It seems like it would be so easy to fix the H1-B program but no one wants to and I feel like I must be missing something. The purpose of the H1-B is to allow companies to hire foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens.
So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most?
Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at least two years, and then just issue them highest salary first until they hit the quota for the year. No country based quotas or any other kind. Just straight up salary. And make the visa transferrable if another company wants to take it over after say the first two years at the same or better salary.
If people are so skilled then they must be valuable, right? This would be good for both the employee and the country, bringing in the most highly paid people.
The only ones that would get hurt in this process are the companies that abuse the system to underpay people and then get them beholden to the company.
> foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens
This is honestly rare, unless you couple it with a wage level that is lower than the domestic market will bear. Some individuals involved in R&D, but outside of that there are few skills that are not found in the US. I believe the condition isn't not found, but rather, in low supply?
> make the visa transferrable if another company wants to take it over after say the first two years at the same or better salary.
The thing you're "missing" is that it absolutely is, in practice, about laundering low-wage foreign labor. It's not actually complicated. It's obfuscation of exploitation. Same as it ever was. You're just not supposed to believe that your country is doing that.
Because then the agricultural company in Alabama wanting to hire the brightest chemist will be at a disadvantage compared to the IT firm in California. Forgetting about the cost of living adjustments for each area the industry wide disruption alone may not be worth it
> So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most?
As others have pointed out, you're assuming highest salary == most valuable, but what your idea will lead to is a bunch of talented people working on new ways to get people to click ads or write yet-another trading algorithm.
IMHO, you'd fix the H1-B program by doing two things:
1. Eliminate the requirement that the visa-holder have a sponsor past the start date, so the they can quit immediately and take a different job if they are underpaid or the working conditions are poor. That will eliminate any potential exploitation enforced by the program.
2. Limit the sponsors to legitimate US-based companies who will employ the workers for in-house work. Working out a precise definition may be hard, but it should be possible because it's pretty clear when we see it. Basically, something to prevent foreign contracting/outsourcing companies from even using the program.
Another goal (as I understand it) of the H1-B process is to allow foreigners who've come to the US for school to stay here and work after they've graduated. This seems (IMO) better than training a bunch of valuable people, then having them immediately go back home.
A system based entirely on salary would bias towards only senior roles, preventing the handling of that scenario at all.
The purpose of H1B is to keep wages in control amongst highly qualified American workers so that owners and executives can create a more competitive financial advantage in P&L and stock price juicing
I'm surprised even in HN we are taking PR at face value.
The problem with replacing a lottery with a salary ranked cutoff is that all skills do not exist on a single linear axis proportional to economic value. It is not as if all academics are currently highest paid across the economy, so why would that be true of imported academics?
To me, an ideal skilled worker system would define quota categories by skill/job at a much finer granularity, i.e. hundreds or thousands of different H1-B sub-categories somehow weighted by policies rooted in national strategic interest.
Maybe some kind of blinded auction process that could minimize abuse. Both potential employer and employee go through some vetting process and post their needs/skills using a standard ontology. Then, a matchmaker assigns job offers that are binding. You might allow either party to reject the offer and go back into the matchmaking pool for a limited period or number of offers before they are evicted with a cooling-off period before they are allowed to reapply.
You would also need some kind of anti-abuse audit. Otherwise, malignant players could establish esoteric job requirements via covert channel and then mislabel both the worker and the position to try to force the matchmaker's hand. How do you distinguish a truly rare skill from covert ear-marking?
Firstly, your assumption seems to be that it’s broken but I don’t think uscis or most other participants actually share that opinion. What they need to fix is fraud and you can have fraud in any system including the one you proposed.
Secondly, h1b is not just a working visa - it’s officially a “dual intent” visa meaning it’s also a path to immigration. If we do what you are suggesting then 99.99% of applicants will be senior-principal sw engs from china/india. Which, i assume, is not the intention of this program.
