7 ms·

I might previously have argued that H-1Bs were causing a domino effect on the rest of US employment - their complete inability to negotiate higher salaries spil

• tkahnoski 7y ago
  Have you had first experience with H1-B employees? There definitely is inertia on moving companies for higher wage. However in my experience the public posting of title and salary has lifted net wages as it provides transparency on wages that otherwise would be kept hidden from employees.
• henvic 7y ago
  Immigrants are what built the US recently (after the real Americans... the native ones). Why close the gates now? Please don't use them (or us; though I'm not in the US) as scapegoats; this is not just. No one should have a privilege to employment. You and your potential employer shall have the right to associate freely. They should be seen just as regular competitors [with really hard barriers of entry]. If anything, blame the state agencies for making their lives worse and yours more unpredictable because by the blink of an eye, they can make the market go one direction or another, unjustly. We should end these artificial barriers. Not blame the victims (that includes not only the immigrants but also locals who can't figure out the real market forces both to plan their careers and to make hiring decisions).
  • bumby 7y ago
    What other artificial employment barriers do you advocate removing? They may not all be just or implemented particularly well, but I think there are some (e.g., child labour, work-health standards, etc.) that make sure the economy is serving society and not the other way around.
    • ktta 7y ago
      Having to go through a lottery based visa system to work?
      • bumby 7y ago
        I know you're not the parent commenter, but is your issue with the intent of the policy (presumably, to manage immigration) or with the implementation of said policy (via a lottery based system)?
        • ktta 7y ago
          Both, but mostly the implementation of policy.
          • bumby 7y ago
            Out of curiosity, is there a method of implementation you'd be more in favor of?
            • ktta 7y ago
              Yes, a preference system similar to the Canadian one, which has a points system based on a variety of factors. Especially factoring in the fields with the most need and also education level (or equivalent experience that is actually verified). That is a more clearer approach than a lottery based one. This is what I would suggest if I was American. Speaking as a non-American: I have issues with the intent too, because I am not happy about the fact that this is a country developed by immigrants, yet there is anti-immigrant sentiment. People have to 'prove' themselves to get in, and even there's no guarantee of success there with clear goalposts, and only extra-ordinary ability people (O-1 visa) can get in without much headache. A bit like locking the door behind you IMO. I want to say that I understand the problems unrestricted immigration will place on the country. However, there is a position that will allow many more immigrants than current immigrant visa system allows for, and we are not close to that. I believe the reason is that people aren't comfortable possibly having their salaries drop by a small percent. The hypocrisy is what really gets to me though. America is touted as a free market economy, especially by the Republicans who fight for less government intervention in business, yet they're the ones advocating for tighter immigration controls which is the opposite of free market. Apologies if this seems like a rant. You might not get what I'm trying to convey because you probably not know the feeling of being dealt the shitty hand of being born in a place that isn't a first world country.
• NCG_Mike 7y ago
  As someone who worked in the US with a H1-B, in my case it was because you'd not find someone with my particular skill at that point in time. I was also paid more than the employees at the company I was contracted to work at - because of my particular skill and I'd taken a pay cut to move to the US. This is what the H1-B is/was supposed to be like. It does seem that it has been abused.
  • cptskippy 7y ago
    > in my case it was because you'd not find someone with my particular skill at that point in time. That's how the program is sold and it's incredibly easy to game. Require 10 years of Swift experience and suddenly the candidate pool is dry. Generally most, if not all, IT job postings list an unrealistic and fictitious skill set. > I was also paid more than the employees at the company I was contracted to work at The cost of a Full-time Employee is usually something like 140-160% of their salary. So a contractor making 120% more than an FTE is still cheaper for the employer.
    • TMWNN 7y ago
      >That's how the program is sold and it's incredibly easy to game. Require 10 years of Swift experience and suddenly the candidate pool is dry. Generally most, if not all, IT job postings list an unrealistic and fictitious skill set. Can't such abuse be avoided by requiring the "winning" candidate to show that he indeed has 10 years of Swift experience?
      • cptskippy 7y ago
        To whom?
  • ccffph 7y ago
    You were the only person in America that could do that exact task? What were you doing?
    • NCG_Mike 7y ago
• whatshisface 7y ago
  >There is no evidence outside of my own conjecture to support such a thing Every economist believes in supply and demand curves. If there are any H1Bs being awarded to replaceable programmers (as opposed to specialized programmers with no American counterparts, as was the intended use of the system), then wages are being depressed. It's practically a law of physics.
  • noego 7y ago
    Economists also believe in the lump of labor fallacy, which your comment perfectly exemplifies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • whatshisface 7y ago
      The lump of labor fallacy is equivalent to believing in inelastic demand. However the supply and demand model doesn't depend on inflexibility: its basic highschool formulation involves supply that increases with price and demand that decreases with price. So, no, I don't think the suppply and demand model requires a fixed demand.
      • noego 7y ago
        The lump-of-labor fallacy arises when people don't realize that increases in the labor, also cause a increase in labor demand. Hence why wages have been rising constantly, and unemployment being steady, despite America's population growing exponentially in the past 300 years.
