I will repost my quick immigration quiz, for Americans/others who may be unfamiliar with what the typical visa process is for an immigrant:<p>1. An international student graduates at the top of their class in Stanford in CS, and goes to work for a tech company. What visa do they use?<p>The correct answer is F1 (OPT) for one year, with OPT STEM extension for 2 extra years, while they apply for H-1B. If they weren't a STEM major, regardless of their actual role, they have a single year to apply for H-1B, with a ~30% chance of success by lottery, before being asked to leave the country. Regardless of their qualifications.<p>2. Instead of staying in tech for their career, they work for a year in a tech firm, then go to MIT for CS grad school. They perform excellently, having many publications under their name, doing several industry internships at Microsoft/Google labs. They then get accepted to a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Columbia. What visa do they apply for?<p>Still H-1B.<p>My understanding is that the latest executive order includes several exemptions, but I still want to emphasize how widely used and important H-1B is as an channel for introducing talent into the US.
This announcement means anyone who planned on beginning work under an H1B soon after perhaps months of job seeking and waiting for H1B approvals is suddenly shit out of luck. Anyone about to be granted a green card after years on the wait list is shit out of luck. Another HN'ers comment about their sisters Irish boyfriend who now can't move and leaves their family living in different continents is already one example of all the life plans this kind of change disrupts.<p>They have been making these sorts of life changing policy decisions at the drop of the hat for years now - no notice, no coherent long term plan whatsoever, only a year old tweet from Trump promising reforms. Even if you have spent 5 or 10 years in the country studying, working, paying taxes, building friends & family in the US, you have no more stability or value to the government than a fresh immigrant.<p>The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else - in most places you get points based immigration and a STABLE visa & path to citizenship that won't fall out from under you.
A lot of people are bemoaning this move from the viewpoint in the Valley. I work for an old-school Fortune 250 which is a top-30 H-1B holder. They strategically employ thousands of visa holders for jobs that hardly require a high school education. It seems to be a calculated move to get over-qualified workers at a discount, who have very limited mobility in the job market. From my view here, it's a system that's working against the long-term interests of the country, denying those jobs to local people for whom they would be a huge leg up.
With companies getting very comfortable with WFH and remote work because of the pandemic, this is perfect timing for them to hire offshore in India or in Canada to keep the timezone the same. And open offices in Canada and/or India. Once offices are set up in Canada, preference will be to hire new teams there since anyone in the world can work easily there and salaries and costs are lower than in the US.
As a scientist in the US (on H1B visa), I really worry about other scientists postdocs/professors that were planning to come to the States and won't be able to (and will be out of the job, as very often your previous postdoc ends at the time when the new one is about to start). This capricious government is uprooting lives of people without any advance notice or concern. Essentially people are dealt with like cattle. Today you can go, next day you can't.
(personally this is one of the reasons I'm moving back to the UK, where at least I don't have to deal with idiotic immigration laws).
As I posted somewhere else, this is THE time for EU to jumpstart their tech industry.<p>It's a simple process:<p>- Actively court American companies to set up shop in EU<p>- The global market is filled with tech workers who would otherwise be sucked in by the US. Give them visas.<p>This is a great boost to GDP and bounce back from covid recession. Canada has capitalized on this for the past 4 years and the wages in Canada have only gone up and up.<p>EU can have the pie too while the US shoots itself in the foot.
The "no-shortage-if-you-pay-enough" dog has caught up to the car, and now the proponents need to show the US citizens can indeed fill many of these positions.<p>I think it will be a unfortunate denouement for both industry and research.
The freeze is pretty wide ranging and will apply to a number of other visas as well:<p>- H1-B - Specialty occupations<p>- H4 - Immediate family members of the H-1B visa holders<p>- L - Intracompany transferees from oversees<p>- J - Work-and study-based exchange<p>- H2-B - Temporary non-agricultural workers
Please replace this article with the official order: <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspending-entry-aliens-present-risk-u-s-labor-market-following-coronavirus-outbreak/" rel="nofollow">https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation...</a>
I'm not very informed on this topic, but doesn't this seem exactly like DACA? Where they issued a stupid executive order, and then the supreme court over-ruled them because they weren't competent enough at justifying their decision? Would that be likely to happen here as well?
