[HN Gopher] H-1B program grew 81 percent from 2011 to 2022
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H-1B program grew 81 percent from 2011 to 2022
Author : DonnyV
Score : 115 points
Date : 2025-07-18 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| mikece wrote:
| Serious question: can the case really be made that American CS
| grads (and other entry-level tech folks) are clearly inferior to
| the potential pool of H-1B applicants?
|
| If the answer is in the affirmative then we need to study and
| address why that is.
|
| If not, then I'm curious how many qualified Americans are being
| pushed out of (ore prevented from entering) the high tech job
| market by H-1B applicants.
| toast0 wrote:
| What do you count as American CS grads? A lot of H-1B holders
| have a degree from an American school. (Edit) If you hold an
| American CS degree, aren't you an American CS grad?
|
| If you close that pipeline, you'll lose those students, and
| then you have to find more funding, because international
| students usually subsidize local students.
| laretluval wrote:
| While I disagree with GP's premise, there's no sense in which
| H1B visa holders are American. It's a nonimmigrant visa. They
| are required to specifically disavow any intention of
| becoming Americans or else the visa can be revoked.
| quag wrote:
| Yes and no. The H-1B visa is "dual intent" [1] and you are
| allowed to apply for and receive a green card (permanent
| resident card) while on an H-1B. After 5 years with
| permanent residence you can apply for citizenship. It is a
| common path, and the intention for the majority of people
| on an H-1B visa.
|
| [1]: https://isss.temple.edu/faculty-staff-and-
| researchers/intern...
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| It wasn't until recently that I found out 40% of students at
| top colleges were not even American! I'm not specifically
| against foreign students, but 40%?
|
| That and the H1B issue and American's not having jobs at
| American companies. Something isn't right.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Yes that something is the rapidly vanishing government
| funding for public universities.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| That comes with the territory of have the vast majority of
| the top universities in the world. One of the things that
| has kept the US as the global hegemon for the last 100
| years is the fact that every other country sends their best
| and brightest to study here, and a significant fraction of
| those people stay here to work.
|
| I agree the US could do more to take advantage of its
| position to benefit the average American, but torching
| exactly what put the country in that position is short-
| sighted at best, categorically stupid at worst.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Colleges and Universities charge the non-local rate for
| international students which is considerably higher than
| the domestic rate (example from Georgia Tech:
|
| In state $30,154 Out of state $53,638 International
| $54,814
|
| This incentivizes them to keep more slots open for those
| high dollar students making it even tougher to develop a
| domestic workforce.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Another way of looking at those numbers is that the out
| of state / international students are subsidizing the
| education of the locals. AS long as local governments
| keep up pressure on the universities to not go 100% out
| of state, then it's by and large a win-win.
| proc0 wrote:
| At least from my experience it tends to be that outsourcing
| agencies who often supply H1B candidates are not finding the
| most experienced or talented people. i'm guessing that CS
| degrees are still better in the US on average.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| Ive been directly exposed to the H1B candidate pool. The answer
| is no. It's 90% candidates with very similar sounding resumes.
| It's unnerving how templated all the resumes are.
|
| You really have to have solid, engaged recruiting and screening
| processes in place to filter the wheat from the chaff with
| H1B's.
|
| I would interview 10 H1B's, and then one domestic candidate,
| and the domestic candidate would outperform every time.
|
| This is obv anecdotal, but I would not be surprised if this
| pattern exists across the entire H1B pool.
|
| We do hire some H1B's, and there are some incredibly talented
| candidates, but only after great expense and time invested in
| screening and interviewing.
| ToxicMegacolon wrote:
| > I would interview 10 H1B's, and then one domestic candidate
|
| Do you ask people their visa status during interview?
|
| If you do not ask them about visa status, then how do you
| know they weren't a domestic candidate? Is it a judgement
| based on race/skin-color/accent?
|
| If you do ask them this question, How do you keep that
| information from influencing your decision in the interview?
| Aspos wrote:
| One can trap an experienced seniour dev for a few years for a
| price of a fresh grad which may or may not turn out to be a
| valuable resource and which may leave at any moment. In this
| context quality of the grad is not much relevant.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, not clearly inferior but it's a mathematical property
| that if A is a subset of B then max(A) <= max(B).
|
| I've hired people for a decade in tech and through that period
| people have been bellyaching about this stuff throughout.
|
| The absolute truth is that if you can't hit $500k annual income
| in 5 years despite trying to do so, you're not good enough.
|
| The H-1B workers I know are making millions. If you're getting
| pushed out by them it's because American competitiveness is
| enabled by this. And I care a lot more about what's good for
| America as a whole than trying to protect someone's income.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Clearly, you think that every tech job exists on the coasts.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > And I care a lot more about what's good for America as a
| whole than trying to protect someone's income.
|
| Uncharitably, it sounds like you think of your nation as a
| generic economic zone whose growth you want to continually
| increase at all costs, regardless of the fate of its
| citizens. But what is a nation, if not the people that
| comprise it?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure, that's one way of looking at it. But the truth is
| that there is only one force for civilization in the World
| today and that is America. The end of USAID illustrated
| something: America stands alone against the entropy of
| nature. She is humanity's only vanguard against ruin. The
| Chinese are dedicated to their own advancement, the Indians
| are currently bootstrapping out of poverty, the Europeans
| are primarily concerned with wine, cheese, and luxury
| goods. Fair play to all of them - may they live in peace.
