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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

#451

Post by reddytowns »

tn13 wrote: post #299

H1B employees being exploited works in Murica's favor. It means American companies are more competitive at the expense of some Rajesh from Chennai. This is something Trump should love. Even if American companies are paying lower wages I don't see the problem. It helps American companies make more profit and lower prices for American consumers. Something that we all must cheer. Some people argue that it lowers the wag…

If Rajesh from Chennai is sending all his money back to Chennai, Americans won't have the funds to benefit from the lower prices. You can see a just released Hollywood movie in the theatre for $3 in Indonesia, that doesn't mean it's better to live there.

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

#452

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #319

It's worth putting in a shout-out to Lofgren's H1B bill: https://lofgren.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentI... Far from "emasculating" it like the article suggests, the "bucketing" system in Lofgren's bill is designed to put upward pressure on all wages, including those of American citizens. The way that it works is that positions paying in the top 2/3 of the average wage for their geographical area will ge…

[deleted]

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

#453

Post by gozur88 »

tkahnoski wrote: post #272
danenania wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about simply allowing H-1Bs to change jobs if they get an offer from another company, and giving them a sufficient window to find something new if they leave their current company? The no-recourse indentured servitude relationship that makes people dependent on a company for their residency takes away all the employee's negotiating power. If we could change this, I expect that wages would begin to even out.

They can. It's just painful and depending on the competency of both companies legal counsel, it can take months. We've had employees accept offers with a start date, only the visa transfers weren't finished yet so they started MONTHS after the expected start date.

I used to work at a company that had a lot of H-1Bs and treated them terribly. Whenever someone was trying to transfer of get a green card there was some involvement with their current employer, and I always used to wonder "What incentive to they have to do this quickly and correctly?"

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

#454

Post by mavelikara »

mi100hael wrote: post #314
tkahnoski wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can. It's just painful and depending on the competency of both companies legal counsel, it can take months. We've had employees accept offers with a start date, only the visa transfers weren't finished yet so they started MONTHS after the expected start date.

The other problem is that AFAIK the 10-year-long Green Card clock resets if they change jobs, so there's a strong incentive not to leave.

H.R.392 - Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 [1] aims to fix the green card backlogs by removing the per-country quotas.

[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...

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

#455

Post by mavelikara »

nostrademons wrote: post #319

It's worth putting in a shout-out to Lofgren's H1B bill: https://lofgren.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentI... Far from "emasculating" it like the article suggests, the "bucketing" system in Lofgren's bill is designed to put upward pressure on all wages, including those of American citizens. The way that it works is that positions paying in the top 2/3 of the average wage for their geographical area will ge…

Also of note, the H.R.392 - Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 [1] aims to fix the green card backlogs by removing the per-country quotas.

[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...

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

#456

Post by mavelikara »

throwawaydbfif wrote: post #36
yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. Joel Spolsky explains why this does not imply what you think it implies. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html tl;dr; Imagine 1 low quality developer who applies to 9 places and gets rejected. There's also 1 high quality developer who appl…

Inc.com is a really bad source for such information... As if they would be expected to be neutral in such a situation. If this was true you would see it across professions and at every level of position, yet it's something fairly unique to software development.

If inc.com is your problem, Joel makes the same argument on his blog here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/

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

#457

Post by dang »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #117

> 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.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13581128 and marked it off-topic. I realize that other comment planted the seed of offtopicness but this is where it sprouted.

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

#458

Post by r00fus »

davidf18 wrote: post #445
r00fus wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/goldman-sachs-power-wh...

I see allegations, but no true corruption. Could you please cite a specific example? Hiring a Goldman banker is no proof of corruption.

I said corruptive patterns, ie, things commonly associated with corruption, like hiring insiders from the very companies the agency is regulating.

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

#459

Post by Chris2048 »

okreallywtf wrote: post #293
Chris2048 wrote: post #278

Cheap labor isn't the only issue here. Wage theft in the form of capping competition is the big issue. Assume the rate of salary change dS(t)/dt is propotional-to/a-function-of (average_labor_demand - average_labor_supply) Now, if you keep topping up supply from overseas, salary never increases as much as it might, as such it is limited - as such, salary rate increase is also capped; and it's not employees can have a…

Just to play devils advocate, wouldn't it eventually even out then because high demand and lower wages here would mean that other countries with a tech sector would have high wages and would then be more appealing, which would encourage H1B visa seekers to consider going elsewhere or would even lure more talent from the US overseas. Granted, like many market-based arguments I make a lot of assumptions about how easil…

This would work if all countries were equally desirable, and capable of supporting the same economy. Maybe the US is competing with Europe? But at the moment US salaries are considerably higher.

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

#460

Post by Chris2048 »

strainer wrote: post #382
Chris2048 wrote: post #278

Cheap labor isn't the only issue here. Wage theft in the form of capping competition is the big issue. Assume the rate of salary change dS(t)/dt is propotional-to/a-function-of (average_labor_demand - average_labor_supply) Now, if you keep topping up supply from overseas, salary never increases as much as it might, as such it is limited - as such, salary rate increase is also capped; and it's not employees can have a…

By way of an unrealistic formalisation there you actually assumed that salaries are determined exclusively by labour supply and far more predictably and linearly than possible. The complexity of the economy, greatly confounds simplistic formulas.

So you're complaining because my post above isn't a more comprehensive analysis? I was responding to one specific point, not implying that the above formula is a complete model of the economy.
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