Seems like such a simple issue to fix: the only condition for getting a specialist visa should be to find an employer willing to pay a specialist salary, say above 150K. Doctors included, I see no reason to protect them from competition. Hop jobs at will but need to maintain within 85% of that level.
If a company can't find workers, it should pay more up until a level that puts the competitiveness of the economy under question. Below that level, it's the citizen's right to a fair salary without labour dumping from a poor country. Above that level, it's everybody's right to fairly priced services without professional rents.
When I was on an h1b, I was making around 60k in the middle of the country, working for an amazing startup where we were ramen profitable. My skill set was highly specialized for the job. However, I couldn’t be a founder due to my visa status and we couldn’t pay each other even basic salaries. But we did some pretty amazing stuff for DARPA, DOD, and eventually some commercial enterprises.
You would price out people like me and make it virtually impossible for me to become a citizen eventually. But maybe that is by design and I don’t mind that opinion. All countries have nativist subsets of society so it is just a normal, natural stance.
Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically. But maybe now the populace believes the natives need to be protected from outside competition so that they can improve. Fair enough.
Yes there's nativism, but that's not the only thing here. In purely economic terms h1bn visa holders are potential employess that are extra attractive because they have less power; power they cannot get back and power other classes of residents cannot give up.
This is classic artificially divide the market and race to the bottom.
> You would price out people like me and make it virtually impossible for me to become a citizen eventually.
> Historically, america has attracted the best minds. Historically.
You are making the classic mistake of holding the macroeconomics constant. If we had sane immigration policies as proposed in this thread, the going rate might have been different.
Maybe you have been payed more, matching the coasts. Maybe we all would have been paid less, matching you. Maybe the incumbents wouldn't have had a competitive advantage such that you all had to be underpaid to be even ramen profitable.
The big point is given a skill set (projection of the labor market), residency status shouldn't be economically observable. Policy should be constrained to affecting the residency status distribution accross slices.
Off topic, but I hadn't heard this expression before so I looked it up and stumbled upon an interesting Paul Graham blog post derived from it: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html
From my point of view - both excluding you from the job market or giving you general purpose work visa are better for the rest of the people in your industry(with second option better for you of course). Than work permit depending on sponsorship.
If you are valuable enough to work in US, you are valuable enough to do it as a full market participant without shackles or handicaps.
Exactly. The reason startup salaries are low is that the companies don't have the cash to pay. If they had customers who believed in them they would have cash. If they had investors who believed in them they would have cash.
Asking the government to let in someone whose company might eventually make it big enough to pay "the going rate" is asking the government to take a risk -- it's like asking them to invest in the company on the promise that the payoff will be as good or better than the next person in line.
Actually, we were very proud of being bootstrapped and not selling stake to an investor. But perhaps that is not a big deal to other people, so I can see your point.
Nativist implies a racial undertone. I would call it tax-payerist: regardless of your background, the state prioritizes the interests of current tax payers to the detriment of future potential citizens. It's true even for migrants on other types of visas, they should be protected from labour dumping.
It's the only way a rich nation can function really, the alternative being open borders and a rapidly decreasing standard of living. They all do this in some convoluted way, despite any rethoric to the contrary.
Future potential tax payers. Like myself btw. I am giving so much money to Uncle Sam these days that it makes me sad. I could invest in multiple YC companies with that money.
The problem with this is that "absolutely anybody in any country" can be a future potential tax payer, there are way more people willing to migrate into the US than there is economic capacity to integrate them all. Not to say that an excessive rate of migration, especially concentrated to certain hotspots, can have other political backlashes - see the Trump era.
A financial threshold is a nice way to limit that influx to manageable numbers, while guaranteeing they can mostly take care of themselves and become productive taxpayers and without exposing them to employer exploitation. The actual amount is debatable of course, it could be 2x the national average salary, 1x, 3x... or it could be dynamically allocated to fulfill an intake quota.
