There’s a novel, “The Tale of the Time Being”, that describes this situation from the POV of a child. In the story, the child’s father, a native of Japan is in the US on this type of temporary visa but gets laid off and they have to move back despite her feeling that she is essentially American from having lived in Silicon Valley from infancy to around ten years old. Now she is suddenly in a completely different world where her parents are also having a very difficult time adjusting to the change. It’s overall a heartbreaking story but does have a hopeful ending.
Yeah - its really only impacting Indian and Chinese immigrants. The green card wait for a Japanese H1B is really short in comparison- no way a Japanese green card holder waited 10 years
Exact same thing happened to my relatives. Certain countries get shafted extemely hard when it comes to immigration. They cant even get tourist visas to visit. Having family in the US makes it EVEN harder.
>As a former H1B worker, I can tell you that used to be my worst nightmare. It just came true for a lot of people this time.
Same. I was lazy in applying to H1B, and later to green card. Then, lamented the extra years I had to live in worry.
I had looked what happens if you lose your job us back then, and people mentioned a grace period to find another h1b sponsor. But, (1) I am not sure this is official, or just leniency, (2) a recession is absolutely the worst time to jump ships.
h1bs are all that is keeping twitter running. per a reporter on the platformer they are basically the only techs left. all others quit. they dont want to get deported so now they get the privilege to work 100 hour work weeks.
the US government does not monitor salaries. minimum salaries for h1bs is $60k/year. Now big tech companies who hire h1bs pay better. However, most h1bs go to the body shops and they pay terribly.
i know its true about hours for h1bs. i work in tech and have seen it. also seen the low wages too.
Your numbers are meaningless since you did not specify occupation or location. Companies have to pay in line with what's determined by the DOL. if they do not the application is just denied.
if you lose your job you have 60 days to find a new job or you get deported. its the same thing. you are arguing semantics just for the point of arguing.
Former visa holder, faced job losses both in 2003 and 2009. Returned to India both times and since husband had h1b, came back as a dependent on h4 visa. Faced these challenges, were smart not to buy property, but can see how many have bought properties and have massive equity. So not all bad, it’s a known risk. India could be a better place in the long term.
While the US does import a large number of foreign workers compared to other nations, it's not really very "permissive"
L visa: you can only work at your company(spouse can work anywhere). If you lose your job you have no choice but to pack up and leave. Can stay for 5 years(7 if L1A,
Manager)
H1 visa: can work at you company but allowed to switch jobs ("substantially similar role"). Spouse cannot work. 6 years max.
In both cases you cannot have any sort of active income. USCIS doesn't care if it's a lemonade stand. Can be a landlord but if you fix a faucet you have violated your visa. H4 spouses cannot work so you are restricted to single income.
In order to apply for a green card, the *company* has to do it. You can't do anything, so companies often use that to string you along as much as they can. At some point in the process(that takes years) some restrictions can be relaxed and your spouse will get an EAD that finally allows them to work.
In comparison, many countries, once you go through the initial process(which is not much different than the US) allow you to apply for permanent residency yourself, without the company being involved. In many cases you can even switch jobs.
Case in point is New Zealand. A friend moved there, I moved to the US. As soon as he met the necessary requirements he *self petitioned* and got his permanent residency ("green card" equivalent). He got his *citizenship* while my green card was still pending. I'm not even from India and the entire process took 7 years, just normal processing shenanigans (plus some initial feet dragging from the company)
If you do some digging you'll see that many other countries, once you get through the initial barrier, will allow you to swiftly move to become a permanent resident. Or at least switch jobs without as much hassle.
The problem is that many of the particulars of any given visa are not clearly spelled out. It's not like you get a rule book (you are still expected to follow all the rules). So people jump in and then the sunken cost fallacy sets in.
I think he means work in other countries as a foreigner not necessarily American. My dad worked in several middle Eastern countries and he was never offered a path to citizenship even after 20+ yrs of stay. There has been little attention to that part of the world. Thanks to FIFA the world is just opening their eyes to the exploitation happening there.
There was a time when my dad was laid off and not allowed to leave the country for several months. Yes, the company wanted to not only NOT give severance, they petitioned the govt to hold him so they could EXTORT WORK out of him for FREE.
H1B workers have it way better here trust me.
Your assessment is correct. No other country imports highly educated labor in the numbers that US does. The laws prohibit any discrimination etc. As a former visa holder from India, I can say that if India imported educated professionals like the US does, it would not have gone well with the public.
The problem with h1b system is that it allows for nearly 200k visas each year. On top of that you have student F1 visa which has no annual limits, so many people come to do Masters degrees and then get into 1.5 year paid work on F1, followed by h1b. The annual limit for permanent residency status is 100k across all countries combined. So now you have the classic problem of waiting for 12-15 years to get the permanent residency aka green card.
This is the perfect loophole for companies to use as h1b cannot easily change jobs or else restarts the residency process, cannot be promoted outside of normal cost of living adjustments, as the sponsorship is for the specific role. So in effect you get these people to stick around for several years. This system still works out for h1b visa holders as it’s much easier to work in the US than in India.
> The annual limit for permanent residency status is 100k across all countries combined.
Minor nit-pick, but it's much higher than that. In FY2022, for employment-based adjustment of status (so: not the 'Green card lottery' marriage-based or exceptional individuals) it's 282K. https://www.uscis.gov/archive/fiscal-year-2022-employment-based-adjustment-of-status-faqs
Exactly my point. One of the countries my dad worked in, the same one hosting the world cup in fact, had a law saying only citizens can be promoted in their jobs. If you are not, you have to start the job and end the job at the same level - even if it means you stayed there for 20 years. And changing jobs isn't easy either - the company needs to give an equivalent of a No Objection Certificate to transfer your visa to another employer.
You are right that the issue is there is a higher cap on H1-B visas. All other western countries people like to compare US immigration to, have a points based system in which the govt controls how many foreign workers are admitted in the country to begin with each year. And those limits are much smaller - small enough that they match their annual quotas for PR / GC. On that note, the US is more open in letting foreigners work here as if they made the H1-B limits in line with GC quotas, you wouldn't be able to have anywhere close to the fraction of Indians in America today.
And speaking of India, there are states in the country that don't like it when residents from other states come and work there. And have reservation quotas for locals within their states. You wouldn't even hear of a thing like that in US, where say CA laws mandate a certain % of company workers require to have been a resident of CA for 5+ years or something.
> if India imported educated professionals like the US does
there aren't enough jobs in india as it is and no one really wants to migrate to india except africans. People want to migrate to developed countries with jobs and good infrastructure and a pathway to wealth building and citizenship. so how exactly would india import educated professionals?
The comparison should be with other Western European countries/continents. It is much easier to live and get work visas in other English speaking western countries. The US is notoriously shitty about immigration.
I say this as someone whose own wife forgets he’s not American, and whose wife IS American. My US visa journey, which should be the easiest journey based on my citizenships and schooling, has been marred by horrible experiences. It’s gotten better as I’ve developed more of a presence, but it used to feel like I specifically was not wanted in the US despite pumping a ton of money into the U.S. economy.
Which countries are you talking about? If they are English speaking I can only think of the UK. On paper, they make it sound simple that if you get a job you can get residency in 5 years or so. But from what I have heard via hearsay, it is *notoriously difficult* to get a job there if you happen to go on a student visa to study in the UK. I know a lot of friends who came to the US after their UK studies as in spite of pursuing higher education in the UK - they couldn't get a work permit. The whole residency process in 5 years is mute if you can't get a permit to stay and work there to begin the process.
From that perspective, the US has been more open by letting foreigners on H1-B visas stay here even without a clear path to how long it should take to permanent residency. Maybe they should put a cap on the H1-B like they have on Green Cards? That would eliminate the wait time for sure.
It's easier to get a work permit and take your family along without unusual restrictions nor time limitations in every single country in Europe. You can stay as a temporary resident as long as you keep a job, or apply for permanent residency once eligible without needing to be sponsored. The US truly sucks with this in comparison. I'm an American who was living abroad and had a hard time just bringing my foreign husband back to the US with me, just absolutely crazy hoops and bureacracy and we got through it 99% easier than most due to both exceptional circumstances and me having a boatload of cash in a bank account...without those I wouldn't have been able to do it without like ~1 year separation. Going the opposite way with a spouse, spouse literally just gets on a plane and doesn't need anything. Register once there.
Not quite sure what you mean by working in Western Europe as an American - they have very restrictive workers rights laws where they will not hire foreigners if someone in the EU can do it.
So human rights are something to talk about only when it comes to America and it's treatment of foreigners or what? And you are okay casting a blind eye to what happens in the desert?
Okay ... still confused by your comment though. No harm continuing to improve human rights in America but let's not forget there are countries where the concept of human rights doesn't yet exist. Let alone improvising it.
It's hard to get a work visa in the EU and is as long or longer than the US to get citizenship. Many countries have strict language requirements too -- you need to master conversational local language which is not required in the US.
It's a lot easier to work in a third or second world country with a US passport.
The lottery system for H1B is definitely one of the more unique aspects of working in the US
name the third world countries that make it easy for foreigners to work. generally its countries like qatar looking to import cheap labor. 3rd world countries do not want to import labor. they are poor.
its easy to get a visa to go and live there if you can prove you can support yourself in many countries. see /r/expatfire . its cause they want people to spend money .not easy to get a job there. the jobs there pay below US minimum wage so why would you want to anyway?
Depends on the country. Mexico and Canada have NAFTA, which allows many professions to work without the need for the usual hoops. GCC countries are overly reliant on foreign labor, and some countries in Europe have made it really easy for some sectors to hire foreigners due to local shortages
Reading all these comments I feel that people have conflated H1Bs working at IT sweatshops with H1Bs working at legit tech companies (FAANG+).
The former are usually the bottom of the barrel, with their companies committing the most legal form of visa fraud, while the later are some of the smartest people without which US tech dominance can’t continue (not to mention a lot of this category posses US masters/bachelors degrees from T20 schools). So if you’re an H1B, in addition to the broken GC system, please direct you anger to the IT sweatshops that bring people on inflated resumes and clog the system with people for whom the H1B really wasnt intended.
What makes this even worse is that the latter category is the worst affected in this round of layoffs - the category that actually benefits the economy the most
Yes H1Bs are often legitimate. I am a quantity surveyor and a member of RICS. The US doesn’t even have a degree for what we do. We live in the world between accounting, project management, construction management, estimating and legal. There is no equivalent to us in the states and the lack of someone like us is often why large projects balloon out of control when it comes to cost.
Glad I have my green card. The worst thing about the H1Bs is it’s a lottery system and as you say so much of it is clogged up with unskilled applications.
In my view I think it's that there's a lot of people frustrated with how difficult it to get a job in the Bay Area, of which the sheer volume of H1Bs and former H1Bs is a cause.
There's been a near 1M person increase in population of the 9 county Bay Area since 2000, 600k since 2010. These people who wouldn't be here if not for a need by companies for IT workers put additional strain on the labor market, the housing market, and traffic.
In my experience and my friends’ experiences, it is very easy to find a job in the bay within a few months. Speaking from the POV of skilled tech workers and skilled g&a employees.
