USCIS is challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications

Conservatives may generally view this as &quot;good&quot; regardless of the impact because (according to arguments I&#x27;ve heard) &quot;the less globalization, the better.&quot;<p>In my mind, however, it boils down to two pretty simple points:<p>Given that (1) the US is lagging far behind every developed nation in education, and higher education in the US is prohibitively expensive compared to other developed nations, (2) the only way for the US to remain on the R&amp;D playing field is to attract already educated&#x2F;trained people from other nations with the lure of misc benefits of living in the US (culture, safety, stability, philly cheese steaks). Take away our ability to import talent and there goes the last leg of American dominance in technology.<p>No more American students that can compete with Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, or German ones, leading to less innovation in a generation. No more immigrant students making their money and starting their businesses here (or working for American R&amp;D departments) because they can&#x27;t get a visa - and possibly even worse, well-trained highly educated Americans leaving because of the obvious end-game (reduced GDP causing all sorts of ripple effects in local economies, safety, etc).<p>I just don&#x27;t understand why we wouldn&#x27;t want to make it as easy as possible to steal talent that another country invested in. We take a 23yo Chinese engineering graduate as he&#x27;s going to begin peak productivity - the USA didn&#x27;t have to invest in his k-12, scholarship his university, clean the water he drank for 24 years, etc. Instantaneous social profit. He joins Chevron and is turning a profit for them within the year, pumping out research and getting taxed on his 100k&#x2F;year salary, spending his money in-country and oh well, maybe he sends a bit (already taxed) home.<p>Am I being reductive? Seems to be a very poor investment to make it harder for the highly educated to come into this country, without at the very least making a massive push for higher education across the board for our own citizens (which we are not seeing).<p>EDIT: To clarify my points: There are 2 ways for a country to be technologically advanced - train their own citizens, or steal other trained citizens. Have neither of those and obviously, you will fall behind.

The particular anecdote in this article almost seems anti-convincing to me... It suggests a job that <i>should</i> get challenged:<p>&gt; For Centro, a company in Chicago that makes technology for ad agencies [...] applied for visas for three young employees who already had the legal right to work for a limited time after graduating from college.<p>&gt; To Clark&#x27;s eyes, the position — which consisted of writing algorithms and required knowledge of multiple programming languages as well as a solid understanding of relational data storage systems — wasn’t a borderline case.<p>I dunno, that sounds a hell of a lot like a fluffed-up description of an entry-level junior web-dev.<p>A server-side language + JavaScript + SQL queries. Not exactly the skill set that requires you to go head-hunting overseas.

Two points:<p>1) Given that the numbers did indeed end up proving that wage arbitrageurs like Accenture were dominating the H1B lottery [<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;interactive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;11&#x2F;06&#x2F;us&#x2F;outsourcing-companies-dominate-h1b-visas.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;interactive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;11&#x2F;06&#x2F;us&#x2F;outsourcin...</a>], reform would seem to be necessary.<p>2) Trump has repeatedly called for a Canadian or Australian style skills-based immigration system to replace chain and quota-based immigration. One would think HN would generally support this?

&gt; Aegis applied for a half-dozen visas this spring, and only one of them made it through the lottery. The year before, Aegis secured a visa for someone filing a type of job he’s filled with H-1B workers in the past. So Narayanan set up a client project for the prospective new employee, a woman who was living in Dehli, India, at the time.<p>Sounds like they are exactly the type of consulting firm the administration is attempting to crack down on.<p>&gt; USCIS challenged the application in August, which irked Narayanan because he had provided everything the agency had asked for. Narayanan was doubly annoyed because, without someone else to handle the new contract, it fell to him directly. For the last month, Narayanan has been spending four or five hours each morning doing the work himself, forgoing his own primary responsibility, which is to bring in new clients. “We might not make the profit we were expecting because of these issues,” he said. “We are afraid of on-boarding new H-1B employees, because of the unknown world.”<p>My heart weeps for him. If he could do the work himself, is it really so specialized he required H1B for it? Or was it more he just didn&#x27;t want to pay the local rates?<p>That said, having hired through the H1B program I sure hope it remains viable. Reforms based on salary instead of lottery seem like a good compromise, reducing outsourcing and low salaries endemic with H1B mills. I&#x27;d much prefer a floating high salary floor (say top 25%) and uncapping H1B entirely.

