[pkoiralap]

Something that I personally feel unfair about the H1B lottery is that it doesn't consider where you live and what you are currently doing. Students that graduate through a STEM degree get to work for 3 years in their OPT (Optional Practical Training). This extends then to them having 3 chances (one per year) at getting the H1B. Now what's unfair is that an employer in the US can apply H1B for employees living oversees. That application then goes to the same pool where H1B application of the employees that are already living in the US go. The very same people that already hold a college or graduate degree, are already living in the US, and are contributing to the US economy. Unfortunately, the lottery is fair. So those that don't get picked up even after their third attempt are kicked out. They leave their life that they were trying to build in the US, potentially their girlfriends and partners, their friends, and their possessions. While that happens, someone who has never stepped foot in the US soil gets to go to the US. So in a sense it's fair for them. And while there is no real metric to measure this, when compared, between the fairness people oversees get and the unfairness people already living in the US experience, I personally think that the later tips the scale by a huge margin.

[wing-_-nuts]

If it were up to me there wouldn't be an h1b. People would be admitted via a points based system like Canada (but stricter) and would then be on a green card path and be granted perm residency after 5y, citizenship after 10.

That's of course my pie in the sky 'we can get congress to agree on things' version. If I were president, I would simply make the h1b go to the highest bidder, so the people that enter the US are, supposedly, the cream of the crop. Yeah, that would make students return home vs someone with more skills and experience. The whole point of the h1b is to bring over people with skills we can't find here in the US.

[bedobi]

Why stricter than Canada? Why green card eligible after five years (Australia, NZ, Canada and others, you get the PR immediately long as you reach the points requirements) and citizenship after TEN? (again, other countries you become a citizen after four)

[wing-_-nuts]

Because the lax immigration regs of the commonwealth countries are already causing significant issues.

[bedobi]

Lol, how are they "lax? And "significant issues" like what? According to who? You?

Those countries are only afloat because of immigration. Their homegrown economies are uncompetitive ones based on resource extraction and the trades, and their populations are uneducated and unambitious.

[undedone]

The mess that the huge flood of immigration of all sorts (students, refugees, etc) has created (housing, food banks etc) has been in the news - mainstream news - for months here in Canada.

[jandrese]

It's a political problem, but it's not clear that it's an actual economic problem. Immigrants are easy to demonize, so absent anything else political provocateurs tend to default back to complaining about immigration. Real life studies show that immigration is a net positive for the economy.

[danbolt]

Housing affordability had been an issue in Canada even before recent changes to immigration. Cities have been hesitant to upzone and no premier wants to upset voters in suburban homeowner ridings.

[rmccoy6435]

> Those countries are only afloat because of immigration.

According to who? You? One of the countries you specifically just listed has just tamped down on some immigration efforts [1].

[1] https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/government-responds-unsu...

[bedobi]

A right wing populist clamps down on migration, color me surprised, it must be because of real problems and not to appease anti migrant voters.

It's very interesting how NET migration figures are rarely mentioned when this happens. Yes migrants are entering NZ in record numbers but citizens and migrants alike are also leaving in record numbers. (not uncommonly for the exact reasons I mentioned - the NZ economy is not competitive and it's not a place educated, ambitious, career minded people can maximize their potential)

[rvba]

Because there are billions of people in Africa, India, Pakistan and so on. And you cant just let them all in.

Millions would come even from second tier countries if they could. Look at any war conflict, refugees would come to the western countries too, if allowed.

[ToxicMegacolon]

> Because there are billions of people in Africa, India, Pakistan and so on. And you cant just let them all in.

> second tier countries

Maybe you didn't intend it, but your comment reads like you have an issue with immigrants of certain racial profiles. I'd suggest rewording, unless of course that was your intent behind the comment.

It also comes off as racist/supremacist to term certain countries as "second tier". Unless of course, that is intentional on your part.

[kelseyfrog]

What does it mean, "second tier", and who gets to decide tier placement?

