You're kidding? There is more and more rhetoric being spewed relating to the legal kind as well. There is even policy being enacted to drastically cut down or make it very hard to gain legal status by burying you with paperwork.
Beyond immigration talk, the constant spewing of racism coming from the administrations is a clear signal that immigrants of different backgrounds are not wanted.
To that end, they simply pack up and build their business and wealth elsewhere. We won't feel those effects right now but it will hit hard in a few years.
There has always been pressure against H1Bs in the US tech industry. The one time I tried to immigrate to the valley there the visa cap was hit and I couldn't go (no regrets though). For my whole life I've seen American talk about immigration = outsourcing = lower wages. It's not new and it's not based in racism but rather money.
As for Trump, he is only talking about illegal immigration. Nobody with an engineering degree is going to care about his views on immigration, they may even welcome them because Trump apparently (I did not know this until reading the sibling links) wants to move to merit based immigration instead of a lottery scheme, which would help high skilled workers.
Engineering benefits from enormous network effects. American engineers are better off if all the engineers in the world move here. The industry goes where the engineers are. It's not because the valley has few engineers that it pays high salaries, it's because it has many engineers, and the high paying companies locate here to benefit from the network effects.
The guy said "there are good people on both sides" after a group of neo Nazis chanted "Jews will not replace us," murdered a woman by driving a car into a crowd, and attempted to lynch a black man.
I feel a strange need to show fairness to Trump here. The CNN headline is very misleading, it says "Trump basically called Mexicans rapists again" but then goes on to quote him and the quote doesn't contain any such statement. He doesn't even mention Mexicans. Rather he makes a general statement that women get raped a lot on the paths used for illegal immigration into the USA, a statement CNN actually agrees with according to their article:
"Nobody is arguing that the trip from Central America to the US is easy or that women are not attacked or exploited on it. That is a well-documented problem, one that Trump brought up to bolster his own case for tougher immigration laws."
Trump expressing concern about abuse of women on the paths used by illegal immigrants is an odd form of 'racism'.
There is no way you can be this gullible. There is absolutely rhetoric and action being taken against all immigrants. The "illegal" label is a canard, and being as how our immigration laws are largely arbitrary and nonsensical, not even a very logical one.
As a potential legal immigrant, I just don't want to take my labor to a country whose President doesn't respect or welcome me. Sure, the rhetoric might be against illegal immigration, but I'd rather just move to a country where Nazis aren't "fine people".
I don't understand this logic. You want to move to America, but you hate America. Why not just move elsewhere then? Is there something that America has that you can't find anywhere else?
That's exactly what I meant: that I'd just take my labor elsewhere. I have no intention of immigrating to America in the near future; it will take someone like Obama in power again for me to think otherwise. There are other labor markets that are happy to put out the welcome mat for me
The sad thing is that I studied in America for two years and can't reconcile the current rhetoric with the memories I had
You have no idea how this administration is systematically pushing family oriented tech people away by creating gridlocks in the legal immigration process.
Well, big companies abusing the system certainly doesn't help.
Having ceilings based on a % of company number of employees or some other mechanism would go a long way (or the chance of draw being related to their salary)
Moving to a function of salary instead of a lottery would be an improvement, but not if it is accompanied by a cut in the quota which the Trump admin is reported to want. Bringing people to the US who earn more than the median wage enormously benefits Americans. We've built our economy on a brain drain from the rest of the world and we're making every effort right now to fuck that up.
>> Well, big companies abusing the system certainly doesn't help.
They already have a legal requirement to pay prevailing wage before they can get a visa. That means at least six figures in the bay area.
There are a few reasons Americans don't take these six figure jobs:
1. Don't want to live in California/too expensive
2. This is the more common reason: Americans don't do STEM much, cannot compete with internationals. Obviously not all Americans are incompetent but given the number of open positions in the bay area, there are just not enough of them.
As an anecdote, my manager has had 2 open positions for 7 months now, paying $125k base + sign on + relocation + bonus + stock for a new grad. Guess how many we've filled after 7 months? A big fat zero.
The only way our product would sustain is by hiring people. So we eventually ended up hiring an h1b Chinese guy who was very very smart and capable. Then, because legal immigration process is choked off, he still couldn't join after 4 months. So we just had him join an offshore satellite office and moved his projects there.
If he plays his cards right, the project will grow and he will help us hire more in the offshore site.
As an anecdote, my manager has had 2 open positions for 7 months now, paying $125k base + sign on + relocation + bonus + stock for a new grad. Guess how many we've filled after 7 months? A big fat zero.
Why would anyone move to California for $125K when they could live in one of 20 other major cities, make the same amount with a lower cost of living?
GP didn't say $125k total comp. Counting sign-on, bonus, and stock, it could be as much as $200k total comp - for a new grad. Which other cities/industries pay that much? (outside of finance or law, at the top end)
What are the chances that the stock+bonus will be an extra $75K per year? Also, the stock and probably sign on bonus probably has a vesting period. What will be the future value of the stock? What if the project doesn’t go as planned and they let the potential employee go before the vesting period?
Cash is king. Anything else shifts the risks away from the better capitalized corporation to the less capitalized potential employee.
"Chain migration", "extreme vetting", people legally seeking asylum are "gaming the system", "turn off the jobs and benefits magnet", "Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people. And they’re changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like", "almost every student that comes over [from China] is a spy", we admit too many immigrants from "shitholes"
If you haven't seen rhetoric against legal immigration, you haven't been paying attention.
Beyond immigration talk, the constant spewing of racism coming from the administrations is a clear signal that immigrants of different backgrounds are not wanted.
To that end, they simply pack up and build their business and wealth elsewhere. We won't feel those effects right now but it will hit hard in a few years.