"The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY2020-FY2022, by reserving a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas. Of the unreserved visas, not more than 85% shall be allotted to immigrants from any single country."
The current system is unfair to Indians and Chinese, so they are trying to fix that with the bill. At the same time, they put in that text to make it so that people from other countries who are already in the queue are not adversely affected, so it eases in the transition over two years so that people from other countries applying in the next few months don't have to wait for decades.
Currently the limit is 7% per country, as described in the second paragraph of tfa. If 85% is a "blatant move to block" people from those countries, how would you describe 7%?
The motive is to level the playing field so to say. China and India have the largest populations. India (and US) staffing companies have been abusing the Visa system and the eager Visa applicants for some time. I’ve personally seen it with IT Contractors getting pointless mail order Masters just to meet the Visa requirement.
I do not see this as part of the ongoing China/US trade “issues”.
I would like everyone answer few questions to define what is fair and what is not:
1. Is it fair for high-skilled Indian-nationals to wait 10+ years for a GC?
2. Is it fair that indian consultancy bodyshops overwhelmed the IT market and H1B quota and then brought down the wages of IT professionals via C2C, 1099, OPT/CPT, fake resumes and other tricks?
3. Is it fair that indian GC backlog will delay GC for other nationals, in case the 7% limit is lifted?
I would say since Indians enjoyed getting the majority of H1-Bs, they should also bear the consequences of hitting the country limit. Otherwise, it would only benefit Indian nationals only at a cost of other nationals.
I am not even talking about nurses and other professions that will be harmed by this bill.
Nations don't get visas. Individuals do. Punishing or rewarding people on the basis of where they were born instead of their own skills is wrong.
Regarding #2, the body shops are able to get away with it because of the long GC backlog for Indians. Hence companies like to hire Indians precisely because they will work for them for a long time without pay hikes because of the GC backlog, compared to hiring Americans or workers from other non-backlogged countries. This bill will take that away and equalize everyone's footing. You know the body shops and staffing companies hate this bill right?
>Is it fair that indian GC backlog will delay GC for other nationals, in case the 7% limit is lifted?
Yes, it is. It's called first come first served. That's like asking if it is fair that people who got into the queue at the DMV before you get to go to the counter before you. Yes, it definitely is.
The reason why diversity is good is because it helps break down enclaves and bubbles and let's the dominant culture play a bigger role. When people from one nation migrate en masse are they forced to integrate into their new environment and culture or they do they form ethnic and cultural enclaves that resist the dominant culture and form a concrete in group that resists outsiders, including the native population?
Country quotas have existed across the globe and history for a reason. People inherently have in group preferences, they are nationalist, that includes migrants.
First of all, this bill benefits people that are already in the US and working there for close to a decade, so all that text about diversity in your post is completely irrelevant.
Looks like you need to advocate for national quotas on H1B visas, so you're barking up the wrong tree.
>Country quotas have existed across the globe and history for a reason
Not really. Do you have examples of other countries still enforcing a country quota on work visas?
But its fairer - its certainly not fair that one country take the lions share?
What about some bright young kid from Saharan Africa doesn't get a fair chance at a H1b Visa.
And you could argue from a realpolitik view that allowing more sub Sharan h1b's would act as a counter to the Chinese Belt and Road would be a good policy
The bright young kid from Saharan Africa has a less chance of being hired by a company right now because he will get his green card in 7 months, compared to 70 years for a less bright Indian worker. Companies can pay the Indian worker less to retain him for a decade since he cannot switch companies easily unlike the African worker. It also reduces their employee turnover so they prefer Indian workers. This new law will make it more likely for that African worker to get hired because everything would be on an even footing so the bright young kid would get preferred.
> What about some bright young kid from Saharan Africa doesn't get a fair chance at a H1b Visa.
Why not? They can go the student, OPT route and a shot at H1B the same as anyone else. Plus they'll get a green card faster than any bright Indian or Chinese kid.
EDIT: Changed some wording and "engineer" to "bright kid"
But the bright possibly partially self taught "bright kid" wont have the same support structure. Its just like WASP kids with a rich mommy and daddy who can support them in unpaid internships for those high status jobs.
You know Indians aren't just coming from consulting companies right? They are individuals. Is it fair that the children of Indians who have grown up in the US have to self deport because other nationalities think it's better to subject indians to decades long uncertainty rather than not considering race or national origin (which would equalize wait times to 5-6 years)?
Btw pretty much NO other country in the world has national origin quotas. Are you saying that racially discriminatory provisions put in place to satisfy southern segregationists that no other country follows are fair??
It's not easy for American citizens to get permanent work/live visas in most other countries either.
And it is often in the interest of each country to prevent an influx of additional (lower wage) workers in trades that already have enough workers.
