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Thing is, nobody wants that effect. We want the PhDs. What we do not want it companies that bring in cheap barely-qualified labour for cost-cutting. This hurts the people brought in (they are stuck in bad jobs with bad pay and no way out). This hurts the local workers who cost too much compared to this effectively-slave-labour.

The hard part changing the rules such that PhDs and other productive uses of H1B do not suffer, but the companies exploiting the rules for slave labour do.

I assure you nobody wants to make you feel unwelcome. In fact we are happy to have you here.

7 comments

"This hurts the people brought in (they are stuck in bad jobs with bad pay and no way out)."

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i agree with everything you said except for this part. many of the indian workers are still better off economically than they might otherwise be, even if they are not as well off as their american counterparts.

in any case, we should let every person seeking higher education in the US work indefinitely in this country, not just PhDs. in fact, anyone who wants to work hard should be allowed in. all such workers will accrue a net economic benefit, as the new workers will generate more value than they consume.

the problem with this (playing my own devil's advocate) is that it neglects to account for the status disruption it generates for the incumbent workers. the current H1B visa program happens to account for this by it effectively being indentured servitude, which limits the status of these foreign workers. i don't like this fact, but i believe it's why the H1B visa program is actually palatable in the US.

> many of the indian workers are still better off economically than they might otherwise be

Isn't this obvious? You can be stuck in a job with bad pay and still be better off than if you were in your home country. This is the fundamental condition that was ripe for exploitation.

The solution is to remove any and all incentive and mechanisms for companies to entrap employees and push wages down. I want people who come here to work to enjoy the same salaries we enjoy, and I want them to be able to quickly/easily change jobs when their current employer isn't paying them enough.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of these schemes to exploit bad policy to hire cheap foreign workers. I don't want to live in a country where people associate Mexicans with cheap farm labor and contracting work and Indians with cheap IT workers. This sort of shit seeds to the worst types of prejudices, seeds racist resentment and can leads to drastic/fascist solutions.

Call me an egalitarian sap, but I think we'd all be better off if we didn't have policies that allow companies to profit off of people's prejudices.

> many of the indian workers are still better off economically than they might otherwise be, even if they are not as well off as their american counterparts.

Isn't that exactly the main criticism of current H1B system: driving down salaries and standard of living away from U.S. standards down towards India's?

However better off they are economically they would be even better if companies couldn't exploit their status to pay less. And American counterparts would be better off if they didn't have to compete with lower paid competition. Everyone would be better. Well, except the companies.

> Isn't that exactly the main criticism of current H1B system: driving down salaries and standard of living away from U.S. standards down towards India's?

The issue, of course, is that you can have only one of these 2 things :

1) a global market, easy international travel/living

2) Americans making significantly more than the global average (which I might add is $200/month in actual dollars, $1480 in PPP dollars) (this essentially means you can buy $1480 worth of (cheap) food with it, but only $200 worth of iPads)

Which is going to win here ? There can only be one answer, sadly.

I completely agree that H1B visas drive drives down salaries for US workers. But I cannot see how Indian workers are worse off.

Indian workers are worse off, because they pay the same amount of taxes as an American worker with no salary hikes or promotions. Stuck with the same job for years. No freedom of job portability. Spouses cannot work, always at the edge of relocating based on where the bodyshops deploy them.

The H1B visa is for 6 years temporary stay, but the H1B worker pays for SSN which he have no use of.

well, they are "worse off" compared to their non-H1B counterparts here but are way better off being here as opposed to staying in India, which is why they are here in the first place.

Money isn't everything. Being put through the bodyshops, the stress of making ends meet on those low wages, and not really being able to do things outside work takes it's toll.

> in any case, we should let every person seeking higher education in the US work indefinitely in this country

This is the discussion that's always missing whenever H1B is discussed anywhere. It always gets hijacked by Indian IT companies abusing the system. Does the administration have a plan on how to deal with students who get their degrees from US universities, who also seek H1Bs to work? If they don't make this distinction and club every applicant together, I can assure you US universities will become extremely unattractive to foreign students. Guess who benefits then? Not the US.

But then Infosys sets up Infosys University and calls all their applicants students

and pay them "Scholarships" if they pass their previous term assignment successfully maintaining the codebase of whoever they're interning for.

There is a F1 and J1 visas for studying (which allows on the job training and some work, at least one year following end of formal study etc). These could easily be extended to answer this - and I believe it should be independent of the H1B itself.