Besides, companies already have to pay over prevailing wage for the role in the area. I don’t think you can just conjure up expert professionals out of thin air by raising wages despite what folks on hn/reddit seem to believe. We tried that in 2021 - didn’t work too well
It’s because the positions that talent may not exist for (but is needed) isn’t necessarily as profitable (and can’t pay as much) as other industries under the same program.
Basing on salary alone would mean ~100% of visas go to tech talent in major cities, and every other profession is cast aside.
That’s not to say that ranking based on salary within an industry wouldn’t be a potential improvement. Or modifying caps to be industry based. There are definitely options here that could be a bit more surgical.
According to your logic the H1-B program doesn't need to exist at all then. You can find all special skills within US Citizens. However what happens is that companies deny interviewees the chance so they can obtain H1-B workers for cheaper or for political power.
The fact that the U.S. immigration system is so obviously broken is the topic on which I am most vulnerable to conspiracy theories. It just makes no sense. From the Southern border to H1-B, it looks designed to anger and disappoint every single stakeholder (excepting the businesses who employ illegal immigrants for poor wages).
> So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most?
Because then the acceptance rate would be x% for people from India, y% from China, and 0.001% for everywhere else, which would be politically untenable.
One thing I find really, really weird about the US immigration system is that immigrating illegally is trivial (apparently even more so nowadays than it was 15 years ago), and it even comes with a loophole that can make you a legal immigrant later, yet legal immigration is a very tedious and often impossible path.
I have a relative that 15-ish years ago simply overstayed their tourist visa and never left. Some 5 years later he found a chick and put a ring on it (and because he married a US citizen, all his overstay was instantly forgiven). Then he had a immediate US citizen relative who sponsored him for a green card, which he got a couple of years ago. In a couple of years he can apply for naturalization. Yes, he couldn't leave the US until he had the GC in his hands, but I'd say it was a small price to pay for a massive shortcut.
For a married European that would love to live in the US, like myself, legal immigration paths are simply not viable. I would not accept a non-immigrant visa (like H1B), because it doesn't come with any guarantees that I'll be able to stay in the US, and legal immigration paths are basically limited to winning the DV lottery or coughing up $900k for the EB5, as no company in the right mind would sponsor me for an EB2/3.
And for many people from oversubscribed countries (like India and China), marrying a US citizen is the ONLY viable path to a green card.
Having been through it myself, I agree that US immigration is fundamentally broken. With that being said:
> One thing I find really, really weird about the US immigration system is that immigrating illegally is trivial (apparently even more so nowadays than it was 15 years ago)
The system had serious negative consequences on my health, but my personal suffering isn't even a hundredth as bad as what hundreds of thousands have gone through.
>For a married European that would love to live in the US, like myself, legal immigration paths are simply not viable.
As a European, you have several options. H1, O1, L1, etc. are all fine. None of them have any guarantees, but realistically, you'll be able to apply for a green card through an employer and get one within a couple of years under EB2/3. You can also apply for EB2-NIW or EB1A by yourself even from outside the US if you qualify, and you don't need to get a visa at all. You'd get a green card directly.
The majority of "Top H1-B Recruiters" are in the "Professional and Technical Services" industry. I think people imagine that most immigrants on H1-B visas are being paid princely sums directly by FAANG companies. Instead the reality looks like they're being exploited by the same Indian bodyshops like Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra, etc. Of the companies in that list that aren't bodyshops, the majority aren't in IT.
Aside from all of the obvious problems with the system, and the political implications, I think many people really have the wrong impression about who the real beneficiaries of the H1-B visa system are.
> The initial registration period for the FY 2025 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 6, 2024, and run through noon Eastern on March 22, 2024.
I know fraud prevention is whack-a-mole, and I know the system has been broken a long time, but this still works only for a certain segment of hires.
