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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

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yummyfajitas

I love HN.

Trump hating on Iranians and Mexicans.

HN: "I hate Trump, he's so mean to immigrants. And avocado prices will go up! ::angry face::

Trump hating on Indians who took our jobs!

HN: "Protectionism for me too? ::swoons::"

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Well that's not even remotely the same thing.

Trump hating on Iranians for no good reason. Trump hating on Mexicans who are here legally or aren't even in the country (the whole "Mexicans are rapists, but I'm sure there's some good ones" comment). Versus Trump changing immigration policy to balance foreign and domestic workers, where it's heavily tipped to foreign workers right now.

He's not building a wall to keep out Indians, he's not arresting them at airports when they have a green card, his plan is to just not issue as many visas, and put tighter restrictions on the people he gives visas to.

That's not "hating on" anyone. There are lots of reasons to oppose Trump, but this isn't one of them. The H1B visa system could use some work, and it's getting that work.

It's heavily tipped to foreign workers?

For a US worker to find a job, they need to find a willing employer.

For a foreign worker, they need to:

0) Find a willing employer.

1) Get lucky. For 2017, there were 236,000 applications for 65,000 H1Bs (about a 25% success rate).

2) Prove that an American worker isn't available to do the job.

3) Wait > 8 months to start the job (applications happen in April 2016 for 2017 employment).

Yeah, things are totally tipped in favor of foreign workers. I'm constantly wondering if I should give up my US citizenship to gain these advantages.

If it wasn't tipped toward foreign workers, you'd hear stories of H1B workers who sadly lost their job to an American. You'd hear stories about companies who hired all American employees, then apologized when they realize it didn't work out and they went back to H1B workers. You'd hear politicians calling for more foreign workers because there are too many jobs for Americans.

The 25% success rate? That's the system working as intended.

But your story of American workers just needing to find a willing employer, your story of proving that an American worker isn't available to do the job, it's just not true. Or at least it's not as true as you want to make it seem.

The minimum for an H1B employee is $60,000 right now. I made more than that at my first tech job right out of college, living in a small city in the Midwest. To get an H1B employee, all you have to do is put up a job posting for $60,000 and wait. The people who will fill that position will be expecting $80,000 and will turn it down. To get an H1B employee, all you need to do is pay far less than market rate (but at or above H1B minimum). Boom, you have highly skilled Americans out of a job and companies getting employees for less than market rate. I've seen it happen at every place I've ever worked.

Part of Trump's idea is to raise the minimum for H1B workers to $100k. The idea of an H1B is that it allows you to hire employees who have such a specialized skillset that you can't find someone in America to do the work. What it's become is finding an entry-level Java coder for less than what an American college-educated entry-level employee would make. If the work you need done is so advanced or so specialized that there is no one in America who can do it, you should be willing to pay whatever it costs to get it done.

It should be extremely difficult to hire a foreign worker. Not impossible, but really, really hard. Yes, it may be a privilege to be an American, but there are a lot of unemployed, skilled, college-educated Americans. The problem isn't not finding enough Americans to fill the positions, it's not wanting to pay what they need to get paid. And that's the wrong sort of behavior to encourage.

H1B visas should drive pay up, not down.

> If it wasn't tipped toward foreign workers, you'd hear stories of H1B workers who sadly lost their job to an American.

You don't, because when an H-1B worker loses her job, she has to leave the country or find another job real quick. Either way, she most likely do not have time to get her story across to you.

That's another problem I have with the current H1B visa system: the workers are almost literally slaves. It is so close to indentured servitude that I'm not sure if it isn't the same thing as indentured servitude. I've worked at multinational tech companies and I've worked at regional enterprises and everywhere in between and unfailingly, the H1B employees have four people in a two bedroom apartment all sharing a 1987 Toyota Camry. They work 17 hour days for less money than their coworkers, and if they complain, they're deported and banned from the country.

That's not fair. If your skillset is so important that American companies will bring you across the ocean from your home country to work for them, you should be a god to them. You should be the most valuable employee they have. They hired Joe because he was the best candidate that applied to their local ad. They hand-picked Prakesh and brought him all the way to California from his home in India because no one is better than Prakesh.

