10 ms·

Really? Companies are cynically using visa programs no native citizen ever asked for or wanted because they are nothing but an avenue for large corporations to

Really? Companies are cynically using visa programs no native citizen ever asked for or wanted because they are nothing but an avenue for large corporations to enslave foreign workers with salaries that no American would ever tolerate? It should be reduced commensurrately for every tech layoff. Given that we're in the negatives, it's probably time to start cancelling some visas.

flavius29663 3y ago
you don't want to cancel visas, it would wreak havoc on families and lives. But you can definitely reduce the number of new visas
- boringuser2 3y ago
  I'm sorry, but American citizens aren't to blame for this and don't need to shoulder this burden.
  - piva00 3y ago
    American citizens got, collectively, an advantage by exploiting these people. As much as you didn't want them there, they have been working and providing value to your society, and paying taxes. In the end they are not only exploited by the companies taking advantage of a broken system but also now some citizens (you) think they should be punished even more by being kicked out of a place they create roots at. The lack of empathy is, frankly, astounding...
    - boringuser2 3y ago
      I like how you think empathy only exists when it isn't being directed towards people you like. It's just such a cynical and emotionally manipulative conceit to demand that your group (I've perused your history and am aware you're an immigrant) be treated with "empathy", which is something you reserve entirely for your own benefit. If other people thought like you, you wouldn't get any at all.
      - piva00 3y ago
        I like how you only attacked me and not even tried to acknowledge you are lacking empathy by wanting to kick people out of a place due to some misplaced anger :) You are aware you can want the current immigration system to change without causing massive harm to some people, right? They are people, with lives, just like you, not some faceless cog in a machine that you can decide doesn't suit you anymore and be thrown out. It's not cynical and manipulative to remind yourself that these are lives, not a fucking number, we are talking about. Good luck with your anger, hopefully you can find healthier and more productive ways to express it.
        boringuser2 3y ago
        You are incredibly emotionally manipulative. Perhaps you should remember yourself that the lives destroyed by companies outsourcing American wealth (both directly and indirectly via immigration) had a real cost on real people.
        piva00 3y ago
        You are incredibly dim. Of course it had a real cost on real people, immigration to the USA causes a continuous brain drain in multiple countries that could use the skilled labour for their own benefits. I don't dispute that at all. Outsourcing American wealth causing these companies to become wealthier, maybe it's time you direct your anger somewhere else, somewhere which is actually causing this issue, no? Instead of punishing workers who immigrated and generated wealth for your society. I can give you a tip: point it towards corporations :) Good luck, mate.
    - belltaco 3y ago
      I think the punishment for those workers is the thing they want. Their logic is probably that the worse the punishment the less likely people want to work in the US, so that tech salaries will balloon even higher. In reality many jobs will be nearshored to Canada/Mexico or offshored, especially with all the remote friendly setups that have taken place during Covid.
  - welshwelsh 3y ago
    "American citizens" are usually just people who, by no fault and no merit of their own, happen to have been born in the United States. Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms. But putting that aside, when Americans issue a visa, they are forming a contract with another person that they are obligated to honor. When someone uproots their life to come to the US by following the rules created by Americans, it would be unconscionable to exploit them and then fail to honor the visa.
    - flavius29663 3y ago
      > "American citizens" are usually just people who, by no fault and no merit of their own, happen to have been born in the United States. Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms. As an immigrant to the US, I disagree, it's the right of existing Americans to decide how many and what type of new immigrants they accept in their own country. The same way a person born into a rich family -through no merit of their own- has the right to decide who they want to marry and benefit from the riches.
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      > Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms. Who should decide, then? This view is both undemocratic and anti self determination.
    - localplume 3y ago
      Yes that is how citizenship mostly works. That is life. Americans absolutely should have the right to decide who comes to work in the US and on what terms. Unbridled immigration and open borders would be a disaster for everyone involved. America isn't a welfare state for the world. Additionally, H-1B visas are nonimmigrant visas. Workers are aware of this. They are not permanent. If they treat it like its permanent, that is their own fault. Would it be better if USCIS was streamlined? Absolutely. Thats why fraud needs to be cut down and bureaucratic bloat needs to be reduced.
    - blululu 3y ago
      Sorry but I have to take a strong disagreement with the claim that anyone has just as much of a right to live in America. Maybe in some highly abstracted form you could say that is America is just job opportunity but for those of us who were born here, it is our home. Our families are here, our lives are here. I'm sure lots of people are more qualified to write Java apps than the native population of America, but America is more than a factory for Java apps. It is communities, cultures and people. Saying that those communities should please make room for anyone who wants a job is just really insensitive and entitled. You see the same thing play out at a local level with gentrification. The people who have built a functional community are squeezed out the moment a large tech company wants to take over the housing stock for a bunch of transplants. The locals are pushed to the margins and a bunch of yuppy tech workers puzzle over why everyone hates them. There is an element of fairness in thinking that we are all the same, but I think you would feel differently if it were your family and friends getting pushed out from the home they built up for a generation.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- edgyquant 3y ago
