If they were super-stars they would be able to cover it from the Amazon signup bonus (and become indentured to Amazon - your signup bonus is due back if you bail out early). However superstars rarely end up in those jobs. We're looking at people with kinda average engineering skills, poor understanding of the American culture, no connections, and grim determination to grind their way out of their old life.
Liberating the indentured h1b workers is not just flipping a legal switch, it's a cultural integration project.
We've had other forms of indentured servitude that were summarily abolished, sometimes with difficulty. Certainly the government should not be incentivizing this, which seems to have been the case for a while.
Granted, if family in the mother country are effectively held hostage to the debt payments, that's a different story, but there can be enough protection for US law to protect h1b workers against exploitation by law-abiding employers and creditors.
Are you saying that Amazon's H1B workers are hired specifically for to their "kinda average" skills, lack of connections, etc.? Having been involved with hiring at Amazon, using these criteria would have to be part of a secret hiring system that parallels the one I was trained on which focused on raising the talent bar and avoiding bias.
Superstars can pay back money owed back home from an Amazon bonus... not sure if OP meant “from the start” or “if they bailed from indentured servitude job”.
I don't think these are the kind of people getting an H1B visa, though. It's usually the super-talented people they hire on H1B.
Not anything original, not anything H1B worthy, just building front-end UIs and basic BE stuff. There's of course H1Bs working on the more complex things too like machine learning (complex to me) but I'm just astounded by the number of "brilliant" H1Bs that I have to stand shoulder to shoulder with when doing my average (at best?) coding.
As some one who has had the same experience. One of the things I note is many of these people undervalue themselves and their training doing that kind of work for ad companies. They could be writing code for the robotic arm that could mine asteroids, but they write code to show ads to people.
Well people have their own priorities. But the lesson I learn is just because they work with us it doesn't mean the definition of smart gets blurred. It just means they downgraded their aim and are likely hitting it more easily compared to us.
The question one must ask is. How can we learn from these smart people?
The 1619 project made waves domestically for questioning and highlighting the speciousness of such arguments. It is because these companies are able to pay labor below market rate (by restricting mobility and creating indentured servitude conditions) that they are able to add "tremendous value" to enterprises in the first place. But of course, I question even that.
To those who have ever been in the unfortunate position of the counterparty in either inheriting a codebase or making the argument against them internally, the code produced by these kinds of body shops is frequently ROI negative -- they're the "high interest credit card" of engineering orgs. That is baked into the profit structure internally of these consulting companies. Your loss is their gain. They will promise whatever they need to secure the contract upfront, and fail to deliver results. They are incentivized to do so, because they are incentivized to think short term rather than long term as owners.
You pay less upfront, but the hidden risks and maintenance burdens continue to stack over time. And so from a discounted cash flow analysis, there is a strong argument to be made that they contribute negative enterprise value and serve only to extract cashflow through a sleight of hand. Of course, on a quarter to quarter basis, they provide an easy way for an enterprising management consultant (or corporate financier) to cut costs and increase apparent profit to expenses. But if it was so easy to achieve technical outcomes this way, why wouldn't everyone do it?
> they are operating in an environment where FAANGs spend a lot of money lobbying for favorable regulations
There are certainly myriad issues with how FAANGs operate. One only needs to look at their previous settlements with the DoJ for wage collusion to see they are no angels; far from it, they often behave in an anticompetitive manner reminiscent of Gilded Age robber barons. With that said, they are still able to create some kind of a long term incentive alignment by generally setting the market price for top talent quite high -- we need look no further than levels.fyi to see evidence of that. And the proof is in the pudding -- FAANGs have continued to capture a larger and larger percentage of the SP500, managing to create growth in market cap at scales that are scarcely possible in other sectors. Their P/E ratios reflect this, and it derives from their ability to turn technology into leverage over the market and a sustainable competitive advantage with network effects. That is a far cry from consulting body shops where technology is viewed as a cost center to be minimized rather than profit center to be fully exploited.