And also, there's a proposal to _finally_ require that H1-B's are paid no less than median pay for the jobs, when visa issuance is resumed. Companies are fighting it tooth and nail, obviously, but I think they'll lose this time.
As with many thing this administration has done, this move may have some nefarious and xenophobic motivations. I don't want to speculate about those things.<p>However, I have heard the notion that, with unemployment numbers soaring, the American job market ought to prioritize the re-employment of Americans before serving the employment interests of foreign nationals.<p>I don't know what the numbers are, but anecdotally I know a few people in my social circle who are highly skilled/educated and have been jobless due to the pandemic.<p>Will this work visa suspension be a positive development for those people?
>The official said Trump has also directed aides to work on longer-term reforms to the immigration system. The president is pushing for a more merit-based system that would distribute H-1B visas based on which applicants received the highest wage offers, the official said.<p>I found this part to be the most interesting. If this current proclamation is a prelude to the overhaul of H1B system in a way that would make it work like described above, then it is somewhat exciting for a couple of reasons.<p>1. It would get it closer to Canadian system for work visas, which works as a point system that (I think a lot of people here would agree) is more preferable to how H1B works now.<p>2. It solves the whole issue with consultancy companies flooding the H1B pool with extremely underpaid bodies, thus making it more difficult for other people to get their H1B visas.<p>EDIT: after reading some replies, I feel the need to clarify what I meant. I am not saying "this H1B suspension is a good thing, because it means they will implement those other changes very soon" (because I don't believe this will happen). I simply meant that this H1B suspension aside, it would be great if that proposal for a giant H1B reform actually materialized, and I am glad it got mentioned. And no, I am not holding my breath that it will happen soon, but I am just glad that it seems to be getting some traction.
Let me share my H1B experience.<p>I did Masters in CS at a top 30 University in the US, graduated in Feb 2017, got into a major US tech company on OPT, at a higher-than-median income as a software engineer, unsuccessfully tried 3 times to crack the H1b lottery from 2017 to 2019. In 2020, I received a Canadian PR, and moved to Canada (we have an office here in Vancouver, although I took up a remote position in Toronto). I'm working on the same job here in Canada, although I had to take a bit of a pay cut. I'm happy to be here, and its great. It was a bit of a circus to get my Social number in Canada in the beginning due to COVID, but it's been smooth sailing since then.<p>I miss my girlfriend who's in the US and is on OPT. So I got my company to apply for my H1B again in 2020, and finally got through lottery on the fourth attempt (consular processing), and was going to be back by October 1st. Due to the H1B travel ban, I now cannot travel to the US before Jan 1st 2021 as I don't have a visa stamp yet. I'm now considering not going back, as I don't see the point. My girlfriend is quite capable of moving her job to Canada as well, and her company is more than willing to do so via a work permit.<p>I know for a fact that I'm not the only person who moved an American job overseas due to visa policy. The fact that my company's HR and immigration consultant company (Fragomen) worked on this like clockwork suggests that this is something they're used to doing, as they reached out to me before my OPT work permit was expiring. When a company has an employee for three years, it's a lot easier to hire them overseas than hire someone else, American or not, even if the former option costs the company a lot more. I unfortunately know several people who had visas they couldn't renew follow the route I took, and it worked out for them in the end. I want to start my own start-up eventually, and that's probably not possible on an H1B anyway (or so exceedingly difficult that I wouldn't try).<p>I'm going to miss US National Parks though.
If <a href="https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2019-H1B-Visa-Category.aspx?T=WC" rel="nofollow">https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2019-H1B-Visa-Category.as...</a> is accurate, the bay area was the top recipient of H1B recipients in 2019.