I should've put out a disclaimer in my previous comment, I was an F1 student now working in SV as an H1B. So I've to state my bias. Why do you think it should be independent? F1 students pay a lot of money to study here and I think there should be a fairly easy path to work for a considerable amount of time here. I believe it's mutually beneficial. But I'd love to know alternative views.

I believe his implication was that the F-1 should allow for a post-study work-residence period without the individual having to acquire an H1B or other residency visa. This would constitute an overall relaxation of immigration restrictions, particularly in your case.

If that was the implication, then I agree with it. But this exact discussion is what's missing in the whole H1B debate.

Indeed, I was thinking of extending the 1-year post study work allowance of the f-1 to three, or something along those lines.

One alternative view is that it's good for America to educate the world, give them a positive experience/perspective on the US, then go back to their homelands to improve and run it having said positive American outlook.

Another is that just because you studied here doesn't mean you're actually unique talent -- there are Americans who also need work at the low-to-mid levels whose industries have been displaced and are now jobless.

Obviously there alternative paths to citizenship, and being educated accelerates your prospects. It's not like the H1B or J1 are the only way -- I've known many get the O visa because they actually are unique talent.

Minor detail, but I should note that I haven't talked about path to citizenship at all. I have no opinions on that. Probably because I'm not interested in a citizenship.

> Guess who benefits then? Not the US.

If demand at US universities goes down, they might just have to reduce prices.

Yeah that would certainly suck for the millions of recent college grads working gig jobs, indebted with tens of thousands of dollars.

Actually the opposite at many public universities. "Out of state" and international students subsidize in state students because they pay far greater tuition.

I have trouble believing students are paying less tuition because there is a greater demand from international students. If anything, the tuition would be higher. That international students are more profitable doesn't change the value of the degree or what everyone else is willing to pay for it.

At least in the topic of H-1B CS / programmers, a good chunk of them are not paying tuition, but rather working as GTAs and GRAs for stipends and tuition waivers. By and large, tuition does not fund CS departments, research does.

More than students it would suck for universities, less funding, less infrastructure growth, it would cause a domino effect. If not US then somewhere else, students will figure it out, they are young but it will have a long lasting effect on US. If talented students don't have options out side their home country they will improve the conditions of their home country and cause less brain drain. Especially China and India considering their population.

I think students want to study in US (or are willing to pay to study in US) is because after completing education there, they are eligible to find work there. I dont think students want to spend great sums of money studying overseas, because they dont have options in their own country.

The context was PhD students.

None of those, at good universities at least, pay for tuition (be it from research grants or TAships). So I would expect the effect on prices to be minimal.

There is a huge pool of international students who join these Universities to take a Masters course, and pay heavy tuition fees. And I have no reason to think they are technically any less than their American counterparts.

I believe US students would benefit, because I think state-sponsored universities are preferring foreign students over in-state students because foreign students pay more tuition than in-state students.

> in any case, we should let every person seeking higher education in the US work indefinitely in this country, not just PhDs. in fact, anyone who wants to work hard should be allowed in. all such workers will accrue a net economic benefit, as the new workers will generate more value than they consume.

A country is more than just an economy of value-producing workers.

yes, absolutely. the kinds of folks that uproot themselves to move to a new country and culture to make a better life also tend to be interesting and add cultural richness as well. =)

I'm an immigrant from Bangladesh. My parents moved here when I was about 5 years old (my dad on an H1-B). I think folks like me, my parents, and other immigrants I know contribute a lot to America. At the same time, America has given us far more than we have given it. It has Americanized us, acculturated us into views and values that are better than what we would have been acculturated into had we stayed in Bangladesh.

Working hard and being smart isn't what makes America great. Bangladeshis are smart and they work incredibly hard, but Bangladesh isn't great. It is the virtue of ordinary American people that makes our society function so well. It's the supermarket employee who goes to work the day after her preferred candidate loses an election instead of participating in a violent strike, or the telephone company worker who doesn't demand a bribe to install your phone line. You threaten to lose that if you allow "anyone who wants to work hard" to move here with no other considerations.

It sounds like you're advocating vetting of immigrants. Was your father vetted before he came?

I too followed a similar path with parents migrating from South Asia.

What seems clear to me is that behaviour is a function of environment.

The same Bangladeshi that needs a bribe to put in the phone line isn't going to be demanding one when he sets it up for you in New Jersey.

