[650]

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates compared to pre 2015. Of course its nuanced between training that companies used to offer etc.

[whatwhaaaaat]

No the solution is hiring American workers and implementing strict on soil laws for pii just like other countries are doing (India for example).

I have learned a great deal and been enriched by my friendships with foreign born workers, but to act like h1b workers come “ready to perform software engineering duties” at any higher rate than new grad higher is funny.

[Suppafly]

>No the solution is hiring American workers

This, I don't understand how we have tons of un- and underemployed American workers and yet somehow businesses have convinced the government that they need to import workers.

[raw_anon_1111]

How are you going to make a law telling companies with offices and that do business internationally that they must hire Americans?

As far as PII, any reasonable company only lets a select few developers see production data anyway. You just don’t let non Americans go near production if you work in an industry where that is necessary

[ulfw]

And American software shouldn't be bought by foreign entities/customers anymore. Because why would we? Just make it only by Americans and sell it only to Americans and see how that goes.

[stego-tech]

I’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs.

1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…

2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers. It’s absolute protectionism, which means you just shift the negative trends (“credential” mills in particular) onto domestic shores. Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.

3) Unionize the technical trades. This lets the professionals set skill and comp floors, potentially offload benefits burdens to the Union itself rather than the fickleness of the employer, and even undermines the “contractor class” of companies deflating labor through precarious contracts by setting floors industry-wide. The downside is that Unions, like any power structure, can and will corrupt with time and incentive, leading to jams in the marketplace - less an issue in the age of AI, but still one worth noting.

4) Taxation. Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American? No tax breaks for you, pay up. This is a very bad idea on its face, because companies will just shift the transaction offshore to dodge that rule and gum up everything else in the process, but some form of punitive tax scheme for exploiting social safety nets in lieu of fairly compensating workers is sorely needed to stop, if not begin reversing, the current wealth pumps. For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program as a means of depressing their pay has robbed taxpayers of billions, increased the national debt, and robbed workers of the fruits of their labor. It must be fixed, somehow.

There’s a number of other policies to get into, but that’s the “highlight reel” as it were. The important thing to keep in mind is that the status quo only works for the monied interests, and neither the H-1B workers coming in nor the Americans being shoved onto welfare programs for corporate greed. If a program or system enriches the rich while harming everyone else, it’s a bad system, and needs to be replaced rather than overhauled. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it piss people off? Of course. Will it feel like nobody really won? Ideally, because that means it’s balanced compromise rather than a gift package.

[_DeadFred_]

After Tiananmen Square we let Chinese students in the USA stay. I gained a ton of great colleagues during that time. No one freaked out, no one cared. We need to bump up immigration and remove the artificial power H1B/sponsorship gives companies. Perhaps the difference was that those new Americans weren't able to bring their families in due to Chinese policy so racists didn't SEE a huge visible difference?

2. Rural states were what you state already historically. Hence the existence of the rust belt. The existence of lots of towns who's manufacturing was outsourced from Clinton on. They were already this model, just with small/midsize factories and/or call centers.

[hallole]

> Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.

Depressing labor costs, but only to a point, no? They would be subject to American minimum wages; and, presumably, American labor, even at its cheapest, is more expensive than the offshore alternative.

And, assume there is no price differential... Would Americans not be better off if companies outsourced to other American (i.e., not foreign) companies? Thereby keeping currency within the U.S.? I've been hearing that remittances represent a substantial outward cash flow nationally.

I've never heard of such "Data Sovereignty Schemes," but they seem like far and away the best option. And thanks for writing this up, btw.

[SkiFire13]

> 2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers.

How would this work with basically any foreign service?

[thatfrenchguy]

> 1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…

Do you know how long those take? Consular processing for green cards is painful as hell and somehow even longer than adjustment of status if you're in a non-backlogged country. The real solution here is obviously to allow self-sponsorship for employment based green cards.

> Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American?

I mean, do you want to tax a company that hires foreigners, sponsor their green cards, just because some of their employees decide to not naturalize (say, like Apple or Google or Meta?) ? That makes zero sense.

> For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program

H1B folks aren't eligible for any social welfare program, even though they, e.g. contribure to Medicare / Social Security.

[TitaRusell]

Most people want to stay in their own country with their own culture and close to their friends and family.

In my own country we are actually seeing people GO BACK to Asia because places like Vietnam now have a viable middle class lifestyle.

[foogazi]

> Most people want to stay in their own country with their own culture and close to their friends and family.

But not all people otherwise we would all live in one giant city. Some are willing to greave the frontier in search of better outcomes: the early American Colonists, those that expanded west-ward into California, even the early Silicon Valley workers were all willing to move

H1Bs and international workers are not most people

[hshdhdhj4444]

Clearly the real problem in America is the industry with the fastest growing number of jobs, along with the fastest growing salaries coming off a base where it was already one of the highest paid jobs, all numbers which don’t even include equity payments, despite this being an industry which pays far more in equity relative to any other industry.

Maybe AI changes everything, but there is no evidence that immigration has hurt Americans working in software over the past few decades given that software salaries have been growing faster than any other job in the U.S., but also (and this is critical), it’s been rising faster than salaries in any other comparable country as well, including countries with strong tech industries but limited immigration in the industry such as France (the other country with almost as high growth as the U.S. in software dev salary is the UK, which also has high immigration).

[dzonga]

it's an own goal end of day - led by myopic thinking about foreigners stealing the jobs

a foreigner worker pays taxes, rent & other bills thereby contributing and circulating money in the economy

now if that foreign worker stays in their home country - yes - they might get paid less - but who losses overall ? the country that would've imported labor or the worker ? - it's always the country - hence why brain drain is devastating.

remember the foreign worker only gets a better life - but losses social connections, culture etc

the countries & companies wouldn't be sponsoring these things if ultimately it didn't benefit them & them only

[ReptileMan]

Sending CIA assassins to ceos that have offshoring plans?

[orangecoffee]

The solution is simple, but unpalatable to us. With AI, SWE-1 becomes a minimum wage job, with SWE2 (1.5X), SWE3 (2X) and SWE4 (3x). With such a rationalization we will retain more of the work here, or this will move. Government policies cannot control this as it will mean losing tech hegemony.

Is it worth taking a hit on higher compensation for longer term peace of mind?

[lou1306]

Then why companies aren't offering minimum-wage SWE-1 jobs already? Could it be that the output of an AI tool still needs a modicum of skill and craft to evaluate?