up with. On the other hand, most ESL speakers try to learn a so-called "Prestige" dialect, like RP or General American. Thus, most fluent native speakers have a more prestigious accent and way of writing due to this, than those who speak English as a first language.
That's a great point that I haven't thought of before! I tend to forget that when others learn a new language it is generally taught in the proper and/or polite manner.
> Another thing is that there is something of a cultural identity crisis going on. We cannot match the enormous cultural influence of the US, and so a lot of our culture is American.
I don't think that applies to music genres. I live in Gloucester, England which is practically in the middle of Jungle country.
There are only a few really good places to live for an educated worker. Japan, Australia, Western and Northern Europe, Canada, and the US. I will operationalize "good" as "an intelligent worker can make an exceptional living relative to their country of origin."
Each of these places only take a limited amount of immigrants each year. Some are more difficult based on the national language -- learning Danish isn't more difficult than English or French, but there are fewer learning resources to do so.
So, your best options for the greatest amount of opportunity is to learn English -- you have the UK, America, Canada, and Australia as potential landing spots. (This is, of course, not universal. Developing countries with French as a national language will prefer France, for example.)
Australia has an uncapped temporary migration program for skilled workers (http://www.immi.gov.au/Visas/Pages/457.aspx), the situation described in this article can not happen in Australia.
On a permanent level, Australia has a permanent program of around 180,000 places a year in a country with only 22 million people.
And those 180,000 places is only the front door into Australia. The back door is to immigrate to New Zealand, become a NZ citizen, then move to Australia. Because Australia and New Zealand have a single labor market, citizens of both can live and work in each others countries without any special permission or numerical restrictions. From my personal observations, virtually all immigrants to NZ move to Australia once they can, and frequently refer to New Zealand as Australia's back door.
Not sure what you mean by "potentially harder". I've met many people who immigrated to NZ because they couldn't get into Australia. They then moved to Australia within a month or two of qualifying for and getting NZ citizenship. It used to take 3 yrs of NZ residency (tho with very lenient allowances for time out of the country every calendar year) to become a citizen but was changed to 5 yrs around 10 yrs ago, so maybe the situation's changed a little since then.
But I don't understand why you'd want to leave, having lived in the US, UK, Australia, South Africa and NZ, the choice of NZ for ease of doing business and life is easy.
In the 1990's it was easier to immigrate to NZ than Australia under the different points systems of the two countries. Virtually immigrant I spoke to in NZ got in because of qualification and work experience in China.
Given that, why aren't more people trying to get to Australia to work? Aside from spiders (a personal fear of mine) it seems to be a pretty awesome place.
I'm from the UK but have been staying in Australia for a little over a year now. I'm making a hardware gadget from scratch, and some of the people involved are here. I've also lived in the US for a while.
On Bloomberg I listened to an interview with the founder of Jetstar airlines, currently owned by Qantas, and who is now expanding a renewables business, who called Australia a resource exchange economy. Reading how cooks can earn $325K a year in gas projects, and noticing that the just signed Australia - Japan free trade agreement is mostly beef and agriproducts in exchange for TV's and other electronics, the sense initially is of lack of diversity in tech.
There's no way I could make my hardware project in Australia, not that I ever intended to. I haven't been able to find a single viable option for PCB manufacture. And if a company can provide them they're almost always farmed out to China in any case.
In the UK and the US, but also Europe it's just much richer in scope and size. There are some outstanding hardware facilities in the US. They're virtually non existent in Australia, at the right level of expertise and scale.
However, one big deterrent is proximity to the rest of the world. If you want to travel home to visit family, or due to an emergency - it's going to cost a lot of money and time.
Because of the distance, the logistics of physically moving there are also that much more difficult.
Then there are the mainstays - cost of living in/around major cities is quite high (though in the ICT sector earning potential is quite good), there are lots of scary critters, etc.
Lots of people are trying, but it's not that easy. You can't get a 457 temporary working visa without an Australian company willing to sponsor you. The hurdles for skilled migration are fairly high (and getting higher all the time) and the process takes several years.
It's far away, and as a developer I don't think you can earn as much as you would in the US. Certainly to be more HN specific, the startup scene is not much to talk about.
I was interested in migrating to Australia for a while, mostly because it's closer to where my wife's family lives. But it's just so expensive to live in Australia and the pay scale isn't nearly as good as the US or UK. On top of that, they have so many barriers to getting a skills visa it's just not worth it.
Can I do my own plumbing if I do it according to the codes and I am not in a union? Also why do I have to pay for a plumber that is qualified in drainlaying, gasfitting and roofing when all I need is to fix a small leak in my faucet? It's like when you need to reinstall Windows on your PC you cannot do it yourself and have to get a software engineer for $500/hr who can write assembly code and knows the difference between merge and quicksort.
Is `educated worker` some kind of euphemism for genius/top of the game or something? I am an educated worker, and probably everyone else around here.. Seems like a bit-too-broad statement(I for one am not currently interested in immigrating not one bit)
Anyway, I always thought the best would want to move to the US because it's there's top work, e.g.: there's no Tesla or SpaceX elsewhere and a top engineer would probably want to be doing this kind of work... Same with scientists that are working on ambitious research. But maybe I'm thinking about H1b as more of `top of the top, get your asses here` and it's more like `ye you're skilled enough you can try`, dunno.
With the advent of remote work upon us, I find it hard that you'd be limited to those countries.
In fact, literally the ENTIRE WORLD is your oyster, assuming you can reliably, regularly find power, wifi, and a team that'll work with you on your timezone's timeframe.
Remote work is lowering some barriers, but others aren't so easily fixed.
I'm a first-gen immigrant. My family originally moved because of rampant pollution due to unrestrained industrialization, as well as geopolitical risks (having air/bomb raid drills in school isn't really that fun). Telecommuting doesn't really fix these.
