I’m going on in a few hours to talk about the ongoing debate about H1-B visas.
For those who aren’t following, Elon Musk expressed vast enthusiasm for dramatically increasing the number of tech specialists brought from overseas. He’s been receiving enormous blowback since then.
I know what I want to say but is there anything you, people, want me to mention? Insights, stories, numbers?
Clarissa's Blog 
Here are my random thoughts in no particular order:
We bring to the US a lot of illegal immigrants as unskilled labor. These people are here without the protections of visa and legal status. Bringing people with good skills and education legally is not a bad thing.
Can removing the caps on H-1B harm job prospects of American citizens/permanent residents and lead to decrease in the salaries for specialized jobs? Probably. On the other hand, there are many foreigners who obtain PhD-level education in the US Universities with their stipends and tuition funded by the US tax-payer dollars (this is done either through teaching assistantships that are at least partially funded by the state money at state schools or via research assistantships that are funded from research grant money that their research advisor obtains from federal funding agencies). It makes sense to make it easier for them to obtain work in the US companies after the US invested in their education. My former (American-born) PhD advisor actually used to say that the US should automatically give green cards to people who obtain their PhDs here since they invested so much money into these students.
Are there enough Americans with the work ethics and education to fill these jobs? I do not have data, only anecdotal stories. I work in a STEM field with graduate students/postdocs at a decent (R-1) University. Sadly, based on my personal experience, there is a significant difference between the work ethics and resilience of an average foreigner and an average American student. And then, there is so much personal drama in the life of American students. The main difference is in the ability to focus and overcome problems. Obviously, there is also an element of self-selection happening. Students who come here from aboard are all making a big change to their lives, so there is naturally a higher level of motivation and responsibility. There is also more at stake when they fail. Moving to a different continent is not for everyone.
Finally, I would rather bring educated people to the US to work in the tech jobs than outsource these jobs to a different country. Keeping the jobs and the know-how in the US helps everyone, and also gives opportunities to Americans to get these jobs when competitive.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, I really appreciate the help!
The company here in St Louis that hired N back in 2011 had spent years unable to hire because people with the requisite skills don’t want to live in this region. They want Silicon Valley and Wall Street and can easily get there. I’m not saying that N stuck around because of any particular immigrant virtue. He stayed because of me. But in the absence of something specific keeping people in these areas, there’s very unequal distribution of talent around the country. And that is a serious, real block to innovation.
Also, being in tech seems to mean endless, lifelong learning. N spends more time learning than he does working. There’s always a new programming language, a new skill, a new causal inference or whatever. It’s a particular type of person and our whole life is set up in a way that discourages the development of such a personality.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Can removing the caps on H-1B harm job prospects of American citizens/permanent residents and lead to decrease in the salaries for specialized jobs? Probably.”
Come on you know very well it’s not “probably,” it’s a certainty. Anybody with half a brain can see the intended purpose is to increase competition and lower the salaries of American tech workers.
“Sadly, based on my personal experience, there is a significant difference between the work ethics and resilience of an average foreigner and an average American student. And then, there is so much personal drama in the life of American students. The main difference is in the ability to focus and overcome problems. Obviously, there is also an element of self-selection happening.”
No shit there is self-selection. Many people coming here for higher education are some of the brightest from their home countries. However, they are not here on H-1B visas and likely will never will be on H-1B visas. If you’re really in academia you would know that very well. But instead you take this as an opportunity to attack American workers and American work ethic.
LikeLike
Many foreign graduates from American Universities end up on H-1B visa for several years. The opportunities to obtain jobs in private sector are also severely limited for these graduates due to the caps on H-1B visa. The best options end up being academic positions or government labs where the caps do not apply. In my field, companies prefer not to deal with these graduates or will use them until their OPT runs out (it is much easier to employ someone on OPT – you can pay them less than you would have to pay people on H-1B visa too). I went through about 4 years of being on H-1B visa after graduating from an American University and many people I know have gone through the same pathway. I have also supervised people on H-1B visa and I am familiar with the requirements to obtain these. You actually have to pay prevailing wage to people on H-1B visa (you cannot simply fire Americans and then employ foreigners on a reduced salary), which means the wage you pay them has to be documented based on what workers in that particular field earn in the geographical area where you employ them. Trust me, with the amount of work you have to go through getting H-1B visa for your employees even without a cap, it is much better, easier, and preferable to employ Americans (as it should be). This is a very different situation from undocumented workers who are here without legal status and any kind of protections. I am assuming the discussion is about removing the caps on H-1Bs, not the process/other rules on the visa.