Wow finally someone thinking similarly. Never understood why people think the US owes immigrants (especially skilled ones) anything. If you are truly bright and gifted of course you can make a living in any country! On several occasions I've had my future immigration path clouded and people have always asked me "gosh I bet it's frustrating" but I'm like "not really". I do like the US and would love to continue being here but hey it's your country your rules do whatever. Im sure I'll be just fine in another nation too.
Yea it’s not worth fretting about the whims of the American political class and neither the American populace. Some people have advantages by accident of birth, but so what.
Cheers to the immigrants who battle the crappy system here with national origin quotas and prioritizing chain migration over the American educated and trained foreigners like us.
I do have my green card but I’ve been contemplating not getting the citizenship because of the anti immigrant sentiment from all sides. Alas, the American passport allows travel more easily so I might just cave - but never vote.
I think there should be a monthly allocation of visas that can be issued, and companies are allowed to bid on the salary that they would pay the worker. Each month, the highest salaries get visas issued. If they don't bid enough, their candidate doesn't get in. If companies really need these specialists, they should pay them enough to secure a visa in a market-based system. I suspect this would create upward pressure on the salaries of these visa workers and prevent some of the abuse that we see today
So pretty much only companies in Bay Area or a couple similarly high $ hubs, and candidates wanting to go there specifically. That intuitively feels like promoting an unhealthy environment (not because of Bay Area in particular, but because of promoting concentration).
Yes, that is probably how it will play out. At least at first.
But I think the side-effect of this is that other industries & locales would not get as many workers as they currently do, which would put upward pressure on wages in those areas. Compare this to the current system, where wages for lower paying jobs and areas are kept lower than they would otherwise be by adding worker supply through this visa program.
>the only condition for getting a specialist visa should be to find an employer willing to pay a specialist salary
Countries in Europe do precisely this but take it slightly further. Take Ireland[0] and Sweden[1], for prime examples. For those of you who don't want to read the links: The company has to have a minimum salary (oft above the standard cost of living) for the employee to obtain (and retain) the permit.
(On an aside, in Sweden, they go a step further in that the contract must also be approved by the relevant union that company has agreements with.)
It is not really a specialist salary enforced in that law. I've been living in Sweden for 5 years now, as an immigrant, soon to be citizen.
The required salary quota, which is 15.000 swedish krona per month, is less than half of an average developer salary.
And that thing about union, is not as bureaucratic, as you make it sound. Company has to be part of a Union as a whole, to offer work-visa for immigrants. That's almost all there is to it. They dont really check each individual contract.
(Jag tänka att du inte förstod min svar men jag ska skriver i engelska, så alla kan att läsa.)
>It is not really a specialist salary enforced in that law.
To which law do you refer? The minimum stated on the original page that I referred? You would be correct that it's not a specialist salary; however, to suggest that it simply does not exist would be fool-hearty. Migrationsverket has documentation specific to that[0].
>The required salary quota, which is 15.000 swedish krona per month, is less than half of an average developer salary.
An average developer's salary, where? I can tell you that the average developer's salary in Östergötland, for example, is far less than in other places in Europe.
>They dont really check each individual contract.
A "check" is vastly different that an approval, yeah? You could've easily found this information[1] yourself, as it's freely available on Migrationsverket's site.
Needs to be adjusted for cost of living, salary changes over time by profession (Tech salaries are in a bubble rn. which makes 150k reasonable by bay area standards, but they may go significantly up / down in the future) which is complicated enough but there's edge cases like Universities / Non profits etc. that can't pay salaries to compete with the private sector but people work there anyway because of passion.
I disagree, if you can find cheap programmers in Des Moines, Iowa, then by all means expand there, spread the love within the country before going for import labour. As for bubbles, that's the point, there shouldn't be any if labour is available and willing to come in.
