In Blow to Tech Industry, Trump Shelves Startup Immigrant Rule
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Can you elaborate specifically on the rules of the USA startup visa that didn't make sense? For comparison and discussion, you can look at other countries' startup visa programs [1] like Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, etc.
Basically, the idea is to craft the visa rules such that the barriers are high enough that it allows legitimate foreign entrepreneurs with real business prospects to filter through. On the other hand, if you make the criteria "too easy", it becomes a "back door visa" for non-productive foreigners to abuse.
It's a balance between those two outcomes. Did any other country tune their visa policy correctly? If so, what did USA specifically get wrong and what did the other countries get right?
[1] http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/visas-entrepreneurs-h...
The argument being that as we skim the top people from the talent pool of other countries we reduce their capability to push innovation and ideas within their own infrastructure. Instead the USA benefits in that we don't have to have the smartest people just the most attractive place for them to come and help our country. So while I disagree with his message behind this move, I think he inadvertently helped the rest of the world...
That's only tangentially involved in this discussion though. That video is about whether opening immigration pathways to the USA can reduce world poverty. I never reviewed the rules that are being overturned here, so I can't say whether they made sense or not, but they were probably targeted at increasing US economic growth, not reducing world poverty.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/06/19/40-pe...
Most of my friends and extended families have a grand parent or two who were immigrants. If not grand parent then great grand parent.
Grandchildren are not included, hence Donald Trump doesn't qualify.
My definition of immigrant is not a child of an immigrant.
Regardless of your play on semantics, you're still wrong about your grandparents.
F.ex. Budweiser: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HtBZvl7dIu4
How many came here as free and full members of the workforce, allowed to pursue their own career paths as they saw fit?
There's a huge difference between supporting immigration and employer controlled visa programs.
If you place a single bitcoin programmer in the middle of, say, Yemen, that person would be a lot less productive than they would in the US.
This might be marginally improved with the internet (at least the person doesn't have to physically ask questions or purchase books), but only marginally.
Consider:
1. Tough time understanding the needs of paying business customers because the business are smaller and less tech savvy.
2. Tough time hiring other workers to expand because they are fewer schools that produce programmers, managers etc.
3. Tough time with internet, electricity and so forth because the infrastructure isn't there.
4. Tough time with knowing what the legal hoops are for setting up a company and a contract because the institutions have been weakened.
And so on.
Of course there are smart and innovative people there who can do useful work in that context. But that is not the same as the US context.
/Until we learn to package the solution in a nice development kit and resale it back to their homeland at a nice markup.
I mean, if smart people stay in Russia instead of move to the US, is that going to change that rampant corruption and government control make it hard to run a legitimate business in Russia? If smart people stay in China instead of move to the US, does that mean that the oppression that the Chinese Communist Party engages in is going to go away through magic? If smart people stay in Greece instead of move to America, is that going to solve their sovereign debt problems? If smart people stay in Venezuela, how will they solve the problem of there not being enough food to eat?
Those are all examples off of the top of my head. I'm certain less dramatic ones can be easily conjured up for any country where someone may decide to choose USA to start up.
Maybe it's worse for those countries, but in a world of globalisation, it's not irrational to pursue the opportunities in a place where you can get the most bang for your buck. You can always return if you want to, but that's not the path of least resistance.
Basically, if these "smart people" couldn't come to the U.S., there would be no option. They wouldn't have any where else to go, and would have to help their homeland in order to help them and theirs. No other option if they couldn't come to the U.S. instead (if the theory is correct).
Yes, Greece would be closer to solving their financial situation if there were smart people in Greece. What kind of question is that?
I don't think they have a shortage of high IQ people in Greece. They seem to have a shortage of money to spend, and a culture that is hostile to spending less money because of trust issues within their society. How do you throw smart people at that problem to make it go away?
This rule originally required $345,000 in investment from US based investors before the visa is awarded. The amount was then revised down to $250k after comments from the executive and investor community. It then required $500k in recurring revenue and 20% annualized revenue growth in order to extend the visa after 2 years.
