[hildaman]

The US skills based immigration system is based on bringing in indentured labor to enrich corporations.

L-1 visa holders _cannot_ change jobs. H-1B visa holders have to go through an expensive and cumbersome process to change jobs which effectively restricts their job mobility.

Obviously, outside super-hot job markets like silicon valley, US workers have a hard time competing with indentured labor.

This visa would have created brand new class of "entrepreneur" indentured to deep-pocketed VC firms. They would actually be worse off than H-1B and L-1 workers because - not only would they be beholden to the VC firms for funding (thereby their jobs) in the United States - but they would have to part with their ideas.

No nativist here - just saying how things are working on the ground once you shave off the corporate propaganda.

[dang]

You picked just about the most inflammatory word you could ("indenture") and repeated it several times. That is exactly the wrong way to comment on a divisive topic here. It leads to shallow discussion and flamewars. So please don't do that. We're hoping for thoughtful, substantive discussion, not rhetorical escalation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

[beefman]

This is indeed a politicized topic, and moderation is hard, but FWIW I see no issue with the parent comment. The point has been discussed here before using similar terms.[1][2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360522#13360887

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111531#7113442

[dang]

It isn't just a question of the word, but of using it as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological argument. That leads to flamewars so when we see people doing it we ask them not to.

It's also not ok to use HN primarily for political or ideological battle, since that isn't the purpose of the site. Obviously some topics are more political and commenting in such threads is fine, but it's not to use an account primarily for it.

[apenwarr]

It's actually a pretty accurate use of the term. Immigrants end up taking less money and putting up with very bad workplace situations because many of them end up forced to work for a particular employer or return (at great expense) to their home country. I don't think that's rhetoric. The work permit system in Canada is much less problematic.

[nebabyte]

While I get that the comment sounds like a divisive/incendiary and thus non constructive comment, I would not argue that it's an unreasonable exaggeration Or likely to derail substantiative discussion. Just my two cents.

[hildaman]

When the system brings people in who cannot change jobs or have a hard time changing jobs - what other term would you suggest I use?

Is "bonded labor" better?

[dang]

The phrase 'have a hard time changing jobs' seems fine. You could even, if you wanted to, make an argument that this has some things in common with what was historically called indentured labor. But to use a charged phrase as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological battle, which you clearly are doing, is the wrong kind of comment for HN.

The same goes for swipes like "you are kidding right?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745448). Using escalating rhetoric on divisive topics causes internet discussion to erupt in flames. Mostly it's negligence rather than arson but the result is the same. If you're going to comment here, please don't do these things.

The guiding value of HN is intellectual curiosity (please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). We're hoping for thoughtful conversation, and using the site primarily for political or ideological battle is destructive of that, so we ban such accounts. In particular, it's not ok to create an account here just to do that.

[hildaman]

Ok - that "you are kidding" was an unwarranted swipe. I won't do it again.

Regarding "indentured servant" - that is the factually correct term to describe the situation. Even H-1B visa holders themselves use this term.

Here is a video of an H-1B visa holder using the exact term "indentured servant" with Congressman Darrell Issa at some policy event about the H-1B visa in Washington DC: https://youtu.be/2Tgc9m1IwNc?t=35m47s

The term "indentured servant" is exactly the right term to describe the employer-employee relationship between Guest Worker visa holders and their employer's. As demonstrated in the video, even the H-1B workers themselves are saying that they feel like indentured servants.

I personally feel that politically correctness is somehow having the effect of normalizing this very abnormal employee-employer relationship (at-least here in America).

As the guest worker in the video says, if he loses his job - he has to take his kids out of school, sell his car, sell his house and leave. This is not in any way a normal employee-employer relationship.

I would like to think the points I am raising are thoughtful. well researched and articulate. Apart the "swipes" - which I will tone down on - I don't think I am guilty of any other transgressions.

[dang]

The bigger problem is the one you didn't respond to. You're showing up in an HN thread with a single-purpose account armed with seasoned ideological talking points. That's very much not what this site is for, regardless of which battle it is and which side you're on.

[hildaman]

If this is what you want me to respond to:

> You could even, if you wanted to, make an argument that this has some things in common with what was historically called indentured labor. But to use a charged phrase as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological battle, which you clearly are doing, is the wrong kind of comment for HN.