[bedobi]

the context of the thread is highly selective points based visas for professionals which have nothing to do with whatever you're imagining

[ahmeneeroe-v2]

I hope at least these uneducated and unambitious populations manage to keep people who think like this out of their countries

[bedobi]

They do! I migrated to but subsequently left Australia in no small part for the reasons mentioned.

[faeriechangling]

Canada has been pulling back in immigration, specifically student visas by a third because things got modestly out of hand and it ended up with about the same number of international students as the US, uh, not adjusted for population. This is after a decades long pro-immigration cross-party consensus so I should highlight how irregular this is as now 2/3 major national level parties have supported curtailing immigration.

“Schools” would open up in strip malls and most of the students wouldn’t show up which existed simply to justify visas.

Some enterprising types would go out and take out mortgages and buy a house and have a dozen plus people living in it.

Public services like the healthcare systems and food banks saw overflowing demand. People were allowed to come to Canada to study with proof of just 10k of credit, which you will obviously blow through long before you complete a 4 year program, and that’s not actually enough to live in Canada.

Housing prices absolutely exploded in no small part to all of this, and in case you’re thinking maybe the immigrants will build more houses, Canada has about 9% of its population working construction compared to 2% of immigrants, because for some reason the immigration ministry was unconcerned with taking in immigrants who can build homes during a housing shortage.

GDP per capita has actually been backsliding, and while this is largely demographics and an aging workforce and low productivity, national bank of Canada economists pointed to there simply being more people and this spreading our economic output thinner. I do notice how immigration numbers are multiples of the number of new jobs in the statscan data. The jobs are also going down in pay over time.

Of course you are correct about these economies being uncompetitive but framing them as resource extraction economies is reductive and mostly wrong. These are service based economies for the most part. If anything, the main economic driver in recent times has been building and selling houses and products and services to people who want to live in the beautiful lands and breathe in the clean air of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia to new money bringing fistfuls of cash. You aren’t wrong about these counties being kept afloat by immigration, but this sort of thing is taking the air out of the rest of the economy though because it’s inflating cost of living and gutting the cost competitiveness of other businesses. Also we took in a whack of students who were fuck poor and went to school at a fake strip mall school they did not attend which does not seem like a wise strategy if we want this educated economic juggernaut of a population.

Framing these countries as uneducated is somehow even more wrong, Canada has repeatedly topped the entire world in numbers of those with a post secondary education despite grads constantly bleeding south. In no small part because Canada both has a shitton of student immigrants as I just mentioned and all these students subsidize the education for the rest of the students. It seems like education is not actually the key to economic success and in practice actually results in people getting bachelor degrees to do menial work so they can get hired over somebody with a mere diploma, while the most economically productive graduates fuck off to America.

[dahfizz]

You're claiming the native population of rich western countries are uneducated? And immigrants from the third world are all doctors and rocket scientists coming to save the day? uhuh...

[bedobi]

Have you spent a day in Australia? Overflowing with homegrown bogans working in resource extraction and the trades (at best), meanwhile professionals like Drs and Scientists (including Computer Scientists) are overwhelmingly migrants. So yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

[avidiax]

Sorting the applications by 2 year guaranteed total comp would be a great start.

You then have to have a whistleblower program to stop the inevitable practice of inflating the total comp on the understanding that most of it will be kicked back to the employer.

[para_parolu]

How it would work with startups that pay via non liquid equity? Or what about innovative works that is not well funded. Most of jobs will go to large corporations while new businesses will suffer. And it will reinforce corporations even more.

[pphysch]

> If I were president, I would simply make the h1b go to the highest bidder

The article makes clear that many H1B aspirants are manipulated into indentured servant like conditions and debt. Selling H1Bs would just amplify that class divide.

I think the goal of the H1B system is to benefit American labor market, it's not a sort of "Ivy League" that is for elite reproduction.

[fragmede]

The stated goal of the H1B system is to allow companies to import high skilled and high quality labor that isn't available in the US market, into the US. That it doesn't behave that way in practice is at odds with the intent of the program.

[jandrese]

The stated purpose of the H1B program is solving a problem that didn't exist. The problem was that highly skilled people exist, but they know what they were worth and demand living wages. That's the problem that the H1B program solves: how to get skilled people who the company has enough leverage over to prevent them from negotiating high wages.

