alt Hacker NewsI'm all for importing top talent to work at American companies. In fact, I think H1-Bs should be allowed to start businesses and move from job to job like anyone else. If it's about innovation, why force them to stay in one job while they're here?
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If it's top talent, then they should be forced to pay them the wage of a US worker, if not more.
Instead, you end up competing against the whole world on salary and servitude hours for a local job.
The median H1B engineering salary is 120k. There is no top talent working for that salary.
Yup, if you take the restrictions off, none of these companies would want them. They love the restrictions. Americans can just up and quit on them, but not temporary workers.
You know the answer! It's veritable slave labor is why. I've seen it a thousands times at major US companies and how it plays out. It is a horrible form of leverage they have over their "assets."
How would you prevent people from getting an H1-B visa for a job just for the sake of moving to a different job in a sector that doesn't need a lot of workers? And if they are going to start a business, they could start a business in tech that is actually successful, and then fill a few extra positions with friends/family/contacts/people willing to pay, and then those people could move on to other jobs for which they are more suited.
Fact is, immigration systems in all of the richest countries are already bursting with abuse from certain countries with very ingenious schemes and you gotta have some ways to protect it unless you want a free-for-all.
If it's actually top talent, sure.
But if it's a replacement for supporting domestic education and a source of cheap skilled labor, no thanks.
If FAANG were screaming at Congress about their inability to hire and the solution was better primary and secondary education programs for people at home to create that skilled workforce, we probably wouldn't have such an aggressive urban/rural political divide in this country.
I used to be but that's not how any of these immigration programs are used. Often they've been used to crush domestic workers and even change demographics and voting patterns.
At this point it doesn't look like allowing anything other than net emigration is practical. You just can't trust the people involved to do anything else.
When Microsoft does layoffs and then mass H1-Bs, is that shedding low-skill Americans for top Indian talent, or just labor arbitrage? Is a country of 340 million really lacking talent, or do we just want cheaper and controllable labor?
https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-h1b-visa-applicat...
Companies always want the lucrative American businesses and consumers as customers, all the while wanting to shed expensive American workers.