&gt; <i>Centro had applied for visas for three young employees</i><p>&gt; <i>He’d received a letter from USCIS saying it would reject his application unless Centro proved the position required someone with specialized skills</i><p>&gt; <i>The position — which consisted of writing algorithms and required knowledge of multiple programming languages as well as a solid understanding of relational data storage systems — wasn’t a borderline case.</i><p>I&#x27;m going to disagree here. It sounds to me like a textbook example of a company hiring a young, inexperienced worker because they&#x27;re cheaper than experienced ones.<p>To those getting old in the valley, it seems this type of action is <i>good news</i>.

So now they’re just doing what was supposed to have been happening the entire time? I’m having difficulty sympathizing with these companies and lawyers when all they have to do is apparently file more paperwork.

I deeply understand the need for H-1B&#x27;s for bringing in highly talented individuals. However, I can&#x27;t stand how the argument seems to completely ignore the Americans who are displaced because of abuse of the H-1B system.<p>It seems a bit deceitful to paint this story solely through the lens of &quot;immigrants&quot; while lots of Americans are being directly replaced by H-1B workers.<p>I do not expect to go to another country and displace local workers. I do not expect to be granted a work visa in a place that I do not belong. If I go to another country to work, I expect to be providing a skill or talent that is not present in the local economy. Further more, I expect that I&#x27;d be teaching that skill to others. Or at the very least, be in the position to lead the growth and development of a team until a local worker can do my role.<p>Why should we expect any different from the H-1B&#x27;s that the US grants?

<p><pre><code> Even though Silicon Valley sees the H-1B program as one of its top political priorities, this campaign of reform by red tape has avoided the frantic political fights surrounding other aspects of immigration, like the proposed travel ban or the cancellation of DACA, a program for those who came to the country as undocumented children. </code></pre> This is conflating two different things - DACA and travel ban are issues related to immigration; H-1B is about temporary guest workers. The (skilled) immigration issue which concerns most of SV is green card backlogs. That has not gotten any attention from SV leadership.

This is not only happening to H1-B Visas. I am on L1 Visa and got an RFE as well. Lawyers said that they have seen a large increase in such requests.<p>I am in charge of production systems which, if they go down for any significant amount of time, can represent hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. This is a very niche system(networking-related), not your usual run of the mill web app. My salary is in the 6 digit range (and I have got multiple raises since then). I have got awards from my company for work I have and am doing.<p>Still got an RFE. Now, I&#x27;ll have to dig into payslips from my home country, get letters from former managers overseas, justify one more time all the skills (which I already did multiple times), provide org charts(from the current and previous position), and so on. I believe I have a pretty strong case, but it&#x27;s a very stressful process. All this to be allowed to continue doing the stuff that was previously approved. And, unless I apply for a green card, I can stay for 5 years max. So why make it even harder? There&#x27;s already an expiration date.<p>And I can&#x27;t drive while this is going on (DMV wants the approved extension). Fun times.<p>The US is a great country; I feel that some &quot;natives&quot; have no idea how great it is, despite all its quirks. And, for engineers, the allure of Silicon Valley is too great – everything of notice is happening here. I have chosen to come here, and I knew that I need to jump through some hoops and prove my worth, to both the country and the company. But at some point, you start questioning if it is worth it.<p>Can an American do my job? Absolutely – if you can find one with the right skillset that&#x27;s willing to join. This position was open for MONTHS before the company even considered hiring from outside the country. They tried increasing the offers too, no takers, at least not qualified ones. The problem is that at some point all the companies can do is to poach from one another.<p>Can you improve things with education? Yes. Do you want to avoid immigration altogether? Why would you, when you can hire the best brains from anywhere in the planet?<p>The problem is that there are companies heavily abusing the system. But they are a handful, and they should get the hammer. That&#x27;s from a rational perspective though, not a politically motivated one.

