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Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

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Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#141

Post by mcbruiser3 »

calvinbhai wrote: post #69

Those abusing H1b visas are companies that are usually brought in to replace aging workforce. H-1b visa holders have very limited job portability, which lets the employer abuse the system. If the H1b employee had full work authorization similar to a green card holder (give a 6 year full work auth to every H1b holder, and his/her spouse), then there wont be a question of enslaved H-1b employees trying to grab whatever…

>> give instant green cards to anyone who secures a job in US after graduating from a US university.

sure but PhDs and special skills only

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#142

Post by pyrophane »

ashwinaj wrote: post #139
pyrophane wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get people to literally haul garbage for a living if you give them a good salary, health care, and decent job security. I don't buy the whole "native workers don't want to do this" argument. Employers don't want to pay enough to entice native workers.

http://latinosreadytovote.com/wages-rise-california-farms-am... > Some farmers are even giving laborers benefits normally reserved for white-collar professionals, like 401(k) plans, health insurance, subsidized housing and profit-sharing bonuses. Full-timers at Silverado Farming, for example, get most of those sweeteners, plus 10 paid vacation days, eight paid holidays, and can earn their hourly rate to take English…

I read the article you posted.

The argument that "Americans don't want these jobs even when you up the wage and add benefits" is only supported by a couple of anecdotes from growers who have an interest in maintaining the supply of foreign laborers, and I don't think that is sufficient to make the point.

I would maintain that there is a wage at which a sufficient number of Americans would be willing to do farm labor. Whether that would raise the price of crops beyond what consumers are willing to pay for them is another question entirely.

As an aside, I'm not opposed to foreign workers in the US, but I do find the argument that they are needed because "there aren't any Americans who want to do this" to be a bit disingenuous.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#143

Post by ashwinaj »

pyrophane wrote: post #142
ashwinaj wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://latinosreadytovote.com/wages-rise-california-farms-am... > Some farmers are even giving laborers benefits normally reserved for white-collar professionals, like 401(k) plans, health insurance, subsidized housing and profit-sharing bonuses. Full-timers at Silverado Farming, for example, get most of those sweeteners, plus 10 paid vacation days, eight paid holidays, and can earn their hourly rate to take English…

I read the article you posted. The argument that "Americans don't want these jobs even when you up the wage and add benefits" is only supported by a couple of anecdotes from growers who have an interest in maintaining the supply of foreign laborers, and I don't think that is sufficient to make the point. I would maintain that there is a wage at which a sufficient number of Americans would be willing to do farm labor.…

> and I don't think that is sufficient to make the point.

This maybe a small sample size but none the less shows that there are jobs that Americans won't do. This is despite the decent pay and benefits.

> from growers who have an interest in maintaining the supply of foreign laborers, and I don't think that is sufficient to make the point.

Sure, any one who owns a business would want to lower costs. If there is no option, that would have to raise salaries. And yet, no Americans are taking these jobs.

So your off the cuff comment "You can get people to literally haul garbage for a living if you give them a good salary, health care, and decent job security." falls flat on it's face.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#144

Post by stevenwoo »

outworlder wrote: post #23
delbel wrote: post #14

The h1b program is out of control. We've got Americans who need jobs. I've had a big corporate job where they had us train our h1b and then laid us off. I've also worked for H1B's in America who hired me through upwork. They would outsource their job to me, that's pretty messed up when you fully think that out.

> I've had a big corporate job where they had us train our h1b and then laid us off This is indeed ridiculous. But how often does that happen? More specifically, how many companies go to the trouble of hiring H1B workers in lieu of local workers and then make the current workers train the replacements? if the worker being trained was actually a contractor for one of those big indian IT companies, then it makes more s…

news article today with lots more examples - the rise in companies that specialize in just this tactic should give a clue to it's pervasiveness. http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/20/15370248/trump-h-1b-visa-r...

