I will repost my quick immigration quiz, for Americans/others who may be unfamiliar with what the typical visa process is for an immigrant:
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?
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.
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?
Still H-1B.
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.
Also while most people around the world can transition to green card from H1B, there is limit of 7% per national origin. Since India and China are large countries, their citizens often have to wait longer than anyone else in the national origin queue.
This has resulted into huge queue for Indian citizens. Any Indian who applies for employment based green card has to wait around 150 years to get his/her green card. Until then they have to keep renewing their H1B and subject to constantly changing laws. It is estimated that there are around 300K-500K Indians stuck in the backlog many of whom are in country for more than 10 years.
A lot of H1B rule changes by current admin are done specifically to target these individuals.
If they have a number or publications as you say, they may be eligible to apply for O-1 visa. I know a couple of people who received it and (in my opinion) got it for less than what you may think of as good technical merit
My understanding is that O-1 visas require very specifically tailored applications to qualify. (I too have heard stories of how moderate achievements are twisted/massaged to be pitched for the O-1 application, and worked.)
I know several brilliant new/junior professors who are nevertheless on the H-1B track. My point is that H-1B is far and beyond the default and most common visa for introducing foreign working talent, and others like O-1 and EB-1 are the rare, rare exceptions.
> My point is that H-1B is far and beyond the default and most common visa for introducing foreign working talent, and others like O-1 and EB-1 are the rare, rare exceptions.
EB-1 is an immigrant visa and, aside from being smaller in number than H-1B, was already halted along with immigration generally on April 22, and this order extends the immigration halt through December as well as adding a few nobimmigrant visa categories to the halt.
EB1 is not a visa, but a category to get green card. It stands for employment based, priority 1. Irrespective of how your green card application will be prioritized, you still need a visa. Typically, people under L1A (intra company managers), O1 visa get to apply for green card under EB1 and rest under EB2 or EB3.
> EB1 is not a visa, but a category to get green card. It stands for employment based, priority 1.
No, it stands for “Employment Based, First Preference”, and you can go tell U.S. Citizenship.and Immigration Services that it's not a visa, because they think it is.
Employment-Based Immigration: First Preference EB-1
[…] You may be eligible for an employment-based, first-preference visa if you are an alien of extraordinary ability, are an outstanding professor or researcher, or are a certain multinational executive or manager.
You can still apply for an EB-1/2/3 Green Card while on O-1 status and apply for Adjustment of Status. The consequence of it not being dual intent is that you can't travel with the pending I-485 until you obtain an Advance Parole document.
Ah, maybe I'm missing some subtleties. I was referring to "you're not supposed to have intent to immigrate on a X visa", which never seemed to matter as I personally applied for H1-B and a greencard while on a J1
Only ~20,000 O-1 visas were issued in 2019, compared to 190,000 H1B visas.
The reason for this is because the O-1 visa is significantly harder to qualify for. The same people who would expect would be in the running for an O-1 (master's and postdoctoral students) apply for an H1B, in large part because the bar for the O-1 is just that high.
It’s less than what you may think it is. It also highly depends on your lawyer, I know a couple of people who you may think may not qualify but their lawyers ended up writing a lot of stuff (not made up obviously, just lawyer like language that drags on) and they ended up getting the visa. Out of those one of them got an rfe but they still pursued on and qualified. EB1 on the other hand is far harder.
Thinking about it as an immigrant, just the same way as the H1B: why punt on it if it is this variable? And why even depend of this? The entire problem is that immigration isn't working as it is supposed to. If even this can be gamed, what's the point?
I suppose you're getting downvoted because people don't like the answer. O-1 visas are absolutely attainable. Look at the evidentiary criteria for O-1A visas: "Authorship of scholarly articles in professional journals or other major media," "Published material in professional or major trade publications or major media," "Authorship of scholarly articles in professional journals," and "Original scientific, scholarly, or business-related contributions" are among the qualifiers, and are natural parts of a career in these fields.
In fact, enumerating the criteria here is useless, because almost all of them pertain directly.
O-1 is hard as heck. Not only do you need a very strong publication record but you also need a history of doing things like serving on program committees for conferences.
I think the people that get the jobs as tenure track assistant professor at good research universities can usually qualify. At least the young professors I knew didn't have any issues. Graduate students and post docs are usually already doing those types of services now also.
False. All you need is to prove your “exceptional qualifications” and that you would improve the country by working here. There are a number of ways to do that and conferences is just one possible way
I'm a hiring manager at a FAANG company and exclusively hire PhDs. The very first question that I try to answer when looking at a candidate who can't get OPT is "can this person feasible get an O-1". Then I bring a resume to the lawyers. I have a lot of experience evaluating whether somebody can feasibly get an O-1.
Just having a publication record is not enough. It needs to be a strong record and you need to have strong ties to the academic community through things like program committees. I've sadly had to turn down a lot of people who would easily improve the country by working here because their publication record isn't enough to get an O-1 visa.
I know three people who got it and one of them I wrote reference for. If my recommendation (among other things ofc) is sufficient I assume it’s not impossible =) Also you need good lawyer as with many such things
It is certainly possible. The point is that it isn’t easy. “This person has published novel research in a top conference and has a PhD from an internationally recognized university” is not a guarantee.
Note that these are separate class of H1Bs. If Florida state hires you on cap exempt H1B you can probably move to University of California Irvine but not Google Inc.
Also, if I remember correctly not all non profits can do this, but only certain category of nonprofits hiring for specific roles. Otherwise I could start a non-profit software foundation, bring in workers and then write lots of free and open source software.
> 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?
> Still H-1B
Wait, really? I would think EB-1 would be the better route to take via the "Outstanding professors and researchers" qualifications, no?
The "American century" was largely built on the USA being the recipient of brain drain from the rest of the world. Brain drain from Germany alone, even just before the war, helped propel America to the top of the global game in science and technology. Germany was once the world's great physics powerhouse, and it passed that baton to the USA in part because many of those physicists were Jewish.
Actively trying to keep talent out to appease idiots who believe in the type of ideology all those great physicists were running away from is national suicide.
BTW, the rise of Xi Jinpeng is an incredible opportunity to absorb top talent from China, and we are squandering it by making ourselves inhospitable. Same goes for top talent who doesn't feel like swinging on Vladimir Putin's nuts.
> Same goes for top talent who doesn't feel like swinging on Vladimir Putin's nuts.
Putin's been around for a long time, mon ami. Those that didn't like him and could leave already have. There is a reason there are a lot of very expensive houses (that stay empty) in Vancouver.
Almost everyone I know have been talking about leaving and as time goes on the fraction that actually left is increasing. Changing the constitution would most likely accelerate the process.
In most markets, yes. But, you're actually competing for talent in markets like Bay Area or Seattle. So, if you're worthy enough, you'll have employers fighting for you.
You can get an O1 easily with your tenure track and publications. I know a bunch of people who have obtained an O1 with none of that.
There are more interesting stuff about US visas IMO. With a number of them, and if you come from countries like Poland, after a year in the US you have to stay away for 2 years before coming back to the US. With a number of visa your spouse also can’t work and is reduced to a stay-at home. Internships that want to be converted to FTE needs to try the H1B lottery also.
> Internships that want to be converted to FTE needs to try the H1B lottery also.
This is not true in general, assuming you're a student (since that's the usual situation for an internship). You can rely on CPT during school (with some bureaucracy), or OPT if you run out of CPT time.
that's if you got a master degree in the US. I was a student who came to the US to do an internship (on a J1) and had to get a H1B after my internship.
Apologies for misusing the term "immigration" to refer to the broader topic, but in any case H-1B is a dual-intent visa and is still the primary work-related route on the way to applying for a green card.
I suppose the big picture here is that pretending that the H-1B suspension is the big news for immigration kind of misses the point because:
(1) All actual immigration entry was already suspended since April 22.
(2) The present order adding suspension of some nonimmigrant visas through the end of the year also extended the general immigration halt to the end of the year.
You are mistaken. Only thing suspended for new green card applications. You apply for green card after you are in the country on one of these visas. A lot of immigration happens after people are in the US under H1B or L1 visa, not at the counsulates.
You are actually mistaken yourself. Green cards do not depend on non-immigrant status, being an immigrant visa. Thousands of people (at least 50000 DVs + CP EB and FB) get these visas, arrive to the country for the first time and become LPR without using any non-immigrant visa.
You are right.. I missed the diversity quota completely. It is not available for some and open for others. I had friends from West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago) come with green card.
Not just diversity, most immigrant visas can be obtained through consular processing (CP). You don't need to be in the US for any employment or family based immigrant visa. I am not a lawyer but I imagine only asylees need to actually be in the US for their greencards but they don't need a non-immigrant visa as well.
> Only thing suspended for new green card applications.
You don't apply for a “green card”, you apply for an immigrant visa. If you get and enter on an immigrant visa (including getting one while already present on another type of visa), you are then issued a permanent resident card (a “green card”, though it's not green.)
What was suspended April 22 is essentially all immigrant visas.
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.
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.
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.
I have spent 18 years in this country and am still on a H1 due to bad luck (was at a company that had layoffs which meant my GC application got audited) and terrible immigration laws (restricting green cards by country of birth). My friends who went to grad school with me are now citizens. Some folks that came on a L1 visa used a loophole to become citizens. And am still on a visa despite being valuable to my company and getting paid top dollar (top 0.5%). I can't make any long-term decisions (regretting my decision to upgrade my home 2 years back). My child is a US citizen and is old enough to realize that she wants to live here. Not sure why I have to be in this predicament. This is a rant. Not all H1-Bs are created equal. The law applies to everyone equally though.
Sorry, but your post has no information. I hope you have made some good dough. If push comes to shove, you may be able to move to Canada. FYI, I am in the exact same boat, but without kids.
But that's funny, as my mother immigrated from Europe in the 50's and the naturalization process was rather straightforward.
If you are referring to national immigration quotas then I agree that yes, it was quite unfair for awhile now.
It's just a bit odd. There wasn't even a hard physical border with Mexico until the 1920's.
There used to be a rather active workable "temporary farm worker visa" program that got sacrificed on the altar of pleasing xenophobic morons somewhere in the 70's or 80's I guess...
As a person that lived thru it, it was not xenophobia, it was NAFTA that sent everyone scrambling to survive. Our farm lost viability due to it, as did most small family farms. You either conglomerated with the emerging mega-farms if you where big enough or you died. Organic was nowhere on the horizon at that time and was the only thing that brought back the viability of small plot farming. Xenophobia is an easy answer to reach for, but the reality is people where scrambling to save their livelihoods and kicking the legs out from under the big conglomerates via removing the migrant workforce they relied on was one of the efforts. It has more to do with surviving than a disdain for other people. Also there was no love loss for the big conglomerates as they where the very entities that pushed for NAFTA, so trying to remove their workforce was fair game.