Suffice it to say, emigration/immigration is a Big Deal for the people who do it, and for the most part it isn't being done simply because the jobs are better. There are usually far more fundamental concerns behind the decision, a better economy is just one factor out of many.
The "advent of remote work" may be upon us, but a lot of places aren't really on-board yet. Go look at any job listings site — remote work is very much not the rule.
It's not that easy to emigrate from developing world to slightly more advanced developing world in many cases. Sometimes, it's easier to go straight to the top 20.
> In fact, literally the ENTIRE WORLD is your oyster, assuming you can reliably, regularly find power, wifi, and a team that'll work with you on your timezone's timeframe.
I'll add that part of the US has mild weather, and that makes it more attractive than Canada or Northern Europe to a lot of immigrants (someone from Ghana might not want to spend winters in Sweden for instance).
You missed South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, New Zealand, most of South America, Malaysia, Middle East and so on and on. Personally I put New Zealand on top of the list - as many other lists do along with the Nordic countries.
What do you mean by "take"? Canadian employers aren't very familiar with a concept of working visa in practice - they prefer you to first have a permanent residence, then they can talk about hiring you. To get permanent residence, you have to pass the process, which is many months long.
In US, if - and that's a big if - you're lucky enough to win H-1b early April, you may start working early October. Is there anything as fast with Canada? Without employer agreeing to hire you even though you don't have a working visa - i.e., you have to apply for one?
Not really. To get sponsored by an employer you need a labour market opinion and there are certain conditions (like no Canadian candidates applying for said position during a certain time period).
> There are only a few really good places to live for an educated worker. Japan, Australia, Western and Northern Europe, Canada, and the US.
You need to pull your eyes out of your ass. The countries you mention are far from being superior; perhaps "good enough", but frankly nothing too fancy. You need to visit Hong Kong or Singapore to see how highly qualified immigrants live there like kings.
Japan has serious environmental problems and their government does not stand up to the transparency one would love their government to comply with [1]. They are rolling into huge economical depression too.
Australia. Have you ever been there? Spend couple months you will be surprise how alienated you will feel. My friends live there for 15-20 years and they will never be a part of the community. They will always feel like outsiders; mostly recognized by their accent. Australians divide themselves among those who were born here, and all outsiders who came to steal jobs. Its the mentality. It wont change. Australia has their own environmental problems too and politics & taxation goes through the roof (viva la Queen that fixes everything through more taxes).
European Union is on a brink of collapse; some countries are openly discussing living EU. Its rotten to its core by very well hidden corruption [2]; Ukraine situation that helps Russia shows their real aspirations does not help either.
Canada, they are still under Queen that can suspend the parliment anytime she wants to [3].
Then we come to US. I think its a matter of "the grass that is greener on the other side". I mean, how many of those folks applying for visa know anything about US more than from movies about "land of the free home of the brave?". Politics? How many know who Nancy Pelosy or Henry Reid are? For all they know America has this good man named Obama who gave everyone free healthcare so it can't get better than that. Did they hear about Justina Pelletier, Cliven Bundy, Kelly Thomas or hundred of thousands other cases of governmental abuse?
This is a silly and hypocritical critique. All countries have their flaws, but you're really not being fair or objective.
You lambast Japan for a lack of government transparency just as you finish extolling the virtues of Hong Kong and Singapore. You also conveniently fail to mention the salary required to live "like a king" in either of those two locations. Singapore ain't cheap. In fact, it's the world's most expensive city by several measures [1].
H1-B is pretty broad, and most applicants are certainly not eligible for mid six figure salaries in the finance hubs of Asia. "Highly qualified" for the purposes of this discussion does _not_ necessarily mean rolling in the dough.
Lastly and most comically : Canada's parliament being desolved by the Queen? That's patently absurd.
I don't think it's inappropriate language, but I find your statement that the Queen can suspend Canadian parliament any time she wants is totally incorrect. The case you link to is an exceptional one that had no jurisprudence, and was most likely decided by the Queen's representative, not the Queen herself, which is not an insignificant difference. This was the aftermath of an election with a minority government result, which almost never happens in our First Past the Post system. Your misrepresentation of this case is more offensive to my eyes than your language. My HN values intellectual correctness over proper language. :)
Of course truth is more important than civility. But the two are compatible—there's no tradeoff.
It would be great if we had a way to correct all false statements on Hacker News, but we don't. That shouldn't prevent us from addressing the corrosion of the discourse by garden-variety incivility. Pulling out those weeds is one of the big things we all can do to make HN more conducive to truth-seeking discussion in the first place.
I've traveled pretty extensively across the world for work and very few places have an internet connection that compares to even a modest broadband connection in the US. Not only that, I deal with this problem weekly from our partners in 75 countries across the world who don't have good internet connections. As well, you're discounting the world's oceans. I've worked on a ship where we provided an extremely limited internet connection that would not be suitable for rapid development work.
I'd say it's a pretty small portion of the planet that has a decent internet connection, but the detail is how you define "decent".
"Large portion of the planet"... you've got North America, South America(some exceptions), Europe, a good chunk of Asia and Australasia. That's a pretty reasonable selection of places to live isn't it?
As an immigrant, I believe that US education is the number one cause for most of this. I did my undergraduate degree from Nepal and came to US to go to Grad school. Most of the engineering course content is American and most of us end up being inspired by the pioneers - Dennis Ritchie, Linus, Bill Gates, John Carmack to name a few
Once you are here, and have a degree, there are opportunities here that are not there back home and hence the interest in working visas.
Consultancies are another catalyst - in cases where the candidates do not manage to get a job right out of school, consultancies act as a bridge where they file immigrant visas for the candidates and then help them find companies that are in need of their skills.
85,000 people is a tiny amount of people all things considered. Australia had 129,250 placed for skilled immigrants in the 2011-12 period and that's with a population of around 10% of the US.