(I don't think you even disagree with that)

I don't think that's the ax rayiner is grinding here.

> in fact, anyone who wants to work hard should be allowed in.

Do you think other countries should do the same? Do you think it would work out well for all of them?

They're not really stuck by Visa rules though, once they have an H1 they can transfer it without worrying about the cap any time they like to any company in a position to sponsor an H1B. It's definitely not ideal. If there are terms binding them to their employers that should really be addressed. What sucks is they can't go off and found on their own.

> playing my own devil's advocate

That shows a great sense of self awareness, and objective reasoning. I wish more people did that. :)

When looking forward to what could be a good change, it's easy to miss out the importance of the intent of this reform. H-1B system is inefficient, but the intent of the current administration is not to make it efficient but to score the cheap points on nativist sentiment. H-1B reform will not make SV go republican, but anti-immigrant and non-skilled voter base of the president will be pretty happy (especially when there is nothing else to be happy about).

That and given the log of the current administration's initiatives, we can be rest assured that this reform will be as reckless and uninterested in details as possible and will do more harm than good to the US. Or there will be no reform at all.

All these effects are the product of workers being stuck in their jobs through the H1B program. Give H1B workers the same rights as American workers and they will compete on the same terms, getting a competitive salary and not bringing wages down.

If someone's got an H1B, it's because there's demand for the job, unsatisfied by US workers, wether at the original company requesting the visa or in the industry in general. Companies will pay them correctly when foreign workers are free to leave for the competition. And when they do, they're not unfair competition for locals anymore. With equal pay, companies will prioritize US workers over visa hassle.

Also, ban H1B outsourcing.

> All these effects are the product of workers being stuck in their jobs through the H1B program. Give H1B workers the same rights as American workers and they will compete on the same terms, getting a competitive salary and not bringing wages down.

I strongly agree on the general sentiment. But I think you'd continue to need some restrictions, otherwise it'll end up as a means to pay companies to get a US visa. Get visa, switch to a different company with way lower salary, etc. Similarly you could have arrangements where companies move people to cheaper subsidiaries after getting the initial visa.

I presume you'd have to have continuing salary requirements, possibly requiring that the next job's salary is higher than previous ones. That'd have the issue that you could trap somebody by giving a way above market salary, but that seems a fairly remote problem.

> Also, ban H1B outsourcing.

Not sure about that in general. There's plenty of work where it just doesn't make sense to have a full-time employee in a company, but you want somebody available on a regular basis. But it's also quite commonly misused.

> Also, ban H1B outsourcing.

No need to ban it. Just adjust the salary to REAL IT salaries.

From the article:

> The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500

Essentially, these Indian firms are wage dumping by paying lower than US market.

If they had to pay 90K+ USD for these H1Bs, the number of applications would drastically reduce.

> What we do not want it companies that bring in cheap barely-qualified labour for cost-cutting.

The alternative at many tech companies (including mine) is to outsource to the cheap overseas labour while they continue to work remotely from their home countries. Still competing against US workers, but no US income tax paid. H1-B's seem like the lesser of two evils for the country. Not having a US visa does not stop said person from working for a US company, in this day and age.

I hear this argument all the time.

If the companies could offshore everything, they would have already done it. If they can't, they can afford to hire Americans for the few onsite employees they've got left.

Otherwise, they should move their whole operation - the executive board and their families, included - to S. India.

No one gets to have their cake and eat it too.

H1Bs are still way more expensive vs offshoring. There's a host of reasons it hasn't been done yet but if it was clearly going to happen it would have long ago. Engineering would have gone the way of manufacturing in this country but instead the opposite is true. I personally think it's because engineering is complex (even CRUD apps) and requires a lot of communication, back and forth etc. There's a lot of nuance that's not easily defined into step by step factory instructions. It's a field where you need to be taught to think first and countries with very weak educational systems cannot compete easily.

India outsourcing doesn't work well from the USA.

Too much time difference (9-12 hours). You never work at the same time, you can't communicate, you can't have any meeting.

>I assure you nobody wants to make you feel unwelcome. In fact we are happy to have you here.

Steve Bannon has explicitly said otherwise, and it's safe to assume he and the President share many of the same opinions, so I would not be too sure about this.

I don't understand why that's hard. One could literally just make a rule giving first priority to PhDs from research 1 universities and setting up a reasonable quota for other smart ppl who may not have a PhD. End of story.

"we"