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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.
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but if he actually delivers on this campaign promise (even if it's just scrawling his signature on the bill and then taking all the credit in speeches) that will be a good thing for me and most employed people on slashdot.
Is there any way this is a bad thing? H1B was supposed to be for bringing in essential foreign talent. If a company isn't willing to pay $100k per year plus the various expenses, whoever they are bringing it must not have been all that talented.
An even better solution - move to a points system and no guest workers.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
âAnd, here, tech folks admit that increasing the minimum wage leads to less employmentâ.
How many companies will see this as the tipping point to it making more sense to move the company to where the H-1B workers are instead of continuing to do the work inside the USA?
Slavery is already illegal, actually. If an employee trains his replacement, it's voluntary. Usually they are compensated with severance, which of course they are not entitled to. We can say this is a dick move by employers, but it's not forced.
Now when I replace American worker, I will be getting paid more than American worker!
Not sure if satire or serious. You won't be replacing American workers above cost. If anything the jobs will go to 3rd world shitholes and drive the wages lower there.
If the goal is the best and brightest, why deny anyone based on luck?
Leave the work of determining who to bring in to the H1-b sponsors. If they want to pay $50,000 to get their guy in, and another company wants to pay $60,000 for their guy, then it's pretty obvious who we should let in.
I would restrict H-1Bs to only areas of the country where residential rents (per sq. foot) are in the lower 50 percentile. If Google or Facebook wants to hire someone on an H-1B, open an office in Idaho or Mississippi or Fresno and hire them there. High skilled immigration is supposed to help the US, not just San Jose.
Or, alternately, if you want to hire $1 worth of H-1B payroll in a high rent area, then move $3 in payroll to a lower rent area.
This would help immigrants learn about America and Americans learn about immigrants. And it would help encourage tech companies to open facilities somewhere where people go to live rather than somewhere people go only to work.
The goal of the H1B program is supposedly to bring talent to this country that simply cannot be had otherwise. Talent like that should be rare and paid accordingly.
They can and will be replaced with companies that don't see US citizens (of all skill levels) as a problem.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
$100,000 is still too low. I'd say $300,000, but I'm open to an auction system too. The auction method would need a quota, and the other could safely be open ended.
See that "Preview" button?
Something feels off about this. I want to make it clear I hated both Hillary and Trump and think they're equally dangerous.
This won't increase the minimum wage for existing tech workers. In places like Redmond and the Bay Area, wages are already way over $100k. I don't think this will really change things for the best.
The only people who will be able to afford H1-B people are the big companies. I have a feeling this will starve the rest of the IT sector, consolidate jobs in Seattle/SF/NYC, and only allow the very large companies to even hire immigrants. This will push less qualified workers out of these high income areas and into 100k/year jobs in rural areas. Amazon/Microsoft/Google/Whoever will be able to hire the best US and on-US workers.
Sorry but this is just outright nuts. Who the hell are you or the govt to say a free person can't provide training services for $25,000 if they want to?
Just because one choice has consequences doesn't mean you are forced not to choose it. Most choices have consequences. The examples you cite are all voluntary.
I recently heard a better idea.
Auction the H1B visas to the companies.
Take all the revenue from the auction and put it towards scholarships for people studying to work in STEM.
Also, fast-track to green card. The higher the price paid for the visa, the faster the green card application is approved.
Anyone worth an expensive visa is probably someone we want to make a permanent resident. Make the rhetoric around H1B match the reality - bring the best and brights to america and then keep them here.
The one catch is we have to make sure the number of available visas is limited to a number that maximizes auction revenue. Otherwise they'll just flood the market and the auctions won't fetch squat.
Sucker: It's the Indian's... They're taking all our jobs for half the salary.
Groucho: Well give them more money then!
Rim Shot.
Re "It's because it's open to the best and brightest, regardless of where they're born."
The US graduates the worlds 'best and brightest" every year. The US has no advanced skills issues. Engineers, doctors, artists, artisans, lawyers, scientists, technicians all flow out of of the US educations system every year in bulk.
If you got your education in the USA and legally want to stay on your fine.