A parallel can be seen of how Walmart entered rural and small town America years ago and killed many local businesses. It also lowered local wages, because the primary job became Walmart Checker.
If you are a country of 330 million people, and you do not put limits on countries 5X larger, then you will find your citizens less employed and lower income.
This is not racist, nationalist, or any other label. I suppose you could label it "localist", whereby you favor local resources over remote ones.
The excuse used by tech companies starting around 2000 was that there were not enough talented local workers, so importing cheaper (and often lower skilled) workers was the answer. That's not to imply that all foreign labor is lower skilled. However, displacing local workers with foreign workers without some quality control, especially where the pay is lower, will result in an accumulation of lower skilled workers.
> It's not easy for American citizens to get permanent work/live visas in most other countries either.
Getting permanent residence in any foreign country is going to be a more difficult process than getting a tourist visa. I think you're underestimating how much harder the American system is, and how things really are easier for US citizens in other countries.
To take a random example, Americans can apply for work permits while physically within Germany[1]. After some years of residency (I think it's 3) one can apply for a EU Blue Card if one has a college degree and an employment contract of EUR 53k/year[2] (easily attainable by a software engineer in Germany).
So your average HN US citizen software engineer can:
1. Interview with a German company on video chat
2. Visit visa-free for an onsite interview
3. Sign offer, apply for work and residence permits after relocating. Permits are for the duration of the employment contract
4. Get a Blue Card after 3 years
Which honestly sounds like a breeze compared to what a foreign-born software engineer would need to do to work in the US:
except why would you ever migrate to Germany where wages are like 50% of the US salary for IT engineers and like 20% of silicon valley wages for senior folks.
supply/demand in action, and difficulty of the immigration process is just an indicator of that
Besides there are lots of reasons to emigrate to Germany besides the money - minimum 5 weeks' vacation every year, employee-friendly labor laws, cheaper healthcare and childcare, college, more interesting city centers all sound pretty good to me.
Also, "you can make a ton of money here so there's no need to improve our processes" isn't a great argument for the US to make.
Nope. Having an affinity for people you live near does not imply that you dislike others. It may be true for some people, but it is not a logical truth.
Isn't a K1 visa related to marriage? That's nice for people who happen to be marrying a national, but that doesn't apply to most people.
I was talking about big picture. Majority of H1-B are taken by nationals of one country. It cannot be one way street to benefit one country nationals only in H1-B and GC. I agree that the system is completely broken, but the harm to the system is contained within H1-B system only. Thanks to the country limit, the GC immigration system is not broken yet for all other nationals.
If America wants diversity in immigration, then the country limit is doing its work perfectly as was designed.
I dont agree with you that "US system is subjecting indians" - this is manipulation. You failed to mention that fact that there is entire industry of bringing Indian engineers into US from Hyderabad (and cities like that) via student visas, H1-B, and then GC. It is this system that is flooding the immigration with H1-B and then GCs that put family immigration and other category GCs in a very long backlog
>If America wants diversity in immigration, then the country limit is doing its work perfectly as was designed.
No, it's not. The H1Bs that the bill benefits are already in the US and have been living there for several years. The lack of a green card is stopping them from switching jobs, which lowers their salaries which hurts the job market. It also stops them from starting up their own companies and creating jobs for everyone.
>You failed to mention that fact that there is entire industry of bringing Indian engineers into US from Hyderabad (and cities like that) via student visas, H1-B, and then GC. It is this system that is flooding the immigration with H1-B
Body shops and US companies prefer Indians instead of other nationalities because they would be stuck in the backlog which makes it really hard for them to switch jobs, so they can be paid less while reducing turnover costs. This bill will equalize things so people from other nations will be on a level playing field.
that's the problem of broken H1-B system that indians abused for a very long time and enjoyed the benefits of getting tens of thousands H1-B eveyr year. Now are paying for it by being in a queue.
H1-B is a temporary visa for 3 years, and was designed as such. This is not a guaranteed GC, so let's talk about who is abusing the system from working as intended, rather than lifting systemic barriers that will hurt everybody (including american citizens that will lose their jobs really fast)
>rather than lifting systemic barriers that will hurt everybody (including american citizens that will lose their jobs really fast)
The bill does not add one new green card or one new H1B visa so I have no idea of what people like you keep talking about. Looks like the fake news and propaganda has won. I give up.
>Now are paying for it by being in a queue.
Yea lets punish rural doctors for being born in India.
Indians did not abuse it if the law allowed their entry. There is no such thing as "working as intended" when it comes to law - there is (non)compliance. Congress's intent is fully specified when the law is written. Any wiggle room is due to Congress's inability to be precise, and occasionally interpreted by the Court when some specific law becomes a big enough issue to a complaining party that it's worth their effort to take it that far.
yes they do abuse and they are very creative in bending the law for own favor. H1-B program was designed as temporary program to bring skilled immigrants. But somehow ended up being abused by huge tiered network of consultancies:
1. CV/resumes for H1-B candidates - are 90% fake, inflated
experience -> that leads to hiring overseas nationals over domestic professionals.