[pphysch]

The labor market is highly political and any policy that significantly affects it is going to have lipstick on it. US politicians will never admit that the southern border issue is driven by the demand of US business (agriculture, manufacturing, services) for inexpensive+disenfranchised migrant labor, but that is the bottom line for a lot of the stakeholders.

[terse-broccoli]

So basically you want to extend the luck/financial privilege that those people have had to be able to study in the US to extend to additional advantages for future visa applications. Not sure that I’d clasify that as fair, personally. As you mentioned, they already get multiple chances at a H1-B already.

Side note: my understanding is that there’s already a secondary lottery for people who hold a US masters (the advanced degree petition). If you are not selected in the first lottery, and you meet that condition, you get placed in a second lottery which has much better odds as there are far less people who meet this criteria (it also makes up almost 25% of the total H1-Bs granted). So basically each year you have 2 chances, and there are better odds for one of those chances.

[tivert]

> So basically you want to extend the luck/financial privilege that those people have had to be able to study in the US to extend to additional advantages for future visa applications. Not sure that I’d clasify that as fair, personally.

It's not fair to uproot someone from a life they've already established, just to give someone else a chance.

Also, this is a US policy meant to serve US goals. Absolute fairness to some overseas person is not the point. It makes sense to favor an existing immigrant over a potential immigrant in similar way as it makes sense to favor a citizen over an immigrant.

[CPLX]

The problem with your plan is that it essentially grants the ability to determine which people get to immigrate to the admissions committee of private colleges.

If you propose that you have to defend it on policy grounds. I don’t like that idea at all, that decision is the function of a democratically elected government.

[tivert]

> The problem with your plan is that it essentially grants the ability to determine which people get to immigrate to the admissions committee of private colleges.

Who said anything about "admissions committee of private colleges"? 99% of the immigrant college grads I've known went to public colleges, most of which were not particularly selective.

And even if "admissions committee of private colleges" were given that exclusive power, that sounds a lot better to me than the mindless operation of an unjust lottery.

IMHO, all OPT visa holders should be given first dibs on H1-Bs, in front of the likes of HCL and Google bringing new people in.

[CPLX]

> And even if "admissions committee of private colleges" were given that exclusive power, that sounds a lot better to me than the mindless operation of an unjust lottery.

It's not. A lottery is infinitely more fair than letting an unelected and unaccountable group of people on a college campus decide basic questions like who does and does not get to become long term members of our country's society.

[sys_64738]

H1-B visas are non-immigrant visas so anybody coming in on one knows it's finite then they need to leave after the fact (assuming they don't change status).

[lowenergyphoton]

On paper it's finite, but in practise everyone on H1-B applies for green card asap to get the I-140 approved, and then the H1-B is not finite, you are cap exempt for extensions until your I-485 comes through

[pandaman]

And the people on OPT (Optional Practical Training) have F "student" visas, which required them to prove that they needed to get education in the US in order to use it in their home country and have no intention on staying in the US after finishing the education least "building a life" there. Supported by evidence of strong ties to the home country, stated under penalty of perjury.

[tivert]

> H1-B visas are non-immigrant visas so anybody coming in on one knows it's finite then they need to leave after the fact (assuming they don't change status).

So what? I don't see how that's relevant to the question, unless you're being unreasonably legalistic.

Also, I've known only one person in my career who came to the US on temporary visa who intended to leave. Everyone else's ultimate goal was a green card.

[sys_64738]

I know plenty who have left after a few years. Maybe you don't know many people on non-immigrant visas.

[tivert]

I know quite a few, and there was a time where almost everyone I interacted with was an immigrant with an H1-B or OPT, though I think all of them did go to school in the US and got hired as full-time employees through the same process Americans would go through.

I also know immigrants who left after a few years, but only one had planned/wanted to do so from the start (and that's just because he didn't want to bother the uncertainty of trying for an H1-B).

[pkoiralap]

Let's look at a really dumb comparison.

