Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 188 posts

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#71

Post by rayiner »

davidw wrote: post #27
diogenescynic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the real fix is to make the H-1B 'lottery' into an auction. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Cognizant and Infosys that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.

What is special about the number 65,000? Absolutely nothing. It's central planning for something that doesn't require it: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...

That's a pretty ignorant article. The limiting factor for immigration is how quickly you can Americanize immigrants, not land area.

As for why it's imperative to Americanize immigrants. Look at how much trouble the U.S. has had cultivating democracy in places like Iraq. Most people acknowledge that the Iraqi people aren't ready for Democracy. Do you think they would be any more ready for democracy if you moved them en masse to Minnesota?

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#72

Post by DINKDINK »

diogenescynic wrote: post #13
DINKDINK wrote: post #3

Can anyone elucidate why having artificial barriers to employing certain types of people is beneficial? If so, why not create the same restrictions on, say, a company in California from hiring someone from New York? Or is this a guise for xenophobia?

>artificial barriers Like citizenship? Do you consider citizenship an artificial barrier? As someone who has worked at tech companies and various law firms in the Silicon Valley, I've seen this story played out several times. Hire Cognizant, TCS, Infosys, Symphony, or some other outsourcing firm and then bring in H-1Bs for an entire department. All it does is drive down wages for everyone and hurt everyone except for…

>Do you consider citizenship an artificial barrier?

Actual barrier to a job: knowing how to deliver that type of service.

Artificial barrier: Something arbitrary synthesized by a party not involved in an AB transaction. Such as, having your papers in order so someone doesn't throw you in jail.

>All it does is drive down wages for everyone and hurt everyone except for the 1% at the top. Specious argument. What about the person from New York/India moving to California?

Does allowing a company from California hire someone from New York 'drive down wages hurt everyone except the top 1%"? If not why does it suddenly 'drive down wages hurt everyone except the top 1%" when you change New York to India? This is my motivation of suspicion that H1 visas are a guise of xenophobia.

To me, H1 visas appear to be a sophomoric tantrum of the US transitioning to a global economy.

Addendum for your reflection: Doesn't buying foreign manufactured goods 'drive down wages'? Do you not buy foreign mfg goods? Why not force all companies selling goods in the US to have those products exclusively made in the USA?

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#73

Post by [deleted] »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #52
davidw wrote: post #6

The real fix to this is to make sure that people brought over with an H1-B can easily change jobs. That way they're not beholden to some low-wage job, and companies that bring people in merely for low wages will face high rates of churn.

To me the real fix is to abolish the entire system. It was a half baked program cooked up by industry lobbyists that invented and perpetuated the myth of a "STEM" shortage. There is no shortage and the character and education system of the US produces plenty of well trained and proven trainable people.

[deleted]

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#74

Post by outworlder »

seibelj wrote: post #9
DINKDINK wrote: post #3

Can anyone elucidate why having artificial barriers to employing certain types of people is beneficial? If so, why not create the same restrictions on, say, a company in California from hiring someone from New York? Or is this a guise for xenophobia?

"Certain types of people", you mean non-citizens? The H1B lets non-US citizens into the country, ostensibly to fill a supposed skills gap. In reality, most H1B's issued are to replace high paid citizens with lower paid, low benefits immigrants. Whether you think this is good or bad, it isn't xenophobia or racism, it's a dollars and cents issue.

> In reality, most H1B's issued

That's a pretty bold claim! That would imply widespread fraud. I don't think all companies do that, not even most of them. I think the bodyshops heavily skew the perception, though.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#75

Post by lazaroclapp »

fra wrote: post #45
diogenescynic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the real fix is to make the H-1B 'lottery' into an auction. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Cognizant and Infosys that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.

Whether 65,000 is the right number or not isn't the important bit. While it may seem unpalatable on its face, granting the visa to the candidates with the highest paying offer is the simplest, least prone to abuse way I can think of to bring about the stated purpose of the H1B visa.

Except this leaves out any organization that pays below market rate for exceptional talent. That might sound like a good thing in the face of it, but consider such organizations include: national labs, early stage startups, software foundations, etc.