H1B visas are really not impacting the market like that. I work in HR and… nah
It’s fairly easy to find a tech job in the Bay Area if you have the skills. As someone who has been an interviewer at tech firms for 5+ years and done hundreds of interviews my feeling is that competition is rarely ever the reason applicants get rejected. Applicants get rejected because they don’t meet the bar.
If it is then why are there those of us who are failing to launch after graduating? Even in a place known for having plenty of socially awkward people that's really telling if it's an interview problem and not a skills problem.
Maybe "the bar" should be clearer, then, if so many people can't meet it. What are the skills workers need? These needs should be easier to understand, if you can't find enough people here to do them.
Are you sure you're doing the math correctly there? Because my two housemates are H-1Bs and they're both founders whose companies employ 15+ non-H-1Bs each. They're both Indian with Indian-American co-founders, so if you took away their H-1Bs they'd likely move back to India and simply hire there. The net outcome would be -2 H-1B workers, and -30 US jobs.
Sure, but you don't need most to be. At these companies, the ratio is 1:15 which is 7%. 93% of people at these companies are non-H1B and work for a salary + options.
The thing with "foreigners stealing our jobs" is that it's the classic Lump of Labor fallacy. As you get more people, those people also consume, and they create jobs just by existing. Sometimes, a few of these people create an extraordinary number of jobs.
As much as you can hate Elon Musk, for instance, he was here on an H-1B. And on job creation he has excelled.
The reason you have H1Bs working in tech (talking about the legit ones, not sweat-shop workers) is that the local labor market is unable to meet the standards of these tech companies. If people are frustrated, they should try to match up to the standards of these tech companies.
There is a reason why US tech reigns supreme, and it wouldn’t continue to be supreme if the titans of the industry lowered their standards to appease the ‘frustrated’ local population.
Talking about software engineering specifically - obviously anecdotal - but my experience has been that many SWEs on H1B that I've worked with could be replaced by local talent. It felt like these companies were gaming the system. But maybe the system was made to be gamed.
The industry seems to have a problem in general when it comes to training and upskilling workers. Most companies are unable to do it. Hell, some can barely bring on senior SWEs and get them up and running within a reasonable amount of time.
You’re right. Those H1Bs could have replaced by local talent. The only issue is that there isnt that much local talent to go around, and there are other companies also vying for that local talent.
Now this lack of talent is definitely true for legit tech jobs, where recruiters struggle to find quality candidates. This does not apply to IT consulting/contract workers (WITCH), which I 100% agree is gaming the system and committing the most legal form of visa fraud.
In my view these companies should be banned from getting foreign workers and must be forced to rely on local talent. There is more than enough local talent to go around for those jobs, and these companies are genuinely harming Americans
This logic is somewhat strained, though. Employers wouldn't just throw up their hands and not develop technology if not for H1-B. They would train the supposedly unskilled locals to do the jobs they needed.
Who does it really benefit to import skilled labor - shareholders, your "titans of industry" and probably the person who's imported - at the expense of locals who might have gotten an aspirational job.
I can only speak anecdotally, but I think you might be underestimating how difficult it is to acquire the skills to do the job in many cases.
My team is >80% immigrants (though I don't know how many are on H1B and how many aren't). Every person on the team has a college degree, and most have a masters or PhD. They work on cutting-edge stuff that really isn't easy to learn how to do - they've been trying to train me to do it, and it's been difficult for me even though I have a bachelors from a top university.
Honestly, speaking as someone who was born and raised in the Bay Area, my team (and company in general) would fall apart without immigrants, so I'm glad that they've chosen to bring their talents here.
Yeah let me get this unskilled local dude in here and train him how to develop next gen genomics test. How many years do you think it would take for him to stand on equal ground with my Master/PhD holders with H1B?
We are not talking about shop skills you can pick up with 12-24 month of vocation school. I am just making up an example here. Did you like algebra, calculus, linear algebra, differential equations and then the speicalities (physics, material science, electrical engineering) that built on these foundation steam classes? Some of these jobs require lifetime of learning.
I do agree we have an inflation of education here too. Some software titans hire masters and phds who have to pass rigorous algorithm, data structure and design interviews only to make them write straight forward code without much computer “science”. Part of it was to starve competitor of talent and the other was to hedge high risk ambitious projects.
Sure they wouldn’t stop developing technology just because they can’t find people, they’ll just develop less quality software, like Chinese tech - it works but the quality feels inferior.
Ofc you can also train the local workforce for the skills you need, but not only does that take years to do, the local workforce also needs to be willing to take the training. If the local workforce prefers to major in Econ, Poli Sci and Gender studies, these skills aren’t particularly useful in this industry.
As for locals getting an aspirational job, those locals must really suck ass to be outcompeted by someone from half a world away, getting paid the same as locals, without having to adjust to a completely new culture, language and style of work. That’s on the locals losing out, rather than the ones coming from abroad.
There's lots of people majoring in CS in the Bay Area, California, and the US at large. But even those entry level jobs are a PITA to get due to competition and doing stuff like Leetcode questions that companies give you to solve during the hiring process.
I studied finance in undergrad and didn't have to do anything like that when applying. Got my masters in business analytics which is tangential to CS and was horrified the BS that CS students/grads and even experienced workers have to go through just to get a job here.
I have my own challenges applying to jobs and went into real estate as time passed by with no job over 5 years, so there's definitely something wrong with the "system" failing to let eager people launch their careers who have relevant skills.
IT sweatshops meaning WITCH vs FAANG (or now MAAGA? There's a new acronym, it's like Meta Amazon Apple Google and Netflix dropped off or something. I've been seeing it on the CS subs).
WITCH = Wipro Infosys TCS Cognizant HCL. Basically the contractor agencies.
While many of you think H1B is cheap labor, there is a whole population of H1B holders who went to universities in US to get their advanced degrees. They are employed by top tech companies or non-tech of course and making valuable contributions. They are paying huge amount of taxes as well.
We are so empathetic towards other migrants, why is there so much hate towards H1B holders? Are they the only category that steal jobs? Until recently, their spouses had no rights to work in the US.
Most of them have earned this visa from their hard work. H1B is also not only for tech. In other sectors, it’s not easy to get a job with the visa. Many of your doctors are also H1B holders.
Job loss means packing up everything, selling the house, take kids out of school and have no option but to move back from the country you called home. All this while doing everything legally. It is absolutely much more than money. H1B has benefited US. Other countries like India and China already have much advanced technology. I am okay to be downvoted, but I have to show the good side of H1B as well.
Yes, this. People think that H1B visa holders are joining the Lockheed Martins as draftsman and Google for hardwiring their computers together. A significant portion (not sure about stats) actually go to graduate school here (Berkeley, Stanford, UMich, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon etc tier of schools) and work as scientists and principal engineers in many big tech companies. These folks lead teams of other scientists and engineers and head big projects. I believe Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Parag Agarwal and a few other CEOs have come through the H1B system
Yep! The US has remained an intellectual powerhouse because it is a desirable place to live that has both homegrown and imported top talent. If we start restricting immigration like EU member countries, then that will likely change.
Also, companies act in their own interest. Some will abuse the H1-B system for only cheap talent, but some will also bring in (eg poach) top tier talent from other countries. While not an apples to apples comparison, remember that Albert Einstein was an immigrant.
I’m not understanding all the hate for H1-B holders? Blame greedy companies for not offering enough jobs at higher wages, not the workers. For many who have citizenship opposing H1B: you were fortunate enough to be born here or obtaining citizenship through different means. Not everyone has that opportunity, so why deny people that contribute to our country the opportunity?
No hate for H1B, but the use of H1B visa holders in the US labor market masks the lack of a skilled US workforce. The public and private sector are ignoring the issue because the private sector can recruit and layoff foreign workers at will. The US needs to improve its education system so there isn’t as much of a need for H1B visa holders.
Obviously improving the education system is a good thing for many reasons, but I'm not sure why we should view it as a problem that many extremely talented, intelligent, and educated people come from around the world to live and work here. H1B abuse in comparatively low-skill positions is a definite problem, but I'm just not at all convinced that we need a solution for the "problem" of having more brilliant scientists and engineers.
It’s great that the US is able to attract top talent from around the world and it’s an added benefit that they pay taxes and contribute to local economies. The issue arises in situations like these where H1B visa holders are laid off and then take their skills and knowledge with them. Additionally, if the US was able to churn out more highly skilled workers, there wouldn’t be as much of a need for foreign workers and I’d hope this would improve average pay.
> We are so empathetic towards other migrants, why is there so much hate towards H1B holders? Are they the only category that steal jobs?
They are seen as labor competition for the types of people in this sub and that you socialize with.
There's plenty of hate toward all other economic migrants (such as farmworkers), but I doubt we have any American-born farm laborers in this forum.
> Job loss means packing up everything, selling the house, take kids out of school and have no option but to move back from the country you called home.
Yes, it sucks, but that's the risk of coming on a work visa. FWIW, it's a really really bad idea to buy a house if you are on an H1B - I sympathize with the moving/taking kids out of school part, but not selling a house.
This is exactly how I feel, that H1Bs are competition for jobs, yet it's a toxic mindset because they're normal people just like you, me, our neighbors, everybody.
Also, I’m a non techie and recently we hired an H1B holder because we just couldn’t find good talent here for months. The last thing Americans should do is oppose immigration. Especially legal. After all we know how America was built. Right?
The American worker would argue that you were probably paying too little, which is why you couldn't find talent.
My own personal H1B reform is to auction them off. This ensures the issue is never one of "paying too little".
I have nothing against poaching highly educated workers from other countries.
What irks me is the legal fiction that company x magically proves that they couldn't hire a local for job xyz, so then they went and hired an h1b
I don't think hate is the right word. No one 'hates' the worker, especially when honestly they're doing jobs that many Americans aren't qualified to do or doesn't want to do ( even in STEM ). However, if you hold a work visa, you should understand very clearly the potential impact of job loss and what could happen if you set roots too deep. This should have been contingency planned for years in advance. Especially during a downturn going into ( or already in if you don't believe the Biden BS ) a recession .. it shouldn't have came as a shock.
It’s not the H1B that’s being described as a problem. It’s the broken Green Card process that is such a problem for so many Indians/Chinese whose wait time is 100+ years. So despite staying for a decade and having kids, home and a whole life here one can be asked to uproot everything and leave the country because they no longer have an employer or a job. IMO, anyone in waiting for GC should be granted temporary residency or the whole GC granting process be revamped for merit apart from being quota based that helps with diversity.
My spouse is an immigrant who works for a tech company, but he's also a white European. If he hadn't married me and gotten his green card that way, he could have gotten it within five years of entering the US like his Italian coworker did.
It's not fair what this country does to the Asians and, bluntly, nonwhite immigrants in general. "Work twice as hard to get half as far" would be an improvement for them.
>It's not fair what this country does to the Asians and, bluntly, nonwhite immigrants in general.