        • rollingdeep 7y ago
          Please don’t post misinformation. Exponential growth (population or otherwise) is a tired economic trope. The frontier days are over, please update your views to modern times like the past 70 years or so where growth is much more limited than the frontier days and is fairly linear—probably due to the fact that the economy (especially the USA) is a mature system and you can’t so easily apply unnuanced econ101 generalizations (from the previous century) about the lump of labour fallacy to today’s system. You incorrectly imply that tech jobs will expand organically in a frontier-like or exponential fashion as happened in the past. That doesn’t actually happen in the tech sector. Tech companies seek to exclude alternative hire options from other STEM fields (engineering, science, etc.) because those alternatives would not be as cost efficient. Instead the tech jobs grow linearly (like most mature industries and systems) and only by the annual cap on visas being granted. How you can tell that there is no absolute shortage of tech labor is that the number tech jobs never grows beyond the visa cap. If there were a shortage, companies would find more creative ways to exceed the cap limits like the above mentioned alternatives or creating training factories to increase the supply to meet organic needs/demand. So while this mature system is not necessarily a fixed lump of labour, the mature constraints that apply seem to limit any organic growth to the current regime we find ourselves in. That is to say that companies constrain the tech labour system to their very skewed preferences instead of organic growth, and as a result the economic pie is growing less and less, and there is more and more competition over slice distribution. Incumbents are absolutely in direct competition with foreign labour and there is less overall growth to share equitably. Again, not a fixed lump of labour, but increasingly competitive to the point of very limited growth from within.
• JamesSchriver 7y ago
  The reality that is not going to be well received by people here is that you don't seem to understand that the H1B visa is not some exercise in globalist altruism for foreigners over native people in their own homes; it is a ruse, a scam to masquerade the wealth pillage by the ruling class from their own nature middle and working class, by driving down wages and salaries, while also using it to cover up the reality that they are utterly illegitimate and incompetent rulers that did not adequately mange the country and resources to produce the supply of workers they would have needed to meet the demand domestically. What that translates to the H1B loving crowd here, is that the second the H1B visa and all the other ponzi scheme tactics are no longer profitable to the ruling elite, like if the cost of an H1B were doubled and tripled, as they should be (e.g., must pay the H1B holder triple what a domestic employee would receive, and tax the employee at double the going tax rate, while also paying a $200,000 employment tax along with $200,000 annual visa maintenance costs), you would not see any H1Bs or any immigration. The ruling class are pillaging the working and middle class USA through a kind of leveraged buyout type of con job where they are getting their own people to finance and support their own pillage. It's why the ruling class is so in support of "immigration" because "immigration" makes the ruling class wealthier and more powerful as a matter of marginal increase through every "immigrant" that is imported to pillage wealth and opportunities from the native population. But I get it, as long as people here are largely benefiting and getting wealthy from the exploitation, the exploitation is invisible to most. Not even to mention the detrimental effects of skill concentration by extracting and draining the most driven and motivated and educated from their respective countries, whether they are Nicaragua or France. All but the centralizing power are degraded by immigration and no rationalization or delusion will change that reality.
  • thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    > every "immigrant" that is imported to pillage wealth and opportunities from the native population. You realize the « native population » of the US was victim of a genocide right ?
    • shrimp_emoji 7y ago
      Sorry, I think he meant current-native.
• momokoko 7y ago
  I agree that when you look at the total number of H-1Bs being awarded vs the size of the total labor market in sofware engineering, it seems unlikely it is having a massive effect. And if you look at the massive absusers of the system(Toptal, Wipro etc), that use it to lower pay, I feel as though many of those jobs would have instead been outsourced oversees anyway. So at the very least, for a US perspective, the taxes and consumer spending are still partly captured in the US as opposed to another country.
• arugulum 7y ago
  Here's a quick immigration quiz: - An international student graduates at the top of their class in Stanford in CS, and goes to work for a tech company. What visa do they use? The correct answer is F1 (OPT) for one year, with OPT STEM extension for 2 extra years, while they apply for H-1B. If they weren't a STEM major, regardless of their actual role, they have a single year to apply for H-1B, with a ~30% chance of success, before being asked to leave the country. Regardless of their qualifications. We all know the H-1B is susceptible to abuse. But it is also the main feasible channel for any international to work in the United States. (Excluding country-specific visas, transfers.) But shouldn't qualified H-1B applicants be supportive of immigration reform? I would, if I had any confidence that it would be done well. As things are, changes almost always end up hurting the applicants. See: the recent flood of RFEs. See: the suspension of H-1B premium processing. The entire lives and livelihoods of immigrant workers, even exceptionally high-skilled ones, hinge upon delicate archaic bureaucracy and paperwork, not to mention politics (see: the fear of the government unilaterally suspending the OPT STEM extension). Introducing further uncertainty to the process almost always makes things worse, and that's why many of us are nervous about any proposed changes.