If you have the one skill the USA cant find in all its universities and within a vast pool of decades of skilled workers, you can still get into the USA to work.
The change is in not allowing wages to spiral down using cheap guest workers to never have to consider US workers.
The guest worker was to fill in a gap in US during times of need i.e. a specialty occupation, not a vast wage reduction system for years of wage savings.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
My graduate program is chock full of unqualified "fresher" Indians looking to exploit the Masters degree loophole.
Best and the brightest? Don't make me laugh.
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but if he actually delivers on this campaign promise (even if it's just scrawling his signature on the bill and then taking all the credit in speeches) that will be a good thing for me and most employed people on slashdot.
Is there any way this is a bad thing? H1B was supposed to be for bringing in essential foreign talent. If a company isn't willing to pay $100k per year plus the various expenses, whoever they are bringing it must not have been all that talented.
Good post.
We have to get back in the mode where we can say "the other side did this" without assigning blame and descending into name calling.
It's been argued for the last 2 decades (-ish) here on this site that the main problem with American governance is corruption by big business. Regardless of the left or right position we need to start doing things that are good for the people, even if such actions are narrowly bad for business.
This is a good start, it was indeed one of his campaign promises, and that part doesn't matter one bit.
(I'm very curious to see who votes for/against the bill, or if it gets killed in committee.)
Here's another even better solution: Set a fixed limit, and then auction off the visas to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the US Treasury. Currently, they are free (other than a processing fee) and issued to whomever is first in the queue. An auction would ensure they go to the companies that value them the most, and have a real need to import critical skills, rather than just looking for cheap labor.
Hmm... 65,000 visas auctioned off for $1000 each would net about $65 million, possibly more.
That's actually enough to pay for some of the smaller services, and it's a great idea.
What's been going on with Slashdot? There's been, like, 4 insightful posts in the last 24 hours.
And how many of these H1(b)'s are doing engineering work at MS? Well, some from Canada but that's about it.
Require that for every H1-B hired that an American be hired to shadow that H1-B hire and learn the job the H1-B is supposed to do.
If an American is not available, multiply the H1-B's salary by 3 and contribute that to the nearest college with a computer training curriculum.
If the company is a habitual user of multiple H1-B visas, require the company to set up and fund an apprentice program at the nearest school, with priorities for the most disadvantaged students.
There are a lot of sharp foreign people out there. Will this ploy backfire in their faces?
In the Portland Oregon area, housing prices rose 20% last year. The poor and disabled in Beaverton and Hillsboro are getting squeezed out of the housing market. I have seen a HCL employee work 5 months on a L2 visa, then goes back to India for a month, come back to work for an other 5 months on a L2 visa.
Hmm... 65,000 visas auctioned off for $1000 each would net about $65 million, possibly more.
I think it would net WAY more than that. My company paid a lawyer $10k to do the H1-B paperwork for an important employee from a site we were closing in Europe. It turned out that we didn't even get the visa. If we could have just bid instead, I think we would have been willing to pay at least $50k, and likely a lot more, to guarantee a quota.
I agree completely, I was just hesitant to speculate that much on the value.
We're now talking about a billion dollars in revenue, which for comparison purposes is a sizeable percentage of the $18b NASA budget or the $6b NOAA budget.
With that amount of money, over 20 years you could rebuild a lot of infrastructure.
The only cognitive dissonance is your lack of understanding of both the effects of H1-B workers taking middle class jobs, and the real effect of the minimum wage on job availability and inflation.
Genius.
Why go into engineering when management or sales pays double for less work?
Because, if you are in a good work environment in a good company, it's a whole lot more fun to follow your heart than to follow your wallet.
For those whose hearts lead them to engineering and who are fortunate enough to have a good work environment in a good company, there's plenty of reasons to stay rather than go with a less-work/higher-paying position in management or sales.
On the other hand, if your heart isn't in engineering, you probably shouldn't be there. If it is in engineering but you are in a lousy work environment or lousy company, change employers, not careers.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Shouldn't the pay be higher than what Americans are paid not the same? Shouldn't the cost discourage long term use of the program. Maybe average salary, plus $100,000 adjusted for inflation.