  This is always the excuse given, while no one seems to care about the Americans who are passed up by companies exploiting these programs.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    Punish visa holders because of corporate fraud? That does not make any sense.
    - belltaco 3y ago
      It does make sense in the context of what has been happening with low skill immigration from the south of the border. Punish the workers being abused and let companies doing that off the hook. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/09/workplace-raids-multiply-trump-administration-charges-few-companies/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/09/workplace...
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    I explicitly called out "issuing fewer new visas" - how is that not protecting US workers? It seems like preconceived ideas stopped you from reading my comment. A lot of people on visas come and go, not all are establishing a new life in the US. Issuing less new visas will reduce the total number over time, without having to destroy the lives of the ones already established.
- amluto 3y ago
  I would rather see more visas issued, but I want them to be on better terms. A visa holder should be able to change jobs and even go through a period of unemployment without losing their visa. And, critically for citizens and permanent residents, they should be able to negotiate salaries as well as anyone else. As far as I can tell, importing a moderate amount of skilled labor is good for America and its people. But importing that same labor and underpaying for it is worse for all involved, including for citizens whose wages or opportunistic are depressed as a result.
  - welshwelsh 3y ago
    Being able to switch jobs is critical; the existence of workers who are unable to quit is devastating to worker's rights. I would prefer if we had better visas with higher salary requirements, designed to attract the world's best, but without making them jump through hoops. E.g. Someone making $250k = green card instantly. Someone making $80k = denied, try again when you are worth $250k.
    - flavius29663 3y ago
      or just take the top N visas based on income (which is based on a solid work offer). Lottery makes no sense.
      - amluto 3y ago
        This sounds like an auction. That seems kind of sensible, but I'm concerned it would prevent any but the highest paying industries from using H-1B visas. In theory, the purpose is to import specific skills and expertise that is unavailable locally. So if US company needs, say, a plastic tooling engineer, and only China and Taiwan trains enough people with the relevant experience [0], then they should be able to hire someone from outside the US and help them get a visa. Making them outbid the tech giants who are in entirely different industries could drive the cost up to absurd levels and deny the US the benefit of getting plastic tooling expertise. [0] I made this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
- Symmetry 3y ago
  I sort of wonder if it wouldn't be best to auction off the new visas to companies rather than assign them by lottery. Then they go to the companies their most valuable to and the government gets some revenue.
belltaco 3y ago
> Companies are cynically using visa programs no native citizen ever asked for or wanted because they are nothing but an avenue for large corporations to enslave foreign workers with salaries that no American would ever tolerate? Categorically false, go look at the public H1B salary data for large companies and you will see very competitive salaries. If anything, they're on the higher end, much less "no American would ever tolerate". If you just revoke visas, those workers in those jobs and the jobs will be nearshored to Canada/Mexico offices, and new jobs will either be offshored and nearshored. This means the money paid to the workers will go out of the US economy, hurting supporting non-tech jobs. Newer members of the team are likely to be recruited in those places rather than the US, hurting tech workers. This has already been happening. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/dealbook/h1b-visas-us-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/dealbook/h1b-vis...
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  Large companies don't get many of the H1B visas overall, and they generally aren't the ones abusing the H1B visa process. Last I saw, something like 80%+ of H1Bs went to bodyshops like Infosys and TCS, which certainly don't pay well, and definitely do make their employees live somewhere where job swapping isn't easy.
  - belltaco 3y ago
    In the top 15 for 2022 I see Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook/Meta, AWS, Apple, Intel, Walmart, JP Morgan Chase.
    - droopyEyelids 3y ago
      Thanks I stand corrected
piva00 3y ago
Isn't there a salary threshold requirement for H-1Bs? I thought it was a common practice to have a minimum threshold salary for high-skilled visas in developed countries, I know that at least Germany, Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark have such in place exactly to avoid the practice of depressing salaries in the local labour market.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- blululu 3y ago
  Yes but it was set in ~1990 and never adjusted for inflation. It is still about $60,000 a year which was a lot of money 30 years ago. The program was intended to enable companies to hire people with unique skills that are unavailable anywhere else. A salary that is below bottom quartile of entry level CS grads does not reflect that reality.
  - hwbehrens 3y ago
    This is misleading, because the Prevailing Wage also applies based on the average wage by geographic area. This means that Bay Area H1B workers have a minimum wage of something north of $125K/yr depending on their area of expertise. It's still a bit low, but it's not laughably low like the $60K absolute minimum. You can search the database here: https://flcdatacenter.com/OESWizardStart.aspx https://flcdatacenter.com/OESWizardStart.aspx
HDThoreaun 3y ago
I am extremely happy that this country allows people from around the world to come here and try to have a better life. It’s heartless that you’re against that and insulting that you think the rest of the country is too. Educated labor is what makes this country the innovation capital of the world.
morsecodist 3y ago
So you are complaining that these workers are enslaved by the threat of not having visas and you are advocating for cancelling those visas, subjecting the holders to the penalty they are accepting low salaries to try to avoid?
- belltaco 3y ago
  Yes, that's what they want and that's how it has been played out in the past for unskilled workers, while companies doing and profiting from the abuse and hurting both the immigrants and citizens go scot free. https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-arrests-e7113c50a6fd4d2688fc2f2b8a9a91cd https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-us-news-...