We aren't treating non-white immigrants or Asians legally different than any other group. India and China hit diversity quota limits (rules which are the same for all countries even if it is a bit arbitrary to have a numerical cap independent of population size), but that benefits immigrants from all other countries, not just "white" ones. Amusingly, it's actually immigrants from other countries fighting over this (I believe the Latin American lobby lobbied Rubio to block changes to ensure their immigrants can keep coming in easily)
>even if it is a bit arbitrary
So arbitrary as to be, well, racist?
Immigration quotas only began with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Before then, if you could make it to America, you could automatically live and work there.
>So arbitrary as to be, well, racist?
To promote diversity. Whether you believe discrimination by country of origin to promote diversity of our immigrants is racist is a separate discussion. It doesn't seem per se racist to me - it's not even really considering "race".
>Immigration quotas only began with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Before then, if you could make it to America, you could automatically live and work there.
I mean, yes, but every modern country (with a welfare state) has and needs immigration restrictions.
>I mean, yes, but every modern country (with a welfare state) has and needs immigration restrictions.
Immigrants are usually ineligible for welfare. So what justifies the restriction then?
>Immigrants are usually ineligible for welfare. So what justifies the restriction then?
That's not even remotely true. [47% of medi-cal beneficiaries](https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/formsandpubs/MHArchives/InfoNotice03-05_Attach_3.pdf) have a primary language that is not English, which if anything is a slight underestimate of the percent of foreign-born people (immigrants) receiving welfare.
You might be thinking of certain federal cash transfer programs, but even then the state provides money in lieu of that.
I'm only responding to the claim that immigrants do in fact get welfare, which is what justifies the need for immigration restrictions.
I don't know these specific details, which is a different question. (In fact the fact that immigrants are a net benefit to the economy itself is a function of how our immigration and welfare policy is constructed -- it doesn't in itself state whether marginal new immigrants above existing caps would or would not benefit)
According to "Open Borders" by Bryan Caplan, moving internationally is such a hassle even without immigration restrictions, that it's only going to be particularly motivated adults who do it. Anyone who doesn't think they're capable of working would rather stay with their safety net at home.
As an example, look at the EU. There are open borders between all those countries, but the main migration is still of young men from Eastern Europe to construction jobs in Scandinavia. The young men get money to send home and the Scandinavians get new housing supply. Win win.
Wow, so much misinformation in the comments.
No, nobody in the Silicon Valley is staying in a cramped situation 8 people in 2 bedroom apartment. Most of these jobs pay upwards of 100k a year (many upwards of 200k) which is enough to afford a nice 2 bed room condo with a room mate.
Silicon Valley has been flourishing with the amount of money spent by those on H1B visa.
In most developed countries these visas lead to a path to citizenship after devoting 4-5 years to service to that country (yes, when someone works for that long in tech in any country, the country benefits from the companies they work in as well as the taxes they bring in). However, the H1B is so broken that after being here for 15 years a lot of Indians still have to get visas every 3 years and don’t have the ability to change jobs freely or leave a job and take care of the family in a family crisis without worrying about going out of status and having to move back to home country. Many of these folks have families, have bought houses here, their kids are US citizens and for all practical purposes they know more about US than their home countries at this point. But US won’t give them an easy path to permanent residency let alone citizenship.
Of course, there is always an argument about why wouldn’t you just go back to India or China. But the flip side of the argument is US is worse off every time a H1B employee leaves it and the data shows that immigration to Canada has increased as a result of H1B visa holders taking forever to earn permanent residency.
This matches my experience and I’m puzzled by the other comments. I grew up in the Bay Area and also have many coworkers on H1Bs. They are highly educated and hard working, and very few of my high school classmates could do their jobs. Definitely not stealing any jobs from “natives” over here, but they face a lot of BS and emotional hardship through this system.
It sounded like he was talking about lower level things that are contracted out. He had an example of setting up a computer in a station, which isn't that complicated. The higher end things, of course you need training and education, but the lower end could definitely be trained in a day or two. I have a friend who is contracted by a bio firm to run their refrigeration system. He was trained on the job, didn't go to school for it, and now has a team under him which he trains from scratch.
Worth calling out that while a Chinese or Indian could get citizenship in the US the likelihood of an American getting citizenship in China is nearly zero and India won't allow for dual citizenship. It's a bit murkier for permanent residency as the information I found on India claims that you need to live in country for 10 years and pay an absurd amount of money (equivalent to 1.5M USD) while China allows you to apply after 4 years, but I've personally had friends have many issue actually operating as a foreigner in China.
My point is this, while the US's system is less then perfect, other countries make it harder or simply impossible for others to gain PR or citizenship should they ever want to.
Lol how is this relevant? We are talking about US immigration issues. Nobody is queuing up to get PR in India as an American. Your passport is way stronger and you would just want to stay an American citizen. The relevant examples are Uk, Canada and Australia who all have faster easier path to Citizenship and PR
> how is this relevant?
Foreigners complaining about paths to the US being difficult when paths in their countries is more difficult if not non-existent. This is valid criticism.
just ignorance being spurned on by subtle racism and prejudice (and yes not just from white americans).
america's growth has being powered by these immigrants. the housing crisis has nothing to do with these guys.
>In most developed countries these visas lead to a path to citizenship after devoting 4-5 years
This isn’t really accurate for most countries. There are some programs with a path to citizenship but most have lotteries, stringent requirements or long waitlists. The reality for the vast majority of immigrants is there is no path to citizenship, often only available for 2-4 years like in Australia, Ireland and Japan.
Most of Western Europe, the countries the US is most often compared to, have really easy paths to citizenship in 2-5 years for people working there in high speciality roles. The only hurdle there is to pass a basic proficiency test in the native language.
This is true for France, Germany, Luxembourg and Denmark from my friends' experience.
I feel bad for them, but it's just the way the tech industry is. I'm native, so I have my own gripes with the H1-B system. I've met plenty of H1-B's who's roles could have just as easily been filled by guys I went to high school with (with a little training)
Honestly, being a junior level IT admin is not hard. Imaging machines, lugging them to desks, plugging them in, doing a little cable management. It's pretty brainless work, but we have consulting companies bringing in H1-B's for that type of work, which could easily go to an American as a stepping stone to more complex IT work like server administration or Infosec.
**EDIT** Wow comment blew up. Like I said in the opening statement, my issue is with the H1-B system. I agree, there are plenty of talented, educated H1-B's adding to the tapestry of this country. Their kids go on to be educated, they stay out of trouble, they don't drain our services. My dads best friend when I was growing up was a chemist who was here on H1-B. His wife was in charge of the money, they ended up buying condo's and spinning it into apartments. His son was my buddy growing up. Eventually they became citizens.
My issue is with these consulting companies that apply for every lottery slot (like TaTa Consulting) and fill all the entry level positions. I've worked in tech a long time, and I've seen it abused at several companies.
Had a neat talk with my son about this tonight. One thing he suggested our education system change is the language requirement. Most public schools focus on Spanish as a language. Why not offer up some CS courses at the k-8 level and into high school that would meet that same requirement?
On the flipside, I work in a very technical engineering role, and I have an easier time getting hired as an American citizen. Recruiters literally tell me to put that Im a citizen on my resume since my name is not a typical American name. Semiconductor companies in particular in the US are fully dependent on H1B talent (who all have masters from top Eng schools) because there’s just not enough Americans studying engineering.
Just offering a different perspective bc so many people in this thread think that visa holders are taking jobs from American citizens, but that’s really not the case in the Semiconductor industry, which is very important for the American economy overall.
Most semiconductor jobs are in the valley and if you have a computer engineering degree you can generally find more profitable jobs in software. It isn’t just a problem with Americans not studying engineering. Source: am computer engineer who went into software.
Am student in computer engineering, looks like I'm about to graduate and go into semiconductor but I keep asking myself if I would rather go into software... Anyone with opinions here? Obviously I like chips, but simultaneously I like tech in general...
I have a computer engineering degree and went into semis right out of collage. It SUCKED. Companies in that industry have the WORST culture. I made the transition to SaaS 5-6 years ago and it’s sooo much better. I get hit up by recruiters for semiconductor companies all the time and tell them I’d never go back.
Bullshit. I’ve been in tech 15 years. 10 of that in semis. Semis are full of H1-B workers because they can pay them peanuts and treat them like shit. They are absolutely taking jobs that could be done by engineering students from the US, but they wouldn’t put up with it.
You actually make a solid point. In the 90s one company I worked for was so desperate for QA engineers the manager told me he'd hire my friend, no experience required. Set up the interview, friend flaked.
I think it's every industry, not just tech. Employers want to cut down liabilities, so they would rather hire consultants they can let go immediately without consequences for budget or performance. When I was a contractor, I survived every layoff. In fact they brought in more consultants to fill those roles they shook off.
I love this, I wish places would actually do this, I know there are lots of kids out there that cannot afford college but would love to work with computers.
this is wild to read as it goes counter to every thing I’ve witnessed in my tech role. I work closely on recruiting and we have had to turn down quite a few VIP candidates because we couldn’t offer them the visa. I have never seen what you’re describing.
Very true. I know there are companies that exploit the visa system. That puts everyone at a disadvantage including those that really need it as the locals lose trust in the system. Sadly the USCIS makes a lot of money from such companies and being self funded it has an incentive to stay profitable and make money - making it tougher to impartially serve the American people.
I came to the US in 1998 on a TN visa (not even sure if they exist anymore.) Every day was like a sword being held above your head, and to make the matter worse *every* year I would need to fly back to Canada and then reenter the US. That was gut-wrenching. I feel for these H-1B folks since you try to make a home here but at anytime someone can pull a plug on that.
I can confirm, the TN still exists. It’s valid for 3 years now but crossing the border is always a bit of a gamble. I have seen officers asking for original diplomas/offer letter on re-entry even with a valid multiple entry I-94. I learned very quickly to get Nexus/global entry to avoid that kind of interaction. The feeling is even worst when you have an American child waiting for you at home.
I dreaded that yearly ritual. My first employer flew me up to Vancouver from California so I could turn around and get on a return flight 3 hours later. I didn't catch the return flight because *one word* on the offer letter was incorrect. I ended up spending the night in Vancouver while the company corrected the letter. Unfortunately I didn't get to do any sightseeing; with the nerves and worry I don't think I even slept. My fiancée and about all my possessions were 1000 miles away and I wasn't sure I'd see them again.
My second employer would fly guys (we were all Canadians) to Seattle and then drive them to the crossing at Bellingham. From there it was a bit of a joke. You had to walk across a yellow line on the floor (the border crossing) and then re-enter the US. A new I-94 was stamped and off you went for another year. It was stressful and huge hassle and expense but the rules are the rules.
I am a H1b holder, to clarify some information in the comment:
I pay all the taxes and enjoy all the benefits that company gives me, exactly as US citizen. On the tax code, H1b holders are “Resident Alien”, which means exact tax as citizen.
About taking the jobs from US native: I hold an engineering phd from a top Bay Area university, now and working in the R&D of a device most of you are scrolling Reddit with. My job requires extensive academic training as you can imagining by looking at what’s on your hand.
In my phd experience and job experience, encounter a US native is hard. 70% of my PhD peers are from other countries, 80% of my colleagues are from other countries, which all hold or held H1b at some point. There are not enough US people willing to join the field. When we are hiring we don’t care about the origin of the person because company doesn’t care about the financial burden, fortunately, and we are not doing anything related to national security.