I was on the board of a "foreign" school. All instruction (except English) is in the home country's language, and we of course want native speaking teachers familiar with the subject material. For years we used H-1s -- all the teachers qualify, as they all have master's degrees or more and the specialized skills -- but when the big consulting companies started scamming all the H-1s in early October that became impossible for us. Teachers don't tend to think about leaving until late in the school year, certainly not in March, and they need to know relatively quickly so they can move to the US and get settled before the school year starts. What a pain.
US immigration is an absolute nightmare especially for Indians.
In Europe its simple. Job offer above minimum salary? Apply and get a blue card yourself. Has been in the country for over 5 years and speak the language? You get citizenship.
In the US its nearly impossible to get a Green Card. Forget how difficult it is to get an H1B visa in the first place because of the lottery system.
India has a brain drain problem. The most profitable career in India is to leave India and become an immigrant.
The US is not responsible for that problem and never will be. And even if the US fixed its immigration inconveniences, the problem in India would remain.
India has other problems as well. For software engineers, the number one threat of hiring from India are the corporate cultures at Infosys, TCS and similar companies. I do not want to work with the alumni of those work cultures. It's radioactive-level toxicity.
Friends of mine pursuing Swiss citizenship had a much longer road than what you describe above. I know them to be pretty fastidious when it comes to paperwork exercises and they did not have citizenship after 10 years, though they indicated they were on a path towards it.
> Also under the new rule, USCIS may deny or revoke the approval of an H-1B petition if it determines that the fee associated with the registration is declined, not reconciled, disputed, or otherwise invalid after submission.
The fact that they mention this suggests that they couldn't do so previously... which is pretty mind-boggling.
Oh, so this looks like it's correcting for that thing where companies were essentially using multiple contracting companies to all apply for a visa for the same person? e.g. double (triple? n-ary?) dipping in the lotto?
I still think a lot of the more wanton abuses in the H1-B system could be resolved by requiring the employee be a direct employee of the company they're actually working for (e.g. you can't get a contracting company to provide you with engineers), and to require compensation be - say - a minimum of say 20% above the average wage for the job they're doing, relative to other employees at the company, other workers doing manifestly similar jobs in the same geographical area, etc.
If nothing else this will apply upwards pressure on wages even in shitty "we're abusing the h1-b process" contracting companies, because every new h1-b employee they have necessarily increases the average wage at that company, which increases the minimum wage for the next h1-b, etc. The reality is that the set up of the h1-b program allows employers to abuse h1-b employees with relative impunity (including notably lowering wages), so a mechanism by which simply increasing the number of h1-b employees you have forces the wages up counters their ability to use h1-b supported abusive practices to undercut local workers.
Yeah I’ve heard of multiple applications, some sketchy applicants swaps (basically purchasing the winning ticket) and more. You won’t see it in large established companies because they mostly play fair but there is good amount of fraud in the fat tail
> the registration fee during the registration period starting in March 2024, will remain $10.
Yeah, every single outsourcing provider is going to enter all their employees and market whoever is selected for on-site assignments to their customers. The cost of entry is way too low and this attracts frivolous registrations.
Previously, it used to cost thousands of dollars before to prepare a full petition and only those employers with serious job offers applied for H1B.
The lottery ticket price has always been low; you pay the full price once you win the lottery. They're de-duping applications this year (stopping people from buying multiple tickets), and the ticket price will go up next year (to somewhere in the ~$200 range). Raising the ticket price for a lottery is an ass backwards way to solve anything.
That fee has been $10 all along—see this from last year [0]. I don't know much about this process, but the thousands of dollars must be coming from something else—probably some combination of other government fees and attorney bills.
I think part of the issue is that H-1B is a non-immigrant visa.
It's ridiculous for a country like the US to expect people to move their whole household for ... 6 years?
H-1B is actually slightly better than an L1*. At least with the H-1B you are allowed to change jobs if the new employer wants to do the paperwork. For the L1 you can't do that. The visa is tied to the current employer. You leave? You're out.
>> Under the beneficiary centric process, registrations will be selected by unique beneficiary rather than by registration.