We have a winner. Sorry Slashdot. Realistically you can't be all conservative and gong ho Libertarian like most all and so that is the market wage yada yada with other people's jobs including minimum wage hikes or automation stories with posts about increasing demands for robots ..... then cry WANNA UNFAIR.
I am not saying I agree with this. But rather I want to state economic reality. If you put in artificial caps the market will respond appropriately and negatively. Our version of robots taking over is to give Phreej a root account and have him do the work in Bangalore.
I think this will surely bring more jobs overseas than protect them. Limits on H1B1 visas sure but 100k is quite excessive as not all IT jobs are frankly worth 100k. Yes someone needs to administer a database or do Active Directory infrastructure support and work. These are solid middle class jobs that are not super specialized anymore.
http://saveie6.com/
I've spent a lot of time fixing other people's code. ...
I've spent too much time throwing out off shored code. Just worthless.
I've had offshore teams coding for me. Asia fails. China, India, never got it right.
I had a team in Hungry, they were good. Not great, I said don't and one did it anyway. Language issues
To be so bad at your job that you're terrified of 80,000 non-native English speakers (out of a workforce of 160m) who generally tend to work in growth industries. If you can't beat out an Indian making 60k, maybe the problem isn't them, it's you.
Um, no. The increase to $100k for H1-B pushes employers to use US labor in exactly the same way that a $15/hr min wage pushes employers to use automation. When you increase the cost of one alternative, you make other alternatives more attractive.
These are solid middle class jobs that are not super specialized anymore.
If they're not super specialized it shouldn't be an issue to find someone locally to do it for less than $100k. The H1B program was supposed to be for filling those really difficult to fill jobs.
And if you truly can't find anyone to do it locally, then it should be worth $100k to you.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
job titles are to easy to game now an COL based mini wage for H-1b's say rangeing from 90K-150K+ Is nice.
And it's easier to stop people from gameing the location.
I'm from India and work in Bangalore.. This move might hurt our industry in the short term but I think in the long term we will gain with more jobs moved here. Companies like IBM, Accenture etc no longer outsource work to local companies here but they themselves have a very significant presence and work force here.. If I'm not wrong, I think IBM has the maximum no of hired man power in India..
job titles are to easy to game
Indeed. At my company, people have the freedom to pick their own title. With a few exceptions (you can't say you the CEO, president, or a director) it can be anything you want. One of our warehouse clerks has business cards that say "Supreme Commander".
The only real solution to the H1-B problem is to eliminate it entirely. If somehow it's true that finding talent is so hard that we need to import it, then institute a proper accelerated green card program for properly qualified folks and let them compete with Americans on equal legal footing. The H1-B program creates indentured servants who risk getting tossed out on their ear if they don't stay in line. That is the edge they have over American workers who are free to leave oppressive conditions. I think that is what companies want out of it, not the talent. Just look at who is actually hiring these folks for proof.
So no, raising the minimum H1-B wage is just theater. Kill the program and replace it with something far more fair for everyone involved. Well, except the greedy companies sucking the job out of life.
Firstly, it should be 108k adjusted for inflation since it was first set but whatever.
More importantly, it's going to be a waste of time if they fix it because it'll be broken within a few years (unless we have deflation in which case things are much worse anyway).
$100,000 is basically top 20%.
So instead of setting it at $100,000, set it at "Must pay a salary equal to the lowest income in the highest quintile for the prior tax year".
That way it will naturally increase with inflation. When $60,000 was originally set, it had purchasing power of over $100,000 today.
And if these are so special, rare, and talented then shouldn't they be making top 20% pay?
Keep in mind that Google and similar companies are often unable to hire the truly rare genius's they need because all the slots have been taking by bachelor's degree candidates with "C" averages for that year by large consulting firms.
The goal of H1B was to bring in labor unavailable in the U.S. at any price- not to bring in labor that undercut local market prices.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I remember his famous routine where he wanted to make a law to make it illegal to pay illegal aliens less than what an American earns for the same job...
If that was possible they'd already be doing it, because it would be vastly cheaper than even the lowest paid H1-B.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Every single indicator from history disagrees with this sentiment.
