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If Immigration Reform Is Dead, So Is Raising the H-1B Cap
dcblogs writes: In a speech Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) declared immigration reform dead. He chastised and baited Republicans in Congress for blocking reform, and declared that winning the White House without the support of a growing Hispanic population will become mathematically impossible. "The Republican Presidential nominee, whoever he or she may be, will enter the race with an electoral college deficit they cannot make up," said Gutierrez. If he's right, and comprehensive immigration reform is indeed dead, then so too is the tech industry's effort to raise the cap on H-1B visas. Immigration reform advocates have successfully blocked any effort to take up the immigration issue in piecemeal fashion, lest business support for comprehensive reform peel away. Next year may create an entirely new set of problems for tech. If the Republicans take control of the Senate, the tech industry will face this obstacle: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee could become its next chairman. He has been a consistent critic of the H-1B program through the years. "The H-1B program is so popular that it's now replacing the U.S. labor force," said Grassley, at one point.
H1B is merging with the us labor force, not replacing. The overwhelming H1B workers I know have either become citizens or are eager to do so.
That's a euphemism for "Let the illegal immigrants (criminals) stay in the country".
It's surprising to be that the R's support lower H1B caps. I've never really heard a position from the Dem's on this. I'm not exactly educated on this issue, but it seems that H1B directly compete with my ability to be a programmer; and large companies are the ones mostly vying for the talent H1B brings in. With barriers to competition being as low as a cost of a computer, why would we want increased H1B? I know they say there's not enough US workers for the tech industry.. but do they really mean, there's not enough CHEAP tech workers? What's the Dem's position on this?
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Next year may create an entirely new set of problems for tech.
Problems like how to treat their employees like human beings rather than disposable trash?
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Now maybe the IT jobs will pay a little better and people over 40 can get a IT job.
Just say no to a cheaper, but less productive H-B1 visa holder
So a Democrat is so concerned about the possibility that the Republicans won't take over the Senate, or won't get into the White House; that he, out of the goodness of his heart, tells the Republicans what they need to do to win.
Reminds me of the phrase, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts".
To have someone in the Senate that sees the H1B program as replacing the American workers, would be a refreshing change from the current leadership that looks for every opportunity to raise the H1B cap, for their K street buddies.
H1B is merging with the us labor force, not replacing. The overwhelming H1B workers I know have either become citizens or are eager to do so.
No, immigrants are replacing native workers. The Center For Immigration Studies just released a report showing that all employment growth since 2000 has gone to immigrants, legal and illegal. There is no general labor shortage.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
google cognizant. Lots of forum posts by their employees complaining that the company won't sponsor for a greencard. When you don't sponsor they have to leave. Company I work for refused to spend money on an h1b to continue sponsoring him , but brought in contractors who were L-2 visa holders at an india company instead. they don't want greencard holders. sponsorship costs a little money and once they get a greencard they can get market wages and will quit.
look if companies have been h1b dependent for this long its because the ones they sponsor are not getting converted to greencard and/or quitting when they do because the job sucked. they just want lower wages with worse terms. its so obvious.
rather odd that a guy from Iowa is the one guy seeing it. But go Grassley. If you just give them all greencards to start with.. then you will see the real demand for immigrant workers. cause they can quit.
My personal problem with all this talk of immigration reform has been the consistent desire by both parties to making the expansion of E-Verify a requirement of any bill. To sum it up, E-Verify is a way for the executive branch to block the employment of anyone that the database flags. Or more colloquially, you have to get permission from the president in order to feed and house your family.
One of the biggest problems with e-verify is the false negative rate. Even if you assume absolutely no malice, you can easily end up on the "no work list" by accident. Note, that's not a false positive - giving people permission to work when they aren't permitted, it is stopping people who have done nothing wrong in the slightest.
Requiring government permission to work is absolutely unacceptable policy in a free society. E-verify is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.
I think I probably speak for many on Slashdot when I say, Fuck You
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Employers: There is a shortage of good tech qorkers. Give us more H1 visas so we can get the work done.
Employees: These darn foreigners are taking our jobs! They work for much less than us people born in Amerika! (studys show about $13,000 less http://www.workpermit.com/news... )
The simplest solution is of course to offer unlimited H1 Visas - at the cost of $15,000, paid by the corporation, before the employee is hired.. (with inflation adjustments so this doesn't become abused).