You are right, I could have absolutely talked about the history of indentured labor in America - but I don't think that was germane to the implications of the Regulation or the implications for the current (sorry) state of Guest Labor in America which what this discussion was about.

Regarding: > The bigger problem is the one you didn't respond to. You're showing up in an HN thread with a single-purpose account armed with seasoned ideological talking points. That's very much not what this site is for, regardless of which battle it is and which side you're on.

I am a geek, who has frequented HN for a long time, and before that digg and before that slashdot (I still go there BTW).

I usually don't post very much.

And "seasoned talking points" - cmon. Doing my research before shooting my mouth off - is a GOOD THING and I would like to think that I am elevating the level of discourse.

Infact everyone else (except projectramo - who I did mishandle and doesn't disagree with my characterization of H-1B/L-1 workers) who has weighed in seems to think my comments are very apropos:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14746592

Infact, in my view - you are the one who is flaming me and disrupting the discourse here.

[paapi__gudiya]

He/she is not exaggerating at all. US companies outside the Silicon Valley treat foreign workers pretty much like indentured (or bonded) labor.

[FilterSweep]

I would agree, considering the horrifying Disney story where employees were given an option to train their cheaper replacements in their severance[0]

However, this current repeal, related to "The International Entrepreneur Rule"[1] is only tangentially related to H1-B.

H1-B could have gotten minimized but this is a bit worse, IMO.

I have a major criticism of this article and it's not clarifying.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...

[davidw]

You're competing with those people in any event unless the code you write is impossible to move around over TCP/IP.

The answer is to make it so H1-B people are not so tied to one employer, so their wages are bid up to local levels in short order.

[ihsw2]

That's specious reasoning -- there is something to be said for Silicon Valley's capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry. This critical mass is difficult to achieve and your implication that it can be replicated elsewhere is just deceptive equivocating.

The rationale behind this legislation is that employers have been driving wages down via a self-sustaining lower class of tech workers, where low-cost temporary foreign workers constantly trickle in. This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.

[davidw]

> capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry.

You mean the industry that includes tons of companies founded by immigrants or their children?

I'm not saying SV can be replicated elsewhere. But the code you're writing can be, if the price differential is big enough. Outsourcing is a PITA, so if the price differential is not big, why bother. But... if it's big enough, innovative people will find a way to make it work.

> This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.

Or a foreign office without all the bureaucratic, nativist BS.

[projectramo]

I think you need to explain why you think an entrepreneur is "indentured" to a VC.

The entrepreneur has a lot more leeway in making decisions than an employee, and has more freedom in how to spend the company's money.

Do you think that a VC would choose a foreign entrepreneur just because they are foreign? Don't you think other factors (product, team, strategy etc) would play a larger role?

[trendia]

You're missing their point. Suppose you are an engineer in India making $10k / year. You have the same skills and ability as American citizens in San Francisco. So, a startup comes to you and offers you a $60k / year job. You take it, because you can make 6 times as much as you did in India!

However, when you get to the US, you realize that American citizens make $80k - $100k / year for the same job. What do you do? You can't switch jobs, because the H1B program makes it very difficult to do so. You can't threaten to quit, because then your visa only gives you a few months before you have to go back to India -- and back to the $10k / year job. You have no choice -- if you want the $60k / year job, you have to to stick with the company who hired you. So you stay.

The result? The salary for software engineers is driven down. The employer gets extra profits while getting the same work. The software engineers are now making less than they would be if either 1) the H1B program didn't exist, or 2) the H1B program were reformed so that switching jobs is easier.

(Trump did #1. However, #2, reforming H1B, is far better for all employees in the long run. Not surprisingly, #2 is not hugely supported by all companies).

[emmett]

This isn't at all how H1B visas work in Silicon Valley that I've ever seen.

There are definitely large contracting companies which abuse the H1B process in this way, but at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Yahoo/etc I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US.

Doesn't mean I don't agree the H1B system needs serious reform, but it's unfair to tar all employers with that brush.