I'm not sure why a foreign startup founder with a product that raised $250k from US investors and can confidently say they will have $500k in revenue want to temporarily immigrate to the US? Nothing is stopping them from operating in the US and there are existing visas for business owners operating in the US they can use that don't have all of the related hoops.
I think ultimately this would be underutilized at best and gamed much like the EB5 program at worst.
To make sure I'm not misinterpreting that, you're saying startup founders would rather run their startup company remotely thousands of miles away? E.g. the foreign startup founder stays in France which is 6+ time zones away while his company and employees are working in the USA? To be clear, we're not talking about the mother ship of a mature company opening a branch office in another country but instead, an infant startup company with maybe the founder and 1 or 2 other people. Even if the majority of startup founders wanted that arrangement, what VCs would invest in that type of working structure?
>Nothing is stopping them from operating in the US and there are existing visas for business owners operating in the US they can use that don't have all of the related hoops.
If you look at the other USA visa options[1], they are not exactly redundant with the proposed startup visa. (E.g. EB5 requires higher amount of $1 million from the immigrant which basically means the immigrant is already wealthy instead of starving entrepreneur with no money. The other visas are based on talent/skill such as advanced hard-to-find PhD or require employers to sponsor. The immigrant is his own employer.)
[1] http://fundersandfounders.com/coming-to-america-for-entrepre...
I don't think a foreign startup with 1 or 2 employees is going to attract $250k investment from US investors. (source: I once started a tech company in south america, US investors rarely invested outside of the US in early stage businesses) I think this would just be too risky for the US investor.
On the other hand if there was a startup that were within 2 years reach of $500k recurring revenue and 20% growth and were derisked to the point that US investors were interested in putting up real money then they are probably established enough that they wouldn't want to make the move for such a short time frame.
I think when people first read about this visa rule they imagined it'd be more ycombinator hacker types ("infant startup company with maybe the founder and 1 or 2 other people") when in reality that wasn't the case.
As someone pointed out a couple weeks ago [1]:
> From the article:
> "To qualify for the rule, entrepreneurs would have to meet high standards. A foreigner must demonstrate that he or she will contribute to economic growth or job creation and show that a reputable investor has put at least $250,000 into the company. Under this rule, they can stay in the U.S. for 30 months, with the possibility of a 30-month extension. They cannot apply for a green card during this period."
> This sounds like a pretty lame visa. How are you supposed to build a startup if you only have 30 months to do so? Why would investors risk $250k if the founder may be deported in 30 months? What happens after the extension period?
So from your link, that startup rule got wrong the 'Defining Success: Criteria for Permanent Residence' which states:
> Conditional entrepreneur visas can typically be renewed or converted to permanent residence after two to four years if the immigrant creates a successful business. (An exception is the Australian Venture Capital Entrepreneur program, which provides immediate permanent residence.)
But here the rule is simply: 'They cannot apply for a green card during this period.'. So even if your startup is successful, you're kicked out after 2.5 or 5 years.
I know everyone likes blaming Trump for everything but i’m happy when they decide to reform immigration programs that don’t make sense.
And yet he did see the value in the startup path. Which led to him starting a company that grew to a decent size and got acquired and continued to provide innovations and value for the new parent company. And kept many people employed. All because of what this one founder started.
So, from a jobs standpoint, and from an innovation and business expansion standpoint, I would say the visa made plenty of sense.
It was never intended as a path for large numbers of good people to immigrate to the USA, and so makes no sense for that. It was just meant to get government out of the way of people who are likely to generate jobs here.
Democracy in action.
People with a likely decent track record are willing to put their money down on, "This person can create jobs." Would you prefer to have those jobs created or not? Saying yes to the option is very much not a zero-sum game.
The difference here is that a job offer or an investment is a decision made by an employer or an investor. US citizenship or work/residency, on the other hand, is a status not with an employer or an investor but with the US government and the citizens it represents.
Think about it this way - you're a startup founder with US citizenship. You go to an investor who offers you 100K in seed funding in exchange for X% of your business. You say no deal. Ok, says the employer, but that does mean I won't give you my money.
Now imagine you don't have citizenship. Same scenario. Ok, says the employer, but that does mean I won't give you the right to live in the United States.