LikeLike
I too am a tech-worker, from India, came here as a student and on an H1-B visa currently. Some thoughts:
Removing country caps is a good idea. This will primarily benefit Indians. While the time to get a green card is 1-4 years for most countries, for India it can be up to 12(!) years. Keeping immigrants (and employers) in a precarious position (where your or your employees’ visa can be denied at any time, for any reason) is absurd and inhuman. Country caps make no sense. Every country gets an equal number of green cards regardless of population or the country’s relationship with the US. I have been in the country for over 15 years, and paid taxes for 10, and I’m still to receive a green card. At the current rate, it won’t happen for another 7 years making it a total of whopping 22 years! This is the cause of a lot of uncertainty about my future, making me unable to plan my life one way or another. It might actually be a relief at this point if they just cancelled the program and I had to return to India! (Obviously, I don’t want them to. But you know what I mean.)
It might be useful to distinguish between the two kinds of people that get H1-B. One is people who come here as students, start working for an American company after graduation and then apply for a green card. Such people would fit the description in the comments above – being able to take initiative, whose education is paid for by US taxpayers etc. Speaking from personal experience, the student-pipeline also get more opportunities to assimilate to American culture. The other group are people who study in India, start working for an Indian MNC with operations in the US and come here through their Indian employers. This group often has difficulties assimilating often living in isolated communities.
Indian firms engage is a lot of outright visa fraud and irregularity. Much of this could be fixed through fixing some loopholes in the H1-B visa process and greater vigilance on Indian firms.
One reason there is proportionally large number of immigrant students in graduate school is because grad school doesn’t make any economic sense for an average American. A bright American graduate with a Bachelors degree, can earn a lot more money and success in the 5-7 years it takes to do a Masters+PhD. You don’t even need a degree to be a Silicon Valley CEO. Only people who really LOVE academics or want to work in specialized roles gravitate towards a PhD programs. OTOH, for immigrants the economic hit is worth it because they get a path to immigration and a life in America.
It is true, what Clarissa said about tech-workers having to be lifelong learners. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for this insight! It’s definitely a shame that you have to wait for the green card so long.
In the US, math education has been knee-capped with the obsession about equal representation. What’s being done to math and stats programs in the name of fairness is downright atrocious. We aren’t going to have homegrown talent if we do everything not to raise it and educate it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s really a shame! This is unfair to American kids who might have a talent for math. It also has a cultural impact. The profusion of immigrant scholars in grad school also brings with them their cultural ways of working. My experience in grad school was very ‘Asian’, for the lack of a better word. This was a disappointment. Growing up in India, my role models were all American scientists and engineers. I was deeply engrossed in American nerd culture. The reason for this was not just the knowledge and the innovation, it was also a certain kind of ‘ethos’ that I admired and that only Americans have. From a distance I’d imagined that I’d get to participate in it in this country. But, by the time I arrived in this country, all of that was gone. That was a moment of disillusionment.
Eric Weinstein has spoken about how the culture of even MIT has changed in that way.
LikeLike
Eric Weinstein just shared this very interesting article: https://users.nber.org/~sewp/references/archive/weinsteinhowandwhygovernment.pdf
LikeLike
” This is unfair to American kids who might have a talent for math”
Screw those losers… you can pay to train home grown talent with a small trickle of immigration or you can rely on other countries to train talent en masse and channel home grown into various forms of addiction and maybe have a trickle of domestic talent survive.
There’s no way to put a nice face on it. The US has chosen to import rather than train talent. Sucks to be born in the USA and not have clout chasing / wealthy parents.