As an aspiring immigrant, I feel this is great. Instead of a situation where immigration to US sort of works, sort of doesnt, is a hassle, but not really a bad one, a lot of companies were still keeping major offices in US.<p>Now that Americans have made up their mind that they dont want immigrants, companies will spend more money on opening engineering centers in immigration friendly countries (Canada\west Europe\Australia(maybe),etc) which from a personal perspective are great countries for me to immigrate to. And this time I might would be able to catch the first wave of immigrants (who get to convert to citizens) if there is a genuine boom in jobs in such countries (unlike US where its near impossible for an EB2 immigrant to get citizenship if moving today)

I may be an exception and my experience may be anecdotal, but as someone on an H1-B I think I&#x27;m seeing this as a good change. My immigrant peers working at consultancies are seeing more RFEs, and those I know to be working as direct employees are not (as often compared to consultant employees). But there&#x27;s been a net increase in site visits and verifications along with RFEs to even legit applicants.<p>For those who dont know the process here&#x27;s how and when one can get an RFE:<p>1) Missed a key point in the application or Immigration attorney goofed up (this happens way often)<p>2) Position doesn&#x27;t look like it needs a high skilled engineer with skills mentioned in application<p>3) Grossly underpaying the H1b employee<p>Getting an RFE by itself is not the nightmare scenario. Its a problem if the employer is doing things using shady loopholes.<p>What needs to be seen is by what %age RFEs have increased at companies like Apple, Facebook, Intel, Google etc. The bigger companies use boutique immigration law firms and its rare but not impossible for them to mess up on the immigration application process.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what has Trump&#x27;s administration done to reform the H1b system, its still as crappy as it has been. If anything certain employers were abusing the loopholes. Now its going to get tougher to abuse the loopholes.

Instead of a lottery, we should have an H1-B auction. There are a limited number of H1-B slots, and the companies that offer the highest salaries get them.<p>In addition, whistle-blower protection with automatic Green cards for anyone who reports employer abuse, with prison sentences for the entire company C-suite if a company abuses this process.

It&#x27;s great that these RFE&#x27;s are happening, and Trump should have closed things up even earlier. There are plenty of people with skills out there who may not know every feature of Vue.js 2.5.3, or who are 30 years old and thus &quot;not a culture fit&quot;. Companies will start having to look for these people instead. Enough is enough. There&#x27;s not even an argument, it&#x27;s whether the programmer gets to make a salary in an industry where you&#x27;re chucked overboard at 40, or whether billionaire heirs get that money added to their pile of riches. It&#x27;s no contest. As far as Indians, they can work in India, or Europe, or apply for a green card.

I just wish now that the US government would kill the H1-B and all other immigrant visa and send us all home. I have spent 13 years here, I earn well over 200K, have a kid. But every 3 years, I have to renew my visa and pray and tell that there is no bullshit like RFE when visa is sent for renewal. And then the DMV drama begins as your DL expires, but your application is still not approved. When I came here, I had hope that the US government would make improvements to the immigrant system in good faith, considering all I heard from abroad was that this country is a &quot;nation of immigrants&quot;. But it seems like the fancy thing to do these days is to blame every ill on immigrants.

Couldn&#x27;t this be positive if it stops all the body shop h1b companies that just want cheap, basic programmers? This will then allow for visas for true skills where there are gaps.<p>I&#x27;ve worked with hundreds of h1b visa, 90% of them were just java programmers with a low bill rate. But there were also a few with really rare skills. I&#x27;d like to see more of the latter and less of the former. Especially since the number of h1b visa is capped.

&quot;It would reject his application unless Centro proved the position required someone with specialized skills. Clark was surprised. She’d been helping people apply for visas for four years, and this was the first time she’d ever seen such a letter.&quot;<p>Four years, and this is the first time she&#x27;s seen the government even try to see if the law should be enforced. Really says it all.

If only borders were as porous for workers as they are for capital.

Young french software engineer here. I was an intern with a J1 for a year in a company in san diego. I&#x27;m working remotely since last february.<p>My H1B got picked in the lotery but I received an RFE early august. I had to write a ton of technical doc about my job and the system I work on. The documents were submitted mid-october. I received my approval last week.<p>I guess if your application is legit you don&#x27;t have much to fear about getting an RFE.

Cracking down on Indian outsourcers is one thing, but if this is true<p>&gt; The skeptical eye the government is taking to applications has extended to all types of employers, according to immigration lawyers. Many are rethinking their own use of H-1B as a result.<p>This is absolutely disastrous. I personally know families on H1B from well-known American companies are afraid to leave the country because of this.