Except for the ones that precede the deleterious effects of globalization. Never mind that the United States' economic/geopolitical status as a hyperpower tends to nullify precedents set by other countries.
Approximately 75% of the [amorphous construct redacted] market (by consumption not population) is found outside of the US so if our country tries to rely [redacted].
Nothing says that the US market can't be served by itself and friendly countries, while others can be localized to serve *their* own.
Given the proper reward, companies will step up and employ as well as serve US customers - as well as those in friendly (read: not recipients of abuse/fraud against US citizens) foreign countries.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
> the only way to combat it is by some incorruptible authority guarding against it with an eagle eye
If you have an incorruptible authority handy, that would certainly be good. The framers of the Constitution (the written one, not the govt we have now) explicitly designed the system to make greed and self-interest work for good. For example, the way separation of powers works was designed for that purpose. A hundred of the most powerful people in the country, the Senate, was to have many of the powers the President doesn't have; the President could gain those powers only if the Senate gave up power. That effectively restricted presidential power for most of the first 150 years - Congressmen could retain their power only by seeing to it that the President didn't take over, and vice-versa. The founders wrote about this.
Consider two economic systems. In the first, everyone is supposed to get the same $18,000 /year. Greedy (amd hungry) people who want more can only get more by doing illegal things - corruption, black market, etc. In the second system, you can get more money by providing anything that people want. If farmers want better tractors, you can make a lot of money making better tractors for them. If people want better smartphones, you can make a lot of money by making better smartphones for them.
In the first system, people who want more for themselves have no choice but corruption and crime. In the second system, the easiest way to get more for yourself is to do something that's helpful to other people. The second system has much *less* corruption (much less, though not zero).
The net effect of this price control will be to accelerate offshoring of those services performed by H1-B workers today.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
One function of government is to protect society from "voluntary" (in most cases financially incentivized/coerced) actions that seem beneficial to an individual actor, but aggregately have a deleterious effect on the prosperity of the whole population.
Consider - dumping toxic waste into the river is "voluntary" (as above) and almost always beneficial to the dumper. Yet most of us are happy to have the government prevent it. Because it's harmful to all of us, even if it benefits the person doing it.
At least SOME H1-Bs from overseas will see an increase in pay. The market response will be more applicants, and more people overseas seeking degrees in those fields. You can't fool Mother Free Market.
Gently reply
Seems this this benefits everyone except those who would exploit this program.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
So work in New York.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I have spent the last several months hiring two QA engineers. I got about two dozen resumes that had been pre-screened by the corporate recruiter. All of them were somewhat qualified. I phone interviewed about half of those, and had about 8-10 people come in for interviews.
Most of them were on some kind of work program. I only saw resumes for three men, and one came in for an interview. He was from an African country. I think the other two may have been Americans, but I didn't phone interview them and am only guessing by their names.
All the rest of the resumes were women, and only 1 was American.
So while I understand the sentiment that the H1B program is being used to "replace American workers" - which I am sure it is - I personally don't see it. I did not get any qualified Americans applying for the position. There was nothing wrong with the salary or the market we are in, and nothing specialized about the positions. Now I do know that Big Corporations are able to use-and-abuse the visa program because I have seen it firsthand. But there is also some good that comes out of the program as well.
I guess this what we've been reduced to though, you have to choose one end of the spectrum, there's no in-between on anything.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
H1B program is just the tip of the iceberg. Indian companies TCS, Cogniscent, HCL, or Indian-American companies Syntel, Mastec, whatever name they go by now, all engage in faking credentials, faking interviews, faking resumes. A few good ones take a phone interview, and someone else shows up for the job.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Bad analogy. We are talking about a transaction of labor for money. You have no right to tell me I cannot offer training services to an employer for money.
If we're combating wealth inequality, "America First" and "America Great Again" then the H1B minimum salary should be pegged at no less than 20% of the salary + bonus + benefits of an organizations CEO/COO (whichever is higher) as posted the prior year according to their income tax statement - or $100K pegged to 2016 dollars - whichever less less. Although honestly unless we have a way to verify the quality of the imported talent - their safety - then we really should only allow American-made talent. For now. I'm all for H1B worker visas - but only after the FDA says they're safe. Just like that recently defeated drug import amendment. AM I RIGHT CORY BOOKER? AM I RIGHT?
imagine a soft, buttery paw gently pressing down onto a sleeping soldier's face. forever.