The whole "their code is horrible" is shifting of a goalpost. If that's true (and it might well be), then stop hiring them. If businesses see the point you are making, they'll stop hiring them.
On FAANGs adding value - I 100% agree. FAANGs add way more value than any Indian consulting company and that's reflected in the market cap of these companies. But surely,one can appreciate that FAANGs add value and that they lobby to have laws created in their favor. My limited point is that I don't think these American companies (which benefit from the new H1B rule) have any higher moral ground to claim with respect to their stance on immigration laws.
Also, A higher wage is an odd way to restrict hiring. A FAANG company can pay much higher wages for low-end coding job than Indian consulting companies ever can. So, if a FAANG hires the same Indian kid, at 120K/yr and have him/her do the same shitty job that the consulting company does, there's nothing here that stops it (please correct me if I am mistaken)
Yes. Now I will pre-emptively call out that there is a wide step function gap between slavery and indentured servitude, and indentured servitude and H1B workers. H1B workers can always leave and return back to their country of origin. In this sense they are neither slaves nor bonded serfs. You are well within your rights to question the comparison.
But the question is if we have a binary classification, should it be between slave and non-slave, or should be between free and not free? The historical context of this country post abolitionism implies through the civil rights movement that it should be the latter. And that is why I made the comparison, clumsily hyperbolic or not. When some residents are not free, there is a chilling effect for citizens nationwide. Wages are depressed for all workers. The space is made for a culture of "I'd rather hire an H1B than not because they'll be more loyal because they have no choice." This culture corrodes national freedom.
> So, if a FAANG hires the same Indian kid, at 120K/yr and have him/her do the same shitty job that the consulting company does, there's nothing here that stops it (please correct me if I am mistaken)
The difference is the incentive structure. The consulting company is based on essentially ripping off the customer by selling a high interest loan to them. It runs on services with razor thin margins which are predominantly returned to the owners rather than reinvested in the firm. Fundamentally, the firm owns no proprietary IP, and is not structured to accrete nor reward the long-term strategic thinking that FAANGs do.
The FAANG may pay that same kid 120k a year but that share grant could easily result in 300k a year with appreciation over the long-term. Because they are giving the employee long term incentivization, they are going to want to see long term results or else that employee will get PIPped. Beyond that, if that employee can hack it at 1 FAANG and is underpaid, they'll just go to another one which pays them market. But the gulf between WITCH body shops and FAANG is wide because the employee gains the skills which give them mobility at the latter and not the former.
All of which is a long way to say that body shops dilute the labor pool by exploiting an externality and creating a market for lemons by flooding it with low quality product. I think they create a situation where no one wins but the proprietors of the body shop, at the expense of the rest of society.
Not really. It's just the history of the equal rights amendment.
> Let's for a second assume that's all accurate, are you in favour of government solving this problem by an executive decision? Note that the same State refuses to regulate FAANGs which have stood by as their platforms were exploited to influence elections. The double standards are staggering
I am neither in favor of it nor against it. I think it is a PR tactic that will not hold up to the scrutiny of the court. True, lasting change will obviously have to originate from the legislature -- I'd love to see something comprehensive come from there. But these PR "tactics", while not truly standalone policies, nonetheless spark, influence and shape public discourse. In this case, I think that vigorous discourse (and sunlight on the corruption of H1B abuse) is a good thing for everyone.
TCS has made an announcement that they will not have any layoffs during COVID https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/tcs-not-to-lay-off-e...
So, even when thousands of employees of these companies could not travel to the US, their profits soared. Anecdotally, it appears (need more data) that if these companies cannot send someone on an H1B, the job does not always go to an American national, it probably goes back offshore to Bangalore (good for us, we get those tax Rupees).
https://www.immihelp.com/employer/h1b-top-sponsor-2020/overa...
Some blogs for the curious:
https://swizec.com/blog/how-i-got-a-visa-normally-reserved-f...
Even better would be a salary auction where US companies get to auction (higher and higher salaries for the best overseas workers.) The highest auction rates would fill the quota first. Overseas workers win bigtime. Companies seeking talent also win. Local workers win as well. Companies trying to underpay lose.