The best way to make that happen? Pay them more.

> That's not fair.

What you are asking for is a point-based skilled immigration system like in Canada, Australia etc. Nobody has proposed that in US yet. But there is a bill - H.R.392: Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 [1] - currently up for consideration of the Congress which removes the multi-decade green card backlogs for skilled immigrants. From [2]:

   H.R. 392, Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act replaces the current per-country caps 
   on immigration with a first-come first-served visa system without increasing the total number 
   of available visas. The current system of awarding no more than 7% of available employment-based 
   visas to one country is discriminatory. It ultimately imposes decades-long wait times for people 
   from some countries, creating a backlog of qualified workers. The bill makes no changes to the 
   current law limiting US employers to hire foreign workers except when there are no qualified, 
   willing, able, and available American citizens.

Please consider supporting H.R.392 as that is closest we have now to what you are asking for.

[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...

[2]: http://chaffetz.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentI...

Not to mention the exhorbitant wait times to get permanent residency for Indians(and Chinese). As things stand, with an approved petition for 2011 or later it will be well over a decade before they can get a green card.

Keep in mind, a large amount of those applications are pushed by outsourcing companies, that are gaming the system.

"Federal officials allow only one application for each foreign worker, but companies can submit an unlimited number of applications for their employees, so global outsourcing giants can, and do, submit many requests."

And one third of all approved H1Bs are for those outsourcing firms.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcin...

The spammed requests by these firms make it more difficult for foreign workers to get through this process, too, unless they work for these outsourcing firms.

that makes no difference to the workers. It's worse if anything because those companies won't even sponsor them for a green card.

I'm a foreign worker, and while I am very happy to live in the US being here on a visa sucks.

when americans talk about privilege, they never realize how big of a privilege it is to be american and to live in the us.

i love my country and my city, but my life would be a lot easier if i lived in the us.

Seems like you never read the full Trump quote on Mexicans, because that is precisely what he doesn't say. Usually when the clip is shown on television they edit it to make it seem that way though.

Not necessarily the same people commenting on the first and the second.

That's the issue with "The Reddit/HN/Gawker/*chan/Twitter's community is toxic".

This is a classic logical fallacy I see too often. It's like mentally creating a Venn diagram of "People who said a" and "People who said b" and then just assuming that the two circles basically entirely overlap - without any basis.

I feel like it's somehow a variation on a straw man argument, but I can't work out if that's a good enough analog. Would be interested to know if anyone knows of a more formal name for it.

False equivalence? Existential Fallacy?

Or some hybrid of the two.

Not hating on Indians per se, but hating on the wage-depressing way they are hired. H1B visas tie you to your employer, so you have no leverage to increase your wages. Now if they could job-hop like the rest of us, their presence wouldn't depress wages so much, and we'll all be better off. In other words, we want more freedom for them, not less, nor the crippleware BS that is the current H1B system. Same goes for undocumented Mexicans. If they could organize and switch jobs without fear of deportation, their presence wouldn't depress manual labor wages nearly as much.

H1B visas tie you to your employer, so you have no leverage to increase your wages.

Sure you do: you can find a new employer willing to spend a couple of thousand (i.e. a lot less than recruiting costs) on transferring the visa.

There is no barrier to a Mexican illegal immigrant changing jobs whatsoever.

I'm all in favor of making it easier for people to come to the US and productively work for willing employers (whether high skilled Indians or low skilled Mexicans). But it's pretty clear that this isn't what Trump is proposing.

Except whenever you change employers your green-card application resets. For people born in India, green cards applications are currently being processed from July 2005. That means someone from India who is trying to become a permanent resident is stuck at the same company for over a decade.

> Except whenever you change employers your green-card application resets.

The green card application has to be redone again, but the place in line will be intact in most cases.

Still, you are right that the backlog can take over a decade.

Please support H.R.392 [1] which proposes to remove the long green card backlogs which causes the wage depression you mention.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...

It's almost like there are different people here with different opinions.

Yeah, because HN is one person...

So true!

There's nothing wrong with this.

It was always about protecting our interests.

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