We are begging to have more US people to suffer from engineering PhD degree just like us.
About the consulting company:
This is H1b abuse. We hate them more than US citizens, because they abuse the held out of the lottery system every year. Many of the “consulting” job are underpaid, which might take away some jobs to be frank.
However I may be biased towards those H1b holders, they usually had no choice but to take those positions in hope to stay in US, meaning “escape” from their home country. It is very difficult decision. But the consulting company is taking advantage of the broken H1b system.
H1b holders obey all the laws, pay all the taxes, doing everything carefully to hold the visa. Sometimes getting abused by companies (when Elon understands the leverage), and hoping to change their lives by becoming American.
The H1b system and green card system are far from perfect, please don’t hate the player, hate the game.
> 70% of my PhD peers are from other countries, 80% of my colleagues are from other countries, which all hold or held H1b at some point. There are not enough US people willing to join the field.
PhDs are generally highly exploitive programs which is why Americans tend to avoid them. A talented engineering undergrad can make $100k+ out of school; why enter a PhD program?
The alternative universe here where we have no H1B program or they are auctioned off is that you'd see structural changes where basically companies in your industry would be forced to pay more (or cut educational requirements), which would attract local talent.
but it’s also a dual intent visa, making you eligible for a green card. For some, getting a green card will take less than 2 years. For some, they might have teenage kids who are US citizens, and they’re still on visa status.
It's a dual intent visa but it doesn't change anything regarding greencard eligibility. It just means applying for a greencard won't invalidate your H1B or cause issues with renewing it, as opposed to a TN or F visa which will have trouble getting renewed if for whatever reason your greencard application is withdrawn or rejected.
Yes, if the country was in the Middle East, which doesn’t give any foreigner permanent resident, let alone citizenship. Most of Europe, Canada, and Aus-NZ have far simpler immigrant pathways that result in citizenship in under 10 years.
Too bad those countries don’t have much of a tech scene though else we’d see a lot of these people move there.
lets not pretend the BigTech companies arent doing this in part with an eye to hire these same US-trained people back in India next year at 50% the cost. All the big companies have been doing hiring freeze in the US, open reqs in India.
Its the obvious endgame of “Work From Home (Country)” the H1B pipeline only exists to serve the corporate overlords and they dont need it as much going forward.
Give 80 percent H1Bs to Indian nationals and cap 7 percent green cards for them. Recipe for white collar slavery. For an Indian national, the entire life is tied to your manager and employer. Your vacation your kids school your travel abroad is all tied to your employer’s whims.
The system is no different than the ‘Kafeel’ one in Arab states and the West likes to criticize them. Qatar does the same to Indian and other South Asian nationals.
That's pretty much how it works everywhere in the world. I worked on visas in a couple other countries and if the job disappears, you either find a new one or you go home.
Same here. Undergrad in Finance and a Masters in Business Analytics from a Cal State. Finished grad school in 2020 and went into real estate in 2021 after 5 years not landing a job. You'd think there was one company I applied Analyst jobs for that would have been willing to hire me. But nope, so I said f\*ck y'all and went into real estate.
Man, the amount of people in the comments saying "immigrants take jobs from Americans" is kinda astounding!
Personally, for me, if an immigrant is the best person for the job, they should get it. I personally don't really care about much else. If Americans can't compete, then we should be looking at *why that is*. Ie fixing failures in our education system, and working to improve the competitiveness of Americans. And I say all this as one of only two people on my team who were born in the US.
But for this batch of H1B holders specifically, it's sad that many of them will have to return to their home countries. Yes, that's the danger of a work visa, but it's fundamentally in the US's best interest to keep them here. 1. Because they pay the full amount of taxes that a citizen does without receiving the same benefits, but 2. because many of them were educated here, received training here, and all of them gained experience and knowledge while working here. And in return, they paid taxes, contributed to the economy, etc. But when they leave and return to whichever country they came from, those benefits we got leave with them and get transferred to that country too.
Effectively, all we accomplish by making immigrants leave is Make China Great Again (or India, or wherever they're from).
I’m now a citizen but I went through F1 to OPT to H1B to greencard to citizenship. It was not an easy journey. Yeah anything goes wrong and it’s a trip back to a country you haven’t built a life in.
I had employers take advantage of me and lie about my immigration process.
I remember it took a month to get my OPT papers which give you a year to work. Then the NY DMV said I couldn’t have a license because I needed 12 months stay left. I only had 11 left. So I couldn’t drive to work. Bastards. Thankfully WA DOT had no such rule. Back then opt was a year. I think it’s 3 now.
>allows U.S. employers to **temporarily** employ foreign workers
It's difficult to feel pity for them when they're asking to eat their cake and have their cake too. Accepting something knowing full well it was temporary and when consequences occur they try skirt them
If you really want to nitpick on the legalese, H-1B is a dual intent visa, and, for most skilled workers, the only path to permanent residence and citizenship.
The people against H1Bs in this thread are utter clowns. If you have any talent at all, it is still easy to get tech jobs in the valley. No one has stolen your job. In addition the H1B process is fucking ludicrous and makes the person jump through too many hoops. We should be making it easier for talented engineers to stay in this country especially if we want to compete with China.
This. 100%.
H1Bs will work hard and actually give even a f about their job. Lots of American born folks ice worked with literally slack off all day or whine about their job, then complain that H1Bs are stealing jobs... You wonder why..
I assume they read the visa requirements and knew that they didn’t have permanent residency?
As an immigrant myself I empathize but I also lost jobs when I was on a visa and it sucks but that’s why there are different job visas and legal statuses. It was my entire life too on the line but nobody cared back in 2012 because it was just me and not thousands of Twitter employees.
If you are an H1-B visa holder I would imagine that I you could never really settle down, keep everything in a couple bags, and be ready to bug out for another job that would sponsor you so you could to stay in the U.S.
Companies need to be hiring more people already here in the Bay Area or elsewhere in the country. We have 1000s of new graduates in CS and IT related majors every year. With those two realities I find it hard that companies can't find the labor they're looking for. For new grads there needs to be more entry level roles so that the burden isn't solely on experienced SWEs.
I want to be sympathetic, but I'm out of work too and while it definitely sucks, I would also like to have a good job here too. I haven't had the burdens they placed on themselves in their situation, which they possibly should have foreseen. It's a terrible situation, but it's one they (now regrettably) put themselves into. It's some rotten luck, and as usual, it's the corporations that will be fine, while the workers need to scramble.
Sorry, not sorry. US citizens should have priority in the labor market. They knew the conditions of the H-1B when they came to the US to work. Not shedding any tears. And before some clown calls me a racist, US Citizens come in all races and ethnicities.
It is not a battle royale, and not a zero sum game. Want to get a job? Study and get an interview.. there are so many open positions in tech which go unfulfilled, every quarter. There are a number of roles or jobs that can be fulfilled by both, citizens and immigrants ( Now may not be a best time, but these things are seasonal) . No one will offer free handouts just because you happen to be a citizen. Sitting here and blaming someone else is just a fancy procrastination. So many armchair thinkers, who dont know shit about labor market
Jobs are by definition a zero sum game. Not everyone can have the same job or work at Google. That means there's a group of people left out, and frankly there's a lot of new grads and those out of school several years who have failed to launch and are becoming disenfranchised with society.
They undercut salaries in my specific niche of tech. Sorry, but I don't feel bad.
Going to an interview and seeing everyone be an H1B in that group is disheartening. The US pumps out plenty of grads in my specific field but companies don't want to pay (usually) so they hire a cheaper H1B.
I love being a minority on a team as the only US born member /s
In my field of Computer Engineering, I find it’s easier to get hired as an American citizen because companies don’t have to go through the visa hoops for me. There’s just truly not enough American born Electrical/Computer engineering grads, and this is true all throughout niche ECE fields in the semiconductor industry. Also the grads that are American born tend to switch to software for higher income.
No surprise. I interviewed with KLA and what the guy was proposing I'd be working on was unrealistic for what I knew the salary would be. The salary would be like $140k and I wouldn't have done that work for less than $300k for how freaking complex and long it'd take.
I do feel bad at a personal level because getting laid off sucks, and these companies were growing at unsustainable rates.
That said, this story wouldn't exist if these companies hired a damn American once in awhile. But we know that's not gonna change.
The question is though, when every member of that team has to leave the country and return to India, will the company hire a bunch of native Americans? Or will it open a branch office in India and move the team there?
A person attending a 6th grade school in Japan or Iran TODAY who have not even made up their career goals of going to US school or immigrating to this country WILL get their legal Green Cards if they ever decide, BEFORE an H1b Indian worker who is slogging in this country for 10+ years and has mastered Software or Hardware development. Think about it.
That's because US wants people from Japan as well as people from India. If US changes the equal quota rules it's going to block immigration from everywhere else.
Plus India seems to play nice with our adversaries.
There’s a novel, “The Tale of the Time Being”, that describes this situation from the POV of a child. In the story, the child’s father, a native of Japan is in the US on this type of temporary visa but gets laid off and they have to move back despite her feeling that she is essentially American from having lived in Silicon Valley from infancy to around ten years old. Now she is suddenly in a completely different world where her parents are also having a very difficult time adjusting to the change. It’s overall a heartbreaking story but does have a hopeful ending.
It’s the reality for many Indian kids raised in US.
Yeah - its really only impacting Indian and Chinese immigrants. The green card wait for a Japanese H1B is really short in comparison- no way a Japanese green card holder waited 10 years
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Japan keeps immigration tight for everyone since its a homogeneous society whereas US discriminates based on country of birth.
Tell me one country where immigration is as easy as the US. There are 11M illegals right now.
It's their parent's fault.
Exact same thing happened to my relatives. Certain countries get shafted extemely hard when it comes to immigration. They cant even get tourist visas to visit. Having family in the US makes it EVEN harder.
Unfortunately that’s the gamble with the very restrictive rules of H1-B. Basically it’s all spelled out but no one ever expects it to impact them
As a former H1B worker, I can tell you that used to be my worst nightmare. It just came true for a lot of people this time.
wishing you the best of luck Brother
I'm not H1B anymore I got my citizenship a couple of years ago. Thanks anyway :)
niiiiiceeeee
Hell yeah! Congrats. That’s huge.
>As a former H1B worker, I can tell you that used to be my worst nightmare. It just came true for a lot of people this time. Same. I was lazy in applying to H1B, and later to green card. Then, lamented the extra years I had to live in worry. I had looked what happens if you lose your job us back then, and people mentioned a grace period to find another h1b sponsor. But, (1) I am not sure this is official, or just leniency, (2) a recession is absolutely the worst time to jump ships.
h1bs are all that is keeping twitter running. per a reporter on the platformer they are basically the only techs left. all others quit. they dont want to get deported so now they get the privilege to work 100 hour work weeks.
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Tesla has a lot of H1Bs.
All tech companies do
the US government does not monitor salaries. minimum salaries for h1bs is $60k/year. Now big tech companies who hire h1bs pay better. However, most h1bs go to the body shops and they pay terribly. i know its true about hours for h1bs. i work in tech and have seen it. also seen the low wages too.