If it was a straight up "who pays the most", then the software industry (mostly FAANG) would end up with 80k H1Bs per year, and other industries would still not be able to hire for jobs they can't fill locally.
I think there is a shortage, so I'm proposing increasing salaries. Accounting firms are not competing with tech firms necessarily, they are competing with the market for accountants (lots of accountants go into other fields because they cant find work at a suitable rate.) Their business model should not be to underpay workers, it should be to pay workers high enough to attract them and charge customers appropriately.
Yes, I'm not disagreeing with this. However if you put ALL H1Bs in a single pool, and they go to the highest bidder across all industries, then yes, accounting firms are competing with tech firms.
I think GP's point is that that's the way it's supposed to be. The shortage of accountants could be due to some combination of:
1. There are not enough people with the physical / mental / psychological capability to be accountants in the US
2. People with the physical / mental / psychological capability to be accountants are choosing other jobs; perhaps because they pay better, or are more fun, or have better work/life balance, or whatever.
#1 is a reason to steal^W import capable people from other countries; but I doubt very much that's the source of accounting's problems. It's almost certainly #2. In which case, if accounting firms want more accountants, they should make the job more attractive: pay more, have better hours, etc.
Your company has to declare what industry segment they're in when submitting annual returns anyway (here), not sure if it's the same case in the US.
I think there would also be debate around how the quota is split between categories. I highly suspect that are much few Foreign Law advisors or Psychologists attempting to get H1Bs than there are "IT/Computer Professionals" (and many less positions available for them); giving each category an equal split wouldn't be fair either.
I'm not saying there isn't a way, but it would have issues too.
The sacrifice to the "right now" bit is immense, it destroys incentive to learn pretty much anything.
If I just keep offering to pay more, then yes, I will eventually be able to hire a nurse that was previously employed somewhere else, but now _that_ person needs to hire a nurse. No matter how many times you go around this circle, there are not enough nurses for everyone to hire.
That is a shortage. A shortage doesn't typically come with the asterisk of "but if I wait long enough then maybe there won't be".
It's not a binary "oh no not enough people" type of deal. It's a sliding scale and the closer you get to each side, the higher the incentives are to revert to some sort of equilibrium.
It really is quite one-sided (and potentially suspicious) to just try figure out "how can we get more of these people from other countries" instead of looking at all the other locally-available solutions. The same "circle" you speak of will happen regardless, even with plenty of immigration, with the double-whammy being that it'll affect the poorer countries that can't afford to keep those skilled immigrants.
The Market works. Pay fair wages and your personnel problems go away.
Or stay more pedestrian. Grocery baggers in the US basically went away for a while. I assuume they came back based in part on what grocery stores had to pay for them to work.
Suppose I want a new BMW and I want to pay no more than $300 for it. This doesn't mean that we should force BMW workers to work for free -- it means that my expectations are not rational.
Similiar, if I want a 10km Uber ride for $1, which costs less than even gas, the desire is irrational. Why should workers have to work for free to satisfy this consumer's irrational desire?
Same thing for grocery baggers "disappearing" -- of course they disappeared, there was a pandemic. They werent being paid for the risks of bagging groceries.
I'm talking about in the 80s or so when a lot of things started switching to more self-service. My local supermarkets have baggers today and you're literally not allowed to bag yourself.
I don't see there being anything irrational about not wanting to pay the price for certain services. And I don't expect either individuals or companies to sell me things on terms that aren't attractive to them. But that doesn't mean I don't want those things even if I accept that I can't have them on terms acceptable to both myself and the person providing them.
From my comment. Nurses require training. I did not assume a finite number of nurses. If I am sick and need a nurse, I need one _right now_. There not being enough of them is a shortage. It may not be a shortage in the future, but right now, it is.
Demand for nurses doesn't change abruptly and before importing people became a fad it was largely followed by supply.
Or are you suggesting that you would wait around and be homeless for 4 years until someone local built up enough training and experience in order to build your house? If you're going to suggest that you would wait and "live somewhere else", I would point out that people who are trying to hire, for example, nurses, often don't have that luxury. If they wait 4 years, they'll be dead.
