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U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

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Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#491

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

jayd16 wrote: post #340
tossaccount123 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To prime your intuition a bit, consider how woman and minorities more than doubled the work force from the 1960s to 1990s with no loss in jobs or lowering of wages. You do realize there hasn't been a raise in real wages since the 70s when you account for inflation right? Coincidentally during that same time period the income gap exploded because the wealthy had plentiful cheap labor and were able to pocket the produ…

By this logic, any increase in productivity is bad because it reduces labor scarcity. That's just not how it works. > if we dropped 10 million software engineers in Silicon Valley from around the world, guess what? Guess what, we'd get a lot more overseas clients as they wrestled with the labor shortage abroad. (Although, the real problem would be the humanitarian crisis in housing 10m more in SV overnight, ha)

Guess what, we'd get a lot more overseas clients as they wrestled with the labor shortage abroad.

India produces more than 20 million undergrads every year. I don't think 10 million will make a dent in developers supply in India.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#492

Post by brookhaven_dude »

luckydata wrote: post #369
austincheney wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the idea of wage depression due to visa status is speculative and unqualified. Is there any data on this?

Tons, I linked a bunch of articles already, you could also Google it and find it if you were actually interested in learning something instead of making the point most ideologically aligned to your own preconceptions.

You can look up H1B salaries online. Salaries seem pretty high to me. Now you may argue it may be even higher if they were forced to hire domestic workers only, but that's just conjecture. Like saying if Android wasn't available then cheap android users would switch to Apple devices.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#495

Post by brookhaven_dude »

They lost an opportunity to really overhaul the system that would have drawn support from liberal groups. Like turning H1B allocation process into an auction - let the company that offers highest compensation win the visa. And associating the visa with the employee not the employer, so they are free to switch around.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#496

Post by CalRobert »

dalbasal wrote: post #448
CalRobert wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of the unintended consequences of strong welfare states. If your government spends $xx,xxx per resident per year then someone who arrives and doesn't contribute at least $xx,xxx is a net drain on resources. At the VERY least, you need to ensure your population produces at least $xx,xxx per year in gov't revenue. While I am strongly in support of things like free healthcare, education, etc. I can a…

That's definitely an argument that comes up, with purchase, in politics. I don't really think it has much (if any) validity. Taken as a whole, skilled migrants ar just to unlikely to be net recipients of redistributive governance. Skilled migration usually means educated, healthy, employable young ( I'd also note that I'm more comfortable (as a liberal) with denying migrants certain positive rights (eg unemployment p…

I think we agree - skilled migrants are fine. I'm a skilled migrant (I hope!) and I pay more in income tax than about 90-95% of the people in my adopted country. But they wouldn't be thrilled if I'd tried to move here when I was 70. Unless I had a giant pile of cash, of course.

I don't _like_ that it pretty much all comes down to money. I'd love to be able to say "this buddy of mine is a broke artist but he's super sound, great guy, plays the drums like nobody else and brings joy to all around him - that's the kind of person you want right?" but I don't know of a way to implement that sort of system without 1) being incredibly prone to bias and 2) being pretty expensive if you're not careful.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#497

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

joshe wrote: post #272
TylerE wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population grew from 179M to 281M so the workforce didn’t really double. More like a 50% increase

The workforce grew, look at the link and table 5. Basically woman and minorities joined the workforce. Worker to population ratio went up and the total number of workers went up faster than the growth in population.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say pretty much all the minorities have always been a part of the workforce.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#498

Post by mywittyname »

jorblumesea wrote: post #201
skybrian wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetable and dairy farmers would go out of business, if prices can't be raised due to competition from imports. You'd need tariffs as well, and people would need to put up with significant price increases at the grocery store. There are not many Americans who want their kids to grow up to be farmhands or migrant workers. If you can speak English, you're better off in retail. For immigrants, there is a valuable benef…

Nah, there are plenty of countries that operate fine without cheap imported labor. They just need to...you know...pay fair wages. Which apparently has everyone up in arms I guess? It's really just about the bottom line. Exploiting people is cheap. Paying or treating people properly is expensive. That's it. Tim Cook or your California farmer don't give a flying fuck about these people. It's just about the $$$. Immigra…

> Nah, there are plenty of countries that operate fine without cheap imported labor.

This is not true. Farming has always relied on exploited labor in some form. Once easily exploited labor disappears with no machinery to replace them, so too does an agricultural industry. Lots of developed European nations are facing this exact problem.

Paying people proper wages will either cause food to get massively more expensive, or will migrate production to crops that are more readily harvested by machines. So grains will still be dirt cheap, but meat and vegetables will be very expensive.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#499

Post by smg »

The most important thing that needs to be changed about the H1B program is how the green card is linked to your particular employer. The H1B program is almost like indentured servitude for the vast majority of workers of Indian or Chinese origin because of the delay in getting a green card. It would be impossible for any employer to exploit H1B workers if the visa was not linked to an employer but to the tax paid by the worker. As long as the worker stays in a particular (federal) tax bracket the worker should be allowed to engage in any work that they desired.

Re: U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers

#500

Post by tomrod »

dmichulke wrote: post #443
tomrod wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard of living arguably continues to increase as well.

Technological advance is a confounding factor for basically any empirical discussion about economics and standard of living. Any smooth annual negative impact below the rate of technological advance is very hard to detect due to this.

I reckon if standard of living improves, so does my dollar per unit of happiness ratio improves, then a flat real wage isn't a terrible thing.

Of course, this belies the fact that wealth inequality increases. This means though the median may stay stable, the tails get fatter: or, in other words, the standard of living isn't necessarily getting better for everyone.

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