Comment by vsskanth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vsskanth | Hacker News Reader

Typically HN seems to down weight any discussions on visas or immigration to keep it off the front page, but for what it's worth it's important to point out that this lottery system was designed by USCIS and recently changed post 2016 in a way that aids staffing companies and IT consultants.

Previously you have to file a full petition with a serious job offer which costs thousands of dollars but now you just pay some entry fee and you're in. Obviously this was ripe to be gamed by shady staffing companies taking money from applicants for filing a petition and THEN finding a job later based on whichever staffing agency gets picked. It's not even illegal for multiple companies to submit a petition for the same person.

USCIS can fix this by just selecting the lottery based on passport numbers and making sure the full paperwork is filed before the lottery like a few years ago, but of course they'll just lazily blame others for taking advantage of something that is so easily gamed.

The real losers here are the students who studied in the US, worked hard to find a job and only submit a single petition through their employers. It's now way less likely they will get picked in the lottery.

My opinion - USCIS can't legally reduce H1B visas so they intentionally wreck the lottery system to invite bogus applications, who they can later reject, or they simply won't file a full petition, and they don't have to issue all the 85K H1B visas Congress has allowed.

> The real losers here are the students who studied in the US, worked hard to find a job and only submit a single petition through their employers. It's now way less likely they will get picked in the lottery.

I'll never understand why we don't just staple green cards to master's degrees. It's absolutely absurd that we're choosing to kick out talented, hardworking people who are already established here, who are disproportionately young and healthy. And they're at the very beginning of their careers - they're ready to pay a lifetime of taxes. They're the absolute opposite of drains on society.

> Providing a green card upon completion of your master's degree.

Seems like an interesting idea. Why do you think it's not already being done? I haven't really explored the idea very carefully, but this would amount to giving universities the power to grant citizenship to foreigners, which seems like it has a lot of potential for abuse.

But i would have applied for trump university right away!

Remove the potential for abuse by still requiring the application to be approved.

> this would amount to giving universities the power to grant citizenship to foreigners

Just a note that green card holders are residents, not citizens. They don’t get to vote, they just get to pay taxes.

Still potential for abuse of course, but an important distinction.

> Just a note that green card holders are residents, not citizens.

While there are time and other requirements after getting lawful permanent resident status (“green card”), the main limitation on access to citizenship is getting status in an immigrant category and thereby becoming an LPR.

The citizens of Washington DC (or the other U.S. territories) don't have voting representation in Congress, but it isn't a potential for abuse.

The difference between H1B and permanent resident is massive. Residents aren't beholden on their employer to remain in the country.

When I had a friend deported for losing the lottery (she had a masters in a math related field) our friend group had a lot of discussions about the topic. Masters degrees can be gamed, and some people do get them simply because it gives them more time. But difficult degrees in industries that America needs (STEM was our initial thought) we should be encouraging people in those industries to stay with a green card or some extremely long visa that isn't just chance. Determining the fields would be the hard part.

PhDs on the other hand, regardless of the field, you've contributed something unique to the collective knowledge of humanity. Instant green card, it's even dumber to kick them out.

Green cards, also aren't citizenship but are simply a step to getting there. There are many types of visas that let you work but have stipulations, especially around leaving the country. If there really is some kind of fear of people collecting citizenship after spending decades in the country and becoming highly educated, special visas with rules are always an option. But there should be a viable path to citizenship either way. We should not be kicking these people out.

> PhDs on the other hand, regardless of the field, you've contributed something unique to the collective knowledge of humanity. Instant green card, it's even dumber to kick them out.

Depends on the field. I've met PhDs that are fantastic, and I've also met PhDs whose defining contribution to human knowledge over their entire lifetime was "I made this algorithm 2.3% faster in a specific tiny edge case that no one will ever care about."

>"I made this algorithm 2.3% faster in a specific tiny edge case that no one will ever care about."

That's pretty much what most research or even startups are like. You bet that 5% will blow up, and hence you fund the other 95%.

Because that is not how American immigration has traditionally worked. Many of us are from families that did not have the means to put someone through graduate school, they arrived as Irish orphans or with $8 in their pockets. The graduate student doesn't need the citizenship, the person with $8 in their pocket does. Imagine a world where the graduate student who is already guaranteed to be pretty successful AND the immigrant who came with $8 dollars have good lives. That's what America is about to me. That is why we limit immigration number by country (so more people have an opportunity) and promote familial immigration, not immigration of elites. If you want that system there are plenty of countries with golden visas, one right next door to the USA.

Because that would lead to an influx of an infinite number of people from a particular south asian country.

A solution to that would be tightening up admission requirements. But if universities deem that applicants are legit, there is no detriment to the supposed "influx" that you are pointing to. At that point, that's just the US drawing in trained labor force

So what?

They have to get accepted into a program and graduate and they have to have the funds to pay tuition. Then they'll work productively here and pay taxes. I can't think of any reason why this would be a bad thing except the bigoted "ugh, too many Indian people."