I'm not saying that the US is not a popular choice for people wanting to immigrate, but I think that it is more that there is a good quality of life to be had, with the added bonus of being an English speaking country (which is the most popular choice as a 2nd language learn).
I can speak for Argentina in this case: first and foremost, an average entry-level programmer in argentina might make 600 dollars a month. There is no consideration for your degree in that regard.
Second but not least, because ARgentina grows so much on outsourcing contracts, the quality of the job to do is poor and uncommitted. Product management in Argentina is almost non-existent. This means that the most likely job you will get is contracting-"do as the guy that pay exactly wants even if you know for a fact that there are better ways to do it" work.
So, more pay + more interesting work is enticing enough.
Also, having worked in the US gives you a halo if you come back.
It makes sense to compare the purchasing power parity and not just the dollar amount. Argentina is an up and coming destination for tech folk but the standard of living and opportunities offered are not at par with the US (specifically the valley)
English as the primary language (great learning resources available for it all across the globe).
Real economic mobility - you can really make it big if you're smart, persevering and slightly lucky. Who you know matters to a certain extent in all countries, but the significance of that factor is less in the US as compared to the other countries, in my opinion (others may disagree, of course).
(Personal opinion) It isn't the United States that's attractive. It's the tech-hubs within it. I would never seriously consider moving anywhere but a handful of cities / areas in the US. The eco-systems in those places are still years ahead of London or Berlin.
I moved from Sweden to the United Kingdom to attend university for similar reasons. The university culture is different (much better) here, and there is more of a hub factor to the campuses, which offers many advantages socially and otherwise.
I am an Eastern European living in Central Europe.
I moved because University and because of the better living/work conditions.
However, if I had the chance I would probably move to the US. Maybe CA, but I am still on the fence. The things stopping me are the super expensive health care, work-life balance and higher crime rates.
Money, and a corporate culture where being good at your job is, at least in some way, part of the equation.
For instance, a programmer in Spain makes about a third as he would in the midwest, with the same cost of living. He'd also be able to find a job by having skills that fit what companies need, instead of being about being a good friend of the CTO's nephew.
And that's a developed country in the EU. Imagine the same thing, in one of those places that have immigrants that move to Spain.
To me it's the universities and the already existing multi-culturalism. Everyone here is an immigrant in some way.
Also, multi-culturalism seems to be growing organically here in the U.S rather than being shoved down people's throats like in Europe. This leads to fewer instances of racism and a more accepting climate where every one has some degree of mutual respect. I don't think that's the case in Western Europe where from what I hear, refugees are being brought in huge numbers angering the local population.
Last year, i visited Switzerland and Austria and was called nigger multiple times by random passers on bicycles whilst walking (and I'm not even black and pretty fair for an Indian guy). Fuck that shit.
Well, the simplest answer is that incomes are way higher for certain positions, even for significantly less skilled work. I mean, engineers are a dime-a-dozen in China, but the pay is lower and STEM work is not nearly as glamorized as it is in the US right now. Doctors too. All the praise goes to business and financial managers.
Of course, if you're an international trailblazing software-engineering guru, yeah, you'll get fantastic opportunities pretty much anywhere. However, even fairly low-level IT work in the US can feed a new family (depending on your geography, of course), which is not the case everywhere in the world. And with recruiters banging down peoples' doors throwing jobs in peoples' faces, it's no wonder foreigners want to stay in the US.
>>What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world?
So, I'm highly critical of USgov but USA, with all its alleged faults, is still considered the "Land of opportunity" by a lot of people. If you have tech-skills and you need a country where the internet doesn't cost you a kidney-per-month(and barely works), electricity is reliably provided during core working hours; combined with the perception that Bay Area / Silicon Valley tech scene is where the money & smart people are at.... there you have it.
> What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world?
That is a broad question.
Probably because unlike most other countries, we're a nation of immigrants, and while our policies may not be perfect, we have empathy for people who want to move here, and work hard for a better life.
Lets just say it's not about the country itself, but the companies based in the US. In other words, the opportunity to work on really interesting problems with the best people in the field.
What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world?
As a European who spent his last 3 summers in the US, and now participating in H1B lottery, my motivation is pretty simple: money, and also prestige stemming from working for a well-recognized tech company in the core of SV that will follow me when I get back my home country, or immigrate to some country I find more desirable.
Spending few months in Bay Area and in Seattle made me pretty disillusioned about the whole "land of the free" thing, about equality and justice for all. It also made me concerned about my own personal safety, something I never ever felt back home.
But for the salary, I find that Canada is in almost every way superior for immigration purposes, not to mention Germany, Switzerland, Denmark or Sweden.
1. stability of the political system
2. percentage of large companies that originate (i.e. google, facebook, vmware, etc)
3. open opportunities with respect to social class
What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all, relative to other advanced or semi-advanced nations? More applicants than places does not prove that much in a world of scarce jobs.
People are dying, literally drowning in the Mediterranean, to get into Europe. As I know, people still apply to work in Qatar even as they engage in work practices that well be "nothing less than murder"in the process of constructing their World Cup stadiums.
About 13% of the world's adults -- or about 630 million people -- say they would like to leave their country and move somewhere else permanently. For roughly 138 million people, that somewhere else would be the U.S. -- the No. 1 desired destination for potential migrants. The U.K., Canada, and France also rank among the top choices for potential migrants.
>What evidence do you have that the US is an attractive place at all
You don't have to look very hard to see that the US is still very attractive for migration: about 1 million people, legal, permanent, per year for almost 3 decades[1] (and 1.5MM "temporary"). For comparison, Germany had about 800k in 2011, France 150k, UK 500k.
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I always found Table 6 to be the most interesting, particularly in debates about immigration — I have a green card as a 9 year long EB3 process (Employment Based, 3rd class - the CIS doesn't value Philosophy degrees as highly as engineering degrees!)
