Silicon Valley frets over foreign worker crackdown

https://www.ft.com/content/b42f40c2-a6df-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1

by chirau • 10 years ago

44 65 10 years ago

ft.com

ddrum001• 10 years ago

There may be a paywall issue. Can someone please post another related story?

deedree• 10 years ago

https://t.co/ErBTm2HrTI

notliketherest• 10 years ago

Paste the URL into Google and enter from there.

ptaipale• 10 years ago

And in the Google search results, open it in an incognito/private window. This gets asked in comments for pretty much every FT/WSJ/whatever article.

Overtonwindow• 10 years ago

I don't have a problem with hiring workers from outside the country. My problem is when you lay off American workers and replace them with cheap foreign labor, while claiming you're doing so because you can't find qualified workers. That smacks of Silicon Valley doublespeak, and it's grossly unfair.

brianwawok2• 10 years ago

Increasing the supply of workers will ALWAYS drive down cost. So you can debate the minutia, but that is the trade off we make.

Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor competing. Software devs do not.

mifreewil• 10 years ago

Lawyers and doctors have strong "guild" protections to stop overseas labor competing.

I'd be interested in reading more about this if you have a link handy.

guiambros• 10 years ago

Increasing the supply of workers will ALWAYS drive down cost.

Not necessarily. This is only true for companies where minimizing the cost is the best (sometimes only) strategy to increase profits. Tata, EDS, Accenture, and the many IT body shops are all in this camp.

For the so-called "SV tech companies", they need a steady supply of talents to continue creating products that in turn generate new revenue streams. This is much more valuable than saving 30% off in an individual's compensation -- at the expense of high turnover, when said worker realizes he/she is being underpaid.

Artificially reducing an already dwindling supply of talents in the top tech hubs won't make salaries go up; it will simply shift the jobs elsewhere. That is already happening for many companies.

matchagaucho• 10 years ago

If all Software Developers had to pay their own E&O insurance and warrant the quality of their work, then a comparison could possibly be drawn to Doctor/Lawyer professions.

guard-of-terra• 10 years ago

It's generally true but there are counterexamples. For starters, in most of the world, 15 years ago computer programming was something geeks did while the rest of people were building real careers involving oversight of buying and selling stuff.

Fast forward today, programmers rake serious money getting better than average salaries, in some places several times more than peer salaries. But supply also increased several times. It's just that demand increased faster. I think that if supply would fail to increase we'll see smaller wages today as the market will fail to evolve.

xherberta• 10 years ago

Here's the full Kenneth Galbraith reference:

He ridiculed the Reaganite trickle-down theory of wealth distribution, preferring the earthier phrase "the horse-and-sparrow theory" - "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

From this interesting (long) overview of Galbraith's life and work: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialscie...

mc323• 10 years ago

Does SV really rely on undocumented workers for their skilled labor force? As far as I can tell Trump wants to thwart illegal immigration but wants to make hiring skilled foreign workers easier -i.e., if it's apparent we have a skills deficit, the administration would increase quotas to accommodate the demand. Examining demand/need and adjusting accordingly and cracking down on abuse of the system, if it does occur, would seem reasonable.

Of course, that remains to be seen but, at the same time, I don't believe the intention is to cut off all immigration, only illegal unregulated immigration, the way most advanced economies do.

skybrian• 10 years ago

Rely on undocumented workers: probably not, but subcontractors maybe?

What's going to happen to legal immigration: nobody knows. Trump has said a lot of things, and by the time a bill gets through Congress, it may be very different.

Your line of reasoning is one of many plausible scenarios.

caseysoftware2• 10 years ago

But the headline "Newly elected President says he'll enforce the law" isn't nearly as provocative and scary.

davidw3• 10 years ago

This is one of those laws that's kind of like speeding in cars. To actually enforce it 100% of the time would require the sort of enforcement that people would not be very happy with. With immigration, it'd mean living in a "papers, please" kind of country. The best way to deal with immigration is to make it cheap, legal and easy for people who just want to work:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/economy/if-immigr...

No one would walk miles through the Arizona desert if it were easy to do things legitimately - the only people sneaking around would be actual criminals.

And of course this one is a classic:

http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...

pgeorgi2• 10 years ago

There's one issue in Trump's current ideas: That he wants to "punish" countries that don't take back illegal immigrants by limiting visa access to their citizens.

So if the Trump administration at some point considers Liechtenstein to be not in compliance with Trump's ideas of handling illegal immigrants, fully compliant H1-Bs from Liechtenstein might get in trouble the next time they need to renew their paperwork.

bootload• 10 years ago

""punish" countries that don't take back illegal immigrants by limiting visa access to their citizens."

Astute reasoning.

WillPostForFood3• 10 years ago

Is that really an issue? Why would Liechtenstein refuse to take back one of their citizens?