It is what it is. You might look at what’s happened to other countries that are further along the process (UK and Canada) to see where it’s heading.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I thought AI was going to obviate the need to import H1-Bs for IT, science and related fields. Isn’t that the hype?
AI is just going to magically brain drain people all over the world without the need to fuss with the immigration system or whether a particular place is attractive to live in and we’ll learn how to live with and love regurgitated AI GIGO sludge in science, math, education, the arts, etc.
Why is your region unattractive to people with N’s skills?
=
LikeLike
Do you know many people who would choose St Louis over California? Me neither.
As for AI, it will replace doctors before it does IT people.
LikeLike
Without commenting on the merits of either position, boy is the pro-H1B side doing a terrible job presenting their case. I’m seeing crying about anti-Indian racism, a lot of smug people saying that native born Americans are loser idiots who can’t compete, Vivek Dorkaswamy saying American culture is bad because our kids go to sleepovers instead of becoming mathletes, etc.
LikeLike
I think H1B visa is a terrible idea. In the 2000s we were told that Americans did not want to harvest strawberries. Now apparently Americans do not want to do engineering, nursing, secretarial work, lawyering, etc etc. this is insane propaganda. It makes no sense to import a middle/upper middle class from outside the country. As for the so-called high skills. They’re probably only 0.1% of them which can easily be accommodated by an O1 visa. The rest of them are absolute sweatshop idiots barely trained, coming from tier 3 colleges in India, and highly nepotistic in nature. I know this class of people very well, I know what kind of education they’ve had, and believe me they are not an asset to the country.
We already have this the results of this experiment done at a mass scale. Where is the new semiconductor industry in Canada? Where is the tech innovation in Canada? Canada imported tons of so-called high scale immigrants from India and you see how shitty the country has become. Tech wants people tied down to a visa so they can pay them lower wages without complaints, because Americans have options and will not stand for labor exploitation.
The only people we should be importing in tech are the very rare kind of genius (easily identifiable through their achievements and tech does a very good job of identifying them anyway). As for the rest, sorry you don’t get to build an upper middle class life here (at the expense of other Americans) by virtue of Java coding which you learned six months ago in your sweatshop company boot camp. You have to go back.
Stringer Bell (on phone)
LikeLiked by 1 person
“I think H1B visa is a terrible idea. In the 2000s we were told that Americans did not want to harvest strawberries. Now apparently Americans do not want to do engineering, nursing, secretarial work, lawyering, etc etc. this is insane propaganda.”
You’re spot on Stringer Bell. It’s the exact same propaganda with a slightly different tinge.
I’m really curious to see how this plays out because this is the exact same shit that got us where we are in terms of problems with immigration and it’s what’s crushing Canada right now. It’s more of the same corporate globalist BS that Trump is supposedly against.
LikeLike
Elon Musk is backtracking:
“Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.
This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA.
Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.”
Problem is, nobody is talking about the lone genius who’s one in a million. We are talking about a completely different phenomenon. I wrote recently about how the whole concept of graduate school is transforming into a conduit for utterly unprepared people to come to the US under a pretext. Graduate programs do it because otherwise they won’t survive financially. But it’s a total scam.
There are way too many graduate programs but instead of dying they are playing this trick on all of us. It will be too late once we notice.
LikeLike
He’s not only backtracking, he’s continuing to lie. Take a look at one of Stringer Bell’s posts showing H-1B positions and pay at Tesla. “Packaging engineer, quality engineer, associate process engineer, etc.” All these are low enginnering job all at relatively average to low wages.
These are not the Jokic’s and Wemby’s of the STEM world, these are low-wage tech workers that he can exploit knowing that they have no recourse but to take it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is one of the best comments on the situation that I have come across so I will post it in full.
Dear @JTLonsdale,Hold on a minute. Take a breath. Read the room. Those 1000s of angry messages you’re getting are there for a reason. There’s something you haven’t understood here. If you listen to yourself talk, if you read, really read, what you just wrote, as if seeing it for the first time, you should notice that you are speaking of America as if it were a corporation. Look at your phrasing. Recruit the best and the brightest. Highest standard of living. Competitive. Talent game.