To take the last year for which data are published, 2011
A partial breakdown of new Permanent Resident status issued—informally “green card”
Family sponsored 206,585
Immediate relatives of citizens 209,984
Employment based 14,955
In round numbers for every green card issued on basis of employment, 28 are issued to family members of citizens. This is pretty much the inverse of popular understanding of immigration.
> In round numbers for every green card issued on basis of employment, 28 are issued to family members of citizens. This is pretty much the inverse of popular understanding of immigration.
There are people that don't understand that the US immigration system is primarily family-based? I think lots of people think the motivation for immigration is largely economic (and that's also true, even for the family-based visas), but I don't recall encountering many people that had any mental model of the immigration system that didn't know that being allowed to immigrate legally was largely through family-based classes. Certainly, much of the public political drama centers around that fact (e.g., the whole "anchor babies" thing.)
(Although "Family sponsored" is not, as you present it, necessarily family-of-citizen -- the family-sponsored grouping includes visa classes for family members of Permanent Residents as well.)
People may realize that familial relations can significantly shape immigration process, but they tend to greatly under-estimate the extent.
Immigration is almost always discussed in terms of fairness and, usually, "the line." But the metaphor is a bad one; instead of "the line," it might be better to think of the system as multiple, separate lines that are of varying distances from the destination. And honestly, some of those lines have some nasty obstacles laid out in front of them.
> People may realize that familial relations can significantly shape immigration process, but they tend to greatly under-estimate the extent.
I don't see any real evidence that's true, but, maybe it is.
> Immigration is almost always discussed in terms of fairness and, usually, "the line." But the metaphor is a bad one;
It's not really a metaphor at all, its a fairly literal description of the family-sponsored visa system which dominates immigration. At least as it pertains to the countries where immigration demand exceeds per-country quota, where qualified immigrants are literally on a wait list (in some cases one that will take a decade or more to reach them).
And I suspect it dominates the discussion specifically because the family-based part of the immigration system is the one most people know the most about.
> it might be better to think of the system as multiple, separate lines that are of varying distances from the destination.
Well, that would be even a more literal description of the family-sponsored system, since each category of visa has its own quota and queue.
Most of the rest of the immigration system doesn't really consist of lines...
You're quite correct, “Family sponsored” also contains ‘Second: Spouses, children, and unmarried
sons/daughters of alien resident’ which accounts for 96,633 immigrants in 2011, which is nearly half of this category, much larger than I had realized.
That's a great point to mention. US immigration policy is heavily biased towards family reunification. If you become a US citizen, you can sponsor your parents and children (if they are under 18) immediately, there is no quota.
We're discussing high-skilled immigrants. People trying to reach the southern European countries (especially Italy and Greece) or wanting to work in Qatar are a different kind of immigrants.
A pretty solid evidence is the consistently high number of people coming / trying to come to the US each year...
Seriously, you wouldn't put up with all that immigration crap if it was not attractive.
> People are dying, literally drowning in the Mediterranean, to get into Europe.
Right. Don't you think that's an indication of proximity rather than attractiveness? (some) People from Africa might be poor and are dying to go some place else, but they're not stupid. They understand crossing the Mediterranean is easier than crossing the Atlantic...
> What is that makes the United States such an attractive place to immigrate to for people whose skill sets could take them almost anywhere in the world?
They really should call them "indentured servant slave visas". The H1-B visa holder has to leave the country if he gets fired (and doesn't find a new employer quickly), and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over.
Because the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job, he becomes more attractive than hiring a US citizen, (assuming equal salary and qualification).
The H1-B visa really needs to be completely divorced from the company that originally applies for it. At the end of the day, the US government makes a decision if an individual adds value to the country by working for a US company. Which US company shouldn't matter. The only time the visa should be re-evaluated in a way that the employer may be deported is if the worker is fired for cause. Beyond that the visa should belong to the employee, not the employer.
The fact that the green card process resets if the employee switches jobs is crazy. That really does make it an "indentured servant slave visa".
Quite right. It's not a free labor market if laborers aren't free to move around! H1Bs keep wages down for that very reason. If they were attached to the worker, not the company, H1B wages would rise overnight.
This is an interesting idea. You could have a lottery for 100K H-1B visas which any non-citizen could apply for on January 1st. Then you have 6 months to find a qualified high-tech job in the US. If you don't have an offer in that time you lose the visa and are put on deferral for 1 year. Then there is a smaller lottery of visas reclaimed from those who were not hired. Every year you get two shots at visa.
I don't think calling it slavery is accurate, but indentured servitude is close (except I don't think they experience maltreatment or harsh conditions).
Most white immigrants arrived in Colonial America as indentured servants, usually as young men and women from Britain or Germany, under the age of 21. Typically, the father of a teenager would sign the legal papers, and work out an arrangement with a ship captain, who would not charge the father any money.[10] The captain would transport the indentured servants to the American colonies, and sell their legal papers to someone who needed workers. At the end of the indenture, the young person was given a new suit of clothes and was free to leave. Many immediately set out to begin their own farms, while others used their newly acquired skills to pursue a trade.
The question of legality would come down to whether it's voluntary or involuntary servitude. But as a practical matter, I think it would be good for all people (not companies) if we found a more lenient path to citizenship as it wouldn't put as much downward pressure on salaries and wouldn't make H1-Bs preferable over others, all else being equal.
Your point actually makes H1B worse than "indentured servitude" of the past. Many (if not most) H1B folks stick around at one company just waiting for a green card. This kind-of means it is involuntary in some sense. However, unlike indentured servitude, there the "young person" does not automatically get a green card and is not "free to leave" at the end by default. By default, at the end, he/she has to leave the US.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. Many H1-Bs work in high-value industries and make a decent amount of money (I should know, I'm an H1-B holder). I don't think many of them consider themselves slaves.
The green card process for a H1-B is particularly annoying and restrictive though, as is the arbitrary time limit.
