Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 149 posts

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#81

Post by candiodari »

dragonwriter wrote: post #66
candiodari wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why socialist in the vast majority of the 20th century were vehemently anti-immigration, and the right was pro-immigration. Immigration destroys labor, and rewards capital. You'd think "leftists" would have a problem with that. Or maybe it's just the pendulum swining back I guess. When democrats and republicans were young, new, parties, republicans were definitely left-wing and democrats were right-wing. Mayb…

> Immigration destroys labor Free migration empowers labor in the same way that free movement of capital empowers capital; real immigration systems in capitalist regimes tend not to favor free and reciprocal movement but instead are regulated to favor domestic capital, but it's a foolish leftist that is opposed to free migration rather than migration regulated to favor capital. OTOH, H-1B is one of the most blatantly…

That's an illusion small business owners keep putting forth. It is a well established fact in economics that free movement of capital will concentrate the capital in fewer hands.

So in reality, free movement of capital is bad for 99.99% good for 0.01%.

However, I get it, it is a very popular illusion among business owners that this is not in fact true. That they could do better if they could just put their business in more places, deploy their money and capital more flexibly.

99% of them are wrong. Of course, you wouldn't be running a business if you didn't think you could do this, I get it. But time and time again it is shown: 99% of them can't.

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#82

Post by bduerst »

paxys wrote: post #12
Trundle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You contributing to supply would still suppress wages though no?

There are tons of studies that show that high-skilled immigrants create more jobs than they occupy and overall boost a region's economy, but all of those are conveniently ignored whenever someone wants to make a point. Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without the H-1B visa. Yes, there are companies that abuse visas and pay low wages etc. Why not focus on improving enforcement rather than rant about immigrants?

40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families. A large number of jobs and companies wouldn't exist today without work immigration.

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#83

Post by kgwgk »

candiodari wrote: post #71
yen223 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restrictive visa requirements is the reason why workers are willing to put up with the abuse in the first place. Workers have a better shot at demanding a fair wage if they didn't have to face deportation if they spoke up.

Okay let's run that train of thought through, because ... you are VERY wrong. What would happen if we opened the floodgates entirely ? Let's be 100% idealistic and just assume everyone reciprocates, China and the like magically become non-dictatorships, and so forth. Rule of law in rural Madagascar magically becomes as reliable as in the central cities of Switzerland. We just equalize the labor market worldwide. What…

> What happens ? Well wages everywhere strongly trend to the worldwide average wage

Like wages in the US are all equal to the national average? Like wages in the EU are all equal to the EU average?

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#84

Post by pkaye »

thisisit wrote: post #32

PSA: This is massive clickbait. This article is not about "Bay Area", as in San Franciso Bay area. Here's the content: A dozen Indian workers at an East Bay technology firm were promised salaries of up to $8,300 Cloudwick Technologies of Newark has been ordered to pay about Seriously, what is this East Bay area? Google turns up nothing. Edit: Thank for pointing out my mistake. Looks like my understanding of US geogra…

Newark is like 5 miles (as crow flies) from Facebook and Google.

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#85

Post by biocomputation »

Gigablah wrote: post #77
biocomputation wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to being cheap and uncivil, it's absolutely unbelievable (but not surprising) that a foreign national here in this country as a guest of the American people thinks that it is in any way acceptable to say things like this. You would do very well to advise yourself on the laws of the United States, which do not require ancestry from any particular place in order to qualify for citizenship. That includes peo…

> It starts with R. And ends with N? /s

?

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#86

Post by TangoTrotFox »

paxys wrote: post #12
Trundle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You contributing to supply would still suppress wages though no?

There are tons of studies that show that high-skilled immigrants create more jobs than they occupy and overall boost a region's economy, but all of those are conveniently ignored whenever someone wants to make a point. Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without the H-1B visa. Yes, there are companies that abuse visas and pay low wages etc. Why not focus on improving enforcement rather than rant about immigrants?

One major issue you're going to have with studies like this is the same as with studies on any social or economic issue - there's room for 'massaging' the data to fit any narrative. It's the same thing with things like minimum wage. In Seattle after the city increased the minimum wage they commissioned an independent study from the University of Washington study to try to assess the overall results. The study indicated that they'd lost ~5,000 jobs and the changes were hurting lower income workers resulting in fewer hours and an overall loss of $125 per month per worker. So they canned that study which was supposed to run for 5 years, and commissioned an individual well known for evangelizing wage increases to carry out a new study. There's a writeup on WaPo here [1] about that. The Michael Reich individual they quote, in that article is the person who was commissioned to carry out his study. And he managed to report that wages are up and there was no increase in unemployment.

H1-B (and immigration in general) is not only a fairly hot political topic, but also one where there an immense number of massive corporations that benefit substantially from the system. There have been an large number of reports, including government reports during the former administration, indicating a substantial depression of wages due to H1-B visas. [2] I hate to cite Wiki, but really - there are a ton of reports there and me giving dozens of links in this post is less reasonable than just linking Wiki there.

So on this issue, your phrasing is already hinting at some angling and I'm not sure you even realize it! In the US there are a huge number of STEM educated individuals who are not working in STEM. Certainly many of them are doing so voluntarily, but it's equally certain many of them are doing so involuntary. Filling these jobs domestically would of course create at least as many jobs, but on top of those created jobs it would also allow citizens to also occupy the 'creating' jobs, all without the wage depression of H1-Bs.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-s...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Wage_depression

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#87

Post by sanxiyn »

dingo_bat wrote: post #57
tiff_seattle wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H-1B shouldn't be used for entry level positions though. It should be used for positions that cannot be filled by the local workforce.

So no jobs for newly graduated students who are not citizens?

H-1B is not intended for newly graduated students. For them, there is OPT. You are right OPT is restrictive, but that is best solved by changing OPT.

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#88

Post by sanxiyn »

bduerst wrote: post #72
curun1r wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would result in tech workers continuing to be underpaid, just slightly less so, and other professions being complete non-starters for immigrants. Working in tech, it's easy to get myopic about H1-B issues and only see how the program affects our workplaces. But it's important to realize there are professions other than tech that get paid a lot less than even the underpaid tech H1-B visa holders. And adjusting th…

Not to mention it would drive down wages for American jobs. This national auction for visas would be an economic disaster, resulting in immigrants being paid much less in areas that have higher a cost-of-living. Companies could pay immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens, and lay off the citizens. Immigrants would take the jobs too because it has the added value of the visa.

Paying immigrants less than the prevailing wage of American citizens with H-1B visa is illegal.

Re: H-1B abuse: Bay Area tech workers from India paid a pittance, feds say

#90

Post by closeparen »

Trundle wrote: post #8
vkou wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an H1B at Google, I get paid as much as my American co-workers at the same job title. Please stop spreading FUD.

You contributing to supply would still suppress wages though no?

Why are people unlucky enough to be born in the wrong part of the world less entitled to "suppress wages" compared to the hordes of Americans entering the field?
Post reply on HN