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

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321–330 of 490 posts

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

#321
post #222

H-1B and J-1 consulting and labor firms are far more nefarious than people probably think. Most of my personal experience is with J-1 pimps. These "firms" import seasonal labor and directly collect wages from the hiring company. The catch is as old as markets, as they usually debit housing, food, and fees that are grossly outside of true cost, but allow for just enough origin country adjusted income to still make sen…

The J-1 program is readily abused. I've known young people abroad just graduated with finance or accounting degree are brought in under the J-1 program, under the guise of "business training" for 3 months. They end up doing retail work in bakery or manual work in the kitchen for minimum wage. They have to pay for their own cost for flight, food, and room.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a substantive argument, or merely the vague supposition that somewhere out there there must be some personal anecdote that invalidates what I said? Could you clarify what "assume so much" refers to? I'm pretty sure that the only assumption I made is that most illegal immigrants are not non-workers collecting benefits.

Do you have a substantive argument, or is assuming that all illegal immigrants come here with 0 cash your argument?

It's possible illegal immigrants saved money - the question then arises why the Americans didn't.

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

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's not a shortage of skilled engineers, then why is Google paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? While it's true that the industry has a bit of myopia and tends to focus on a specific subset of engineers as "skilled," there is absolutely a huge shortage of them and massive competition to hire them.

Google is one of the few companies hiring H1B's for their true purpose. If you look at where most of these visas are going it's clear that a large majority are low quality jobs. It's a disservice to the brilliant visa holders I know as well as US citizens. it's extremely hard for them to get a job at a good company because so many of the visas are getting soaked up by those abusing the system. If there was a huge eng…

What? That is happening.

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

#324
I miss waking up in the morning and checking the news and not seeing some story about how horrible the H-1B is and how I'm stealing an american job for a shitty wage.

Such a nice thing from a site that freaks out if you call someone illegal instead of undocumented. So much love for immigrants, except lets still shit on them because DEY TOOK R JOBS.

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

#325
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joel Spolsky makes important points in the article. Disregarding them because you don't like the web site that they're posted on is fallacious reasoning.

Inc is a publication targeted towards business owners. Nothing about the site is meant to be neutral. It's like learning about Democrats from a Republican website. I wouldn't disregard it so quickly if the source was more neutral.

And that's how echo chambers of thought develop. Only listen to the sources of information that you wish to and disregard others without evaluating what they are providing.

Sorry, but Spolsky is normally extremely insightful and if you read the article, he makes many excellent points that are worth considering no matter which angle you're approaching the problem from.

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

#326
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely true. Companies like Infosys, cognizant, Accenture spams the visa applications with huge amounts, causing the H1B visas go into lottery process (if applications exceed the 85k visa availability). And for this spamming they deserve to be blamed. These companies alone file more than 100k LCAs each year. LCA is the first step before applying for H1B. This is a major issue for students who pursue Masters in…

The Masters in US is gamed too. Many of those students are the ones who could not clear the campus interviews of Infosys, Cognizant or Accenture when they were in the college for Bachelors. So they come to "study" MS in the US so that they can get into the H1B system easily. As far as I know, the MS hires do not posses any special skills. Most of them fake their experiences to get into the companies. There are specif…

"The Masters in US is gamed too. Many of those students are the ones who could not clear the campus interviews of Infosys, Cognizant or Accenture when they were in the college for Bachelors. So they come to "study" MS in the US so that they can get into the H1B system easily."

I don't mind a bit of cynicism but this is absurd. Why the hell is "study" in scare quotes? It's a pretty standard thing for fresh graduates to better their chances for employment by getting higher degrees.

"As far as I know, the MS hires do not posses any special skills."

Maybe you should keep your speculations to things you do know.

I think you're being making the classic mistake of using your narrow experience range into making far larger proclamations based on speculations and innuendo. As an employer in silicon valley myself, I would definitely look upon a resume from a person with a Master's degree from US more closely than someone coming off of the infosys/wipro train. That is not to say that there's a clear yes or no either way but having an MS from a US university is at least one positive signal among other signals I'd look for in a resumé.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just confused as to what you actually want to see happen to the SV bully-boys. The democrats (as far as I can tell) have had little to no actual effect on coal or guns but your comment makes it sound like they've been able to rein them in or bust them up or something. I was kind of making a joke because to me the democrats have been largely ineffective against coal and guns. Thats not necessarily their fault, to…

>I'm just confused as to what you actually want to see happen to the SV bully-boys. I'd love to see the value of their businesses destroyed through zealous over-regulation. I'd love to see the IRS target them for audits the way Obama's IRS targeted conservative groups. I'd love for them to be criminally prosecuted, and -- dare I dream? -- jailed for any violations of the tax code that might be uncovered. That would w…

The problem is, the GOP's rhetoric is free markets, but their reality is crony capitalism. If they were serious about illegal immigration, they would go after the American employers and corporations that exploit illegal labor, first.