|
| But one nation, alone, fights Humanity's cause. Trump et al
| have cast off the mantle, but it's only another 3.5 years
| and we have a shot at donning it again. The nation is not
| for the people - or we would simply rapaciously consume its
| resources to feed the present. The people of the nation are
| not for the nation or we would consume them to fuel the
| engine. The nation and the people are both there to advance
| the principles of the group into the future. And I believe
| America's principles deserve to exist into perpetuity so
| long as they adapt to meet shifting weather.
|
| Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can
| do for your country.
| adamrezich wrote:
| Sorry, but I don't care about the self-interest of my
| nation in any matters that don't concern the self-
| interest of her citizens, much less any matters that work
| directly _against_ the self-interest of her citizens--and
| no amount of rhetoric is going to convince me that I
| should think otherwise.
| awjlogan wrote:
| Europe (as a whole) gives more money absolutely and
| multiples more in proportion to national income than the
| US. The US does (or did) have very good distribution
| networks, and that's not liquid in a monetary sense.
|
| I would encourage you to examine your statements on
| rapacious consumption of resources and people as well.
| richwater wrote:
| Both political parties are selling out citizens employment
| opportunities to let corporations pay as little as possible and
| import foreign labor.
| mikece wrote:
| What if there were tariffs applied to importing laborer or
| using offshore contractors?
|
| That wouldn't do anything to address any supply shortages of
| workers for certain skills but would at least level the playing
| field for citizens looking to get into fields like tech,
| nursing, medicine, and more.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| If you tax remittances at 50%+ I have a feeling that suddenly
| many of the incentives for the H-1B workers themselves would
| change for the better.
| henry2023 wrote:
| If we tax remittances at 50%+. I'd buy so many BTC call
| options.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And then large companies can just set up entire offices
| overseas - all of the large tech companies already have large
| offices and subsidiaries overseas.
| silisili wrote:
| This is an absolute farce.
|
| I'm not so cold hearted or extreme to say 'shut it all down
| tomorrow', but it feels like at the very very least, in this job
| climate, we could suspend new entries?
|
| But it just keeps humming along like everything is rosy.
| avidiax wrote:
| I feel that 2 simple rules would capture all the value of H1-Bs
| but naturally limit their abuses:
|
| 1. H-1Bs applications are ranked by total comp. 2 years of that
| comp is unconditional (no PIPs, no performance management, no
| excuses). I can see an argument to bucket this by industry.
|
| 2. Only job codes where the YoY median pay and total employment
| are currently at a 3 year high are eligible to receive H-1Bs.
|
| The comp requirements would devastate the body farms. The
| unconditional comp will put major pressure on the system of
| working H1-Bs to the bone, and not thoroughly vetting those
| hires. Companies that layoff in the thousands, or layoff their
| highest paid (oldest) employees are simply poisoning the H-1B
| well for that industry. Deep cuts can't be made up with H1-Bs
| for 3 years or until all the layoffs have been recouped
| industry-wide.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| So only people who would work in high COL areas would be
| eligible?
| Analemma_ wrote:
| That's not actually all that unreasonable, despite how it
| sounds on the surface. High COL areas are high COL because
| people working there are more productive. If it's worth it
| to import an H1-B worker even in the high COL area, they're
| contributing that much more to the economy than someone in
| a low COL area.
|
| If this still sounds crazy, I think your objection is more
| to there being a cap at all. If there is going to be a cap,
| it makes sense to order it by total comp even
| notwithstanding the COL.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| So do you expect someone to boot strap in a LCoL area
| without H1Bs
| jibe wrote:
| H-1Bs are rare at bootstrapped companies , rare outside
| major tech centers, and basically non-existent in
| bootstrapped companies in LCoL areas. It is a benefit
| that almost entirely accrues to big corporations with
| legal teams. It is big corporate welfare.
| nine_k wrote:
| No, companies which are ready to pay high (above median)
| salaries would be able to hire H1Bs. No matter where the
| office is. Even now many companies offer compensation
| without regard to geography, when the compensation is high
| enough; if you live in Alabama but still qualify, the
| better to you.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Employers already need to prove that they can't hire an
| American to do the job.
| grumple wrote:
| Very loose definition of "prove". I would guess that there
| are many on HN who are overqualified for any H1B job and
| would take it for the right money. The talent is here, they
| just want to pay less.
| analyte123 wrote:
| This is false for H-1B - there is no "labor market test".
| Such a test is required for the PERM process in which an H-1B
| visa holder would seek a green card through their employer,
| although the definition of "prove" is up for debate [2].
|
| [1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-
| sheets/62o-h1b-recruit... [2]
| https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-
| immigration-h1b-vis...
| advisedwang wrote:
| H1-B applications must have a Labor Condition Application
| which requires a prevailing wage assessment and that hiring
| a foreign worker won't adversely affect US workers.
|
| It is true that the LCA (and PERM!) processes are have
| grave flaws that leave them open to abuse.
| itake wrote:
| Several FANGa companies have gotten in trouble for
| advertising in uncommon places like newspapers for jobs that
| also aren't listed on their careers page in order to avoid
| qualified American applicants from applying in order to get
| approval for green cards or H1b
| luckydata wrote:
| they do all the time, with all kinds of tricks that
| misrepresent reality. the H1B system is a scam.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| This is easily subverted when the "proof" is conducting a
| subjective interview.
| popularonion wrote:
| I've followed this issue for a long time, the thing is at the
| end of the day the average American just doesn't care very much
| what happens to tech workers.
|
| There's an underlying attitude of "serves those entitled nerds
| right" on both the political left and the right.
| risyachka wrote:
| You should probably do some research on how many of those ended
| up starting their own companies. And how many jobs they
| created.