Most IT / h1 roles are not based out of the Bay Area [1]. Significant amounts of H1b population goes to doing cookie cutter consulting projects spread across the country and setting a 150k min on the wage means that you won't be able to hire H1s at all in other parts of the country. Obviously this creates a lot of demand for American programmers and personal experience suggests that this will cause a labor shortage.
That doesn’t seem too hard to solve. You just say that an h1-b job needs to be at the 85th percentile, salary-wise, in a basket of similar jobs by location/position.
That's what the regulations say right now - for each title, there's a prevailing wage level that DOL publishes and a H1 has to meet that wage level. It is however a single level across the country so it tends to be a bit on the lower side.
Actually it isn’t. “The prevailing wage rate is defined as the average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in the area of intended employment.“
https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pwscreens.cfm
I don't think that's necessarily the case. A lot of people that work at a university do so because they're an international grad student who has no other way to stay in the country. They're barely scraping by, hoping they can finish and that an advanced degree will land them a job.
The problem is that there's two very different things achieved by the H1B process:
a) Getting talented entry-level employees who graduate from US schools to stay in the US
b) Getting talented experienced employees to move to the US
The H1B is actually rather bad for b) due to the long processing time (6 months) during which a candidate cannot work in the US and high chance of not winning the lottery. Revamping the O1 visa makes more sense for that case. So that leaves a) for which salary requirements based around experienced employees make little sense.
> Revamping the O1 visa makes more sense for that case.
Canada has a pretty sane skilled worker visa program that gives you points for academic achievement, proficiency in English, French, age and other factors. I see no reason the US couldn't have that.
Having said that, factors that would increase the wish to move to the US would be things like universal healthcare, a sane schooling system (with less inequality between school districts, easy access to higher education), better lablr laws, and overall social security. Without that, I don't think it's that much attractive.
>Without that, I don't think it's that much attractive.
Given that salaries can be something like 5x what you get in Europe for the same experience level with lower taxes there is a big reason. Probably even more compared to places outside of Europe. If you're working at a large tech company making good money then healthcare doesn't matter (since you got solid medical insurance), school district doesn't matter (since you can afford to live in the good district), labor laws don't matter (in fact their lack is probably why you're making 5x the money) and social security doesn't matter (that's what saving the decent chunk of money you make is for).
These are all things that don't matter to me - I was always under some sort of health insurance since before the day I was born and never seriously contemplated needing social security systems. Still, living in a society where everyone can enjoy that makes for a better living experience.
Earning 5x what I would earn (which is not what I observe on my compensation level) does not compensate for knowing there are people who were driven out of their homes and now live in tent cities because I could pay more. In fact, I would not want to live in a society that encourages that and, most definitely, don't want to raise my kids to think that's normal, or desirable.
One big problem with restricting to salaries above 150k is that you’ve disqualified anyone who may be early in their career. Not many who are below a mid-level career role will get that kind of salary.
What does that affect? All undergraduate students coming to the U.S. who spend $$$ on a 4 year college degree here and then try to find a job. You’ve just wiped that demographic out because they won’t get 150k salary.
Why would they be inclined to come to the US and spend all that money on an education here? They won’t.
And if the best talent doesn’t come here to compete intellectually with Americans in a classroom then Americans lose.
H1Bs comprise a big chunk of people who come here, get an education here, prove their competence and make the American economy grow.
You won’t get them to come here with a high salary cap like 150k.
> You won’t get them to come here with a high salary cap like 150k.
That's not the purpose of the H1B visa. The purpose is to fill shortage areas with temporary workers; it's not some kind of college recruitment program.
>What does that affect? All undergraduate students coming to the U.S. who spend $$$ on a 4 year college degree here and then try to find a job.
That’s great... hire locals not foreigners just because they paid for a degree. I don’t care what they paid for. This is supposedly for specialized knowledge—-it shouldn’t be going to ANYONE entry level or undergrad...
Not really- the way H1-bs are sold the general public are that they are for “extremely hard to find” labor and requirements state you must look for us persons to fill your position before getting an H1-b visa to do so.
