It's quite astonishing to see the US actively reject the people and the talent that other countries would be taking with open arms. Indian and Chinese immigrants in particular in tech constitute a large part of the workforce and the former increasingly in leadership too.
With the rapidly developing national sectors in India and China and the increasing racism and deteriorating condition this could very well the point at which many people consider to actually go home. What could have been decades of comfortable technological lead for the US may evaporate within a decade or two if human talent is rejected like this. Crazy to see a nation do this to itself honestly.
Folks need to understand the context in which all this is happening. This isn’t just about what policies we should have for high-skill immigration. It’s the product of decades of administrations ignoring the immigration laws that we have.
In other countries, the legislature votes on immigration policies and those policies are implemented. Canada decides to have high-skill immigration through a point-based process and the executive implemented those policies. That’s not what we do in the US. We formulate immigration policy through executive fiat and bureaucratic practice. In the US, the H1 program is not a high-skill immigration program. We don’t have one. The Wikipedia article covers this well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
> An H-1B visa allows an individual to enter the United States to temporarily work at an employer in a specialty occupation.
> The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability
The Immigration and Naturalization Act that created the H1-B program was billed to voters as creating a temporary immigration status, not a vector for permanent immigration. It has turned into a de-facto permanent immigration visa not by law, but by executive practice.
My family (my parents and I, then later my uncle and aunt and their two adult kids) came here on an H1B visa. I’m a proponent of skilled immigration. But viewing this as just a debate over immigration policy (or worse, just an artifact of Trump racism) is deeply misleading. We’re a country founded on the rule of law. But for decades, we’ve ignored our ordinary legislative processes when it comes to immigration policies. That’s not right, that’s not how Democracy is supposed to work, and it’s hard for me to blame people who are simply demanding that our existing laws be enforced. At the same time, yes, it’s unfair to people who came here on H1-B thinking it was a route to permanent residency. Maybe if proponents of skilled immigration had actually done the work and actually gotten legislation passed creating a permanent immigration program for skilled workers, we wouldn’t in this mess today.
What reforms do you advocate? Is there model legislation?
I've worked and lived along side immigrants my entire life. From what little I know, it's just nutty. (My childhood church helped refugees get resettled and established. Working in tech, a huge fraction of my coworkers were born elsewhere.)
While I'm very pro immigration, maybe even open borders, I understand it'd have to be thought out. But I have no idea what a better system would look like, what to fight for.
Isn't O-1 visa a category for higly skilled workers? H-1B is certainly not, I mean they recently redefined it to include "fashion models" of all things - what kind of skills does that job entail?
Most of my team will be affected by this. We are considering changing location of our offices among other options. So, even though I and a few others are americans,Trump's insanity on this will affect us directly.
It's not like there are American workers lined up to do the job h1b workers do. America will lose the demand for skilled labor permanently with this along with a largr chunk of what little supporting skilled workforce exists.
I will be honest with you, I like living in america with all it's problems.
Do you guys suggest a better country for relocation? Canada is all I can think of but it's so cold!
I fully support giving h1b holders a green card once trump is gone.
This will also incentivize firms to consider running teams from countries like Ireland, Canada (less restricted on immigration) and India (labor rich). It's also a shot in the arm for remote "work from anywhere".
Higher the wage in US, greater the incentive for a firm to do these things.
It's hard to say how long Silicon Valley can be an economic diver without immigrant talent, especially if that talent concentrates elsewhere.
A lot of that talent originally came to the US for an education, and those numbers leveled off when Trump was elected. Most of the foreign student growth was also from China, which I'd expect to see drip in the next decade regardless of who wins in November.
With the rapidly developing national sectors in India and China and the increasing racism and deteriorating condition this could very well the point at which many people consider to actually go home. What could have been decades of comfortable technological lead for the US may evaporate within a decade or two if human talent is rejected like this. Crazy to see a nation do this to itself honestly.