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Zuckerberg Lobbies For More Liberal Immigration Policies
An anonymous reader writes "Mark Zuckerberg, along with other notables such as Google's Eric Schmidt, Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin, has launched a new immigration reform lobbying group called FWD.us. In an editorial in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg claims that immigrants are the key to a future knowledge-based economy in a United States which currently has 'a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants.' As expected, they are calling for more of the controversial H-1B visas which reached their maximum limit in less than a week this year, but those aren't the only things they're looking to change."
Immigrants are great, but only so long as they have the same rights as the guy that wants to import/exploit them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Pretty much. This H1-B VISA push is called "in-sourcing" by the trade; you bring a bunch of folks from overseas and then you pay them less than what the local talent would want and you push the market down. Then you can hire local talent as well at a discount. If a large number of major corporations want something you'd be right to be suspicious.
Wouldn't it make more sense for Zuckerberg to lobby the US government to restrict the amount of H1B visas going to overseas outsourcing firms? Because if they just raise the limit these overseas outsourcing firms will just gobble up more H1B visas and Zuck and company won't be better off for it.
"Mark Zuckerberg Lobbies for Cheaper Programmers Who Can't Quit"
I am officially gone from
It would be nice if these companies would be putting this time and effort into pushing for / funding more S.T.E.M. education in the US.
mnewberg.com
Zuckerberg didn't start his own company, he graduated college and got a job as a software developer.
Zuckerberg PU: "Corporations lobbying the government to import cheap labor from the third world is unethical. It amounts to indentured servitude and it does nothing but lower wages for the local workforce. It is but a scheme to let the rich grow richer and reduce the middle class to menial labor serfs."
The great thing about it is that once you artificially drive down wages with H1B's, then you get to advertise more fake jobs for those low wages. And when you don't get enough applicants, you complain that you need even *MORE* H1B visas, driving down wages even more. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The thing that stands out to be from your statement is that your sister has 2!!! STEM based MAs and still only makes 50k. All sympathies for her, but I can understand why someone might complain that the market is being diluted and driving wages down.
Americans are happy to do STEM degrees when they lead to lots of high paying jobs with good job security. Bring back long term contracts for STEM employees at high wages and watch how quickly Americans churn out STEM degrees.
No doubt Zuckerberg wants more slave labor to pay the tax base that he and his corp. are evading. I have a better idea Mark, move your ass and everyone else to an impoverished nation. No doubt you'll enjoy the infrastructure, benefits, gov't, and protection that all affords you.
Now everyone else please stay out.
This has nothing to do with folks who want to move to the US because: they want religious freedom or to escape tyranny or because they want to live in the Western Hemisphere for health reasons.
You see, this is about exploitation., for one. And this is also about labor market manipulation. Increase supply of workers while demand stays the same and what happens?
As has been said many times, the wages of developers and other IT professionals do not indicate a shortage of any kind. Wages haven't gone anywhere in over ten years and if you factor in inflation, they have gone DOWN.
If any employer is having a hard time finding qualified people, then there is something horribly dysfunctional in their recruiting process. Either they are not getting the word out to attract the right candidates or they are unrealistic in regards to the qualifications or salaries for said qualifications that they demand - hence the market manipulation with H1-Bs and immigration reform.
If they were trying to get a Ph.D in some esoteric CS field that very few people study, then I would possibly buy into that maybe they need a foreign born worker.
But for a developer? Please, spare me.
And the funny thing is, the biggest noise makers are folks out in Silicon Valley. Hello! Lockheed just canned a bunch of folks - very talented and qualified folks - who are looking for work. Folks that have worked on things that make your pathetic little "social networking" software look like child's play - so don't BS us with the "they don't have the skills"!
Have you thought of moving out of the high tax state of California and move to the low cost South? There are folks here just as smart as you folks who can make a nice living on $70,000 doing whatever you need.
God! You people kill me!
That's precisely the point – there is no "natural" state of what things "should" be, since the entire structure of the "free market" is itself the product of government intervention. (Multinational corporations are a direct creation of government, they sure as hell don't exist in a state of nature. Same with IP laws. And in a state of nature, you only control as much property as you and your friends/family can defend with armed force.) So the question then becomes: why should we structure the market to benefit billionaires like Zuckerberg instead of ordinary working programmers?
Americans generally do not want to do STEM degrees, which many other cultures value more highly than we do.
