11–20 of 31 posts
Paywalled for me
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35560/w355...
It's a very specialist tome though, and I suspect it's meant to be quoted for its conclusion and abstract more than its methods. Having said that whether or not the "Synthetic Control Estimator" works as advertised, I think most people here will at least get a kick out of it.
Like anything there is a positive and a negative. It’s certain many incredibly talented people immigrated to America with OPT and H1B. However I have observed abuse with my own eyes of H1B labor outside of the FAANG and similar all stars who don’t have leverage to switch firms within the law and have the money or corporate backing to pay lawyers to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. Middle market firms love H1B bec…
This isn't me bitching about how them foreigners are suppressing wages or whatever. They aren't. I'm a citizen so I had leverage, and it wasn't that difficult to find greener pastures. It just sucks to see good people getting screwed. I helped a few of them get out with some strongly-worded letters of recommendation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might’ve seen abuse but it doesn’t mean it’s universal or those people aren’t better off even though they’re being “abused” , which is mostly your opinion else you should’ve reported there employers
you'd have to be pretty naive to think it wasn't common
It's an interesting paper, and it certainly takes "gather evidence and present it" part of the program very seriously.
Is it still an issue after Trump imposed a $100000 fee for h1-b applications?
Is it still an issue after Trump imposed a $100000 fee for h1-b applications?
At least for now, the US court system has correctly called that out, and has blocked the attempt because it's not something a legitimate President can do.
It seems the case is Californa v. Mullin, and the latest status is that his staff have filed an appeal (2026-06-12) asking a higher court to undo their loss.
> ABSTRACT > We study the effects of H-1B immigration on U.S. industries that employ H-1B workers and their trading partners. Using a novel cross-industry design and the 1999–2003 expansion of the H-1B visa cap for identification, we find that H-1B exposure raised incomes for natives and pre-existing immigrants, with gains concentrated in non-STEM occupations. Income gains propagate forward through supply chains to d…
I suspect this topic is too complicated to be truly captured by one such study. But I'll add that the observation of increased income is in line with the predictions of classical economists (e.g Adam Smith) in the case of a growing population. Classical economics says that population growth leads to increased productivity (efficiencies of scale, division of labor) and increased competition for scarce resources (in pa…
No one questions outsourcing likely generated lower-costs for shareholders or labor with stock options. However, did the policy improve productivity measured by revenue or in-house innovation... than probably not, as most of the IT industry retired... they left folks to fend for themselves on a rented cloud with a 43% staff incompetency rate.
Managers often get a percentage of the unspent division budget as a year end bonus as well. So the stats and incentives will skew even if 43% of the workforce is functionally irrelevant to a business. =3
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you'd have to be pretty naive to think it wasn't common
Belief has nothing to do with this. If you think something is common then gather evidence of that and make a convincing case to support your claim. "Trust me, guy" doesn't cut it. "I've seen it" doesn't cut it. It's an interesting paper, and it certainly takes "gather evidence and present it" part of the program very seriously.
Like anything there is a positive and a negative. It’s certain many incredibly talented people immigrated to America with OPT and H1B. However I have observed abuse with my own eyes of H1B labor outside of the FAANG and similar all stars who don’t have leverage to switch firms within the law and have the money or corporate backing to pay lawyers to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. Middle market firms love H1B bec…
The fix would be to allow H-1Bs to jump to any employment, not just employers capable of sponsoring an H-1B. But that creates a new problem: H-1B sponsoring employers are now spending extra time and bureaucracy just to be the welcome mat immigrants step on before getting a real job. This isn't really feasible for them.
It would be easier to more or less "just throw open the floodgates" - i.e. hand out work visas to anyone who can pass a background check and let them apply to any job a US worker can. This would immediately fix most immediately conceivable problems with restricted immigration creating a second class of worker that is cheaper to hire.
On the other hand, nobody wants immigrants anymore. There are an increasing number of people for whom their birth citizenship is the only valuable asset they have, and this sentiment is geographically distributed. It's actually more prevalent in the kinds of countries that are sending people to rich countries - i.e. ask the average Indian how they'd feel about, say, liberalizing immigration with Pakistan or Bangladesh, and they'd probably say something so racist it'd make people at MAGA rallies blush.
Of course, the reason why this happens is pretty straightforward: POSIWID. The people who benefit from immigration visas being handcuff-shaped are the same people who own the news media and are reminding people day in and day out how dangerous and awful the people they're bringing in are.
"Wait, it's all slavery?"
"Always has been."