Ask HN: Why does no one talk about the H-1B problem?

10 points by valianteffort 140 days ago | 11 comments

It seems like the only circles online discussing abuse of the nonimmigrant system in the US are right wingers.

Why is everyone else not concerned with the obvious ethnic nepotism, often caste based too, among primarily indian nationals? I have watched entire teams and companies get overrun with foreign nationals, while Americans have been laid off.

It is 1000% not a skill issue, the foreign nationals are often worse at the job, but it doesn't matter because realistically most of these companies can coast on their products with a skeleton crew of competent engineers that pickup the slack.

How can we seriously claim that we are facing a shortage of engineers, justifying hiring foreign nationals, when hundreds of thousands have been laid off over the last 5 years?

Obviously this applies to all nonimmigrant visas, and all foreign nationalities, but with indians making up ~80% of H-1B's specifically, they're not even trying to hide it. The trucking industry, something I'm very familiar with, has also been devastated by the same ethnic cartel.

If this post is flagged, I think it's obvious who is upset I am pointing this out. It is not intended to be racist, or inflammatory. This is a serious discussion, of a serious issue.

It's not lost on me that this website is full of indians who will probably take offense. But it's not a good look to defend this and will only amplify contempt for foreign workers.

PaulHoule 140 days ago |

I will "flip the script" and say I see it goes both ways: other people lose their jobs to Indian immigrants but those Indian immigrants are frequently underpaid and otherwise exploited.

More than once I've seen very talented Indians get mistreated. At one startup I worked at they put an Indian immigrant on an H-1B through some crazy abuse which made our new HR manager quit. I wanted to tell him "your skills are in demand, you could get a job across the street" but because he was on an H-1B.

I quit the ACM for a few reasons and unqualified support for the H-1B program was one of them. I joined the IEEE Computer Society instead because the IEEE takes no position on the issue. As I see it, Indians are treated particularly poorly by the US immigration system because "there are so many Indians", yet with a high level of education and an entrepreneurial attitude they make a strongly positive contribution to our economy.

valianteffort 140 days ago | |

You are correct in that part of the reason they are hired is because they are ostensibly indentured servants. They cannot quit because without another job lined up they have to leave the country.

But I don't think we should be correcting that issue to their benefit while Americans are dealing with a horrendous job market and high unemployment rates. And in my experience, it was often other indians abusing the indian foreign workers. These behaviors are incompatible with western society.

PaulHoule 140 days ago | | |

Look, it's a classic that people with an identity will use it to exploit other people with the same identity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud

If it gets on the agenda I will write my congressman a letter saying we should end the H-1B program. Overall though I don't think that is the major cause of why people here are unhappy with the economy.

gusmally 140 days ago |

I don't have a macro-level answer for you but an interesting anecdote: we opened a job for a Software Designer and looked at the first 9 applicants. All of them were in need of H-1B sponsorship, most were Indian, and most were "software-engineers-turned-designers". So at a micro (company) level, we hire immigrants because those are the candidates we receive.

Note: One of my parents is an Indian immigrant. I have worked with many great Indian engineers and many not-so-great, just like every other nationality.

valianteffort 140 days ago | |

> One of my parents is an Indian immigrant. I have worked with many great Indian engineers and many not-so-great, just like every other nationality.

This kind of blatant, wholesale dismissal is part of the problem. It's not "just like every other nationality". It is overwhelmingly indian nationals abusing the system. Why would we spread the blame to nigerians, or hungarians for what is an indian issue?

FrankWilhoit 140 days ago |

Zoom out. It's not about the immigrants. It's about the demand for them. American businessmen are consumed by the emotional obsession that their employees and their customers are stealing from them, and that "government" exists solely in order to prevent them from taking direct revenge for that theft. So they take pinprick revenge wherever they can.