No one is suggesting that high skill work status are used for people with no training or experience; they explicitly require training and/or experience in order to qualify. If think you're proving my point; if you need to hire someone right now, and there is no one available locally to do it right now, then there is a shortage, and you need to look outside of your local market.
The point is that if someone you need to hire is not available, you're going to try to find them elsewhere. You're not going to wait 4 (or whatever number of) years for someone to go to school, train, gain experience, and be available for you to hire.
And when you reach 80k (or whatever the number was), you'll also be able to get H1B nurses.
There are some states that have a compact and getting a multi-state license for those compact states will let you switch practice in multiple states - https://www.ncsbn.org/nurse-licensure-compact.htm
However, Illinois isn't part of that compact so its a new exam for anyone licensed elsewhere.
Aside from all of this... (as related to H1Bs) - nursing isn't a specialized occupation and doesn't qualify for the H1B. A specialist nurse, however, may. https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa/h-1b-nurses/ ... and that is a different license (in addition to) the RN.
Possible solutions are:
-Require the hirer to contribute to scholarship funding in the area of work
- Limit H1B to 75th percentile in salary terms.
Do you mean, cap the amount of money a company is allowed to pay someone on an H1B? The entire change of rules here is because companies were not paying market rate. Requiring them to not pay market rate defeats the purpose here entirely.
If you mean require that companies pay _at least_ the 75th percentile, then yes, I believe that is what the action that this entire thread is about is going.
I would also disagree that H1B destroys the feedback loop of jobs being needed. I don't believe the number of H1Bs issued is any where near large enough to disrupt an entire industry.
I can't find anything specific about the new requirements.
1. It is unfair to the workers
2. The H1B Programme is for top talent, for talent you cannot find locally. If anything you should overpay for such valuable talent.
3. High H1B salaries also come back to the country in the form of taxes just like for all workers, which should improve schools.
Schooling is a shared problem for communities and our country, and should be paid for with taxes -- why would you put the burden of that on immigrant workers?
Finally, if despite taxes, we cannot fix our school system, perhaps instead of blaming/punishing immigrants we should be looking at our municipal and state governments.
Employers pay as little as they can. If it's possible to hire someone for minimum wage, you hire for minimum wage.
If it's possible to import and indenture a guy for whom a crowded shared house with an actual bathroom looks like a palace, you'll do that. If you don't, your competitor will.
>why would you put the burden of that on immigrant workers
You don't put it on immigrant workers, you put it on industries whose demand exceeds supply.
Also remember that immigrant workers don't come out of nowhere. You imported 100 nurses, India and Pakistan have 100 nurses less. Vacuuming up the brightest people from everywhere doesn't help global development.
College level school funding (state/federal) has basically dried up in the past few decades with budget cuts. The idea is affordable public college education is not realistic for most people. I believe this is what the commenter is talking about needing more funding.
That’s probably not true exclusively anywhere in America, and it's not true predominantly in a number of parts of America.
For instance, in California less than 1/4 comes of K-12 funding comes from local property taxes, and the absolute majority comes from State funds which are derived primarily from state income taxes.
...
> Property based funding of schools is not likely to be a very effective target for school reform since our current system does not actually have large differences in the funding of poor students. I think that it is more likely that the dysfunction in the schools is best explained by a lack of continuity and efficiency within the schools that serve poor students. The property tax debate is mostly just an easy but misguided target for explaining the achievement gap. On top of the pure fact that property based taxes have actually still allowed for the progressive funding of schools, we already have examples of states that fund students without a total reliance on local property taxes. Take Michigan. Michigan has a centralized funding source for their students. The state takes an overall tax and then breaks it up evenly across students within the state (there are extra complexities to this that are addressed in this article). Even with these changes in school funding, it does not appear that the reformed funding strategy had any impact on student outcomes. In general, funding is not a good proxy for educational quality.
https://medium.com/@coreykeyser/why-conventional-wisdom-on-e...
