Why though? If Google is hiring an engineer, it doesn't make a distinction and does so purely on skill. Why should it matter if said engineer is from Argentina (arbitrary example) instead of India?
The US issues roughly 1 million green cards each year. 86% of those go to family based immigration. The rest 14% are for employment based immigration. Even in there the dependents (spouse + kids) are counted against that quota. So net effect is close to 5% employment based immigration if we count only primary applicants. What purpose is discrimination by country of birth serving here?
Benefit is greater diversity. Rather than have majority of immigrants from hugely populated countries like China or India, immigrants are more evenly distributed from all around the world. The system obviously has big downsides to individuals from India/China. If it can be proved to US citizens that it’s in their interests to get rid of the cap, I think it will be gone.
What makes arbitrary geographic borders markers of diversity ?
The language, religious practices, food, festivals and traditions change every 100 miles in India. It is an old civilization with as much or more diversity than all of Europe.
Small countries like Belgium, Netherlands and Austria can balkanize and claim diversity over minor differences. Yet, Indians are clumped together under 1 umbrella ? How does that make sense ?
What makes skin color marker of diversity ? This is world we live in.
India can have diversity claims if they let individual states in India their passports, languages, flags and so on. It's on them to show diversity before expecting others to appreciate it.
It gets even more ridiculous if we try to use 'physical' differences. It then becomes about genes.
Guess what ? Everyone who lives out of Africa has a common-ish ancestors as far as 80k years ago. So, Africans are significantly more diverse than the rest of the world combined.
Diversity can be preserved for 86% of the green card quota. Why does need to be there for the other 14%?
Already this is forcing companies to make investments in offshore centers as it is difficult to hire here. There is enough proof this is bad for Americans but the current political climate makes any change impossible.
There are other "diversity" visas. One is a literal diversity lottery and a family permanent resident visa. Does it not make more sense to look at qualifications for employment petitions.
You get enough diversity from the 85% of people who come in through family based immigration. So, the majority of immigrants are not coming from countries like China or India irrespective of whether this discrimination persists or not.
We are talking about 14% of the total annual green card quota, 140,000/1,000,000.Everybody is not coming from same place and it will be a pure FCFS system if these archaic quotas are gone.
>> Now i wouldn't want anyone to be discriminated but still it makes sense to limit green card based on nationality
> Why though? If Google is hiring an engineer, it doesn't make a distinction and does so purely on skill. Why should it matter if said engineer is from Argentina (arbitrary example) instead of India?
Because the priorities of the system don't have to be the same as Google's. Specifically, the US decided it prefers to get immigrants from everywhere rather than letting a couple big countries flood the queue.
If there's a demand for certain roles, which clearly seems to be the case, what difference does it make where the people filling those roles comes from?
Most of the people who are interested in moving to the US, as expat workers, are mostly from India. Let's break this down piece by piece:
1. Canadians have TN visas, so they prefer to use that since there is no lottery for that and it's a simple process of taking your offer letter and have CBP stamp a 3-year TN visa. Even though it is not dual intent, people can and do apply for green cards on TN status since for Canadians the wait times are current and they can get a green card before they need to renew their TN visa.
2. Australians have E-3, so that is what they will use.
3. The Chinese use H1B's but the numbers have dropped as more Chinese prefer to stay in China or return there after their foreign education since a lot of big Chinese tech companies have sprung up.
4. Europeans either do not want to move to the US, they sometimes don't try to have a prospective employer sponsor for H1b visas since a lot of them seem to believe that Indians have a monopoly on those visas.
You're left with mostly Indians, most of who study STEM subjects in college, overwhelmingly come to the US for studies and then hop on to work visas post-graduation. Most of the highest paying tech employers in India are American companies even then many Indians still want to move to the US since there are still a lot of socio-political and quality of life issues in India.
Take all these points and that's how so many H1B's go to Indians.
Because all else being equal, that skew shouldn't exist. There is nothing inherent to Indian people (or any other people) making them better at these jobs, so there is value to understanding why their numbers are so high. And by value, I mean value to US citizens. It could show us how we can improve within the country, or it could expose fraud in the system. Or a mix of both.
> There is nothing inherent to Indian people (or any other people) making them better at these jobs, so there is value to understanding why their numbers are so high.
Their numbers are so high simply because they represent almost a fifth of humanity - there are almost as many Indians as there are people in Europe, South & Central America put together.
This is just obviously and factually wrong. Even average age differs greatly between countries. Why would they have the same degrees/skills/value? You just want to chop down the forest because trees are different heights - you're optimizing for nothing based on nothing.
So what about Basketball ? Should there be more whites ? Is that skewed by design ? Have you ever thought about the various factors behind why a certain group dominates certain fields or you just think it is unfair and on purpose ?