Companies now incentivized to open foreign development offices. Right? If you hire foreign nationals in their country of origin they're not an H1B employee. So instead of importing foreign workers to the U.S. (who pay rent, taxes and buy things from American companies), American employers will just employ more people abroad.
For things like services, I'm not sure whether Trump has thought out a way here. But for anything involving manufacturing and reselling in the US, Trump has already been wagging the 'Border Tax' so loudly that companies have been falling over each other in not closing, or in fact expanding, US manufacturing. Now he'll have to decide whether and what to do for things like offshoring operations, like IT
If they can raid colleges for CS graduates, why can't they attract their professors? Those professors would be easy to attract given that they would get both a pay raise, as well as government benefits, which are invariably better than universities
If Microsoft is paying someone $70k, bumping that up to $100k WILL make a difference
Why not just vote to end the program
I would restrict H-1Bs to only areas of the country where residential rents (per sq. foot) are in the lower 50 percentile.
So you'd give all the jobs-for-locals benefits to residents of a few big cities and leave the rest of the population in competition for high-value jobs with underpriced H1-Bs?
Looks to me like you completely missed the point of the Trump Win. He was elected by exactly those people you propose to leave out in the jobless cold, over a set of issues of which loss of jobs to foreigners by H1-B visas, illegal immigration, and outsourcing topped the list.
This election - not just the Presidential, but all down the ticket - was largely a revolt by the rural and the downtrodden against the urban elites. Trying to fix the problem only for those living in pricey cities and leave it in full force for these voters is a recipe for more extreme shakeups.
If the soapbox and the ballot box both don't work, and the jury box is unavailable, the only one they've go left is the ammo box.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
H1B is about one thing only: increasing the size of the labor pool to lower labor costs for the benefit of corporations.
Can I enjoy Indian costs of living while having to compete with them? Can I cut a zero off my food, medical, housing and education costs? If not, then you can go fuck yourself, toady.
Indian restaurants are closing all over the UK because of a visa requirement that experienced chefs need a job offer of over £35k in order to get a visa.
https://www.theguardian.com/li...
Instead of a lottery, allocate the limited H-1B slots by auction, then use the money to support tech scholarships for US citizens.
And you have no right to tell me I can't dump toxic waste in the river you drink from, broham.
Plenty. Less at MS than most tech companies, but when I was there it seemed about 1/3-1/2 (as opposed to about 2/3 at most left-coast tech software companies).
In software development, H1-Bs are just where most talent enters the pool, and as the industry is still so biased towards young talent, most of the workforce is still in the first 5 years of the industry. Most H1-B holders I've known over the years have green cards now, BTW, as the years went on.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Fortunately, there's a limit to the supply by virtue of the number of visas, so I can actually see this being better for everyone involved (stateside). More foreign competition for the limited visa slots, and US workers are more appealing with the cost of living imbalance lessened.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Nice try, but "highest paying base salary" is going to be screwed by the same regional factors isn't it? That should be obvious so you are clearly doing this deliberately.
Are you pushing an agenda or just think that "flyover country" doesn't matter?
What you've written is only applicable to a tiny percentage of graduates each year that by connections or ability manage to snag one of a tiny number of jobs available at that incredibly high base rate, and are able to move to an area where rents are ridiculous. It's also skewed by those people who land a ridiculously high paying first job due to family connections and their pay rate is due to who they are and nothing to do with the actual job. That's relatively rare, is not going to show up on an average, but it's going to skew that "highest paying base salary" metric right up. Averages are what you should be looking for in an honest discussion.
Are you attempting an honest discussion and made a mistake or are you pushing an agenda with false metrics?
Depends on the stream.
Sorry to bother you dwpro, but modern politicians have a long history now of changing laws to make it legal to do things that were formally illegal. So nothing is concrete anymore.