One point I've emphasized over and over here on HN is that you can be very pro-immigration and still be very opposed to programs that put private citizens (employers, investors) or corporations in a position of government sanctioned power over would-be immigrants. I think employers and investors should be allowed to decide who gets a job or money, but the power ends there. They absolutely should not be empowered to run the US immigration system for their personal benefit.
These visas are often described as "allows foreign engineers/entrepreneurs/etc to live in the US." That's misleading. It should be described as "allows corporations and investors to decide who is and isn't allowed to live in the US."
So, the tech industry is in favor of a regulatory regime that allows tech corporations to be gatekeepers for who is and isn't allowed to immigrate? What a surprise.
Think of it this way - I can accept that google is allowed to no-hire someone who contributed to open source but can't reverse a binary tree on the spot at a whiteboard. Google's call.
But should google be making decisions about who is allowed to live in the US based on these interviews? That changes the question dramatically for me.
Edit: In response to comments, currently $100k and $250k are not uncommon amounts for a person to incur attending university in the US. Solo operational costs in The Bay can swallow much of either in a year without hiring anyone or building anything...but in fairness either is a lot of money for most people if its yours and not very much if it is someone else's.
Apparently I need to find some better friends and family...
So, for example, an entrepreneur that just raised $10m would be prioritized for the visa over someone who raised $100k.
At least an amount of money is something people can kinda sorta reason about in terms of a business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_Visa#Use_of_existing_v...
How do you indirectly pay $100k-$500k for the privilege of an E-visa?
What are the ostensibly direct purposes for spending those funds?
Would you make the same expenditures if you couldn't travel to the US?
People trying to punish the CEOs who advise him are harmful to our country, and worse than the politicians that make decisions to further their own careers instead of do what's best for their country/state/county.
Not to mention that it was clear from the start that Trump was never going to listen to them anyway. Just about everyone on that board said no to the Muslim ban. He did it anyway.
Just because you didn't get the outcome you wanted doesn't change that fact.
Good democracy:
- fierce competition in the election
- choose winner
- work together as much as possible to do what's best for the country
Replacing step 3 with "do as much as possible to obstruct the winner and hurt the country until we win again" is stupid. It slows us down and weakens the functioning of the democracy.
Nothing wrong with anyone saying "We are fully against policy X". There is something wrong with "We are fully against policy X, so we will harm unrelated things: Y and Z (the economy in this case)".
I'm curious, do you feel the same way about insurance companies that expressed dissatisfaction with the Affordable Care Act and stopped participating in the exchanges, or do you view that decision as purely business-motivated?
No it's not. The president has an enormous jurisdiction, and you can cooperate on some issues and abstain on others. And you can advise on all of them.
> there is some objectively good direction for the the economy as a whole which is clear to all
It is clear to all that the economy is best off if the titans of our economy give their thoughts to those making policy and decision. I'm not saying everyone has to help the pres do whatever he wants, but withholding advise from the president in the area of economy because you disagree with his stance on immigration is nothing but spite that harms the country.
Count me out of this, please. If there's evidence of a pattern of bad decisions that are deleterious to the economy as a whole - something each person has to decide for themselves, obviously - then I think it's better not to assist with that process. Otherwise you risk enabling bad outcomes.
- executive power should be wielded (WITH | WITHOUT) input from leaders of the economy
I'm not arguing that we should elect Trump. It's done. Now that he wields exec power, you think that "WITHOUT" is the better choice above? Why?
> - executive power should be wielded (WITH | WITHOUT) input from leaders of the economy
That's not anything remotely like a syllogism; it's just a dichotomy.
A syllogism is a structured argument consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion that follows from the two premises.
A more relevant question is whether it's worth it for leaders of the industry to publicly pretend to give input to a person who they know will ignore it.
I don't think that's clear to all, but, in any case, the “titans of our economy” or going to do that whether or not they participate in formal executive commissions or not.
It seems more like Trump sits at the table with people to have his own photo taken. Which is not much of a surprise because that has been his entire career for the past 30 years.