In the end I miss the family homestead but it worked out for me. I was a crappy citrus farmer (due to lack of passion) and while I appreciate my youth, I don't ever want to own a farm so I am glad my family got to reap the rewards of selling it, rather than me inheriting a farm that I would have to figure out what to do with.
NAFTA was in the 90’s. The cancelled visa program in the post you’re responding to was 10-20 years earlier.
The visas in question made it easy to legally hire foreign (mostly Mexican, I’d guess) agricultural workers. That would have reduced the cost of farming your family homestead.
Canceling the visas presumably encouraged many of those workers to accept lower wages to work farms in Mexico. The old visa program was effectively a subsidy for US farms; ending it created more competition for US farms. Arguably, it also made NAFTA more likely to happen, since it moved agricultural production from the US to Mexico, and people have to eat.
Suspending the H-1B and green card programs will have the same long term effect on the US tech industry.
Yes I understand that the finalization of NAFTA was years later but the seed of NAFTA was the immigration program the same players where lobbying for both and saw them as complementary legislation in a package of legislation they wanted passed. It did not reduce the cost of farming for my family because it was a family farm, any labor cost killed the economies of scale as we did not have the volume to compete. The reduction of return to noncompetitive levels started with the immigration visas and was completed with NAFTA, then the conglomerates turned around and picked up most of the viable land from the farmers NAFTA killed and then petitioned for more immigration reform, to reopen those combined tracts. As I said, I have no skin in the game, I did not want to be a farmer, but that is how it works and that is how it is done. You can argue that it has an overall net positive effect because it reduced the cost of goods and that is one way to look at it. But it came at the cost of consolidation a good deal of middle class land wealth into the hands of a few mega-corps.
In the US, basically everything is tied to employer: healthcare, retirement (though at least with 401ks they now float from employer to employer), etc.
I think this is primarily because there is now so much money in politics that only large corporations (or the rich in charge of same) have enough to participate in the political system.
Family reunification is generally considered a right, not a privilege, at least in the "civilized world".
The US switched to acting stingy, mean, xenophobic, etc. a few decades ago. I'm not sure why, as it has about 1/9th the population density of an India.
One could wax philosophical about "the end of the west" and how the influx of immigrants was needed to colonize the land up to the Pacific Ocean and feed the factories of our vast manufacturing sector, and clearly those motives both dried up.
I'm not sure where the whole "punish immigrants and treat them like garbage" concept came from.
I may sound extreme to some folks, but having some experience as an immigrant FROM the USA moving TO Europe after significant time lived abroad (50+ countries in a decade) I can honestly say that no country on earth is currently more xenophobic and snobby.
Someone will probably flag me for promulgating such views but it's the inexorable conclusion I've come to given my experiences.
> I'm not sure why, as it has about 1/9th the population density of an India.
I’m not sure why either, but I’d definitely like to maintain or even decrease that population density. I’m not sure why people focus on increasing population density as a good thing. It’s not like we have some sort of shortage of people.
I would like to provide a personal account as to how this has affected me. I am a U.S. citizen, and these draconian, ineffective, and political grandstanding policies have drastically changed my life. In short, I may need to leave my immediate family behind, my job, and restart in another country, almost by force because of these policies and the hidden policies, which are actually much worse than these official declarations.
I am engaged to a Chinese citizen, who is an active H-1B visa holder working for a U.S. technology company. We were visiting China in January to both see her family and friends and to do the yearly renewal of her re-entry visa. This latter point is important because it is a mind bogglingly inefficient process that forces people to travel back to their home country to renew a visa they already have and are using to live and work in the U.S. just so they can be able to leave and re-enter. This is just so the U.S. can have the possibility of keeping them out when they want for whatever reason, just as they have in this case.
Anyway, the U.S. Consulates shutdown during the outbreak in mid-January, halting her visa processing, needlessly in my mind because she had already accomplished her in-person interview. Then, the U.S. Consulate held her Chinese passport, which had valid visas to other countries, for over a month. This prevented her from going to another country and doing the visa processing there. (It is normally recommended to do the renewal in your home country, for reasons of being stranded wherever you're doing the renewal.) So the U.S. stopped processing her basically finished visa renewal, then held on to her non-U.S. passport preventing her to travel between two countries that aren't the U.S., and now they have kept her out of the country on the point of helping unemployed workers when she already has a job because she was the qualified candidate. This was all in January and February and some of March, long before the "official" bans on visas.
I have not seen my fiancee in over five months. It is unlikely I am to see her in 2020 and even 2021. I may eventually be able to travel to China to see her, but it is looking more and more that she will be unable to return to the U.S. any time soon. This is all complicated by the fact that her H-1B is time bound and the Green Card is a lost cause because it takes multiple years to be issued.
This is a person who already has a U.S. job that she was more qualified for than U.S. citizens. Just because people are unemployed doesn't magically make them qualified for jobs they already lost out on. It also is unclear what companies who already employ H-1B holders are supposed to do. There is no policy or method to get the fiancee of a U.S. citizen who already holds a valid H-1B back into the U.S. right now, and it's not clear when one will open up. It also makes no sense, from the very beginning, why the U.S. prevented her from returning at any point unless you understand that the U.S. is literally at war with China, immigrants, and non-immigrant workers.
All of this is vastly compounded by the inefficiencies, directed by our miserable administration, of the USCIS, because applying for a K-1 visa is not as straightforward as you would think. Even though the H-1B is a dual intent visa, applying for the K-1 visa could see the H-1B process incur delays or even denial. The U.S. government holds immigrants and non-immigrant workers hostage, and this is affecting U.S. business and citizens' personal lives. Right now, it is literally impossible to get someone who has a job in the U.S., has a current H-1B visa, a home, cars, and other assets in the U.S., is engaged to a U.S. citizen, and planned on immediately marrying a U.S. citizen after a "routine" vacation back into the U.S. any sooner than years. This is a pathetic situation.
I am a tech worker who has worked for technology companies and national security labs. I am now being forced to think about leaving my parents and brother behind in the U.S. to consider moving outside of the U.S. so that I can continue my life with my fiancee and build my own family.
People in this country wax on (whine) about freedoms, but what they are really wanting is to do whatever they want when they want it at the expense of literally anyone else but themselves, including their neighbor. It's nothing but extreme narcissism, and I cannot help but feel this country is a lost cause. The U.S. is an extremist state now, taken over by charlatans and textbook traitors.
A good friend of mine has a somewhat similar story. Originally from Germany, she is a visiting researcher at an American university on a J-1 visa. Her husband is a refugee in Germany, who is going through education there and working toward obtaining German citizenship this summer. She used to travel to Germany often to see him since he cannot visit her in the United States because of his citizenship (his country is on a list of countries whose citizens are banned from entering the United States). Her employment was under a two-year contract, which was renewed for another year. Now she needs to renew her J-1 visa, which means she needs to travel to a consulate in Germany to do it. The US embassies have suspended issuing these visas. Their website says the decision to issue an emergency J-1 visa is on a case-by-case basis. She applied for an appointment. The embassy did not see her case as "an emergency", so her application was denied. It all happened before the EO was issued yesterday, which exacerbated her stress even further. She cannot pack up and move things, like many of her books or furniture, for example, because the shipping of these things between the United States and the European Union has been suspended due to COVID-19, as far as I understand it. She doesn't have a job in Germany and jobs in academia are hard to come by these days. And academia is not quick processing job applications. It can take months or even a couple of years before a decision is made. She cannot continue working on her book, which hurts her chances of employment in the future. So she is stuck in the US, where at least she can continue to work. He is stuck in Germany. They haven't seen each other in months.
My experience is similar if not worse. I came back to China for wedding this Jan and the wedding got cancelled because of the pandemic. Around mid Feb, US announced travel ban for Chinese. My wife went back to US with a still valid visa before the ban became effective, and I need to wait for new stamp. You already know what happened next. And now with this new EO, I'm not sure when we can reunite. We were students from top universities and now are hired by top companies, not sure how we became a risk to US labor. I've always been reminding myself this is not my country, yet I'm not fully prepared for the huge disruption this caused to my life.
Actually a majority of the (popular) vote did go to his opponent, but because of historical vagaries that majority didn't translate into a win for his opponent.
I have a similar story. I am on an H1b with an EB1 approved petition for a Green Card. I am presently waiting for my priority date to be current for the GC to be issued. My wife who was on an H4, had to leave the US in March and got stuck in India, where US consulates have shut down. Then the travel ban hits, followed by the latest executive order which means she can't come back till at least the end of the year.
Even worse, the priority date for EB-1 India, where I am from, jumped nearly 11 months forward in 1 month, and my priority date is just 7 months behind. If I end up getting a GC before she is able to come back, we'll have to go through an entirely separate process to get her GC, which will take at least 1-2 more years.
The only option seems to be to wait for the GC for a few more months, and then move to a different country so we can be together and start anew. We will then have to start the process of getting her GC and deal with all the paperwork that entails, assuming laws don't change again. Who knows, in this time maybe we'll just end up living in the new place for good.
Both of us have PhDs from a top engineering school, own a house, and have lived in the Bay Area for the past 15 years. The chaos this is creating is mind boggling.
It doesn't make sense to anyone but the U.S. government. It gives them the right to deny the renewal or re-entry for any reason and then say "too bad, you're in your home country, so our hands are washed of the situation."
You must renew your visa in your home country. There is a possibility of doing it in another country, such as Canada, but this is not usually recommended and has a higher probability of failing.
Mind you, these are people that already have visas. They are simply being renewed. The secondary effect of this is that it slows down processing of visas, which lowers how many are given out and increases the cost of the USCIS. Although I think this particular thing has existed for a while now, the Trump administration has made it a point to needlessly increase the processing time by making policies to delay the processing. This is a tactic that further slows down the USCIS, making it much more costly, just so that they can point out how costly and inefficient the USCIS is when it is their policies that make those things worse.
For example, if you make an application for an H-1B, extension, or renewal, it takes months to prepare the paperwork. Once submitted, the USCIS can send it back, requesting more information. This has become much more common under the Trump administration, because it basically adds a minimum three to six month delay to the process. It gets sent back to the applicant, one must extremely carefully understand the confusing request for more information, provide the information, and resubmit. The USCIS then starts the whole evaluation process back over again.
You mentioned a number of times that the visa has to be renewed in your home country.
I don’t think that’s correct. Although often it’s considered advisable to do it that way (consular processing), there is an alternative process (change of status) where you apply while remaining in the US.