Not sure what you mean by "the H1-B visa employee is legally bound to the job". Sure, your company's name is printed on your visa but it is excessively easy to transfer to a new employer.
The H-1B becomes a whole lot more restrictive the moment you apply for a green card, since your transferability just vanished.
This is less of a problem for people from non-Indian and non-Chinese backgrounds, since the wait time is reasonably short. The priority dates for Indians and Chinese though make it such that once your green card is started you're stuck for literally years.
Once you've applied for a green card and the PERM and I-140 has been approved and your I-485 has been pending for 180 days, you do have portability. You can leave your current employer, but you must find another position that is substantially similar.
Labor certification and I-140 processing used to be painfully slow. I waited 3.5 years just for my labor certification. However, the new PERM process is much quicker, so you'd probably only have to wait 1 or 2 years to be eligible for portability.
I know a few H1-B visa holders who were and I cannot imagine the stress they went through. Fortunately they all found jobs in time, although when you've got a time limit, you end up making some compromises.
Except relocation costs, lawyer fees, living expenses (frequently covered for a time period after move), and so on.
Bringing a foreign employee over is incredibly expensive. The reason companies do it isn't to get a grateful slave that will do anything to hold his job and rise ahead. They do it because a shortage of skilled workers locally, and incredible competition from other companies.
Not to mention all the hassle and uncertainty of interviewing someone, and then not knowing for months or even years if they can come over and start working.
As someone that works for a company that hires a LOT internationally, trust me, we'd much rather hire locally. But our needs are greater than can be found in one place, so we have to broaden our reach.
I've been in this industry for nearly 20 years. There is no shortage. There IS A HUGE SHORTAGE of engineers willing to work for the pay and conditions that an H1B will work for though.
"and if he switches jobs the green card process has to start over." This is incorrect. You retain your place in the GC queue if your i-140 is applied and approved. You just have to port your i-140 .
At my last job, we tried to get an H1 for just one person, and failed in the lottery!
I feel there would be much less abuse of the H1 if each company could receive only say 100 visas a year max, or a % of their US workforce size max, or something.
Or just rank em by salary/comp. More skilled people => more valuable to the economy => receive higher salary => more likely to get visa (=> pay more in taxes).
I think they should be auctioned off. (Either the company or the individual could pay the final auction price.)
The end result is the same: the most valuable workers are let in. It'd also have a small, but nice benefit: a voluntary revenue stream for the US to spend on whatever it would like (perhaps improved education and training for citizens).
Wouldn't this create the obvious problem of companies artificially increasing comp.? How do you judge that? Seems like its asking for trouble. They already do this a little bit with advanced degrees.
Why is that a problem? They wouldn't bring in H1Bs unless there was an obvious benefit. Your "problem" just reduces the gap between value produced and compensation.
Yes, they would increase the compensation until they were paying the same rate they would need to to hire a citizen (which should already be the case, in theory).
I'm saying the company would try to "artificially" increase the value of compensation without adding anything that really is valued at the price they say it is. Think extra benefits, not increased salary.
As a Indian, I would love if Visa to outsourcing firms are restricted. Take Cognizant for example, they can't compete for salary with most startups in Bangalore or Pune (and work is not great as well) and yet people want to join them, just for onsite allure.
On other hand, I would love to have a easier way to start a business in US and a Visa program that helps US economy.
DISCLAIMER: I run a services startup in Bangalore.
Hey, thanks for the 'disclaimer' there. That you are honest and thought that your opinions may be unduly influenced and that we should know it shows real maturity and a concern for others. Really, I do appreciate it. Keep up the good work. You are one of the people that makes HN great. Thank you.
"Does anyone know why the number of visas isn't capped on a per-company basis?"
Or why the state department does look at what skills are actually needed where ... or why those who get the visas remain utterly dependent on the companies that got them the visas, thus lower wages in a way an "ordinary market" etc?
-- Wow, I can think of a reason. I think of "a million reasons", all with the face of a founding father.
Yeah, if seriously high-skilled folks were let into the US, no questions asked and then weren't dependent on only company X, then they actually wouldn't be putting pressure on wages of existing geeks because they would have their own legitimate demands. But couldn't have that.
A H1 Visa is a great job perk for wannabe immigrants to US. Do you want to know the worst part of it?
H1 is supposed to be for high skill individuals, the actual people getting it are really like the absolute worst mid level corporate sycophants. The real high skill individuals are likely working at start ups, bootstrapping, or successfully running their own start ups. Who will never get Visas.
There are also other H1 candidates like doctors, Many of whom I think justifiable deserve it.
Either way the Indian start up ecosystem is growing wildly due to these Visa restrictions. Most people who would have likely started in San Francisco given a chance are starting up here now.
i recently saw a table of firms awarded these visas. it seemed nuts to me that a large proportion of the visas go to firms whose primary business line is outsourcing in one form or another.
i typically think of visas as fulfilling unmet hiring needs for domestic US firms - like Facebook! - but instead see they are largely squirreled away by firms whose primary function is overseas labor cost arbitrage.
I would be interested to hear informed opinions as to why so many visas go to these firms. i thought the stated objective is to help american firms meet their hiring needs where the local work force is deficient.
instead, it seems like all the demand is corralled into a few firms which do the dirty work for everyone else. if your primary purpose is outsourcing, how can you plausibly claim to be searching for qualified workers inside the US, and thus deserving of access to these visas?
The visas are helping american firms meet their hiring needs... through the outsourcing firms. The people who want to hire don't want to be burdened with the paperwork of actually keeping track of work-visa'ed employees; the outsourcing firms are willing to take that burden on for them. Everyone wins.
The "real" (as opposed to outsourcing/staffing) companies that want a visa for an employee and don't get one because of the cap aren't winning. Plus I'm guessing the pay / benefits would generally be better at many of those places as well.