flavius29663 3y ago

you don't want to cancel visas, it would wreak havoc on families and lives. But you can definitely reduce the number of new visas

boringuser2 3y ago
I'm sorry, but American citizens aren't to blame for this and don't need to shoulder this burden.
- piva00 3y ago
  American citizens got, collectively, an advantage by exploiting these people. As much as you didn't want them there, they have been working and providing value to your society, and paying taxes. In the end they are not only exploited by the companies taking advantage of a broken system but also now some citizens (you) think they should be punished even more by being kicked out of a place they create roots at. The lack of empathy is, frankly, astounding...
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    I like how you think empathy only exists when it isn't being directed towards people you like. It's just such a cynical and emotionally manipulative conceit to demand that your group (I've perused your history and am aware you're an immigrant) be treated with "empathy", which is something you reserve entirely for your own benefit. If other people thought like you, you wouldn't get any at all.
    - piva00 3y ago
      I like how you only attacked me and not even tried to acknowledge you are lacking empathy by wanting to kick people out of a place due to some misplaced anger :) You are aware you can want the current immigration system to change without causing massive harm to some people, right? They are people, with lives, just like you, not some faceless cog in a machine that you can decide doesn't suit you anymore and be thrown out. It's not cynical and manipulative to remind yourself that these are lives, not a fucking number, we are talking about. Good luck with your anger, hopefully you can find healthier and more productive ways to express it.
      - boringuser2 3y ago
        You are incredibly emotionally manipulative. Perhaps you should remember yourself that the lives destroyed by companies outsourcing American wealth (both directly and indirectly via immigration) had a real cost on real people.
        piva00 3y ago
        You are incredibly dim. Of course it had a real cost on real people, immigration to the USA causes a continuous brain drain in multiple countries that could use the skilled labour for their own benefits. I don't dispute that at all. Outsourcing American wealth causing these companies to become wealthier, maybe it's time you direct your anger somewhere else, somewhere which is actually causing this issue, no? Instead of punishing workers who immigrated and generated wealth for your society. I can give you a tip: point it towards corporations :) Good luck, mate.
  - belltaco 3y ago
    I think the punishment for those workers is the thing they want. Their logic is probably that the worse the punishment the less likely people want to work in the US, so that tech salaries will balloon even higher. In reality many jobs will be nearshored to Canada/Mexico or offshored, especially with all the remote friendly setups that have taken place during Covid.
- welshwelsh 3y ago
  "American citizens" are usually just people who, by no fault and no merit of their own, happen to have been born in the United States. Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms. But putting that aside, when Americans issue a visa, they are forming a contract with another person that they are obligated to honor. When someone uproots their life to come to the US by following the rules created by Americans, it would be unconscionable to exploit them and then fail to honor the visa.
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    > "American citizens" are usually just people who, by no fault and no merit of their own, happen to have been born in the United States. Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms. As an immigrant to the US, I disagree, it's the right of existing Americans to decide how many and what type of new immigrants they accept in their own country. The same way a person born into a rich family -through no merit of their own- has the right to decide who they want to marry and benefit from the riches.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    > Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms. Who should decide, then? This view is both undemocratic and anti self determination.
  - localplume 3y ago
    Yes that is how citizenship mostly works. That is life. Americans absolutely should have the right to decide who comes to work in the US and on what terms. Unbridled immigration and open borders would be a disaster for everyone involved. America isn't a welfare state for the world. Additionally, H-1B visas are nonimmigrant visas. Workers are aware of this. They are not permanent. If they treat it like its permanent, that is their own fault. Would it be better if USCIS was streamlined? Absolutely. Thats why fraud needs to be cut down and bureaucratic bloat needs to be reduced.
