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

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621–630 of 637 posts

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

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jus soli is a civil rights issue. Jus sanguinis has led to many cases of intergenerational oppression. Giving up jus soli would be like giving up the Civil Rights Act.

Jus soli was a hack, applied to force southern states to stop being terrible to former slaves in the wake of the Dredd Scott decision. That doesn’t make it intrinsically a civil rights issue. It makes it a tool used to solve a civil rights issue. The civil rights issue itself can and (IMO) should be solved directly, and be a separate conversation from that of what constitutes nationality. IMO jus soli doesn’t make se…

You're not wrong, I think birthright PR would be fine, but I'd be worried about the political viability of statutes. Jus soli has the advantage of being embedded in the constitution so nativist leaders can't just change it. (I don't think the current president would be in favor of what you described either.)

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

#622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College education is a proxy for knowledge and skills of value, however the green card system (not sure if it applies to H1s) provides an equivalence when assigning preferences. EB3 is a bachelors degree or 5 years work experience, and an EB2 preference is a masters or a bachelors + 5 years or 10 years work experience. I don’t necessarily believe caps are valuable on immigration but given that we’re working within a…

> shouldn’t we prioritize on skill instead of using a lottery Why? It's not a prioritization based on employer needs or what employers want. Obviously if one has a degree they enjoy being a protected class, and if they don't have a degree they don't like being discriminated against. At least a lottery gave equal opportunity. I also want to point out that this policy is not what companies want. They want the removal o…

I think that's fair, but I also think that companies don't always want what's best for the workers, just for themselves. This kind of regulation helps ensure the system isn't abused. I can see an argument for it both ways, tbh.

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

#623
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you have households with both working and they can't afford to have kids This strikes me as ridiculous as a broad-brush, general statement. It's not that Americans can't afford to have kids, it's that they incentivize different things than they did in the past. I don't deny that real wages haven't risen because of the supply of workers and dual-income families, but c'mon. There's been an increase in professional…

I'm sorry but you don't seem to know what kids kost. Rent, childcare, clothing, food plus only one income are in no relation to some electronic toys or a fancy holiday.

I have two kids. I must be doing it wrong.

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

#624
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

>any increase in productivity is bad because it reduces labor scarcity Isn't it? Increases in productivity, normally called automation, must reduce labour scarcity unless demand for the product is proportionately increased. There are plenty of sectors where this is exactly what happens, and some where it isn't.

"If you wanted to increase the salaries of the lumberjacks, you would only need to pass a law that no axe could ever be sharpened" - Bastiat

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

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. Once you're past a certain point in the GC process, you will renew your status each year.

But at that point you are approved for a GC and are just waiting for the country quota.

and if you are born in India or China, you wont get a GC until you are in your 80's

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

#626

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…

It is hard believe so many people still don’t “get it”. You cannot inflate the supply of labor, regardless of the means, and get a good result for the average working stiff.

What is hard to believe is that the mercantilist mindset has been vanquished 200 years ago, and you still need to instruct adults into why it doesn't work over and over again.

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

#627
post #262
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's super interesting, I didn't know that about hourly wages. I tend to think of income gaining from 1950 to 1990 and flattening from the mid 1990s to now. Though it does look like total compensation (adding in benefits) did actually increase recently, they don't have anything for back to 1960. So maybe the story is that wages stayed flat, but benefits accounted for most of the income increase. Not an economist so…

>Wage trends over the past half-century suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of workers with a particular set of skills probably lowers the wage of that group by at least 3 percent. Even after the economy has fully adjusted, those skill groups that received the most immigrants will still offer lower pay relative to those that received fewer immigrants. >Immigration redistributes wealth from those who comp…

Because there is a moral compass in the human being that takes into account non-economic benefits as well.

Why would you cheer against slavery if you could buy some up?

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

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1-B mandates a lower than competitive wage that the recipient's get stuck in, this isn't the same situation as women / minorities gaining access to the workplace unless their access came at a mandatory much lower salary.

Do you just enjoy spewing lies incessantly? The H-1B LCA requires visa holders be paid equivalent to or better than U.S. workers. Also, the LCA often lists a lower salary than what people earn. At my last company, my base salary was close to 140k, but the H-1B LCA on file listed 95k or something. With bonuses, I've made over 200k in a single year in the past. My tax return and the H-1B LCA paint two very different pi…

> The H-1B LCA requires visa holders be paid equivalent to or better than U.S. workers.

This is a typical bureaucrat solution. An an immigrant you dont have the power to leverage salary, so there is no chance you will get the same results as an american, adjusted for everything else. First of all, there is a legal cost of the visa, which is and will always be paid by the employee. Second, you can adjust salary in 20 ways the bureaucrat cant see: PTO, stock grants, chances of advances, bonuses, etc. And finally, if you as an employee cant go into your bosses office saying a competing company wants to pay you 20%, because you cant do that with an H1B, your long term income is also affected.

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

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you just enjoy spewing lies incessantly? The H-1B LCA requires visa holders be paid equivalent to or better than U.S. workers. Also, the LCA often lists a lower salary than what people earn. At my last company, my base salary was close to 140k, but the H-1B LCA on file listed 95k or something. With bonuses, I've made over 200k in a single year in the past. My tax return and the H-1B LCA paint two very different pi…

> The H-1B LCA requires visa holders be paid equivalent to or better than U.S. workers. This is a typical bureaucrat solution. An an immigrant you dont have the power to leverage salary, so there is no chance you will get the same results as an american, adjusted for everything else. First of all, there is a legal cost of the visa, which is and will always be paid by the employee. Second, you can adjust salary in 20…

[deleted]

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

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jus soli was a hack, applied to force southern states to stop being terrible to former slaves in the wake of the Dredd Scott decision. That doesn’t make it intrinsically a civil rights issue. It makes it a tool used to solve a civil rights issue. The civil rights issue itself can and (IMO) should be solved directly, and be a separate conversation from that of what constitutes nationality. IMO jus soli doesn’t make se…

You're not wrong, I think birthright PR would be fine, but I'd be worried about the political viability of statutes. Jus soli has the advantage of being embedded in the constitution so nativist leaders can't just change it. (I don't think the current president would be in favor of what you described either.)

I agree with everything you said here.
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