You know what, as an H1B receiver, I am fine with more scrutiny towards H1B. Over the past few years, I have seen competent international coworkers not able to get H1B visa because:<p>1. it&#x27;s a lottery system, regardless of background and academic accomplishment.<p>2. it&#x27;s been abused by outsourcing companies. Practices such as multiple-filing for one person are so shady that it baffles me how loose the inspection towards H1B application is.<p>I totally agree that American citizens should be prioritized when it comes to hiring and my country would do the same for its citizens. I also know that immigration service is a booming business for many American law firms and they have their own agenda to go against any further regulations towards H1B. However, in a long run, if done properly, a more merit-based&#x2F;restricted H1B visa could actually be beneficial to outstanding individuals who follow the rules.<p>As someone that love American culture but also have pride in his academic&#x2F;career accomplishment, I stay in the US because I like this place, not that I have to, and I am more than happy to go back to my homeland or somewhere welcoming if I am not welcomed here anymore. H1B has never been the last straw of my life and it&#x27;s true for many folks I know. I am all for making H1B more accessible for accomplished individuals and more restrictive towards those who cheat the game, but do it properly so that America doesn&#x27;t give an image of Xenophobia to the world.

ex H1B here. I left US because of this broken system. There are many bad apples than good ones utilizing the H1B system. Indian bodyshops, one room consultancies all over New Jersey. Even companies like Sprint,Walmart,TR,Garmin,BOFA,Chase,Visa,AMEX, they all game the system and exploit H1B employees because of their situation. There are a lot of fake payroll running firms too which keeps the fake H1B employee&#x27;s status valid. There are firms which apply for &quot;future greencards&quot; while the beneficiary is not even physically present in the US.<p>Even many non CS graduates faking their resumes as CS ones and applying for &quot;specialized&quot; positions in IT. I had enough of this and left US and immigrated to Canada for good because I am pretty sure that my future will be affected by these bad apples gaming the system. I do not like Trump personally, but he is right about the H1B immigration system.<p>If H1B system is a lottery, then why is it called a &quot;skilled visa&quot; ? H1B should be merit based so as to weed out the bad apples and body shops gaming the system.<p>Probably I should write a book on &quot;How to game the H1B system and get away with it&quot;. The book will be an eye opener for this broken skilled visa system and its loopholes.

This program was abused badly by US and Indian companies and put a number of engineers in subservient position. I will not shed a tear for those companies.<p>For people, we should have one clear policy and apply it, if they can&#x27;t come, so be it, but tell them clearly what they can get and what they cannot. And allow some transparency of the income and rates so that it can&#x27;t be abused as much.

Serious question here: Why not get rid of the closed number and charge a 100% immigration tax to the employer?<p>Cheap labor would be priced out unless American really cant substitute the imported labor. Employers would encourage employees to get a green card (as opposed to doing everything in their power to keep them chained to the H1B)<p>What are the negatives (except for the obvious problems of taxes, of course)

Yet Trump&#x27;s own Mar-a-Lago is abusing H-2B to obtain 70 foreign workers:<p>From the article: &quot;It’s unclear whether the Trump Organization had made an extra effort to try to fill the jobs.<p>In July, the club placed an ad on Page C8 of the Palm Beach Post: “3 mos recent &amp; verifiable exp in fine dining&#x2F;country club,” the ad said. “No tips,” Fahrenthold reported.<p>The ad, which ran twice, gave no email address, mailing address or phone number and instructed applicants to “Apply by fax.”&quot;<p>Hypocrites.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;powerpost&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;05&#x2F;trump-who-urged-people-to-hire-american-secures-70-foreign-workers-for-mar-a-lago&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;powerpost&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;05&#x2F;...</a>

It seems like the pretense of these changes is to affect the &quot;infosys&quot; style of visas. Does anyone have any insight on how this will affect getting visas for higher end jobs?

Young, European, High-skilled worker here, who&#x27;ve been working on core Kubernetes products for three years. Got several job offers for key infra positions in various companies @ 200-250k+. Trump administration came in, decided to RFE+NOIR my H-1B with a bullshit reason, had to go back to my country, which is not my really home anymore whatsoever (wife&#x2F;friends here). So yeah, that just happened. It&#x27;s not only about abuses and &#x27;Indians&#x27;.