(source: renewed an L-1A visa a few years ago; advice received from my firm’a immigration attorneys)
My knowledge comes from immigration lawyers, sponsoring companies, and H-1B holders themselves, all of which spend tens of thousands of dollars on these things. They would have had to miss something, which I doubt, so it's a bit presumptuous of you to say it is incorrect. I am talking about the re-stamping process in which you are able to leave the U.S. and come back, so maybe I used the wrong words. As far as I understand, if you never do this stamping process, you can just stay in the U.S., never leaving while your H-1B remains valid.
The process is so overly complicated, it's hard to track. I am not aware of any process in which you can re-stamp an H-1B inside the U.S. You meed to do an in-person interview, and these are done at U.S. Consulates and Embassies, none of which are inside the U.S.
Of course, it's difficult to quickly find the information on the official U.S. websites, but here are sites that explain it.
yes you are right. You eventually need a visa label as soon as you abroad.
Upon renewal even the most trivial thing can be used with no transparency or accountability or review and keep you out of the country for life. Bam. Can't get back home, stuck in India, everything left behind. That's it. I know because I've had several clients lives ruined by thus lunacy.
Change of status won't give a visa "stamp". That will be needed to get out and get back in. Visa stamps are only issued from consulates outside the US and are subject to vagaries of
weather patterns and cosmic radiation.
OK, but that happens only once in the first six years in the U.S. for an H-1B doesn't it?
Initial visa issuance (for three years) will be at a consulate abroad by definition, and then one more visit to get the extension stamped (for the next three years).
My experience of the whole process was much less dramatic than many here. I was advised to budget for a week out of the country (for consular processing of an L-1A extension), and it ended up taking rather less.
Is the real problem after the six year term when extensions are done on a year-by-year basis for those with pending labor certification or backlogged priority date for an immigrant visa?
Visa stamp's term depends on the country: it's reciprocal to the equivalent visa Americans get from that country. If an equivalent visa for an American is 1 year then the citizens of the country get 1 year visa to the US as well. If it's 10 years - same thing (obviously not applicable to H1B since its max term is 3). Visa fees are following the same rule, foreigners are charged the same their country charges Americans (and it's free if Americans get free visas there).
Having said that, the story from the OP does not add up: you don't need to renew the visa stamp to stay in the country. The stamp is for crossing the border. I, for one, never renewed my H1B stamp since I did not have a need to leave the country. If I were to leave, I'd just go to a consulate and get a new stamp to get back so having visas stamped only outside of the country does not appear as such a hurdle - you only need the stamp if you are already abroad.
> Having said that, the story from the OP does not add up: you don't need to renew the visa stamp to stay in the country. The stamp is for crossing the border.
My story does add up. We needed to leave the U.S. to visit China, and we also visit Canada sometimes, hence necessitating the stamping process to take place at a U.S. Consulate in China. And it was this process that ended up being indeed a massive hurdle. In fact, so massive it is a major part of what kept my fiancee from returning. This is one of the cruxes of the story.
>We were visiting China in January to both see her family and friends and to do the yearly renewal of her re-entry visa.
sounds like the renewal per se was a goal of your visit. If you are saying that you went to visit China and had to get a new visa stamp because the current one expired then it indeed adds up.
It is both. There is a dependency in the sense of us going to China necessitated her getting the stamp. But if she wants to leave the U.S. to any country, Canada for example, and return to the U.S., then she needs to go back to China to do the stamping process to enable that. So it's basically required unless you want to just stay in the U.S. for multiple years straight, which is unlikely for international people and also for people in general that like to travel.
> OK, but that happens only once in the first six years in the U.S. for an H-1B doesn't it?
No. At least for Chinese citizens, it is either every year or every two years that you must renew the stamp to be able to leave the U.S. and return.
I would advise not trying to dilute the impact of the rules just because you don't know or didn't experience them yourself. You aren't mentioning the country you are from, which also confuses the matter. These things change depending upon the origin country.
As far as I can tell, this makes no particular difference to anyone currently in the US or who has a currently valid visa. It does not restrict issuance or renewal of visas on its face, only entry into the US based on as-yet-unissued non-immigrant visas in the relevant classes.
Most Big Tech companies have offices in other rich countries like Britain or Canada.
You will have a ridiculously high salary rather than a garangutan SV salary, but it's worth not getting stuck in a Bay Area traffic gridlock every day while worrying about whether you'll be allowed to go back to the country after renewing your H1-B.
Years ago made the decision to stay permanently the European Big Tech office which I was going to stay temporarily, and I'm much happier for it.
Money is not comparable to peace of mind. With a stable government ( like under Obama or even Bush), you can assume that your visa is safe and will be handles in a logical way. Now its just gambling.
What's the upside? Paying 1/4 of your salary for low-grade healthcare with a $10k deductible?
Getting treated like a second class human being by even "liberal minded" folk simply due to an accent and the lack of hip phrasology "like, I KNOW! I CAN'T EVEN, OMG"
Being kept at arms length for decades even after putting enormous amounts of money in escrow and submitting piles of paperwork just to get the slightest hope of a visa appointment at your local US consulate, let alone entering the Green Card Lottery?
It's over-rated, over-ripe, and the "Land of Opportunity" is now the "Go away, we have self-inflicted problems we will likely blame you for" land.
Flag this if you want, but I have direct personal experience in many many countries and I come from the states, so I'm not talking out of my behind. We are the meanest country on earth right now.
That's why I left.
(well, actually it was the Iraqi invasion, Guantanamo Bay, and the ongoing activities in central Asia coupled with the new-speak that even the Dem-aligned rags were pushing, NYT, WaPo "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and wars on emotions and such... but see, this is related: it's about being mean and making others pay with their lives for ones ideological comfort zone, etc.)
I understand your concerns, although there is some hyperbole.
I was just pointing that the reason a lot of skilled h-1bs still come and stay despite the issues is because the salaries at some companies are just really damn good compared to what they'd make at their home countries.
I find it funny that there is a cap to how many software software engineers could get to the US, but not how many domestic employees or nannies you could take. Hell, you can bring nannies as an H1B.
I agree. Noped out of staying in the US last year even after finally getting an H1B in my third attempt. All the dollars in the world aren't worth it if I have to leave at any random point just because a politician wanted to pander to his base, or I get laid off for any reason, or <insert any random twist of fate here>.
The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them. This is mainly an image issue; in the Obama years, even though it was probably as bad as this today (just not overt), the risk-reward ratio of surviving all this was viewed as better than going somewhere else. All this changed with Trump being this transparent. There is going to be a lot of hesitation now for anyone who wants to immigrate. Anywhere except the US, and only if necessary.
> The only way this nonsense will change is when more people who do have other options take them.
Since getting them to do that is literally the purpose of the nonsense currently being executed, and which has been executed against immigrant and nobimmigrant aliens for the last several years, I think you are mistaken. It's not like that's been at all a secret.
You're exactly right, this is what I mean when I talk about the current government being this transparent. Immigrants tend to think of the risk-reward scenario, and a lot depends on image and perspective in their heads.
This image now is a lot nearer to reality than it previously was. When this leads to people not having US-citizen children, or not buying houses, or just not jumping on the boat to reach the US come what may, or just not being too optimistic in general (essentially not tying yourself to a country when the country hasn't done the same with you in terms of citizenship), things will maybe get a bit more sane.
Sorry I disagree. The decision to make it a temporary visa has to be based on the employer's decision to continue their employment and not some politician's whim. Going by your logic, no one should be optimistic in life because the government could do some random thing and ruin your life. Tomorrow, if Trump decides that the dollar is worthless, you'll not be saying that 'Ah well, I shouldn't have been too optimistic in life'.
I never said to not be optimistic; I said to not be too optimistic. On personal level, immigration decisions and everything that comes after needs to be tied to reality and consider what could happen in the future, including all the nasty stuff. You need to consider all realistic scenarios, including all the political, financial and personal issues and shenanigans which can crop up. As the above poster said, none of this is new.
> has to be based on the employer's decision to continue their employment and not some politician's whim
While everyone here would love for this to happen, clearly nothing's working as it should be, or how we want it to be. It hasn't been, for quite a while. This is realpolitik.
That's not the reality of H1B. The reality of H1B is a recruiting industry completely dominated by Indian headhunters, who submit only Indians and not native U.S. citizens to their corporate clients. Followed by Indian H1B recipients then moving into two or three bedroom apartments they share with 10 - 15 H1B visa recipients, everyone splitting the rent and utilities, and sending the majority of their cash back to India.
U.S. workers in the engineering and technical disciplines cannot compete with H1B visa applicants who are submitted at probably 30% market rates and wages, and openly discriminate in the work place if you're the token white dude U.S. citizen working in the same office. H1B is miserable, corporate welfare for Zuckerberg and Bezos.
As an Indian on H-1B, most of your views are correct, except 30% market rate. Discrimination is there, but not rampant, or significant. There are pockets of discrimination in bigcos.
Some of this has some merit, but Zuckerberg and Bezos are actually paying the same salaries... 24 year olds making in excess of $200K, and senior engineering roles $300-$400k, with Amazon on the lower end. These aren’t 10 people living in one apartment to send all their money to India. That part of your post is misinformed.
but with h1b you aren't getting the same employee though. You are getting an employee who doesn't have much freedom to switch his job, doesn't have leverage to negotiate a raise, cannot say no to overtime requests.
I would def hire an H1B even it costs me upfront premium for those reasons.
FB, Amazon, etc are not having H1Bs work any more hours than other employees. If you’re already paid $300K+ before you’re 30, I don’t think you’re being abused if you ask for a raise and the employer says no, but in any case, these companies have stringent promotion processes. It’s not based on your visa or residential status. These conspiracies may be real at the IT recruiting companies that farm talent from India, but FB, Amazon, Google, MSFT are actually going after top hires. They’re hiring H1Bs because a lot of Americans don’t pass the interviews. The technical bar is high... now whether you agree on that style of leet code interviews is another topic entirely.
No they cannot, this causes issues with their perm processing. You need to find an employer that can sponser your greencard otherwise you are out of country in 6 yrs. So you not just have find an employer that will transfer your h1b but also pick up perm processing from your previous employer.
It is far far far away from 'freely'. Given the arbitrary nature of uscis processing people try to minimize their iteraction with the agency. No visa employee will attempt this risky move for a 10k salary bump.
You just need one perm and 140 approval. And most companies are ready to start processing your green card in 3-6 months after you start at the latest. It is not as convenient as getting up tomorrow and walking away. But, it is definitely not as dire as you seem to be.