This solves all real claims of not enough tech workers, it reduces the US budget, and gets rid of the financial incentive to refuse to hire perfectly good American tech workers.
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Are Democrats trying to raise the H1-B limits? How? Seems to me they're much more interested in out Southern Border.
Organization? You must be joking..
Nonsense. I support eliminating the H1-B program entirely. Poof, gone. I also support streamlining the legal immigration program. Supporters of H1-B don't mind letting "them" do the dirty work, but god forbid "that kind" should move in!
So who is the racist, the guy that welcomes actual immigrants or the guy who wants to churn 'em and burn 'em?
There is a reason for the H-1B demand, and it is not money, it is skill.
No, there are plenty of skilled workers in the U.S. They just won't work for slave wages and can't be treated like disposable indentured servants or threatened with deportation when they ask for a raise.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
add to that the filing costs, legal fees, and costs associated with other compliance requirements and it's MORE expensive to hire H1B workers.
The real difference is that corporations can treat them like crap and and most of them will take it because it's better than what's back home.. Being an H1B worker is a kind of indentured servitude ... quit your job and go home(or get deported) ... get let go and go home (or get deported)
You are a fucking idiot. You want to come here, like my grandparents and everyone before them:
1. Go to your home country
2. Go to your embassy
3. Fill out a form
4. If you are smart or rich, you can come
5. When you get here, we will make sure you have no communicative diseases (i.e. Ellis Island)
6. If you are clean, welcome, you are free to compete
7. If you are sick, GOTO #1
That is basic immigration.
Here is H1 logic:
1. Company needs to hire somebody
2. Oops, there is no one with that skill
3. Unfortunately, here is where a government program may help... They contact them with the appropriate skill needed. If there is a an American with that skill, anywhere in the FUCKING country. You don't get an H1. For example, asteroid mining experience. I am fine with an H1. Therefore, go look at the list of people who have applied at their local embassy, but haven't gotten here yet.
All in all, for everyone who disagrees with this FUCK YOU!
Have you deal with the call centers some time the same people are the H-1B's
also forced OT pay for H1's As getting 60-80 hours an week work out them of with the idea if they get fired they get kicked out of the USA makes them better / cheaper then us workers.
or what about cost of $15,000 + they must be payed at least 100K + inflation / cost of living adjustments an year.
Dianne Feinstein should be charged with criminal negligence for writing the law that has been encouraging unaccompanied minors to travel to the US to cut in front of people who are in line for H1B's.
Here is H1 logic:
1. Company needs to hire somebody
2. Oops, there is no one with that skill
3. Unfortunately, here is where a government program may help... They contact them with the appropriate skill needed. If there is a an American with that skill, anywhere in the FUCKING country. You don't get an H1. For example, asteroid mining experience. I am fine with an H1. Therefore, go look at the list of people who have applied at their local embassy, but haven't gotten here yet.
All in all, for everyone who disagrees with this FUCK YOU!
Wrong, H1 logic is:
1. Company needs to hire somebody
2. Company creates job description with impossible to meet or ultra specific skills ("10 years Windows Server 2012 experience")
3. Oops, there is no one with that skill (because nobody can possibly meet your 'requirement')
4. Company now can go outside the country to bring in an H1 at whatever pay they can negotiate, generally far cheaper than they could get someone in the US with comparable skills for. The fact that the H1 doesn't fit the 'requirements' either doesn't matter since they've already determined there are no 'qualified' US people.
There really is no need to import foreign work anymore as most of it can be done in their own country. India is a good example, where employees abroad are able to work remotely. Most companies know and do this due to VPN to sponsor company in US. That is why Virtual Desktops is a growth industry! As an added bonus, they can be paid in native wages for their local country. Why would companies bring employees to the US, except if a physical presence is needed, i.e. farm work., etc.?
Why does the US need a population infusion? All the new manufacturing in the US is heavily automated; in fact, the big fear now is that increasing automation is going to render many lower and middle-class jobs obsolete. We aren't going to need taxi drivers pretty soon, for instance, because of driver-less cars. The economy's in the shitter (except for the 1%), and good-paying jobs are drying up. So why again do we need a population infusion?
