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Trump's policy sounds like affirmative action for US citizens. Yes, the H1-B visa system need to be policed so it's not used entirely to drive down wages of lo

Trump's policy sounds like affirmative action for US citizens. Yes, the H1-B visa system need to be policed so it's not used entirely to drive down wages of local specialized employees. I'm under no allusions that foreign H1-B workers have any right to work in the US, but neither do unemployed US citizens -- which is what Trump is advocating. This is blatant pandering to those working class voters who have been forced out of the US economy for macroeconomic reasons. Trump's message is for the working class, despite the fact that he is specifically talking about the H1-B program in this instance. In any case, Trump has no evidence that he will be capable of lobbying Congress better than corporations do. He even complains in his immigration policy document[1] that "Completion of a visa tracking system – required by law but blocked by lobbyists" has allowed foreign citizens to overstay their visas. A vote for Trump is a vote to show frustration with the current political system, not a vote to fix the current political system. For anyone who wants a radically different idea from a presidential candidate, look towards Lawrence Lessig[2]. [1] https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform [2] https://www.yahoo.com/politics/who-is-lawrence-lessig-and-why-is-he-running-for-126512471106.html https://www.yahoo.com/politics/who-is-lawrence-lessig-and-wh... *edit to clarify the "working class" reference, despite the article not touching on working class.

pcurve 11y ago
That's a pretty harsh statement. It's hard for average American IT workers to compete with H1B when many of latter carpool, share houses, and are willing to work for less. Sure they pay income taxes, but over $22 billion gets remitted to india from U.S. That's remittance of after tax wage alone. Total IT expenditure is likely in the hundreds of billions if you include Indian subcontracting firms, u.s. investment in India, etc. Look, I don't like Donald Trump. I also recognize there are many talented H1B out there that play vital role. But current implementation of H1B is completely broken. A lot of H1B positions in the U.S. has nothing to do with U.s companies' global competitiveness, because many of them are employed in service sectors like insurance companies.
geebee 11y ago
As I understand it (this is from his website), Trump's proposals are 1) Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs 2) Requirement to hire American workers first I actually don't see here a "right to work" for US citizens, only a requirement that they be hired prior to issuing a visa for a non-citizen/permanent resident. There are no details here, and how this is implemented is all important. First, what would the minimum wage floor be? Market rate plus a percentage? Personally, I'd say that in high cost regions like SF, if the salary is less than $150k a year, it should be dismissed with contempt. I know this would cause sticker shock to employers, but when the median price of a house is well over 1 million, I'd say the minimum salary should be at least 200k, and probably more (this is in SF/Silicon Valley, it could be lower elsewhere). The reason I say this is that if the worker can't afford a buy a house and support a family in the region where the job is located, then you have a wage issue, not a skills issue. Keep in mind, we're talking about changing the normal hiring rules for employers seeking supposedly high skilled, highly educated workers who can't be found at any (reasonable?) wage. I understand that many jobs pay less, but we don't talk about a shortage of cashiers so critical that the US government needs to create a special visa for cashiers, even though employers would absolutely love to pay their cashiers less. The issue of hiring a US citizen or permanent resident first is also all in the details. Suppose a programmer being interviewed for a junior web developer position does a great job on fizzbuzz, and can implement code to find all subsets of a set of integers that sum to a prime number at the whiteboard, but stumbles a bit trying to write code to find the sub matrix with the largest sum in an NXM matrix. Would this mean that the company can say attempted to hire a US citizen first? Alternatively, suppose that programmer completely failed fizzbuzz? Personally, I like (but haven't fully considered) the approach of setting a very high minimum salary level, and then making it unlimited or setting the cap very high. To me, very high is, like, 250k ore more.

pcurve 11y ago

That's a pretty harsh statement. It's hard for average American IT workers to compete with H1B when many of latter carpool, share houses, and are willing to work for less. Sure they pay income taxes, but over $22 billion gets remitted to india from U.S. That's remittance of after tax wage alone. Total IT expenditure is likely in the hundreds of billions if you include Indian subcontracting firms, u.s. investment in India, etc. Look, I don't like Donald Trump. I also recognize there are many talented H1B out there that play vital role. But current implementation of H1B is completely broken. A lot of H1B positions in the U.S. has nothing to do with U.s companies' global competitiveness, because many of them are employed in service sectors like insurance companies.

geebee 11y ago

As I understand it (this is from his website), Trump's proposals are 1) Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs 2) Requirement to hire American workers first I actually don't see here a "right to work" for US citizens, only a requirement that they be hired prior to issuing a visa for a non-citizen/permanent resident. There are no details here, and how this is implemented is all important. First, what would the minimum wage floor be? Market rate plus a percentage? Personally, I'd say that in high cost regions like SF, if the salary is less than $150k a year, it should be dismissed with contempt. I know this would cause sticker shock to employers, but when the median price of a house is well over 1 million, I'd say the minimum salary should be at least 200k, and probably more (this is in SF/Silicon Valley, it could be lower elsewhere). The reason I say this is that if the worker can't afford a buy a house and support a family in the region where the job is located, then you have a wage issue, not a skills issue. Keep in mind, we're talking about changing the normal hiring rules for employers seeking supposedly high skilled, highly educated workers who can't be found at any (reasonable?) wage. I understand that many jobs pay less, but we don't talk about a shortage of cashiers so critical that the US government needs to create a special visa for cashiers, even though employers would absolutely love to pay their cashiers less. The issue of hiring a US citizen or permanent resident first is also all in the details. Suppose a programmer being interviewed for a junior web developer position does a great job on fizzbuzz, and can implement code to find all subsets of a set of integers that sum to a prime number at the whiteboard, but stumbles a bit trying to write code to find the sub matrix with the largest sum in an NXM matrix. Would this mean that the company can say attempted to hire a US citizen first? Alternatively, suppose that programmer completely failed fizzbuzz? Personally, I like (but haven't fully considered) the approach of setting a very high minimum salary level, and then making it unlimited or setting the cap very high. To me, very high is, like, 250k ore more.