Live data from Hacker News

Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

mercurynews.com

81–90 of 218 posts

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#81
post #60

I wonder why people here praise free competition on a global market as a primary value when they talk about their products and services, but support competition limiting when it comes to the labor market in their own country.

It's not about competition limiting, it's about unfair pricing and abuse. It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper . And, there are tons and tons of staffing firms who systematically abuse the H1B program - they funnel workers from different countries (especially India), often mistreat them / threaten them / underpay them.

> It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper.

It's as fair as buying something for cheaper when you can.

In fact, it's probably more fair as globalization lifts foreign workers out of poverty.

A richer local worker loses while a poorer foreign worker wins and the U.S. overall wins.

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#82

I wonder why people here praise free competition on a global market as a primary value when they talk about their products and services, but support competition limiting when it comes to the labor market in their own country.

I probably hold a minority opinion, but I wish that the US would take millions of immigrants every year, up to even ten million(!). And people from OECD countries could come automatically as they pleased, ideally like a Schengen Area that extended throughout the whole OECD, with hope of eventually including the entire world.

Yeah I'm not sure you've paid attention to the effect that this has had on employment levels in several European countries, and on adherence to employment legislation.

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#84

I wonder why people here praise free competition on a global market as a primary value when they talk about their products and services, but support competition limiting when it comes to the labor market in their own country.

There's no contradiction here. You're mixing up two markets, and many concepts (you seem to be ignoring law, for example).

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#85
post #73
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about competition limiting, it's about unfair pricing and abuse. It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper . And, there are tons and tons of staffing firms who systematically abuse the H1B program - they funnel workers from different countries (especially India), often mistreat them / threaten them / underpay them.

> It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. Why not? I'd argue that it is more unfair that an American worker gets paid many times more than an Indian worker even when they do exactly the same job. Letting those Indian workers come to America and compete on more equal terms is among the fairest things you can do.

Fair to who?

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#86
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably hold a minority opinion, but I wish that the US would take millions of immigrants every year, up to even ten million(!). And people from OECD countries could come automatically as they pleased, ideally like a Schengen Area that extended throughout the whole OECD, with hope of eventually including the entire world.

Yeah I'm not sure you've paid attention to the effect that this has had on employment levels in several European countries, and on adherence to employment legislation.

I'm not sure how European unemployment can be blamed on Schengen.

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#87
post #60

I wonder why people here praise free competition on a global market as a primary value when they talk about their products and services, but support competition limiting when it comes to the labor market in their own country.

It's not about competition limiting, it's about unfair pricing and abuse. It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper . And, there are tons and tons of staffing firms who systematically abuse the H1B program - they funnel workers from different countries (especially India), often mistreat them / threaten them / underpay them.

> It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper.

See. This is the problem. Is it fair to buy a Toyota because it's cheaper than a Cadillac? You either accept globalization or you don't. Globalization brings nice and bad things. You can't just have your cake and eat it to. Doing that will result in inefficiencies that in the long term will kill your internal economy. Imagine the USA didn't have access to outsourcing. Industries would have collapsed instead of bringing the top level jobs the US citizen enjoys now.

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how anyone could be prevented from using google to research how much they are worth. Edit: To clarify, I am commenting on the parent's remark that employers are preventing employees from finding this out.

Leaving immigration aside -- there are order-of-magnitude compensation differences even among white US-citizen programmers. I.e., some are paid 50k a year; some are paid 500k a year. How is it possible for someone to figure out what they're "worth" in this environment?

Work history, interviews, coding tests, side-projects...

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how anyone could be prevented from using google to research how much they are worth. Edit: To clarify, I am commenting on the parent's remark that employers are preventing employees from finding this out.

Leaving immigration aside -- there are order-of-magnitude compensation differences even among white US-citizen programmers. I.e., some are paid 50k a year; some are paid 500k a year. How is it possible for someone to figure out what they're "worth" in this environment?

I'd hazard a guess that a computer professional who was unable to use google to determine a salary range for his education and experience is probably worth at the bottom.

The ones I know at the top end (and the $500k figure is low) are well aware of the value they bring to a corporation, and price accordingly.

Re: Bay Area professionals indicted for H-1B visa fraud

#90
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably hold a minority opinion, but I wish that the US would take millions of immigrants every year, up to even ten million(!). And people from OECD countries could come automatically as they pleased, ideally like a Schengen Area that extended throughout the whole OECD, with hope of eventually including the entire world.

Yeah I'm not sure you've paid attention to the effect that this has had on employment levels in several European countries, and on adherence to employment legislation.

I have. The effect is very small for most purposes. It's largely fabricated right wing propaganda.

From Oxford University: http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings...

Does immigration create greater unemployment or greater inactivity among existing workers? The first systematic study of this issue used data for 1983-2000 to analyse how changes in the share of migrants impact on employment, labour market participation and unemployment of existing workers (Dustmann, Fabbri and Preston 2005). It concluded that immigration had no statistically significant effect on the overall employment outcomes of UK-born workers. The study did, however, find statistically significant effects on specific educational groups of UK-born workers: immigration was found to have adverse effects on employment, labour market participation and unemployment of UK-born with intermediate education (defined as O-level and equivalent) and a positive impact on employment outcomes of UK-born workers with advanced education (A-levels or university degrees).

A separate study carried out by researchers at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) analysed the impact of labour immigration of A8 workers on claimant unemployment during May 2004-November 2005 (Lemos and Portes 2008). The study found little evidence of an adverse effect. There is some evidence to suggest that, just like the impact on wages, the effects of immigration on unemployment differ between the short and long run. An OECD study of the impact of immigration on the unemployment of domestic workers in OECD countries (including the UK) during 1984-2004 found that an increase in the share of migrants in the labour force increases unemployment for those with skills most similar to the migrants in the short to medium term (over a period of 5-10 years), but that immigration has no significant impact on unemployment in the long run (Jean and Jimenez 2010).

Post reply on HN