It's funny that you bring up sports, because one of the hot topics in the sports world right now is that there should be less whites in many positions, from coaching to ownership.
It's supposed to be accepted as fact that if there are a lot of non-whites somewhere, it's simply because they're better. But if there are a lot of whites somewhere, it's because of racism.
>>>> Let me flip your question too: why do you think it matters?
Sure, it matters because there are tens of millions of black, hispanic, and latino US citizens -- numerous with CS/STEM degrees -- who cannot get into FAANGs. Many end up in retail or as best buy tech squad reps or tmobile store salespersons.
Yet we're told that someone from a foreign country is a better candidate for these FAANG jobs. In my experience, half the foreign workers cannot even speak english legibly.
Do Americans and the US Government owe at least some chance to local citizens who are being passed over for jobs generation after generation?
Surely there must be something the profit driven FAANG companies are seeing that they prefer hiring broken English speaking Indians over American hispanics/blacks with tech degrees?
With FAANG companies it is not as much profit driven as much as it is that they get an employee who will have to work harder than others due to keeping their visa, and will stay for longer at least until their green card processing is complete and they have their I-140.
> Sure, it matters because there are tens of millions of black, hispanic, and latino US citizens -- numerous with CS/STEM degrees -- who cannot get into FAANGs.
FAANGs aren't discriminating against black, hispanic and latino US citizens. If someone can't get into FAANG its not because of their "race" or "citizenship", it's because they can't pass the hiring bar -- whether hiring is broken is another question, but hiring isn't biased against blacks latinos and hispanics.
> Many end up in retail or as best buy tech squad reps or tmobile store salespersons.
This comparison is disingenuous. Had you said they therefore have to work in the government sector as software engineers, I'd say you might have a point. But your comment reads as: "because they can't get a job as at FAANG they work at t-mobile as salespeople.
The US government is supposed to first and foremost take care of US citizens, not just allow them to be pushed out of jobs because corporations would rather import cheap labor.
In the tech labor market (as per the post) the labor simply isn't available. We don't generally see American software engineers languishing and unable to find jobs.
I guarantee that the like of Microsystems, Google, and Amazon were not paying the poster a pittance.
>We don't generally see American software engineers languishing and unable to find jobs.
That was me from 2016 to 2018. Trust me, there are weirdos like me out there in the country that can't get a job. I decided to go all in on this exciting tech stack called Ruby on Rails. I heard all the cool kids were doing it. Spend all my life savings trying to get in on the action. What I didn't realize is that they were all unemployed......as a result I don't think Matz is so nice.
I'm ok now, wasting my life writing one line of code a day on software that does not make one lick of difference in this world (and no its not in ruby on rails): The American dream™
Not sure who you hang out with, but black, hispanic, and latino US citizens have a very hard time getting jobs despite having software engineering degrees. They end up in GS-5 equivalent military tech "careers" or crappy geek squad jobs.
I agree with your first statement. I've never felt threatened by imported cheap labor in my role though. I think our immigration laws should protect US citizens but what they seem to be doing is allowing companies to hire people for cheap but not giving a very good path for those people to become US citizens even though they're contributing to US companies and the US economy as a whole.
If you're worried about losing your job to cheap labor that's an issue with our immigration system not a problem with immigration in general. You should be asking yourself why companies are allowed to pay non-US citizens less for the same jobs we're doing.
I, personally, have zero fear of being replaced by cheap labor. I've climbed high enough in what I do and I know how valuable my skillset is. But I see it all over the place, and it still concerns me.
> You should be asking yourself why companies are allowed to pay non-US citizens less for the same jobs we're doing.
I would ask myself this, but I know the answer. It's because these companies have our lawmakers in their pockets. That is the problem that really needs to be solved, which would take care of this and many other issues.
Do you agree that should be weighted by the need of the country to remain competitive, say in the hypothetically scenario where we came to the conclusion that the average american is lazy, and that that's the core reason why immigrants replace them?
The entire reason we have this system is so that the country can remain competitive, which is an important and valid reason. But it was never meant to be what it has become, which is just a way to import cheap labor. It needs to get back to what it was supposed to be, which is a way to bring in highly-skilled labor that simply can't be found in the US, at the same pay US citizens would receive.
The country shouldn’t act in the interests of the “country” but rather in the interests of its citizens. “Replacing” the citizens (sounds a little genocidal) is not in the citizens best interests.
This is an emotional subject. I've gone through this but come from a country that has a relatively easy path.