$150k is at the 95th percentile of individual income for the entire US. I’d argue that if a company in any industry/profession isn’t upping their advertised pay to higher than what 1/20 us persons currently make, they aren’t trying sufficiently hard to attract a US person.
I generally favor looser immigration in the US, but H1-Bs as written unduly benefit the sponsoring company at the expense of labor generally.
Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job. If you leave your job, voluntarily or not, you have 90 days (up from the current grace period of 60 and strict rule of 0) to find another job. If you've been here for a few years you can apply for citizenship, independent of your employer.
The primary objection to this is crowding out the labor market, to which I'd say: protectionism doesn't work. If there are people in another country willing to do the same job for cheaper, the invisible hand will figure out how to move the jobs there, perhaps through competition. Fighting the free market isn't going to work: figure out how to work within it. (For instance, offer a UBI for citizens only.)
Again, protectionism. If a billion people in India and a billion people in China are competing in global markets, my country's culture isn't going to survive anyway. How is Ottoman culture doing these days? Honestly, how is the British culture of even a century ago doing these days? How long did the Japanese culture so carefully preserved survive Matthew Perry's arrival?
(Also as it happens I'm an American-born child of Indian immigrants, so I am actually a carrier of American culture and not Indian, so I have reason to question the implicit assumption that immigrants will destroy culture.)
You're a carrier of American culture (at least in some superficial way) because you grew up surrounded by Americans. If 500 million people moved here, they would not grow up surrounded by Americans.
Well, okay, but there are multiple times 500 million people living in other countries growing up extremely not surrounding by Americans, and they are preparing to quash America's culture entirely in 100-200 years through economic dominance. Do you prefer that outcome?
If you dig in, a lot of cultures have roots going back centuries. People might be wearing tshirts and jeans everywhere you go, but the way they handle family matters and daily routines is very different.
You're a superficial carrier of American culture. Sure you speak English and consume American media, but you have socialist values which are not American. This is the land of the free, not the land of government-enforced equity and insanely high marginal taxes for the rich. Let me guess, you're anti 2nd amendment? If there were more people who thought like you in America, the country would indeed collapse in on itself.
No, I'm pro-Second Amendment. Probably more strongly than you: I believe the original purpose of the Second Amendment was to maintain a continuous threat of violent revolution against the government, not to let people hunt deer or whatever, and as a result I believe that the people have a right to own weapons sufficient to win a war against their own government—either by letting the people have a nuclear deterrent, or by disarming the government to the point of having no weapons the people can't have.
Not sure what that has to do with anything, though.
Bummer, isn't it? I left the US because of its work culture (always working all the time, or trying to look like it) and now it's infecting Europe, or parts of it at least.
But that was without throngs of Americans moving here
To be fair, American culture is the destruction of other cultures if you take a critical eye at American history. It's quite funny to see people so protective of it.
Well, I'm not talking about American culture, I'm talking about any country taking in immigrants, and general reasons to object to it. It certainly isn't economics-only. (America has already undergone this process in many waves, e.g. when non-Quakers took over Pennsylvania, or when Californians move to Idaho.)
This is a thread and topic about America and immigration in America. To suddenly shift and say that you're somehow not talking about American culture seems rather incredibly disingenuous.
And that said, a culture does not deserve to live by virtue of existing. It's protectionism and xenophobia, founded purely because of fears that immigrants will somehow replace your culture with something you view as being lesser. This is a two-way street because I have seen people use it as an argument against letting in people that would destroy woman's rights or what now here in America...and I've heard it used in fears of immigrants fighting for minority rights or woman's rights in countries like Japan.
It's an argument born out of irrational fears and one I find not compelling at all.
Well I certainly object to the destruction of America’s culture too, but the construction of geofft’s argument is that categorically he could only think of one possible objection to immigration.