You are right that politics is a war and ideologies are shouted but policies belie them to be empty promises. It is ironic that a libertarian is cheering on a protectionist administration to attack economically libertarian/neoliberal corporations (in the SV mold - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology) who are aligned with a center-left liberal/socially liberal party.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But pretty logical, no? You don't want someone to migrate to your country in his late 50's / early 60's, contribute to your economy for a few token years and then piggyback on your medical welfare system for rest of 15-20 years. Whats the incentive for local citizens to welcome immigrants in that case? (And no, I don't want to consider rare examples of superstars in their 60's. I am just talking about average Joe's).

You can't get social security unless you pay in for a sufficient number of years

But that's not the only program. You can get Supplemental Security Income without even being a citizen or ever having paid in.

https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-non-citizens.htm

Also you can generally get Medicare if you're old and you've paid in for a few years.

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

#329
post #132

> overestimation of Russia's danger on the US and EU Depends what you mean by “EU”. Western Europe? Sure, Russia maybe isn't a big deal for them. But the Baltic states, which are EU and NATO member states, understandably consider their next-door neighbour a huge threat.

What would a big country benefit from invading its weak neighbor in the 21st century? Putin isn't an angle but he is surely not Europe's or US' enemy like the liberal media is trying hard to push that narrative. Many of the Baltic states are inexplicably pushing the west towards a pointless conflict with Russia. It's just like Georgia in 2008 or maybe even like Poland with Nazi Germany in late 1930s.

Inexplicably? Let's take a quick look at some history.

Russia has attacked & occupied the baltics multiple times. Imperial Russia occupied Estonia during 18th - 20th century, and Soviet Russia once again occupied for half of the 20th century. During this time they sent the natives to Siberia, while importing Russians here and imposing other forms of russification [1] to obliterate our culture. It's more than just about land, it's about the survival of our culture which has been under systematic attack by Russia for the overwhelming majority of the last 300 years. The current Russian regime isn't much different and holds a strongly anti-Estonian view, so of course self-preservation is the #1 political issue for us.

Russia still celebrates everything Soviet as the biggest heroes that have ever lived, and have an amazing number of Stalin statues/paintings everywhere. Then they fund & organize attacks on Georgia [2], and annex Crimea [3]. Then, as recently as 2014, the FSB came into Estonia and abducted one of our intelligence agents. [4] This agent was denied contact with anyone, and was given premission to only use a Russian appointed lawyer. In a charade of a trial he was quickly sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was later exchanged for a FSB agent who was sitting in our prison. [5]

Then there's the fact that Russia keeps flying their military planes into baltic airspace on a regular basis. [6] They have been doing this ever since the collapse of USSR and they keep doing this even today when we have NATO fighters patrolling the skies. It might be easy to say "liberal media is pushing propaganda" if you live far from the Russian border, but we are actually living here with regular Russian war plane visits and seeing events like Crimea where they go even further.

So you see, it's not only about precedence, but it's also about the continuation of the theme and actual real events that keep happening.

--

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eston_Kohver

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksei_Dressen

[6] https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+plane+estonian+airsp...

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

#330
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where are you getting 60%? Are you adding up the two years? And I presume you're in the US, but from an external observer's perspective, 'poverty' in the US is extreme and is almost incomprehensible to people the rest of the Western world. These are not people "choosing" to not work, they're the most decrepit, uncared-for group in the developed world.

Table 3 and division.

And I presume you're in the US, but from an external observer's perspective, 'poverty' in the US is extreme and is almost incomprehensible...

I spend about half my time in the US, half in India. So as a semi-external observer, all I can do is laugh at you. Most middle class people would love to live as well as the American poor do. Actually so would many Europeans - Bulgarian GDP/capita is about 1/2 of what the average poor American consumes.

No matter how much you might scoff and sputter, most poor American adults chose not look for work even once in the past year. That's just the basic fact of the matter.

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