|
| After that you may want to rethink suspending new entries.
| silisili wrote:
| I have not. Feel free to educate me/post numbers or links.
|
| How impactful would a say, 1 year pause be to that? Is the
| number of jobs created by H1B each year > the number of H1B
| entries each year?
| chris_va wrote:
| (not the parent, I don't have a specific number)
|
| Generally speaking, the economy is not a zero sum game (by
| definition), or we would never have made it past the first
| 50 people in New Amsterdam. Every person here on a visa
| interacts with the economy (needs to buy groceries, etc).
| Presumably they create more wealth for the economy than
| they cost, or it would not be worth it for a company to
| hire them.
|
| I think a more interesting question would be if, for the
| particular occupation (say software engineer), a person on
| an H1-B visa adds more than one jobs worth of demand for
| more software engineers. Even if they benefit the economy
| as a whole, it is still possible that a subset of the labor
| force sees extra competition. That opens up the question of
| is it better to suspend the program to protect a subgroup,
| or is it better to expand the economy as a whole.
| adamrezich wrote:
| In order for such a statistic to be useful, you'd not only
| have to demonstrate it, but also demonstrate evidence that
| companies they start add more non-H-1B jobs to the market
| than they add more H-1B jobs to the market.
| luckydata wrote:
| I agree. The cap should be adjusted to unemployment surveys by
| sector. If there's high unemployment in tech at the moment
| there should be simply no quota to hire from foreign countries
| until the labor market recovers.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| I'm all for importing top talent to work at American companies.
| In fact, I think H1-Bs should be allowed to start businesses and
| move from job to job like anyone else. If it's about innovation,
| why force them to stay in one job while they're here?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Indentured servitude to depress domestic wages.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| as an American who worked in Silicon Valley for years, but is
| not from there, i'd say it's also "captive real estate
| customers" created by H1-B people.
| throwawaybbq1 wrote:
| Can you clarify this? You saying non H1B's would not pay
| the crazy high rents of SV's housing?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I once asked an (American) director where i worked just
| this question.
|
| He said what you surmised: while there are plenty of
| qualified American engineers in the United States, citing
| Motorola headcount reductions as an example, it was a
| challenge to convince them to move to California's cost
| of living.
| msgodel wrote:
| I used to be but that's not how any of these immigration
| programs are used. Often they've been used to crush domestic
| workers and even change demographics and voting patterns.
|
| At this point it doesn't look like allowing anything other than
| net emigration is practical. You just can't trust the people
| involved to do anything else.
| Permit wrote:
| > Often they've been used to crush domestic workers and even
| change demographics and voting patterns
|
| Can you give an example where H1Bs changed voting patterns?
| msgodel wrote:
| I meant immigration in general. Obviously people on H1B
| visas don't (or at least shouldn't) change voting patterns.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| That's a great point: immigrants are great for the existing
| voting populace. They count for the census, but if you keep
| them on a program like H-1B, they'll live their whole lives
| without being able to vote. The existing voters have their
| votes count more and more with H-1B population growth. A
| great gig when you've got something like Prop 13 making sure
| the newcomers pay most of the taxes too. What a racket!
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| How would you prevent people from getting an H1-B visa for a
| job just for the sake of moving to a different job in a sector
| that doesn't need a lot of workers? And if they are going to
| start a business, they could start a business in tech that is
| actually successful, and then fill a few extra positions with
| friends/family/contacts/people willing to pay, and then those
| people could move on to other jobs for which they are more
| suited.
|
| Fact is, immigration systems in all of the richest countries
| are already bursting with abuse from certain countries with
| very ingenious schemes and you gotta have some ways to protect
| it unless you want a free-for-all.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I would encourage you to actually read up about the hoops
| that people with H-1Bs have to jump through just to stay in
| the country. It is a demeaning and abusive process, and not
| usually one that people engage in frivolously.
|
| Additionally, you can already today legally switch jobs as an
| H-1B, but it is a process that gives undue amounts of power
| to the employer, which makes switching difficult. Finally,
| regarding switching fields, it's not that easy. You have to
| show that your new field is related to your degree and
| experience.
|
| So please, instead of making up imaginary bogeymen, learn
| more about the immigration system.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I never said it should be as difficult as it is, which you
| seem to imply that I did. I only said meant to say the
| system shouldn't be too easy, either.
| colechristensen wrote:
| If it's actually top talent, sure.
|
| But if it's a replacement for supporting domestic education and
| a source of cheap skilled labor, no thanks.
|
| If FAANG were screaming at Congress about their inability to
| hire and the solution was better primary and secondary
| education programs for people at home to create that skilled
| workforce, we probably wouldn't have such an aggressive
| urban/rural political divide in this country.
| exe34 wrote:
| It takes ~22 years to train up a native. Election cycles are
| on a 2-4 years basis and corporate profit reporting is on a 3
| month scale.
| jibe wrote:
| The fix may take a long time, but the bigger problem is
| there are no workable ideas for a fix. It's not like better
| education hasn't been thought of, attempted, and tons of
| money dumped into it. Results have been mixed at best.
| exe34 wrote:
| Better education works elsewhere, so it's probably not
| where the problem is.
| jibe wrote:
| Ok, so let's just do that then, sounds easy.
| exe34 wrote:
| > so it's probably not where the problem is.
|
| Did I give the impression that better education is
| sufficient to solve the problem?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| If it's top talent, then they should be forced to pay them the
| wage of a US worker, if not more.
|
| Instead, you end up competing against the whole world on salary
| and servitude hours for a local job.
| meatmanek wrote:
| They already are.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Condition_Application
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I've yet to see that once.
