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Right, but I don't believe any of those people came here on an H-1B visa. And it seems like many of the best and brightest are still trying to get into the US,
by sverige 10y ago
Right, but I don't believe any of those people came here on an H-1B visa. And it seems like many of the best and brightest are still trying to get into the US, though right now perhaps fewer than previously.
I'm not arguing against immigration. Heck, I don't even think that the current administration is against immigration. (Yes, I know this is not the popular view of the current administration here on HN.)
My point was that the H-1B program is basically built on the hypocrisy that these are jobs that cannot be filled without bringing in immigrants because no one here has the skills.
It seems pretty obvious that the reality is that the H-1B program is built to enable employers to bring in high-skilled workers at a steeply discounted rate, and to keep them steeply discounted by preventing the immigrants from looking for better jobs once they get here. If this were untrue, I wouldn't read so many comments and even articles about how people here on H-1B visas ought to have the right to find another job.
In other words, make the program declare its real intentions. But that would never fly, because politically it would be unpalatable to people in any part of the political spectrum, with the possible exception of the <1% of those who profit from H-1B employees.
- scholia 10y agoAgreed! In passing, tech companies only use a small proportion of H-1B visas -- less than 100,000 out of 647,852 from Oct 1 2015 to Sept 30 2016 -- and most of those are Indian outsourcing firms: Wipro, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, IBM India (75,606). https://www.axios.com/tech-firms-arent-biggest-filers-of-visa-applications-2226392488.html https://www.axios.com/tech-firms-arent-biggest-filers-of-vis...
- toast0 10y ago> Right, but I don't believe any of those people came here on an H-1B visa. I looked at a couple of the tech people noted, and many of them came with their parents while they were young, a few came for college, and could possibly have stayed on an H-1B or without legal status. Often citizenship dates were reported, but other status wasn't well reported.
- learc83 10y ago>Heck, I don't even think that the current administration is against immigration. (Yes, I know this is not the popular view of the current administration here on HN.) His top advisor, Steve Bannon, is definitely against immigration. "Isn’t the beating heart of this problem, the real beating heart of it, of what we gotta get sorted here, is not illegal immigration? As horrific as that is, and it’s horrific, don’t we have a problem, we’ve looked the other way on this legal immigration that’s kinda overwhelmed the country? When you look and there’s got 61 million, 20 percent of the country, is immigrants — is that not a massive problem?"