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

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

#101

Post by bduerst »

nitwit005 wrote: post #95
bduerst wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Not to mention it would drive down wages for American jobs. There are a fixed number of slots in the program. Requiring the highest paid employees take those slots would mean immigrant labor would be costlier.

No, it just means that you have a set supply and the auction settles at a specific wage.

Say you limit the supply so that only immigrants being paid more than $90/k yr gets approved. Now companies start laying off American citizens getting paid more than that in high-cost-of-living areas because they can hire replacement immigrants for $98/k yr.

If you look at the purpose of the H1B program, it's not to play a numbers game with wages - it's to allow skilled labor to come to the U.S. and contribute to the economy.

40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families, and if you keep lowering H1B quotas to make sure Americans survive the wage auction, you're going to stagnate the economy.

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

#102

Post by sg0 »

I've seen consultants in Houston enticing Masters students or spouses of H1-B holders (holding some technology degree) with H1-B promises [Masters students on F1 visa are good targets, because they can work for 12 months if their Optional Practical Training (OPT) gets approved]. A company outsources projects to these consultants, and the consultants pay these people following any schedule they like. Someone I know was hired by one of these consultants, and then she managed to get a job offer with H1-B sponsoring. The consultancy created lot of problems when she tried to quit, and threatened all sorts of repercussions.

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

#103

Post by candiodari »

kgwgk wrote: post #83
candiodari wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure in the US, but in the EU, frankly employer racism keeps wages up. You cannot get many jobs in the Netherlands unless you're culturally dutch. Certainly lawyer or Doctor (normal, GP) is off the table.

Now don't be confused, you can be Indonesian or South American and be strongly culturally Dutch (though there aren't many). But you can't be Polish or Algerian, for example.

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

#104

Post by bduerst »

sanxiyn wrote: post #96
bduerst wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP is talking about switching the H1B visa to a wage auction, specifically doing away with prevailing wage. That's what we're talking about.

I would think any such wage auction reform would maintain prevailing wage requirement. I don't see why not.

Then the wage auction doesn't solve any problem that the prevailing wage requirement already solves, it only creates more issues.

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

#105

Post by sanxiyn »

bduerst wrote: post #80
cheriot wrote: post #23

It's always companies that specialize in offshoring caught doing this. Why do these companies get H1B visas when there are companies willing to pay better that don't? Turn H1B into an auction. Lotteries are a terrible way to allocate a scare resource.

H1B auctions would drive wages down for American citizens. Companies could hire immigrants for less than what the prevailing wage is of citizens working the same job in the same area - then lay off the citizens.

You can have both auction and prevailing wage requirement.

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

#106

Post by candiodari »

biocomputation wrote: post #54
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…

This leftist is is vehemently and resolutely against H1-B. I've posted about it many times here on HN. I feel like access to good jobs and housing are bedrock social justice issues for American workers. I've been called a racist, even though I certainly don't care where the H1-B workers come from. If it were up to me, I would literally line up the planes and send them all home. American tech companies are basically t…

I don't get why anti-H1B attitudes get so consistently downvoted on HN. I mean, supposedly HN is leftist. Ostensibly people here are smart and care about the poor. How come smart people aren't able to see how this system works, when it keeps and keeps getting explained how it's exploitative ?

And yet, the words "anti" and "h1b" in the same post ? -5 karma, at least !

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

#107

Post by paxys »

tiff_seattle wrote: post #63
dingo_bat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If they don't have a skill that employers are willing to pay top dollar for, then no. H-1B is designed for bringing highly skilled workers into the country. It's not a program for job security for new grads.

Experience is usually worth more than skill. It's pretty stupid to turn away smart young people who you have paid to educate in the best universities in the world.

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

#108

Post by bduerst »

nitwit005 wrote: post #100
bduerst wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1B auctions would drive wages down for American citizens. Companies could hire immigrants for less than what the prevailing wage is of citizens working the same job in the same area - then lay off the citizens.

Then you'd just adjust the pool of openings till it stopped being an issue. We control the supply, so we can set the price. And you're kind of overlooking that the program is already heavily used for what you're afraid of.

Then you'd drastically lower the inflow number of skilled laborers contributing to the U.S. economy - which is the opposite purpose of the H1B program.

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

#109

Post by bduerst »

sanxiyn wrote: post #105
bduerst wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1B auctions would drive wages down for American citizens. Companies could hire immigrants for less than what the prevailing wage is of citizens working the same job in the same area - then lay off the citizens.

You can have both auction and prevailing wage requirement.

Then what problem does the auction solve that the prevailing wage doesn't already solve, other than creating more issues.

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

#110

Post by Apocryphon »

candiodari wrote: post #81
dragonwriter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

Capital moves freely. Labor doesn't, or can't. You're ignoring the previous message's point.
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