This has been extremely disappointing news for our family. My sister's boyfriend is an Irish citizen and recently got a job at a large national lab in the same city as us, visa sponsorship and everything. They were supposed to be here in April, but covid delayed things. Now the won't be coming at all. I'm not sure what we're going to do. This was a huge opportunity for him, and it was going to reunite our family. I'm unbelievably sad right now.<p>It's especially bullshit, given part of the H1B criteria is proving there's no US citizens that can do the job. I have a hard time seeing any good coming from this, and it feels like Trump is just pushing his xenophobic agenda further.
Also, extends the complete immigration freeze that started April 22 till the end of the year. Those nomimmigrant visas (H-1B, H-4, J, L) are added to the existing and now extended halt to all immigration, not a standalone thing.
Reading the declaration it seems it does not apply to people who have existing visas and are (re)entering the US. Is this correct?<p>(How border agents choose to enforce, however, is anyone’s guess)
Does this apply to H1B ‘transfers’? I know that it’s not officially called a transfer so was wondering if that be counted as a new application and so will be rejected.
The various reasons this is wild to do aside, it looks like 2020 is kneecapping the bay area rental market even more.<p>According to [1], the Bay Area has around 12,435 people living and working here on H1B visas, no doubt mostly in Tech.<p>[1] <a href="https://insights.dice.com/2020/01/14/h-1b-salaries-filings-highest-12-cities/" rel="nofollow">https://insights.dice.com/2020/01/14/h-1b-salaries-filings-h...</a>
Just to add something to the conversation. I'm sure you guys see these recruiting emails as well but here an example of why H1B is broken. This salary is below market rate, clearly targeting H1B visas. Also below 150k mark. I like the idea and the spirit of the H1B and other visas but I think it's being abused.<p>"W2 Role: Scala Developer, Loc : NYC, NY, Salary : $114k per annum, H1 TRANSFERS, H4 EAD, L2 EAD, USC, GC."
Virtually all economists agree that this is a terrible idea.<p>There is not a 'fixed lump of labor' to go around.<p>A good follow on twitter for immigration issues is David Bier, of the CATO institute: <a href="https://twitter.com/David_J_Bier" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/David_J_Bier</a> . I'm not a libertarian, but he puts out a lot of research and well-informed articles.
If you want to have a fun read: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1406862602901657/permalink/2571584449762794/?__cft__[0]=AZU4poB_g3FXZ2e8qr_8EOn1z1IytVnzg-237c17DOLRhvm0X0_roO_sngy5B0D-V-sLNAR1VJSny1w63L_3DD1frFI4WhPt-tU2nI6488iyoonW8eXFI1Y7nKs-KiGM9_eE7TpqA0UOaIPI6tZLoiBRxSiIaLrcDKyhc4dZSo27mw&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/groups/1406862602901657/permalink/2...</a><p>a "French in the US" facebook community with 200 comments of people panicking.
There are a lot of valid criticisms of skilled labor visas in the United States.<p>But you also can’t ignore the population growth problems that would exist in this country without immigration. We would be Japan.<p>And the entire suburban growth Ponzi scheme that every post-1890s American city suffers from will be exacerbated by shutting off not just immigration but immigration of skilled labor.<p>How many countries would <i>dream</i> of educated people flocking to live in their country?<p>Unfortunately the whole discussion seems like one big digression. No matter which angle you approach this at, it’s just bad policies all around. You’d think that a policy built on training the vast US citizen population with better, more equitable education would be better than importing foreigners. You’d think that lowering the cost of education would help, that companies would prefer a large supply of educated citizens.<p>The problem is, all that thinking naively assumes our policymakers and the donor class don’t hold active disdain for their own constituents: because an H1B worker is a worker with no leverage and worse ability to quit.<p>If you read this whole comment and are confused at what position I’m trying to take, you’re not alone. I don’t even know anymore.