And it makes sense that you would have that mindset. Starting companies is what you do. Recruit the best people, swing for the fences, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. But the people you are talking to, the people whose trust you are asking for — and, in some now-deleted comments, angrily demanding — they don’t think that way. To them, America is a not a corporation. It is their home. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t invite people to my home on the basis of an IQ test or a resume. I invite people into my home on the basis of friendship and trust. The American worker does not want, and did not vote for, America to be run like a corporation. Because corporations are loyal to their stockholders, not their workers.
Most of these people don’t own a single square inch of America. They pay rent to live wherever they live. Multiple generations of their ancestors shed their sweat, their tears, and even their blood, not to build up a personal legacy of wealth, but to build a really nice country for their descendants. And so the one legacy those descendants have, the one piece of tangible, visible evidence that their parents, grandparents, and family line loved them and wanted them to prosper and thrive and be happy… … is a nice country that in some collective sense belongs to them. That is a homeland for them, and their people, and their culture, and their values. So they’re not too enthusiastic about the idea of inviting in infinite strangers so that the companies you start can be more competitive and make you additional money.
And you can say that “American” companies need the best, worldwide, talent in order to prosper. Well, okay, but in what sense are those companies American in any way that benefits the actual American people? If a company has no preference for American people, culture, or values, how are they helped by that company being “American” merely in the sense of existing on American soil? People without a homeland suffer. Just ask the Jews. So if India is to be a home for Indians, Ukraine for Ukrainians, Russia for Russians, Israel for Jews, and so on…Then why is America to be a homeland for everyone and no one?
If America is to be apportioned out based on IQ tests and resumes, so that your companies can be “competitive”, what is to happen to those Americans who didn’t get to go to Caltech or Stanford? Who are merely average? Whose claim on America does not lie in their academic pedigree, but in the blood and sweat and toil and sacrifice their ancestors invested to leave a great country for their children? Do we truly owe previous generations nothing for all that work and sacrifice? Is it moral for us to take everything they built, and strip it away from their children? They built it because they wanted their children to have it. Your companies will survive if you recruit Americans, in the same way that companies not only survived before infinite third-world immigration, but made America into a place that everyone wants to come to.
You might have to pay salaries that are competitive in America, rather than what people fleeing third-world poverty would expect, but previous generations of Americans, and companies, managed that just fine. The American working and professional classes are not convinced of your premise that they are somehow inadequate to do what their ancestors already did. And the reason people are angry at you is not only that your premise insults them, but that you demand their trust without having first successfully inspired it. Sriram is your friend, not their friend. And however much you enjoy his company, however awesome a dude he is to hoist a couple beers with, that doesn’t make them want to invite him into their home, much less put him in charge of bits of it. Because they don’t know him. Most of them don’t even know you.
Please, for your own sake, read the room. Then write this on your bathroom mirror, so you can read it as you shave every morning. Civilization is impossible without trust. Trust cannot be demanded, owed, or even earned. Trust must be inspired.
LikeLike
LikeLike
LikeLike
As far as I can see, American/Canadian born engineers are not unemployed or working as barristas. They are still working as engineers, they are just getting less than they would be getting in the absence of competition from the newcomers.
Suppose we remove the newcomers. The salaries of the engineers will surely go up. Less supply, more demand… So in a several year perspective, the profession of an engineer will become more attractive, etc, etc and more locals will want to become engineers…
But: a) in a short term there will be lack of engineers.
b) what will prevent the business owners from passing the increased costs of labor onto customers? Or other business owners from increasing their prices as there is more money in the hands of the paying customers (engineers)?
Furthermore, in a scenario where more American born will become engineers eventually, it is implied that there is some additional pool of locals who are capable of being engineers but are not becoming engineers just because the pay is not attractive enough… Is this actually a correct assumption, or something similar to “those ex-miners of WV should learn to code”?