|
| Not the H1Bs at Amazon who were paid less and guilted into
| working weekends. Not my Mexican girlfriend who works for
| $50k as an oil rig chemical engineer in Houston at a
| company that only hires visa workers on the cheap. Not my
| Indian neighbors I befriended making $60k in software at
| Chase bank in Houston on their all-visa teams.
|
| SLB is a good example, where I met my girlfriend. Entry
| level American chemical engineer: $120-150k. Visa chemical
| engineer imported to work on the same team in the same
| position: $50k. Guess which part of the pie chart grew
| while I worked there.
|
| But I'm not supposed to notice any of this. And until very,
| very recently it was a faux pas to mention it at all.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| your personal anecdotes doesnt negate the actual data
| DragonStrength wrote:
| It's basic economics that more workers with fewer rights
| lower wages across the board. "They make what Americans
| do" when there is a continuous flow of competing labor.
| Sure. What would companies pay if they didn't have these
| exploitable workers? Would the companies have opened new
| office closer to where Americans are educated? Certainly,
| one of those two would happen.
| 3uler wrote:
| But this is why the government should enforce existing
| laws and include provisions like must pay x above median
| average salary for the role to discourage fraud.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| They do that already. H1b has a minimum salary
| requirement. I agree it should be higher but it exists.
| The median H1B is 130k.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| But it does negate the claim that H-1Bs are paid the same
| wage.
|
| If your claim only applies to a subset of visa workers in
| a subset of companies, then refine the claim to use a
| word like "some", and it will be a trivial claim that I
| agree with.
| troebr wrote:
| If we're going to give anecdotal data, when I lived in
| NYC I was hired as an H1B, and every single other H1B I
| knew was paid way more than the median wage. But these
| were companies not trying to abuse the system. I do not
| doubt that there are bad actors.
|
| I do agree that there should be minima to prevent abuse.
| I do not agree that every H1B hire was to abuse the
| system.
|
| In the early 2010s there were hiring shortages, the
| startup that hired me would have probably preferred
| saving on the attorney fees and the 6+ months it took
| between the offer and the start date. For a new H1B you
| have to prepare the paperwork in March at the latest,
| apply the first week of April, for a start date of
| October 1st. And not only that, but with the quotas and
| the lottery you're absolutely not guaranteed that your
| hire is going to make it. All things being equal without
| a shortage or the ability to underpay, it is not an
| attractive solution.
|
| H1Bs do push salaries down, because there is more
| "supply" of workers, so it should probably only be used
| for hiring for areas with shortages, but even then you
| can have downturn like what we're having in tech, and
| some companies may keep their H1Bs over FTE because they
| are less of a flight risk and can't negotiate their
| salaries as well. Even with a shortage, this means that
| employees with that specific skill will be paid less, now
| it's more of a matter of which one is better for the
| economy/society.
| bialpio wrote:
| > If it's top talent, then they should be forced to pay them
| the wage of a US worker, if not more.
|
| They are forced to do that, and they in fact do that.
|
| Source: I was hired by one big tech company as an H-1B worker
| (I was a new grad) over a decade ago (2012), my salary was
| ~15% higher than what the chart says for "class of 2014".
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I will go a step further and suggest that you, an HNer,
| were probably even a world class talent back then who
| mogged your US cohort so badly they offered you 15% more to
| snap you up.
|
| It's just evident that's not what's happening across all
| H-1B positions in the US, and those are the ones worth
| talking about here.
| root_axis wrote:
| The median H1B engineering salary is 120k. There is no top
| talent working for that salary.
| 9x39 wrote:
| When Microsoft does layoffs and then mass H1-Bs, is that
| shedding low-skill Americans for top Indian talent, or just
| labor arbitrage? Is a country of 340 million really lacking
| talent, or do we just want cheaper and controllable labor?
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-h1b-visa-applicat...
|
| Companies always want the lucrative American businesses and
| consumers as customers, all the while wanting to shed expensive
| American workers.
| 3uler wrote:
| If they wanted cheap labour, they would outsource. H1Bs are
| an important source of talent. That does not mean it is
| abused by outsourcing companies to bring cheap talent to
| America and profit from the arbitrage.
|
| Big tech is not the one abusing this program.
| 9x39 wrote:
| >That does not mean it is abused by outsourcing companies
| to bring cheap talent to America and profit from the
| arbitrage.
|
| It doesn't have to follow directly; the problem is often
| indirect. H1Bs are much better behaved for employers
| because they are nearly powerless to say no, and can be
| slow-walked for raises, promotions and squeezed for high
| hours worked to reduce effective wages. There's also
| cultural migration issues - India is 70%+ of the H1B
| program. Does India have a monopoloy on top global talent,
| or is it just a process vulnerable to political capture and
| top execs' whims?
|
| Talent exists everywhere, but when one country absolutely
| dominates a process, it suggests the process has been
| captured.
|
| >Big tech is not the one abusing this program.
|
| Did they promise that in a press release or something?
| Compared to Microsoft, TCS and Infosys are bottom tier
| tech, but the H1B program in general is sketchy based on
| the accusations the biggest players have had over the last
| decade.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Yup, if you take the restrictions off, none of these companies
| would want them. They love the restrictions. Americans can just
| up and quit on them, but not temporary workers.
| paxys wrote:
| How much did the entire tech industry grow in that period?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I'm not sure thats even a lot in the context of 2011->2022 tech
| hiring though?