Are you advocating that we start treating workers the way they do in China, where they live in company barracks as virtual slaves and there's no minimum wage? This seems to be what the open-borders advocates are advocating these days: bringing in a giant number of easily-exploited laborers so that corporate profits can be increased.
I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the ones in the pockets of Big Business, but these days it seems that the Democrats are the ones more guilty of that.
Very good point. The H1-B program is great for employers, because they can bring in skilled workers and then pressure them to work themselves to the bone because they can't easily change jobs, making them indentured servants.
Somehow, you never hear the Democrats talk about this or work to change it.
^^THIS^^ but to take it a step farther the real solution to the illegal immigration problem is to take away the incentive.
We should do away with all the quotas and pretty much all the requirements. Lets let people show up tell us where they plan to live; agree to drop the federal government a post card with their new address when they relocate and after two years without any felony convictions call them citizens.
Lets let anyone already here step forward and start their two year probation period too.
After we do that we could then pretty safely conclude anyone who still remains here or enters illegally really is the sort of ne'er do well that should deported and permanently denied re-entry.
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Why does the US need a population infusion?
There's actual a valid answer to this, I'm assuming, rhetorical question: the "locals" are not breeding at a high enough rate to propogate the pyramid schemes that are hyperconsumerism and social security. Well, valid, for some corporatist/politcal definition of valid.
I'm moving in two months to the US because I got a job wich pays about 200k a year. When I got the job, my wife started looking as well and got another job for about 170k a year. Me L1, her H1b.
I'm tired of reading here in slashdot people complain that they cannot get a job, or that 100k jobs don't exist, and than H1b workers go to the US to earn little money for jobs you wouldn't accept. My opinion is that if a foreign worker, who has to leave their place behind, has to learn a new language and work entirely on a foreign language and a whole lot of other things against their odds is taking your jobs away, you suck, there is no other explanation, sorry.
I'm probably going to be moderated troll, but you have to face the facts people, you have it too easy. I work on a company where we struggle recruiting, we search for the best candidates around the world, including the US, obviously. The candidates from the US are just not there, they don't exist. H1b candidates have hiring windows of just a couple of months a year, and still then, the rest of the year, when the only that we would be able to hire is people from the US, we don't get any. So we struggle to hire people to work in other countries until the H1b is ready, then they are transfered, we pay relocation to the first country and then another one to the US. This is fucking expensive, in your dreams a H1b is cheap.
Why does the US need a population infusion?
America has lots of room compared to the rest of the world (no issue of overcrowding) and we have a slight demographic issue with too many retirees and the associated social security payments.
In a more general sense, it is because we want America to remain a strong vibrant country. That small dip in your paycheck today ensures that your child will live in a great economy.
Routinely the best and the brightest of foreign nations come to the United States. We get the cream of the crop. They come here, build, reinvigorate, and rejuvenate. They form dynamic networks allowing the US to sit in a privileged seat in the center.
Does America produce enough smart, dynamic people? Sure – why not. Can you ever have too many smart, dynamic people? No. Study and study has shown that immigrants contribute more than they take.
What it's done is placed a carrot out there to bring on H1-B programmers instead of college hires.
With an H1-B the employer has a lot of power over the employee. They can't move jobs with out sponsorship. It's very easy to knock them out of the country. You can easily classify them in a lower pay band because they have very little recourse. These employees usually get little to know employee development (i.e. money).
With a college hire the employee can change jobs at will. You as the employer are expected to put money into employee development. And in the end they are likely to leave after a couple years to seek greener pastures.
So yes, the H1-B program has done tremendous harm to our country. I consult with many large companies and I haven't seen a intern in a programming department in half a decade. College hires are few and far between. It's a radical change from how things were when I started in the 90s. Simply put business have put their money into short term H1-B and Offshore workers. They stopped putting money into college hires. Now they whine they can't find qualifies workers because they stopped investing in Junior programmers a decade ago.
Republicans don't actually need to win a presidential election. They just need to control enough of congress to block or hinder any kind of meaningful social progression. The Tea Party knows this, which is why they really don't care about fielding an "electable" candidate.
Familiar with the Dreyfus model of skills acquisition?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Sure you are. It goes like this: Want to be an expert? First you need to to be proficient. Want to be proficient? First you need to have been competent. Want to be competent? First you need to have been an advanced beginner? Want to be an advanced beginner? First you'll need to be a novice. Want to be a novice? Great! Just get started learning by following the rules and doing what people around you do. Experience will let you unwind the stack.
