alt Hacker NewsI’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs.
1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…
2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers. It’s absolute protectionism, which means you just shift the negative trends (“credential” mills in particular) onto domestic shores. Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.
3) Unionize the technical trades. This lets the professionals set skill and comp floors, potentially offload benefits burdens to the Union itself rather than the fickleness of the employer, and even undermines the “contractor class” of companies deflating labor through precarious contracts by setting floors industry-wide. The downside is that Unions, like any power structure, can and will corrupt with time and incentive, leading to jams in the marketplace - less an issue in the age of AI, but still one worth noting.
4) Taxation. Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American? No tax breaks for you, pay up. This is a very bad idea on its face, because companies will just shift the transaction offshore to dodge that rule and gum up everything else in the process, but some form of punitive tax scheme for exploiting social safety nets in lieu of fairly compensating workers is sorely needed to stop, if not begin reversing, the current wealth pumps. For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program as a means of depressing their pay has robbed taxpayers of billions, increased the national debt, and robbed workers of the fruits of their labor. It must be fixed, somehow.
There’s a number of other policies to get into, but that’s the “highlight reel” as it were. The important thing to keep in mind is that the status quo only works for the monied interests, and neither the H-1B workers coming in nor the Americans being shoved onto welfare programs for corporate greed. If a program or system enriches the rich while harming everyone else, it’s a bad system, and needs to be replaced rather than overhauled. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it piss people off? Of course. Will it feel like nobody really won? Ideally, because that means it’s balanced compromise rather than a gift package.
Replies
> 2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers.
How would this work with basically any foreign service?
> 1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…
Do you know how long those take? Consular processing for green cards is painful as hell and somehow even longer than adjustment of status if you're in a non-backlogged country. The real solution here is obviously to allow self-sponsorship for employment based green cards.
> Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American?
I mean, do you want to tax a company that hires foreigners, sponsor their green cards, just because some of their employees decide to not naturalize (say, like Apple or Google or Meta?) ? That makes zero sense.
> For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program
H1B folks aren't eligible for any social welfare program, even though they, e.g. contribure to Medicare / Social Security.
> Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.
Depressing labor costs, but only to a point, no? They would be subject to American minimum wages; and, presumably, American labor, even at its cheapest, is more expensive than the offshore alternative.
And, assume there is no price differential... Would Americans not be better off if companies outsourced to other American (i.e., not foreign) companies? Thereby keeping currency within the U.S.? I've been hearing that remittances represent a substantial outward cash flow nationally.
I've never heard of such "Data Sovereignty Schemes," but they seem like far and away the best option. And thanks for writing this up, btw.