Why do they think that's a good thing? If you have more than one offer then you are more in demand on the job market, presumably being a better specialist, more deserving of getting a visa :D
In the previous H-1B registration system, employers could submit multiple registrations for the same beneficiary (employee). This increased the chances of selection for that beneficiary but potentially reduced the fairness of the process. So, this makes things fairer to an extent.
The H1B program makes little sense in this moment. The major issues facing America are cost of living related. Importing high-pay workers just makes it that much harder for the regular Joe Schmo.
I find the entire H-1B program somewhat ridiculously designed.
0. There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US. What's the point of educating people and equipping them with everything they need to be successful in the US, advance the US (including creating lots of jobs) and then deporting them right after?
1. There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or other jobs that are going to vastly develop the economy.
There is a cap-exempt H1B, but it's for nonprofits. It makes no sense.
There's been a massive problem of diploma mills, both in America, and even worse in Canada, where colleges have basically been admitting students for fake degrees for pay, just because it gets them work permits post graduation much more easily, as somewhat of a workaround Canadian immigration.
Canada recently has cracked down on (I believe undergraduate) student visas recently, with effectively a per-province cap. I'm not sure if Canada has a problem with diploma mills at the Master's level though.
> There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US.
Then you're effectively creating a loophole. There would be a proliferation of private schools that accept anyone willing to pay enough $$$ and churn out barely-competent graduates just so that people have a better shot at citizenship. "Attended a school in the US" is not a good proxy for being an asset to the country.
> There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or other jobs that are going to vastly develop the economy.
That's essentially the whole point of H-1B, and right now, they're overwhelmingly allocated to what one could generously describe as STEM professions.
A disturbingly large number of non-US born people I know with US degrees in STEM fields got their green-cards by marrying a friend who they had not previously been in a romantic relationship with. In many cases this was after dealing with the H-1B system for some time.
>There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US.
I'm ok with that, if it comes along with the death penalty for diploma mill operators including major universities. Otherwise its not a loophole - its an open barn door.
> There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US.
This has the effect of delegating decisions about who enters the country to an unelected and unaccountable group of admissions officers working at private institutions.
> What's the point of educating people and equipping them with everything they need to be successful in the US, advance the US (including creating lots of jobs) and then deporting them right after?
Making money for the schools where they go? Foreign student, studying in the US, come here on an F visa, and to obtain such a visa one has to prove that he or she has such strong ties to the home country that they cannot possibly stay in the US after graduation and need to quickly come back and use the education at home.
I think USCIS is trying to fix one common misuse by certain applicants where he /she applies for H1B through more than one employers ( typically body shop companies) and tries to increase his\her odds of getting the visa. Sometimes the applicant gets more than one H1B visa and wasting the limited visas.
yeah, I've heard a bit about this- basically, it is technically legal right now to have multiple job offers from separate employers to get multiple H1B lottery tickets. The abuse comes from some shady operations, that will basically give you 3-10 "offers" from various consulting firms, where you'll be paid way less than market rate to work at any of them, with the idea being if you win a ticket from any then you trade off your potential salary for the H1b.
They had an easy life being drafted into the US army, and then having to work the land and having to build all the infrastructure from scratch without power tools.
jedberg|2 years ago
So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most?
Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at least two years, and then just issue them highest salary first until they hit the quota for the year. No country based quotas or any other kind. Just straight up salary. And make the visa transferrable if another company wants to take it over after say the first two years at the same or better salary.
If people are so skilled then they must be valuable, right? This would be good for both the employee and the country, bringing in the most highly paid people.
The only ones that would get hurt in this process are the companies that abuse the system to underpay people and then get them beholden to the company.
tomrod|2 years ago
> foreigners with special skills that can't be found amongst US citizens
This is honestly rare, unless you couple it with a wage level that is lower than the domestic market will bear. Some individuals involved in R&D, but outside of that there are few skills that are not found in the US. I believe the condition isn't not found, but rather, in low supply?