I'm an American grad student in a STEM Ph.D. program right now. It's not hard to see why Americans don't want to do STEM degrees. There's little to no employment opportunities, and what little jobs there are don't pay significantly more than what you could get with a non-STEM bachelor's degree. I've lost count of how many friends I've seen get their STEM Ph.D. and then go into jobs like bartending, retail, fast food, etc. or, at best, community college teaching because there were almost no post-docs or research positions available and their Ph.D. made them "overqualified" for jobs that would have been more of a lateral move. In fact, they only got the jobs they did by omitting the Ph.D. from their resume.
I'm strongly considering just dropping out with a Masters' degree, because several students who did that (because they failed a qualifying exam) left and had no trouble finding jobs that paid well--though even some of them had to omit the Masters from their resume.
This is insanity. She had a good portion of her schooling supplemented by the US Government
I agree, subsidising foreign nationals' schooling is insanity.
The sworn purpose of the United States government is to act in the best interest of its citizens and their protection. Letting a company the size of Facebook effectively design immigration policy to the disadvantage of US citizens is actively working against that purpose. That's fraud.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
The sworn purpose of the United States government is to act in the best interest of its citizens and their protection.
They are acting in the best interest of the citizens. They just aren't acting in your best interest. Letting in more techies is good for America. There are still some losers, such as techie citizens that have to compete, but it is still a win for the overall economy. Face it: you belong to a special interest group that is trying to get the government to act on your behalf by reducing competition, at the expense of the country as a whole.
The word you are looking for is treason.
The problem is that this pattern isn't limited to one sector of the economy; it's everywhere.
Perhaps in isolation you could say "favor capital over labor in the hi-tech sector to drive down wages to make it cheaper for everyone else --- it's worth paying management $1M more, if they can cut wages by $2M." The problem is, at the same time, it's "favor capital over labor to drive down wages in manufacturing"; "favor capital over labor to drive down wages in retail"; "favor capital over labor to drive down wages in service industries"; etc. --- at the end of the day, the "everyone else" you're trying to "help" can't afford even the cheaper services, because they've lost their own wages and/or jobs. The only people who benefit are the tiny capital/management class, who "earn" their wages for taking money away from everyone else. Unless you look at the system as a whole --- where it's obvious that slashing wages for the majority of people doesn't help the majority of people --- you'll be fooled into your addled style of thinking.
We've had three decades of subtle propaganda that misrepresents corporate interests as American interests. Corporate america has shifted from treating employees as assets to treating them as liabilities. Our corporate law forces corporations to seek short term profits uber alles, bringing in cheaper foreign labor is just one aspect of that. The entire scheme is short-sighted.
you're goddamn fucking right!
if we don't protect ourselves, we won't HAVE a middle class.
you corp bootlickers really want that? think it thru, please. erosion of our middle class hurts everyone in the long-run.
I do think the country owes me (as someone who was born here and spent nearly 50 years paying taxes, working, investing in my own country and infrastructure) more than they owe some disconnected foreigner who comes here for short-term gains and then goes back home again.
the 'free market' has not shown itself to be self policing so the gov HAS to step in and ensure fairness to the people who LIVE here.
yes, it owes us that. we paid into the system in many ways and its only right we get first dibs on the pay-outs. that includes having a decent job that can pay the bills and keep us in the standard of living that we have EARNED. yes, earned. this is not asking for any handouts!
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The SOLE reason arseholes like Zuckerberk want to relax immigration controls is to keep wages low.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
You don't think the $200,000+ total compensation packages that companies like Facebook routinely offer (including to H-1B holders, BTW) are "high paying" enough or "secure" enough?
While it's true that the H-1B system is heavily abused, and that most of the visas probably shouldn't be granted, Facebook is not simply lobbying for more H-1Bs. They're lobbying for more more comprehensive reform that would allow more legitimate high skilled workers into the country, and fewer illegitimate ones. There needs to be a visa for truly high end employees. Facebook probably only hires people in the top 1%, and H-1B lumps them into the same category as people in the 50th percentile.
In the 8 years I've been in Silicon Valley, the prevailing wage for software engineers at top companies has increased by more than 50%. To suggest that there aren't jobs at companies like Facebook and Google and Apple for high-skilled American workers is crazy. How high would our salaries have to rise for you to admit there's a shortage? When we're being paid like professional athletes?