And it’s not an irrational fear. It’s a very obvious fact that America with wide open borders would be a worse place for existing Americans to live, just look at the average country and ask if Americans would like to live there, and why not.
I don't believe it's a very obvious fact at all, considering America has had very lax borders in the past and I would not describe it as being a far worse place to live. If you're going to describe something as an obvious fact, how about you back up your obvious fact with citations or data? Otherwise then yes, it would be an irrational fear.
And I would imagine the converse is true: If you asked anyone in another first world country if they would like to live in America, I would bet you'd see the results end up rather negative. Especially after the past few years of nonsense we've exhibited to the rest of the world.
Simply by increasing population, traffic, and pollution it would make the country worse off.
You don’t need studies and citations to figure this out, you need to hold in your head a model of reality. You need above average people, who give more than they take, in order to drive the quality of the country upward.
Let's take your argument to the extreme then: If increasing population -> more traffic -> more pollution, then the obvious thing should be to reduce the birth rate in America which is a far more pressing issue than immigration if we're talking pure population growth.
Not only that but by your own argument since we need 'above average people' who 'give more than they take', the end result should be forcing people out of rural areas (the dense metropolitan areas tend to be more economically powerful) while also ensuring they can't procreate. What I'm getting at is essentially using population growth as an excuse for restricting immigration is itself an excuse, because there are many ways in which the issues of population growth are stymied and more effective at doing so.
And yes, I do want studies and citations. You're essentially begging the question in lieu of actually providing evidence for your own claims. I want you to give me explicit citations for your claims and your 'model of reality', because you're assuming that your model of reality is correct without any factual basis.
Then you're admitting that you're not here to actually debate in any sort of rational manner. If you make a claim and can't substantiate your claim when called out on it, then your claim has no rational or factual basis. At which point your entire argument falls apart, especially when you call something a 'very obvious fact'.
It's obvious now that you're not actually willing to properly argue on your side of the debate. The argumentative burden of proof is on the person making the claims, not the one disputing it. The fact that you're being so flippant about your claims does not do your argument justice.
Not only that, but now you're attempting to twist the argument into something that it wasn't in the first place. Even if we did decrease immigration, that wouldn't fix the issues of traffic and pollution in America because those are born out of poor city planning combined with lax industrial standards. Unless you want to somehow argue that immigrants contribute more to pollution than corporations doing things like say, flaring in West Texas.
If you can't support your claims with evidence when called out on it, then you shouldn't make such bold claims period.
> Simply by increasing population, traffic, and pollution it would make the country worse off.
This doesn't at all seem obviously true to me. It rather seems obviously false: I find big cities more pleasant to live in than small towns, even though they have more of all three. More population seems like an inherent virtue to me. More traffic gets turned into more efficient traffic via public transit, or building denser and more walkable cities, or whatever, which I find more enjoyable than cars. More pollution is a side effect but a solvable one.
If your argument is the model of reality in your head, then you need to admit that the model of reality in lots of other peoples' heads is very different, and there's no reason that your model should win (unless you're claiming that your political opinions matter more than others'?).
I think waiting in traffic and being forced to use alternate means of transportation is a net negative. There are already Big Cities in this country for anybody that enjoys the city-slicker lifestyle, and increasing total population won't make the world better for those people.
Okay, that's correct. And I disagree(d) with what the primary objection is and would be. Maybe not your objection, but most people's, in every country.
I haven’t actually told you my immigration policy, and it’s clear you’ve incorrectly decided you know what it is.
My immigration policy would be to let in the set and sequence of immigrants that makes this country as nice a place to live as possible. Approximated with a greedy algorithm, that means picking the individual that makes this country the most nicer place, letting them in, and then repeating the calculation until we’ve run out of people that make the country a better place for us to live. Culturally, that means cultural optimization, not preservation.
I’d happily stop 99.999% of noncitizens from moving here and working here while allowing Californians to move to Idaho. (I’d also remove the financial penalties California places on people that moved from Idaho to California.)