Eridrus• 10 years ago

This seems like an odd way to "punish" countries. Most countries would probably be quite happy that the US was stopping the brain drain from their country.

ojbyrne• 10 years ago

The US immigration is incredibly byzantine and opaque, far beyond what most Americans realize. Trump has said that he thinks the H-1B program is being abused, and the fear is that there will be yet another layer of bureaucracy layered on top of what is already there.

It is not uncommon for immigrants to work 20+ years in the US before they can become citizens, always facing the prospect that unemployment or sickness means they have to be out of the country in as little as 10 days.

downandout4• 10 years ago

Does SV really rely on undocumented workers for their skilled labor force?

Of course not. The idea that Trump's election would be detrimental to Silicon Valley was a fear mongering tactic promulgated by left-leaning tech luminaries. Say what you will about his other stances, but all signs point to a very pro-business administration.

I'm more worried about business interruptions coming as a result of the holy war that some ultra-liberals have unleashed on anyone that they view as responsible for not getting their way in the election than I am about Trump interfering with any aspect of American business. The Grubhub incident was truly disturbing, and several people have publicly said they would cut Peter Thiel out of deals specifically because of his political beliefs. It seems that Democrats stress tolerance, except when they have to tolerate anyone that disagrees with them.

pedrosorio• 10 years ago

"The Grubhub incident was truly disturbing"

Are you referring to the CEO e-mail? [1]

"While demeaning, insulting and ridiculing minorities, immigrants and the physically/mentally disabled worked for Mr. Trump, I want to be clear that this behavior - and these views, have no place at Grubhub. Had he worked here, many of his comments would have resulted in his immediate termination."

Sounds like standard HR policy to me.

[1] http://media.grubhub.com/media/press-releases/press-release-...

jackweirdy2• 10 years ago

If there is wage manipulation via H1-Bs, it's because there's a pressure on the candidate to accept a lower salary, knowing it's the only way to get into the US to work. As I see it, raising that cap removes the employer's leverage to push for a lower wage.

hangonhn• 10 years ago

You think the pool of available talent to replace all those H1Bs is large enough to do it before many tech companies implode or start outsourcing?

WillPostForFood3• 10 years ago

The best argument for the H-1B is that the jobs would go to the same employee anyway, just back in their home country, but there is probably a sweet spot where you aren't actually incentivizing dumping current US workers and replacing them with H-1Bs.

jackweirdy2• 10 years ago

Not sure I understand you - my point is if you allow twice as many H-1Bs things would get better. Don't see where replacing H-1Bs comes into it?

skookum• 10 years ago

Oh look, yet another article talking about how our leading tech companies (aka "Silicon Valley") can't hire fast enough with an infographic clearly showing that the "highly skilled guest worker" visas are predominantly going to IT body shops (aka "not Silicon Valley"), the "H1-Bs on average make less" mostly being due to the same body shops, and no mention at all within the body of the article that this is the case. It should be obvious to anyone with even limited reasoning ability that the system is is not being used in the spirit* it was created in and that there are possible fixes that don't land at one of the extremes of close it down or leave it (mostly) wide open.

(*or for the cynically inclined, replace "spirit" with "stated purpose")

jensvdh• 10 years ago

In fact cracking down on H1-B should be GOOD for silicon valley. As it will open a lot more slots for legit companies applying for real talent.

jasoncchild• 10 years ago

I'm confused, how is a company who hires H1-B visa holders "illegitimate"? Maybe I'm taking this too literally...

Senji2• 10 years ago

A bad choice. A more appropriate choice would be a hellhole like Mexico.

grzm2• 10 years ago

Why purposefully inflame the discussion? I suspect that's exactly why that choice was made.

dang• 10 years ago

Slurs like this are a bannable offense on Hacker News. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940754 and marked it off-topic.

supercanuck2• 10 years ago

Silicon Valley companies are s small percentage of the H1-B pool.

Focusing on the 10-15% of H1B's is not doing this issue justice, in my opinion. Wipro, Cognizant, Infosys and TCS are not Silicon Valley startups.

hga• 10 years ago

Case in point, his stated policy is the "Intel yes, Infosys no" one.

However, how much do Silicon Valley startups eventually hire from the Infosys etc. pool of H1-Bs?

Old line Silicon Valley companies like HP are notorious for doing this, although as I recall they've been cluefull enough to avoid the "train your own replacement" PR debacles that are most recently driving this, those are in companies where "IT" is a cost center, like that California electrical company and Disney.

bane• 10 years ago

Here's a disruptive idea for SV, open field offices in tech hubs that are all over the country, pay lower salary, get the same employees you would have moved out to SV anyway.

(I know more than one person who works in SF/SV and works literally in the same department as half a dozen other people from their home cities, all moved out to SF and given enormous pay differentials to live there).

Silicon Valley frets over foreign worker crackdown

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