Every profession maps to this. It's a type of career ladder. And what do H1-B's do? They seriously knock out the chances of getting a position on the lower rungs of the ladder. H1-B aren't taking me and other Gen-Xers jobs, they're taking the millennial's jobs. And the Baby Boomers who pissed & shit in the punch bowl that used to hold the American dream don't care enough to do anything about it. They started setting the tone for all this bullshit over 10 years ago and just like everything else, now we're left holding the bag.
Fuck class warfare. I think there's some serious generational knuckle dusting that needs to be applied to those in power in BOTH political parties regarding what's happened on their watch to whole notion of careers they've been selling to the rest of us.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I don't think US needs a population infusion, but wouldn't you agree that freedom of movement is fundamentally a good thing to be promoted and encouraged?
if there wasn't so much Automation and off shoring going on. More importantly, those studies look at _total_ # of jobs, not Job quality. The reason there's a shortage of non-immigrant farm labor is that they pay them less than minimum wage and rely on their illegal status to keep them quiet. Also nearly all of the job growth in America is in low paying service sector jobs like fast food and customer service while the middle class manufacturing, tech and office jobs have been going off shore and to H1-Bs
But hey, one of the best things about armchair economics is you can declare anything you don't agree with a fallacy.
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At least if we mean Republican Politicians, which is implied by the context. There's several cases where Republican leadership got caught saying they want to crash the economy so that people will blame the democrats. There's several (mostly on the Tea Party fringes) who believe the democrats policies are so damaging to the country that it'd be better to wreak the economy than to risk those policies.
So yeah, Grandparent's kinda trolling, but compared to what the Repubs are doing it's small potatoes.
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Freedom of movement within the US is fine. But freedom of movement across national borders is not.
Why not? What is the fundamental difference?
Or maybe you prefer the US start taking care of citizens of all countries around the world?
Freedom to move within the borders doesn't imply taking care of those who moved (at least, not without demanding the associated duties).
In any case, if your state spends more on its citizens then it gets from those citizens (in taxes etc), then its fiscal policy is broken in any case. And if it does not, then increasing the number of those citizens will not change that.
Just start handing out passports to whoever asks without any kind of selection?
You pretty much did just that up to 1870s or so. Seemed to have worked out fine (in fact, good chances are, your ancestors were one of the people who used that opportunity).
If you are arguing in favor of selection, then can you articulate 1) what are you going to select for, and 2) why those criterias, and not any other? Simply put, if you want to prevent people from moving, then what is the motivation for that restriction? As in any other case of limitation of rights, such limitation is what has to be justified, not the other way around.
That's one reason I do not consider the Dems to be left anymore. They're at best not as far right.
I don't recall the 1870s having food stamps, section 8 housing, earned income tax credits giving you more money than you paid in, free emergency room care, etc. 150 years ago, you came her and worked your ass off or you died. There was no option to simply live off the labor of others.
Routinely the best and the brightest of foreign nations come to the United States. We get the cream of the crop.
The poor, unskilled people coming over our southern border are NOT the "cream of the crop" and certainly not the "best and brightest". Yes, poaching other countries' smart people is a good tactic for a self-interested country, but you do that by bringing in highly educated people from elsewhere, not by bringing in dirt-poor uneducated people who immediately apply for government assistance.
You say that we need more workers to shore up Social Security; what about all the welfare payments going to these people? Liberals have been whining for a while now about Walmart getting subsidized workers because they're all on welfare because Walmart's wages are so low (in fact, this is true of just about any place that pays minimum wage). So how is bringing in even more minimum wage workers going to improve things? We'll have to pay out even more in welfare and Medicaid payments, so that we can subsidize more businesses to have minimum-wage help.
It's really weird how on one hand, liberals complain that minimum wage is too low and we need more jobs for low-end workers. But then on the other hand they want to bring in even more minimum-wage workers to compete with them for the few jobs left.
Seemed to have worked out fine
Not really. This country was built upon the corpses of many of those immigrants. They were worked to death; there were no ERs to take care of them, no welfare or food stamps to make sure they weren't starving to death, and no worker protection laws. People died on the job routinely, either from accidents or overwork. They just hauled the bodies away and kept working. This happened well into the 20th Century.
Do you really want to go back to that?