A hybrid monster that takes the worst of both a private market (heavily benefiting the richest incumbents) and government regulations (broad and non targeted rules).
I'm just proposing we auction to increasingly higher salaries so all those people get nice high wages. The H1b system is to get the best and brightest for talent we cannot find locally, so paying these immigrants handsomely seems like the right thing to do. Its also good business, because high end R&D facilities should not be crossing their fingers for luck in hiring, they should be able to purchase talent by bidding for it.
I'm not sure how this benefits the richest incumbents -- the pool of workers continues to be the same. It benefits companies who desperately need the most talented workers by making them pay fairly for that top talent.
Frankly, if some company thinks they need the best-of-the-best and cant pay fairly for it, do they really need the best of the best?
Then the employer would go back to the H1B well, underpay another worker for 6 months until the worker bailed, go back to the well, lather, rinse, repeat.
That is 6 months, plus a couple thousand dollars minimum, to try to get an H1B status for someone you want to hire.
If an employer is knowingly expecting the person they hire to bail after 6 months, they won't go through the process.
Worst case scenario for the business: they lose a couple thousand dollars and a few months of employee development time, then still have the option to immediately hire the qualified American worker (or try the H1B route again).
Best case scenario for the business: they get an overqualified employee at an extreme discount, since that employee is willing to accept less just to be in America. Since that employee knows it's hard to get H1B status, they're probably willing to work for a discount for many years. (therefore the business makes its money back from other failed H1B attempts, and they retain the employee at a discount)
As an American myself, I want to see my fellow Americans getting good jobs over people from other countries.
Immigration has much less of an impact on employment than you might expect in some cases — because immigrants also consume goods and services.
One widely cited example is the Mariel boatlift, where more than a hundred thousand Cubans immigrated to Florida over a short period of time. Subsequent economic analyses found essentially no change in wages or employment for native workers. (There was one study by Borjas which did find a change in wages for a subsection of workers, but this was widely criticized for basically p-hacking — split a population into enough subsections and you'll eventually find one that had a decrease in wages.)
More reading:
https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/5f6gqu/open_b...
https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/btt4uo/the_le...
If we allowed in 100,000 immigrant astronauts, I think it's safe to say they'd impact the hiring prospects of American astronauts. And they wouldn't consume enough goods and services to spawn new space ventures that create 100,000 new astronaut jobs.
1. You picked a profession which has a _shockingly low number_ of positions, and extreme requirements (including citizenship). This is basically a straw-man argument.
2. Astronauts have an incredibly high bar, and could come to the US if they wanted to anyways. Typically, astronauts have at least one (or multiple) PhDs. If you can get to the US as an astronaut, you are self-sponsor for a EB-1 or an O-1.
3. No, they wouldn't. Astronauts in the US must be (unless things have changed) US citizens.
Military astronaut candidates are U.S. citizens and commissioned officers with at least five years of active duty service.
And regardless, the point the parent was making is that even if it did, this would be ok, because the broader influx of immigrants would create more demand for all of these professions to the point where it'd be a wash.
How many of your fellow citizens do you know who have the skills to get a good job and don't get one because of foreign competition? All I know is companies having trouble hiring really good people.
I know multiple Americans who are good software developers with good credentials who would be qualified for that job and similar but never got them.
An oldie by now, but still relevant: https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-...
It's kind of a chicken and egg problem. I certainly know people with skills to do what used to be good jobs, but aren't good jobs anymore due to foreign competition.
Hiring isn't a competition to find the smartest candidate, silly Google interviews notwithstanding. Companies want the "good enough" candidate they can get for the least pay. Otherwise all job ads would express a preference for principal engineers with doctorates, instead of the opposite which is far more common. So yes competition drives down pay, it doesn't drive up everyone's skills.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...
Why do we automatically prioritize jobs for people who just randomly happen to live inside our borders, over people who don't? 110 years ago my great-grandparents moved to the US, and maybe I wouldn't exist today if the attitude then was "prioritize Americans at all costs".