2. Usage of training visas (cpt/opt) for actual work. The training visas are for training entry-level students, not just a work authorization for experienced foreign IT specialist working for entry level wages.
3. Lower effective wage in the industry, due to inability of Department of Labor to depress wages. They go around the rules by creatively choosing specialty occupation codes to determine prevailing market wage and make foreign-brought IT talent way cheaper than domestic ones.
4. Outsourcing itself allows greedy companies to slash full-time staff and increase profits, as foreign IT nationals require fewer/cheaper benefits than domestic -> that's why C2C and consultancies in general are in high demand
there are countless other examples of how the system was abused that I can go on and on forever.
Yes, states do all sorts of awful immoral things. But blanket punishments go against the post-war consensus regarding fundamental human rights.
Not comparing the backlogs to Japanese internment, but if you look up the history of immigration law you'll realize that the country limits in the 1965 law always had racist intent.
While it was sold to the American people as not affecting demographics ("Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), asserted that the bill would not affect the U.S. demographic mix."), this turned out to be extremely false, as pretty much any demographic chart will show.
Yes, that's what I mean by racist intent. Turned out some of the actions done with racist intent (focus on family-based immigration) backfired, while others (per-country limits) worked out perfectly.
But the law was passed specifically because the previous law was viewed as racist: "the National Origins Formula increasingly came under attack for being racially discriminatory. With the support of the Johnson administration, Senator Philip Hart and Congressman Emanuel Celler introduced a bill to repeal the formula."
It's very common for racism to be replaced by slightly less terrible racism! The most obvious example is how slavery was replaced by Jim Crow laws, segregation, and later the prison system.
If you have statistics showing that US green cards are mostly awarded to whites, despite going to mostly non-white-countries, please share them. It would certainly go against the general trend of US immigration, which is predominantly non-white, and has been since 1965.
I'm honestly not sure. Until now, I had no idea that was a special type of green card. The second-to-last chart in that article mentions employment as an admission category, so maybe? Better sources are welcome.
In either case, pretty much every source I'm aware of shows immigration to the US as predominantly non-white, so I'd like to see the claim that it appeases southern segregationists backed up by some evidence.
This bill does not add one single green card or H1B visa, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Giving green cards to people waiting in queue for a decade will actually make it more likely that they will switch jobs or demand better salaries, which will make it more likely for companies to hire others. Plus immigrants are more likely to start companies which increases jobs for everyone.
>My great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all fought wars...
So your forefathers did something great so you're entitled to untold riches? What if your forefathers were slave owners or serial killers? Should you be thrown into jail because of that? How about we judge individuals on their contributions versus their forefathers?
>Hey just wondering what Indians are giving to the US' native population that built the country giving them jobs?
Plus, if work immigration is restricted, the jobs will be offshored. It's already happening in some form. There are some tech sectors with zero unemployment like security, and there are millions of job openings. There should be strict laws which are enforced against ageism which is a big problem.
> So your forefathers did something great so you're entitled to untold riches?
Yes, the poster is entitled to the benefits of living in the country they were born in. Infinitely more so than foreigners are entitled to access to his country. A country has an obligation to its citizens, arguably more so to those who have sacrificed to allow it to exist, and none to outsiders who wish to join. Those outsiders' desire to join should be considered only insofar as they benefits the citizens of the country, and I think you've fairly illustrated where that can be the case.
This only applies if everybody else, in addition to India, is also exhausting their per-country limits. But it is not the case. That's why although India face huge backlog, overall # of visas is smaller than the global CAP set in the law.
If per-country limit is lifted, the effective number of GCs issued will instantly reach its global limit and will continue reaching limit every other year from now on, adding more GCs and putting even more downward pressure in the labor market
Sorry, but you have just proved that you have absolutely no clue about how green cards work, yet are speaking with so much conviction. Unused green cards are moved around in categories and among countries till they are used up. It's called spill over. In recent years there has been very less spillover. Yelling in ignorance does not make it true. You are either spouting fake news or believing it. I suggest you Google the subject before commenting with an axe to grind against ethnic groups and trolling on a new account.
I've often heard "fair" being referred to as "The F word" in communications circles. The reason is that the word will have many meanings to many people, with all of them being "correct" to some degree. And many of those meanings will be contradictory to one another.
The only meaningful response I can give to your questions is that "No. A fair solution to the problem is not possible". You have to pick what you are optimizing for. Whatever solution you come up with will have elements of unfairness.