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#145

Post by tn135 »

knucklesandwich wrote: post #117
davidw wrote: post #80

These threads always have a great mix of: * Subtle racism. * Zero-sum thinking. * Specifically, the lump of labor fallacy. * People not realizing that code is about the easiest thing in the world to ship back and forth between different countries: if a company is hell-bent on being cheap, they'll outsource rather than bring someone in. * A stunning lack of perspective on the benefits that immigrants bring to the econ…

It's incredibly weird when I find myself agreeing with someone on the right. This article is filled with lots of bullshit "its just econ 101" neoliberal cliches (and uses the beloved tactic of the right that "everything I dislike is soviet central planning and a perversion of this clearly natural and non-synthetic notion of a totally free market"). None of that is necessary to what is fundamentally an argument that s…

I am libertarian and I think US immigration system is a glowing failure of central planning. It is something that people on left, right, center and under the ground can very easily agree on.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#146

Post by knucklesandwich »

davidw wrote: post #134
knucklesandwich wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly weird when I find myself agreeing with someone on the right. This article is filled with lots of bullshit "its just econ 101" neoliberal cliches (and uses the beloved tactic of the right that "everything I dislike is soviet central planning and a perversion of this clearly natural and non-synthetic notion of a totally free market"). None of that is necessary to what is fundamentally an argument that s…

I'm not really a right-wing guy either, but I think anyone can agree that the current "magic numbers" involved in H1-B visas are very much central planning at its worst.

It's a failure of policy to be sure, but it's not as though planning is really at fault here, just as open borders isn't really a market solution (even though the implication that it is somehow worms its way into this argument). A market solution would be to use the government to perpetuate scarcity of visa slots and enforce property rights around a visa, and allow visa holders to sell or trade their visa rights. As a corollary, the problem with immigration is not inefficient allocation of slots caused by planning, its that we have immigration limits to begin with.

It's a neoliberal trope to try to work markets into every social problem, but this is really an issue concerning ethics and justice, not allocation.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#147

Post by knucklesandwich »

tn135 wrote: post #145
knucklesandwich wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly weird when I find myself agreeing with someone on the right. This article is filled with lots of bullshit "its just econ 101" neoliberal cliches (and uses the beloved tactic of the right that "everything I dislike is soviet central planning and a perversion of this clearly natural and non-synthetic notion of a totally free market"). None of that is necessary to what is fundamentally an argument that s…

I am libertarian and I think US immigration system is a glowing failure of central planning. It is something that people on left, right, center and under the ground can very easily agree on.

Planning is not the problem, and open borders is not a market solution. There's a fair point to be made that it's an overreach of the state, that it's unethical and pointlessly carceral and represents the kinds of things we shouldn't have government doing, but that has nothing to do with it being a failure of planning. And the soviet analogy is really going out of your way to score redbaiting ideological points when you can compare it to every other needlessly cruel and punitive policy that leads to social ills in our own legal system. At least that would be a comparison structured around the actual problem, which is one of morality and justice.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#148

Post by jdhopeunique »

davidw wrote: post #80

These threads always have a great mix of: * Subtle racism. * Zero-sum thinking. * Specifically, the lump of labor fallacy. * People not realizing that code is about the easiest thing in the world to ship back and forth between different countries: if a company is hell-bent on being cheap, they'll outsource rather than bring someone in. * A stunning lack of perspective on the benefits that immigrants bring to the econ…

"* Specifically, the lump of labor fallacy."

I've seen the lump of labor fallacy come up many times on HN and often it is a case of simplistic reductions of statements like: "Increased labor supply cheapens wages." to some variation of "They are taking our [finite, limited supply] jobs." What may seem like a lump of labor fallacy(that there is a fixed amount of work) may simply just be an application of the law of supply and demand that does not assume fixed supply or demand. The fixed amount of work is assumed by the hearer of the argument and not the maker.

Additionally, even someone who is under the illusion of the lump of labor fallacy may still instinctively understand the law of supply and demand well enough to vote for his or her best interests.

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