| eitally wrote:
| I don't understand the point of this chart. It essentially shows
| linear growth -- all 65k H-1B visas were allocated every year,
| until the past two years where layoffs have started impacting
| this labor pool. The entire tech industry has expanded by far
| more than 65k FTEs/yr so unless the OP does the leg work to
| figure out whether a disproportionate fraction of new jobs are
| being given to immigrants vs eligible Americans I don't see how
| this is useful.
| itake wrote:
| I think the point of this graph is to demonstrate that there is
| a large jumper of temporary workers and high unemployment.
|
| The program was to address labor shortages, and if we don't
| have a labor shortage, then we should be reducing our temporary
| worker pool, not US citizen pool.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| You seriously think that in the period of 2011 to, say 2021,
| there wasn't a massive labour shortage in tech hiring?
| mushroomba wrote:
| Yes. As a US citizen, I, and many of my college cohort,
| spent many years unemployed during that time period,
| despite applying to thousands of positions.
|
| The reality is that businesses hire attorneys to create a
| legal fiction that I and my peers are unqualified so that
| businesses that desire it can hire H-1B employees.
|
| Shortages are, always and everywhere, a pricing phenomenon.
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| Do you think it's possible you were _over_ estimating the
| skills in your particular cohort?
|
| Being more senior, my world of coworker and colleagues
| has been a mix of highly skilled people, largely in the
| AI/ML space. There are many H1Bs among them, but there
| has been no difference in the ability of the US citizen
| subset and the H1B subset in getting jobs.
|
| Even closer to the entry level, the H1B pool all came
| from very competitive and elite universities, and all of
| them also had advanced degrees.
|
| I do believe the market for fresh out of college software
| engineers without much specialization is tight, but I
| also don't see many H1Bs in that category either (but
| again, that could just be because of my own cohort I'm
| surrounded by). A PhD from NYU/Harvard/MIT with an
| undergrad at a place like IIT or Tsinghua is not in the
| same talent pool as newly graduated undergrad students
| from a standard US university.
| Zacharias030 wrote:
| This is also what I suspect. It is very different how
| many CS majors in the US enter the job market with just a
| bachelor's degree.
| itake wrote:
| I think you're conflating visas. The PhD would use the
| OTP and O-1 visas, not the h1b.
|
| The h1b candidate pool would be mostly undergrad and
| masters students.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| It is not that easy. OPT only works for a few years, and
| you are not immediately eligible for an O-1
| itake wrote:
| During this period, many job opportunities went to h1b
| candidates, resulting in teams at FANGA companies with all
| 1 nationality.
|
| It would be fair to say that they couldn't find any
| american talent and thus needed to hire h1b workers, but
| that wouldn't explain how they got monoculture teams.
| mattnewton wrote:
| There is an argument that the purpose of the program is to
| provide skilled labor which is beneficial to the economy,
| beyond just, but including the domestic employment rate.
|
| I'm not sure that's what the H-1B program is doing in
| practice here, it probably is replacing many skilled American
| born workers. But at least in theory it can both be true that
| domestic worker unemployment has gone up, but that
| contracting the program risks the global competitiveness of
| major US companies that net employ US workers. More analysis
| is probably warranted.
| michaelteter wrote:
| The purpose of this program has always been to provide
| cheaper labor for companies. We have never had a legitimate
| shortage of qualified software engineers.
| itake wrote:
| We definitely did have a shortage until about 2021. Code
| camps wouldn't exist if companies couldn't hire from a
| more qualified candidate pool.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I worked at BigTech, I don't think I met a single coworker
| on H1B that was a "specialized top talent" whose job
| couldn't go to an American citizen. I'm not saying any of
| my H1B visa coworkers were _worse_ than American citizens,
| they weren't _better_.
|
| Now I also spent a long career in regular old enterprise
| dev before 2020. Definitely any halfway decent framework
| developer could have done the job as well as the ones who
| were here on H1B.
|
| I can easily hold multiple thoughts at once.
|
| 1. As long as their unemployed qualified Americans for
| roles, we should reduce the new H1B visa applications
| dramatically.
|
| 2. I don't begrudge anyone here on H1B and don't support
| discriminating against them or cancelling their visa
|
| 3. I don't agree with how once you get let go from a job,
| the clock starts ticking no matter how much money you have
| saved. When I was at Amazon and Amazon started Amazoning
| with me. I didn't break a sweat when I was on "focus". I
| played the game long enough to get through my next vest and
| then sat around and waited on my "get $40K+ severance offer
| and leave immediately or prostrate myself for a couple of
| more months and still be let go with 1/3 the severance
| amount".
|
| Of course I took the severance. My coworkers here on H1B
| were scared shitless and overworked themselves. Then again,
| it was my 8th job out of now 10 and I was already 49 at the
| time. I might have acted differently if I were younger.
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| > and high unemployment.
|
| I didn't see where that was shown in the chart.
|
| All I see is an assertion that "often at the expense of
| recent American CS grads.", and while I do believe I saw
| reporting that new grads _are_ facing higher unemployment, I
| didn 't see anything related specifically to CS grads, and,
| further, I haven't seen any data pointing out that H1Bs are
| taking entry level jobs. At least my experience has been that
| H1B are often in more senior roles and entry level jobs that
| require advanced degrees.
|
| I'm not saying that it's _not_ the case that there is a
| misalignment with the number of H1Bs and the current
| employment situation, but there doesn 't seem to be enough
| data here to fully flesh out this argument without some
| fairly major assumptions being applied.
| itake wrote:
| > For computer science and computer engineering, the
| unemployment rate in those fields was 6.1% and 7.5%,
| respectively -- notably higher than the national average.