(Best reform idea I've heard: the limited H1B slots go to whoever is paying the most for the job. Inherently prioritized the most economically impactful immigrants and also creates upward pressure on wages. Win/win!)

[curun1r]

> I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US

I have. And based on the patterns I saw in hiring, I expect that it's the same across the industry, even when companies aren't trying to underpay immigrants. It's a fascinating perspective when you get involved with hiring at the offer stage and see the negotiations. You can send the exact same offer to an H1-B and a citizen and the counter-offers will be completely different. A citizen will ask for more comp and an H1-B will ask for an EB2 sponsorship. Both are entirely rational decisions the since employment flexibility of a green card is probably worth more to an immigrant than an immediate increase in comp.

> Best reform idea I've heard...

I still think the best idea is to impose ratios like other countries do. Let companies hire as many immigrants as the like so long as they're also employing, in similar positions, the requisite number of Americans as well. If the theory is that highly-skilled immigrants are bringing skills and knowledge that's in short supply here, we should be trying to have them work with Americans as much as possible so that Americans can learn from them. Companies that abuse the current system end up having nearly all-immigrant work forces. Meanwhile, smaller companies without large legal teams can have difficulty getting even a single H1-B hired. Ratios fix both problems and they also help immigrants assimilate faster because there's less chance they end up working with mostly other immigrants.

Your idea of using salary as the deciding factor is great in theory, but in practice we don't allocate capital wisely. We'd end up with a lot of H1-Bs in finance and almost none in science or any of the many lower-paying areas that require education and intelligence.

[conanbatt]

> I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US.

By pure economic logic, they must. Because the cost of the immigration attorneys and process has to be paid by the employee. If the employer absorbed that cost, it would be cheaper to hire local at the same price(salary).

Not only that, but the lower level of mobility an immigrant has means he cant switch jobs as easily, thus sacrifices potential earnings that a local wouldnt.

There is no way around it: any restriction you make will harm the person being restricted. It is thus that it think any kind of immigration policy aims at harming individuals at the request of others.

The best reform would be remove the requirement altogether and let companies hire who they want, and individuals work where they want to. While the US pertains itself to questions like how restrictive their visas should be, other countries panic at the constant brain drain.

[sumedh]

> but at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Yahoo/

They are not the majority, most visas go to the Indian Outsourcing companies.

[droopyEyelids]

Silicon valley H1B jobs are a tiny fraction of H1B jobs. Something like 90%+ go to InfoSys & Tata like consultancies which do exactly what the parent comment mentioned.

You're making an argument based on an infrequent exception to the rule

[emmett]

The parent comment was talking about H1Bs working for startups. Startups are not InfoSys or Tata. I agree with you and the parent comment, as I said, that H1Bs are widely abused by InfoSys and Tata and I would be very happy to see that abuse stopped -- but let's not tar startups with the same brush!

[projectramo]

You're missing my point: this is not the H1B. This is an entrepreneur visa which is (presumably) less abusive.

The example he gave seems to indicate that the power dynamic you just mentioned carries over to entrepreneurs who have equity in the firm, who are empowered to make decisions and so on.

[brudgers]

I'm not inclined to presume that it would be less abusive (or more abusive) or abused than any other visa program which creates financial incentives for domestic capital.

[hildaman]

You are kidding right?

When the "entrepreneurs" very status in the US is dependent on being in the good-graces of anyone else - especially vultures like VC firms - these "entrepreneurs" are no better than indentured servants.

Think of it this way - any dispute with the "sponsoring" VC firm could snowball into a complaint to DHS which could result in the "entrepreneur" having to leave the country (and leave behind the carcass of a company the VC's will then proceed to digest).

Entrepreneurs might not understand or appreciate this yet, but they are better off going to Canada or somewhere else as landed immigrants with rights - instead of living in the US as indentured servants of some entity.

The junking of this rule has potentially saved so many startups from being absorbed by entrenched players (Hello Google Ventures). The resultant dispersion of wealth/ideas and the increase in competition will benefit all of us.

[projectramo]

"Think of it this way - any dispute with the "sponsoring" VC firm could snowball into a complaint to DHS which could result in the "entrepreneur" having to leave the country"

I don't know if you believe this to be true. How would this work?

