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Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

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Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#161

Post by Existenceblinks »

Bartweiss wrote: post #25
zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

> there is a “talent shortage” among Americans I see a bait and switch conducted here all the time, where thinkpiece writers will count up the number of annual graduates in Computer Science (or sometimes Information Technology in general), subtract the number of new software jobs per year, and conclude that we have massive overproduction of programmers. This is obviously stupid, but I keep seeing it. It ignores CS gr…

> implication that any CS graduate can fill any software job regardless of specialization, experience, or interest.

Your basic calculation is still right although I'd add more numbers to the opposite site. "Potential graduates" with or without CS can potentially enter to any software sector, or even hardware. Though this is just a small factor.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#162

Post by program_whiz »

darkarmani wrote: post #83
program_whiz wrote: post #34

Ok what's the suprise here? If you give companies a chance to get cheaper "mostly the same" labor without a downside, or maybe with the upside they can't leave, they're going to take it. That's why I do believe globalization and the availability of huge amounts of cheap unregulated labor does hurt American jobs and industry. Its not xenophobia, its just common sense. I think if you look past any ideas of racism, xeno…

> That's why I do believe globalization and the availability of huge amounts of cheap unregulated labor does hurt American jobs and industry. Its not xenophobia, its just common sense. I'm not sure what you mean by unregulated labor, but the bigger problem in this specific case is not the foreign worker, but the fact that they don't have freedom of movement once hired. If they could transfer job easily, companies wou…

Was referring more to general case, like using less regulated labor abroad (China, Mexico). It has an impact because workers in the US or other first world countries are essentially in an unfair competition those workers can't demand benefits or higher salaries, and the US workers can't "skirt the law" to take lower wages or benefits (for example you can't pay a factory worker $2 / hr in the US). Put it another way, the law essentially says "If you use workers here, your minimum cost is $X. You have unlimited freedom to use workers elsewhere though, and you don't have to follow these rules in that case."

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#163

Post by yummyfajitas »

robjan wrote: post #130
yummyfajitas wrote: post #22

I'll just suggest that it's probably a great time for tech companies to open a Bangalore or Gurgaon office. Bangalore in particular is a good choice - the people are smart, the infrastructure is good, and it's a very pleasant place to visit. Perfect weather all year and the best breakfast in India. Also a very strong tech culture; second in the world to SF, in my view, and without many of the social pathologies [1] t…

We outsourced most jobs to Bangalore and productivity dropped to around about 10% while costs increased. We have experienced death by committee and hierarchy in all of our outsourced projects so far and are now starting to solve this by in-housing everything again.

I didn't say "outsource", I said "open an office". There's a world of difference between having a team in a different office and outsourcing.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#164

Post by cwingrav »

dleslie wrote: post #124
t1o5 wrote: post #29

ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms. These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited and there is nothing we could do abou…

As a Canadian, it is my pleasure to welcome you into our community!

Darn it Canada! Can you stop being nice for a second while we in the US figure out what we're doing? /s

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#165

Post by yummyfajitas »

anjc wrote: post #154
yummyfajitas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, most of our 7 million unemployed are unemployed by choice. They are unwilling to do many jobs they perceive as being "below their station" and they are unwilling to move to places where the jobs are. We need to import a better working class to pay for our leisure class since pushing our leisure class into work is considered socially unacceptable. Here's a great first person account of this: http://www.…

The last major study I saw on this showed that a large proportion of IT and STEM graduates had to move into unrelated industries due to an inability to find employment. This meme that there are hordes of people who would choose poverty because of an unwillingness to work is disgusting.

60% of poor adults choose not to work. I'm sorry you consider reality to be "disgusting".

http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... Table 3 Page 21

My uncited study says that your uncited study is wrong and the authors of your study are Nazis.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#166

Post by t1o5 »

swat535 wrote: post #158
t1o5 wrote: post #29

ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms. These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited and there is nothing we could do abou…

As another Canadian, we need more people like you here! You guys make a significant contribution to our country :)

Happy to be at a place where my skills are appreciated. More of my friends will soon be ex H1Bs.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#167

Post by tzs »

projectramo wrote: post #115
program_whiz wrote: post #34

Ok what's the suprise here? If you give companies a chance to get cheaper "mostly the same" labor without a downside, or maybe with the upside they can't leave, they're going to take it. That's why I do believe globalization and the availability of huge amounts of cheap unregulated labor does hurt American jobs and industry. Its not xenophobia, its just common sense. I think if you look past any ideas of racism, xeno…

There have been many studies on this. Conservatives usually use the phrase "at best, the impact is nil" Liberals usually use the phrase "at worst, the impact is nil" Because the study shows there is negligible impact. Every laborer is also a spender. If the person saves, then every laborer is also an investor. If you believe in the mainstream economic theory, more jobs are produced for the ones that are "taken." You…

> Every laborer is also a spender. If the person saves, then every laborer is also an investor.

What about laborers who send most of their earnings back to family in their home country?

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#168

Post by Z1nfandel »

rhapsodic wrote: post #96
cujo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a gun manufacturer should be held liable for the results of people misusing a gun They aren't.

> They aren't. But many say they should be. Simply because they want to drive the gun industry out of existence and outlaw private ownership of guns in the U.S. And FTR, I normally would not favor regulating Airbnb out of existence. But I've had such a bellyful of Airbnb CEO Brian Chevsky's self-rightousness, that I would love to see him and his investors take a multi-billion dollar haircut. The Democrats weaponized…

So you want to enact sweeping legislation that covers an entire industry because you feel that the CEO of a single company has a poor attitude and you want to spite him?

I'm at a loss for how naive and petty that viewpoint is, and how drastic the unintended consequences could be. But hey, you stuck it to the man, good job!

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#169

Post by HeavenBanned »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #81
ansy wrote: post #42

Could H-1B be more effective? Yes. It could definitely be more fair to the visa holder and do a better job of attracting and retaining the most skilled workers. But I also think it's totally wrong to say we don't have a technology labor shortage. The best evidence of this are the salary numbers for people with math and science degrees. It's not because physics and math suddenly got more valuable. It's because tech is…

There is a luxury yacht shortage. I say this because I want to run a luxury yacht business and I'm unable to buy a luxury yacht for the $10 that I have in my pocket. There is a Ferrari shortage because I want to start a "Uber With Ferraris" business, and I'm unable to buy a Ferrari with the $10 that I have in my pocket. There is a developer shortage because I want to start a software business and I am unable to buy a…

Why is it so difficult for this very simple reasoning to prevail in discourse about tech?

Relatedly, why is the myth so persistent?

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#170

Post by dxhdr »

shas3 wrote: post #99
garyfirestorm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is amazing! However I would like to point out, H1B is not only for Silicon Valley. There are many automotive companies which require foreign talent in specialized fields. Very smart people with multi-disciplinary knowledge are nowhere to be found in auto sector. Signal Processing and vibrations and programming and control systems understanding etc. is required to deal with things like active noise control which…

Yeah this fixation on Silicon Valley is dumb. The worst affected will really be other industries. Small wonder that Lofgren who is a Bay-Area Representative is the one sponsoring the auction system. Many Si valley jobs for which H1Bs are hired are generalist in nature. And it is for generic programmer jobs that you have potential for wage abuse. But outside Si valley, for much lesser wages, companies rely on highly s…

> this fixation on Silicon Valley is dumb

The tech industry accounts for the vast majority of H1B visas: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.asp...

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