We can't afford to give all these social services to everyone who wants them worldwide.
So I take it that the Democratic way is increasing imported wage slavery, then calling anyone opposed a racist? How progressive of you.
Overstaying a visa, a common way of being in the US illegally, is a civil issue.
However, that's not the case for border jumpers, as imprisonment is clearly part of the potential punishment.
8 U.S. Code 1325 - Improper entry by alien
Any alien who
(1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or
(2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or
(3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
Did you bring your child or any other aliens with you when you jumped to border? Criminal.
8 U.S. Code 1324 - Bringing in and harboring certain aliens
(a) Criminal penalties
(1)
(A) Any person who—
(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States and regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or
shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
(B) A person who violates subparagraph (A) shall, for each alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs—
(i) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i) or (v)(I) or in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), or (iv) in which the offense was done for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain, be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both;
(ii) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v)(II), be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both;
(iii) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) during and in relation to which the person causes serious bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of title 18) to, or places in jeopardy the life of, any person, be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both; and
(iv) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) resulting in the death of any person, be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, fined under title 18, or both.
And once an illegal gets here, assuming they've avoided the criminal penalties of these and many other statutes, their whole life here is one long string of criminal actions, starting with that first job:
US Code says [Title 18, Part I, Chapter 47, Section 1015] "Whoever knowingly makes any false statement or claim that he is, or at any time has been, a citizen or national of the United States, with the intent to obtain on behalf of himself, or any other person, any Federal or State benefit or service, or to engage unlawfully in employment in the United States...Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."
Sure, let's build some of those. We can keep these pitiful refugees there until it is safe for them to return home.
1. I share some of your opinions on Social Security. The problem is that we promised the baby boomers a specific retirement, the baby boomers have mostly paid in, and the baby boomers are the demographic bulge. A suggestion 30 years too late for the current batch of retirees.
2. I would argue that it is too soon to tell for South Africa but it has worked remarkably well for the US. WASP, the ethnic group that built and founded this country, have been in a minority since 1850.
3. I would look at Japan again. Japan, one of the most xenophobic nations on earth, is seriously debating about tripling the number of immigrants to fix their demographic issue.
Freedom of entry into a welfare state is not supportable.
I know that charity and goodwill means seeing a man in need and inviting him into my home for food and shelter. If the same man crawls through an open window and helps himself to the contents of my pantry and trashes my home, then calling the police and hoping he goes to jail is not a crime against humanity.
It behooves us all to distinguish between Hispanic (or any other ethnicity) immigrants and illegal border-jumpers.
Anyone, no matter what race or original nationality, who comes to this country legally; who strives for citizenship; who embraces our language & culture while respecting their own traditions; who wants to help keep this country great--I welcome him with open arms and call him a fellow American. Those who sneak into this country illegally; who break immigration, employment, tax, zoning and even basic traffic laws on a daily basis; who reject our culture and retreat into barrios; who demand taxpayer-funded social services not even available to citizens in good standing--I have little sympathy for them and their "plight".
"We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birth-place or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people." [Teddy Roosevelt]
Oddly not a liberal. And the thread is on legal immigration, not illegal.
The case for legal immigrants is clear. They contribute far more, more in fact than the average native.
For illegal immigrants the case is a bit more murky. Hard to get good data on illegal activities. However the evidence is still suggest that they are net contributes. While they may not be the best educated, they do have “get up and go”, tend to be young, healthy, in the most productive years of their lives, and use social services (welfare, hospital, prison, etc.) at a lower rate than natives.
As you state liberals tend to be a bit mushy on the facts and logic. I am not a liberal.
http://www.cato.org/publicatio...
http://balanceofeconomics.com/...
http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.e...
http://www.cato.org/blog/herit...
We can resume the free flow of "workers".
Sure, but who said immigration cannot be conditional on "working your ass off"? There are ways to implement this, if people were really interested.
It's not about giving those social services to everyone who wants them worldwide - only to those who come and live and work and pay taxes here. A fairly simple two-step scheme, where the first step is permanent residency without full political rights and benefits, and the second step is full citizenship, but is earned only by virtue of working in the country and paying taxes for a certain amount of time (or better yet, keyed off a certain amount of taxes paid, after taking all deductions into account), would be trivial to implement.
That is all.