All I'd like to establish is that it is, at this point in the conversation, not reasonable for you to write as if you don't understand the objection people have to these meetings.
Obviously. The point of my OP was that there shouldn't be liabilities to advising the president (liabilities for endorsement are another matter).
> You're repeating yourself needlessly.
Because the central point of our disagreement is whether being on the economic council is an endorsement or not. Musk and Kalanick both being on the council and loudly leaving it, but not telling any of the public that the advisory council is an empty photo-op seems unlikely to me. So I wanted to get your explanation for why that would happen, but you twice didn't respond to the question.
Despite what they may say, tech leaders don't go to these things in the hope of seriously influencing the administration. They're grown ups, and most of them pay lobbying operations. All of them understand that nothing important starts at a giant polished wooden table occupied by their competitors on one side and the news media on the other.
You honestly believe Tim Cook woke up the morning of that last meeting and thought to himself, "the best thing I can do with my time today is to sit down at a table with Donald Trump and Eric Schmidt"? Of course you don't.
The reality is: Trump's invitation to these events is coercive, in the sense that Cook will make news by not attending, and 50% (well, OK, 39.2%) of the US market will be irritated by that news. Attending is problematic, but if he shuts up, it's less problematic than not attending. So that's what he does.
It's for a similar reason that Musk and Kalanick don't hold press conferences decrying the theater of these photo op meetings. The political photo-op is as old as cameras, and tilting at windmills offers them nothing but downside.
Which brings us back to the reason we're irritated that Cook and Schmidt go to these things. The current calculation they're making says they lose less by going, and effectively providing a soft endorsement, than by boycotting. That's because their own employees --- who overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration --- are allowing them to get away with it. If even 5% of Google's employees credibly threatened a work stoppage of any sort over Schmidt's co-opting of their work to endorse Trump, Schmidt would not be allowed to attend; the costs to Google would outweigh the benefits.
That said, I think I've been pretty clear that I don't expect you to agree with me; I simply expect you to stop writing as if you can't imagine any reason other than (I suppose) bloody-mindedness that people would have a problem with Cook and Schmidt and Pichai attending these meetings.
While I don't want to be taken for one who is just losing their mind over Trump (since they have all typically seemed pretty lame to me), xenophobia is actively harmful to US economic interests.
How do those two statements not contradict each other? It sounds like "developing a product that it's unlikely any domestic firm could" should really be "developing a product that domestic firms are not interested in" if the talent required to build it is also American.
This is to the best of my understanding. They have made some explanatory statements to me, but usually we are working. And they are very polite, not feeling it is really on them to criticize. I know they have used a large number of freelancers in my area, for various tasks.
While this story may not be stereotypical, everyone has their own story and our current immigration policy seems to limit entrepreneurs in many unexpected ways.
It seems Trump is turning out to be a good Canadian president, so far.
You wouldn't use this same logic for actual people, would you? Two people may have sexual intercourse; many acts of intercourse lead to unwanted pregnancy and AIDS, so we should deem these people "unharmed" if the government denies them the opportunity to have sex?
Though, I think you can't really say it's a "blow" overall if we don't know exactly what would have happened under the policy.
I'm glad it's dead.
p.s.: Before you call me xenophobe keep in mind I'm a foreign born US citizen, I immigrated through the normal procedures.
The major economic tech centres in Canada are Toronto and less so, Vancouver. Montreal and Ottawa (because that's where Shopify is HQ'd) are the next biggest.
Toronto and Vancouver are hugely unaffordable when it comes to housing; Montreal and Ottawa are much more affordable.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/Unit...
However, this does not adjust for free healthcare and education.
On the other hand, tech cost of living is skewed by SF and Vancouver.
SF is the #1 tech city in the US whereas Vancouver may be #2 in Canada, but the US is a larger country so SF may "dilute" more. Without stats, this is just guesswork.
And if you happen to join a great tech company, chances are the health insurance you'll get is superior to the general public healthcare system in Canada.
The entrepreneur who founds a company will benefit from lower developer costs.
Grass only needs to be greener, not the greenest.
