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> That's not true. If H1-Bs were not a good deal for the guest workers, there wouldn't be a 10 year waiting list to get one How about this: If below minimum wa

by amf12 5y ago

> That's not true. If H1-Bs were not a good deal for the guest workers, there wouldn't be a 10 year waiting list to get one How about this: If below minimum wage illegal work wasn't a good deal for guest workers, there wouldn't be illegal immigration to the US. This doesn't mean its not exploitation, although not every H1B is being exploited. > The workers being exploited by wage depression here are the American ones 85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages when the population of the US is 300M+. Especially when there is record demand across industries. Look at tech, every company wants to hire more and is competing with high salaries. > and that's not even addressing the infrastructure costs of a growing population which is distributed evenly instead of being born solely by those incurring the cost. I don't understand this point. Isn't every citizen benefiting from the improved, expanded infrastructure? Legal immigrants like H1Bs pay the same taxes as any citizen or a permanent resident.

paulgb 5y ago
> Legal immigrants like H1Bs pay the same taxes as any citizen or a permanent resident. Moreover, primary H-1B holders are basically by definition selected to be the subset of the population that poses a negative burden on society. They have a steady job (if they lose it they get deported); they have health and criminal background checks; they are college-educated. Some other country took the burden of educating them and took on the risk that they’d turn out to be a deadbeat, and the US receives them as a taxpaying adult. (Full disclosure, I was an H-1B holder.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pyuser583 5y ago
  I wasn’t aware an H1-B holder was subject to deportation as soon as they lost their job. I thought losing your job created a weird legal grey area, where you were allowed to stay in the country and look for work, but couldn’t reenter if you left.
  - samspenc 5y ago
    The clock starts ticking as soon as a H1B holder loses their job, so they have to find a job ASAP before the deadline. I can't remember the exact number but I think it is 30-60 days max after a layoff. And if they don't get a job by then, they have to leave the country, otherwise they are basically an illegal immigrant at that point (overstayed beyond permitted visa), and no company that wants to now sponsor them for a H1B can hire them.
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      Ok gotcha. Thanks.
crate_barre 5y ago
85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages I was at a large company in Silicon Valley where over 50% of employees were Indian. A large, white American, company. I’ve seen this shit with my own eyes. I don’t know man, is SQL Migrations and web development so hard to find in fucking Silicon Valley? Lol. This stuffs a scam.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Note that just because someone looks Indian doesn’t mean they’re on a H-1B.
  - crate_barre 5y ago
    Of course not, but listen man, I know who was H1B and who wasn’t. The systems literally tell you who are contractors and what company they are from (Infosys, etc).
    - nunez 5y ago
      Some Indians working at these companies are not H1B, FYI. You can't tell unless you ask.
Spooky23 5y ago
The “abuse” of H1 is mostly for lousy operations and legacy sustainment jobs. There’s no way your state labor department or insurance company is going to pay a premium for US workers to train for and work a dead end, low satisfaction job updating 50 year old COBOL or 20 year old J2EE. So they contract out the work on-prem or setup a technology center in Nowhereville, New Mexico to grease the skids and make the hiring process work. The reality is, without the H1 folks, those jobs would just be outsourced abroad anyway. The calculus is easy: the company benefits from greater control, the country collects taxes from people who may not ever collect benefits, and we get a pipeline of skilled immigrants.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  I disagree. When you look at how many young people were scammed by College for their chosen major and then actively bootcamped their way into Tech, you realize there is a strong commitment within the country to fill these industries. We really don’t need to contract out at all. I’m sorry my Indian friends, but Jonathan at the local community college has been learning AWS too. But don’t fret, you guys have a billion people in your country and they need tech too - stay there, and improve it.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    For AWS, sure. Hire ops folks for $60-75k and they turnover pretty quick or move up. If you do a formal mentoring and training program, you’ll “grow” 80% of those folks. It’s tough to do for a smaller company, you can pay one skilled worker a wage 3x the semi-skilled worker and get 5x-10x the output. Good luck finding that COBOL programmer.
    - crate_barre 5y ago
      They are not importing COBOL developers man. I know 3-4 members on my team that do Angular. It’s a scam.
      - geraldwhen 5y ago
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> 85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages when the population of the US is 300M+. Well, this is obviously false. Compare these numbers from 2017 ( https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-tech-workers/ https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing... ) > According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were. > Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers. "74% of the employment pool just isn't enough people to make a dent in salaries" is not an argument that can pass the laugh test.
- filoleg 5y ago
  Being foreign-born isn't the same as being on H1B. I am foreign born, majority of my team is foreign born. All of us are US citizens. That "74%" you tout is useless as a number, unless you know exactly how many of them are on H1B and how many out of that subset are "depressing wages" (in which case, you should've used the number for that instead of the one for "foreign-born" employees). I worked with quite a few H1B people before, and they were being paid pretty much the same as the rest of the teammates who were US citizens. And no, I dont think that all of us were underpaid at all. Unless you count close to $200k/yr for junior devs as being underpaid, in which case, I still am more than happy about being "underpaid" like that in the past at the start of my career. Not discounting that abuse of H1B happens (just look at the likes of Tata and Infosys), but trying to claim that all H1Bs are like that or, even more ridiculous of a statement, that all of foreign-born employees are H1B holders is just disingenuous.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > I am foreign born, majority of my team is foreign born. All of us are US citizens. How did you get that way?
    - filoleg 5y ago