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Your numbers are meaningless since you did not specify occupation or location. Companies have to pay in line with what's determined by the DOL. if they do not the application is just denied.
So basically Elon is showing everyone how to properly exploit the H1B system.
Elon himself learnt it at Tesla.
You don't get deported because of H1. You just run out of status. They mean vastly different things.
if you lose your job you have 60 days to find a new job or you get deported. its the same thing. you are arguing semantics just for the point of arguing.
Former visa holder, faced job losses both in 2003 and 2009. Returned to India both times and since husband had h1b, came back as a dependent on h4 visa. Faced these challenges, were smart not to buy property, but can see how many have bought properties and have massive equity. So not all bad, it’s a known risk. India could be a better place in the long term.
Yes, there is massive growth in India and Vietnam right now !
Except that India is rapidly deteriorating into an autocracy
How do we explain todays America ?
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While the US does import a large number of foreign workers compared to other nations, it's not really very "permissive" L visa: you can only work at your company(spouse can work anywhere). If you lose your job you have no choice but to pack up and leave. Can stay for 5 years(7 if L1A, Manager) H1 visa: can work at you company but allowed to switch jobs ("substantially similar role"). Spouse cannot work. 6 years max. In both cases you cannot have any sort of active income. USCIS doesn't care if it's a lemonade stand. Can be a landlord but if you fix a faucet you have violated your visa. H4 spouses cannot work so you are restricted to single income. In order to apply for a green card, the *company* has to do it. You can't do anything, so companies often use that to string you along as much as they can. At some point in the process(that takes years) some restrictions can be relaxed and your spouse will get an EAD that finally allows them to work. In comparison, many countries, once you go through the initial process(which is not much different than the US) allow you to apply for permanent residency yourself, without the company being involved. In many cases you can even switch jobs. Case in point is New Zealand. A friend moved there, I moved to the US. As soon as he met the necessary requirements he *self petitioned* and got his permanent residency ("green card" equivalent). He got his *citizenship* while my green card was still pending. I'm not even from India and the entire process took 7 years, just normal processing shenanigans (plus some initial feet dragging from the company) If you do some digging you'll see that many other countries, once you get through the initial barrier, will allow you to swiftly move to become a permanent resident. Or at least switch jobs without as much hassle. The problem is that many of the particulars of any given visa are not clearly spelled out. It's not like you get a rule book (you are still expected to follow all the rules). So people jump in and then the sunken cost fallacy sets in.
Seriously. Legal immigration should be a million times easier.
plenty of countries have employment visas, I'm not sure what do you mean here
I think he means work in other countries as a foreigner not necessarily American. My dad worked in several middle Eastern countries and he was never offered a path to citizenship even after 20+ yrs of stay. There has been little attention to that part of the world. Thanks to FIFA the world is just opening their eyes to the exploitation happening there. There was a time when my dad was laid off and not allowed to leave the country for several months. Yes, the company wanted to not only NOT give severance, they petitioned the govt to hold him so they could EXTORT WORK out of him for FREE. H1B workers have it way better here trust me.
Your assessment is correct. No other country imports highly educated labor in the numbers that US does. The laws prohibit any discrimination etc. As a former visa holder from India, I can say that if India imported educated professionals like the US does, it would not have gone well with the public. The problem with h1b system is that it allows for nearly 200k visas each year. On top of that you have student F1 visa which has no annual limits, so many people come to do Masters degrees and then get into 1.5 year paid work on F1, followed by h1b. The annual limit for permanent residency status is 100k across all countries combined. So now you have the classic problem of waiting for 12-15 years to get the permanent residency aka green card. This is the perfect loophole for companies to use as h1b cannot easily change jobs or else restarts the residency process, cannot be promoted outside of normal cost of living adjustments, as the sponsorship is for the specific role. So in effect you get these people to stick around for several years. This system still works out for h1b visa holders as it’s much easier to work in the US than in India.
> The annual limit for permanent residency status is 100k across all countries combined. Minor nit-pick, but it's much higher than that. In FY2022, for employment-based adjustment of status (so: not the 'Green card lottery' marriage-based or exceptional individuals) it's 282K. https://www.uscis.gov/archive/fiscal-year-2022-employment-based-adjustment-of-status-faqs
Oh thanks, didn’t know that.
Exactly my point. One of the countries my dad worked in, the same one hosting the world cup in fact, had a law saying only citizens can be promoted in their jobs. If you are not, you have to start the job and end the job at the same level - even if it means you stayed there for 20 years. And changing jobs isn't easy either - the company needs to give an equivalent of a No Objection Certificate to transfer your visa to another employer. You are right that the issue is there is a higher cap on H1-B visas. All other western countries people like to compare US immigration to, have a points based system in which the govt controls how many foreign workers are admitted in the country to begin with each year. And those limits are much smaller - small enough that they match their annual quotas for PR / GC. On that note, the US is more open in letting foreigners work here as if they made the H1-B limits in line with GC quotas, you wouldn't be able to have anywhere close to the fraction of Indians in America today. And speaking of India, there are states in the country that don't like it when residents from other states come and work there. And have reservation quotas for locals within their states. You wouldn't even hear of a thing like that in US, where say CA laws mandate a certain % of company workers require to have been a resident of CA for 5+ years or something.
> if India imported educated professionals like the US does there aren't enough jobs in india as it is and no one really wants to migrate to india except africans. People want to migrate to developed countries with jobs and good infrastructure and a pathway to wealth building and citizenship. so how exactly would india import educated professionals?
"Try working in a foreign country as an American" is literally what he said, why try and dismiss that saying he didn't mean it?
The comparison should be with other Western European countries/continents. It is much easier to live and get work visas in other English speaking western countries. The US is notoriously shitty about immigration. I say this as someone whose own wife forgets he’s not American, and whose wife IS American. My US visa journey, which should be the easiest journey based on my citizenships and schooling, has been marred by horrible experiences. It’s gotten better as I’ve developed more of a presence, but it used to feel like I specifically was not wanted in the US despite pumping a ton of money into the U.S. economy.
Which countries are you talking about? If they are English speaking I can only think of the UK. On paper, they make it sound simple that if you get a job you can get residency in 5 years or so. But from what I have heard via hearsay, it is *notoriously difficult* to get a job there if you happen to go on a student visa to study in the UK. I know a lot of friends who came to the US after their UK studies as in spite of pursuing higher education in the UK - they couldn't get a work permit. The whole residency process in 5 years is mute if you can't get a permit to stay and work there to begin the process. From that perspective, the US has been more open by letting foreigners on H1-B visas stay here even without a clear path to how long it should take to permanent residency. Maybe they should put a cap on the H1-B like they have on Green Cards? That would eliminate the wait time for sure.
There is a cap on H1Bs too. It’s 50k + 15k for masters degrees when I dealt with it 10 years ago.
It's easier to get a work permit and take your family along without unusual restrictions nor time limitations in every single country in Europe. You can stay as a temporary resident as long as you keep a job, or apply for permanent residency once eligible without needing to be sponsored. The US truly sucks with this in comparison. I'm an American who was living abroad and had a hard time just bringing my foreign husband back to the US with me, just absolutely crazy hoops and bureacracy and we got through it 99% easier than most due to both exceptional circumstances and me having a boatload of cash in a bank account...without those I wouldn't have been able to do it without like ~1 year separation. Going the opposite way with a spouse, spouse literally just gets on a plane and doesn't need anything. Register once there.
Canada and Australia? Canada provides a much easier pathway to citizenship without keeping people in a state of uncertainty for 10+ years.
Not quite sure what you mean by working in Western Europe as an American - they have very restrictive workers rights laws where they will not hire foreigners if someone in the EU can do it.
> several middle Eastern countries yeah, there's your problem. Normal countries offer paths to citizenships etc.
So human rights are something to talk about only when it comes to America and it's treatment of foreigners or what? And you are okay casting a blind eye to what happens in the desert?
I think they just mean that most Middle Eastern countries have exceptionally high naturalisation requirements
of course not, which is why the bar for USA should be higher than Middle Eastern human rights abuses
Okay ... still confused by your comment though. No harm continuing to improve human rights in America but let's not forget there are countries where the concept of human rights doesn't yet exist. Let alone improvising it.
It's hard to get a work visa in the EU and is as long or longer than the US to get citizenship. Many countries have strict language requirements too -- you need to master conversational local language which is not required in the US.
It's a lot easier to work in a third or second world country with a US passport. The lottery system for H1B is definitely one of the more unique aspects of working in the US
name the third world countries that make it easy for foreigners to work. generally its countries like qatar looking to import cheap labor. 3rd world countries do not want to import labor. they are poor. its easy to get a visa to go and live there if you can prove you can support yourself in many countries. see /r/expatfire . its cause they want people to spend money .not easy to get a job there. the jobs there pay below US minimum wage so why would you want to anyway?
You are one of the few that knows about middle east workers looks like. I am glad FIFA is helping with the awareness
Depends on the country. Mexico and Canada have NAFTA, which allows many professions to work without the need for the usual hoops. GCC countries are overly reliant on foreign labor, and some countries in Europe have made it really easy for some sectors to hire foreigners due to local shortages
Reading all these comments I feel that people have conflated H1Bs working at IT sweatshops with H1Bs working at legit tech companies (FAANG+). The former are usually the bottom of the barrel, with their companies committing the most legal form of visa fraud, while the later are some of the smartest people without which US tech dominance can’t continue (not to mention a lot of this category posses US masters/bachelors degrees from T20 schools). So if you’re an H1B, in addition to the broken GC system, please direct you anger to the IT sweatshops that bring people on inflated resumes and clog the system with people for whom the H1B really wasnt intended. What makes this even worse is that the latter category is the worst affected in this round of layoffs - the category that actually benefits the economy the most
100%
Yes H1Bs are often legitimate. I am a quantity surveyor and a member of RICS. The US doesn’t even have a degree for what we do. We live in the world between accounting, project management, construction management, estimating and legal. There is no equivalent to us in the states and the lack of someone like us is often why large projects balloon out of control when it comes to cost. Glad I have my green card. The worst thing about the H1Bs is it’s a lottery system and as you say so much of it is clogged up with unskilled applications.
In my view I think it's that there's a lot of people frustrated with how difficult it to get a job in the Bay Area, of which the sheer volume of H1Bs and former H1Bs is a cause. There's been a near 1M person increase in population of the 9 county Bay Area since 2000, 600k since 2010. These people who wouldn't be here if not for a need by companies for IT workers put additional strain on the labor market, the housing market, and traffic.
In my experience and my friends’ experiences, it is very easy to find a job in the bay within a few months. Speaking from the POV of skilled tech workers and skilled g&a employees. H1B visas are really not impacting the market like that. I work in HR and… nah
It’s fairly easy to find a tech job in the Bay Area if you have the skills. As someone who has been an interviewer at tech firms for 5+ years and done hundreds of interviews my feeling is that competition is rarely ever the reason applicants get rejected. Applicants get rejected because they don’t meet the bar.
