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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

#171

Post by yummyfajitas »

pscsbs wrote: post #125
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…

You must be joking about the infrastructure. Moving even a few kilometers can take hours due to all the traffic and lack of public transportation.

I was mainly referring to the internet. Io've never commuted in Bangalore, and most of my friends live/work in Indira Nagar or Koramangala. so I've got no real firsthand or even secondhand knowledge of traffic.

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

#172

Post by rhapsodic »

Z1nfandel wrote: post #168
rhapsodic wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

>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?

Yep.

>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!

Thanks!

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

#173

Post by dxhdr »

mdorazio wrote: post #129
d--b wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious at all. Shipping lower skilled jobs to other countries mean higher margins for US companies. Which is good in itself for the US economy. Buying manufacturing from other countries means it's easier to sell stuff to them as well, which is also good to US economy. The fact is that the US has a very good overall economy, so maybe one has to look at the issue of redistribution of wealth for instance. Econ…

I think you're missing two key points here - 1) what are corporations doing with their increased profits as a result of tactics like abuse of the H1B system?, and 2) what portion of H1B salaries ends up back in the US economy vs. abroad? The net effect for the overall economy is only going to be better under the current H1B system if companies reinvest their profits into productive uses, which they haven't been [1].…

> 1) what are corporations doing with their increased profits as a result of tactics like abuse of the H1B system?

I'll answer that for anyone confused: stock buybacks, of course!

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

#174

Post by davidf18 »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #39
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…

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…

Well, the car companies and other companies need to open up offices where tech workers want to live as some firms have already done. Sorry, but a lot of tech people don't necessarily want to live in Detroit or parts of Michigan. They do want to live in SF, Boston, NYC, DC.

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

#175

Post by topraman »

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!

Seriously Canada... Seriously! Stop being nice.

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

#176

Post by rhapsodic »

wnevets wrote: post #134
rhapsodic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You want more strongly written letters? In 2008, candidate Obama remarked, “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them. … Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Four major coal companies have filed for bankruptcy in just the past 15 months. http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/h-sterling-burnett/obama-d...

Do you have a link that isn't extremely partisan political commentary? The reality is even without Obama's CPP coal is dying world wide, between china pouring billions into clean energy and the natural gas boom in the states coal can't compete.

>Do you have a link that isn't extremely partisan political commentary?

It was the first result in a google search for [obama coal fired power plant]. I was just looking for that quote, and I found it. If you think additional context will refute my point, feel free to provide it.

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

#177

Post by xamuel »

dhruvrrp wrote: post #137

The discussion about H1Bs is getting dominated by SV. The brunt of the changes are gonna affect other industries, for example, someone i know is currently doing a masters in biotech at a really good research university, and she is really scared about the 130k lower limit for H1B applicants. According to her, even postdocs in her field don't make that much! If the new H1B system passes as is, then its gonna cause a ma…

Ever tried hunting for a job in academia? There are hundreds of super-qualified U.S. candidates for every opening. If your friend's so amazing she beats all of them, 130k is a steal.

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

#178

Post by mcguire »

michel-slm wrote: post #159
omouse wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fixation on Silicon Valley isn't dumb when wages were deliberately suppressed by Google, Apple, Adobe and others. The big tech companies really do want to keep salaries low and H1Bs can help them with that, along with paying for the really smart people that they can bring in too.

Except that Google, Facebook, Cisco would gladly sponsor you for green card - if they're gaming the system they would surely try to string you along until you've used up your H1B renewal before doing that?

If you start out making much less than other candidates, even after many years of CoL raises you will still be making less.

Source: drastically underpaid for my experience because I was an idiot.

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

#179

Post by projectramo »

program_whiz wrote: post #160
projectramo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said immigration may not cost jobs. And you responded with poverty is bad. If that was a response to what I said, I don't see how.

Your point was that the impact of using non-American labor was essentially nil in every study ever done. My point was that replacing a $25 / hr union factory worker who has healthcare and PTO, with a $2/hr factory worker in a "suicide sweatshop" is not nil. You said that in general, the replacement workers are just economic spenders too, and I provided a counter example (don't seem like these Chinese workers are like…

Okay, I now see what you are saying. So let's take apart those two points.

You might be asking how could replacing a $25 worker with a $2 worker -- foreign, domestic, etc doesn't matter -- have no economic impact on jobs and wages?

So one might argue the following: The company paying the $25 to the first worker, now has $23 in profit/savings. What happens to that money?

They might reinvest it, they might pay it out as dividends, or they might use it for an acquisition, or they might reduce the cost of the good sold (passing it to the consumer). And so on.

Whatever they choose to do will end up creating more jobs and boosting wages in something else.

Now, you might say -- and I won't disagree -- that if they pay them out as dividends then the kinds of jobs they will produce is ship building for yachts, and massages for rich people and perhaps you don't agree with that kind of redistribution.

That may be, but purely from an economic perspective the net impact of jobs and wages has not been significant.

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

#180

Post by t1o5 »

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!

I really feel welcomed here. I should have done this earlier, but better late than never.
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