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there is very little legit use of H1B, the tech companies are abusing it by not hiring US employees in lieu of getting underpaid H1B’s who have no option to lea

there is very little legit use of H1B, the tech companies are abusing it by not hiring US employees in lieu of getting underpaid H1B’s who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize) - modern day white collar “slavery”

rbanffy 2y ago
The customer (companies) don’t think the price for US employees is a good deal and prefer to find a cheaper option that can’t quit as easily. In market terms, H1B workers are simply a better product - slightly cheaper (because companies can game the system) and more predictable (because they can’t show the employer the middle finger).
- jollyllama 2y ago
  No, you missed the point of the GP. The companies don't want them because they are cheaper, they want them because they have less rights. > who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize) The companies don't want cheaper labor. They want slave labor.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    You are missing the point: if they have fewer rights, they are cheaper in the long run.
    - jollyllama 2y ago
      Perhaps we're getting into semantics. Sure, fewer rights necessarily implies cheaper, but not the other way around. "Cheaper" alone fails to get to the heart of the matter.
- cmxch 2y ago
  As stated up thread, treat that as an externality that the business ends up paying to the citizens. Offer them an opportunity to fully uncap their favorite programs on the condition that a large chunk of total compensation (with minimums and locality adjustments) will be paid to citizens that essentially doubles or triples most citizen salaries.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  ^^ what he said ^^
- master_crab 2y ago
  This is correct and yet kinda misses the point. The market exists specifically because of one of the most fundamental and basic of government functions: who is allowed to enter the country and work. Those market economics revolves around whatever the government decides to do: firstly when it created the H1B system and now when all the politicians are arguing over how to handle the abuse of the program. I’d call it something more along the lines of “regulatory capture” than a freely operating market.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > regulatory capture It's been like that for quite some time. A lot of political power coming from economic power is a sure way for a democracy to transition into a kleptocracy.
breadwinner 2y ago
Here are the folks who contributed to the "Attention is all you need" paper [1] which changed the world as we know it, and the countries they came from. I rest my case. Ashish Vaswani: India Noam Shazeer: USA Niki Parmar: India Jakob Uszkoreit: Germany Llion Jones: USA Aidan Gomez: British Canadian Lukasz Kaiser: Poland Illia Polosukhin: Ukraine [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gregw2 2y ago
  They are all able to get O-1 visas for having extraordinary merit. (It may be true some get them via lying as with anything.) Elon came in on an F visa, Trump hired maids via H-2. If the conversation is about H-1B, a list of names is not enough for an argument. There probably should be some level of difficulty between H-1B and O-1 in my view.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  “rest your case” is too funny… this is 8 people, what about 63,992 other yearly recipients of this visa? what an compeling argument you are making (and this is former H1B-er writing here…)
  - more_corn 2y ago
    The point is that major contributions to American tech supremacy come from foreigners. Scrapping the H1B program would jeopardize us tech leadership. Those other 64k people contribute as well. If you want to argue the other side (I don’t know why you would) feel free.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      how would you know whether or not american tech supremacy would not be the same without foreigners? of course you wouldn’t so this is silly line of argument :) the main reason for american tech supremacy is american military budget. and also that is next 876 reasons. H1B program won’t crack top-1000
smrtinsert 2y ago
H1Bs I've seen were treated worse than American workers or seemed to work at a roughly 60% of American jobs. No American would take a job posted for a 40% paycut, regardless of the title. The system is being gamed.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  funniest thing is that there are still people who do not recognize this. it is a simple supply and demand. if there is no “supply” (no US workers can do job X and we need someone from Cameroon) this would mean that this is cream-of-crop position and you’d expect to see 20-30-40-50% premium on the salary to get the right person. I am US citizen and I may not apply for $140k/year job. But if you jack that up to $395k/year I just might. Instead, we’ll do H1B and not only underpay but also have employee by the balls for X mumber of years to do with as we please…

rbanffy 2y ago

The customer (companies) don’t think the price for US employees is a good deal and prefer to find a cheaper option that can’t quit as easily. In market terms, H1B workers are simply a better product - slightly cheaper (because companies can game the system) and more predictable (because they can’t show the employer the middle finger).

jollyllama 2y ago
No, you missed the point of the GP. The companies don't want them because they are cheaper, they want them because they have less rights. > who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize) The companies don't want cheaper labor. They want slave labor.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  You are missing the point: if they have fewer rights, they are cheaper in the long run.
  - jollyllama 2y ago
    Perhaps we're getting into semantics. Sure, fewer rights necessarily implies cheaper, but not the other way around. "Cheaper" alone fails to get to the heart of the matter.
cmxch 2y ago
As stated up thread, treat that as an externality that the business ends up paying to the citizens. Offer them an opportunity to fully uncap their favorite programs on the condition that a large chunk of total compensation (with minimums and locality adjustments) will be paid to citizens that essentially doubles or triples most citizen salaries.
bdangubic 2y ago
^^ what he said ^^
master_crab 2y ago
This is correct and yet kinda misses the point. The market exists specifically because of one of the most fundamental and basic of government functions: who is allowed to enter the country and work. Those market economics revolves around whatever the government decides to do: firstly when it created the H1B system and now when all the politicians are arguing over how to handle the abuse of the program. I’d call it something more along the lines of “regulatory capture” than a freely operating market.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > regulatory capture It's been like that for quite some time. A lot of political power coming from economic power is a sure way for a democracy to transition into a kleptocracy.

breadwinner 2y ago

Here are the folks who contributed to the "Attention is all you need" paper [1] which changed the world as we know it, and the countries they came from. I rest my case. Ashish Vaswani: India Noam Shazeer: USA Niki Parmar: India Jakob Uszkoreit: Germany Llion Jones: USA Aidan Gomez: British Canadian Lukasz Kaiser: Poland Illia Polosukhin: Ukraine [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gregw2 2y ago
They are all able to get O-1 visas for having extraordinary merit. (It may be true some get them via lying as with anything.) Elon came in on an F visa, Trump hired maids via H-2. If the conversation is about H-1B, a list of names is not enough for an argument. There probably should be some level of difficulty between H-1B and O-1 in my view.
bdangubic 2y ago
“rest your case” is too funny… this is 8 people, what about 63,992 other yearly recipients of this visa? what an compeling argument you are making (and this is former H1B-er writing here…)
- more_corn 2y ago
  The point is that major contributions to American tech supremacy come from foreigners. Scrapping the H1B program would jeopardize us tech leadership. Those other 64k people contribute as well. If you want to argue the other side (I don’t know why you would) feel free.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    how would you know whether or not american tech supremacy would not be the same without foreigners? of course you wouldn’t so this is silly line of argument :) the main reason for american tech supremacy is american military budget. and also that is next 876 reasons. H1B program won’t crack top-1000

smrtinsert 2y ago

H1Bs I've seen were treated worse than American workers or seemed to work at a roughly 60% of American jobs. No American would take a job posted for a 40% paycut, regardless of the title. The system is being gamed.

bdangubic 2y ago
funniest thing is that there are still people who do not recognize this. it is a simple supply and demand. if there is no “supply” (no US workers can do job X and we need someone from Cameroon) this would mean that this is cream-of-crop position and you’d expect to see 20-30-40-50% premium on the salary to get the right person. I am US citizen and I may not apply for $140k/year job. But if you jack that up to $395k/year I just might. Instead, we’ll do H1B and not only underpay but also have employee by the balls for X mumber of years to do with as we please…