VC: We have a complaint!

DHS: Yes?

VC: The entrepreneur wants to grant more options to their main people.

DHS: okay... so?

VC: Please dissolve the company, make my equity worth zero, and return this person to their country?

DHS: What?

VC: Good point, just make them turn their equity into MY equity and then kick them out

I just don't know what you imagine this rule to be. How do you think this works? On an H1b you can just fire the employee and they have to leave. I understand the mechanics of the power. For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.

[hildaman]

How about this:

VC: Hey DHS, Entrepreneur lied about something 2 years ago just before/after he came here.

Entrepreneur: That was not a lie - that was marketing. Every business does it.

DHS: "Get out"

> For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.

This is nice in theory, but in practice (especially in knowledge economy companies), the employees are the company - everything else is furniture, coffee machines, ping pong tables...

The VC can just start a new company with ideas stolen from the person they just kicked out. They can offer the (now unemployed) employees of the previous company slightly more equity and money then they would have received at the previous company.

I don't understand why you are defending a system like this.

[bko]

Suppose you're an Indian making 10k a year in India. Then you have an opportunity to make 60k in America so you go. Native born Americans get paid more than you but you understand that it's really an accident of geography and bad policy, but you don't care because the opportunity will help you break your family out of poverty and open up doors not possible in India. So you stay.

Why due to the accident if geography is an American entitled to a salary that an Indian would be willing to do for less? How is that fair?

[observation]

> Why due to the accident if geography is an American entitled to a salary that an Indian would be willing to do for less? How is that fair?

I am not going to argue about "Fair" because it is a value judgment which depends on your moral and political predilections. This isn't the right place for such discussions.

However there is definitely no such thing as an 'accident of geography'. I see this all the time expressed as a implicit argument, which I believe to be a form of pre-scientific thinking that has crept into our world view.

Sperm cells are not randomly selected in some kind of bingo ball system in the ether when a woman is impregnated.

It is one of the least random things possible - the entire catalogue of back choices of your ancestors is present as part of that inception. All of history, culture, geography, must have been necessary for you to be born where you are born. If you think otherwise, then you must not believe evolution theory is real or you have to be compartmentalizing it away from the present somehow, as if it were theoretical pure math instead of an always present reality.

[dropit_sphere]

Those who were elected/hired to make foreign policy and immigration law do not have the word "fair" in their job description, or at least nowhere near the top.

I have a million dollars. I hire you to manage it for me. You decide that, you know, it's kind of lopsided that one person have all this money, so you distribute it to 99 others. Do you have the moral high ground in this situation?

[ojbyrne]

You're wrong about the end result - in the end the job goes to the engineer making $10k in India.

[stale2002]

Would you rather someone with NO valuable skills be brought in to the US and jobs for much poorer people be driven down in wages?

Assuming that SOMEONES job has to receive that wage pressure, who better than highly paid workers?

[waisbrot]

That's a pretty weird assumption. There's not any direct relationship between the number of software engineering jobs and the number of (e.g.) housing construction jobs.

[stale2002]

We let X people into the country every year.

The question is WHICH X people should we let in. Should we let in X low skilled workers or X high skilled workers?

You could perhaps make the argument that the US should lower the TOTAL amount of people let into the country.

But if that is your argument, then there is no point in talking about software engineers. You should be worried about the construction workers wages that are being reduced.

[cbhl]

The rule, as proposed, required foreign entrepreneurs to receive "significant investment of capital (at least $250,000) from [investors]" or "significant awards or grants (at least $100,000) from [the government]" to demonstrate "potential to have accelerated growth" and job creation. The entire visa is based on the idea that startups have "significant public benefit".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_entrepreneur_rul...

At the two year mark, you need to show further investment, to extend the visa three more years.

Failure to hit these numbers means your visa gets taken away.

[JoeAltmaier]

'Indentured'? I call hyperbole. Quit, go home. That's something a true indentured servant couldn't do.

Its 'something like' indentured servitude, except it isn't. It isn't slavery either. Nor torture or any number of other emotionally laden words we could come up with.

Its an employment deal. Its an immigration option. Others exist. Don't choose it if you don't like it.