There's nothing inherently special about someone who has the same passport as you when it comes to where they should be allowed to live and work. Our borders are mostly just arbitrary lines drawn based on who had the best military at a particularly pivotal time in history for that region.
Given the diversity of thought and values across the US, I expect I have more in common with a lot of people who are not US citizens, who live in other parts of the world, than huge swaths of America. Maybe I want more people in this country that share my values. I've never really thought about immigration in these terms before, but this question has prompted some tangential thoughts about it.
Sure, you could just say “anyone can come to the US to work”, but you’d also have to entirely overhaul the whole societal structure to accommodate that.
Why?
I don't understand how people can go through this pandemic, where at least 50% of the people on this site are of the view that we can all work from wherever we want all time, and think that a company who is willing to pay 90k to hire somebody in the US, will not be willing to pay half that to hire that same person in Bangalore or Kiev instead.
Let me provide some background. If you already know this, my apologies.
The process of getting an H1B is not the employer picking up the phone and ordering "1 H1B for delivery please".
It involves applying at the beginning of April, being entered into a lottery, and you find out if you "won" (and your application is looked at) around the end of March. IIRC it is ~30% that your application is even looked at.
At this point, you're out legal and processing fees (at least a couple thousand), and likely more if USCIS wants more evidence that the position qualifies, or that the individual being sponsored is eligible. As a side note, this is often why job descriptions have degree requirements and such, even if they will hire people without a degree. If a similar job at the same company doesn't "need" a degree, it will be much more difficult to get a work status for, even if the requirement bar is actually quite high.
After this, assuming you actually get your status, you don't "get" it until the beginning of October.
It's now cost your employer 6 months of lead time, a legal process, thousands of dollars, and uncertainty throughout to know if they even _could_ hire someone.
It is not _easy_ to get an H1B.
If you have 2 equally qualified people, who will make the same amount of money (which is what market rates are, see my initial suggestion above), then any reasonable employer is going to go with the candidate that they can hire the next week, rather than going through the H1B process.
Except in industries that have high turnover, like technology and fashion. There, H1Bs are abused by companies who don’t want to compete for talent at market rates and instead can lock in foreign workers. It makes more sense to hire the foreign worker specifically because they can prevent them from leaving. Illegal threats and intimidation of H1B workers are more common than you think.
"""
I'll give you that, but it seems like a much simpler solution would have just been improving the flexibility for an H1B worker to be allowed to work at any employer for the term of their status.
If an employer used an H1B in order to hire a foreign worker and then under pay them, the worker would just get another job that pays market rate, without the work status concern. Without the artificial control over the employee, H1B fraud, in this manner, wouldn't be worth it.
"""
Stop tying the H1B visa to an employer, and the entire basis of fraud that you have outlined disappears.
The reason it's a disingenuous argument is that the H-1B is not technically transferred: The new employer is actually filing a new H-1B petition, which, yes, is not subject to the lottery. And the employee can start working while the petition is pending.
But here's the thing: Even though the new petition is very likely to approved, it's not automatically approved and there's no guarantee that it will be. Particularly if the new job doesn't use the skills that make the employee special.
It also adds uncertainty to the job hunting process. And, if the current employer finds out that they're looking, they could be fired... which technically makes the ex-employee immediately eligible for deportation... which means there's no counter-offers.
You have good intentions towards the kids, but some communist intentions towards business owners. Let them decide how to spend their money. It's their money.
Yes it takes years to develop talent. It’s not easy. But these are the same companies who throw money to the wind for the purpose of empty virtue signaling and making some connected politicos happy. Why not devote that money to real causes that actually provide hope for kids rather than fill the pockets of people who know how to shake corps down?
That and US doesn’t need to pay a dime for them developing their skills while getting to skim the cream of the crop.
We had a revolution and a civil war and unrest to fix our own failures. They can work to improve their own self determination. Look, Panama 25 years ago was a basket case. But now they are one of the better economies of the southern cone.
Tell me more of this “our own”. 25% of the current US population is either 1st or 2nd gen immigrants arrived after immigration reform of 1965. They include the innovators, laborers, entrepreneurs, researchers that pay a lot for your “our own”. Can’t eat the cake and have it too.