|
| > By comparison, the unemployment rate for art history
| majors was 3%, and for nutritional sciences, the
| unemployment rate was just 0.4%, the New York Fed found.
| The New York Fed's report was based on Census data from
| 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/16/college-majors-with-the-
| best...
|
| > I haven't seen any data pointing out that H1Bs are taking
| entry level jobs
|
| Foreign new grads start their career on the OTP visa, which
| allows them to work for 2 years after they graduate. So you
| are correct, foreign students use OTP, not h1b to apply for
| entry level jobs.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| > whether a disproportionate fraction of new jobs are being
| given to immigrants vs eligible Americans I don't see how this
| is useful.
|
| This is bound to happen as you run out of people in the US. I
| don't think it's useful to prove a problem unless top US
| graduates start losing jobs to immigrants that outcompete them
| for lower salaries that they can live on because of lower
| educational debt.
| luckydata wrote:
| nobody honest can say we ran out of US citizens that can work
| the type of jobs H1B do. Unemployment in the industry is not
| zero. Top graduates from MIT and Stanford? Sure, they can't
| make enough of them, but as a whole the industry is using H1B
| to lower cost of labor, not to fill a hole that simply
| doesn't exist.
| mertleee wrote:
| The issue is endemic and I've seen it at companies I've worked
| at. Indian hiring managers have distinct obvious biases to only
| hire other Indians.
|
| This is blindingly obvious if you look at the share of h1b
| visas that indians account for (a vast majority).
| forinti wrote:
| That's less than 0.2% of the total population (340 million) and
| about 0.3% of the workforce (163 million).
| itake wrote:
| I don't think these workers are competing directly with 100% of
| the population. How many unemployed Americans could be employed
| right now if there was less temporary workers?
| dmix wrote:
| It's very difficult to tell. Employment isn't a finite thing,
| especially in white collar jobs. High quality workers will
| generate economic activity which generates new jobs. For ex:
| imagine a Chinese AI engineer working at OpenAI develops a
| new tool that generates enough $$ to support a whole team.
|
| How much of that is reality or how much is is suppresses
| wages will always be hard to pin down.
|
| A basic starting point would be cracking down on H1B mills
| that explicitly do wage suppression + more scrutiny on big
| companies like Amazon using it. There's some big H1B
| consultancies designed to undercut gov contract tending who
| are much more blatant despite hard rules in H1B meant to stop
| it. Biden admin passed some new policies to help combat it
| but enforcement has always been problem #1, not a lack of
| rules meant to protect American workers.
| msgodel wrote:
| Asians are 7% of the US population and above 30% of the
| engineering workforce at most tech companies. So either
| Asians are just extremely genetically/culturally superior
| somehow (which seems unlikely given the state of the
| software industry in most of their countries) or something
| is going on.
| itake wrote:
| > For ex: imagine a Chinese AI engineer working at OpenAI
| develops a new tool that generates enough $$ to support a
| whole team.
|
| Whose to say an American, given the same opportunities,
| couldn't do this as well? If you look at where the top AI
| companies are, only 1 is in China.
|
| I don't think h1b mills impact tech workers as much. Most
| of those cases seem to be in the healthcare space or in low
| end tech jobs that Americans probably don't want anyways...
| alexpotato wrote:
| There was a survey post on HN a while back stating that <5% of
| the US workforce can write any code at all.
|
| So it's fairer to it's really ~490K vs 8M.
| preciousoo wrote:
| That's ~6% of the 9M. Not nothing but not a glaring amount.
| I'm seeing that there are 1.7M total SWEs in the US, which
| would bring the H1B % to 30%, assuming all are SWEs. This
| would make it a significant amount, not sure if it's enough
| to suppress wages / pass on US persons if they attempted it.
|
| One look at the top H1B employers should stop this narrative
| however, because those companies do not pay near peanuts.
|
| https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-
| studies/h-1b-employe...
| basiccalendar74 wrote:
| curious how much of the growth is solely due to renewals since
| the cap on first time H1-Bs has stayed the same at 85k per year.
|
| the green card queue is severely backlogged for India (and to
| some extent China, Mexico). this causes people who would usually
| get a green card after 3-5 years be on a continuous H1-B renewal
| cycle every 3 years.
| apwell23 wrote:
| for reference india graduates 1.5 million in just 1 year.
| randomizedalgs wrote:
| For perspective, in the same time period, The number of employees
| at Google multiplied by five. It seems likely that the number of
| highly educated positions, in general, increased by quite a bit
| during that time.
| randomizedalgs wrote:
| For perspective, in the same time period, The number of employees
| at Google multiplied by five. I wouldn't be surprised if the
| growth of the software industry, at least, actually outpaced the
| increase in H-1B visas.
| kappi wrote:
| In 2023, American colleges graduated 134,153 citizens or green
| card holders with bachelor's or master's degrees in computer
| science. That same year, our federal government handed out work
| permits to at least 110,098 foreign workers in computer
| occupations through just three major guest worker programs.
| That's equal to 82% of our graduating class who are guaranteed
| jobs even before any Americans walk across the stage for their
| diploma.
| daft_pink wrote:
| A better approach would be to implement a significant application
| fee, less than the $5 million Trump implemented, but indexed to a
| multiple of the median wage, which would prove an employer's
| genuine need for talent not found in the U.S. In exchange for
| this premium, the employee should receive a green card, granting
| them the freedom to switch employers.
|
| This would create a more honest system, ensuring these highly
| sought-after professionals are paid competitive market wages and
| the company has to pay a large premium to hire the foreign
| worker. Not engage in this fictional market studies to prove they
| can't find people to find the role. Make them pay a premium and
| don't lock them into the employer.
