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

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

#91
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody here is anti-immigration. The reality is that the H1B program is being used not to bring in individuals with 130+ IQ, but essentially anyone with a bachelor's degree, which can be easily obtained from diploma mills. In some third-world countries, you can even buy your degree outright. For the top 0.1%, there are O1 visas, as well as EB1 and EB2-NIW visas — the latter two don't even require an employer and can…

In the last few days I've seen hundreds of pure anti-immigration posts across various tech focused communities. O1 has an incredibly high bar and not something that "this person has a PhD from a top institution and a strong publication record" can guarantee.

I was responding to the comment regarding "how about the top 0.1%". H-1B isn't designed for bringing the 0.1%, there are other visas that already do exactly that. Also, it is not so high bar, I know people even without a degree who got O1, it isn't even a requirement. But you need to have a public track record of various kinds.

Also, I am not against visas intended to fill labor shortages. But it needs to be done in a way that incentivizes hiring local talent over foreign. Currently the H-1B works the other way around. This has to be dealt with. Like raising the minimum salary, making it significantly more expensive to hire an H-1B worker than a local one, and removing the exploitative leverage employers have over visa holders — people shouldn't have to fear negotiating for better terms due to the threat of deportation. That would likely fix it.

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long have you lived in the US ans where have you lived since moving here Since 1992 - in order: - Springfield IL - Chicago IL - Fayetteville AR - St Louis MO - Washington DC - Denver CO - Chicago IL - Washington DC what is US culture? parents in retirement homes, kids cannot walk alone by themselves anywhere without someone calling Cops, everyone at home buying shit on amazon and watching netflix, psychiatrists e…

Everyone of the things you've described are afflictions that are happening in the other two countries I have citizenship from (one of which is where I was born in and lived as a child). One is in South America and the other is in Europe. It's also happening in many other countries in the world, not just the ones I know. That's a cancer that is ruining all developed or developing countries. America is just further alo…

appreciate the effort but it is no use arguing with a self-loathing liberal.

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

#93

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 voted for Trump and an immigrant and I'm mixed on immigration. I've been in the US for 29 years now and I'm a US citizen. I'm more American in attitude than most Americans I know. I consider myself a nationalist. Immigration has been both good and bad for America and both sides in this debate are being super dishonest. First and foremost, I strongly believe that elected representatives should represent the best int…

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For example, I've across some of them who think that the (sole) language of India is "Indian"! :) There is no language called Indian, dudes. India is both very diverse (regionally and subregionally and fractally), and a melting pot, like the US, and has been that way, for centuries before the US became like that. In both cases, it is due to both being huge, geographically, and due to the invasions in both countries.…

ha, you think they give a damn about that?

If you speak spanish, you're a "mexican", regardless of whether you're from el salvador, ecuador, cuba, whatever.

nevermind what they think about "indians"..... JFC indeed

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

#95
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody here is anti-immigration. The reality is that the H1B program is being used not to bring in individuals with 130+ IQ, but essentially anyone with a bachelor's degree, which can be easily obtained from diploma mills. In some third-world countries, you can even buy your degree outright. For the top 0.1%, there are O1 visas, as well as EB1 and EB2-NIW visas — the latter two don't even require an employer and can…

The average IQ of Indian Americans is 112. That being the average I can see a large percentage being 130+.

https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-americ...

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

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

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> America was never a "high trust culture". > Absolutely not true. It was much much higher trust when I first moved here in 1986 I don't believe it, especially given that you're saying this is due to immigration. What do you mean specifically when you say this? Do you mean there was less violent crime? Because that isn't true. Do you mean that there's more ethnic conflict now? That also isn't really true. America ha…

For the most part, my observations is that we now just put up with rampant property crime and very little of it gets reported. This isn't surprising because getting cops to respond to property crime reports when you call 911 now takes so long that it isn't even worth it. I've personally experienced more property crime and other issues in the past 5 to 10 years than my entire family experienced in the 29 to 34 years p…

I really appreciate the tenor of the discussion you've had with your primary interlocutor(s) above. It's been substantive and civil, and I wish every sociopolitical disagreement online could be approached in the same manner. Because of the respect I've gained for you throughout this thread I'm going to do what I seldom do online, and express something about my political point of view.

I agree with your diagnosis of the problems with American society, particularly the 'high trust' vs 'low trust' line of thought. I'd add the nuance that in the past trust was not (largely) extended across racial lines, but there was progress made, up until it began falling apart altogether.

Coming from a left-liberal point of view, I think the root cause has been economic, rather than cultural, because (developing along the same timeline as your tenure in the United States) we've arrived at an extractive rather generative form of capitalism. I think that explains the H1b abuses we both deplore, the social balkanization, and also the very similar cultural, economic, and governance breakdowns simultaneously appearing in other countries across the "western/liberal" world.

I'm not saying that to spark further argument, just as prelude to: I hope you're right. If the way to re-forming a high-trust society and curing what we agree ails us is as simple as the American right posits then I will happily eat crow over the next four or eight or whatever years. That is, of course, the opposite of what I expect to happen with (as I see them) the extractive capitalists fully in charge, but I am prepared to be proved wrong.

I will ask you, as I've recently been asking all of my right-wing friends, to judge what happens in the near future against the expectations that you have now. If things go badly, and those solutions fail, will you be willing to try "my side's" ideas - think TR +FDR reduce corporate power, : wealth transfers and massive infrastructure investments - next? I believe that's what created the mid-twentieth century cultural foundations which we'd both like to reconstruct.

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

#98
post #69

I used to travel for work, and one year covered companies in St Louis. St Louis is approximately 50% white and 50% black, and yet whenever I went into these companies, the demographics were 50% white and 50% Indian, with blacks only being found as security guards at the front desk. It felt like the H1B were used to fill the low level positions that could have been taken by aspiring black Americans. Steve Bannon made…

H1-B and other visas outside exceptional talent (Einstein level) shouldn't exist. Repeal them.

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

#99
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you missed the point of the GP. The companies don't want them because they are cheaper, they want them because they have less rights. > who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize) The companies don't want cheaper labor. They want slave labor.

You are missing the point: if they have fewer rights, they are cheaper in the long run.

Perhaps we're getting into semantics. Sure, fewer rights necessarily implies cheaper, but not the other way around. "Cheaper" alone fails to get to the heart of the matter.

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

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

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

They are all able to get O-1 visas for having extraordinary merit. (It may be true some get them via lying as with anything.) Elon came in on an F visa, Trump hired maids via H-2. If the conversation is about H-1B, a list of names is not enough for an argument.

There probably should be some level of difficulty between H-1B and O-1 in my view.

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