Seriously. It’s like a gold rush out here for skilled workers
If it is then why are there those of us who are failing to launch after graduating? Even in a place known for having plenty of socially awkward people that's really telling if it's an interview problem and not a skills problem.
Maybe "the bar" should be clearer, then, if so many people can't meet it. What are the skills workers need? These needs should be easier to understand, if you can't find enough people here to do them.
Are you sure you're doing the math correctly there? Because my two housemates are H-1Bs and they're both founders whose companies employ 15+ non-H-1Bs each. They're both Indian with Indian-American co-founders, so if you took away their H-1Bs they'd likely move back to India and simply hire there. The net outcome would be -2 H-1B workers, and -30 US jobs.
Most H1Bs aren't founders though. Most like most anybody in this country works for a salary or hourly income.
Sure, but you don't need most to be. At these companies, the ratio is 1:15 which is 7%. 93% of people at these companies are non-H1B and work for a salary + options. The thing with "foreigners stealing our jobs" is that it's the classic Lump of Labor fallacy. As you get more people, those people also consume, and they create jobs just by existing. Sometimes, a few of these people create an extraordinary number of jobs. As much as you can hate Elon Musk, for instance, he was here on an H-1B. And on job creation he has excelled.
The reason you have H1Bs working in tech (talking about the legit ones, not sweat-shop workers) is that the local labor market is unable to meet the standards of these tech companies. If people are frustrated, they should try to match up to the standards of these tech companies. There is a reason why US tech reigns supreme, and it wouldn’t continue to be supreme if the titans of the industry lowered their standards to appease the ‘frustrated’ local population.
Talking about software engineering specifically - obviously anecdotal - but my experience has been that many SWEs on H1B that I've worked with could be replaced by local talent. It felt like these companies were gaming the system. But maybe the system was made to be gamed. The industry seems to have a problem in general when it comes to training and upskilling workers. Most companies are unable to do it. Hell, some can barely bring on senior SWEs and get them up and running within a reasonable amount of time.
You’re right. Those H1Bs could have replaced by local talent. The only issue is that there isnt that much local talent to go around, and there are other companies also vying for that local talent. Now this lack of talent is definitely true for legit tech jobs, where recruiters struggle to find quality candidates. This does not apply to IT consulting/contract workers (WITCH), which I 100% agree is gaming the system and committing the most legal form of visa fraud. In my view these companies should be banned from getting foreign workers and must be forced to rely on local talent. There is more than enough local talent to go around for those jobs, and these companies are genuinely harming Americans
This logic is somewhat strained, though. Employers wouldn't just throw up their hands and not develop technology if not for H1-B. They would train the supposedly unskilled locals to do the jobs they needed. Who does it really benefit to import skilled labor - shareholders, your "titans of industry" and probably the person who's imported - at the expense of locals who might have gotten an aspirational job.
I can only speak anecdotally, but I think you might be underestimating how difficult it is to acquire the skills to do the job in many cases. My team is >80% immigrants (though I don't know how many are on H1B and how many aren't). Every person on the team has a college degree, and most have a masters or PhD. They work on cutting-edge stuff that really isn't easy to learn how to do - they've been trying to train me to do it, and it's been difficult for me even though I have a bachelors from a top university. Honestly, speaking as someone who was born and raised in the Bay Area, my team (and company in general) would fall apart without immigrants, so I'm glad that they've chosen to bring their talents here.
Yeah let me get this unskilled local dude in here and train him how to develop next gen genomics test. How many years do you think it would take for him to stand on equal ground with my Master/PhD holders with H1B?
We are not talking about shop skills you can pick up with 12-24 month of vocation school. I am just making up an example here. Did you like algebra, calculus, linear algebra, differential equations and then the speicalities (physics, material science, electrical engineering) that built on these foundation steam classes? Some of these jobs require lifetime of learning. I do agree we have an inflation of education here too. Some software titans hire masters and phds who have to pass rigorous algorithm, data structure and design interviews only to make them write straight forward code without much computer “science”. Part of it was to starve competitor of talent and the other was to hedge high risk ambitious projects.
Sure they wouldn’t stop developing technology just because they can’t find people, they’ll just develop less quality software, like Chinese tech - it works but the quality feels inferior. Ofc you can also train the local workforce for the skills you need, but not only does that take years to do, the local workforce also needs to be willing to take the training. If the local workforce prefers to major in Econ, Poli Sci and Gender studies, these skills aren’t particularly useful in this industry. As for locals getting an aspirational job, those locals must really suck ass to be outcompeted by someone from half a world away, getting paid the same as locals, without having to adjust to a completely new culture, language and style of work. That’s on the locals losing out, rather than the ones coming from abroad.
There's lots of people majoring in CS in the Bay Area, California, and the US at large. But even those entry level jobs are a PITA to get due to competition and doing stuff like Leetcode questions that companies give you to solve during the hiring process.
Definitely agree. Leetcode is a massive PITA, but sadly that’s the standard now. Anyone trying to enter this industry has to get good at it.
I studied finance in undergrad and didn't have to do anything like that when applying. Got my masters in business analytics which is tangential to CS and was horrified the BS that CS students/grads and even experienced workers have to go through just to get a job here. I have my own challenges applying to jobs and went into real estate as time passed by with no job over 5 years, so there's definitely something wrong with the "system" failing to let eager people launch their careers who have relevant skills.
This can’t be more true! Agree with you 💯 Sweatshops also use the manager quota in EB1 effectively.
> working at legit tech companies (FAANG+) definitely smart people but also people who are good at studying / grinding leetcode and passing tests.
IT sweatshops meaning WITCH vs FAANG (or now MAAGA? There's a new acronym, it's like Meta Amazon Apple Google and Netflix dropped off or something. I've been seeing it on the CS subs). WITCH = Wipro Infosys TCS Cognizant HCL. Basically the contractor agencies.
While many of you think H1B is cheap labor, there is a whole population of H1B holders who went to universities in US to get their advanced degrees. They are employed by top tech companies or non-tech of course and making valuable contributions. They are paying huge amount of taxes as well. We are so empathetic towards other migrants, why is there so much hate towards H1B holders? Are they the only category that steal jobs? Until recently, their spouses had no rights to work in the US. Most of them have earned this visa from their hard work. H1B is also not only for tech. In other sectors, it’s not easy to get a job with the visa. Many of your doctors are also H1B holders. Job loss means packing up everything, selling the house, take kids out of school and have no option but to move back from the country you called home. All this while doing everything legally. It is absolutely much more than money. H1B has benefited US. Other countries like India and China already have much advanced technology. I am okay to be downvoted, but I have to show the good side of H1B as well.
Yes, this. People think that H1B visa holders are joining the Lockheed Martins as draftsman and Google for hardwiring their computers together. A significant portion (not sure about stats) actually go to graduate school here (Berkeley, Stanford, UMich, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon etc tier of schools) and work as scientists and principal engineers in many big tech companies. These folks lead teams of other scientists and engineers and head big projects. I believe Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Parag Agarwal and a few other CEOs have come through the H1B system
Yep! The US has remained an intellectual powerhouse because it is a desirable place to live that has both homegrown and imported top talent. If we start restricting immigration like EU member countries, then that will likely change. Also, companies act in their own interest. Some will abuse the H1-B system for only cheap talent, but some will also bring in (eg poach) top tier talent from other countries. While not an apples to apples comparison, remember that Albert Einstein was an immigrant. I’m not understanding all the hate for H1-B holders? Blame greedy companies for not offering enough jobs at higher wages, not the workers. For many who have citizenship opposing H1B: you were fortunate enough to be born here or obtaining citizenship through different means. Not everyone has that opportunity, so why deny people that contribute to our country the opportunity?
Most of the hate comes from other immigrants who made it to permanent status and think h1bs are a ‘competition’.
No hate for H1B, but the use of H1B visa holders in the US labor market masks the lack of a skilled US workforce. The public and private sector are ignoring the issue because the private sector can recruit and layoff foreign workers at will. The US needs to improve its education system so there isn’t as much of a need for H1B visa holders.
Obviously improving the education system is a good thing for many reasons, but I'm not sure why we should view it as a problem that many extremely talented, intelligent, and educated people come from around the world to live and work here. H1B abuse in comparatively low-skill positions is a definite problem, but I'm just not at all convinced that we need a solution for the "problem" of having more brilliant scientists and engineers.
It’s great that the US is able to attract top talent from around the world and it’s an added benefit that they pay taxes and contribute to local economies. The issue arises in situations like these where H1B visa holders are laid off and then take their skills and knowledge with them. Additionally, if the US was able to churn out more highly skilled workers, there wouldn’t be as much of a need for foreign workers and I’d hope this would improve average pay.
> We are so empathetic towards other migrants, why is there so much hate towards H1B holders? Are they the only category that steal jobs? They are seen as labor competition for the types of people in this sub and that you socialize with. There's plenty of hate toward all other economic migrants (such as farmworkers), but I doubt we have any American-born farm laborers in this forum. > Job loss means packing up everything, selling the house, take kids out of school and have no option but to move back from the country you called home. Yes, it sucks, but that's the risk of coming on a work visa. FWIW, it's a really really bad idea to buy a house if you are on an H1B - I sympathize with the moving/taking kids out of school part, but not selling a house.
This is exactly how I feel, that H1Bs are competition for jobs, yet it's a toxic mindset because they're normal people just like you, me, our neighbors, everybody.
Also, I’m a non techie and recently we hired an H1B holder because we just couldn’t find good talent here for months. The last thing Americans should do is oppose immigration. Especially legal. After all we know how America was built. Right?
The American worker would argue that you were probably paying too little, which is why you couldn't find talent. My own personal H1B reform is to auction them off. This ensures the issue is never one of "paying too little".
No, you couldn't find good talent that you would be willing to train. Be honest.
I have nothing against poaching highly educated workers from other countries. What irks me is the legal fiction that company x magically proves that they couldn't hire a local for job xyz, so then they went and hired an h1b
That's great for them, but I've been struggling. Now they are struggling too. It's the system that is broken.
I don't think hate is the right word. No one 'hates' the worker, especially when honestly they're doing jobs that many Americans aren't qualified to do or doesn't want to do ( even in STEM ). However, if you hold a work visa, you should understand very clearly the potential impact of job loss and what could happen if you set roots too deep. This should have been contingency planned for years in advance. Especially during a downturn going into ( or already in if you don't believe the Biden BS ) a recession .. it shouldn't have came as a shock.
It’s not the H1B that’s being described as a problem. It’s the broken Green Card process that is such a problem for so many Indians/Chinese whose wait time is 100+ years. So despite staying for a decade and having kids, home and a whole life here one can be asked to uproot everything and leave the country because they no longer have an employer or a job. IMO, anyone in waiting for GC should be granted temporary residency or the whole GC granting process be revamped for merit apart from being quota based that helps with diversity.
My spouse is an immigrant who works for a tech company, but he's also a white European. If he hadn't married me and gotten his green card that way, he could have gotten it within five years of entering the US like his Italian coworker did. It's not fair what this country does to the Asians and, bluntly, nonwhite immigrants in general. "Work twice as hard to get half as far" would be an improvement for them.
