So, I wouldn’t take the “US Tech Workers” as being representative of tech workers or tech workers unions without further research.
That is funny, I would have never thought that wealthy lobbyists would ever be against easy and mass immigration policies to dilute the labor supply. Much better for corporations to hire people who are willing to work either more cheaply or out of a sense of desperation because job demand is lower than the available/willing worker pool.
Do you have a sound logical reason for why wealthy lobbyists would go out of their way to spend money on opposing immigration?
The more power employers hold over their skilled migrant workers, the more money they can make (from not only their skilled migrant workers but also from the rest of their workforce, who are now competing with the latter.)
Xenophobia.
It is true that some other unions like the AFL-CIO have historically opposed immigration on these grounds, though.
As long as the "risk of having to leave the country" for speaking up about anything is greater than 0% the obviously-wisest thing to do is keep your mouth shut.
The labor market is something that emerges from the equilibrium of several opposing forces. We as a society decide which causal factors are 'reasonable' and which are 'unfair'.
As a simple example, you could argue that 'the wages for married individuals with kids are depressed due to the massive labor pool of single people in their 20s who can be employed for far less as long as you offer them free food and some cutesy perks like happy hours and pool tables'. Ceteris paribus, and as a pure fact of economics, this is true. Of course if you have a bigger supply of labor and hold other things constant, wages will depress, but as a matter of practical policy, we don't consider it 'unfair' that there exist single people who are competing for jobs that married people are also competing for.
But many people do consider it unfair that there exist Indians who are competing for jobs that Americans are also competing for.
This is a matter of policy and your personal sense of what is fair and what is not, not economics.
Single people tend to be younger and less experienced. They tend to be represented in entry level positions, and get paid as such.
That appears to be the reality we've been living in for a couple/few decades. Airplanes, container ships, and the internet have made the world a much smaller place.
So, immigration is generally speaking something that corporations are incentivized to want because they get more manipulatible and desperate employees?
Can we just demand that companies that hire immigrants cannot fire or lay off those immigrant employees for some minimum number of years unless they declare bankruptcy? It might decrease the number of immigrant employees corporations would hire but it would simultaneoulsy ensure a huge amount of safety for the immigrants that do get hired (and for their families).
My quick bandaid bill would: 1) Any H1b holder can switch to any job as long as it comes with at least ten percent pay increase. 2) Any H1b holder gets an automatic green card after x years or paid y in federal+state taxes, whichever comes first. 3) Hiring company pays 80pct salary for the extent of the Visa, come hell or high water. You _really_ need that visa? Fine, prove it by taking on more of the risk instead of foisting it on the poor visa holder who came to help you.
Unfortunately tech unions are typically the ones railing against H1Bs entirely. The mere presence of H1B workers fundamentally increases worker supply (by definition). In fact it was the "US Tech Workers Union" that championed recent actions against H1B workers. And let's be honest they were not fighting to make our lives easier (by making H1B less draconion), only theirs, by reducing the supply of workers.
And while some of them will sugar coat this by pretending to care about H1B worker's conditions and all that, the truth is that as long as the US continues to be a more desirable place to live compared to many other countries, and as long as you need a job to live here, foreign workers will always tilt the equilibrium a bit towards lower wages compared to a domestic worker supply. The true solution would be if you made the path to permanent residence easy for skilled individuals so that they don't need to take these employment decision under duress.