I don't know the truthfulness of the claim but I've spoken with several colleagues on H1B and they were all very reluctant to take any risks due to their visa status. But I also know others who have gone on to change companies for the better.
US tech workers are making a fortune and I don’t think I’ve ever worried about my job being replaced by someone from India. I don’t even have a college degree.
Your recent comments have been breaking the site guidelines past the point of vandalism. I'm taking that as an indication that you don't want to use HN as intended, so have banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
YC is fucking bullshit, what is a flagged post? This has upvotes, not downvotes, but based on "flagged post" this doesn't show up unless I login?
My post again, and stop flagging it you angry H1B workers that leave 20 pairs of shoes outside of your hovel:
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There is no question H1B visa holders can escalate through the ranks and make a bunch of cash in the United States.
And that's exactly what is wrong with the entire thing. That entire teams of Indian H1B visa holders will immediately get whitey off the project, every single time, while making sure that the hiring manager and technical team leads are always Indian. This is the caste system, re-invented here the U.S. And you cannot get shit done if you are a competent engineer dealing with an offshore team or onshore H1B team. They will not do what you tell them to do. They will argue about every single point. They will trash your credibility and refuse to implement anything, using groupthink that controls the entire project. Managing a team of onshore H1B workers is nothing but interoffice politics that they completely control in all aspects. It's blatantly racist and has destroyed U.S. worker opportunity in the engineering fields, all of them.
H1B is a complete scam, especially in the Beltway / Northern Virginia area where everything is a billable contract. Headhunters get their fee and/or a large chunk of the first year's hourly revenue. The company hiring the H1B worker is on some federal project or grant and is making the spread between what the headhunter charges and the hourly rate on the contract. The hiring company couldn't give a shit less about the quality of work provided by Indian H1B workers, nor is a college degree granted from an Indian university anywhere near what is required in the U.S. from an engineering perspective - there is no comparison in the quality of education, nor have I ever met a single H1B engineer that was better than anything but a limited segment of technology that they specialize in, by design, because that requires their team in order to complete the project.
Makes total sense if you're the headhunter and hiring company, both of whom only care about having a warm body in a seat that is billable, and you can get three warm bodies in the seat for the price of one market rate position using H1B. It's complete bullshit, a scam on the taxpayer and attack on U.S. workers. Worthless 99% of the time, and the 1% of H1B engineers that actually do know what they are doing are not worth the damage the H1B program has done to the entire U.S. technical space.
This would have been more moving five or six years ago. Now though, after years of petulant "deal with it" politics from racists on the left, cry me a river.
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.
> A lot of people are bemoaning this move from the viewpoint in the Valley.
Even from the Valley perspective, the picture is more nuanced.
Business leaders from the Valley are fully aware of H-1B restrictions on job mobility and take plenty of advantage of it. Particularly the fact that the huge GC backlogs for employees from India and China allows a version of indentured servitude they can take advantage of.
After the 2014 State of the Union address there were plans[1] to provide EAD[2] to people on Greencard backlogs, allowing them to switch jobs with less friction. This was torpedoed by Tech business leaders. Also, notice how little attention Tech leadership puts on Greencard backlogs (and the H4 kids who will age out) and contrast that against the crocodile tears they shed for DACA, Muslim ban etc.
> who have very limited mobility in the job market
The solution to that problem is to relax immigration restrictions to make it easier for immigrant workers to switch jobs so they have more leverage. Not go the other direction and further torture immigrants by making their lives harder.
H1-B visas are for highly skilled workers, either holding higher education diplomas or similar qualifications. They also come with a minimum salary requirement, which for most tech companies would start at $150,000.
Any company paying their visa holders less than the required minimum salary cap, is indeed committing a crime.
Also, this move is obviously directed against tech companies. It does not make any distinction between large IT providers such as TATA, well known for their dumping tactics, and Microsoft, Google, or Apple.
I would even go further to say that, given the lack of interest in banning the entry of seasonal workers, who focus mostly on blue collar jobs, and given that the highest contribution to the rising unemployment numbers come from lower paid service and manual jobs, this is just another move to appeal to the rural, hard right wing Trump base.
As it will not impact them in any significant manner, yet it would create more uncertainty in wealthier, highly educated, urban areas.
> They also come with a minimum salary requirement, which for most tech companies would start at $150,000.
While I understand that my company is cheating the system, this particular requirement is news to me. I personally work with dozens who are probably taking home something in the $70-80K range. I'm guessing this particular cheat is that most are working through Tata and Infosys (and others, but they're local, and would give away who I work for). The company is probably paying the placement firm that kind of money, and the visa holders are getting shafted. The direct H-1B's are higher-level, and, given what I know of the company's salary schedules, may well be getting paid at the bottom of the requirement.
This is what Google has to say about "H1B minimum salary":
"The H 1B also requires that the H-1B employer pay the H-1B employee the prevailing wage or the actual wage, whichever is higher. The prevailing wage is the salary paid to workers in similar occupations in the geographic area of the intended employment. The actual wage is the wage that the employer pays employees in similar occupations at the location of the intended employment.. Since the procedures and record keeping required for the H-1B are complex, an attorney or other trained person will be necessary to complete the paperwork."
Any tech company, and I'm excluding consultancy companies like Tata or Deloitte here, would have their foreign workers coming to cities where other talent is already available, e.g. Boston, New York, San Francisco.
Given that H1-B visa holders are required to be paid a prevailing wage, hiring companies should not be able to undercut local workers' demanded salary.
Now, consultancy companies aren't following the spirit of the law here, obviously, and thus should be punished. Instead, we have got an order that hurts thousands of legitimate visa holders and prospects.
I work for a large tech company (not FAANG), am a visa holder myself. If the Trump administration wanted to go against the actual issue, they would take on the obvious abusers, i.e. consultancy companies. Instead, they chose to leave thousands of high skilled workers on the limbo.
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.
I'm an American citizen with a Canadian wife and would love for more companies to have offices in Canada. We would definitely move if the job market was better compared to California.
I live in Vancouver and ~1/2 of my salary goes to rent. In Seattle, my rent was ~1/3 of my salary. I don't think Canada is even beginning to compete in terms of Salary.
I live in Vancouver a 30 minute commute from west end downtown in a four bedroom detached house in a reasonably nice neighbourhood and rent it for 1/5 of my salary. And my housing options are quite limited because I have two big dogs.
One data point does not prove or disprove. If you look at average cost of living numbers compared to average developer salaries, my ratio is much closer to the picture those paint than yours.
This is certainly true if you insist on living a 10 minute walk to your office downtown. But there's plenty of cheaper options just a 30-45 minute train/bus ride away (can't speak to biking or driving).
This isn't true of Vancouver and I'm not sure why.
That's a fair point: Vancouver suffers from many of the same problems as other west coast cities around not enough housing being built.
I was only considering my lifestyle in Toronto, where we have similar problems but not to the same scale. Toronto is less afraid to build up! Last I heard there were something like 50+ buildings over 50 stories under construction in the city.
When I last visited Toronto (which was some time ago -- 2012), I was struck by not just how much the city was building up, but by how far out from the city center was building towers. Most of the towers were along the lake, and near a highway, but I didn't see much in terms of rail-based public transit or nearby office towers (basically everything being advertised was residential units), so I have two questions:
- How full are those buildings?
- Are there significant traffic issues from induced commutes?
Anything you save on rent you're spending on income tax. I love living here but for Silicon Valley types who only care about money it's a terrible choice.
> Anything you save on rent you're spending on income tax.
Have you seen California state tax rates? The SALT deduction limits from the 2018 "tax cut" bill have only made the calculus worse. And anything you save on income tax, you (or your employer) will spend on health insurance.
Someone living in California or Ontario will have almost the same effective tax rate (like within 2-3 percentage points) for a given salary.
I mentioned in another post that I am a big proponent of moving to Canada, but I have my eyes wide open. Canadian salaries do not even come close. Also, I have filed taxes in CA for 12 straight years. The tax burden gets diluted by a lot of different factors like deductions, mortgage deductions, tax credits etc. In 2018, I took my total $$$ paid to Fed + CA and divided over total income and effective rate was only 28%. The top rate in CA is 9% which is a progressive rate. Effective rate is actually close to a flat 5%
> In 2018, I took my total $$$ paid to Fed + CA and divided over total income and effective rate was only 28%
Do you mind plugging in the same income to https://simpletax.ca/calculator for Ontario, use $26500 of RRSP deduction and see your effective rate? In this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23618074) I showed that an income with 30% effective rate in California has a 35% effective rate in Ontario. Higher? Yes. A lot higher? IMO, no.
Here's an article from Canada's most respected business and finance paper breaking it down.
Don't forget that cost of real estate/rent in Toronto or Vancouver is not significantly cheaper than SF, salaries are lower, cost of living expenses (food, car insurance, clothes, electronics, cellphone plans, etc) are higher and you're still going to want to carry supplemental health insurance because OHIP does not cover everything.
Marginal tax rates can be misleading, especially because (as the linked article itself states) they apply to different levels of income.
Effective tax rates provide a clearer picture. Let's take one example.
I plugged in $200k (CAD 270k, admittedly quite high for Ontario) of income to a California[1] and Ontario[2] tax calculator.
For California, I used the following: "Filing status - Single, 401k deductions - $19k". Effective tax rate: 30%.
For Ontario, I assumed CAD 26.5k in RRSP deductions. Effective tax rate: 35%.
> cost of real estate/rent in Toronto or Vancouver is not significantly cheaper than SF
Buying isn't cheaper. Renting is still significantly cheaper (at least by 1/3).
> salaries are lower
This is true.
> cost of living expenses...are higher
Cellphones and internet, yes. Everything else (yes, even milk and dairy products if you shop at Costco) is comparable to US prices.
> you're still going to want to carry supplemental health insurance
Most employers provide this. And vision/dental is far cheaper than paying for everything.
I'm not saying you'll end up with more money if you live in Canada. I just want to point out that many of the fears of "higher taxes" and "higher CoL" may be a bit overblown.
5% of 270k CAD/200k USD is 10k USD. That's not an insignificant amount of money.
Sales tax is higher here, 13% in Ontario vs ~7% in CA (varies by county or something weird).
Things really are more expensive. Grab any book off your shelf and look at the Canadian and American MSRP, notice how it's still more expensive in Canada after accounting for currency conversion. Gas is more expensive. Alcohol and cigarettes are more expensive. The list goes on and on.
Off the top of my head the only things I can think of that I know to be cheaper in Canada are maple syrup, propane and lumber.
>Most employers provide this. And vision/dental is far cheaper than paying for everything.