> make the visa transferrable if another company wants to take it over after say the first two years at the same or better salary.
This would be a huge boon.
0xcde4c3db|2 years ago
tonmoy|2 years ago
tivert|2 years ago
As others have pointed out, you're assuming highest salary == most valuable, but what your idea will lead to is a bunch of talented people working on new ways to get people to click ads or write yet-another trading algorithm.
IMHO, you'd fix the H1-B program by doing two things:
1. Eliminate the requirement that the visa-holder have a sponsor past the start date, so the they can quit immediately and take a different job if they are underpaid or the working conditions are poor. That will eliminate any potential exploitation enforced by the program.
2. Limit the sponsors to legitimate US-based companies who will employ the workers for in-house work. Working out a precise definition may be hard, but it should be possible because it's pretty clear when we see it. Basically, something to prevent foreign contracting/outsourcing companies from even using the program.
fishtoaster|2 years ago
A system based entirely on salary would bias towards only senior roles, preventing the handling of that scenario at all.
karmasimida|2 years ago
Because industries pay differently. Unless you argue H1Bs all go to big techs.
The problem with H1B program is, no matter how it is structured, it WILL be gamed.
sfifs|2 years ago
I'm surprised even in HN we are taking PR at face value.
saltcured|2 years ago
To me, an ideal skilled worker system would define quota categories by skill/job at a much finer granularity, i.e. hundreds or thousands of different H1-B sub-categories somehow weighted by policies rooted in national strategic interest.
Maybe some kind of blinded auction process that could minimize abuse. Both potential employer and employee go through some vetting process and post their needs/skills using a standard ontology. Then, a matchmaker assigns job offers that are binding. You might allow either party to reject the offer and go back into the matchmaking pool for a limited period or number of offers before they are evicted with a cooling-off period before they are allowed to reapply.
You would also need some kind of anti-abuse audit. Otherwise, malignant players could establish esoteric job requirements via covert channel and then mislabel both the worker and the position to try to force the matchmaker's hand. How do you distinguish a truly rare skill from covert ear-marking?
dilyevsky|2 years ago
Secondly, h1b is not just a working visa - it’s officially a “dual intent” visa meaning it’s also a path to immigration. If we do what you are suggesting then 99.99% of applicants will be senior-principal sw engs from china/india. Which, i assume, is not the intention of this program.
Besides, companies already have to pay over prevailing wage for the role in the area. I don’t think you can just conjure up expert professionals out of thin air by raising wages despite what folks on hn/reddit seem to believe. We tried that in 2021 - didn’t work too well
COGlory|2 years ago
nrmitchi|2 years ago
Basing on salary alone would mean ~100% of visas go to tech talent in major cities, and every other profession is cast aside.
That’s not to say that ranking based on salary within an industry wouldn’t be a potential improvement. Or modifying caps to be industry based. There are definitely options here that could be a bit more surgical.
tziki|2 years ago
vsskanth|2 years ago
NanoYohaneTSU|2 years ago
We need to abolish the program completely.
next_xibalba|2 years ago
lmm|2 years ago
Because then the acceptance rate would be x% for people from India, y% from China, and 0.001% for everywhere else, which would be politically untenable.
sgjohnson|2 years ago
I have a relative that 15-ish years ago simply overstayed their tourist visa and never left. Some 5 years later he found a chick and put a ring on it (and because he married a US citizen, all his overstay was instantly forgiven). Then he had a immediate US citizen relative who sponsored him for a green card, which he got a couple of years ago. In a couple of years he can apply for naturalization. Yes, he couldn't leave the US until he had the GC in his hands, but I'd say it was a small price to pay for a massive shortcut.
For a married European that would love to live in the US, like myself, legal immigration paths are simply not viable. I would not accept a non-immigrant visa (like H1B), because it doesn't come with any guarantees that I'll be able to stay in the US, and legal immigration paths are basically limited to winning the DV lottery or coughing up $900k for the EB5, as no company in the right mind would sponsor me for an EB2/3.