H1B workers typically work for contracting companies, so that when the work is up (or if they lost their job) they can go to a new company and continue their green card application. The way the government attaches the process to a job really discourages H1B workers from working for US companies as full time employees.
There should be a quota for each company, say less than 500 H1B visas each year. The companies then have the incentive to pick the best candidates. Or there could be different brackets depending on company's sizes.
If the reason for such visa distribution is really the need to outsource paperwork, then introducing the quota you propose would only result in visas going to myriad of smaller outsourcing companies instead of few big ones.
I’m assuming those firms need to have specialists who speak foreign languages. More so, those firm leverage on executive close to the decision making while others (not really Facebook, admittedly) would need far more people to make the same impact. This means they can put a lot more effort into lobbying their positions.
The one job type where these visas should not be usable is consulting. If the employee isn't coming here to work on a very specific product or service, then they are being brought in only to reduce wages and not because the employer can't find someone who is capable of performing a very specific need. Consulting by its nature is the most unspecific need. It's a wildcard need.
The most valuable employees to the country are those that are hired to work on something that scales that can then be sold to other countries. Consultancy is a non-scaleable business model, which does nothing to helping the US' balance of payments. Improving the balance of payments should be the primary deciding factor when determining if an application is valid.
This does not square with my perception but that's anecdotal. Nonetheless I work at a very large financial firm and the rates paid for consulting are 70-80% higher than salaries at the same level. Even accounting for 30-50% add-ons for benefits/vacations, etc, consulting firms are still paid higher than employees, at least here.
That wasn't my point at all. I was making the point that we should be encouraging immigrant visas for positions that actually create growth. i.e. The position will help with scaling so that we end up with a larger business that results in more jobs for Americans. If an immigrant moves here and works for a company that has 10 people and helps create a product that scales so that one day that company employs 1000 people, the US is better off. If the immigrant comes to the country to work at a consultancy doing work that doesn't really scale, that worker is just another person suppressing the wages for Americans who would otherwise be doing that work. An immigrant who comes here to do consultancy doesn't do work that typically generates more jobs. The consultancy can only grow by adding more people like the immigrant since the supply of people like the technical immigrant is already limited.
Second, although consultants typically make more than other software engineers, it still suppresses wages for all software consultants. The pay for software consultants in the US would be much higher without bringing in immigrants to do that work.
Personally, I don't want to reduce the number of highly skilled immigrants that come to this country. I would love to see it increase a lot more. But I don't think it benefits the United States economy and the average American citizen when this immigrant labor is focused on non-scalable activities where the labor needed is likely to be highly fungible. That only serves to increase the bottom line of the shareholders of such companies at the expense of suppressing wages for similar professionals working in the US. That's net-negative for the country, and a subsidy for those shareholders. Every one of those H1-B visas should be decided on the likely value that immigrant can bring to the US economy and not the value that immigrant provides to the shareholders of a consultancy.
IBM getting 5 more generalist software engineers is far less valuable to the US economy than 5 engineers that are specialists in some new emerging technology such as renewable energy. The decision process for granting H1-Bs should be similar to the decision process for making an investment in a startup. You invest in things that can grow.
FWIW, You might think I'm a red-blooded anti-immigration American, but I'm actually an immigrant software engineer living in the US.
> Does turning away highly skilled and educated people due to an artificial cap on visas sound silly?
This is a false way of framing things on many levels. First, as Norm Matloff has extensively documented, they are not all "highly skilled and educated people". Secondly, they can be given green cards and other such things, why is this specific visa necessary?
Also, if there's a shortage of talent, then the Silicon Valley CEO's can put an end to things like their conspiracy to drive down tech wages that is playing out in the courts, which is something that would obviously depress the number of engineers applying for jobs. Instead of the federal government cutting loans and grants to college students, they could expand them if they want more engineers.
And if there is some humanitarian concern for immigrants, there are waiting applicants from Africa who have far more of a humanitarian need to get into the USA then an Indian IIT graduate.
>Also, if there's a shortage of talent, then the Silicon Valley CEO's can put an end to things like their conspiracy to drive down tech wages that is playing out in the courts, which is something that would obviously depress the number of engineers applying for jobs. Instead of the federal government cutting loans and grants to college students, they could expand them if they want more engineers.
You can't expect the Silicon Valley ~~CEO~~ Royalty to be bothered with something as plebeian as the free market. Much easier to get some programming serf imported to do the job and then throw them off the land once they aren't needed anymore.
>>need to get into the USA then an Indian IIT graduate.
I'm not from IIT.
But I guess it was Tom Friedman who said, It is a no brainer for the US to take people from IIT. Because you really have like the extreme best of India landing at US doorstep and practically begging to give them opportunities, to make US awesome.
Why would any country want to not have that kind of people?
If the supply of "highly skilled" people could not keep up with demand (which is what these companies lobbying Congress for uncapped H1Bs are effectively saying is the case), then salaries would be rising.
They are not.
/end of story. All other propaganda and testimony by these companies that say otherwise is bullshit.
That's not really true; if the supply could not keep up with demand, the companies would throw more resources at the problem of meeting their labor demand -- that might be raising wages (in the most simplistic economic models, that's the obvious thing), but it might equally be putting resources into lobbying Congress to allow increased immigration. If they expect lobbying to pay of greater returns for the investment than higher wages will, then that's where you'd expect them to put the resources.
Sorry .. that is totally disconnected from reality. Not only have wages NOT risen, they have stagnated (and not kept up with inflation). Further, if you look at the list (link is in this thread) of the companies along with the # H1Bs allocated to them/their ranking ... you'll see a certain big blue company in that list who is in the Top 5. They have been doing layoffs by the 1000s on a regular basis for years. I know. I work for them. I have seen personally at least 10 people on actively billing customer engagements (i.e., they were billing the customer, not riding the bench or working internally, etc.) layed off. These were highly skilled professionals with good reviews that were doing great work.
