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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

#121

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> That's an illusion small business owners keep putting forth.

No, it's a fact, which is why...

> It is a well established fact in economics that free movement of capital will concentrate the capital in fewer hands.

Yes, the nature of capital is such that policies which empower capital also accelerate it's concentration, whereas policies which empower labor decelerate (or even reverse) the concentration of capital.

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

#122

Post by ivan_gammel »

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.

This would happen if supply of workforce would be higher than the demand. Why would a company fire someone when even with immigration demand is not met?

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

#123

Post by TangoTrotFox »

dragonwriter wrote: post #121
candiodari wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That's an illusion small business owners keep putting forth. No, it's a fact, which is why... > It is a well established fact in economics that free movement of capital will concentrate the capital in fewer hands. Yes, the nature of capital is such that policies which empower capital also accelerate it's concentration, whereas policies which empower labor decelerate (or even reverse) the concentration of capital.

I'm not seeing your argument here.

Let's think about the power of labor for a minute. I think we can both agree that it's heavily contingent on its replaceability. When workers are difficult to replace they are naturally valued more highly. Doctors don't earn huge paychecks because there's some enormous value placed on their work, but rather because there are few doctors relative to demand and so each doctor has a very low level of replaceability. It's the same thing for jobs like athlete or actor. These workers become irreplaceable which gives them a tremendous amount of negotiating leverage.

Even unions can easily be seen in the same framework. Unions work to treat a large number of employees as a single force whose entire source of power and leverage comes from the fact that that 'single' force is less replaceable. This is also why unions in fields where workers are easily replaceable generally don't work (without some sort of third party protection or more underhanded tactics) as they are unable to sufficiently reduce their level of replaceability.

And I think we can also both agree that free migration would massively increase the replaceability of nearly all workers. I'm completely open to your idea, but I'm not seeing the logic!

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

#124

Post by abc_lisper »

checker659 wrote: post #78
diebeforei485 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 9% only includes H-1B folks who are directly employed by Apple. Apple also has hundreds of contractors employed by Tata, Infosys etc on H-1B's, in Apple's internal IT department ("IS&T"). These people are paid less than the 9% of people above, and would not count towards Apple's own H-1B numbers.

Like how many?

3000 if I remember right

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

#125

Post by abc_lisper »

vkou wrote: post #99
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…

That's the whole point. Unless you are a direct descendant of native Americans, you too are a guest of theirs, regardless of whether you are a first generation immigrant, or the grandchild of one. But strangely, nobody is in much of a hurry to ask for native opinions on immigration policy. I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even mor…

Sounds fair. Why restrict yourself to US then. You should go to Venezuela, which according to you, you have an equal right to go to.

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

#126

Post by bduerst »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #122
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.

This would happen if supply of workforce would be higher than the demand. Why would a company fire someone when even with immigration demand is not met?

Considering that a wage of $32k/yr puts you in the top 1% of the world, I don't think companies will have this opposite problem of no supply.

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

#127

Post by biocomputation »

vkou wrote: post #99
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…

That's the whole point. Unless you are a direct descendant of native Americans, you too are a guest of theirs, regardless of whether you are a first generation immigrant, or the grandchild of one. But strangely, nobody is in much of a hurry to ask for native opinions on immigration policy. I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even mor…

That's an utterly fallacious argument and you know it. We're talking about current US immigration policy, not the history of the US, which no one is in a position to change. Your attempt to reframe this debate by painting all US citizens who are not the descendants of indigenous peoples as 'guests' only weakens your arguments because it is crystal clear that you're using US history as a straw man. Whether you like it or not, US citizens cannot be guests in the US, not legally nor otherwise.

Furthermore, this discussion isn't even framed around 'native' vs 'descended from people from elsewhere'. This discussion is about US citizens (people with US passports who can vote in US elections) and foreign nationals here in the US as guest workers. Start a different discussion if you want to debate the history of immigration to the US.

Your attempt to shift the discussion to various aspects of US history shows that you're apparently not willing to debate H1-B on its merits. As noted above, we define US citizens as people who hold US passports and who can vote in US elections. Immigration control is also not a recent phenomenon. People have been engaging in various forms of immigration control for thousands and thousands of years.

This is talking out of both sides of your mouth. If you really believe the US was founded without the consent of the natives, then why are you here participating in a system that you describe as racist with its origins in colonization?

You either truly believe these things about the US and participate anyway (thereby nominating yourself for the hypocrisy prize) or you don't believe it, which means you're presenting baseless arguments that you don't believe.

You can't have it both ways.

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

#128

Post by sanxiyn »

bduerst wrote: post #120
sanxiyn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It solves a problem of, say, Google and Infosys competing to get the lottery. With auction, Google gets all of them.

Or another solution is to do away with the quota that originally caused the lottery problem to begin with, since it's now required that consultancies like Infosys prove the immigrant is working for the customer.

I 100% support quota elimination, but I thought wage auction might be easier to pass than quota elimination.

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

#129

Post by hocuspocus »

thisisit wrote: post #93

“Cloudwick has never brought resources from India,” Chhabra said. “All the resources are Master’s students that have educated in U.S. and then we hired and trained them.” This is rather slippery way to paint the picture. And from the looks of it this is more of an abuse of the F-1/OPT visas program. These visas haven't got the coverage as much as H1B program: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2495580/it-careers/f…

There's an entire industry built around F-1/OPT abuse, since it's the only way to have a decent shot at getting an H-1B. Cf. the Silicon Valley University and the like.

Other visas are also abused (J-1, L-1, even O-1). It wouldn't be that hard to have a saner immigration path for skilled workers, like Canada, Australia and many European countries.

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

#130

Post by nadezhda18 »

gnulinux wrote: post #76
pmalynin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you're talking about. As a new graduate, I have a very hefty Data Science offer in the Bay. (Canadian here btw).

Is it OPT or H1B?

It should be none of them, it should be TN

"The nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional (TN) visa allows citizens of Canada and Mexico, as NAFTA professionals, to work in the United States"[0]

[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employme...

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