The major concerns here are:
1. Whether it's OK for people to jump the queue (current system)
2. Whether diversity is important (currently, yes).
3. Whether it's OK for someone who has contributed with advanced degrees to the country for over a decade to find him/herself without a job and being booted out of the country. (currently, yes - putting the US in the same category as a bunch of Middle Eastern countries).
You're not going to devise a (simple) system that solves all 3.
1. Waiting a decade for GC is not such a uncommon thing, actually I would argue every person has to wait for a decade before they become permanent resident, even the marriage people
2. The current lottery system should be replaced with highest salary first system. Show me the money, this would take away the incentive of using H1-B as cheap labor sourcing.
3. It is fair, for too long people outside of 4 countries pretty much walked in the park and got GC, refer to point #1. I prefer people stay in US for 10 years for the privilege of GC.
>actually I would argue every person has to wait for a decade before they become permanent resident, even the marriage people
For people of equivalent degrees and skills as those Indians, the wait is often about 2 years for EB-2. So no, almost no equivalently skilled person needs to wait a decade.
Why make a country-case at all. Would you advocate for import quotas from china because china takes too much of US's imports?
Forget entirely about the well being of foreign nationals, take the most cynical and cold approach to them as if they did not matter at all. Look at americans: they would like to purchase goods and services at the best available price/quality ratio they can get, and they are forbidden from doing so explicitly by immigration law.
It is literally taking away liberties from the american people.
These types of Visas typically require that you do graduate studies in a US academic institution to be considered "high-skilled". Nothing against this but I've seen many folks add another post-graduate degree just to tick a box.
Which should lead to more demand for professors I assume, but since academia is tenure tracked and therefore isn't very elastic, then it leads to I guess bigger class sizes and more administrative bloat driving up program costs, which in turn drives up loan borrowing?
Just guesses. I'm very curious as to the feedback loops created on the overall system.
Yep, that's pretty accurate. It also drives degree inflation in the job market: "Why would I hire a BS student when I can get an MS or even PhD for the same price?"
Pretty sure that would happen regardless of any immigration changes on the US side. All Tesla really is is an all electric luxury-ish (-ish in the case of the model 3) car.
The government would toss me out a job if someone else wants to come in the country that can make them more money. It feels pointless to stay pledged to one country when someone from another country can just get an H-1B visa and take your job in a matter of months.
You are confusing the government with your employer.
Also, you would also be out of a job if all the tools you use as a programmer would have to be made by americans and not imported from cheap overseas labor.
H-1B is a government program. They are the ones that decide if it stays or goes. The employer has no choice but to use the program if they wish to not fall behind their competitors.
Under your model it is you who is now employed by the government at the expense of your employer. Your employer wants to hire someone else but cant, so the government is preventing both your employer and this other person to work together.
The scariest word a law could ever have is "Fair".
I truly believe that if Americans understood how the visa process worked, they would be appalled, even if they are hard nationalists. It's simply not rule of law, its crazy expensive and its just plain dumb. It would be easier to propose a special tax to foreigners that goes directly into the pockets of americans and remove all the restrictions altogether.
Foreigners would gladly accept a 10% surtax for alleviating the ridiculousness of immigration law.
Add: foreigners already pay surtaxes, but get no credit for them.
The titles of bills are largely irrelevant, especially in the last decade or so.
As for taxing incoming foreigners to give to Americans, that's not what most Americans want. What most Americans want (and i don't mean the white nationalists) is to not lose their job to a same or less skilled person for less pay.
Having fully experienced the dotcom implosion and subsequent H1B and outsourcing fest, I can attest that the only two groups that gained were the tech companies who lowered their expenses and the handlers/harvesters who brought people from their countries to the US, kept half of their hourly wage, and packed them 6+ to an apartment.
> As for taxing incoming foreigners to give to Americans, that's not what most Americans want. What most Americans want (and i don't mean the white nationalists) is to not lose their job to a same or less skilled person for less pay.
I'm willing to wager against this: normally people have a negative reaction to the idea that foreigners should be second-rate citizens with higher taxation systems, less rights and less benefits, but thats exactly the system you have now + uncertainty. I think a deal where explicitly foreigners can't get any state benefit and have a special foreign tax in exchange of freer immigration would be welcome by all citizens, regardless of rhetoric.
> I can attest that the only two groups that gained were the tech companies who lowered their expenses and the handlers/harvesters who brought people from their countries to the US, kept half of their hourly wage, and packed them 6+ to an apartment.
If programming became a job as menial as washing dishes in a kitchen, why would you want americans to do it.
Yeah, I've never met a person, who when the immigration system is described to them, isn't utterly dumbfounded. Even people who want immigration of any type curtailed, believe our system is cruel and senseless.
That is a welcome change.