Wouldn't that violate the freedom to move across borders that you suggested was a good thing? I mean conditional on something means those not doing so will be barred.
However, I think the conditional part is largely accepted already. Most legal immigrants do so or provide some sort of expertise. Not too many people object to legal immigration outside of those who cannot find work and see H1B visa candidates filling jobs they applied for. Most of the objection is illegal immigration. Most of the objections is to borders that cannot even keep foreign children from wondering over them.
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As I've said before, this flooding is a Democrat voter drive. Just ask Nancy.
Life is not for the lazy.
> America has lots of room compared to the rest of the world
And let's keep it that way. A great deal of the rest of the world is having real problems with fresh water, arable land, and pollution. Highly industrialized nations require space, per capita, to provide the energy resources and the comfortable living space they enjoy. There are serious issues with health care costs and manpower for the elderly as the population ages, but H1B visas are not likely to help with that.
If you make the offer, then it's only fair if you offer it to everyone worldwide, regardless of their ability to come here on their own. That means we need to offer relocation services to everyone worldwide who wants to come here, not just those who happen to live within walking distance and on the same continent.
When this happens, several billion people are going to want to come here and get social services. How are we supposed to pay for that? Them working and paying taxes isn't enough. We already have liberals complaining that Walmart is effectively getting subsidized workers because their employees are all making minimum wage and are on welfare and food stamps. So they're costing society more than they're chipping in. How is that going to work when you add tens of millions more, or several billion more?
So, let me see if I have this right:
If you don't let more Hispanics in to vote, the Hispanics already here will vote against you.
Why, exactly, should the US increase the racist vote?
Seastead this.
If you make the offer, then it's only fair if you offer it to everyone worldwide, regardless of their ability to come here on their own.
Not at all. It's an offer of opportunity, not an offer of charity. For that matter, why should it be about fairness in the first place?
How are we supposed to pay for that? Them working and paying taxes isn't enough.
As suggested earlier, provide those services only to those who have been net contributors for a sufficient amount of time (or just amount). People working on minimum wage would never make it, since their taxes would be completely offset by their tax return.
Wouldn't that violate the freedom to move across borders that you suggested was a good thing? I mean conditional on something means those not doing so will be barred.
It would, but to a lesser degree. You could argue that it is the lowest degree possible for the scheme to be sustainable, so it's justifiable on utilitarian grounds.
The other option is that freedom to move is not impeded at all, but all the benefits - food stamps, housing etc - are conditional on first paying a sufficient amount into the system first. Literally, work-to-citizenship for yourself and your kids (but that's not something that can be done on minimum wage).
I sure haven't heard much from the Dems in recent years about labor unions. They seem to just assume the unions will support them, but I've seen zero actual support of unions from the Dem politicians. Instead, it seems their #1 issue is bringing in as many low-cost workers as possible, which seems rather contrary to the goals of unions.
H1-B aren't taking me and other Gen-Xers jobs, they're taking the millennial's jobs. And the Baby Boomers who pissed & shit in the punch bowl that used to hold the American dream don't care enough to do anything about it.
It's not just that. The Millenials have mostly drunk the immigration kool-aid sold to them by their corporate and political masters, and seem to be mostly in favor of open borders, meanwhile they advocate this from their parents' basements because they can't afford to move out on their own.
This country is completely screwed, and it's pretty scary to think what it'll look like in 20 years.
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According to BLS reports, we have many US citizen roofers who are unemployed, carpenters who are unemployed, steel-workers who are unemployed... We have many US citizen tool & die makers, precision machinists, chemical engineers, biologists, chemists,... who are unemployed or under-employed. We have millions of US citizen software product developers, systems administrators, network administrators, operating systems developers, mechanical engineers... who are unemployed or under-employed. We have US citizen biophysicists who are under-employed. We have US citizens certified to be teachers (including STEM teachers), lawyers, paralegals, real estate brokers and sales-people who are unemployed or under-employed.
Altogether, each month over the last 5 years or so that I've been paying particular attention, we have been short about 29M to 32M jobs, according to BLS employment/population ratio data. And the USA has had a jobs dearth for the last 60 years according to economists such as Lester Thurow.