|
| Further there should be a separate program for graduates of US
| universities and us university graduates shouldn't be competing
| against Tata gaming the system. People invested in the USA that
| we've invested in should get a preference over random people from
| a consulting company.
| wippler wrote:
| This chart is entirely misleading. In any given year, there are
| only 85k new H1B visas. That's it, it has not grown nor shrunk.
|
| Reason for increase in population shown here is H1B renewals.
| Normally the way this works is H1Bs convert to permanent
| residents, but due to the country caps, Indian/Chinese H1B
| holders keep renewing their visas contributing to this increase.
| Again these are people who are already here and got their
| approval sometime in the past, so its not like in 2022, companies
| collectively hired 685,117 (which is also why you see the
| decrease in 2023 since due to covid, a very little bit of backlog
| for residency cleared).
|
| (Not to mention the sentiment of comments here is entirely
| disappointing, but I guess that's the vibe these days)
| Aspos wrote:
| What about cap-exempt H1Bs? There are tons of new companies
| which streamlined the process and which are offering "nearly-
| guaranteed H1B with no lottery"
| jatins wrote:
| How can _anyone_ bypass lottery when that's a USCIS process?
| Aspos wrote:
| I understand there are some exceptions made for academic
| institutions so these companies employ people into a
| "participating university" for a token number of hours per
| month, person comes in and once they are in the country
| they can pursue different opportunities to get employed and
| change their status.
|
| This cap-exempt H1B bypasses lottery, can be obtained in
| about 3 months any time during the year.
| atlgator wrote:
| Yes - When Microsoft requests 14,000 H-1Bs after laying off
| 9,000 American workers, it's above and beyond the 85k cap.
| intermerda wrote:
| All the Microsoft layoffs were US citizens? Do you have a
| source for this?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| They were not because in a layoff you cannot prefer a
| specific protected category like race, gender, age AND
| nationality.
|
| The 9000 number is also a global number which includes
| layoffs in countries all over the world.
|
| The argument "9000 US workers were fired and X visa
| applications were applied for" is also very reductive.
| The layoffs were in gaming, sales and other divisions,
| meanwhile the visa applications were for people who
| either already are on visas in other divisions like
| engineering and are continuing their status or for people
| in newer positions that have nothing to do with sales or
| gaming.
| trhway wrote:
| i think you're mistaken. The H1B cap is 65K. Cap-exempts
| are capped at 20K. Thus total cap is 85K. No above and
| beyond of that number.
|
| Speaking about original post US tech industry is 16M
| people. So 600K+ of H1Bs, suppose they all in tech, is 4%.
| Blip on a radar.
| square_usual wrote:
| No, you're wrong too. The 20k is the Master's cap, only
| applicable to students who did a Master's or above in the
| US. Cap exempt refers to H1bs granted to US/State
| employers, who can get H1bs for employees without any cap
| whatsoever, and at any time of the year.
| trhway wrote:
| thanks, i see. So, MS can't get them really.
|
| https://www.nafsa.org/professional-resources/browse-by-
| inter...
|
| "AC21 [codified at INA SS 214(g)(5)(A)-(B)] exempts the
| following petitioners from the H-1B cap:
|
| Institutions of higher education
|
| Nonprofit entities related to or affiliated with an
| institution of higher education
|
| Nonprofit research organizations
|
| Governmental research organizations
| darth_avocado wrote:
| This. Cap exempts are usually PHDs and literal medical
| doctors.
| harshalizee wrote:
| No, it's not. The limit of new is universally capped at
| 85k. They can request as many applications as they want.
| The lottery still only picks a total of 85k
| square_usual wrote:
| Source: I made it up
| junar wrote:
| A cap-exempt H-1B doesn't let you work for a "company".
|
| Only universities, university-affiliated nonprofits,
| nonprofit research organizations, and government research
| organizations can sponsor one. Furthermore, even after you
| obtain a cap-exempt H-1B, you would be required to go through
| the lottery like anyone else if you want to work at an
| employer subject to the H-1B cap.
| screye wrote:
| There is no such thing for tech companies. Not sure where you
| heard about it.
|
| Only non-profits are allowed to skip the lotteries. I've seen
| it apply to universities and hospitals, but never to a for-
| profit tech company,
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I think every time the topic of H1B comes on HN, a lot of
| people have a lot of opinions, but don't fully understand the
| immigration system. Like you correctly pointed out, the
| increase in H1Bs in the country is mostly contributed by the
| fact that country caps force some nationalities to permanently
| stay on H1B while others can naturalize faster. There are
| hundreds of thousands of people who come into the country every
| year through other visas (and also on H1B from other countries)
| and naturalize and take up jobs in the country. But that
| doesn't matter because they are now US citizens.
|
| If people from India/China were allowed to naturalize as fast
| as other countries, you'd not have the chart of number of H1Bs
| grow in the country.
| luckydata wrote:
| if people from India and China were allowed to naturalize as
| fast things would spiral out of control. I know it's not a
| popular thing to say on this forum, but H1B visas are
| absolutely a wage control mechanism for US corporations even
| if that's not the spirit of the law. Note that I'm also an
| immigrant.
| bombcar wrote:
| The H1B "problem" would disappear if companies were
| required to pay 50% more than the median salary for the
| position for one.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The problem would disappear, but they would disappear to
| India or one of the other offshoring countries. I however
| agree that the pay needs to be AT LEAST the median salary
| for the position to avoid abuse.
| trhway wrote:
| Google would be required to pay 900K instead of 600K. You
| think that would stop Google?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Or they would just move some of their development
| departments to another country. Google doesn't need to
| bring developers into the US at all.