Further, I've seen many dozens of "replacements" come in in the form of H1Bs. These were literally DIRECT replacements. They were inexperienced and WORSE at the job.
This is no longer anecdotal. This is happening NOW. All over this country in the IBMs, Microsofts, etc.
It does not take a genius to see what is going on.
> Secondly, they can be given green cards and other such things, why is this specific visa necessary?
Normal path: H1B -> Green Card -> 5 yr waiting -> Citizenship
You will not get GC directly, unless: (a) Apply for GC lottery (b) Marry US citizen (c) Claim refugee status (d) Your US citizen relatives ask for it and you wait 8+ years to get it
I'm going to be in this lottery and it's unnerving thinking about how different my life could turn out if I get this visa vs. don't. Young male, can't imagine I'd try again next year so it could be the difference of a much higher paying job plus living 5+ years in America vs. staying in my home country probably for life. Nothing wrong with my home country, but I'm excited of the prospect of living in America and the experiences that go with.
For people in the same boat: I think it's easier to cope with this if you take the view that you have to be lucky to get the visa, not unlucky not to. No one complains of ill-luck when they buy a lottery ticket and don't win millions. Positivity folks! :)
A lot of American problems seem to be around the thinking that there is some kind "fixed" number of jobs, misery, poverty, disease etc.
A lot of welfare systems here seems to assume that there is a fixed number of single mothers, disabled etc. without acknowledging the fact that the more incentives you give to them more people will try to get into that category. For example more dole you give to disabled I would assume more people would try to get themselves into disabled bucket than in healthy.
Similarly the H1B cap seems to have an assumption that there are some fixed number of STEM jobs out there and if Indians fill it up, somehow the Americans will not get it. I would assume a higher concentration of Engineers in USA would only lead to more innovation, more engineers trying to earn more money by being far more creative and so on.
In India a typical outsourcing giant pays somewhere between $5K to $10k per year to new engineers. The only way I could break such low pay was by getting a master degree, being an excellent coder and joining a more tech focused company in Silicon Valley. After reaching Silicon Valley I realized the tech giant I was working for did not pay me enough. So I changed the job and joined a start-up which eventually did far well making me richer.
Also the Democrats which beat their chest in the name of poor are actually those who treat poor the way a Dog treats a lampost. The lampost helps the Dog navigates but only after it is soaked in his pee.
More engineers would mean cheaper engineering services which means more money saved for rest of the non-engineering Americans which a overwhelmingly high population. By putting an artificial cap on H1B American government is forcing the poor American citizens shell out more money.
There is another important point of outsourcing. If there is more competition here, in the US, then chances of outsourcing to India, China (where pay is substantially low) will also reduce. That might mean more jobs here, in the US.
Take Cognizant Technology solutions for example. I know a friend who works for the company. They are a US company (NJ based) but the majority of their life-sciences projects are outsourced to India office. They pay my friend one-thirds of what they charge the client for him in the contract. Him and about 5 other people who work here for the client, send work off-shore to India office to about 50 people. This model of outsourcing the majority work to India suits the client because the total costs about one-tenth of what they'd actually pay if everyone of those employees was hired here, in the US.
Not only is this model hurting jobs in the US, it is bad for the employees here well. For my friend, he has to work during the day, and then spend most of the night delegating tasks off-shore. He practically sleeps only over the weekend.
This might be a one-off example with this specific client only for Cognizant but I am aware that the profits from pay-scales are company-wide.
Opposite of fixed is `not fixed` instead of unlimited. I never said America has unlimited jobs but the number of jobs would depend on too many factors.
Someone has a degree does not mean the person is productive enough to get an actual full time job. Also government's protectionist mechanisms only hurt these people. Assume that for any job there is a productivity level required X. For some value X=N, it is profitable to simply outsource that job to India. For all values X>N it is affordable to hire a person in US, also there is a strong demand for people X>N.
Under these conditions all the American citizens who have a degree but with productivity level <=N they have no choice but to to something to raise it to a certain extent in order to get employed or learn to make Tacos.
If the government comes up with more rationalized H1B limit then many companies would prefer to simply give H1Bs to cheap labor from India. Yes, true thousands of half educated people from India would flock to America, but at the same time this will lead to more x<N jobs in US for which even Americans can compete. A lot of those unemployed graduates would then have a better shot at getting employed.
Swear words aren't against the rules, but personal attacks are. We ban people for that, especially when they don't have a history as a positive contributor to HN.
Good to note that this does not include the E3 visa available exclusively to Australians. Australia never uses its full allocation of 10,000 E3's each year and they are incredibly easy to get. the candidate simply needs a Bachelor's degree or higher as well as a job offer. If approved, their spouse is also instantly eligible for a E3 visa entitling them to work too.
Generally, it takes 2-4 weeks to get one from start to finish if you have a good immigration lawyer.
This sort of visa should not be exclusive to Australia. As an Aussie, I get the benefit from it but at the same time, I feel everyone should have access to it. I hope visa reform comes soon!
Anyone struggling to hire, big or small, should market to Australians. Its very cheap to fly out and interview a heap of smart candidates who would love to work for startups in the Bay Area.
The agency working on my application specifically timed it so that my application was submitted on April 1st, when the applications initially opened, instead of in November when I submitted the paperwork. If all agencies time applications this way, then the reason that all applications were exhausted within a week is because the entire year's applicants queued up until their requests were submitted this week.
This does not detract from the fact that there are too few visas granted, however, the situation isn't quite as insane as you would expect from reading this article.
A good friend of mine works in the US under a high-Skill visa - as a tenured professor at Cornell, with oh, the Presidents medal for something very clever.
I think high skilled is a term that we coders are happy to apply to themselves, but really folks we are not compared to a genuine elite. The future will be invented by a very small number of brilliant people - the rest if us are just here to fill in the gaps behind them.
let it go, start building a remote-working-orientated company and hire people wherever they live. Stop worrying about the country's tax take.
