Correct, but over simplified. I'm looking for people's experiences based on gender, age and race, as I stated in the post. This doesn't make the post inappropriate or racist. It might make some people uncomfortable, but it isn't a racist post.
Apologies if I implied that it was. I think it's fine to discuss these things in a reasonable and rational way. My point is that was not happened over on X.
As a non-immigrant to the United States, I don't really buy into the idea that companies prefer H1B candidates purely for financial reasons. The H1B process is frankly a rigid, unreliable and time-consuming process.
It's hard for even Canadians and Mexicans to find jobs in the US and we have access to the supposedly easy to obtain TN visa. Australians too with E3.
I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs.
Which in itself should be an argument for further liberalization say by giving I140 approved petitioners access to EADs.
> I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs.
That is a financial motive. Companies don't want to pay the kind of compensation which would induce employees to be loyal to the company, and so they use H1B quasi-indentured servitude as a cheaper alternative.
I’ve been on an H1B before, a long time back. Most companies do not want to deal with your immigration issues. Bigger enterprises have the resources. But the moment you get smaller, there isn’t a whole lot of patience or energy for that.
As an H1B I May have made marginally less than my peers who were not immigrationally challenged. But as promotions picked up I think that wasn’t an issue anymore.
The one thing I still have though is I’m never the squeaky wheel. Getting laid off on an H1B is brutal. So your tolerance for corporate bs and workplace toxicity is quite high.
I don’t buy this and you should not be selling it :) if H1Bs worked 6/10+ while other employees did 45 all it would take is ONE of H1B’s to reach out to ONE hungry lawyer and the lawsuit will be plastered all over the MSM/Social Media/… the H1B gal/guy would go home to their country with a bag full of money :)
people here on HN (without any merit) make H1B program sound like farming jobs in Texas… too funny
Crazy to think the people who come to US universities to obtain post-bachelor degrees are more qualified than those who didn't...
This is purely anecdotal, but my experience at a top institution is that the majority of CS/ECE of MS and PhD programs are foreign students, and the H1B folks I worked with had these advanced degrees.
I don’t think the issue is one of qualification. I think it is wage suppression. I mean if the H1B was a work permit to work anywhere in tech and you could leave without impacting your green card processing for another job - that MS/PhD folks would demand much higher $$.
This is true - inability to switch jobs while on H1B is not right but it is difficult to make that a reality based on the spirit of the program.
If the program is there for "we can't find qualified people in the US to do X" and then you find one such person to sponsor for H1B - the direction in which this is going is that Company is looking for an Employee. If you as an employee than say "imma pack up my bags and go elsewhere" now this is changing direction, now Employee is looking for Company and that is really not what H1B is for.
There 1,000,000% should be like H1E program that works in this direction but I am sure whatever someone tries to come up with there will be hundreds of people here on HN and elsewhere "crying" about "we should first look in the US before we hire immigrants.'
I'm not sure if some American companies have this. I don't believe they do. From hiring I know for sure, if there is someone who doesn't need immigration handholding is about as qualified as someone on an H1B, the former is preferred. Most of the times there is explicit guidance - "we aren't hiring H1B's from this date until further notice". So I know from being on both sides of the coin (as an H1B and then not needing one but being on the hiring side) there isn't a preference to H1Bs. In fact I'd assume the reverse is true.
Now, H1B's will put in longer hours and extra work without complaint and won't take things like EEO action, legal action, etc. against their employer. But it just comes with the territory that as a visitor in the US you do not want legal trouble and would like to preserve your legal status as seamlessly as possible.
To your first point - the H1B exists because they can't find technical (or other) talent in their work zone. So here's the thing - if one company can't find it, neither can others unless that one company is doing something super specialized. They could just provide the ability to move in zones where that expertise is needed and the minimum expected salary the employer must pay. There are solutions if congress gets off their rear-end and tries to find them.
> So I know from being on both sides of the coin (as an H1B and then not needing one but being on the hiring side) there isn't a preference to H1Bs. In fact I'd assume the reverse is true
My experience has been the same but we are just two people with such experience - there is definitely "corruption" associated with this program that you and I personally did not experience.
> Now, H1B's will put in longer hours and extra work without complaint and won't take things like EEO action, legal action, etc. against their employer. But it just comes with the territory that as a visitor in the US you do not want legal trouble and would like to preserve your legal status as seamlessly as possible.
Perhaps... but we do live in a VERY litigious society and I am personally questioning that this is rampant. There are A LOT of highly qualified people that are on the H1B program that won't take sh*t from the Employer. I know I personally 100% would not (I will work LOOOOOONG hours if my entire team is doing the same, I will find a hotshot attorney on Monday if I am the only one forced to work long hours just because I am an immigrant and I am 100% sure there are plenty of H1B's that think the same way. I think we sometimes make an assumption that all/majority/... H1B's come from shithole places and they will do EVERYTHING possible to stay in America (and H1B is probably the most legal way to do so). While that might be true for some, I do not believe it is true for enough people where this H1B wage/... discrimination can be rampant.
> They could just provide the ability to move in zones where that expertise is needed and the minimum expected salary the employer must pay. There are solutions if congress gets off their rear-end and tries to find them.
100% agree with the sentiment of your comment but I do think that this is harder than it appears - if we follow the spirit of H1B program. It can be re-designed into something else, like general "USA has low birthrates and needs immigration - lets create a program where highly qualified people can request to come to work/live/... in the United States..." but IMO this would have to be a different program in spirit to current H1B
> H-1B employees need to have above average compensation or their field.
In the past decade or so, I have personally worked with an H-1B in the SF Bay Area who was working a full-time software position advertised as requiring a Master's degree, but was making something like $120k/year.