That's not entirely true everywhere though. For example, I was born in the US, as were my parents and grandparents. My great-grandparents immigrated from Italy, and if I can gather the proper documentation, I'm eligible for Italian citizenship. If I ever get this done, then yes, I could indeed go back to my great-grandparents' country and do what you suggest is silly. I believe quite a few other countries also have policies like this.
It actually kind of seems like we can do this. We do that by increasing the visa requirements, as this new directive is doing so.
It's infinitely better than importing huge numbers of uneducated fundamentalists whose culture is incompatible with the western values and includes throwing gays off of roofs.
It's better to have a few shining examples of truly great countries in the world, rather than mediocre mush everywhere. So citizens of other countries can point to such countries and tell their politicians and their friends - see, we can do better, much better.
Yes, immigrants built America. But so did enslaved people. So did natives. So did rebellious colonists of the British empire. Most of those people did not consider themselves immigrants - and nor do their descendants.
Many immigrants have contributed amazing things to our nation, and they still do. But immigrants as a group are not a monolith. Many of the "highly skilled workers" that come over on H1Bs, are frankly - not highly skilled workers. Many are semi-skilled workers who are preferred over qualified Americans because they work for low wages and nearly never quit when abused.
Americans have a right to say that we don't want our immigration system used as a tool to devalue working conditions - something which affects all of us. If we can solve this problem first, then we can talk about allowing in more immigrants. But it's absurd to say to reduce this to "immigrants = good = America". Not when we know the current system is abusive to both immigrants, and to the Americans who are part of the toxic workplaces that the H1B visa-mill paradigm has created.
Not many people are capable of traveling from distance places away, learning a new language, and then starting from scratch, with no family or friends. I'd give them a bit of credit, especially since their contributions are still being uncovered after being purposely devalued.
To your point, there are of course other hard working demographics in the US, but limiting the number of H1Bs that can come over is slamming the door on people who rightly deserve to be in the US.
My actual point though was that building this country is not, in itself, an exclusive or special claim. We have to look at the facts on the ground as they are today.
The US has a great relationship with immigrants, they make up 15% of our population. But even Alan Greenspan said that one of the purposes of H1B visas is to depress wages, and he actually proposed opening up more H1Bs because he said depressing wages on high skill workers was the easiest way to fix income inequality. That sounds crazy to me, because it's obviously not engineers who are the root of income inequality at all. But we can't deny that effects like that are real, and can be really harmful - especially to early career workers who are also facing crazy high housing costs (increasing the price of housing, is unsurprisingly another "benefit" that Greenspan likes about H1Bs).
Agreed!
> If we can solve this problem first, then we can talk about allowing in more immigrants.
This is really just not a hard problem at all to solve from a policy perspective. Political will has been a big problem; both parties have campaigned on comprehensive immigration reform, but nothing has materialized. Corporations with political influence love the status quo as it allows them to import workers for similar or lower wages who can't quit or do anything that would risk them losing their job without being sent home.
The right solution would be, to require high wages for H1B visas - if you're hiring a developer, the minimum wage for the H1B worker should be (eg.) 1.5x average developer wage in that area/state. This would solve companies firing local workers and replacing then with H1B workers, and still solve the problem of a company 'really needing' that one worker.
Temporary working visas like H1B(US) or 457(Australia) or L(Swiss) are all terrible in their own little ways, sigh.
The main issue is if you make a wrong career move your situation could quickly turn into an absolute nightmare, e.g. consistent abuse at work which you cannot escape.
If someone can get hired and hold a job paying, say, $25 an hour and keep it for a year, let them stay as long as they want.
It would probably put some pressure on wages, but it would also increase economic activity (create demand).
In any case, it aids in my job security.
You can do that though: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?year=2019
If an employer used an H1B in order to hire a foreign worker and then under pay them, the worker would just get another job that pays market rate, without the work status concern. Without the artificial control over the employee, H1B fraud, in this manner, wouldn't be worth it.