And for many people from oversubscribed countries (like India and China), marrying a US citizen is the ONLY viable path to a green card.
US immigration system is fundamentally broken.
sunshowers|2 years ago
> One thing I find really, really weird about the US immigration system is that immigrating illegally is trivial (apparently even more so nowadays than it was 15 years ago)
For the immigrants most at risk (not the ones overstaying visas), this has never been true. Many immigrants have to cross the Darien Gap: https://www.cfr.org/article/crossing-darien-gap-migrants-ris...
The system had serious negative consequences on my health, but my personal suffering isn't even a hundredth as bad as what hundreds of thousands have gone through.
bubblethink|2 years ago
As a European, you have several options. H1, O1, L1, etc. are all fine. None of them have any guarantees, but realistically, you'll be able to apply for a green card through an employer and get one within a couple of years under EB2/3. You can also apply for EB2-NIW or EB1A by yourself even from outside the US if you qualify, and you don't need to get a visa at all. You'd get a green card directly.
thomasahle|2 years ago
How did he make money during those 5 years?
NovemberWhiskey|2 years ago
That's obviously not true, by both analysis and observation.
livinginfear|2 years ago
The majority of "Top H1-B Recruiters" are in the "Professional and Technical Services" industry. I think people imagine that most immigrants on H1-B visas are being paid princely sums directly by FAANG companies. Instead the reality looks like they're being exploited by the same Indian bodyshops like Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra, etc. Of the companies in that list that aren't bodyshops, the majority aren't in IT.
Aside from all of the obvious problems with the system, and the political implications, I think many people really have the wrong impression about who the real beneficiaries of the H1-B visa system are.
nimish|2 years ago
gumby|2 years ago
I know fraud prevention is whack-a-mole, and I know the system has been broken a long time, but this still works only for a certain segment of hires.
I was on the board of a "foreign" school. All instruction (except English) is in the home country's language, and we of course want native speaking teachers familiar with the subject material. For years we used H-1s -- all the teachers qualify, as they all have master's degrees or more and the specialized skills -- but when the big consulting companies started scamming all the H-1s in early October that became impossible for us. Teachers don't tend to think about leaving until late in the school year, certainly not in March, and they need to know relatively quickly so they can move to the US and get settled before the school year starts. What a pain.
tock|2 years ago
In Europe its simple. Job offer above minimum salary? Apply and get a blue card yourself. Has been in the country for over 5 years and speak the language? You get citizenship.
In the US its nearly impossible to get a Green Card. Forget how difficult it is to get an H1B visa in the first place because of the lottery system.
29athrowaway|2 years ago
The US is not responsible for that problem and never will be. And even if the US fixed its immigration inconveniences, the problem in India would remain.
India has other problems as well. For software engineers, the number one threat of hiring from India are the corporate cultures at Infosys, TCS and similar companies. I do not want to work with the alumni of those work cultures. It's radioactive-level toxicity.
sokoloff|2 years ago
ex3ndr|2 years ago
eatbitseveryday|2 years ago
carabiner|2 years ago
duskwuff|2 years ago
> Also under the new rule, USCIS may deny or revoke the approval of an H-1B petition if it determines that the fee associated with the registration is declined, not reconciled, disputed, or otherwise invalid after submission.
The fact that they mention this suggests that they couldn't do so previously... which is pretty mind-boggling.
olliej|2 years ago
I still think a lot of the more wanton abuses in the H1-B system could be resolved by requiring the employee be a direct employee of the company they're actually working for (e.g. you can't get a contracting company to provide you with engineers), and to require compensation be - say - a minimum of say 20% above the average wage for the job they're doing, relative to other employees at the company, other workers doing manifestly similar jobs in the same geographical area, etc.