Exactly. Sure some H1-b visas might be used to just increase programmer supply, but many are like the professor you're talking about. Even catching a few geniuses in an extremely broad net is an invaluable boon to our country. Our concerns should be that we are missing some.
I"m surprised only 124,000 applications were received. I was expecting the number to cross 200K. It gives more 85,000/124,000 probability which means slightly more than 68% of the people have chances of getting the H1B Visa.
Not quite 68% because there are two categories: 20,000 for advanced degree holders and another 65,000. There is an initial lottery between the advanced degree holders for the 20,000, and then the unsuccessful people go into the regular lottery. Don't know if the figures were released for the number of advanced degree holders who applied, but assuming the cap here was also met, the chances in the main lottery would be 65,000/114,000 = 57%
If this is genuinely an issue (I never really tried, I just asked a handful of interesting offers if they'd consider making the effort and never really received a positive reaction), why haven’t more companies tried to set up large teams in Europe and Asia?
I never heard anyone say that Google Zurich (a terrible location, work-visa-wise) or Sidney didn't fit the bill. Remote work appears to be common practice — a third of offers consider it, and cools start-ups advertise not having an office.
Does it matter? Canada is much more liberal about giving out work visas, so US companies just open offices in Canada and hire the employees there. Meanwhile, Canadians can come work in the US under the TN status, which has no quotas.
"In 2013, 124,000 people applied for the combined 85,000 slots in the first five-day period."
Considering that Americans seem to have little difficulty affording computers and software, yet continue to bankrupted by health care costs, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to give those 85k visas to cheap doctors from overseas to drive down medical costs, instead of giving them to cheap foreign programmers to drive down the wages of American developers?
That might make sense, if it wasn't for the fact that those "cheap doctors from overseas" can't practice medicine without a license, which requires that they complete an american residency program regardless of their existing qualifications. No matter how many immigrants you bring in, the number of residency slots is fixed (and is already smaller than the pool of qualified M.D.s). Residency exists in part to limit the supply of physicians and ensure that wages remain high. It's a nice little (100% legal) wage-fixing cabal.
I can't help seeing this as a higher level in some grotesque cultural fractal that, somewhere along the line, also involves ticket middlemen monopolizing admittance to most concerts and shows.
I don't know if they're part of the same problem or the same problem expressing itself in different ways, but I have a hard time calling this coincidence.
>"In the United States, nine percent of computer science graduates are unemployed, and 14.7 percent of those who hold degrees in information systems have no job. Graduates with degrees in STEM - science, technology, engineering and medicine"
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving-p...
How does opening up more visas help this? It is not about helping the people of America. It is about corporations getting richer. There are plenty of people already here to fill tech jobs.
So if we gave them all Visas - we'd be good for less than two weeks?
Sounds like a bigger problem here.
On a related note, how many highly skilled and educated people live here already who are currently unemployed?
Two observations.
* Immigrants will go to where the work is. They will live almost anywhere the work is, they are moving already so it is easier than for someone who has roots somewhere.
* Immigrants will work harder and for less money. This is like starting a new job x10. Typically starting a new job - people work their tails off (for the first year or two at least). Think about that plus moving half way around the world just for personal achievement. Imagine the motivation that would give you. You would want to prove yourself, get permanent status, make a lot of money to bring family here ETC. And the money? think about it. Would you take less money for a huge opportunity in life?
Here is the thing though. Bringing in skilled immigrants is great for greedy capitalism, you get talent, hard work, and for cheap. The problem is - we are just working around a growing problem. What about the people who already live here. Not just the adults, but the kids who will be in high school and college in a few years. Why can't they be the ones who fill these jobs?
Bringing in immigrants is a short term moneymaker for corporations. Longer term, and in a couple of generations, these immigrants grand kids will be the ones who don't have a job. Let's put more focus on that aspect rather than always rallying behind opening the floodgates without properly considering the ramifications.
Einstein, Tesla and Musk. None of those guys would have ended up in the US if you had any power over immigration policy. Oh.. and are you native? Genuine question as I have no idea.
What kind of argument is this? You can't argue fate. You could also say that without the level of immigration we have, the world trade center would never have been attacked, we would have never invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Millions of lives would be saved.
One could say that Einstein changed fate such that a certain person was never even born who would have surpassed his achievements. This is nonsense and illogical.
In the United States, nine percent of computer science graduates are unemployed, and 14.7 percent of those who hold degrees in information systems have no job. Graduates with degrees in STEM - science, technology, engineering and medicine - are facing record joblessness, with unemployment at more than twice pre-recession levels. The job market for law degree holders continues to erode, with only 55 percent of 2011 law graduates in full-time jobs.
The argument is that if you deny people entry you miss out on talent. It is that simple. Now you want to deny people with proven talent who's abilities will further the interests of the nation state. Some of those you deny will have exceptional abilities. The nation as a whole loses.
It is very sad that nine percent of computer science graduates are unemployed. Why is that? Why are they not fulfilling the already critical need for skilled IT workers? A clue - it's not because the immigrants are taking all there jobs.
Love the quote BTW - from and immigrant news service.
Is the same guy pushing for visas to drive down wages:
"Fwd.us, a group founded in part by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, has pushed for immigration reform. Joe Green, another Fwd.us founder, lambasted current law regarding the cap structure of high-skill visas in an email to TechCrunch, calling the current set of regulations “dysfunctional.” "
(I'm genuinely curious about this, as an American who has lived overseas--with the proper visas of course--for three years in the 1980s and for three years spanning the turn of the last century. I've only lived long-term in one other country, so I still could learn a lot more from all of you who participate here on HN about why people leave their country of birth, which is surely disruptive, to go to another country to live. What's the big deal about living in the United States?)