I have two kids. I get offers between 100k/160k CAD in Montreal. Daycare costs me about 800$ per month for each children and I get kick backs from the governement to bring that down to roughly 189$CAD/month. In San Francisco the average is 1900$USD per child.
Then factor in I live in a 265K CAD house, 40 minutes bus ride to city center. I have 3 bedrooms, one office, a huge kitchen, a nice patio, garden etc... In San Francisco the median house price is 1,194,300$ USD.
I could be making 180kUSD and I wouldn't be saving any more money at the end of every month with housing and daycare alone.
Also... I might pay a good deal of taxes but I have great healthcare.
I know a startup that accepted funding from the valley and stayed in Canada.
Main reasonings: USD goes much further in CAD (longer runway), developers cost less, lower cost of living (most places), and the massive amount of government grants (free money) to subsidize startups in R&D, etc. Federal government just put aside something ridiculous like $900 million for innovation funding.
Last, but not least, Canadian citizenship is a real possibility for someone who moves to Canada under a visa program.
How does it benefit the USA to build foreign companies with United States dollars so they can empower their own country and their own people, while middle and lower class Americans continue to grasp at the scraps?
I think I side with Trump on this one.
Or at least that's the idea of a visa like this. I can't say I understand the system enough to tell if it would, in fact, work as planned.
Does this mean that they are protecting us from terrorists? Because I would have thought the protecting American jobs argument was stronger.
L-1 visa holders _cannot_ change jobs. H-1B visa holders have to go through an expensive and cumbersome process to change jobs which effectively restricts their job mobility.
Obviously, outside super-hot job markets like silicon valley, US workers have a hard time competing with indentured labor.
This visa would have created brand new class of "entrepreneur" indentured to deep-pocketed VC firms. They would actually be worse off than H-1B and L-1 workers because - not only would they be beholden to the VC firms for funding (thereby their jobs) in the United States - but they would have to part with their ideas.
No nativist here - just saying how things are working on the ground once you shave off the corporate propaganda.
However, this current repeal, related to "The International Entrepreneur Rule"[1] is only tangentially related to H1-B.
H1-B could have gotten minimized but this is a bit worse, IMO.
I have a major criticism of this article and it's not clarifying.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...
The entrepreneur has a lot more leeway in making decisions than an employee, and has more freedom in how to spend the company's money.
Do you think that a VC would choose a foreign entrepreneur just because they are foreign? Don't you think other factors (product, team, strategy etc) would play a larger role?
However, when you get to the US, you realize that American citizens make $80k - $100k / year for the same job. What do you do? You can't switch jobs, because the H1B program makes it very difficult to do so. You can't threaten to quit, because then your visa only gives you a few months before you have to go back to India -- and back to the $10k / year job. You have no choice -- if you want the $60k / year job, you have to to stick with the company who hired you. So you stay.
The result? The salary for software engineers is driven down. The employer gets extra profits while getting the same work. The software engineers are now making less than they would be if either 1) the H1B program didn't exist, or 2) the H1B program were reformed so that switching jobs is easier.
(Trump did #1. However, #2, reforming H1B, is far better for all employees in the long run. Not surprisingly, #2 is not hugely supported by all companies).
The example he gave seems to indicate that the power dynamic you just mentioned carries over to entrepreneurs who have equity in the firm, who are empowered to make decisions and so on.
When the "entrepreneurs" very status in the US is dependent on being in the good-graces of anyone else - especially vultures like VC firms - these "entrepreneurs" are no better than indentured servants.
Think of it this way - any dispute with the "sponsoring" VC firm could snowball into a complaint to DHS which could result in the "entrepreneur" having to leave the country (and leave behind the carcass of a company the VC's will then proceed to digest).
Entrepreneurs might not understand or appreciate this yet, but they are better off going to Canada or somewhere else as landed immigrants with rights - instead of living in the US as indentured servants of some entity.
The junking of this rule has potentially saved so many startups from being absorbed by entrenched players (Hello Google Ventures). The resultant dispersion of wealth/ideas and the increase in competition will benefit all of us.
I don't know if you believe this to be true. How would this work?
VC: We have a complaint!
DHS: Yes?