Most employers provide it in the states as well, but it's still money they spend on you instead of paying to you. Insurance needs to cover less here, but it is needed for much more than vision and dental. The biggest one I can think of would be prescription medications, there are more but I don't feel like grabbing a policy book off my shelf.
>Buying isn't cheaper. Renting is still significantly cheaper (at least by 1/3).
I haven't gone into any great detail verifying this but I doubt it is true. What cities and neighbourhoods were you comparing?
Again I love my country but moving to a major Canadian city from a major American as a way to save money is a foolish idea.
> moving to a major Canadian city from a major American as a way to save money is a foolish idea.
Please read my entire comment again. I did write "I'm not saying you'll end up with more money if you live in Canada."
But people hear "Canada has higher taxes" and assume it's like 20+ percentage points higher, not 5 percentage points higher.
> Gas is more expensive.
Not really. It's the equivalent of USD 2.81/gal at a Toronto Costco[1]. It's $2.75 at the Sunnyvale Costco (cheapest gasoline) right now.[2]
> What cities and neighbourhoods were you comparing?
2 bedroom in Downtown Vancouver - $3250 (presumably CAD, which is ~USD 2400)[3]
2 bedroom in Mountain View - $3600 [4]
Same thing for Toronto.
> Alcohol and cigarettes are more expensive
Uh...don't smoke? It's expensive for your health too :-P. Yeah Ontario and BC liquor laws seem to be stuck in the 1940s sadly. But alcohol isn't usually a major component of most folks' household spending, so it's hardly a budget-killer.
>2 bedroom in Downtown Vancouver - $3250 (presumably CAD, which is ~USD 2400)[3]
This is one of those instances where things get lost in statistics without local knowledge. West Vancouver (part of downtown) is a very nice area a person who makes 200k USD would be happy to live. The Downtown Eastside (also a part of downtown), a short walk from West Vancouver, is littered with used 'insulin' needles, aggressive panhandlers and crime. Mountain View is a suburb (70k pop), Vancouver (700k pop) is the hub the suburbs extend from.
>Not really. It's the equivalent of USD 2.81/gal at a Toronto Costco[1]. It's $2.75 at the Sunnyvale Costco (cheapest gasoline) right now.[2]
Trust me man, gas is more expensive. Look at averages, not the lowest available price at any given time. There are times when you get lucky but overall it is more expensive. The divide gets larger when the commodity price of oil is higher (unlike right now).
Ok, then Burnaby[1]. I visited Vancouver last year, and stayed there. It's quite nice, also a suburb, and a short train ride into Vancouver. You can have a 2-bedroom for CAD 2900.
I think you're underestimating how insanely expensive renting in the Bay Area is.
> Look at averages, not the lowest available price at any given time.
I compared prices from the same outlet (Costco) in different locations. That's as apples-to-apples as you can get.
I made two visits to Canada last year, and bought gas at random (non-Costco) outlets. At no point did it feel significantly more expensive than California prices - I converted in my head every time I filled up.
Gas is extremely cheap in Texas, compared to California (and also Canada).
> I made two visits to Canada last year, and bought gas at random outlets. At no point did it feel significantly more expensive than California prices - I converted in my head every time I filled up.
This is another point. Canada is a huge place, where gas prices vary wildly even within provinces. Gas in north Ontario is often much more expensive than south. Sometimes the price in St. Catherines is 20 cents cheaper than gas in the GTA because of the 'gas wars' their stations are famous for.
> I compared prices from the same outlet: Costco. That's as apples-to-apples as you can get.
You can cherry pick information to say whatever you want. You compared a single daily station price in Vancouver to a single daily station price in CA. Costco also requires a membership and they use cheap gas to lure people in, it's not a traditional gas station (though I may look into a membership now...). This is also a time in history when gas is unusually cheap. I suggest you look at averages. There is good reason for the price difference. Although Canada produces a lot of crude, we refine almost none of it so we import pretty much all of the finished product.
That money you're saving on the apartment in Vancouver vs Mountain View basically works out to that 10k USD extra you would spend on tax you worked out earlier as well (but of course you would not make anywhere close to the same salary in Vancouver or Toronto).
If you want to move to Canada I encourage you to do so, it seems like you would be happy if you did. But to go back to my original point, if you move to a major Canadian city from a major American one with purely financial motivations, you will be sorely disappointed.
> Don't be so sure I won't. We should hang out then, since we both like arguing about inconsequential stuff online for way longer than is healthy :-P
Lol, I meant that sincerely. You should do it if it's what you want to do. Life is short, if you want something don't wait. If not now, when. Cheers buddy.
You can get 1 bedroom apartments for 1700 a month in SunnyVale. Far less if you have a roommate or significant other. Even entry level software engineers at FANNG making 180k+ can easily afford that.
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.
It's a simple process:
- Actively court American companies to set up shop in EU
- The global market is filled with tech workers who would otherwise be sucked in by the US. Give them visas.
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.
EU can have the pie too while the US shoots itself in the foot.
>Actively court American companies to set up shop in EU
They have already been doing that pretty actively for quite a while. Doesn't seem to help much, if at all. Have you seen how much those American companies are paying to their employees in the EU? It is a joke compared to how much they pay in the US, and even with that in mind, their pay is still well above local equivalent companies. And it isn't due to differences in cost of living, just take a look at how much FB London pays (yes, I am aware that UK is not a part of EU, but the point still stands; I just simply picked one of the biggest "hub" cities in the are with very high COL).
>The global market is filled with tech workers who would otherwise be sucked in by the US. Give them visas.
EU doesn't suffer from a lack of talented individuals who have a desire and skills to start their own tech company. There have been countless discussions on this topic on HN, and the hard truth is that the governments in EU are simply not providing a conductive environment for those tech startups to flourish into internationally known giants. And the whole EU fragmentation due to wildly different legislations and language/culture barriers on a per-country basis isn't helping the matter either.
Anecdotal data, but you are wrong. If you count total comp FB London pays waaaay more than British tech companies and pretty much anything outside of high finance. The salaries aren't that much lower from what you'll get in Silicon Valley.
From my experience, my colleagues in Seattle make about twice as much as I do in the UK. Raw numbers, not counting taxes, cost of living, etc. In general a new hire in US can make as much as a senior in EU.
Comparing income between countries is very difficult due to a lot of factors (different currency, cost of living, taxes, social benefits like health and education...) but I don't think is hard to argue that tech workers are paid much better in the US than they are in the EU, factoring everything in.
Also just because Seattle gets more, does that mean its not worthwhile to have higher wages in UK? What kind of reductionist point of view is this?
It has been clearly observed that the standards of living and wages have gone up in countries that have invested in tech over last 20 years. These countries are USA, India, China and Canada recently. Don't you want higher than what you are getting now? Make it easy for industry to survive and operate there.
Not if that means they have to move everywhere (which only big tech can afford), and not if the EU continues to be a bad environment for startups to flourish. The best talent will be underpaid or scattered, which is the point.
>If you count total comp FB London pays waaaay more than British tech companies and pretty much anything outside of high finance.
I am in agreement with you here. Even with the abysmal FB London compensation (compared to heavy majority of tech companies in SV/Seattle/Austin/NYC), it is still way higher than local equivalent tech companies. This just reinforces the point I was making in my previous comment.
>The salaries aren't that much lower from what you'll get in Silicon Valley.
They are much lower than in SV/Seattle/Austin/NYC, if you count total comp (which is what majority of people in tech actually count, because the base cash pay becomes less and less relevant the higher you get promoted). And that's not even mentioning taxes and such being much lower in the US(no state income tax in Seattle/Austin at all, for example, only federal).
P.S. on my last point, there is no need to bring up insurance costs that don't come included with lower taxes in the US, as majority of tech companies in the US provide amazing insurance coverage for pretty much no extra charge.
Another issue in the EU is that they try to generalise the term "startup" to non-tech ventures... and then try to apply the advice meant for 80% margin B2B SaaS companies.
Unless they make a serious commitment, open large offices (a la HQ2) and ensure proper employee career progression, workers overseas will still suffer from the "satellite office effect".
Managers will deny it but from my experience and anectdata career opportunities are simply much better in the main offices. Colleagues in sister teams in the US work on more interesting projects, and get promoted 2-3 times more. Unless I'm convinced I'll have the same career opportunities here I could in the US, staying won't be a long term option.
>Actively court American companies to set up shop in EU
Hate to say it, but you're wrong. American tech companies are American companies, run by Americans with American consumers in mind. What you need to do is figure out why Europeans are using American sites rather than European alternatives (where those exist).
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.
I think it will be a unfortunate denouement for both industry and research.
The ban on J is extremely weird and devastating. When I was in UC Berkeley a lot (all? most? idk) of non-citizen researchers and professors were on J. How will this work?
Disclaimer: I'm currently on H1B in the US, so I'm not unbiased.
The J ban only applies to specific J categories. It seems to still allow researchers/professors/students, but bans the shorter-term exchange-type uses of the visa: working-holiday, au pairs, camp counselors, etc. as well as K-12 teachers, professional trainees, and interns (like post-college corp internships).
It will devastate US institutes of higher education if it is maintained over the long term, and merely cause massive damage over the short term. Which is part of the plan, no doubt; the political faction executing it isn't exactly know for it's fondness for the academy.
It is going to go extremely poorly. Guess we can't hire any non-US postdocs anymore with the exception of Canada/Mexico since they have a NAFTA visa that isn't on the list. I also suppose that if the ones we have leave the country and need their J-1 visa renewed, they will be stuck until 2021.
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.
A lot of people are under the assumption that H1-B workers are all about saving on salary costs when this is actually not the full picture and actually leads to misguided arguments in the media and discussions that I have observed. As someone who has worked with many many H1-B workers in the past decade, I can tell you that H1-B workers are hired not because they are "low cost" but because they are willing to put in long hours and are very agreeable to tough working conditions. They are generally agreeable to managers and will not typically complain about or call out ethical/legal concerns when they arise. On top of all of this, companies understand that they can mistreat H1-B workers as much as they want because most of them cannot switch jobs for years due to their visa situation. Simply put, H1-B workers are highly sought after because they have little effective working rights compared to American workers. And after decades of H1-B reliance, companies have been able to transform the American working culture by making this the norm. Even American workers must now adhere to these types of working conditions as in many top companies, H1-B workers make up the majority of the workers.
> As someone who has worked with many many H1-B workers in the past decade, I can tell you that H1-B workers are hired not because they are "low cost" but because they are willing to put in long hours and are very agreeable to tough working conditions.
Pointing out the obvious here: Long hours = low cost
Yes and no. You get to hire PhDs and senior developers into entry level positions, with entry level pay, and then keep them there until they get a green card and show you the middle finger. Glorified indentured servitude. And I say this as a former H1-B myself (sponsored by Microsoft). Once I got a green card (which, BTW, took 7 years), my career took off like a rocket. Elsewhere.
