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Politicians made a decision to help the "free market" by making an exception to immigration rules with H1B visas. H1B visas were intended to address a shortage
by specialp 9y ago
Politicians made a decision to help the "free market" by making an exception to immigration rules with H1B visas. H1B visas were intended to address a shortage of highly skilled tech workers. They were not intended to supplant US workers, nor provide a readily accessible pool of low wage IT workers.
H1B abusers like Infosys use H1B to hire 90% of their staff. They then undercut US workers and cause them to be laid off while their cheaper H1B visa foreigners took jobs on US soil. Pretty much every government in the world regulates immigration. And if you ask a business which country has less favorable business rules, that would be India which is amongst the worst in the world.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> H1B visas were intended to address a shortage of highly skilled tech workers. They were not intended to supplant US workers, nor provide a readily accessible pool of low wage IT workers. Yes, they were. In a market, a "shortage" is meaningless without reference to a price level, and the only way to address a shortage at any given price level is to add additional supply from sellers willing to sell below what the necessary price would otherwise be for the final quantity traded. Adding more workers at the "prevailing wage" means increasing the quantity traded without increasing price, which inherently favors the buyers of the good (labor, here) over sellers. Structurally, the "abuse" by Infosys, et al., and the suppression of wage growth for highly-skilled labor is exactly what H-1B is designed to support, not just a loophole in the design but the fundamental, basic, high-level structure of the program.