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It's always interesting when unsavoury politics is mixed with the difficult realities of such programs. The neoliberal benefits of H1's make sense, but the con

by jariel 6y ago

It's always interesting when unsavoury politics is mixed with the difficult realities of such programs. The neoliberal benefits of H1's make sense, but the context has to be clear. I think it would also make sense if at least public agencies should be required to employ Americans, because the H1 program is not supposed to be for the purposes of 'saving money' and it's hard to fathom what kind of 'highly specialised expertise' is needed in governmental IT operations. Perhaps on a consultative basis. If there are legit R&D needs, i.e. if they were designing new chips for NASA or whatever, fair enough ... but most of this is pretty squarely in the domain of 'off the shelf' IT work. Again - even then the benefits are possibly positive 'on the whole' for the economy, if not for the workers who otherwise did not get a job ... but it's public money ... I think it makes sense to hire locally and I don't think for a second Americans would have a problem with that. Of all the things everyone likes to argue about (i.e. taxes, unemployment benefits) - I suggest there would be at least some easy consensus here.

cosmie 6y ago
> but it's public money ... I think it makes sense to hire locally and I don't think for a second Americans would have a problem with that. TVA is a government owned corporation, but it's fully self funded. So they're not spending public money other than insofar as TVA costs get passed to the electric bills of anyone whose local electric utility is purchasing electricity from TVA. TVA has over 10k active employees and has only ever had 10 H1B employees (all hired between 2001 - 2008)[1]. And all of their H1B hires fell into either electrical engineering or product/financial risk analysis, and all located within Nashville, TN or Chattanooga, TN. Their usage of H1B employees seems far more indicative of localized hiring difficulty, rather than some pattern of H1B abuse. I've lived in both of those places, and they both have risen in popularity and desirability throughout the last decade. Having hired in Nashville before, people have become far more willing to relocate to Tennessee over the last few years. But that doesn't mean their was similar interest in relocating to TN for work 12-19 years ago when they filled these roles with H1B hires. [1] https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALLEY+AUTHORITY&year=&minsalary=&state=&worksite_city=&job_title= https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALL...
- jariel 6y ago
  So that's a great point, it seems this is a bad application of crude politics, that said, in general I still believe my points stand. It would be nice to have more specificity and clarity on the issues as opposed to the arbitrary attention of the Tweeter in Chief on the campaign trail.
  - cosmie 6y ago
    For sure! H1B as a whole tends to be abused, and your points are completely valid ones in general. And my comment was about TVA's direct use of the H1B program - not use of an IT contractor that is likely to be (ab)using the H1B program to staff the roles. That said, the IT contractors TVA is using for their IT outsourcing are used all over the federal government, even if through layers of subcontracting. So it's a bit frustrating that a TV ad triggered such a reactionary response from Trump in this isolated case but not in any other.

by jariel 6y ago

cosmie 6y ago

> but it's public money ... I think it makes sense to hire locally and I don't think for a second Americans would have a problem with that. TVA is a government owned corporation, but it's fully self funded. So they're not spending public money other than insofar as TVA costs get passed to the electric bills of anyone whose local electric utility is purchasing electricity from TVA. TVA has over 10k active employees and has only ever had 10 H1B employees (all hired between 2001 - 2008)[1]. And all of their H1B hires fell into either electrical engineering or product/financial risk analysis, and all located within Nashville, TN or Chattanooga, TN. Their usage of H1B employees seems far more indicative of localized hiring difficulty, rather than some pattern of H1B abuse. I've lived in both of those places, and they both have risen in popularity and desirability throughout the last decade. Having hired in Nashville before, people have become far more willing to relocate to Tennessee over the last few years. But that doesn't mean their was similar interest in relocating to TN for work 12-19 years ago when they filled these roles with H1B hires. [1] https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALLEY+AUTHORITY&year=&minsalary=&state=&worksite_city=&job_title= https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALL...

jariel 6y ago
So that's a great point, it seems this is a bad application of crude politics, that said, in general I still believe my points stand. It would be nice to have more specificity and clarity on the issues as opposed to the arbitrary attention of the Tweeter in Chief on the campaign trail.
- cosmie 6y ago
  For sure! H1B as a whole tends to be abused, and your points are completely valid ones in general. And my comment was about TVA's direct use of the H1B program - not use of an IT contractor that is likely to be (ab)using the H1B program to staff the roles. That said, the IT contractors TVA is using for their IT outsourcing are used all over the federal government, even if through layers of subcontracting. So it's a bit frustrating that a TV ad triggered such a reactionary response from Trump in this isolated case but not in any other.