They pay similar _at the levels where they are hired_. That's what the letter of law requires. They just hire them at lower levels to pay less. And where they _really_ want to save costs, they hire the typical Indian sweatshops which are full of H1Bs who are overworked and paid peanuts. That's why the overall number of people working at e.g. Microsoft or Google can be nearly double their FTE count.
Sorry, that's just not correct. Microsoft or Google does not intentionally try to hire people at lower levels based on their immigration status. They do outsource some IT work to companies like Infosys or TCS which are Indian sweatshops but not their FTEs.
Many grads graduate from top tier universities and get the same level as their American counterparts. Please have some respect for the law abiding students, who pay full tuition and taxes only to get shit on on this forum and by the President and his phonies.
> Requiring equal wages is almost like banning it.
It's not designed to be "equal". It never was. It's (nominally) for importing highly skilled workforce, which, naturally, would be earning somewhere in the upper quantiles, their ESL English notwithstanding. Instead it's mostly used to depress entry level wages for recent grads as well as to reduce overall cost of labor by dramatically boosting supply.
> I want none of that.
Why? Seems like fresh grads could use help getting started, and so could the folks recently laid off due to COVID. And so, by the way, could US citizens from disadvantaged backgrounds, a lot of whom would be competing for entry level positions. What's so bad about increasing wages in the entry level segment, and increasing demand for native talent in that segment? Remember, some of the companies in question are inching towards multi-trillion dollar valuations.
> It's not designed to be "equal". It never was. It's (nominally) for importing highly skilled workforce, which, naturally, would be earning somewhere in the upper quantiles, their ESL English notwithstanding. Instead it's mostly used to depress entry level wages for recent grads as well as to reduce overall cost of labor by dramatically boosting supply.
I'll grant you that immigration depresses the wages of the field they get in to: but thats true of any importation. Immigration restrictions are like tariffs, just on people instead of goods. Importing iphones from china also depresses wages of those who would manufacture them in the US.
Its the wrong way to look at it, its really not economics. If an immigrant produces X and gets paid X - Y, the country gets richer, period. And if the X-Y is used within the united states it becomes a virtuous cycle: if instead the immigrant works from outside and exports into the us, americans lose on demand and the American governments gift taxes to other governments.
If there are good reasons for immigration, they are not going to be economic, and this is so widely accepted in economics that its truly absurd to argue otherwise.
> Why? Seems like fresh grads could use...
Whatever conceptualization you make about the economic effect of immigration will have to be backed by the limitations of imports which have the exact same effect. Unemployment is not caused by immigration at all, it's even the other way around: any immigrant spends in the US creating demand for other jobs.
Both you and the parent are correct. It sucks for me. It is just a political play: his approval ratings have been slumping, this will help for a point or two.
It's an election year move to split pro-labor-progressive Democrats and Democratic-leaners from neoliberal capitalist Democrats (and to force Biden to commit one way or the other, or to waffle indeterminately in the middle alienating both) while energizing right-wing xenophobes.
There’s no need to energize “right-wing xenophobes” - if you think they are a meaningful voting bloc to begin with - they are already voting for Trump.
I think much more likely it’s a strategy to provoke a legislative solution. There is basically no reform legislation that can occur in 2020 without a major forcing function.
Regardless of one's opinion on immigration however, suddenly creating an immediately invoked executive order with no warning, no grace period, and no plan for what comes next is reckless and will needlessly cause harm to many people who were just trying to do what's best for themselves while acting fully within the law and system as it exists (er, existed).
It is a morally bereft and politically motivated action, which is to say, exactly what we should all expect from the narcissistic orange clown in the Oval Office.
> Regardless of one's opinion on immigration however, suddenly creating an immediately invoked executive order with no warning, no grace period, and no plan for what comes next
There's been warning that something like this was coming for a while, and it's been broadly expected since the April 22 immigration halt order, given the way Trump had previously railed against the existing H-1B system as worker-hostile and the entire justification for the April 22 immigration halt was the threat to US workers from immigrants in the present crisis.
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.
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.
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.
Will this work visa suspension be a positive development for those people?
It's just going to continue pushing forward the hiring of qualified remote talent and satellite offices elsewhere.
In my circle nobody's been seriously thinking about emigrating to the US if they have the option to go to Germany, Switzerland, Spain or the UK instead.
The job market is not zero sum. Immigrants do not take jobs from locals or drive wages down. Why do you think immigrant-rich cities like NYC and SF have higher incomes and more robust job markets than places like rural WV with few immigrants? Millions of Americans work for companies founded by immigrants, or on projects started by immigrants. Millions of Americans work in offices that were only set up because companies wanted to take advantage of the concentration of talent in places like NY or SF that only exists because of immigration. These Americans wouldn't have their jobs without immigration.
The truth is that if they are without a job, then they aren’t highly qualified. A degree does not make someone highly qualified. Tech companies have always had trouble finding enough talent. If they can’t find the talent in the US, then they will be forced to hire outside the US.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
I think most people who've dealt with the immigration system would think that that is naive. This administration has proven time and time again with regards to immigration that they will pay lip service to making improvements while almost always simply making life harder for immigrants and people on visas.
See: how they suspended H-1B premium processing for a while some time back, also claiming that it was in service of "overhauling" the H-1B system.
>See: how they suspended H-1B premium processing for a while some time back, also claiming that it was in service of "overhauling" the H-1B system.
Except this time they didn't say they suspended H1B to "overhaul" the system, and that by the time it is over, we will get a new system. They just said they have longer-term reforms in that area in their plans.
Which makes perfect sense in my eyes, because swapping to an H1B system similar to what Canada has is a massive change. I don't see it happening on a scale that is shorter than 5 years from start to finish.
Is there any reasonable explanation why the previous administration, which controlled both the house and senate albeit for a short period + won 2 terms, didn't make any meaningful progress to overhaul the process and make it merit based?
The Democrats spent all of the period when they had supermajority in the senate and majority in the house barely being able to pass the affordable care act (and subsequently sustaining great political damage for that). After Scott Brown replaced the late Ted Kennedy, almost everything was subject to filibuster and it became really hard to do anything substantial. Comprehensive Immigration reform came close in 2013 (in the wake of the 2012 republican presidential election loss) and was passed bipartisanly in the senate but died in the republican-controlled house.
This. Democratic party never intended to pass DACA. All the wanted was to create shock waves and funny how that turned out. If President Obama wanted to legislate DACA, he would've done in his first term. He made sure to to get elected twice and in last term, he chose to introduce DACA. It is clear form last election voting, that majority of America doesn't want DACA. Doesn't matter how much news outlets push for it. All democrats wanted was to polarize their base. They're no different from DJT.
> This administration has proven time and time again with regards to immigration that they will pay lip service to making improvements
Not much different than 8 years of previous administration [1]. One good thing about this administration is that it hurts SV, and that might bring attention to the problem of Greencard backlogs, and the resulting indentured servitude and labor market distortions.
Also, note that the person putting hold on the bipartisan S386[2] bill is Sen. Durbin, a Democrat. So, please don't lay all blame for this situation at Republican's or President's doorstep.
I think that if the rules were changed in the way that the administration has been describing (for several years now), then most people would think them to be good changes.
The problem is that the actual immediate actions don't reflect the message and cause chaos and uncertainty in lives of people whose futures depend on these work permits (ex: recent international student grads whose OPTs are expiring)
> 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.
Only if you still believe the current administration
I have no reason to believe anyone will start “working” on this in an election year in the middle of a pandemic
I think the parent comment was trying to say that addressing high-skill immigration is not a hot topic for the Democratic party, they have no interest in that. Their immigration-related hot topic is illegal immigration and everything related, such as DREAM Act, because they know that's what their target demographic gets riled up by.
Trump invoked an EO three years ago to conduct a study on H1B reform. Then nothing but crickets. It doesn't take three years to take action on the abuses. The people profiting off this scheme made sure he didn't upset their game. This is just an election year tactic to pander to the base.
TIf immigration is good, then you want as much as possible. If immmigration is bad then you want as little as possible. It doesn't make sense as a goal to say you want to limit something you want to get.
The second is that wage is a very fungible metric. It's a bad metric target because the economic value of a work to the country is not necesarily measured by wages. Clinical doctors make less than some categories of software engineers, but their value could literally save lives by cheapening and increasing access to healthcare.
And then you have a lot of ways to manipulate it: FAANG pays a lot with stock that does not show in the base compensation, so now the incentive would be to eliminate stock and increase salary, which can be tax inneficient and more expensive and inconvenient for the company and the employee. Then you can cut benefits: PTO, parental leave, health insurance. Then you can cut office presentism and hire contractors, etc. What a perverse incentive.
> 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.
It solves them by reducing the underpaid persons wages to 0, because they become unemployable in the US. Why a software engineer making 70k is better by making 0? Senseless. This is a senseless discussion that only exists because a rule exists. This discussion makes no sense in hiring international contractors, importing software products or hiring internacional software companies, all solutions that pay less than prevailing wages and pay no taxes to the US.
Most countries run subsidy programs, campaigns, prizes to try to keep software engineers from going to the US, and the US keeps investing money in throwing that advantage away.
>If immmigration is bad then you want as little as possible. It doesn't make sense as a goal to say you want to limit something you want to get.
People want food to sustain themselves. But, for a lot of people, limiting the amount of food consumed and picking healthy foods over junk food is a good idea. You don't want just "any" food, you want the food that will sustain you and will be good for your health in long-term.
You want access to all the food you can get, to eat what you want. Immigrants still need to find an employer willing to pay for their labor.
Additional, the best argument against limitation of immigration for labor is not that immigrants don't have rights, but that this is taking rights from Americans to choose. It is Americans that are being forced into hiring more expensively, or not at all.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
It's not at all bullshit. The H1B criteria mean nothing and are trivial to game. They've been abused continuously to bring in entry-level talent, avoid hiring Americans and lower wages across the board.
This is a great decision and one of the few good things about this presidency. H1Bs as they now exist should be banned outright and only specific VISAs handed out based purely on merit.
Whatever. The dude’s a PHD in mechanical engineering with a very specific focus needed by this lab. It screws us over and it also screws over the lab. We should be so lucky to welcome an engineer like him into our country.
I don't think you understand. Without H1B and J there is no way for US to hire any talent into US. No world-class engineer can work in any US company, no world-class researcher can be hired to any US university. This is will long lasting effects on US economy for years to come.