The H-1B laws, regulations and practices have never had effective minimal standards such as to select and attract the genuinely best and brightest to become US citizens. Early on, applicants were required to prove that they owned property or had other anchors to their countries of origin, to ensure that they would go back, but those were quickly eliminated when it was converted to "dual intent". The wordings of the laws and regulations, and unguarded statements from those who lobbied for the H-1B and its several expansions and loosenings make clear that the purpose is an "infinite" supply of cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign labor with flexible ethics. In the process, a very few* bright people were brought in, but that is incidental (*less than 8% of H-1B recipients according to some analysts, less than 2% according to others).
E-3, F with OPT, H-1B, and L visa grantees are not only directly abused to displace perfectly capable and willing US citizens, but indirectly to displace them, to facilitate both domestic bodyshopping in addition to the more obvious cross-border bodyshopping, and to facilitate off-shoring through transfer of knowledge and intellectual property, in addition to performing middleman functions to keep off-shoring functioning.
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Yes, but I can only think of 1 or 2 politicians (maybe Jeff Sessions) who favor immigration reform. Most prefer to keep on making the visa and immigration laws worse and worse -- doubling down again and again on the bad they and their predecessors have done over the last century.
As to founding new businesses, I can't see that happening until a lot of the licensing, taxing, etc., are eliminated... but, instead, state legislatures have tended to require more and more. (Here, the government agency in charge of business and professional licensing has been spending some of their money on ads, telling people to only do business with licensed individuals.)
But then some of that is perception. Perhaps, out of ignorance or whatever, the immigrant is more likely to go ahead to start a "black-market" business and be able to make a go of it for a while before the governments hunt them down and demand protection payments (and then ask for and get "forgiveness"). Those stronger (i.e. not yet eroded by Great Society and other government programs) family ties and investment round-tables (by whatever name) can also boost likelihood of business founding as compared to an nth generation US citizen with little personal savings who feels overwhelmed by the crushing government burdens (town/city, county, state, federal).
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"the company made a good-faith effort to fill the positions with Americans, but wasn't able to find people with the needed skills."
I must congratulate you on not using/abusing the transparent weasel-word "qualified".
Tell us about this "good-faith effort":
Did they put the hiring manager's e-mail address and desk-phone number in the half-page or quarter-page display ads in newspapers across the country and in trade publications, the way employers did before H-1B?
Did they include them in their postings on a dozen or more job boards? (A lot of firms place job ads on sites, either without an e-mail address and phone number belonging to a manager, or at a site which blocks such contact information from job-seekers.)
Did they offer to fly candidates in from Maine, Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Kansas... for interviews, and were the executives and mangers ready and willing to cover the hotel, rental car, and meal costs the way employers used to do before H-1B?
Did they offer relocation assistance the way employers did before H-1B? Did they offer to buy the new-hires' homes and re-sell them at the company's risk the way better employers did before H-1B (some firms offered this service on a contract basis to other firms)? Did they offer coaching or assistance in dealing with movers?
Did they offer 2-16 weeks of new-hire training (and 2-4 weeks per year of retained employee training) the way employers did before H-1B?
If applicable, did they offer to sponsor the new employee for necessary security clearances?
Were able and willing candidates' info buried in their "applicant management system's" black-hole data-base, never to be seen by human eyes again?
Were they actually offering market compensation (not just a bodyshopper's hourly rate, but total package of salary, insurance, paid holidays off, paid vacation off, sabbatical, company gym, company cafeteria, training, tuition and fee and text reimbursement, company thrift plan, credit union membership, on-site or near-site day-care, stock-share grant, stock options, IRA, Keogh, intrapreneurship grants, flexible hours... whatever)?
Were the "needed skills" actually *needed*, or were there a lot of "nice to haves" listed as "required"? Did they describe an actual human being, or were they seeking a purple squirrel kind of candidate to do -- for one below-market wage -- the jobs appropriate to a team of 5 or more specialists? Or was it merely a very peculiar niche?
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There are several fictions rolled into such claims.
How local is "local"? "Oooh, we couldn't find someone who was already living within 4 blocks, so obviously we had to take someone from 5K-6K miles away, instead. Surely, you didn't expect us to advertise the job across the 3 neighboring states, let alone across the country, did you."