You are the owner of a house and you have a tenant person X, that's living in that house. You let person X to live in your house. They in turn, paid you the rent regularly, took care of your house, and never gave you any reason to complain. Personally, person X built a garden in the backyard, got a dog, got married while living in that house and now live with their partner and 3 other kids that go to school, have friends and consider your house to be their house.

You were fair though. You were very clear to person X at the very beginning that at the end of every year, you will put them in a lottery system where the winning odds are 1 in six, and the other 5 people you are pitting them against can potentially replace them from your house. And if they don't win for three consecutive years, you will throw them out and get a new person, person Y that won the lottery to live in your house for 6 years. But you don't know anything about person Y, i.e. if they will pay you the rent, if they will take care of your house. But you are completely fine with it.

You were clear to them so it's not your fault. They should have been more careful about getting that dog or getting married because they knew there is a rather high chance that they would be kicked out. But they are dumb and they did it either ways. So its them not you.

However, if you put yourself in person X's perspective, you were doing everything right. You were a great tenant, you were paying rent, taking care of the house, and even got attached to the house, knowing fully that there was a high chance of you being kicked out.

I guess people are just dumb that way.

[afr0ck]

To me what you're saying sounds like slavery. Those immigrants are also humans, just like you, who may fall in love. If they lived 5/7 years in the US (for example, they did a PhD) and met someone and fell in love, it is inhuman and very stupid to me to expect them to think about it and possibly reject the love and the relationship just because they might loose their visa in the future. Imagine telling someone I can't be with you because I might not have a visa in 3 years from now and be kicked out of the country!!!

An immigrant has the right to live a life with dignity and not be deprived from human experience and oppressed and exploited just to have a chance to stay in the country and get a visa. What's shocking to me is that you think such a person is stupid!! Are you okay?

[pkoiralap]

I was trying to explain my point through a more personal and practical point of view. It got to you so I think it did a good job.

[CPLX]

We already have marriage visas to solve problems like this. It happens all the time and has nothing to do with the H1B program.

[rtkwe]

I would expect that to be partially counter balanced by companies being more willing to sponsor someone already in the US over someone currently overseas? Haven't had to go through that process fortunately but seems likely from a practical standpoint.

[tivert]

[replying to deleted child comment]

> Sponsored green cards take like 1.5+ years to process, so someone could be OPT the whole time but the employer would have to get the application rolling quickly after hiring or else risk their employee having to go back to their home country for some period of time when OPT runs out and the green card is approved.

Add to that:

1. Some (many?) companies do not file for green cards right away, because they like to keep their employees tied down with an H1-B. I think my employer has a policy of not applying for a green card until the employee has 5 years or service or something.

2. IIRC, there are country-based quotas for employment-based green cards, so it could take very much longer than 1.5 years to get one. E.g. I think it can take 10+ years for an Indian to get one. Though I think having an active application for one is enough to stay in country for H1-B holders (though I'm even less sure about OPT holders).

[oooyay]

I had a friend that was at 12 and counting. He was a pretty talented technologist too.

[muzaffarpur]

It is not 10. It is lifetime.

[tivert]

> It is not 10. It is lifetime.

Did some policy change in the last 10 years to cause the wait times to go up? Because I just checked the USCIS backlog, and it looks like they're now processing Indian green card applications from 12 years ago, and I've known people who've gotten employment-based green cards in approximately that amount of time.

https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-pr...

I did scan some Cato institute blog post that claimed the wait is 134 years, but they're a biased advocacy organization (so have reason to exaggerate for political effect) and what they say conflicts with what I've personally seen.

[ajaynv31]

You do not understand how the processing work - the processing dates don’t move in tandem with the calendar days. For instance , by end of 2024 , you’ll find that the priority date has only moved 2 months . So the actual number is somewhere around 100 years at the current gc numbers

[broknbottle]

Sounds like it’s working by design. Each one pays into social security for 3 years with no chances of ever drawing from it

[lsllc]

... if you don't get the H1B after 3 tries, some international companies will send the employee overseas to an office in a more tech-work-visa friendly country, have them work there for a year then bring them back on an L-1 (intracompany transfer).