  - blululu 3y ago
    Sorry but I have to take a strong disagreement with the claim that anyone has just as much of a right to live in America. Maybe in some highly abstracted form you could say that is America is just job opportunity but for those of us who were born here, it is our home. Our families are here, our lives are here. I'm sure lots of people are more qualified to write Java apps than the native population of America, but America is more than a factory for Java apps. It is communities, cultures and people. Saying that those communities should please make room for anyone who wants a job is just really insensitive and entitled. You see the same thing play out at a local level with gentrification. The people who have built a functional community are squeezed out the moment a large tech company wants to take over the housing stock for a bunch of transplants. The locals are pushed to the margins and a bunch of yuppy tech workers puzzle over why everyone hates them. There is an element of fairness in thinking that we are all the same, but I think you would feel differently if it were your family and friends getting pushed out from the home they built up for a generation.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
edgyquant 3y ago
This is always the excuse given, while no one seems to care about the Americans who are passed up by companies exploiting these programs.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  Punish visa holders because of corporate fraud? That does not make any sense.
  - belltaco 3y ago
    It does make sense in the context of what has been happening with low skill immigration from the south of the border. Punish the workers being abused and let companies doing that off the hook. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/09/workplace-raids-multiply-trump-administration-charges-few-companies/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/09/workplace...
- flavius29663 3y ago
  I explicitly called out "issuing fewer new visas" - how is that not protecting US workers? It seems like preconceived ideas stopped you from reading my comment. A lot of people on visas come and go, not all are establishing a new life in the US. Issuing less new visas will reduce the total number over time, without having to destroy the lives of the ones already established.
amluto 3y ago
I would rather see more visas issued, but I want them to be on better terms. A visa holder should be able to change jobs and even go through a period of unemployment without losing their visa. And, critically for citizens and permanent residents, they should be able to negotiate salaries as well as anyone else. As far as I can tell, importing a moderate amount of skilled labor is good for America and its people. But importing that same labor and underpaying for it is worse for all involved, including for citizens whose wages or opportunistic are depressed as a result.
- welshwelsh 3y ago
  Being able to switch jobs is critical; the existence of workers who are unable to quit is devastating to worker's rights. I would prefer if we had better visas with higher salary requirements, designed to attract the world's best, but without making them jump through hoops. E.g. Someone making $250k = green card instantly. Someone making $80k = denied, try again when you are worth $250k.
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    or just take the top N visas based on income (which is based on a solid work offer). Lottery makes no sense.
    - amluto 3y ago
      This sounds like an auction. That seems kind of sensible, but I'm concerned it would prevent any but the highest paying industries from using H-1B visas. In theory, the purpose is to import specific skills and expertise that is unavailable locally. So if US company needs, say, a plastic tooling engineer, and only China and Taiwan trains enough people with the relevant experience [0], then they should be able to hire someone from outside the US and help them get a visa. Making them outbid the tech giants who are in entirely different industries could drive the cost up to absurd levels and deny the US the benefit of getting plastic tooling expertise. [0] I made this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
Symmetry 3y ago
I sort of wonder if it wouldn't be best to auction off the new visas to companies rather than assign them by lottery. Then they go to the companies their most valuable to and the government gets some revenue.