Also, unless you cap it in a per industry basis (which makes the whole thing very inflexible to changes in the economy) you just created an insurmountable problem for those firms that want to hire, say, a Catalan interpreter. Required skill uncommon in the U.S.? Check. Easy to get a foreign worker with that skill? Check. But now you need to pay them a software engineer salary or higher.

As a matter of fact, given how small the cap is, you could conceive that the only software engineering jobs that would be hiring internationally would be in high frequency trading and other such areas of the industry that pay higher salaries. Or, software engineering, but just in the bay area (other places pay less because of adjusting for the cost of living). No matter the rest of the considerations associated with why someone chooses a particular job.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#76

Post by rconti »

crapolasplatter wrote: post #30

Wait A second something doesn't make sense here. I thought the main reason for H1-B visas was because there aren't enough American workers? So why would they get rid of American workers they already had ,that have been doing the job? Surely it couldn't be because they lower pay of the H1-B workers?

Yes, hence the lawsuit.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#77

Post by makecheck »

diogenescynic wrote: post #23
davidw wrote: post #6

The real fix to this is to make sure that people brought over with an H1-B can easily change jobs. That way they're not beholden to some low-wage job, and companies that bring people in merely for low wages will face high rates of churn.

In my opinion, the real fix is to make the H-1B 'lottery' into an auction. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Cognizant and Infosys that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.

As someone who went through the process, I can tell you that the mere existence of a maximum annual number was insulting.

If I get a job, and my company NEEDS me, and I'm GOOD at what I'm doing, I should get IN; period. There should be no crap involved. How the hell is it good for a company to be told that it can't grow because it happened to petition the 65,001st person out of 65,000 that year? How the hell is it good for the prospective employee to have to try again later? And in extremely-fast-moving industries such as tech, even the arbitrary time frame of "one year" is an insanely long time.

The only limit that kind of makes sense is a thorough investigation of the type of person you're bringing in (e.g. university degrees or other background, some indication of what they're bringing to the country as a whole). It may make sense to force companies to prove that no U.S. citizen can do the job but this system has been gamed for years, as companies produce vague job descriptions just like they post vague patent descriptions.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#78

Post by protomyth »

outworlder wrote: post #64
protomyth wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is, it is the main reason, and the purpose of the visa. It doesn't mean that all companies use it for that purpose, despite what they say. Yes, it is the main purpose: http://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm If the companies are not using it for that purpose and telling the government something different then they are committing fraud.

> If the companies are not using it for that purpose and telling the government something different then they are committing fraud. Yes. Not all of them, but some definitely are.

I suspect that given http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx shows a lot of them are consulting companies that provide labor, it might be worth a study on number.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#79

Post by LoSboccacc »

diogenescynic wrote: post #13
DINKDINK wrote: post #3

Can anyone elucidate why having artificial barriers to employing certain types of people is beneficial? If so, why not create the same restrictions on, say, a company in California from hiring someone from New York? Or is this a guise for xenophobia?

>artificial barriers Like citizenship? Do you consider citizenship an artificial barrier? As someone who has worked at tech companies and various law firms in the Silicon Valley, I've seen this story played out several times. Hire Cognizant, TCS, Infosys, Symphony, or some other outsourcing firm and then bring in H-1Bs for an entire department. All it does is drive down wages for everyone and hurt everyone except for…

the 1% rhetoric is as bad as any. how come the 99% never do shit to foster change? easy to blame 'the man'

how about if your company employ cheap labor, all the 99%ers quit? that'd change how company are run pretty quickly

but somehow the 99% like doing nothing about it, or so it seems.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#80

Post by protomyth »

coldtea wrote: post #60
protomyth wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is, it is the main reason, and the purpose of the visa. It doesn't mean that all companies use it for that purpose, despite what they say. Yes, it is the main purpose: http://www.dol.gov/whd/immigration/h1b.htm If the companies are not using it for that purpose and telling the government something different then they are committing fraud.

> If the companies are not using it for that purpose and telling the government something different then they are committing fraud. The kind of fraud that's profitable, happens regularly and nobody gets called for.

Well, this is an article about Disney getting called on it via a lawsuit.
Post reply on HN