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Congress Will Consider Proposal To Raise H-1B Minimum Wage To $100,000 (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: President-elect Donald Trump is just a week away from taking office. From the start of his campaign, he has promised big changes to the US immigration system. For both Trump's advisers and members of Congress, the H-1B visa program, which allows many foreign workers to fill technology jobs, is a particular focus. One major change to that system is already under discussion: making it harder for companies to use H-1B workers to replace Americans by simply giving the foreign workers a raise. The "Protect and Grow American Jobs Act," introduced last week by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. and Scott Peters, D-Calif., would significantly raise the wages of workers who get H-1B visas. If the bill becomes law, the minimum wage paid to H-1B workers would rise to at least $100,000 annually, and be adjusted it for inflation. Right now, the minimum is $60,000. The sponsors say that would go a long way toward fixing some of the abuses of the H-1B program, which critics say is currently used to simply replace American workers with cheaper, foreign workers. In 2013, the top nine companies acquiring H-1B visas were technology outsourcing firms, according to an analysis by a critic of the H-1B program. (The 10th is Microsoft.) The thinking goes that if minimum H-1B salaries are brought closer to what high-skilled tech employment really pays, the economic incentive to use it as a worker-replacement program will drop off. "We need to ensure we can retain the world's best and brightest talent," said Issa in a statement about the bill. "At the same time, we also need to make sure programs are not abused to allow companies to outsource and hire cheap foreign labor from abroad to replace American workers." The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas each fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 reserved for foreign workers who have advanced degrees from US colleges and universities. The visas are awarded by lottery each year. Last year, the government received more than 236,000 applications for those visas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Trump is the conductor of the gravy train. He's a multimillionaire mogul.
Most places don't use H1B for postdocs, many even refuse to. Anything that raises postdoc pay is a good thing, the whole postdoc system is a joke. I'd like to see the whole academic research system collapse and rebuilt from the ground up.
ORNL uses H1B postdocs as does every other GOCO and university. There are three working in my division alone. While as an american postdoc, I would enjoy a $100,000 pay raise, the more realistic scenario is that my pay stays the same and all the foreign HB1's get laid off.
Well he points out you can't have open immigration with a welfare state, which we have. He pretty much advocates leaving things where they are. So in order to remove all barriers to immigration you have to first get rid of the welfare state (good luck). Then you have to open immigration with the understanding that the welfare state cannot be reinstituted. Unfortunately even if you managed to pull off step 1 you won't be able to do this because the general population is not rational. Having open borders would also be a problem with the drug cartel situation. With no border patrol you can expect the violence and corruption to spill into the US.
So in practice I don't see open immigration working.
> did not get any qualified Americans applying for the position.
You werent paying enough.
>There was nothing wrong with the salary or the market we are in, and nothing specialized about the positions.
Riiiiiiight. So, if you had offered, say, 20% more, you still would have not gotten any qualified Americans?
Let me rephrase: we made a job posting with the salary that was standard for foreign workers. We only got foreign workers applying. See! No qualified Americans.
There's a market for workers and a market for wages. You want to increase the supply of workers? Use the invisible hand of the market: rais wages to attract more suppliers of labour (ie: workers).