"Must be making above the median pay for the position" might be the way it's SUPPOSED to work, but it's clear that it doesn't ALWAYS work that way.
Does that salary need to be above average at the time of hire, or throughout their entire tenure.
If its the prior then if an H-1B employee stays at a company for more than a few years it actually would come out to being cheaper overall, on top of them being more incentivized to just go with the flow and deal with any BS since their stay in the country depends on it. They have significantly less leverage than a US citizen to stay through grueling work conditions or toxic work environments.
But as I understand it, this is checked during the visa application process. The visa expires after a few years and requires another application for an extension then. So at least every few years, the salary would have to be adjusted upwards to meet the visa requirements.
> I think you're assuming that everyone has a price
Nope. They don't need it to work for every worker, they can't get every worker as a H1B either. It working for some workers makes it worth doing for businesses.
There is a (relatively small) subset of Muslims that fast every Monday and Thursday, in addition to fasting the month of Ramadan. Perhaps that’s a better population sample to study?
14 hours every day is considered great (don't eat late, skip breakfast), a solid 48 hour fast every month or so is also great. Small human studies, for example, have measured 5x to 10x increases in HGH after 48 to 120 hr fasts respectively. Free steroids, basically; the body repairing itself while not being drowned in food all day every day. Telomeres too!
Indeed. It has been heavily covered in Private Eye, as well. Labour is deeply in hock to the gambling industry. So much for "gambling is the curse of the working class".
Funny how you can buy British politicians for dirt cheap. In India or the US, it would take at least $100k-200k to get a single politician's attention at the bare minimum, while in the UK you can influence party positions for 25k quid.
In India one doesn’t just bribe a politician, one hires an expensive lawyer who “handles” the case.
The real bribery starts at the bottom of the pyramid.
Say you want a water connection. The rate is set on the size of the property, and each layer in the pyramid knows exactly how many square feet were approved and what their individual percentage will be.
And again, you can’t just bribe the fellow directly: you need to go through a trusted agent who acts as a cut-out between the briber and the bribed. This started after the Lok Ayukta started conducting raids. Who says our babus aren’t flexible and innovative?
How much do you estimate it would take to get a politician to flip their view on abortion, gun control, illegal immigration, health care? Seems like if it were "quite low" you'd see politicians flipping views all the time as one side or the other channelled money to them.
What we actually see is a lot of stasis, refusal to compromise, and politicians locked in with their party, which suggests it is pretty hard to influence politicians.
Where money is effective is using it to get politicians who agree with your view elected.
"Buying a politician to vote in a certain way" is not really how it works most of the time. It's more "buying time with a politician so you can give the best possible explanation for your case without any counter-argument". Turns out, that is surprisingly effective, especially when there isn't really an organised counter-movement with similar funds to get politicians ears.
Those are all hot-button issues that can make someone lose their seat. Unless you have enough money that they never have to work again, not going to happen. Almost nobody outside of HN notices the DMCA, but it’s there.
You don’t buy politicians to change their views on the circus items.
The only reason all those “issues” are issues is because they’re intended to distract the public from the actual stuff politicians are being bought for. Transferring wealth to their buyers.
80% of the politicians on both sides of the spectrum have the same beliefs about all those issues.
It'll be much harder to get a politician to flip on an issue that voters care about but much easier to get them to vote one way on an obscure regulation that most voters have never heard of.
Don't you need to donate at least $100k to influence senators or influence party positions in the US? Sure, you could "buy" a politician for cheaper, but you're not guaranteeing they will toe your line.
India is ridiculously expensive - bribes often amount to 50 lakh rupees to 1 crore + rupees, which amounts to roughly $50k-100k per politician. Not to mention bribery at the lower rungs of the ladder where everyone from the politician's toilet janitor all the way to the politician's chief of staff will demand their pound of flesh, usually in the tune of tens of lakhs of rupees (~$10k).
That's not a good thing.
From what I understand,
a lot of "cheaper" bribes in India
are for things that the government employees must do as a part of their jobs
so like a bribe for these government employees to do their job basically which still filters up to the highest levels of government.
Why would you agree to stick your neck out for something illegal on the cheap when you can wring the ordinary people to do your job?
All this is based on second hand information so please correct me where I am wrong. Also probably things are different in different parts of the country?
I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing - bribery is bad, full stop. I wanted to draw a comparison between how expensive it is in India vs the UK, which means that a relatively smaller pool of individuals can actually afford to bribe in India vs the UK, which makes projects more concentrated in the hands of a few (which is still a lot in a bit country like India).
On the other hand, I was a member of the Treasury group and the Leaders group of the Tory party until recently, with just a "paltry" donation of £50k, which got me the ear of a sitting PM and regular meetings with the Chancellor. Good luck trying to get that kind of access in India or the US with the PM.
The cheaper bribes were a tangent, but just to show that doing business in India is actually more expensive than in the UK (where there are no such bribes).
US politians are routinely bought for numbers similar to the UK ones.
They will often vote in a way that their constituents do not want for ~10k in campaign contributions.
They didn't have to worry about the voters finding out about it (this is changing with alternative media) beacuse the same people bought ads on the major networks.
This is an interesting observation. Why do you think it is so much lower in UK Vs US? My guess: There are much less private donations in the national UK political system.
US congressional districts being an order of magnitude larger than UK constituencies probably has something to do with it. Also, there are significantly more MPs than representatives, so you have to swing more legislators to your side in the UK vs the US to get your pet policies adopted.
But you can get a seat at the table for negotiations if the Tories are in power and you're a part of the Leaders group or the Treasury group of donors. All for £50k.
Leaders group puts you in touch with the Tory party leader (who is often the PM if the Tories are in power). Treasury group invites you to meetings with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