belltaco 3y ago

> Companies are cynically using visa programs no native citizen ever asked for or wanted because they are nothing but an avenue for large corporations to enslave foreign workers with salaries that no American would ever tolerate? Categorically false, go look at the public H1B salary data for large companies and you will see very competitive salaries. If anything, they're on the higher end, much less "no American would ever tolerate". If you just revoke visas, those workers in those jobs and the jobs will be nearshored to Canada/Mexico offices, and new jobs will either be offshored and nearshored. This means the money paid to the workers will go out of the US economy, hurting supporting non-tech jobs. Newer members of the team are likely to be recruited in those places rather than the US, hurting tech workers. This has already been happening. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/dealbook/h1b-visas-us-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/dealbook/h1b-vis...

droopyEyelids 3y ago
Large companies don't get many of the H1B visas overall, and they generally aren't the ones abusing the H1B visa process. Last I saw, something like 80%+ of H1Bs went to bodyshops like Infosys and TCS, which certainly don't pay well, and definitely do make their employees live somewhere where job swapping isn't easy.
- belltaco 3y ago
  In the top 15 for 2022 I see Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook/Meta, AWS, Apple, Intel, Walmart, JP Morgan Chase.
  - droopyEyelids 3y ago
    Thanks I stand corrected

piva00 3y ago

Isn't there a salary threshold requirement for H-1Bs? I thought it was a common practice to have a minimum threshold salary for high-skilled visas in developed countries, I know that at least Germany, Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark have such in place exactly to avoid the practice of depressing salaries in the local labour market.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
blululu 3y ago
Yes but it was set in ~1990 and never adjusted for inflation. It is still about $60,000 a year which was a lot of money 30 years ago. The program was intended to enable companies to hire people with unique skills that are unavailable anywhere else. A salary that is below bottom quartile of entry level CS grads does not reflect that reality.
- hwbehrens 3y ago
  This is misleading, because the Prevailing Wage also applies based on the average wage by geographic area. This means that Bay Area H1B workers have a minimum wage of something north of $125K/yr depending on their area of expertise. It's still a bit low, but it's not laughably low like the $60K absolute minimum. You can search the database here: https://flcdatacenter.com/OESWizardStart.aspx https://flcdatacenter.com/OESWizardStart.aspx

HDThoreaun 3y ago

I am extremely happy that this country allows people from around the world to come here and try to have a better life. It’s heartless that you’re against that and insulting that you think the rest of the country is too. Educated labor is what makes this country the innovation capital of the world.

morsecodist 3y ago

So you are complaining that these workers are enslaved by the threat of not having visas and you are advocating for cancelling those visas, subjecting the holders to the penalty they are accepting low salaries to try to avoid?

belltaco 3y ago
Yes, that's what they want and that's how it has been played out in the past for unskilled workers, while companies doing and profiting from the abuse and hurting both the immigrants and citizens go scot free. https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-arrests-e7113c50a6fd4d2688fc2f2b8a9a91cd https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-us-news-...