"Qualified", as in "an important qualification for this job is to be a pliant indentured guest-worker much less likely to jump ship to another employer or blow the whistle on unethical activities than a free US citizen willing to stand up for himself". "Qualified" as in, "We must have a purple squirrel (software designer + algorithms specialist + software developer + data-base analyst and architect + graphic artist + accessibility specialist + internationalization expert + PR/marketing/sales specialist + mathematician or physicist or chemist or pharmacist or economist or historian or mechanical engineer or psychologist or 12th century literature expert or utilities app area expert or...) for this job! A team of 6 or 12 collaborating specialists just won't do."
"Surely you didn't expect us to offer average or below-average market pay and benefits for someone with well-above average intelligence, creativity and industry, with the expectation that he work hellacious hours did you?"
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Certainly... as long as by "in an area" you mean within a radius of 2K miles or so. "Industrial automation" covers a lot of ground, from citrus juice processors near Orlando, to heavy-metal manufacturing in TN, KY, OH, IN, IL, to metal refining and such in PA, OH, MT.. to consumer products manufacturing in OH, NJ, KY, TN, KS, GA, PA...
But with the surplus of STEM workers we've had over the last 30 years or so, old clusters like Route 128 in MA and the Chippewa Falls, St. Paul, Minneapolis super-computing hot-bed, or even the mini-clusters around Detroit, MI and Dayton, OH and Cleveland, OH and Rochester, NY and Kansas City, KS and Oklahoma City and Ponca City, OK and Ft. Huachuca, AZ... have dumped tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of STEM pros into unemployment and under-employment.
I met people in San Diego who said they did embedded programming, and H-1B guest-workers there who said they were data-base experts who were either so shy of industrial espionage or incompetent to talk shop. There was supposedly a biotech cluster there, but you'd never know it from recruiting efforts. Ditto with the NJ pharmaceutical cluster. US citizens need not apply.
I'm positive H-1B is a scam. I'm optimistic that reform (i.e. reduction, moratorium; institution of reasonable standards) can be achieved.
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In practice, it has always meant a little less than local market compensation for the average worker doing this particular kind of work (and, yes, job titles and such can be and have often been gamed*). Sometimes and in some places in the USA, it has meant 2% below local market compensation; other times and in other places in the USA, it has meant 35% below local market compensation. (And we must remember that L visas have no local market compensation or "prevailing wage" requirement; they can be paid at the levels of their country of origin.)
But, the H-1B grantees, if we are to believe the lobbyists, are each and all "best and brightest". And someone who is "best" or "brightest" should be earning a significant premium over the average. Since the very best software developers have been found to produce as much as 10 or 12 times as much value as the mediocre, then the premium commanded by one of the "best" or "brightest" should be as high as 10 times the compensation of the average.
But what has been found? Those H-1B grantees who were also sponsored for green cards (i.e. most likely the better ones), were earning 0.001% above the median. Not 10 times the median, not 5 times the median, not 130% of the median.
So, absent other more or less objective measures of the skill levels of the individual H-1B grantees (IQ, SAT, ACT, LSAT, MCAT..., increased value of stock granted as part of the pay package), perhaps a 150% of median or average would be reasonable. But, once again, what do we see in practice? If pay is a few thousand dollars BELOW the average for new (most likely lower-skilled wet-behind-the-ears, inexperienced) college grads, i.e. if pay is merely $60K, many standards for H-1B grantees and their employers are waived under current law.
( * For instance, the rules allow, or at least allowed, e.g. a cross-border bodyshopper to pay all H-1B grantees the same, below-market compensation, so long as they were all paid the same and no US citizens were employed at that location at a higher compensation. And this was even the case when an employer dumped all of his US citizen employees doing the same work at a higher compensation level in favor of contracting with the bodyshopper. The new, below market compensation, because it is the same for all of the bodyshop's employees doing that kind of work in that place, is the "prevailing wage".
Domestic bodyshoppers have also pulled the equivalent of this scam; negotiate a deal; employer dumps all his people in a particular kind or kinds of work; replace them with cheaper bodies shopped who are paid significantly less by the bodyshopper (in hourly wage, benefits, training, etc.), and charges original employer slightly less than prior total costs of employing people; the difference going into the pockets of the execs of both firms. Voila, the new "prevailing wage" is less than the local market compensation used to be. Some people with few alternatives will absorb the cuts in a lowered quality of living and hire on at the bodyshop; others will be unemployed or under-employed for extended periods, will seek greener pastures elsewhere...)
Is H1B same as Affirmative Action?
Casteism