The source of the huge delay for Indian-born people is these four facts:
1. India has a population exceeding one billion;
2. Green cards have a diversity rule that no more than 7% of applicants can come from a single country;
3. Your category is based solely on country of birth not country of citizenship; and
4. H1B visas have no per-country caps or quotas (beyond the total annual quota).
The companies that are really ruining this for anyone are the bodyshops like Tata and Infosys who direclty benefit from the situation. As the article mentions, if you have a pending I140 petition you can stay beyond the 6 year limit and changing jobs is dangerous. So employes get to hold this over employees creating an indentured servant type situation for 10+ years. These bodyshops flood applications and create the lottery problem.
There are numerous problems with all of this and (I really do hate to say this but it's true) the only administration who even made noises about reforming the H1B system was the Trump administration like basing H1B on salary (these bodyshops pay low for software engineers). None of this came to pass.
Here's one big problem: children ageing out of the system. If an Indian national has a pending green card petition and their child is born outside the US and that child gets to age 18 before the petition is approved, they are no longer eligible to receive a green card as part of their family's petition. Given how long Indian delays are, this may mean deporting someone to a country they left when they were 6 months old and have no memory of. They may not even speak the language.
Prior to the pandemic a couple of bills floated around to fix this backlog, most notably S369 [1]. These all ultimately went nowhere and (IMHO) had a lot of problems. For example, this didn't really increase the annual caps (it did, kinda, by only counting the petitioner and not their family against the quota) and eliminated the per-country cap. But what this would've done is made things terrible for everyone else for a transition period of years.
I am an H1B holder and an Indian national. The bodyshops alone did not screw this up. A TON of Indians come here for graduate school, the main motive being that it is an easier path to getting a job here in the US. A lot of them also end up on H1B's and have their companies sponsor them for residency permits. A lot of those students have zero passion in what they're studying but it's all ok for them for a chance to work here.
A family friend's kid just arrived here for his MS CS. He told me upfront that he plagiarized all through his undergrad and couldn't write basic programs. I was like "why on earth would you purse an MS in CS then?". I saw a lot of folks like that.
Attributing all the problems to those bodyshops is a bit disingenuous IMO. Yes they are part of the problem. Even Chinese nationals face 5+ years backlog for their green cards. Limiting immigration from populous countries based on arbitrary country caps for employment based immigration makes no sense. As it is it is a small piece of the overall immigration pie (14% and if we count only primary applicants, ~5%).
What is happening due to this is all advocacy to fix this has to be done by the folks in backlogs (Indians & Chinese) and the rest of the world folks can happily go about business as usual. Yes, H1 reform is needed but green card reform is needed yesterday.
All of the factors I listed apply to China. But even though both countries have similar populations, around two-thirds of H1B applicants are Indian nationals. Bodyshops are a big factor here. This flood of H1B applications is a big factor in everyone having to go through a lottery.
So if two-thirds of the H1B applicants are Indian nationals but the current system caps per-country green cards at 7% (per category), you see why Indian nationals have a much longer wait time than anyone else.
In saying that I'm not denying others (eg China, Mexico, the Phillipines) don't have long wait times too.
This is a great point that is rarely mentioned. China has larger population than India yet has a much shorter backlog so is it really the fault of the US immigration system that India has a long backlog? The Indian outsourcing industry and India’s lower level of economic development are parts of the problem.
Why does it not make sense? Imagine you have factory workers making 15$ an hour and a company decides to import labor to work at 10$ an hour because there’s “no limits” to immigration. The government should act in the interests of its citizens.
It's in the interest of citizens to get their goods at the cheapest price. Thats why you have imports, which is no less than importing the produce of labor.
With people, you have the added benefit that if people working within your country they spend and consume in your country.
Countries all over the world fight each other for talent, and the US immigration system is doing to itself what other countries spend money to prevent.
Do you know what discrimination means? This is literally discrimination. Yes, it is encoded in law, still is discrimination. Imagine this, next time you getting interviewed by someone, and he rejects you,because you are not chineese/Indian. Then you'll be discriminated and that would be acceptable, per law. I'm sure your definition of discrimination won't change then.
Not the op, but to be pedantic, every single international border crossing in the world is an official government “nationality discrimination” department. That’s what passports are for. (Not saying I necessarily agree with this, but it is the world we live in)
I'm just trying to understand the meaning of "I wouldn't want anyone to be discriminated" in the context of "Now i wouldn't want anyone to be discriminated but still it makes sense to limit green card based on nationality". I just think it is unclear. If we want to discriminate by nationality then we should just admit it and say we're going to discriminate by nationality instead of being covert about it.
The US issues roughly 1 million green cards each year. 86% of those go to family based immigration. The rest 14% are for employment based immigration. Even in there the dependents (spouse + kids) are counted against that quota. So net effect is close to 5% employment based immigration if we count only primary applicants. What purpose is discrimination by country of birth serving here?