That's not a coherent policy - that basically describes everyone's policy. That describes the current US policy. That describes my policy. It's just that you've shifted it to a discussion of what makes the country a "nice place to live," which obviously lots of people disagree on. In particular you haven't answered what to do when there are conflicting arguments over whether bringing in a particular person would make the country a nicer place to live or not, or for whom it's nicer.
Specifically, I think that this country would be a nicer place to live for myself if I can hire whomever I want for my team regardless of citizenship and without big government second-guessing my decision, and if they can feel confident about their long-term future once they move, therefore making them a) more likely to accept and b) happier and more productive when they're here.
I also think that the number of people who have moved into the SFBA (myself included, I'll be honest—feeling uncomfortable with that is part of why I left) have made it a worse place to live. I think there are ways to solve that other than internal migration restrictions, and I have other philosophical objections to internal migration restrictions, but I do see their appeal. You, for some reason that I don't totally follow, either don't think that SFBA has become a worse place to live or that this isn't an important criterion in deciding internal policy; I'm curious which it is (or whether I've misinterpreted).
That doesn't describe current US policy, which prevents people from coming that would make the country a nicer place to live, and lets many people in that wouldn't. By design, it even brings in random people.
I'm not describing a policy, I'm describing an ideal. (A simple concrete policy proposal is below.)
You said:
> Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job.
So that doesn't describe your policy proposal either. Plenty of people can hold down a job and make the country a worse place for others, or a subset of others, simply by competing for resources, driving down wages in the sector they work in, by being a criminal, or by voting immorally.
I want to let everybody you'd let in, except for people whose immigration would make the country a worse place. Define that ideal as you will.
As a pretty good approximation, we could limit immigrants to those that could qualify for military service.
> myself included, I'll be honest—feeling uncomfortable with that is part of why I left
That's also a reason why I left. My policy as a national policy, is to make the country a nice place for all of its citizens (except criminals and slovenly degenerates) to live in. So that includes people that might like to move from Arizona to California. They're making their own lives better, which counts for something.
> I think that this country would be a nicer place to live for myself if I can hire whomever I want for my team regardless of citizenship and without big government second-guessing my decision
If you're like most employers, that means you're happier if you get to drive down working class wages, while you get to reap greater profits from your pre-established position in the market. That's good for you, but not good for the average American.
To make my goals a little more nuanced: Economically, I want only the smartest immigrants, which do advanced stuff like start companies, work for them, or work in healthcare, which drive up the demand for working-class labor, letting average Americans negotiate a better piece of the pie, while driving down the cost of their healthcare. Culturally, I want supply limited so that immigrants assimilate, and I want all the immigrants and their children to be crime-free pro-life Republican voters. :-)
This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever seen. Why bother being a country at that point? You’d have 2 billion people moving here tomorrow and living in the streets. Bad idea.
Not sure what you mean by "being a country," but, no, you wouldn't. If they didn't have jobs they couldn't stay. If they did they'd find housing - perhaps some would even build housing for the rest. To imagine that two billion people could move to the US, find employment, and all be homeless is to imagine an interesting form of market failure that I don't yet understand.
So they would definitely get back on planes rather than just going rogue and trying to stay in the country and working illegally? And existing citizens would not lose out through massive oversupply problems in the labour market?
I can't say I agree at all this would be of benefit to any nation willing to do this.
Like I've been saying in this thread, existing citizens are going to lose out anyway. The labor market is global. There is no way to have the government interfere in the free market to preserve jobs for certain people of certain backgrounds, and not have it backfire. It is already backfiring, in many industries.
So if you care about not making existing citizens lose out—which I do!—find a solution other than protectionism. Find a solution that works. A UBI, so that not finding a job doesn't ruin your life, is a good one. Fund it with income taxes on immigrants who come here and do well. (And on a UBI you can spend as much time as you want training in an advanced skill or learning a complicated profession so that you can compete in another segment of the labor market.)