|
| It still wouldn't help.
| trhway wrote:
| For companies like Google, H1B isn't about bringing into
| US, it is just an expensive way to satisfy their US
| hiring hunger.
|
| That difference can be understood by imagining that H1B
| isn't foreign devs, instead it is devs grown in a jar by
| the State Department - Google would buy them the same.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| There's a lot to be said about "spiraling out of control".
| You could argue it's fair for everyone. But you could also
| argue that a country like China which is as big as Europe
| gets the same amount of green cards as Luxembourg. You
| could argue there will be less diversity, but then you'd be
| arguing that the French and the Italian cultures are very
| different from each other, but people from NorthEast India
| are the same as people from South of India culturally and
| ethnically.
|
| Anyway, if we are so concerned about "not letting things go
| out of control". A simple solution is also to set those
| country caps on the H1B program. There can be other
| solutions and the conversation can be a lot more nuanced
| but HN is not the forum for it when it comes to the topic
| of H1B.
| osti wrote:
| "Note that I'm also an immigrant."
|
| This sentence doesn't really help your statement, it just
| makes you a gatekeeper.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Exactly. In liberal cities I have lived in, it is almost
| always the earlier immigrants that resent and denigrate
| the later immigrants. It's pure gatekeeping. Like "I
| suffered during the immigration process and therefore you
| have to suffer at least as much as I have, or it isn't
| fair." Or like "the recent immigrants aren't as
| hardworking as older ones and they don't deserve
| immigration."
| kccqzy wrote:
| The so-called wage control mechanism is never the intention
| of H1B. Workers with H1Bs have to meet prevailing wage
| standards before the H1B is approved:
| https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/wages
|
| I get that there are probably loopholes in the law. But
| then the solution is to fix the loopholes and tighten
| enforcement. Give DoL access to IRS data. Improve the
| definition of prevailing wages. A lot of things can be done
| to fix H1B so that it behaves like how it's intended.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I feel like the situation for US citizens would improve if
| they were allowed to naturalize. Their wages would go up
| and companies wouldn't have the relatively cheaper labor
| pool to constantly draw from.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > In any given year, there are only 85k new H1B visas.
|
| Minor nitpick, but if you get an H-1 visa to work at a
| university, it's not part of that 85K limit.
|
| But yes, your point is valid. And the headline is editorialized
| - they cherry picked the year 2011, because it's the lowest. It
| was the lowest because we were knee deep in the financial
| crisis, and many companies suspended/reduced their reliance on
| foreign labor precisely because they'd have a hard time
| convincing the government that they couldn't find a qualified
| local.
| ianferrel wrote:
| I don't think it's misleading. It's clearly a population chart,
| not a count of newly issued visas.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's misleading because it says "The H-1B program grew...",
| which to many implies that it was doing _more_ immigration.
| It wasn 't. There was _less naturalization_.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No it isn't. It's more like a rolling cumulative chart of all
| the prior years' H1Bs combined.
| lurker919 wrote:
| Does this conflate the number of new visas issued to new workers,
| with the existing visas renewed by already settled-in-US workers
| (that must be renewed every 3 years)?
|
| Because due to the GC backlog, the existing visas do not go down
| for 2 major contributing countries.
| basiccalendar74 wrote:
| Yes, the renewals are included
| siliconc0w wrote:
| This is the classic problem with american policy, well known to
| be abused and terribly implemented but too politically difficult
| to change.
|
| You could easily move from a lottery to a total comp auction
| process. IMO if your company does layoffs it should automatically
| void your ability to participate for 5 years. It's pretty gross
| to see tech CEOs whining about how they can't get the talent they
| need on a Monday and then mass laying off on a Tuesday.
| desolate_muffin wrote:
| This phenomenon really frustrates me on behalf of my peers. I'm
| not sure what the right answer is, but anecdotally I've observed
| many others struggle to get their first jobs in tech, while,
| meanwhile, I am mostly being assigned to interview people who
| require visa sponsorship. Most of my referrals for my low YOE
| peers are rejected before the recruiter call. I have observed
| this at both very-big tech and my current medium-sized tech
| company.
|
| I have also observed that on my team, more than half of the
| people are either currently on immigrant visas or were previously
| on immigrant visas. Just to be absolutely clear--these people are
| great, and I don't fault them or hold any ill will for them
| having coming here to work.
|
| At the same time, it seems that most hiring is done at the mid
| and senior level. If we only hire senior talent and rely on
| immigrant visa labor to fill these ranks, where exactly is each
| subsequent generation of seniors supposed to come from? I feel
| there should be some requirements in place to ensure that
| companies aren't perpetuating this shortage by hiring very few
| domestic workers at the entry level.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| This is mind boggling considering how rampant unemployment is in
| tech right now.
| bradlys wrote:
| I'd like to see percentage of tech workers in SV that were
| American citizens then vs now. Regardless of whatever cap we talk
| about - it's quite obvious that this has changed dramatically
| over the last 20 years for those under 40.
| websap wrote:
| As someone currently on the H1B program, and working in tech for
| the past 10 years, how do I navigate the current climate in the
| US? Especially when sentiment around H1B workers is at an all
| time low - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606374 ?
|
| I love working in the cutting edge of tech, but no other part of
| the world has been able to replicate this model the way Bay Area,
| SF, Seattle, and now NYC has. Great companies, ambitious people,
| new emerging tech, and large compensation.
|
| Are there other countries where YC sees companies originate from
| and they prove with a path to citizenship for software engineers?
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