Absorbing educated people from other nations is an economic superpower.

How many white collar jobs do we actually need?

As many as can be absorbed without leaving blue collar workers (further) behind

> How many white collar jobs do we actually need?

More educated immigrants lead to more jobs and economic growth.

Where does this universal truth come from?

Various sources.

1. https://www.cato.org/blog/fiscal-impact-immigration-united-s...

2. https://www.aclu.org/other/immigrants-and-economy

3. https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-century/b...

4. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-e...

5. https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/immigra...

Because American's have chosen to have immigration opportunities spread among different countries and specifically written that into our system? Because I don't want a system that promotes elites that 'have the funds to pay tuition'? None of my grandparents could have afforded that high bar. If you have the funds, you don't NEED to immigrate as much as others do.

None of your grandparents would have made it to the US under the current system either (probably)

Lower ranked US universities will grant admission to anyone who can afford their fees. Majority of the people coming to the US are from tier 3/4 colleges in their home country. There are few states in this particular country that have consultancies submitting thousands of student applications. Everything is taken care of - from the application form filling to preparing SOPs and letters of recommendation. Always a good idea to understand the ground reality before jumping to conclusions.

US had that most of its history with European immigrants. Just show up and not be sick and feeble. Later they added a basic literacy test.

It's not exactly what you're talking about but there's a post degree completion extension for F-1 visas, and extension for that for masters/doctoral students that can extend the visa (iirc) for up to three years and allow one to work. I've known several people that transitioned from their F-1 OTP to H1-B. I've even known people who sought out masters programs to extend their student visa just to avoid returning to their home country due to political turmoil and violence.

But that said, you would make it more difficult for American citizens to attend American graduate degree programs that they subsidize with their taxes. There's a finite number of seats for students and I'm not sure if they're better filled with locals or people who want guaranteed permanent residency.

The majority of international students coming to the US are wealthy or from upper middle class families . Do you really want to shut out deserving people who cannot afford to study in the US . Or make the US similar to Vancouver, BC where all the wealthy elite moved and bought up all the businesses and real estate after working for a few years ?

Not for Masters degrees, undergrad yes, because you don't have a lot of scholarships, but for Masters degrees you have a good chance of getting an assistantship or a scholarship.

> Do you really want to shut out deserving people who cannot afford to study in the US

The parent poster did not say anything about stopping other avenues of immigration. Immigration is expensive. Do you think a lot of people who aren't privileged enough can easily immigrate?

This could dramatically increase the value of a degree for a foreigner. I'm curious what some of the effects would be--an increase in tuition rates for foreign students? A corresponding reduction in the number of US students who are able to get admission to US universities? Obviously some of these effects could be limited by regulation, if desired (i.e., universities could be restricted from admitting more than their allotted number of foreign students). Is it right to concede to the university our shared public power of granting residency?

> I'll never understand why we don't just staple green cards to master's degrees.

As someone who has interviewed and worked with a number of international students with master's degrees, approximately 70% of them somehow manage to get a master's from a US college without actually knowing anything, so my cynical side says we definitely should not automatically add green cards to master's degrees.

How similar is that 70% to US students though. It amazes me how little my friends in the last years of their CS major know about CS or software, so it doesn't surprise me at all if 70% of all masters holders know very little about what they studied.

Hard disagree.

The reason to give almost anyone working a tech job a green card quickly is so they don't depress the market wage by being indentured serfs.

The absolute worst thing the US could do to the Indian IT sweatshops is to give a "tech worker" a guaranteed green card in 18-24 months so that they can change employers. Those companies would quit applying for visas almost immediately.

> approximately 70% of them somehow manage ..

Need a source for this. I'm sure there are a vast number of master's students who get their degree from shitty colleges to just be able to work here, but the vast majority of international co-workers I've had were amazing.

It isn't shitty colleges, it's just cheating. I've seen it first hand with people that I personally know in CS masters programs

Then make VISAs an auction if the goal is maximum value extraction, not some weird arbitrary 'allow all X class (in your case master degree graduates) because they are of 'more value' for 'XYZ reason'. But that isn't the goal nor the will of the American people who have codified a system of ensure the chance for immigration is spread across the world. We are a nation of immigrants most of whom came with nothing. Our goal is giving that opportunity to others who need it. Plenty of countries offer 'golden visas'. If that is how one wishes to immigrate, one can move to one of them today.

The US offers permanent residency if you invest enough and create at least 10 jobs.

https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/gree...

> I'll never understand why we don't just staple green cards to master's degrees.

It can be easily gamed and would lead to a rise in education industry specifically for this.

I think the better would be to give a green card after getting a US degree in areas that matter to the economic growth, and the students have worked here, in those industries for 5 years.

> Obviously this was ripe to be gamed by shady staffing companies taking money from applicants for filing a petition and THEN finding a job later based on whichever staffing agency gets picked. It's not even illegal for multiple companies to submit a petition for the same person.

