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

People seem to have arguments about this based on

1) H1Bs depressing the prevailing wage (true if you believe in classical supply and demand)

2) overall economic utility; aka the economy does better/worse because of more H1Bs (I don't really care, but I guess someone might)

One thing which gets left out: H1Bs are more compliant employees, because their employers have them over a legal barrel. They have a much harder time leaving their employer than a citizen does, and they're a lot less likely to complain if they're abused. Turnover is hugely expensive to a software company; between that and the "costs" of having an employee with civil rights; well, not all employers are bad actors, but the temptation has to be there. I've certainly seen this at work in various places. It's pretty rotten. I mean, obviously many consider it a good trade, but it isn't exactly humane. Social costs like this are often left out of economic considerations. Who cares if your GDP goes up if we end up living in a dystopia as a result?

The way I saw it, the "build a wall" campaign was more about mobilizing the frustration many felt about cultural changes and (perceived) social costs of illegal immigration and less about "they're taking our jobs" (though I'm not saying that argument was never made).

I think it was about people becoming upset at seeing their communities change for the worse, seeing signs and publications coming up in spanish, seeing mexican names in headlines about high-profile crime, seeing mexicans use EBT (welfare) cards at the grocery, hearing anecdotal stories about traffic incidents where "a mexican hit me and had no insurance..", and seeing mexican gangs come to their town.

I think a lot of those voters felt unheard and tired of the politically correct excuses used to defend them. And when someone finally stood up and said "I'm going to fight this [ one precursor that enabled these changes] ", they were immediately sold.

(I'm not going to put an "I'm not a racist" disclaimer here, you all should be mature enough to interpret whether or not I actually endorse those stances or whether I am explaining the motivations of others who do)

former H1B & like any red blooded liberal, a Trump critic. However, on this particular matter I agree with the man. H1B is basically indentured servitude for employer. Its not just that you get paid less salary & bonuses it also reduces the bargaining ability when looking for potential opportunities as there is a lengthy transfer process that requires new employer to spend money.

Another practice that I have seen happen lately is (atleast common in employers like amazon etc) is that the younglings that get hired on H1B get a fairly low level position like engineer-I. they are then told that they are ineligible for green card processing until they get to next level. so in effect they are either working 60+ hours a week eyeing for that promotion or just burning their early years out of scarce 6 years limit. Honestly I dont know how is this legal. then there is matter of green card processing and prio date regression which is a whole another can of worms. IMHO at the salaries most young indians are coming to valley and given the rise of startup ecosystem in india, its almost not worth it especially if you look at cost of living here.

One more thing, often immigrant managers who themselves have hone through the process or are aware of intricacies are the worst exploiters as they know when employees are most vulnerable. Lastly, Dont even get me started on the 'consulting' micro body shops that do shit thats clearly illegal & would land the employee is fair bit of trouble if detected.

I definitely have to applaud trump for doing something about this even if under the guise of xenofobia. that said 130k limit will definitely have effect on the small body shops that are exploitative as hell.

there is one positive thing that happened in last few years which should be preserved, its the ability for dependent spouse (H4) visa to find employment. the wifes that come over here are fairly well educated & have carriers of there own. they often fall into isolation and get depressed due to lack of social circle & opportunities. I wish that still remains viable.

No. That just means that there are unviable businesses when software engineers are priced correctly.

If there are 10 businesses that each need to hire 10 engineers, but there are only 80 engineers, then the price of the engineers will be determined by which 8 businesses have a business model that can afford those 80 engineers. The other two businesses don't have a viable business model. They can't sell enough X to account for the cost of the engineers.

Likewise, if you have a business that depends on building an electric car, and you can't afford to buy lithium at market price and still make the car cheap enough, then that isn't because there is a shortage of lithium. Its because you don't have a viable business model based on the price of lithium.

In my example above, there is no shortage of Ferraris. There is only a shortage of people willing to sell their Ferrari at $10.

Or stock. There are 100 open positions for AAPL at $129, but only 80 offers at that price. Thats not a shortage of AAPL stock. That just means there's only 80 people willing to sell at that price. However, if you offer $160 for AAPL, suddenly you'll find a lot of sellers.

Only 80 engineers looking for work? Find someone that looks good on LinkedIn and offer them double their salary. Suddenly more than 80 engineers available.

Most of your claims are false. And for argument sake if they were true, let's face it: Ukraine not only was independent since 1991, but it's territory integrity was guaranteed by Russia and USA.