I think one of the main problems with the H1B visa program is that foreign workers are kept too long in a state of precarious residency.<p>I work for a tech behemoth that imports an enormous workforce from overseas. My overall impression of my foreign colleagues is that they are very competent, hardworking people and the United States is better off for having them here. However, I'm uncomfortable with the kind of leverage my employer has over them. If my boss asked me to work 60 hour weeks or work through the weekends or something, I'm able to say "no" because if they fire me, it's not really that big of a deal. I'll just go work for someone else. I'm not going to get kicked out of the country. For the H1B holders, it's a different story.<p>Even if the employer never deliberately exploits that situation (and I have no reason to believe that my employer does), there's still that implicit threat in the background.<p>So, I think we shouldn't leave H1B visas in limbo for extended periods of time. If they've been here for a year or more, they should be able to quit their jobs if they want to without repercussions.
It's unfortunate that the title doesn't match the article content here. The article correctly identifies that nearly half of H1B don't go to Silicon Valley, they go to the outsourcing firms that hire foreign workers (usually Indian) and hold them as indentured servants (for a decade or more before they can get a green card) and hire them out to US companies as "consultants". It's a total scam, and it needs to be shut down.
As an american (born and raised) I dislike what has come of the HB1 program for many of the reasons that the author points out.<p>I have quite a few friends on HB1 who have a hard path to citizenship, we need to make it easier for these talented people to get out from under the HB1 thumb and stay here as well. Attracting and keeping talent needs to be a bigger priority than it is.
You cannot, as a culture, simultaneously underplay the importance of science and math education (nerds!!!) and complain when immigrants come in to occupy the high tech jobs. There is a big outrage about lack of high-paying jobs, yet there is rampant anti-intellectualism and discouragement of critical and analytical thinking which is needed for those jobs.
It needs to be much easier to switch employers on H1B so that workers are not abused.<p>There are also needs to be a bidding process. It's absurd that a small company that is desperate to hire someone for $400k needs to participate in the same lottery as a megacorp paying $60k that doesn't really care whether or not they can hire a particular candidate.<p>It is, supposedly, a program for highly skilled workers and not a low wage worker program.
<a href="http://www.emergedigital.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.emergedigital.com/</a> is a parked-website landing page.<p>I <i>think</i> the company was actually an ad agency rather than a "technology" company. But I can't even tell. Regardless, I don't see any reason to think he has actual success, or that his success would make him a credible authority on how Silicon Valley companies function.
What does "Cutting-edge digital advertising professionals" mean?<p>The article is very skim about the specifics of what the folks did.<p>The article mentions that some tech firms tried to recruit employees at this company, but that's no indicator of if this is the class of employee that companies recruit on H1Bs.<p>There is a wide variance in talent of people on H1Bs too, though this article has a very simplistic view which goes: "we didn't have access to H1Bs, so people were forced to learn and get better" without any understanding of what H1Bs do.<p>Your "cutting-edge digital advertising professional" is not an engineer.<p>Fully agree that the path forward to solving a tech talent shortage in the US is for the US to be internally competitive, but just learning on the job doesn't have the same rigor as pursuing 4 year and/or advanced STEM degrees.<p>Also, this company on LinkedIn has no information. Just 4 employees showing up, i.e. very hard to see if they have people doing engineer caliber work.<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=2467546&trk=rr_connectedness" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=2467546&trk=rr_conne...</a><p>Till as such point there is some evidence about the quality of work being done here being comparable to what a software engineer does as, I'm going to call BS on this article.
It is more difficult to see the positive effects of expert workforce in large economies such as the US, but it is easier to observe how smaller but rich economies rely on foreign experts to compete: Switzerland and Singapour being two of such example. Those countries create strong incentive for expert immigration, in various fields, financials, engineering, academia, healthcare. A large portion of the workforce was not train in the country, and innovation both in academia and the private sector is often lead by multi-national teams. It is a classic pulsion of conservatism to try and severe the ties prone to increase the flux of information and people, but in the long run it will hurt the economy. Because if you are not doing it, others will do it and reap the benefits of freely trained experts and innovators. One key example is the migration of scientists during WW1 and WW2, which benefitted the US immensely and insured its supremacy over the second part of the 20th century.
This seems like it plays into a false dichotomy between increasing tech education/training programs and increasing permissive immigration.<p>At the top of the industry- people who are advancing the state of the art- there is significantly more to be done than there are qualified people to be hired. It's not a zero sum game.<p>I do think we should ensure that immigrants have the mobility to easily change jobs, so they don't get locked in with below market pay. Having people chained to their employers lowers wages for everyone. Increasing paths to citizenship is an easy way of ensuring we aren't undercutting market rates for skilled labor by having people afraid to try to change jobs (or start a business) but in the current climate... we'll see.
I don't understand H1B visa program. Shouldn't we be <i>forcing</i> the H1B grantees to become citizens? Instead, we're training them on how to be a modern tech worker, and then shipping them back to where they came once the job is over (assuming that they can't line up another company to foot the legal bills of taking over their visa).<p>Why? We have 700,000 new citizens every year. Let's make H1B part of the path-to-citizenship... either they're a citizen within 2 years, or they're done. It'll add 10% increase to citizens every year, but these will be high-salary, well-trained, employed citizens.
The author gets most of the things wrong in this article. Even though H1B is not an immigration intent visa, most H1Bs come with an intention to stay here. If you give them a chance to stay in the United States, they'll happily stay here. Right now the time to get a greencard is anywhere between 7-15 years for citizens of India and China. H1Bs include students who got their graduate degrees at a lot of good universities and want to work, start a family here, just not people who move exclusively for jobs. Even with a lot of wait, people are rady to wait so long to get their greencards. H1B is not indenture. With little hassle, you can easily move employers if you are smart. Make the regulations strict on consulting companies who abuse the process. They play a volume game where they apply so many visas to improve their probability. A lot of small companies looking to hire engineers and ready to pay market wages miss out since their chance of getting a H1B is less.
<a href="http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html" rel="nofollow">http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...</a> is the best short bit of writing on the subject.
Economy follows the path of least resistance and cheaper labor through H-1B is that path now.<p>But taking away visas does not mean everyone will happily employ local computer science graduates. This is what is more likely to happen:<p>- Coding camps have lower requirements (notably cost), graduate people faster, and are proliferating quickly. Those will drive wages down.<p>- Investment will start going to other countries.<p>If one company doesn't do it, another one does and prevails in the market.<p>As an engineer, the only way to stay competitive is to demonstrate added technical value or actual technical leadership.
If companies are really in it because there is a shortage they should pay H1Bs the same wage. If not, limit H1Bs. I'm pretty sure Thiel will prevent this from happening
The H1B program needs to be ended immediately. It's an outrageous giveaway to corporations. It represents deliberate attempt to reduce the relative price of labor in the American economy.
> Those are the federal waivers handed out to highly trained workers in fields such as technology who don’t plan to immigrate here.<p>Actually large numbers of people on the H-1B do immigrate. It's a dual intent visa, you can start the green card process while on it.
People living in big cities in China and India can't breathe. Let's deny them the opportunity to contribute to the US economy.<p>Next up - "don't let anyone import anything from other countries because I didn't raise any venture capital".