I don&#x27;t like pieces like this who mostly make people who are in a true need of an H-1B more anxious.<p>For instance, statements like this one below are suppose to make the reader think something is deeply wrong:<p>&gt; She said in past years she&#x27;s counted on 90 percent of her petitions being approved by Oct. 1 in years past. This year, only 20 percent of the applications have been processed.<p>But, this year Premium processing was disabled for most of the year so that would explain this, wouldn&#x27;t it? For those unaware, Premium processing is where the petitioner can pay an extra $1225 on top of all the existing fees, to have its case processed in at most 14 days. Without premium processing it can take months &amp; months instead. Also, without the fees for premium processing, I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if USCIS have less employees able to work the cases. It was disabled specifically because the Regular processing cases backlog was getting too big. So if last year 90% of her cases used Premium Processing, the quote isn&#x27;t shocking at all.<p>The same lawyer maintains her personal blog, where she isn&#x27;t as dramatic, and gives more useful facts: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;immigrationgirl.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;immigrationgirl.com&#x2F;</a><p>Premium processing is now back[1], it&#x27;d be interesting to see if the statement still holds true.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;immigrationgirl.com&#x2F;premium-processing-is-back-for-all-h-1b-petition-types&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;immigrationgirl.com&#x2F;premium-processing-is-back-for-al...</a>

The solution is simple: rank the H1B applicants by descending order of wages, and take the top 65K. Period. Done. End of story. No more abuse.

I don&#x27;t understand why companies are still trying to bring people in the US to work for them. What&#x27;s the point for the employer? How about investing overseas and training people here to handle remote offices? That&#x27;s where we failed in the past... because it was too hard to manage and would require spending extra money to fix the mess. So we all decided to bring everyone in-house which is obviously a much bigger issue. I think we should invest more time in building infrastructures in other countries in order to create top of the line working places outside of the US. This would probably end up costing less and would help hiring way more people.<p>Again, create new positions in the US like a &quot;Remote Office Manager&quot; and build kick ass campuses in India, China, Europe, etc.<p>The whole immigration thing would be totally obsolete... I mean, we will be able to travel to Mars soon... why can&#x27;t we even manage remote employees in 2017?

I&#x27;m having a hard time finding sympathy for an industry that has systematically abused this system, with the direct intent of artificially lowering wages.<p>I also find it hilarious that the same people who are always going on about the &quot;evil rich&quot; and the wage gap are the most likely to be against culling one of the biggest loopholes out there.

One of the strangest things with visas is that the agency that authorizes a person to work (DHS&#x2F;USCIS) is different and has different objectives from the agency that issues the actual visas (DoS). With a valid USCIS work authorization a person already in the US can continue working legally, but the moment they step out of the country they need to apply for a visa with a US consulate (DHS). Applying for a visa with the DHS can take less than a week or more than 6 weeks (despite having all the correct documents). With the people I&#x27;ve spoken to, this causes a great deal of anxiety when travelling internationally.<p>TL;DR: A work authorization document issued by one agency allows a person to maintain legal presence in the US. This is different from a visa -- a visa allows one to enter the country and is issued by another agency. The visa doesn&#x27;t clearly specify what one can and cannot do while in the country.

The self-fulfilling prophecy of &quot;there&#x27;s no Americans to do these jobs&quot; is coming to an end. In a nation of 330 million people it&#x27;s been an incredulous argument and it&#x27;s ruined at least 2 generations from entering STEM. People talk about women in STEM, we have a bigger issue, no one is in STEM. Conservatives like to say you get more of what you subsidize, and they&#x27;ve been subsidizing the rest of the world for a very long time. I hope this is a shift in the tide and not a temporary blip.

Here is my take on H1B, which after checking some facts, is the last thing to worry for an average US tech worker, who don&#x27;t like H1B.<p><i>) 65k Visas + 20k (for US educated MS degree holders) = 85k total every year. Lets say each one gets a 130k salary (Senator Chuck Grassley&#x27;s recommendation) = ~$12 billion<p></i>) $12 billion Income. Lets say all these H1Bs send 25% back to their home countries = $3 billion gone out of USA, $9 billion spent in USA<p><i>) India&#x27;s Software exports to USA in 2016 - (61+24.4+22.4 = $107.8 billion) source : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;320753&#x2F;indian-it-software-and-services-exports&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;320753&#x2F;indian-it-softwar...</a><p></i>) Majority of these exports are to US. If we assume, the cost of getting software work done in India&#x2F;China is probably 1&#x2F;3rd of its cost in US, means, India, which exported ~$100+ billion worth of software, would have equalled $300 billion if the work was done in USA (thus creating jobs in USA).<p>*) India, through its software exports sucked $300 billion out of USA and hence took away jobs in USA.<p>Bottom line is, the rise of India&#x27;s, China&#x27;s software industries will suck the money out of USA. So, these numbers mean : H1B don&#x27;t take jobs, Software engineers in India, China and rest of the world are taking them at an order of magnitude faster !

