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Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

theguardian.com

31–40 of 118 posts

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and you can fulfill this growing demand by raising wages, which is essentially the market mechanism to bring in additional supply. Another way to address this is by importing cheaper labor from abroad. For American workers, it is better to let wages rise than to import foreign labor (which would ultimately suppress wage growth). Therefore, importing labor does suppress wages — as you've essentially demonstrated…

Indeed they raised the wages, and yet supply didn't keep up, and that's the reason for H-1B.

Looking at discussions about the current dire state of the white-collar job market — with thousands of applications per job posting and many months of job hunting, even for individuals with over 10 years of experience — it's hard to argue that we're not currently oversupplied.

Perhaps it's time to reconsider the "supply" side of the equation and do something with H1B.

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

america IS the country of immigrants (everyone except native americans…)

i read somewhere as a kid that they too came across the bering strait ...

see:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait

and

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_Unit...

which leads to:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Am...

which leads to:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopling_of_the_Americas

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#33

Wonder what people think about this on both or multiple sides of the equation.

Animal Farm, they'll round up the brown people unless they have H1B, those ones can stay, for now.

nice take.

"some people are more equal than others", from that book, unless it was from Orwell's other famous book, 1984.

I also read another one by him, Down and out in Paris and London.

I liked all three of the books.

IIRC, we had them in school in English literature class.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Lo...

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#34
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say this has upset Trump supporters who are supposedly "anti-immigration" but most of the Trump supporters I know are immigrants and nobody has a major problem with this.

I know a lot of Trump supporters who are nice people, but I also know a great many that are overt racists. It’s never against me (they make the point they aren’t against “people like me”) but there is always a group they don’t like - other Latin Americans (I’m from Brazil, but they also are usually surprised when they learn that), Middle-Eastern, Indians, and, lately, Chinese (and others, because they can’t tell the…

Many Trump supporters specifically, and USians more generally, don't know a lot of things that many people in other countries know; basic general knowledge about the world, including other countries, being a prime example.

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say this has upset Trump supporters who are supposedly "anti-immigration" but most of the Trump supporters I know are immigrants and nobody has a major problem with this.

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[flagged]

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#37

There is legit use of H-1B, which helps make America the leader in tech. Top tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon would not be top tech companies without this immigration. Then there are abusers... for example back in 2016 Disney hired a bunch of H-1B workers and immediately laid off American workers, and then required those American workers to train their H-1B replacements. The abuse must be stopp…

there is very little legit use of H1B, the tech companies are abusing it by not hiring US employees in lieu of getting underpaid H1B’s who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize) - modern day white collar “slavery”

H1Bs I've seen were treated worse than American workers or seemed to work at a roughly 60% of American jobs. No American would take a job posted for a 40% paycut, regardless of the title. The system is being gamed.

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are the folks who contributed to the "Attention is all you need" paper [1] which changed the world as we know it, and the countries they came from. I rest my case. Ashish Vaswani: India Noam Shazeer: USA Niki Parmar: India Jakob Uszkoreit: Germany Llion Jones: USA Aidan Gomez: British Canadian Lukasz Kaiser: Poland Illia Polosukhin: Ukraine [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762

I'm dumbfounded that some people think high-skilled immigration is negative sum. It is so glaringly positive sum. Another country invested 20 years to train a 130 IQ person from birth to tertiary educated. And then the US gets to skim the top 0.1% off that expensive process without paying a dime. These immigrants then generate consumption, scientific discoveries and found companies in their prime working years, which…

there is a huge difference between being “anti-immigration” and critiquing H1B program which is what we are doing here… a very very huge difference :)

I am an immigrant so 1,000,000% not anti-immigration, everyone around me besides native americans is also an immigrant. I am also former H1B-er. the program is deeply flawed and is used for exploitation more than anything else

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#39
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed they raised the wages, and yet supply didn't keep up, and that's the reason for H-1B.

Looking at discussions about the current dire state of the white-collar job market — with thousands of applications per job posting and many months of job hunting, even for individuals with over 10 years of experience — it's hard to argue that we're not currently oversupplied. Perhaps it's time to reconsider the "supply" side of the equation and do something with H1B.

I agree that there is currently a problem in the job market. It would make sense to temporarily pause the H-1B program for candidates with only a bachelor's degree. It should still be open for those with masters and PhD degrees.

Re: Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

#40
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument doesn't hold because you don't know how much an average American SWE would be making today if there were no H1Bs — it could be $200k. > because there aren't enough qualified workers in the US It's often not a shortage of skills but a shortage of pay. Companies can also invest in growing local talent. There are tons of STEM graduates who cannot find jobs — because why hire a junior when there's a supply…

If the wages are rising that means demand is greater than supply. Tech companies are telling the truth when they say there is a shortage of workers.

No. Wages can rise without change in demand. You should let smarter people comment.
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