VC: The entrepreneur wants to grant more options to their main people.
DHS: okay... so?
VC: Please dissolve the company, make my equity worth zero, and return this person to their country?
DHS: What?
VC: Good point, just make them turn their equity into MY equity and then kick them out
I just don't know what you imagine this rule to be. How do you think this works? On an H1b you can just fire the employee and they have to leave. I understand the mechanics of the power. For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.
VC: Hey DHS, Entrepreneur lied about something 2 years ago just before/after he came here.
Entrepreneur: That was not a lie - that was marketing. Every business does it.
DHS: "Get out"
> For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.
This is nice in theory, but in practice (especially in knowledge economy companies), the employees are the company - everything else is furniture, coffee machines, ping pong tables...
The VC can just start a new company with ideas stolen from the person they just kicked out. They can offer the (now unemployed) employees of the previous company slightly more equity and money then they would have received at the previous company.
I don't understand why you are defending a system like this.
Let's just understand what "the system" is in the first place.
Whether it is morally good or bad we can decide after we make sure we are talking about the same system.
It sounds like you are suggesting that DHS would kick out the entrepreneur if there was a falsehood on marketing materials?
I don't know what that example was supposed to illustrate so please clarify, because I don't think that is how it would work.
Secondly, I don't know under what conditions DHS is allowed to cancel visas.
But let's more on to the other matter, which is the relationship between the VC and the entrepreneur. You acknowledge that the "knowledge" is key, but you still think that they can replace the person who is running the company?
Finally, you agree that the person would still retain ownership in the company?
Assuming that SOMEONES job has to receive that wage pressure, who better than highly paid workers?
The question is WHICH X people should we let in. Should we let in X low skilled workers or X high skilled workers?
You could perhaps make the argument that the US should lower the TOTAL amount of people let into the country.
But if that is your argument, then there is no point in talking about software engineers. You should be worried about the construction workers wages that are being reduced.
There are definitely large contracting companies which abuse the H1B process in this way, but at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Yahoo/etc I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US.
Doesn't mean I don't agree the H1B system needs serious reform, but it's unfair to tar all employers with that brush.
(Best reform idea I've heard: the limited H1B slots go to whoever is paying the most for the job. Inherently prioritized the most economically impactful immigrants and also creates upward pressure on wages. Win/win!)
You're making an argument based on an infrequent exception to the rule
I have. And based on the patterns I saw in hiring, I expect that it's the same across the industry, even when companies aren't trying to underpay immigrants. It's a fascinating perspective when you get involved with hiring at the offer stage and see the negotiations. You can send the exact same offer to an H1-B and a citizen and the counter-offers will be completely different. A citizen will ask for more comp and an H1-B will ask for an EB2 sponsorship. Both are entirely rational decisions the since employment flexibility of a green card is probably worth more to an immigrant than an immediate increase in comp.
> Best reform idea I've heard...
I still think the best idea is to impose ratios like other countries do. Let companies hire as many immigrants as the like so long as they're also employing, in similar positions, the requisite number of Americans as well. If the theory is that highly-skilled immigrants are bringing skills and knowledge that's in short supply here, we should be trying to have them work with Americans as much as possible so that Americans can learn from them. Companies that abuse the current system end up having nearly all-immigrant work forces. Meanwhile, smaller companies without large legal teams can have difficulty getting even a single H1-B hired. Ratios fix both problems and they also help immigrants assimilate faster because there's less chance they end up working with mostly other immigrants.
Your idea of using salary as the deciding factor is great in theory, but in practice we don't allocate capital wisely. We'd end up with a lot of H1-Bs in finance and almost none in science or any of the many lower-paying areas that require education and intelligence.
By pure economic logic, they must. Because the cost of the immigration attorneys and process has to be paid by the employee. If the employer absorbed that cost, it would be cheaper to hire local at the same price(salary).
Not only that, but the lower level of mobility an immigrant has means he cant switch jobs as easily, thus sacrifices potential earnings that a local wouldnt.
There is no way around it: any restriction you make will harm the person being restricted. It is thus that it think any kind of immigration policy aims at harming individuals at the request of others.