Here you go. There's a real position at FAANG for every petition they file (and if the petition doesn't get selected, there's a position at a subsidiary). Keep in mind that If I want to hire:

A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup OR

A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop [0]

my only path forward is H1! They'll both be listed as "computer related occupations" and apply for the same visa in the same quota. Does that make any sense to anyone?

Of course, my odds of getting a lottery spot for the former are dramatically lower, since we all know body shops and consulting firms won't hesitate to file 4-5 applications per seat they plan to fill out (so one can hopefully get a spot in the lottery and not get any RFE).

[0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...

Sincere question, why do you think HN tends to down weight discussion on Visas or immigration?

HN downranks any topic that attracts a high level of activity in a short space of time. Immigration is one topic that definitely does that.

it's funny because that's obviously what people want

then instead in top 5 there is some weird article about like "How I used my old CRT monitor to create a fish tracking app using radios" and some guy reply about some home project in 20 000 words no one really cares about

I personally prefer those sorts of topics to yet another entirely-predictable immigration "discussion"

I don't even mean about immigration. Layoff threads or economy threads also get a lot of comments fast

but for some reason those almost autistic special interest posts few care about is getting quite some upvotes

I did not really care about this before, but you just made the strongest case for the algorithm and now I'm glad it possibly* exists.

*I'm not sure how factual the algorithm claim is

You can watch it in action sometimes, with amusing results. Some very active posts do, in fact, vanish from the front page with surprising speed, whereas less-active posts can literally linger for days.

While your claim is plausible there is a lot of confirmation bias, among other biases, when it comes to our idea of what what see on a socially algo'd front page.

I'm not saying you are wrong but I'm saying my confidence starts quite low with this kind of idea. (e.g. the cause could be something different like manual moderation; the effect may just be confirmation bias and not exist; etc.)

Qualifier: I haven't looked into the algo at all, for all I know it could be openly published by YC/HN. I'm mainly responding because I feel like it is important to TRY to be self-aware of our own biases. Emphasis on the TRYing and asymptotically approaching 100% confidence (Qualifier to the Qualifier: it is also important to be at peace with decisions based on <100% confidence lol)

ProTip: You can browse news.ycombinator.com/active for the topics that become "too popular for the front page." I visit /active at least once a day to see what interesting articles I missed because the algorithm immediately buried them.

cool, thanks man

My most charitable explanation is that these topics do not lead to any novel discussions and instead creates flame wars between the pro and anti visa people for no benefit.

Because many of the companies funded by venture capital benefit from abusing those systems and this is a pro-venture capital site.

Also there maybe many individuals who are not pro immigration.

I think you’ll find the companies abusing the process are almost entirely staffing agencies or worse. Very few, if any, are venture funded startups. At every company I’ve worked at and hired for an H1-B is more work to hire and is treated no differently from a compensation perspective as compared to their US citizen peers.

The theory that HN is part of a vast conspiracy in the startup world related to H1-Bs is misguided.

>so they intentionally wreck the lottery system to invite bogus applications

USCIS has a conflict of interest as it is funded by the applicants. USCIS exists to fund USCIS, which means (applicants) x (fees). Everything that is wrong with immigration from the execution standpoint follows from that.

This is so sad to hear. During college and up to the present I have spoken with hardworking international students who are struggling to get H1B visa...

But is uscis depending on the extra revenue flow to fund other sections. Since uscis is not tax payer funded it’s fee funded. Just wondering

Yes but not just though the lottery. USCIS has massively increased visa filing fees, especially for employment, to fund application processing for other areas like asylum etc. which don't have any fees.

> My opinion - USCIS can't legally reduce H1B visas so they intentionally wreck the lottery system to invite bogus applications, who they can later reject, or they simply won't file a full petition, and they don't have to issue all the 85K H1B visas Congress has allowed.

USCIS merely follows the laws and rules. As with most things in the US, this is a Republican-created disaster.

In 2005 the Bush administration invented this system after the Omnibus Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005. Which was, to put it mildly, a shitshow. They gave members a few hours to read over 3000 pages of new laws and 9 new bills. No one had any idea what they were voting for and parts of the law weren't even properly drafted; only 2 bills had ever even been debated. It took nearly a week after voting for the actual text to come out.

USCIS still has a lot of leeway over how they adjudicate visa applications (both standards and the time duration) and this is used by the administration through political appointees to shape who and how many people they admit.

Post 2016, they dramatically increased RFEs (Request for Evidence) and slowed down visa processing for H1B visas and employment authorization (EAD) cards from a few weeks or a month to years. Many, many women lost their jobs because of that.

This is also primarily why they operate on paper and refuse to modernize.

They wasted hundreds of thousands of employment based green cards every year simply because they didn't bother to process applications on time from people waiting decades.

I’m not familiar with the 2005 bill, What part of the bill is bad in this context ?

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