Another field report:<p>Our town has a state university and a modest tech employment market. Every H-1B holder I&#x27;ve met a) went to the local university, b) works at a hospital or law office, c) writes CRUD apps in Java or C#.<p>They&#x27;re good dudes, but hard to imagine that any of them are the kind of alpha-double-plus-good talent that couldn&#x27;t be locally sourced.

I wrote about this a while back and think it&#x27;s still valid:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journal.dedasys.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;29&#x2F;people-places-and-jobs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journal.dedasys.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;29&#x2F;people-places-and-job...</a>

i&#x27;d probably be voted down (even deservedly so). But i cannot resist : what unique sort of modelling work could an american not fullfil that the first lady was given H1B?

Will this increase the number of remote positions (work from anywhere) for software developers?

I am really interested in seeing whether the tech companies eventually bend the knee.

you know its bad when all your neighbors speak hindi, or when at work when you&#x27;ve been there for years, and you don&#x27;t know any of your co-workers because none of them speak english (at fortune 500 companies in the US)

Ah yes, gotta love H-1B threads. The latent nativism among the Hacker News crowd is laid bare.<p>Here&#x27;s a radical proposal: give anyone with a clean criminal record and a job offer a green card. No limits, no $100k minimum wage, no protectionism. If you, with all the advantages that natives get (networks, language, NETWORKS), can be beat by an immigrant with zero social connections, you probably are worth less than you think you are. Time to compete, pal.<p>Anything less is opportunity hoarding based on the patch of dirt you were born on.

I&#x27;ll be excited about solutions when the quality and price of education changes for Americans. There is no &#x27;affirmative action&#x27; for the average white male to ensure access to affordable higher education.

I feel like a lot of the arguments around immigration - including H1-Bs - boil down to two pretty straightforward opposing views of immigration:<p>1) &quot;We&quot; have built something great and unique, and we want others to be able to partake of and contribute to it, but the greatness and uniqueness of it is special and we want to preserve that. This is the more conservative view.<p>2) &quot;We&quot; have an environment where great things can happen, and so we want to bring people into it and add their greatness to it to make it even greater. There is nothing special about what we have, nothing that warrants preserving, and in fact change - constant, disruptive change - is naturally good. This is the more liberal view.<p>It bothers me that (1) is often conflated with racism, admittedly (the bothering part) because it&#x27;s something I happen to agree with despite being mostly liberal on other issues. I DO think we here in America have a culture worth preserving, and while I want to open it up as much as possible to the world, I won&#x27;t support doing so to the detriment and&#x2F;or dissolution of what we have. I don&#x27;t think constant disruption is naturally good; I didn&#x27;t when I was younger and I don&#x27;t think it is now.<p>But anything even approaching a whiff of something like &quot;preservation&quot; is immediately labeled racist dog-whistling (which seems insane to me). Any kind of &quot;hey, maybe non-Americans are trying to exploit this and that&#x27;s not good&quot; is racism. Saying that perhaps as much diversity as possible even if just for diversity&#x27;s sake in all things is maybe not the best thing - again, racism.<p>We need to recognize that there are real, non-racist and completely rational and informed reasons why people are uncomfortable with things like H1-B abuse, and that we don&#x27;t all agree on what immigration <i>should</i> be or accomplish.

Time for companies to hire Americans and train Americans rather than attempting to suppress wages.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;h1bdata.info&#x2F;index.php?em=aegis+company&amp;job=&amp;city=&amp;year=All+Years" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;h1bdata.info&#x2F;index.php?em=aegis+company&amp;job=&amp;city=&amp;ye...</a><p>The Aegis Company listed in the article is paying devs 55k a year in the seattle area.<p>I&#x27;m wondering if this is targeted at the places that seem to pay well under market rate.

&gt; immigration should be merit-based<p>and cut in half. and a visa which requires in demand skills needs to be curbed.

If your business can&#x27;t survive without indentured labor - that&#x27;s on you. Simple as that.<p>The H1B situation could be fixed overnight by declaring the minimum wage to be... one million dollars. Then we&#x27;ll see it genuinely only used for rare talent.