by amf12 5y ago

paulgb 5y ago

> Legal immigrants like H1Bs pay the same taxes as any citizen or a permanent resident. Moreover, primary H-1B holders are basically by definition selected to be the subset of the population that poses a negative burden on society. They have a steady job (if they lose it they get deported); they have health and criminal background checks; they are college-educated. Some other country took the burden of educating them and took on the risk that they’d turn out to be a deadbeat, and the US receives them as a taxpaying adult. (Full disclosure, I was an H-1B holder.)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pyuser583 5y ago
I wasn’t aware an H1-B holder was subject to deportation as soon as they lost their job. I thought losing your job created a weird legal grey area, where you were allowed to stay in the country and look for work, but couldn’t reenter if you left.
- samspenc 5y ago
  The clock starts ticking as soon as a H1B holder loses their job, so they have to find a job ASAP before the deadline. I can't remember the exact number but I think it is 30-60 days max after a layoff. And if they don't get a job by then, they have to leave the country, otherwise they are basically an illegal immigrant at that point (overstayed beyond permitted visa), and no company that wants to now sponsor them for a H1B can hire them.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    Ok gotcha. Thanks.

crate_barre 5y ago

85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages I was at a large company in Silicon Valley where over 50% of employees were Indian. A large, white American, company. I’ve seen this shit with my own eyes. I don’t know man, is SQL Migrations and web development so hard to find in fucking Silicon Valley? Lol. This stuffs a scam.

saagarjha 5y ago
Note that just because someone looks Indian doesn’t mean they’re on a H-1B.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  Of course not, but listen man, I know who was H1B and who wasn’t. The systems literally tell you who are contractors and what company they are from (Infosys, etc).
  - nunez 5y ago
    Some Indians working at these companies are not H1B, FYI. You can't tell unless you ask.

Spooky23 5y ago

The “abuse” of H1 is mostly for lousy operations and legacy sustainment jobs. There’s no way your state labor department or insurance company is going to pay a premium for US workers to train for and work a dead end, low satisfaction job updating 50 year old COBOL or 20 year old J2EE. So they contract out the work on-prem or setup a technology center in Nowhereville, New Mexico to grease the skids and make the hiring process work. The reality is, without the H1 folks, those jobs would just be outsourced abroad anyway. The calculus is easy: the company benefits from greater control, the country collects taxes from people who may not ever collect benefits, and we get a pipeline of skilled immigrants.

crate_barre 5y ago
I disagree. When you look at how many young people were scammed by College for their chosen major and then actively bootcamped their way into Tech, you realize there is a strong commitment within the country to fill these industries. We really don’t need to contract out at all. I’m sorry my Indian friends, but Jonathan at the local community college has been learning AWS too. But don’t fret, you guys have a billion people in your country and they need tech too - stay there, and improve it.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  For AWS, sure. Hire ops folks for $60-75k and they turnover pretty quick or move up. If you do a formal mentoring and training program, you’ll “grow” 80% of those folks. It’s tough to do for a smaller company, you can pay one skilled worker a wage 3x the semi-skilled worker and get 5x-10x the output. Good luck finding that COBOL programmer.
  - crate_barre 5y ago
    They are not importing COBOL developers man. I know 3-4 members on my team that do Angular. It’s a scam.
    - geraldwhen 5y ago

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> 85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages when the population of the US is 300M+. Well, this is obviously false. Compare these numbers from 2017 ( https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-tech-workers/ https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing... ) > According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were. > Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers. "74% of the employment pool just isn't enough people to make a dent in salaries" is not an argument that can pass the laugh test.

filoleg 5y ago
Being foreign-born isn't the same as being on H1B. I am foreign born, majority of my team is foreign born. All of us are US citizens. That "74%" you tout is useless as a number, unless you know exactly how many of them are on H1B and how many out of that subset are "depressing wages" (in which case, you should've used the number for that instead of the one for "foreign-born" employees). I worked with quite a few H1B people before, and they were being paid pretty much the same as the rest of the teammates who were US citizens. And no, I dont think that all of us were underpaid at all. Unless you count close to $200k/yr for junior devs as being underpaid, in which case, I still am more than happy about being "underpaid" like that in the past at the start of my career. Not discounting that abuse of H1B happens (just look at the likes of Tata and Infosys), but trying to claim that all H1Bs are like that or, even more ridiculous of a statement, that all of foreign-born employees are H1B holders is just disingenuous.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > I am foreign born, majority of my team is foreign born. All of us are US citizens. How did you get that way?
  - filoleg 5y ago