The best reform would be remove the requirement altogether and let companies hire who they want, and individuals work where they want to. While the US pertains itself to questions like how restrictive their visas should be, other countries panic at the constant brain drain.
They are not the majority, most visas go to the Indian Outsourcing companies.
Why due to the accident if geography is an American entitled to a salary that an Indian would be willing to do for less? How is that fair?
I have a million dollars. I hire you to manage it for me. You decide that, you know, it's kind of lopsided that one person have all this money, so you distribute it to 99 others. Do you have the moral high ground in this situation?
I am not going to argue about "Fair" because it is a value judgment which depends on your moral and political predilections. This isn't the right place for such discussions.
However there is definitely no such thing as an 'accident of geography'. I see this all the time expressed as a implicit argument, which I believe to be a form of pre-scientific thinking that has crept into our world view.
Sperm cells are not randomly selected in some kind of bingo ball system in the ether when a woman is impregnated.
It is one of the least random things possible - the entire catalogue of back choices of your ancestors is present as part of that inception. All of history, culture, geography, must have been necessary for you to be born where you are born. If you think otherwise, then you must not believe evolution theory is real or you have to be compartmentalizing it away from the present somehow, as if it were theoretical pure math instead of an always present reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_entrepreneur_rul...
At the two year mark, you need to show further investment, to extend the visa three more years.
Failure to hit these numbers means your visa gets taken away.
While the plight of illegal immigrants and the stories of the lonely technical geniuses sorrowing as they fail to gain entry to the U.S. may be heartwrenching, make no mistake that the true interest of the powerful is keeping a labor force that is cheap and easily exploited. If you take away dubious immigration status, their employers lose that much authority over them.
I see correcting such conditions as Trump's primary interest. He is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game", and as a businessman who has tried many different things, he knows that there is a lowest common denominator effect in business. If your competitor is going to China and getting stuff made for a few cents, you are putting yourself at a major disadvantage by not doing so. You can't effectively compete if your manufacturing costs are significantly higher. Consumers assume that legal structures prevent unfair competition and exploitation by default, but this been slowly degraded under false political doctrines pushed by MegaCorps and wrapped neatly in the bow of egalitarianism.
Trump ran and won so that he could level the playing field. Trump's position, IMO, is "Make the rules bar exploitation of consumers and workers without breaking competition and entrepreneurship". This is a credible counter to the "trickle-down economics" theory of "Give owners as much money as possible and you'll get a share somewhere along the line", and that's the primary reason that the Republican power players hate him. Trump is offering a more fair route not by proposing government seizure/control, regimentation, or handouts (which are easy arguments to discredit), but simply by restoring the baseline rules of the marketplace that consumers take for granted.
The answer is to make it so H1-B people are not so tied to one employer, so their wages are bid up to local levels in short order.
The rationale behind this legislation is that employers have been driving wages down via a self-sustaining lower class of tech workers, where low-cost temporary foreign workers constantly trickle in. This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.
You mean the industry that includes tons of companies founded by immigrants or their children?
I'm not saying SV can be replicated elsewhere. But the code you're writing can be, if the price differential is big enough. Outsourcing is a PITA, so if the price differential is not big, why bother. But... if it's big enough, innovative people will find a way to make it work.
> This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.
Or a foreign office without all the bureaucratic, nativist BS.
Its 'something like' indentured servitude, except it isn't. It isn't slavery either. Nor torture or any number of other emotionally laden words we could come up with.
Its an employment deal. Its an immigration option. Others exist. Don't choose it if you don't like it.
What if they have debts to pay off at home, and it's the only realistic option available? Going home means not being able to pay those debts off.
I agree with the op, btw. To make things better for local workers, h1b workers should be offered greater mobility so as to create competition which properly values their skills. Earlier suggestion by the Trump administration that instead of a lottery only the highest paid h1b workers will be admitted sounds quite sane, too.
Disclosure: naturalized citizen, former H1B.
I didn't think about the aspect of people seeing VC funding; not self funded people.