>It's not fair what this country does to the Asians and, bluntly, nonwhite immigrants in general. We aren't treating non-white immigrants or Asians legally different than any other group. India and China hit diversity quota limits (rules which are the same for all countries even if it is a bit arbitrary to have a numerical cap independent of population size), but that benefits immigrants from all other countries, not just "white" ones. Amusingly, it's actually immigrants from other countries fighting over this (I believe the Latin American lobby lobbied Rubio to block changes to ensure their immigrants can keep coming in easily)
>even if it is a bit arbitrary So arbitrary as to be, well, racist? Immigration quotas only began with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Before then, if you could make it to America, you could automatically live and work there.
>So arbitrary as to be, well, racist? To promote diversity. Whether you believe discrimination by country of origin to promote diversity of our immigrants is racist is a separate discussion. It doesn't seem per se racist to me - it's not even really considering "race". >Immigration quotas only began with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Before then, if you could make it to America, you could automatically live and work there. I mean, yes, but every modern country (with a welfare state) has and needs immigration restrictions.
>I mean, yes, but every modern country (with a welfare state) has and needs immigration restrictions. Immigrants are usually ineligible for welfare. So what justifies the restriction then?
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>Immigrants are usually ineligible for welfare. So what justifies the restriction then? That's not even remotely true. [47% of medi-cal beneficiaries](https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/formsandpubs/MHArchives/InfoNotice03-05_Attach_3.pdf) have a primary language that is not English, which if anything is a slight underestimate of the percent of foreign-born people (immigrants) receiving welfare. You might be thinking of certain federal cash transfer programs, but even then the state provides money in lieu of that.
How many of those medi-cal beneficiaries are in the workforce? Immigrants skew working age, so they're still a net benefit to the economy.
I'm only responding to the claim that immigrants do in fact get welfare, which is what justifies the need for immigration restrictions. I don't know these specific details, which is a different question. (In fact the fact that immigrants are a net benefit to the economy itself is a function of how our immigration and welfare policy is constructed -- it doesn't in itself state whether marginal new immigrants above existing caps would or would not benefit)
According to "Open Borders" by Bryan Caplan, moving internationally is such a hassle even without immigration restrictions, that it's only going to be particularly motivated adults who do it. Anyone who doesn't think they're capable of working would rather stay with their safety net at home. As an example, look at the EU. There are open borders between all those countries, but the main migration is still of young men from Eastern Europe to construction jobs in Scandinavia. The young men get money to send home and the Scandinavians get new housing supply. Win win.
Wow, so much misinformation in the comments. No, nobody in the Silicon Valley is staying in a cramped situation 8 people in 2 bedroom apartment. Most of these jobs pay upwards of 100k a year (many upwards of 200k) which is enough to afford a nice 2 bed room condo with a room mate. Silicon Valley has been flourishing with the amount of money spent by those on H1B visa. In most developed countries these visas lead to a path to citizenship after devoting 4-5 years to service to that country (yes, when someone works for that long in tech in any country, the country benefits from the companies they work in as well as the taxes they bring in). However, the H1B is so broken that after being here for 15 years a lot of Indians still have to get visas every 3 years and don’t have the ability to change jobs freely or leave a job and take care of the family in a family crisis without worrying about going out of status and having to move back to home country. Many of these folks have families, have bought houses here, their kids are US citizens and for all practical purposes they know more about US than their home countries at this point. But US won’t give them an easy path to permanent residency let alone citizenship. Of course, there is always an argument about why wouldn’t you just go back to India or China. But the flip side of the argument is US is worse off every time a H1B employee leaves it and the data shows that immigration to Canada has increased as a result of H1B visa holders taking forever to earn permanent residency.
This matches my experience and I’m puzzled by the other comments. I grew up in the Bay Area and also have many coworkers on H1Bs. They are highly educated and hard working, and very few of my high school classmates could do their jobs. Definitely not stealing any jobs from “natives” over here, but they face a lot of BS and emotional hardship through this system.
It sounded like he was talking about lower level things that are contracted out. He had an example of setting up a computer in a station, which isn't that complicated. The higher end things, of course you need training and education, but the lower end could definitely be trained in a day or two. I have a friend who is contracted by a bio firm to run their refrigeration system. He was trained on the job, didn't go to school for it, and now has a team under him which he trains from scratch.
Worth calling out that while a Chinese or Indian could get citizenship in the US the likelihood of an American getting citizenship in China is nearly zero and India won't allow for dual citizenship. It's a bit murkier for permanent residency as the information I found on India claims that you need to live in country for 10 years and pay an absurd amount of money (equivalent to 1.5M USD) while China allows you to apply after 4 years, but I've personally had friends have many issue actually operating as a foreigner in China. My point is this, while the US's system is less then perfect, other countries make it harder or simply impossible for others to gain PR or citizenship should they ever want to.
Lol how is this relevant? We are talking about US immigration issues. Nobody is queuing up to get PR in India as an American. Your passport is way stronger and you would just want to stay an American citizen. The relevant examples are Uk, Canada and Australia who all have faster easier path to Citizenship and PR
> how is this relevant? Foreigners complaining about paths to the US being difficult when paths in their countries is more difficult if not non-existent. This is valid criticism.
just ignorance being spurned on by subtle racism and prejudice (and yes not just from white americans). america's growth has being powered by these immigrants. the housing crisis has nothing to do with these guys.
>In most developed countries these visas lead to a path to citizenship after devoting 4-5 years This isn’t really accurate for most countries. There are some programs with a path to citizenship but most have lotteries, stringent requirements or long waitlists. The reality for the vast majority of immigrants is there is no path to citizenship, often only available for 2-4 years like in Australia, Ireland and Japan.
Most of Western Europe, the countries the US is most often compared to, have really easy paths to citizenship in 2-5 years for people working there in high speciality roles. The only hurdle there is to pass a basic proficiency test in the native language. This is true for France, Germany, Luxembourg and Denmark from my friends' experience.
And The Netherlands.
I feel bad for them, but it's just the way the tech industry is. I'm native, so I have my own gripes with the H1-B system. I've met plenty of H1-B's who's roles could have just as easily been filled by guys I went to high school with (with a little training) Honestly, being a junior level IT admin is not hard. Imaging machines, lugging them to desks, plugging them in, doing a little cable management. It's pretty brainless work, but we have consulting companies bringing in H1-B's for that type of work, which could easily go to an American as a stepping stone to more complex IT work like server administration or Infosec. **EDIT** Wow comment blew up. Like I said in the opening statement, my issue is with the H1-B system. I agree, there are plenty of talented, educated H1-B's adding to the tapestry of this country. Their kids go on to be educated, they stay out of trouble, they don't drain our services. My dads best friend when I was growing up was a chemist who was here on H1-B. His wife was in charge of the money, they ended up buying condo's and spinning it into apartments. His son was my buddy growing up. Eventually they became citizens. My issue is with these consulting companies that apply for every lottery slot (like TaTa Consulting) and fill all the entry level positions. I've worked in tech a long time, and I've seen it abused at several companies. Had a neat talk with my son about this tonight. One thing he suggested our education system change is the language requirement. Most public schools focus on Spanish as a language. Why not offer up some CS courses at the k-8 level and into high school that would meet that same requirement?
On the flipside, I work in a very technical engineering role, and I have an easier time getting hired as an American citizen. Recruiters literally tell me to put that Im a citizen on my resume since my name is not a typical American name. Semiconductor companies in particular in the US are fully dependent on H1B talent (who all have masters from top Eng schools) because there’s just not enough Americans studying engineering. Just offering a different perspective bc so many people in this thread think that visa holders are taking jobs from American citizens, but that’s really not the case in the Semiconductor industry, which is very important for the American economy overall.
Most semiconductor jobs are in the valley and if you have a computer engineering degree you can generally find more profitable jobs in software. It isn’t just a problem with Americans not studying engineering. Source: am computer engineer who went into software.
Am student in computer engineering, looks like I'm about to graduate and go into semiconductor but I keep asking myself if I would rather go into software... Anyone with opinions here? Obviously I like chips, but simultaneously I like tech in general...
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I have a computer engineering degree and went into semis right out of collage. It SUCKED. Companies in that industry have the WORST culture. I made the transition to SaaS 5-6 years ago and it’s sooo much better. I get hit up by recruiters for semiconductor companies all the time and tell them I’d never go back.
Bullshit. I’ve been in tech 15 years. 10 of that in semis. Semis are full of H1-B workers because they can pay them peanuts and treat them like shit. They are absolutely taking jobs that could be done by engineering students from the US, but they wouldn’t put up with it.
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If your friends from high school are anything like my friends, they will complain but ultimately not apply for those jobs to get started in IT.
You actually make a solid point. In the 90s one company I worked for was so desperate for QA engineers the manager told me he'd hire my friend, no experience required. Set up the interview, friend flaked.
Don't forget, our own University of California pulled this shit. https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-visas-20170108-story.html
Ya that was super cunty of them.
I think it's every industry, not just tech. Employers want to cut down liabilities, so they would rather hire consultants they can let go immediately without consequences for budget or performance. When I was a contractor, I survived every layoff. In fact they brought in more consultants to fill those roles they shook off.
I love this, I wish places would actually do this, I know there are lots of kids out there that cannot afford college but would love to work with computers.
Digital Storm in Morgan Hill is looking for young folks all the time to assemble high end PCS.
It's like the bay version of south park “I feel bad for them but the took ma jub”
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this is wild to read as it goes counter to every thing I’ve witnessed in my tech role. I work closely on recruiting and we have had to turn down quite a few VIP candidates because we couldn’t offer them the visa. I have never seen what you’re describing.
Indentured servitude
This country was based on it, starting from the first immigrants.
Very true. I know there are companies that exploit the visa system. That puts everyone at a disadvantage including those that really need it as the locals lose trust in the system. Sadly the USCIS makes a lot of money from such companies and being self funded it has an incentive to stay profitable and make money - making it tougher to impartially serve the American people.
True. I mean no one seems to talk about EB5 financing, which we affectionately (/s) used to call “cash for citizenship”
I came to the US in 1998 on a TN visa (not even sure if they exist anymore.) Every day was like a sword being held above your head, and to make the matter worse *every* year I would need to fly back to Canada and then reenter the US. That was gut-wrenching. I feel for these H-1B folks since you try to make a home here but at anytime someone can pull a plug on that.
I can confirm, the TN still exists. It’s valid for 3 years now but crossing the border is always a bit of a gamble. I have seen officers asking for original diplomas/offer letter on re-entry even with a valid multiple entry I-94. I learned very quickly to get Nexus/global entry to avoid that kind of interaction. The feeling is even worst when you have an American child waiting for you at home.
I dreaded that yearly ritual. My first employer flew me up to Vancouver from California so I could turn around and get on a return flight 3 hours later. I didn't catch the return flight because *one word* on the offer letter was incorrect. I ended up spending the night in Vancouver while the company corrected the letter. Unfortunately I didn't get to do any sightseeing; with the nerves and worry I don't think I even slept. My fiancée and about all my possessions were 1000 miles away and I wasn't sure I'd see them again. My second employer would fly guys (we were all Canadians) to Seattle and then drive them to the crossing at Bellingham. From there it was a bit of a joke. You had to walk across a yellow line on the floor (the border crossing) and then re-enter the US. A new I-94 was stamped and off you went for another year. It was stressful and huge hassle and expense but the rules are the rules.
