Does the tech industry need so many workers on H-1B visas?
64 comments
·January 16, 2025rednafi
owenwil
In my experience, Canada does an excellent job where this program fails. I entered on the high skill “express entry” visa for a tech job. After 18 months we had permanent residency. After 3.5 years, we had citizenship. It was all online and easy enough for us to do ourselves with minimal stress.
During the express entry period where you are employer sponsored, unlike in the US, if you get fired, you have until your visa expires to find another sponsoring job (the visa is valid for 5 years IIRC).
I’m pretty happy with how it went and glad we can settle, I’m not sure we would have chosen Canada if a rapid permanent path hadn’t been clear up front.
Ralo
Were you very specialized in a certain field, filling a senior position?
As a Canadian with a CS degree who's been trying to get into tech for years, this is horrible to hear. We have thousands of new grads in Canada who end up working in fast food because they get passed over for cheaper immigrants. I've seen it first hand, all my tech friends have seen it. We're worse than the US for this, and we have even less tech jobs here.
We don't need to be bring more entry level talent, we have tons of that not being utilized here.
There's plenty of talk about greedy corporations until the topic of using immigration to increase their profits comes up. Then it's silence.
owenwil
I was coming in as a ‘normal’ developer design manager, but that is likely fairly specialized. I’m guessing that was in my favor. I know others with a couple of years engineering experience under their belt having a similar experience. But yes, the lack of jobs can be an issue. Lots of folks I know, myself included, now working remote for US-based companies.
In tech in Canada, usually we aren’t hiring immigrants because they’re cheaper—visas, moving someone, etc, is a huge expense. It’s often more that they’re the best possible fit for the role. After Covid with remote work etc, I don’t think there’s as much of that immigration going on, though—I don’t know of many Canadian companies sponsoring right now.
rednafi
This was probably true a few years ago, but Canada’s tech market has shrunk a lot. I had the option to move to Canada or Germany, and I chose the latter, even though I wasn’t happy about having to pick up German and dealing with EU bureaucracies. I had trouble finding a well-paid job in Canada that would give me an okay lifestyle in somewhere that's not Alberta.
owenwil
The market is still going, it’s just pretty tight right now, yeah. For what it’s worth, I lived in Europe for 5 years (NL) before this and honestly I think you’ve made a great choice there too. I learned a lot working in the Netherlands, and there’s lots of great things about living there you can’t find in North America. I miss not being bound to a car!
saguntum
What's wrong with Alberta? (Genuinely asking, I know close to nothing about Alberta)
johnnyanmac
>After the Twitter saga, two of my acquaintances had to leave the US after being sacked. The H1B is tied to your job, and switching employers is incredibly stressful since you need to find someone willing to sponsor you.
Easiest way to fix this issue. Tie the Visa to a state or federal government. They check in and can stay as long as they are working in X industry in potentially Y state. Still not as easy to move, but the company has much less leverage to keep an H1B hostage.
jsiepkes
> It’s hard to get excited about learning German and joining a local tech company for peanuts in salary.
I don't know about Germany but in the Netherlands there is also a minimum income restriction in order to get a knowledge worker visa. I would be surprised if Germany didn't have one as well.
Ballas
As far as I know, the Blue card income requirement is the same across the EU, and also quite a bit higher than the HSV income requirement in the Netherlands. If you have a choice, the Blue card is better as it gives more mobility and more time to find a new job if you get fired (in general, I think it's the same for the first 6 months).
rednafi
It does have an income requirement. In Germany, it’s around 50k Euros per year, and many companies just pay the bare minimum.
That said, I was fairly lucky and found something that isn’t terrible, so I moved. Other than the language barrier, I don’t have many complaints. I’ve heard the language situation is better in the Netherlands than in Germany.
n_ary
BlueCard has very specific floor too. The Op describing the process using some super utopian terms excluding all the same thorny bits but I suspect Op is not familiar with the requirements too.
rednafi
I went through the process a year ago, and it wasn’t easy. Yes, there’s a minimum income requirement, and European bureaucracy is a nightmare. On top of that, salaries here are peanuts compared to what I used to make.
While the US is more expensive and its healthcare system can be a pain, I still managed to save more money there than I can now. Europe is just poorer, and the tech industry is much smaller. In terms of opportunities, cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, or London don’t even come close to North Carolina, let alone SF/ NYC.
On top of that, the language barrier is frustrating—I can’t imagine anyone being thrilled about learning a new language, earning less, and working in relative obscurity. Still, I moved because dealing with the H1B process in the US was even worse.
sashank_1509
As long as you’re not Indian or Chinese, you can get a green card in 2-3 years in US
jltsiren
It's 3-4 years these days, unless you qualify for EB-1. Every step in the process takes a few months longer than it used to.
But those numbers are not comparable. In most European countries, you first spend a number of years on a temporary residence permit, and then you can apply for permanent residence. That application typically takes less than a year to process. In the US, you can apply for permanent residence any time, but the application process takes several years.
zoomthrowaway
2-3 years are no longer true. rest of the world (aka not Indian or Chinese) wait time if starting now is more like 5-6 years and possibly longer
gunian
is there some stat that supports this?
because I feel like foreign relations between India and the US have never beeen better
wenc
It's not about foreign relations but how long the queue is.