No country is going to do this because no country wants to admit to their citizens that the "country" and "citizen" abstractions are powerless against the reality of the global free market. It's too politically incorrect; people would rather believe that protectionism works. But it's the right thing to do.
Not for all countries! Definitely an imbalance there, and US is already pretty generous with immigration numbers. We've also seen that cheap labor does not reduce cost of living in developed countries, so importing foreign cheap labor is a loss for not-rich folks.
That's not what I mean—what I mean is that labor is in the service of products and services, and the market for products and services is overwhelmingly global. You can get software from anywhere. You can get PCBs from anywhere. You can get oil from anywhere. You can get clothes from anywhere. You can get cars from anywhere. You can get produce from almost anywhere. (Prepared food is hard, as are a few other things like haircuts, but my argument is those are the minority.) Soon you'll be able to get truck drivers from anywhere with remote oversight of self-driving cars.
So if you're in any of these fields, you're competing with people around the world. You're not competing directly—the playing field is still quite bumpy—but it's becoming more level.
So if the actual goal you have is "I want citizens to not starve and be homeless," which is certainly my goal, protectionism is a temporary patch holding back a storm. One day it will stop working. Better to prepare for that day instead of denying it.
(Unless you plan on dying before then and don't care about your kids' future, but I assume all the people in this thread saying "culture" care about that....)
OK, I am fine with amending my proposal to "any job that pays at least a living wage in the area where you live."
A bonus of that amendment is that if you want to bring family, you must all in sum earn a living wage for your family, but you can split that however you want, so e.g. you can legally bring children who aren't going to work or legally take more than 90 days to raise a child.
(Also it might embarrass the government into raising the minimum wage for citizens to a living wage.)
This is such a one-sided point of view. Imagine that you're immigrating to a country, and after a few years you get fire, or you want to take a sabbatical, or you want to change industry for a lower paying job.
Now under your rules you cannot do that. What do you do? You've created your life in the US, you have friends, perhaps a girlfriend, maybe even a house. Now you have to leave?
(I say this as someone who lived in the US on a visa for years)
That's part of the deal. Any immigrant arriving on a visa knows what they've signed up for, and it doesn't involve taking a sabbatical. It also really should not involve buying a house, if you're being sensible. Being fired 100% sucks, but you can transfer an H1B to a new employer. H1B is at least a dual intent visa, so after some years you can apply for a green card, get one, then take all the sabbaticals you want.
(Also, if your life is settled enough to have friends and a girlfriend you don't want to leave, US immigration does offer an answer: marry her!)
The second you are fired, you no longer have an H1B to transfer (usually USCIS allows transferring even if there is a short lapse, but this isn't guaranteed, and during that lapse, the visa holder is actually the US illegally)
This isn’t correct. Once you have an H1B it’s yours for 3 years (plus a 3 year extension). If you lose your job you can use the remaining eligibility for another job, though you may have to do your job search from outside the country.
The real problem is the path from L1/OPT -> H1B -> green card is purely based on how many years you have worked in the US and performed as some kind of lottery. The transition may take at least 8 years, almost identical for highly-educated Top-N employees & questionably-legal "labors" from IT Consulting Companies (there are lots of fake identities/backgrounds in these companies' H1-B applications).
As an immigrant to another country, that's just how it is. It's a risk I accepted the day I decided to pack up and get on the plane.
I'll definitely be upset if things don't work out in my current home, but I'm prepared for the possibility. If anyone out there expects their new country to bend over backwards for them and try to keep them from returning to their old country, they're either not fit for the difficulties they'll inevitably face or they're incredibly wealthy.
If a company can't find workers, it should pay more up until a level that puts the competitiveness of the economy under question. Below that level, it's the citizen's right to a fair salary without labour dumping from a poor country. Above that level, it's everybody's right to fairly priced services without professional rents.