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Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

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Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#211

Post by rhaway84773 »

andrewjl wrote: post #138
s1artibartfast wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visas always are bad for citizen workers, full stop. They are always competition blunting the labor market. It is always good to be labor in a labor constrained market, and the lower supply, the better. I don't see how any liberalization could help local workers in the short term (I assume liberalization means expansion in this context).

It's really doubtful whether a labor constrained labor market helps _all_ local workers. Sure, some may see a benefit. Others might see employers cancel projects and reduce planned investments, due to more expensive inputs driven by higher labor costs.

This, in fact, is exactly what is happening in the UK since Brexit, when UK employees lost access to a vast pool of foreign EU workers.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#212

Post by rhaway84773 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #141
JimmyAustin wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigrants subsidize the citizenry. They pay enormous amounts of taxes, and consume no welfare.

I don’t believe those numbers, economics is terrible at measuring ‘but for’ conditionals. Statistics will tell you whatever you need if you torture it enough. As a former immigrant employee to the US I felt the intended wage suppression first hand. But for the large numbers of immigrants would a wage shortage lead to more taxes paid by citizenry? As I’m now an employer and not an employee I get the benefit of the wag…

So because data can be used to mislead, we should ignore data, and go by assumptions and feelings. Hmmm.

I guess if all you have to go by is your own personal anecdote, one can understand why you might feel immigration is a net negative for the country you’ve immigrated to.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#213

Post by deelly »

hgs3 wrote: post #191

Work visa programs shouldn't exist. They undercut supply and demand. i.e. If there is a demand but a low supply, then the price should go up. Here there is a demand for workers and, according to Big Tech, an "insufficient supply" so they should be raising wages to compete for the available talent. Importing "talent" artificially increases supply and thus suppresses wages.

Maybe instead of killing "work visa programs" we can kill "low wages" for foreign workers?

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#214

Post by spprashant »

Everyone wants a open market, till it's hits the job market.

H1B workers come from countries where the wages are about a fourth of the average wage here. Of course they would settle for lesser salaries. Most privileged American software developers would rather gatekeep than level up their skills.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#215

Post by candiodari »

hintymad wrote: post #168
foobiekr wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a scam to pretend that H1B workers are, on average, high performers in key positions. That isn't the reality, has not ever been the reality, and will not ever be the reality. H1B is about cost of labor, has always been about cost of labor, and will always be about cost of labor. disclosure: have worked for large h1b heavy shops my entire career, and while there has been the very occasional exception, the bu…

> It's such a scam to pretend that H1B workers are, on average, high performers in key positions. I don't think this is what OP meant. OP said "what if you have a H1B worker that's a high performer". This has nothing to do with the average performance of any group. The point is that a blanket mandate that a group should be fired over others first may hurt the livelihood of a company. Note whether this is right or wro…

It's also about companies violating the H1B visa rules on a large scale. H1B is supposed to be about high performers (that is in the law) ... and it just isn't. Companies do not ever use it like that.

There should be consequences to violating these rules. Not being allowed to hire workers JUST because they're cheap (99% of H1B visa workers) is something that should always be enforced.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#216

Post by UncleMeat »

rayiner wrote: post #200
arcticbull wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders. Given these folks could be 10+ year long-term Indian residents of the US with approved I-140s waiting for their priority dates to come up, I'd say this would be incredibly inhuman…

These folks should invest their talents in India instead. My mom was talking about how her siblings were selling their inherited property in Bangladesh (where land prices are skyrocketing) and buying property in the US, Canada, and Australia. And I’m like—you realize this is helping to keep Bangladesh is poor, right? All that capital flowing out to developed countries. (Not to mention the brain drain.) Meanwhile they…

One of my coworkers is gay. He is an Indian citizen and has been in the US for about two decades, roughly half of his life and basically all of his adult life. He is still waiting for a green card and will likely wait a lot longer.

"Just invest your talents in India" is asking him to leave his friends, his long term partner, his job, his home, and everything he has known for most of his adult life. It is also asking him to move to a place that is oppressive to his sexuality and denies him his deserved human rights. It is inhumane.

I also have no idea how H1Bs are voting to turn American into Bangladesh. They aren't allowed to vote.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#217

Post by UncleMeat »

diversionfactor wrote: post #192
estebank wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After living and working in a place for 10 years you no longer have "a place to go back," the new place is your home, regardless of whether USCIS and US immigration laws categorize you as a "non-resident alien." Uprooting people's lives, including that of US nationals (10 years is long enough to meet someone and have kids, even people that do not have a US citizenship or permanent residence either) is not humane. Vis…

I worked that long in another country, as an American, and had kids there. Then I was laid off. The government didn’t care, my employer didn’t care, I had to leave and uproot everything. This is how it works in most of the world. Only in America do we think an immigrant “deserves” a job while letting native born citizens go hungry.

You were treated inhumanely. That's not a reason to treat others inhumanely.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#218

Post by UncleMeat »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #126
kasey_junk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t necessarily believe this position but not a single one of your points argues against the theory that H1b visas are bad for green card/citizen holders during times of layoffs. It’s a perfectly logical (if not humane given current immigration law) position to hold that companies should be required to lay off visa holders first and for there to be a “cooling off” period between layoffs and hiring of visa holders…

Visas always are bad for citizen workers, full stop. They are always competition blunting the labor market. It is always good to be labor in a labor constrained market, and the lower supply, the better. I don't see how any liberalization could help local workers in the short term (I assume liberalization means expansion in this context).

Software jobs create software jobs. A huge reason why engineers in the US are paid so much better than in other countries is because people from all over the world come here to be educated in software and work in software.

There was far lower supply of software engineers in the 1980s. But that market was much worse for software engineers in the US.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#219

Post by UncleMeat »

User23 wrote: post #173
belltaco wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from where is the article getting that they're low paid? Its paywalled. If you see their filings the salaries are on par.

You can’t really refute the claim that H-1B drives down the market price of labor by citing their price in the market. You have to show those wages would be the same even without the immigrant workers. From a basic supply and demand perspective that sounds unlikely, but markets are complex dynamic creatures so perhaps it’s the case. Nevertheless it needs to be shown.

Similarly, it is very challenging to demonstrate this claim. It does not seem like the sort of thing we should take as a given.

Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs

#220

Post by UncleMeat »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #26
shihab wrote: post #6

> Google filed dozens of applications for foreign workers to serve as software engineers... For comparison, Google laid off 12,000 employees this cycle.

And there was no one capable for these roles in those 12,000 people? I find that hard to believe. If the answer is “no”, prove it (I have been the sponsor of H1Bs, and am familiar with the paperwork and the process). Edit: > Normalizing reneging on job offers is a bad path to go down. Google has already done this previously during economic uncertainty. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/29/google-said-to-rescind-job-o...

A bunch of Googlers who were fired managed to get rehired in new positions.

But you can imagine that a lot of the people who were laid off would be justifiably pissed and uninterested in that sort of thing.

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