[0xbear]

Educate us, which "others" exist? Also H1-B is a non-immigrant visa. You can petition for a green card after a few years, but there's no guarantee you'll get it.

I agree with the op, btw. To make things better for local workers, h1b workers should be offered greater mobility so as to create competition which properly values their skills. Earlier suggestion by the Trump administration that instead of a lottery only the highest paid h1b workers will be admitted sounds quite sane, too.

Disclosure: naturalized citizen, former H1B.

[xenihn]

>'Indentured'? I call hyperbole. Quit, go home. That's something a true indentured servant couldn't do.

What if they have debts to pay off at home, and it's the only realistic option available? Going home means not being able to pay those debts off.

[JoeAltmaier]

I get it; we all have to work. But piling up debts then having to work (somewhere) to pay them off - that isn't 'indentured servitude' either.

[eeZah7Ux]

Look up the definitions of servitude and slavery on a dictionary: they fit.

[conanbatt]

I dont think corporations profit from the H1B in an economic sense. Some can, but only very few: that is, copmanies whose H1B situation allows them to have a higher range of profits than other companies in the same space that wouldnt have access to the same visa.

If immigration where free, or almost free, then these companies would hire even more people, and all others would also do it. The amount of immigration the tech sector would have if people could go to the us, stay 6 months to acclimate, learn and pick jobs, would skyrocket and would increase the talent pool for companies.

The great supporter of such restrictions are the people that think their own wage would be reduced if more competition were brought up. And they would be right to fear that in the short term. In the longer term, lower wages would also mean higher profits, thus higher capital which would eventually rise wages again.

Any immigration policy is more often than not a problem of bias and misunderstanding from the public, and a matter of voters for the politicians.

[djsumdog]

When I think about entrepreneur visas, I think about people needing a ton of money (several hundred thousand USD, EUROs, GBPs, etc.) to come in and attempt to start a business. In a lot of ways it's simply buying your way into a country as a resident.

I didn't think about the aspect of people seeing VC funding; not self funded people.

Also, when I first read this article, I wondered what industry stood to gain from this move. Presidents are members of the 1% and their policies are dictated by the top income earners, not the opinions of most voters[0]. Although companies might publicly be against this, they must be secretly benefiting. Maybe big tech players don't want disruptive startups coming in and taking their markets?

[0]: http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-differen...

[cookiecaper]

Great post. So many things that are touted as evidence of our open-mindedness and generosity are actually motivated by the financial incentives they create for corporate owners at the expense of non-owners everywhere, including domestic workers, consumers, and the slave labor used to circumvent first-world labor and environmental standards (whether imported under restrictive visas, exploited due to their undocumented status, or employed in their native "lower-cost" nations).

While the plight of illegal immigrants and the stories of the lonely technical geniuses sorrowing as they fail to gain entry to the U.S. may be heartwrenching, make no mistake that the true interest of the powerful is keeping a labor force that is cheap and easily exploited. If you take away dubious immigration status, their employers lose that much authority over them.

I see correcting such conditions as Trump's primary interest. He is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game", and as a businessman who has tried many different things, he knows that there is a lowest common denominator effect in business. If your competitor is going to China and getting stuff made for a few cents, you are putting yourself at a major disadvantage by not doing so. You can't effectively compete if your manufacturing costs are significantly higher. Consumers assume that legal structures prevent unfair competition and exploitation by default, but this been slowly degraded under false political doctrines pushed by MegaCorps and wrapped neatly in the bow of egalitarianism.

Trump ran and won so that he could level the playing field. Trump's position, IMO, is "Make the rules bar exploitation of consumers and workers without breaking competition and entrepreneurship". This is a credible counter to the "trickle-down economics" theory of "Give owners as much money as possible and you'll get a share somewhere along the line", and that's the primary reason that the Republican power players hate him. Trump is offering a more fair route not by proposing government seizure/control, regimentation, or handouts (which are easy arguments to discredit), but simply by restoring the baseline rules of the marketplace that consumers take for granted.

[droopyEyelids]

Wait... I think you're confusing Trump's branding (leveling the playing field) with his actions. Mostly we've seen more of the same Wall St appointments and corporate boosterism from him that we've seen from our last 4 or 5 presidents.