What about them? Are world class American engineers harmed by proximity to their foreign colleagues? Are world class American engineers so numerous that we can't find anything else for additional world class engineers to work on?
I don't know if I'm a world-class engineer, but I'm definitely a foreign engineer. Why should we all end up in Silicon Valley?
I'd rather have good engineers around the world than all competing in California just because it's a good way for the FANG companies to keep wages lower than they should be. The same companies that tell us that we're living in an interconnected world and so on. Fine, just open offices everywhere in the world, or promote remote work, instead of trying to get everyone in the same physical talent pool.
Ultimately it only benefits the shareholders of those companies, not engineers (American or foreign), nor the population of the areas where tech cash is driving all prices up.
The H-1B program is essentially the only way for most skilled immigrants to enter the US. Suspending the H-1B program is effectively a near-blanket ban on skilled immigration. Even if you think some companies abuse the program, the answer is not to go full North Korea and shut down the country to immigration. It's like banning food because some people eat unhealthily.
> The H-1B program is essentially the only way for most skilled immigrants to enter the US. Suspending the H-1B program is effectively a near-blanket ban on skilled immigration.
The H-1B is a nonimmigrant visa, and there has been a blanket ban on ALL (not just skilled) immigration since April 22, which the same order that added a handful of work-related nonimmigrant visas to the ban that we are discussing also extended at least to the end of the year.
So, no, it's not a “virtual” ban on “skilled” immigration, it's part of an actual ban on all immigration plus certain non-immigrant entry.
Again, it’s dual intent and is functionally the only way for skilled immigrants to get green cards to become citizens outside of family unification (which the admin also wants to abolish).
“Dual intent” refers to a nonimmigrant visa which does not prohibit applicants from intending to apply for an immigrant visa without leaving the country when they apply for the nobimmigrant visa (suspicion of this “immigration intent” is grounds for denying other nonimmigrant visas.)
> and is functionally the only way for skilled immigrants to get green cards
It's not a way for anyone to get a green card, which you can only do with an immigrant visa. It is, however, a way to get into the US while trying to qualify for an immigrant visa. (Or while already qualified for one for which there is a long delay.)
I wasn't aware we were playing a game of contradiction, but you were not contradicting me before I started not contradicting you, so I'm not sure why you are pointing that out.
For those who are baffled by this (I think this is right...)
An immigrant visa is one that permits (in principle, perhaps subject to removal of conditions) lawful permanent residency in the U.S.
A green card is a document that proves immigration status as a lawful permanent resident.
You don’t need actually to have received an immigrant visa to be a lawful permanent resident because you can also achieve that through adjustment of status.
A non-immigrant visa is one that does not permit permanent residency.
A non-immigrant visa that permits dual-intent is one that can be held concurrently with an application for an immigrant visa or for adjustment of status to a category of permanent resident.
You brought up the fact that the H-1B is a nonimmigrant visa when I mentioned that it was how many skilled immigrants entered the country (while waiting to become eligible for a green card). If you were not trying to contradict me, then you were raising an entirely irrelevant point and not contributing to the conversation.
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.
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.
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.
The order does not apply to those already in the United States, and it gives the Trump administration some leeway in making other exceptions. For example, immigrants applying for visas to provide labor "essential to the United States food supply chain" are exempt. Individuals "whose entry would be in the national interests" as determined by the federal government are exempt as well.
It's implied that renewals fall under "the order does not apply to those already in the United States", but is frankly not direct or transparent enough to give comfort for those who have to leave the country temporarily to process their visa renewals. There were plenty of renewal snafus even before the current administration, and the vagueness of these EOs certainly don't make things better.
> It's implied that renewals fall under "the order does not apply to those already in the United States", but is frankly not direct or transparent enough to give comfort for those who have to leave the country temporarily to process their visa renewals.
It specifically does not apply those in the US on the date of the proclamation or with a valid nonimmigrant visa or nonvisa entry document. So, no, there is no ambiguity on the face on this point. (That is, it expressly only applies to those outside the US on the date it becomes effective, who don't have a visa, and don't have a nonvisa travel document.)
And current visa holders that aren't in the US right now have a problem. Saw some reports on Twitter from some seeing early reports and trying to make it, but being denied boarding on flights to the US.
It's not clear if people outside the country with valid visas can re-enter. My spouse is on a H4 and is currently out of the country. We are worried that they might not be able to re-enter. Going through this after 18 years being in this country is extremely frustrating.
It is very clear that the order allows it (but that doesn't mean that's what is being enforced; as with the Muslim ban, it's quite possible that on top of whatever disputes there are about the policy in the text, the enforcement, especially initially, may not align with the text). In relevant part, and note the conditions are “and” conditions:
Sec. 3. Scope of Suspension and Limitation on Entry. (a) The suspension and limitation on entry pursuant to section 2 of this proclamation shall apply only to any alien who:
(i) is outside the United States on the effective date of this proclamation;
(ii) does not have a nonimmigrant visa that is valid on the effective date of this proclamation; and
(iii) does not have an official travel document other than a visa (such as a transportation letter, an appropriate boarding foil, or an advance parole document) that is valid on the effective date of this proclamation or issued on any date thereafter that permits him or her to travel to the United States and seek entry or admission.
If you have a visa, you don't need a separate travel document; the order exempts both people with current visas and people with current nonvisa travel documents.
The vague language also means current visa holders that are in the US can't visit family outside the country and re-enter. Not that this is a good time to travel, but there certainly can be extenuating circumstances.
How do you get to that? I’m not saying there won’t be confusion but the plain language of the order says it doesn’t apply to people who have currently valid visas.
I would highly, highly recommend not traveling. My fiancee already has an H-1B, and we were traveling together when all this broke out. She has not been allowed back in the country, and it unlikely she is able to be let back in anytime soon. I have not seen her in over five months, and there is no rainbow in sight as to when she can return.
Your story if truly heartbreaking.
Me and my fiancee met the same problems (not in the US), however we decided that being together is more important than having better career opportunities - so we choose a country where both of us were able to receive a business visa without significant problems.
Were you considering something like that?
Yes, I am actively considering to move out of the country. However, this is troublesome too. My parents and brother are still here, and my parents are aging. If I do have kids, I would love for my parents to be around them, and I miss my parents dearly already since I unfortunately live far away, even in the U.S.
I totally understand your situation. I meet my parents twice a year (well, was meeting before COVID-19), my working options severely limited, however I'm not even for a second was feeling regrets of my decision.
Hope these restrictions are temporary, also AFAIK after being actually married, your spouse would be eligible for K-1 US visa. Wish you luck in any case.
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. Hopefully you are doing well in your situation now.
I hope these are temporary, but I imagine they will be temporary until at least January of next year. If the unthinkable happens in
November, the prognosis is not good. Even the K-1 visa has large delays, and they aren't even processing any visas at U.S. Consulates in China right now.
I don’t think that’s quite right. K-1 is the fiancé(e) visa: it’s to allow someone to whom you are not yet married to enter the U.S. in order to marry.
If a U.S. citizen marries abroad, they would file an I-130 petition for their spouse to immigrate in the IR/CR category; they would then be able to file for a K-3 non-immigrant spouse visa so their spouse could accompany them to the U.S. while the I-130 petition was processed.
Sec. 3. Scope of Suspension and Limitation on Entry. (a) The suspension and limitation on entry pursuant to section 2 of this proclamation shall apply only to any alien who:
(i) is outside the United States on the effective date of this proclamation;
(ii) does not have a nonimmigrant visa that is valid on the effective date of this proclamation; and
(iii) does not have an official travel document other than a visa (such as a transportation letter, an appropriate boarding foil, or an advance parole document) that is valid on the effective date of this proclamation or issued on any date thereafter that permits him or her to travel to the United States and seek entry or admission.
Yes this appears to be a loophole, wherein anyone in the US on June 24 who has a valid nonimmigrant visa (could be a tourist or student visa) is able to obtain a visa label in a banned category at a US Consulate.
That said whether DOS interprets it that way is another story.
Au-pairs are called out as affected in the WSJ article.
"In addition to the H-1B visa, the temporary ban will apply to new H-2B visas for short-term seasonal workers in landscaping and other nonfarm jobs, J-1 visas for short-term workers including camp counselors and au pairs and L-1 visas for internal company transfers."
This does not apply to H1B1 on advice of our company's immigration lawyer. I know some folks with an interview scheduled for next week at US embassy in Singapore ... fingers crossed it isn't canceled.
Virtually all economists agree that this is a terrible idea.
There is not a 'fixed lump of labor' to go around.
A good follow on twitter for immigration issues is David Bier, of the CATO institute: https://twitter.com/David_J_Bier . I'm not a libertarian, but he puts out a lot of research and well-informed articles.
David Bier needs to talk to American workers who have been displaced by Infosys or TCS. His ivory tower view sounds great in academia papers, but my experience says that the system isn’t considering US citizens like it’s supposed to.
The people who are being displaced are victims of companies violating the rules of the H1-B. Instead of scraping the program, they should increase the funding so they can step up enforcement.
Used property, the H1-B program brings in new talent and contributes positively to the American economy through both innovation and actual tax payments by the immigrants who can't even get all the benefits their taxes pay for (making them greater net contributors than US citizens).
* hires all candidates who pass the coding interview
I agree on this one in particular. It is quite transparently a process that has morphed into a way to reject older candidates. The older you are (relative to a fresh college graduate), the harder it becomes to jump through the various algorithmic hoops (even if you studied Computer Science in college). That's exactly what the majority of the large tech companies want --- hire large numbers of folks who have no life outside of work so that they can work them more / pay them less.
You can always claim 'but he/she did not make the cut' and appear impartial, while selecting for young kids just out of school. It would have been interesting to see how this would have affected fall hiring, but for the confounding effect of the recession.
My view is that the system should be beneficial to American citizens. If that means that US companies are unable to hire US citizens because of a lack of capable applicants, then bring in people from outside the US to perform that work. But, notice that the premise is that the skills aren’t available in the US. That means that there should be more funding for US scholarships in whatever field is demanding these immigrants. I think there should be a tax on the immigrants, which is used to fund education for US citizens to perform this work. Once the US citizen graduates, their salary demands will be less than the immigrants salary + tax. In an efficient system, the company would replace the immigrant with the US citizen. It will result in free college for US citizens who want to pursue job fields in high demand, which is what we really want to happen.
The problem is that they’re not “American”, and my politicians shouldn’t be making laws to put its citizens at a disadvantage when they could be making laws that help pull up lower socioeconomic Americans to participate in these higher paying jobs.
Once these immigrants become citizens, they’re as “American” as me.
So, you understand that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have good paying jobs, who wait decades to become citizens right?