If nothing else this will apply upwards pressure on wages even in shitty "we're abusing the h1-b process" contracting companies, because every new h1-b employee they have necessarily increases the average wage at that company, which increases the minimum wage for the next h1-b, etc. The reality is that the set up of the h1-b program allows employers to abuse h1-b employees with relative impunity (including notably lowering wages), so a mechanism by which simply increasing the number of h1-b employees you have forces the wages up counters their ability to use h1-b supported abusive practices to undercut local workers.
dilyevsky|2 years ago
prakhar897|2 years ago
vsskanth|2 years ago
Yeah, every single outsourcing provider is going to enter all their employees and market whoever is selected for on-site assignments to their customers. The cost of entry is way too low and this attracts frivolous registrations.
Previously, it used to cost thousands of dollars before to prepare a full petition and only those employers with serious job offers applied for H1B.
bubblethink|2 years ago
lolinder|2 years ago
[0] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
WirelessGigabit|2 years ago
It's ridiculous for a country like the US to expect people to move their whole household for ... 6 years?
H-1B is actually slightly better than an L1*. At least with the H-1B you are allowed to change jobs if the new employer wants to do the paperwork. For the L1 you can't do that. The visa is tied to the current employer. You leave? You're out.
nojvek|2 years ago
H1B is more complex for spouse to work.
Detrytus|2 years ago
Why do they think that's a good thing? If you have more than one offer then you are more in demand on the job market, presumably being a better specialist, more deserving of getting a visa :D
gamesbrainiac|2 years ago
cute_boi|2 years ago
thumbsup-_-|2 years ago
riwsky|2 years ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zI5c8qCff2w
thehappypm|2 years ago
bakchodi|2 years ago
[deleted]
dheera|2 years ago
0. There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US. What's the point of educating people and equipping them with everything they need to be successful in the US, advance the US (including creating lots of jobs) and then deporting them right after?
1. There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or other jobs that are going to vastly develop the economy.
There is a cap-exempt H1B, but it's for nonprofits. It makes no sense.
aatharuv|2 years ago
Canada recently has cracked down on (I believe undergraduate) student visas recently, with effectively a per-province cap. I'm not sure if Canada has a problem with diploma mills at the Master's level though.
jedberg|2 years ago
Agree 100%. Student visas should convert to work visas automatically on graduation from an accredited institution and be good for at least five years.
ldjkfkdsjnv|2 years ago
quatrefoil|2 years ago
Then you're effectively creating a loophole. There would be a proliferation of private schools that accept anyone willing to pay enough $$$ and churn out barely-competent graduates just so that people have a better shot at citizenship. "Attended a school in the US" is not a good proxy for being an asset to the country.
> There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or other jobs that are going to vastly develop the economy.
That's essentially the whole point of H-1B, and right now, they're overwhelmingly allocated to what one could generously describe as STEM professions.
aidenn0|2 years ago
dartharva|2 years ago
Aren't almost all students paying in full for their education? Aren't they just consumers of the product American universities are selling?
LegitShady|2 years ago
I'm ok with that, if it comes along with the death penalty for diploma mill operators including major universities. Otherwise its not a loophole - its an open barn door.
CPLX|2 years ago
This has the effect of delegating decisions about who enters the country to an unelected and unaccountable group of admissions officers working at private institutions.
pandaman|2 years ago
Making money for the schools where they go? Foreign student, studying in the US, come here on an F visa, and to obtain such a visa one has to prove that he or she has such strong ties to the home country that they cannot possibly stay in the US after graduation and need to quickly come back and use the education at home.
VirusNewbie|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
CPLX|2 years ago
ycitizen|2 years ago
the_svd_doctor|2 years ago
This is now no longer possible.
Why it took so long to implement this rule is a mystery though. Seems like such an obvious loophole.
badFEengineer|2 years ago
cyanydeez|2 years ago
basura_me|2 years ago
[deleted]
throwpot|2 years ago
foobiekr|2 years ago
29athrowaway|2 years ago