Also, when I first read this article, I wondered what industry stood to gain from this move. Presidents are members of the 1% and their policies are dictated by the top income earners, not the opinions of most voters[0]. Although companies might publicly be against this, they must be secretly benefiting. Maybe big tech players don't want disruptive startups coming in and taking their markets?
[0]: http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-differen...
Is "bonded labor" better?
The same goes for swipes like "you are kidding right?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745448). Using escalating rhetoric on divisive topics causes internet discussion to erupt in flames. Mostly it's negligence rather than arson but the result is the same. If you're going to comment here, please don't do these things.
The guiding value of HN is intellectual curiosity (please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). We're hoping for thoughtful conversation, and using the site primarily for political or ideological battle is destructive of that, so we ban such accounts. In particular, it's not ok to create an account here just to do that.
Regarding "indentured servant" - that is the factually correct term to describe the situation. Even H-1B visa holders themselves use this term.
Here is a video of an H-1B visa holder using the exact term "indentured servant" with Congressman Darrell Issa at some policy event about the H-1B visa in Washington DC: https://youtu.be/2Tgc9m1IwNc?t=35m47s
The term "indentured servant" is exactly the right term to describe the employer-employee relationship between Guest Worker visa holders and their employer's. As demonstrated in the video, even the H-1B workers themselves are saying that they feel like indentured servants.
I personally feel that politically correctness is somehow having the effect of normalizing this very abnormal employee-employer relationship (at-least here in America).
As the guest worker in the video says, if he loses his job - he has to take his kids out of school, sell his car, sell his house and leave. This is not in any way a normal employee-employer relationship.
I would like to think the points I am raising are thoughtful. well researched and articulate. Apart the "swipes" - which I will tone down on - I don't think I am guilty of any other transgressions.
> You could even, if you wanted to, make an argument that this has some things in common with what was historically called indentured labor. But to use a charged phrase as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological battle, which you clearly are doing, is the wrong kind of comment for HN.
You are right, I could have absolutely talked about the history of indentured labor in America - but I don't think that was germane to the implications of the Regulation or the implications for the current (sorry) state of Guest Labor in America which what this discussion was about.
Regarding: > The bigger problem is the one you didn't respond to. You're showing up in an HN thread with a single-purpose account armed with seasoned ideological talking points. That's very much not what this site is for, regardless of which battle it is and which side you're on.
I am a geek, who has frequented HN for a long time, and before that digg and before that slashdot (I still go there BTW).
I usually don't post very much.
And "seasoned talking points" - cmon. Doing my research before shooting my mouth off - is a GOOD THING and I would like to think that I am elevating the level of discourse.
Infact everyone else (except projectramo - who I did mishandle and doesn't disagree with my characterization of H-1B/L-1 workers) who has weighed in seems to think my comments are very apropos:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746592
Infact, in my view - you are the one who is flaming me and disrupting the discourse here.
It's also not ok to use HN primarily for political or ideological battle, since that isn't the purpose of the site. Obviously some topics are more political and commenting in such threads is fine, but it's not to use an account primarily for it.
If immigration where free, or almost free, then these companies would hire even more people, and all others would also do it. The amount of immigration the tech sector would have if people could go to the us, stay 6 months to acclimate, learn and pick jobs, would skyrocket and would increase the talent pool for companies.
The great supporter of such restrictions are the people that think their own wage would be reduced if more competition were brought up. And they would be right to fear that in the short term. In the longer term, lower wages would also mean higher profits, thus higher capital which would eventually rise wages again.
Any immigration policy is more often than not a problem of bias and misunderstanding from the public, and a matter of voters for the politicians.
So half of SV should still be safe.
More importantly, if I have the choice between roughly equivalent outcomes where one consists of decades of busywork and the other consists of taking a small part of the money and doing good in the world, why in the world would I want to be building a real estate empire?
Of course, for Trump the reason would be because he's a narcissist who needs to see his sense of self-worth boosted by seeing his name slapped onto buildings in giant letters and his face in the news. But for someone who wants to merely lead a good life? You take out however much you need to actually make a positive impact, and leave the rest in index funds.
That said, I'm not rich so I don't understand the system and why things need to be the way you describe. Please provide some insight.