The current date for India (Employment-based green cards) is most backlogged, followed by China, Mexico, Philippines, and Others (Others being its own category).
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
rednafi
I saw it first hand. My Indian colleagues mentioned that their queue to transition from H1B to green card is impossibly long. It’s just how the numbers work. There are just too many Indians applicants and not enough seats.
mrkstu
This is presumably about the per-country limits on H1Bs- i.e. most countries aren't hitting their quota, so if you apply for one as a citizen of most countries, the wait is comparatively minimal.
redditor98654
What do you mean? My green card application has been pending for 9 years. Based on current projections I won’t get it in less than 100 years or so. Indian. This is a well known fact.
null
rednafi
Indeed. As you should. Indians and Chinese are no longer considered minorities in the US, so it makes sense to curb the influx.
However, the problem is that the US tech market is volatile, with zero job security. Since H1B makes it difficult to switch employers, tech companies often exploit this and pay these workers disproportionately. On top of that, there’s always the looming risk of getting fired before securing a green card, and the stress of that hangs over you constantly. This part could definitely be improved.
bugglebeetle
> Indians and Chinese are no longer considered minorities in the US, so it makes sense to curb the influx.
Why would this ever be rational a basis for immigration?
dyauspitr
How is 3% of the population not a minority?
breadwinner
This is the problem (from the article): In addition to Big Tech companies, consulting firms like Cognizant, Tata and Infosys are also among the largest recipients of H-1B visas, providing tech companies with a steady pipeline of highly educated, well-trained employees willing to work on contract.
The workers brought in by Cognizant, Tata and Infosys are actually not highly skilled, and they undercut American workers. Their use of H-1B visas should be limited, and the visas should be reserved for highly paid workers who work for Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and so on.
PoppinFreshDo
[dead]
ChrisArchitect
Title is:
Does the tech industry really need so many workers on H-1B visas?
Or: H-1B visas power the tech industry. But experts say that's not necessarily because of a talent gap.
Source article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/h-1b-visa-technology-industry-e...
dang
We've changed the title now. Submitted title was "Why tech giants can't stop hoarding H-1B visas". It's possible that's what the article originally had; they change sometimes.
tomohelix
By the laws, an H1B is not cheap. No big corps would pay them much lower than what they are already paying citizens at the same position. Then add on lawyers and sponsorship fees and having an H1B is much more costly than hiring citizens.
The fact that H1B is still being favorable despite higher cost speaks volume about how it really is. In many ways, H1B is one of the reasons the US is so competitive. It takes in talents (like it or not, many H1B are just as good or more skilled than a native), force them to work much harder than a regular resident would ever want to, make them pay taxes on incomes that are higher than natives, then discard them after a few years since not everyone can have residency or can wait that long.
A H1B will always avoid conflict, keep their head down, and straight up afraid of even being anywhere near a crime much less committing it. They are an ideal underclass that can be exploited easily.
And for that reason, in capitalist America, H1B will not go away. They will try to fix some abuses, raise the barrier, make things slightly more difficult, etc. But the F1 to H1B gravy train will continue. An obvious way is to favor US degree holders to make the expensive universities here more attractive, limit abuses, while still cater to the anti-immigrant crowd.
I bet if there is a H1B reform, this will very likely be one of the changes.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
America never let go of its slavery habits. That's just the modern variation.
JackYoustra
It is very very distinct from slavery. They are free to leave whenever they want, which is THE key point of slavery.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
Said a privileged person born in a rich country, who has never faced the prospect of being deported.
gscott
If companies hire for culture fit more than a particular set of skills and they prefer h1b workers eventually that is the culture fit.
throwblack
Native Indians and African Americans should get more IT jobs to uplift their communities
0xcafefood
Yes, they should. So what are they doing to get those jobs?
spprashant
Honestly the choices are: a) letting workers in who will work for reasonable wages, put in a solid shift, pay generous taxes, who will most likely never seeing a penny of social security or medicare benefits b) outsource to Bangalore for much cheaper
In my biased Indian view, unless something drastically changes, the proposition of 20+ years on a Green Card queue is looking a lot less appealing for a software person, especially if they are talented.
PoppinFreshDo
[dead]
H1B is a pain-in-the-ass, plain and simple. It’s designed to hoard a particularly talented and desperate group of people willing to do anything to get into the US and work in big tech.
After the Twitter saga, two of my acquaintances had to leave the US after being sacked. The H1B is tied to your job, and switching employers is incredibly stressful since you need to find someone willing to sponsor you.
If you’re aiming to stay in the US permanently, the path to a green card and eventual citizenship is just as thorny. Many people go there on an H1B, work in big tech, buy houses, get fired, and often leave the US in shambles.
Countries like Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands handle this visa process better. If you work in tech, you get a Blue Card that transitions into a green card in three years, and then you can apply for citizenship after five. After a year, your visa is no longer tied to your employer, so you can switch jobs. But these countries suffer from bureaucracy and extreme language fragmentation. It’s hard to get excited about learning German and joining a local tech company for peanuts in salary.