That whole time they're paying taxes like a citizen, but without most of the rights and benefits, and no representation.
So, there's a whole pile of people that your government is effectively disenfranchising, and harassing with this kind of activity. And it's disproportionally towards folks who have brown skin.
Oh wait, it's racism, and this is working as intended.
Americans don’t owe other Americans jobs. Employment of non-citizens involves two parties, one of which is American. Immigration restrictions are restrictions on the freedom of Americans.
He's not going to: CATO is the Koch Brothers think tank. It used to be called the Koch Foundation. It's in their interest to have as cheap a labor force as possible. They're in favor of unlimited unskilled labor from Mexico as well, US working poor be damned. Why anyone would carry water for them on this site is a mystery to me.
> not encourage companies to open offices in Canada and the EU.
Opening offices in Canada and EU directly correlates to the sales of their products and services in those markets.
Not quite sure what your point is.
Forcing companies to hire out of the _massive_ pool of US workers(~330 million) is good for the country, its people, just not so good for the profit margins of the companies hiring foreign labour to save money & labour rights strength.
> Forcing companies to hire out of the _massive_ pool of workers is good for the country, its people, just not so good for the profit margins of the companies hiring foreign labour to save money & labour rights strength.
Except that this is a myopic view of the economy as a zero-sum game that is not supported by actual... well, evidence.
The point about Canada and the EU is that companies can and will move operations to places with more liberal immigration systems. Taxes, innovation and many other benefits will accrue to those places, rather than the US.
By that logic, it is imperative to bring in all seven billion humans not currently inside the US. We don't know which of those seven billion might suddenly start a Fortune 500 company ex nihilo where we can't take advantage of it.
I volunteer your neighborhood to host the first 500,000; do you have a pull-out bed or a few spare cots we can use?
A substantial % of the maximum number of immigrants ppl. want to let in can't afford the median rent in my area, unless they are staying at 2-3x the occupancy of a listed apartment. Landlords will undoubtedly turn a blind eye to this, as the rent money is in their hands today, and the cost of schools, utilities, social services etc. not met by the increasing population is a bill due in the abstract future.
As for the ones who can afford their own houses, I think the market for real estate has increased here at at least 3x the rate of inflation over the past twenty years, we certainly don't need more buyers.
> A substantial % of the maximum number of immigrants ppl. want to let in can't afford the median rent in my area, unless they are staying at 2-3x the occupancy of a listed apartment.
The legal minimum H-1B salary is substantially higher than the median American salary, and of course, the average salary is in turn higher than the legal minimum. They are better equipped to afford the median rent than the average resident of your area.
> the cost of schools, utilities, social services etc
Are you under the impression that immigrants don't pay taxes or something? Skilled immigrants are higher income than average and pay far, far more into the system than they take out of it.
The legal minimum H1-B salary is based on 'prevailing wage' standards, of which there are many to choose from. Sufficiently so, such that one employer I know was hiring PhD statisticians with 20 years of experience in bioinformatics for 90K/yr. In downtown Cambridge, a block from MIT.
Doesn't that sound like a princely salary for today's senior scientist with a family in Massachusetts to support? Maybe they'll throw in a gym membership at Planet Fitness.
Are you under the impression that current rates of state & local taxation realistically reflect the actual cost of servicing future obligations for services and infrastructure, including pension costs? They don't pay that much more into the system....of course, if Trump set the minimum H1-B salary to 300K nationwide, and allowed for a marginal rate of 65%, that would be a different story.
> Are you under the impression that current rates of state & local taxation realistically reflect the actual cost of servicing future obligations for services and infrastructure, including pension costs? They don't pay that much more into the system....of course, if Trump set the minimum H1-B salary to 300K nationwide, and allowed for a marginal rate of 65%, that would be a different story.
The median American worker makes something like 30k+/year. So yes, the person making $90k is paying far more into the system than they take out, even if you account for the fact that the current system is not quite fully funded. Skilled immigrants are also less likely to be on disability, be unemployed, end up in prison, etc, or otherwise end up in a position where they are extracting more resources than they put in.
Current rent in Cambridge,MA is over 3,000 a month for a studio apartment. Someone making 90k a year would most likely spend over half their take home pay on rent, and realistically not be able to provide for a family.
Another interesting fact about MA is the cost of public elementary education is massive, if this employee had children the tax burden per child is greater than 16k+ per year. To offset the tax burden for a 2 child family they would need to own a home that would have a property tax bill of over 32k a year. In many US locations people are a massive tax burden even if they are making what is considered a good salary. Someone making 90k a year wouldn't be able to afford that. In fact someone making $96,250 with a family of 4 can qualify for subsidized housing if they live in Cambridge,MA.
The marginal tax rate in the US is to low for the services the government provides and the country is going broke because of it. The pay for many of these H1-B visa is too low for the location and experience they require. The system has been abused by companies, and neither side is going to correctly adjust it.
Many people raise families in Cambridge, MA (and every other expensive city in the country) on much less than 90k/year. (Also double check your numbers, because that $3k/month figure for the median studio apartment is not correct).
Don't forget that most families have two working parents. $90k/year * 2 = 180k/year.
> Another interesting fact about MA is the cost of public elementary education is massive, if this employee had children the tax burden per child is greater than 16k+ per year. To offset the tax burden for a 2 child family they would need to own a home that would have a property tax bill of over 32k a year.
Many immigrants do not have kids, and the ones that do have kids only send them to elementary school for a very short fraction of their working career. The average person making 90k/year pays more into the system than they take out of it. The system is going "broke" because the median person makes ~$30k+/year, and a large fraction of the population is on public assistance or in prison, not because the people at the 90k/year (or 180k/year) end of the spectrum are draining the system of resources.
Many people raise families in Cambridge, MA (and every other expensive city in the country) on much less than 90k/year.
I've met several while I lived there. In the Rindge Homes, or who were getting Section 8.
The ongoing outlay for city & state services is overwhelming MA, even with its high-earning, high-educated population. Even at a (risable) $90/K a year, the debt keeps growing, and adding more people will only increase the consumption of public services whose costs are not being adequately reflected.
Only certain spouses of H1-B visas holders can get work permits, the idea of the H1-B visa program is to hire the best and brightest where the spouse wouldn't need to work.
Can you find any apartments in the Cambridge area for less than 3k a month, I picked that number because of was incredibly low? If it is so easy can't you find actual show proof. Don't even get started with finders fees for many apartments/rentals. Housing in the Greater Boston Area is a huge game.
The median household income in the US is around 60k, and many have households have spouses that do not work (or part time), and are in areas of low cost of living. There is no way to compare the wage you need in Rural America vs the coasts. Most of the H1B-Visas are in companies in the high cost areas of the nation that haven't correctly scaled over the years.
That article describes a violation of the terms of an H1-B visa which could be pursued by the executive without scrapping the program entirely. Why has the administration decided to proceed with the latter instead of the former?
Because they want to? Why do they have to do what you want them to do? They are free to scrap the entire thing if they so choose.
H1-B has been massively abused for decades. Any attempt to reign this in should be welcomed by American workers, who are the ones this abuse affects most.
I'm an immigrant in the U.S. and I can say, YES! Americans are entitled to these jobs more than anyone else. It is their country and immigration is a privilege they accord to those they find suitable, it is not a right as some people seem to believe.
American citizenship is most often granted on a person's first day in the world. It's ludicrous to say that one newborn baby is more deserving of anything than another newborn baby.
What about your ancestors? Those that have contributed to this country over generations? Spilled blood in wars maybe? Built businesses or served in the govt?
You don't understand the concept of being a people? Citizenship is not an award, it's not something one deserves. But it's not something you can give to anyone either.
How do you define yourself? Don't you have a people, a group or tribe (whatever you want to call it) you belong to? I know people who define themselves as "human" and "citizen of the world", but they are quite uncommon.
Is a legal construct, which can be granted to a natural person by law.
Legislation can be (relatively) easily changed. I don't think there's anything preventing legislators from granting citizenship to $PERSON for $REASON.
So I'd argue that it is something that can be given - it's just that there's reasons that it's not.
Am I as and American just as entitled to a job in Mexico or South Africa as a native South African or Mexican, or is it just non-Americans who have this equal entitlement to American jobs?
Americans are entitled to American stuff more than the rest of the world, yes. That's the principle upon which the concept of nation operates.
That notion is disappearing in the US quickly, though, and soon the rest of the world will follow.
It's going to be nice living in a giant global slum with a few extremely wealthy pockets with a de-facto segregation by IQ and wealth /s
I think it's better if each country tries to retain their elites to build their own nations, instead of having everyone end up in Silicon Valley to work on spying technology.
And how many American workers work for companies founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants? Or work on projects and inventions that are the brainchild of immigrants? The job market is not a zero sum game. The US has 5% of the world population but is responsible for a very disproportionate amount of the world's technological output because it attracts a disproportionate fraction of inventors and engineers from all over the world. Why do you think the most immigrant rich cities in America like SF and NYC also have the highest incomes? If immigrants drove wages down and stole jobs from Americans, you would expect places like rural West Virginia to have higher incomes than SF. Spoiler: they don't.
If you have 1 million jobs held by Americans and 1 million jobs held by immigrants, and you kick out the 1 million immigrants, you do not get 2 million jobs held by Americans. You get 500k jobs held by Americans and 1.5 million extra jobs in China, India, the EU, and other any other regions that are less keen on punching themselves in the face with self-destructive industrial policy.
If he loses (I believe there's a good chance he will) he won't lose because of anything left wing people care about like Bolton's book. His base never cared about things that liberals think they should care about and never will. He'll lose because his base is upset that he's not doing anything about people tearing down statues of George Washington and Andrew Jackson and doing things like hiding in a bunker (supposedly) and tweeting while people set fire to a church right outside the Whitehouse. It makes him look weak.
Why would the EU complain about Trump ending the brain drain?
It's a good decision by Trump. It benefits American workers and non-American nations. Win/win.
The losers are the Gates and Bezos who are already extremely wealthy. I will find have to find a source but I think there is a gap between the share of profits captured by IT workers vs banking workers in the US, and those are industries with equivalent levels of workforce education and capital intensity.
There are a lot of valid criticisms of skilled labor visas in the United States.
But you also can’t ignore the population growth problems that would exist in this country without immigration. We would be Japan.
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.
How many countries would dream of educated people flocking to live in their country?
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.
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.
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.
> But you also can’t ignore the population growth problems that would exist in this country without immigration. We would be Japan.
No, we wouldn’t; Japan has negative natural population growth, the US has positive natural population growth (and it's the greatest contributor to overall populayion growth, more than net immigration.)
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?
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.
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?
Still H-1B.
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.