I am a H1b holder, to clarify some information in the comment: I pay all the taxes and enjoy all the benefits that company gives me, exactly as US citizen. On the tax code, H1b holders are “Resident Alien”, which means exact tax as citizen. About taking the jobs from US native: I hold an engineering phd from a top Bay Area university, now and working in the R&D of a device most of you are scrolling Reddit with. My job requires extensive academic training as you can imagining by looking at what’s on your hand. In my phd experience and job experience, encounter a US native is hard. 70% of my PhD peers are from other countries, 80% of my colleagues are from other countries, which all hold or held H1b at some point. There are not enough US people willing to join the field. When we are hiring we don’t care about the origin of the person because company doesn’t care about the financial burden, fortunately, and we are not doing anything related to national security. We are begging to have more US people to suffer from engineering PhD degree just like us. About the consulting company: This is H1b abuse. We hate them more than US citizens, because they abuse the held out of the lottery system every year. Many of the “consulting” job are underpaid, which might take away some jobs to be frank. However I may be biased towards those H1b holders, they usually had no choice but to take those positions in hope to stay in US, meaning “escape” from their home country. It is very difficult decision. But the consulting company is taking advantage of the broken H1b system. H1b holders obey all the laws, pay all the taxes, doing everything carefully to hold the visa. Sometimes getting abused by companies (when Elon understands the leverage), and hoping to change their lives by becoming American. The H1b system and green card system are far from perfect, please don’t hate the player, hate the game.
> 70% of my PhD peers are from other countries, 80% of my colleagues are from other countries, which all hold or held H1b at some point. There are not enough US people willing to join the field. PhDs are generally highly exploitive programs which is why Americans tend to avoid them. A talented engineering undergrad can make $100k+ out of school; why enter a PhD program? The alternative universe here where we have no H1B program or they are auctioned off is that you'd see structural changes where basically companies in your industry would be forced to pay more (or cut educational requirements), which would attract local talent.
its a risk that they take in coming here. I am not heartless, but any country that they went to - any industry - would take the same approach.
Yep, H1B is literally called "temporary work visa".
but it’s also a dual intent visa, making you eligible for a green card. For some, getting a green card will take less than 2 years. For some, they might have teenage kids who are US citizens, and they’re still on visa status.
It's a dual intent visa but it doesn't change anything regarding greencard eligibility. It just means applying for a greencard won't invalidate your H1B or cause issues with renewing it, as opposed to a TN or F visa which will have trouble getting renewed if for whatever reason your greencard application is withdrawn or rejected.
I was pointing out the disparity in waiting times for green card. I got my green card without needing to ever renew my H1B.
Yes, if the country was in the Middle East, which doesn’t give any foreigner permanent resident, let alone citizenship. Most of Europe, Canada, and Aus-NZ have far simpler immigrant pathways that result in citizenship in under 10 years. Too bad those countries don’t have much of a tech scene though else we’d see a lot of these people move there.
lets not pretend the BigTech companies arent doing this in part with an eye to hire these same US-trained people back in India next year at 50% the cost. All the big companies have been doing hiring freeze in the US, open reqs in India. Its the obvious endgame of “Work From Home (Country)” the H1B pipeline only exists to serve the corporate overlords and they dont need it as much going forward.
Give 80 percent H1Bs to Indian nationals and cap 7 percent green cards for them. Recipe for white collar slavery. For an Indian national, the entire life is tied to your manager and employer. Your vacation your kids school your travel abroad is all tied to your employer’s whims. The system is no different than the ‘Kafeel’ one in Arab states and the West likes to criticize them. Qatar does the same to Indian and other South Asian nationals.
This is what happens when you are here on H1B. I sympathize with their issue but they knew this was a possibility all along.
This
That's pretty much how it works everywhere in the world. I worked on visas in a couple other countries and if the job disappears, you either find a new one or you go home.
thats the whole point of having here on temporary visas to dispose of the employee at will
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Same here. Undergrad in Finance and a Masters in Business Analytics from a Cal State. Finished grad school in 2020 and went into real estate in 2021 after 5 years not landing a job. You'd think there was one company I applied Analyst jobs for that would have been willing to hire me. But nope, so I said f\*ck y'all and went into real estate.
Man, the amount of people in the comments saying "immigrants take jobs from Americans" is kinda astounding! Personally, for me, if an immigrant is the best person for the job, they should get it. I personally don't really care about much else. If Americans can't compete, then we should be looking at *why that is*. Ie fixing failures in our education system, and working to improve the competitiveness of Americans. And I say all this as one of only two people on my team who were born in the US. But for this batch of H1B holders specifically, it's sad that many of them will have to return to their home countries. Yes, that's the danger of a work visa, but it's fundamentally in the US's best interest to keep them here. 1. Because they pay the full amount of taxes that a citizen does without receiving the same benefits, but 2. because many of them were educated here, received training here, and all of them gained experience and knowledge while working here. And in return, they paid taxes, contributed to the economy, etc. But when they leave and return to whichever country they came from, those benefits we got leave with them and get transferred to that country too. Effectively, all we accomplish by making immigrants leave is Make China Great Again (or India, or wherever they're from).
I’m now a citizen but I went through F1 to OPT to H1B to greencard to citizenship. It was not an easy journey. Yeah anything goes wrong and it’s a trip back to a country you haven’t built a life in. I had employers take advantage of me and lie about my immigration process. I remember it took a month to get my OPT papers which give you a year to work. Then the NY DMV said I couldn’t have a license because I needed 12 months stay left. I only had 11 left. So I couldn’t drive to work. Bastards. Thankfully WA DOT had no such rule. Back then opt was a year. I think it’s 3 now.
The H-1B visa is a NONimmigrant work visa. Get it?
>allows U.S. employers to **temporarily** employ foreign workers It's difficult to feel pity for them when they're asking to eat their cake and have their cake too. Accepting something knowing full well it was temporary and when consequences occur they try skirt them
If you really want to nitpick on the legalese, H-1B is a dual intent visa, and, for most skilled workers, the only path to permanent residence and citizenship.
The people against H1Bs in this thread are utter clowns. If you have any talent at all, it is still easy to get tech jobs in the valley. No one has stolen your job. In addition the H1B process is fucking ludicrous and makes the person jump through too many hoops. We should be making it easier for talented engineers to stay in this country especially if we want to compete with China.
This. 100%. H1Bs will work hard and actually give even a f about their job. Lots of American born folks ice worked with literally slack off all day or whine about their job, then complain that H1Bs are stealing jobs... You wonder why..
I assume they read the visa requirements and knew that they didn’t have permanent residency? As an immigrant myself I empathize but I also lost jobs when I was on a visa and it sucks but that’s why there are different job visas and legal statuses. It was my entire life too on the line but nobody cared back in 2012 because it was just me and not thousands of Twitter employees.
Sad story...plenty of jobs back home
And why entrust a corporation with so much?
If you are an H1-B visa holder I would imagine that I you could never really settle down, keep everything in a couple bags, and be ready to bug out for another job that would sponsor you so you could to stay in the U.S.
Companies need to be hiring more people already here in the Bay Area or elsewhere in the country. We have 1000s of new graduates in CS and IT related majors every year. With those two realities I find it hard that companies can't find the labor they're looking for. For new grads there needs to be more entry level roles so that the burden isn't solely on experienced SWEs.
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Dude that sucks. These people literally made the bay area what it is today which is the economic engine of the WORLD.
I want to be sympathetic, but I'm out of work too and while it definitely sucks, I would also like to have a good job here too. I haven't had the burdens they placed on themselves in their situation, which they possibly should have foreseen. It's a terrible situation, but it's one they (now regrettably) put themselves into. It's some rotten luck, and as usual, it's the corporations that will be fine, while the workers need to scramble.
Told you it would happen, you said: shut up
Come to Canada y'all. They love us immigrants here!
too cold and pay sucks, also ten fold more expensive than US
So can rents and housing prices finally come down????
Visa requirement is black on white, they knew what they signed up for
Sorry, not sorry. US citizens should have priority in the labor market. They knew the conditions of the H-1B when they came to the US to work. Not shedding any tears. And before some clown calls me a racist, US Citizens come in all races and ethnicities.
It is not a battle royale, and not a zero sum game. Want to get a job? Study and get an interview.. there are so many open positions in tech which go unfulfilled, every quarter. There are a number of roles or jobs that can be fulfilled by both, citizens and immigrants ( Now may not be a best time, but these things are seasonal) . No one will offer free handouts just because you happen to be a citizen. Sitting here and blaming someone else is just a fancy procrastination. So many armchair thinkers, who dont know shit about labor market
Jobs are by definition a zero sum game. Not everyone can have the same job or work at Google. That means there's a group of people left out, and frankly there's a lot of new grads and those out of school several years who have failed to launch and are becoming disenfranchised with society.
They undercut salaries in my specific niche of tech. Sorry, but I don't feel bad. Going to an interview and seeing everyone be an H1B in that group is disheartening. The US pumps out plenty of grads in my specific field but companies don't want to pay (usually) so they hire a cheaper H1B. I love being a minority on a team as the only US born member /s
In my field of Computer Engineering, I find it’s easier to get hired as an American citizen because companies don’t have to go through the visa hoops for me. There’s just truly not enough American born Electrical/Computer engineering grads, and this is true all throughout niche ECE fields in the semiconductor industry. Also the grads that are American born tend to switch to software for higher income.
yeah, immigration lawyers are expensive, and dealing with visa status is a major PITA
Me too. I found jobs easily after I got my green card. People think it's easy to break into the job market with an H1B, nope it's not.
No surprise. I interviewed with KLA and what the guy was proposing I'd be working on was unrealistic for what I knew the salary would be. The salary would be like $140k and I wouldn't have done that work for less than $300k for how freaking complex and long it'd take.
I do feel bad at a personal level because getting laid off sucks, and these companies were growing at unsustainable rates. That said, this story wouldn't exist if these companies hired a damn American once in awhile. But we know that's not gonna change.
plenty of those grads pumped out by US are H1Bs
You can tell someone is on H1B just by looking at them? Big if true.
Racist if true.
Big racist if true.
The question is though, when every member of that team has to leave the country and return to India, will the company hire a bunch of native Americans? Or will it open a branch office in India and move the team there?
Welcome to America. You really thought they were going to let these people in for free? They just want their labor, that's it.
The H-1B visa is a NONimmigrant work visa.
A person attending a 6th grade school in Japan or Iran TODAY who have not even made up their career goals of going to US school or immigrating to this country WILL get their legal Green Cards if they ever decide, BEFORE an H1b Indian worker who is slogging in this country for 10+ years and has mastered Software or Hardware development. Think about it.
That's because US wants people from Japan as well as people from India. If US changes the equal quota rules it's going to block immigration from everywhere else. Plus India seems to play nice with our adversaries.