Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Reasonable Immigration Policy For Highly-Trained Workers?
davidwr writes "What are a reasonable temporary-worker or immigration-visa rules to apply to workers whose skills would quickly net them a 'top 20th percentile wages' job (about $100,000) in the American workplace, if they were allowed to work in the country? Should the visa length be time-limited? Should it provide for a path to permanent residency? Should the number be limited, and if so, how should we decide what the limit should be? The people affected are already likely eligible for special work-permit programs, but these programs may have quotas, time limits, prior-job-offer-requirements, and other restrictions. I'm asking what Slashdotters think the limits and restrictions, if any, should be. (Let's assume any policy to keep out criminals and spies remains as-is.)"
Shaving $5k off "native" pay isn't a bad thing. I'd vote for eliminating all quotas over a 5 year period (giving the market some time to absorb any change in immigration).
Rules:
1) must have an advanced degree capable of pulling in $100,000 or more per year in the US market.
2) No violent convictions.
3) No pre-existing medical conditions (TB, AIDS, smoking, cancer).
They are issued two 6-month visas and four 1-year visas (not at the same time, but sequentially), where they must be employed at $100,000 or more and have no criminal convictions of any kind (I used to have to put in "other than minor traffic tickets" but Texas finally decriminalized traffic tickets sometime after 2001, when I moved away, and I think they were the last where 1 mph over the limit and such was a criminal misdemeanor).
At the end of those 5 years, give them a green card or citizenship or something like that. It would suck for those who would make $102,000 in today's market, but $95,000 in a market filled with others like them so that a quota would help them, but the real effect is that the $110,000 per year jobs would settle in around $100,000 per year, and immigrants looking to move to the US would aim for the $150,000+ jobs for the extra cushion.
If 1,000,000 can get in after 5 years (no quotas), then let them all in, they'll make $100,000,000,000 minimum (taxes and economic value).
My "fix" for H1-B was always to charge the same for the visa (to the sponsoring company) as it would take to train someone into the position. Then train someone into that position and revoke the H1-B visa. I'm not sure it would have the effect I'm desiring, that companies would begin training themselves, rather than outsourcing the training to the US government, but I'm sure someone smarter than me could fix that.
Learn to love Alaska
What field do you work in?
It took me three plus months of searching to find a good IT employee to help me with my workload. I'm at a company that has tripled its revenue in the last two years. I have more work than I can handle on my own, but I need someone competent to do it... not someone who I need to train and hold their hand. I need to be more productive, not less productive. I need someone I can delegate work to and know that they will do it just as well or better than I can. Those people are not easy to find. I had to sort through a whole slew of unqualified candidates before finding the guy I hired.
And right after I hired him, I asked for a raise because going through the hiring process made me realize just how limited the supply of qualified technical workers really is. They gave it to me, because the company knows it too.
There is a serious problem with Americans. Too many people think that they deserve a high paying job. They think they can go "get an education" and get hired by a company that will give them a career track.
Most of the people I know who are doing well are doing what they enjoy. They are in IT and they like computers. They are doctors and they are fascinated by life and the body. They are engineers and they are complete geeks for building things. They are into biochem and are thrilled to be working with the building blocks of life. They all have passion and they work hard and are constantly thinking about work... not because they have to, but because their brains are wired that way. They enjoy it. It fascinates them.
Too many people get too focused on being "successful". They do not realize that success comes from excelling at what you do. The drive to excel only comes from passion. Either passion about the task, or passion about the reward. People who are passionate about the task will be successful their entire lives. People who are passionate about the rewards will eventually burn out.