LikeLike
“Furthermore, in a scenario where more American born will become engineers eventually, it is implied that there is some additional pool of locals who are capable of being engineers but are not becoming engineers just because the pay is not attractive enough… Is this actually a correct assumption, or something similar to “those ex-miners of WV should learn to code”?”
There is a whole lot of new graduate Engineers who can’t find jobs right not, it’s a very rough market as it is.
This is a country of 340 million people, of course there are enough engineers and and enough people to train to be engineers.
LikeLike
Clarissa, same as with just about everything, you need to ask yourself who stands to gain the most from increasing H1-B immigration. As with just about everything nowadays, it’s corporations and the mega rich because this will lower salaries and increase competition in the job market. The tech job market is currently severely depressed with a lot of young American graduates unable to find good fulfilling jobs, or any jobs at all. Tech used to be the field that assured the clearest path to the middle class and whatever semblance of the American dream, but that is mostly gone now and it’s currently being gutted even further.
As with every case where mega corporations and the mega rich stand to gain, I hope you are seeing a pattern of attacking the American tech worker right now as “lazy, unmotivated, difficult, stupid, etc.” I see a lot of people in this very thread repeating the same message because this is the message that that is being pushed, same as it’s always done to justify more immigration to suppress American wages. It’s all the same tactics, they’re now attacking a different sector because they now want to suppress wages and increase competition in tech.
If they really wanted to improve the H1-B program, they would start by making it easier for H1-B workers to freely change jobs and not need to slave away for a single company where being fired likely means having to leave the US. But you never hear about THIS type of change from the likes of Elon.
LikeLike
Just got back in, and I’d like to toss my $0.02 into the ring. This is a horrible idea. Why the ……. is this moron trying to increase immigration now. I don’t give a damn if they are the best and smartest of their various races and countries. America is already hurting badly enough as it is from the endless hordes of foreigners being shipped in from around the world.
If the supply of workers goes up, that doesn’t mean the number of jobs goes up, it means the competition goes up, and the companies can offer lower and lower pay-rates and people will be forced to accept them.
The lower class has been hammered by the endless unskilled illegals flooding in and competing with them for jobs. This will simple do the same to the middle class who are already sinking as it is due to the horrible economy and lack of jobs.
I have no idea who the heck this guy is and why he thinks he should be allowed to flood my home with foreigners, but quite frankly someone either needs to pull him aside and make him understand how badly timed this idea was, or beat him bloody. I’ll be honest at this point I’m fine with either outcome.
If America wasn’t already is such dire straights, and if it wasn’t already overrun by millions upon millions of foreigners, then I would probably have been somewhat receptive to this idea. Oh I would likely still have insisted on a cap, but I would have been ok with it being raised by a fair amount.
As it stands today the guy is either a naive idiot who needs to be taken aside, or a traitor that needs to be removed from whatever position he is in.
Frankly the sense I’m getting from him is that he doesn’t consider himself an American at all. I would not be surprised in the slightest if he supported globalism and was against the idea of nation-states.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Elite workers often do need to be recruited to fill critical positions, but it is the mid level workers who are generally collectively the most expensive and the ones most likely to be targeted for cost cutting.
Reserving these mid level positions for white workers was one of the largest factors behind the rise of the apartheid government.
https://sacp.org.za/docs/history/fifty3.html
LikeLike
Right, because the breaking of South Africa by foreigners went soooo well for South Africa in particular and Africa as a whole. It simply amazes me how a 1st world country, the bread basket of Africa, and a major exporter of some of the best technology at the time had been turned into a living hellscape in such a short time.
Its funny really. All it took was other nations demanding they allow in endless hordes of foreigners. Heck it didn’t take a decade before the country was reduced to ruin. The same as happened to Rhodesia funnily enough.
Also apartheid government sure is a funny way of saying. Wanting to protect your people, the country built by your people, and the prosperity of your people from hordes of foreigners being influenced by demons in human skin. Next time just be honest. You hate my country. You hate my people. There is no reason to try to hide what you are. Your words speak volumes.
LikeLike
PaulS
Hmmm, are you familiar with Godwin’s law ;-D
LikeLike