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Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by paxys on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:27AM (#16974290)
There are tons of studies that show that high-skilled immigrants create more jobs than they occupy and overall boost a region's economy, but all of those are conveniently ignored whenever someone wants to make a point. Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without the H-1B visa.

Yes, there are companies that abuse visas and pay low wages etc. Why not focus on improving enforcement rather than rant about immigrants?

Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by checker659 on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:39AM (#16974357)
Also last quarter, 65% of Apple's revenue was from outside America. And, yet, looking at their total H1B numbers, only about 9% of their employees are H1B holders.

If American companies earn money from the rest of the world, is it really that unfair that they hire a small percent of international people to work at their company?

1) https://www.immihelp.com/employer/APPLE+INC/205136/applicati...

2) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/02/apple-reports-first-q...

Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by diebeforei485 on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:10AM (#16974508)
The 9% only includes H-1B folks who are directly employed by Apple.

Apple also has hundreds of contractors employed by Tata, Infosys etc on H-1B's, in Apple's internal IT department ("IS&T"). These people are paid less than the 9% of people above, and would not count towards Apple's own H-1B numbers.

Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by checker659 on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:14AM (#16974534)
Like how many?
Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by abc_lisper on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @03:33AM (#16974880)
3000 if I remember right
Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by mc32 on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:37AM (#16974345)
This is true. High skilled are desired and add to the economy; unfortunately, in an attempt to ride on the coattails of legal immigrants, supporters of illegal immigration purposefully conflate the two and dilute the former's repute, unfortunately.
Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by TangoTrotFox on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:23AM (#16974565)
One major issue you're going to have with studies like this is the same as with studies on any social or economic issue - there's room for 'massaging' the data to fit any narrative. It's the same thing with things like minimum wage. In Seattle after the city increased the minimum wage they commissioned an independent study from the University of Washington study to try to assess the overall results. The study indicated that they'd lost ~5,000 jobs and the changes were hurting lower income workers resulting in fewer hours and an overall loss of $125 per month per worker. So they canned that study which was supposed to run for 5 years, and commissioned an individual well known for evangelizing wage increases to carry out a new study. There's a writeup on WaPo here [1] about that. The Michael Reich individual they quote, in that article is the person who was commissioned to carry out his study. And he managed to report that wages are up and there was no increase in unemployment.

H1-B (and immigration in general) is not only a fairly hot political topic, but also one where there an immense number of massive corporations that benefit substantially from the system. There have been an large number of reports, including government reports during the former administration, indicating a substantial depression of wages due to H1-B visas. [2] I hate to cite Wiki, but really - there are a ton of reports there and me giving dozens of links in this post is less reasonable than just linking Wiki there.

So on this issue, your phrasing is already hinting at some angling and I'm not sure you even realize it! In the US there are a huge number of STEM educated individuals who are not working in STEM. Certainly many of them are doing so voluntarily, but it's equally certain many of them are doing so involuntary. Filling these jobs domestically would of course create at least as many jobs, but on top of those created jobs it would also allow citizens to also occupy the 'creating' jobs, all without the wage depression of H1-Bs.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-s...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Wage_depression

Re:H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pitta... by bduerst on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:19AM (#16974547)
40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families. A large number of jobs and companies wouldn't exist today without work immigration.