In Canada we have a similar and much worse program called the Temporary Foreign worker program. I want these assholes gone. They are nasty to deal with as their cultures and training are complete shit. They are working like slaves, driving wages down, and generally are giving unethical companies that hire them a leg up over good solid companies. Maybe some of them are nice people but I would send them all home tonight.
Luckily they are mostly in places like Tim Hortons, but the drag is that they are pretty much ending the ability for students to get even crap jobs and quadrupling the competition among students for those jobs that can't seem to get TFWs. This is great, a whole generation of young people who can't get even onto the bottom rung of the ladder of life.
Trudeau is a huge disappointment as I had a vague hope that he might erase this policy since it was a conservative one. My one hope with Trudeau is that he pisses people off so much that we elect our own Trump who won't feel one bit bad sending these people back to the third world hellholes they came from to suck the vitality out of our country.
People keep crapping on Trump over and over, and he certainly seems to be the human version of a botched boob job, but if he identifies a whole bunch of places where the emperor has no clothes and ends these monstrous policies then good for him. Silicon valley hated that they actually had to pay competitive wages while raking in obscene amounts of money. You have top companies with billions in profits not paying the people who make it happen enough to live in SF, WTF?
I love that Silicon Valley supported Hillary and now have been completely shut out of the White House. Best day in a very long time. I hope he burns the lot of them. Forces them to pay taxes, forces them to pay good salaries, and maybe figures out that the bunch of them are violating our privacy in ways that make 1984 look like a peeping Tom.
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but if he actually delivers on this campaign promise (even if it's just scrawling his signature on the bill and then taking all the credit in speeches) that will be a good thing for me and most employed people on slashdot.
There's no doubt that he can push through a number of short-term fixes that make him look good, and maybe it will create more jobs for Americans, at least in the beginning; but isn't this what was criticised severely during the early years of financial crisis - and still is: that there were strong incentives for the executives to make a quick buck and then cut your losses and run, leaving the fall-out to those left behind?
Just to take an example: Trump wants to abandon everything that has been done to protect the environment - he wants to introduce more coal burning, he wants to scrap the Paris agreement and drill for oil in the Arctic etc. Apart from the damage this will cause to America's environment and the health of Americans, down the line, it will also mean that Europe, China and India will continue to get ahead of America when it comes to renewable energy technology, environmental protection etc, and they will build up sustainable industries on top of this, which will provide sustainable jobs etc, while America in years to come will be forced to go and buy this from outside, when a future government finally decides to come to their senses.
Is there any way this is a bad thing? H1B was supposed to be for bringing in essential foreign talent. If a company isn't willing to pay $100k per year plus the various expenses, whoever they are bringing it must not have been all that talented.
I don't know - but I suspect it is not as simple as you make it sound. In many countries in Europe - especially in Scandinavia - there has traditionally been rather stiff rules about minimum wages, and it as meant that the business climate simply wasn't as attractive as in many other countries. The was one of the many contributing factors that pushed up income taxes and foreign borrowing for many years, and the attempts at getting the rules loosened up have caused social unrest, strikes etc. I'm not against minimum wages, but you have to have a well thought out plan so you are prepared to tackle the consequences. And I have seen no indication that Trump has a plan - his stance on climate change consists mostly of ignoring science and walking away from international agreements; it's a bit like keeping warm by pissing yourself - it works, but only briefly, and then you have a more pressing problem to deal with.
Umm, not when they're crammed ten to a two-bedroom apartment and send all their money back home. Which is the same thing you would do if you went overseas to take a temp job for 18 months. Umm.
Non sequitur that in no way addresses your own government importing temp workers to compete for your job.
...and zero sources.
Putting your opinions in parenthesis after your assertions doesn't count as sources to prove your assertions.
Frankly - Comey DID find that Clinton mishandled classified data in a criminal manner.
Here's my source:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press...
And for the lazy:
"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received."
Comey decided that Clinton did commit a crime - but did so without intent to commit a crime. The public saw right through this as one set of rules for us and another set of rules for the Clintons.
Clinton lost because she is corrupt, she is a criminal, and her policies sucked - and she lost to a real-estate developer/reality TV star with NO government experience at all.
That should tell you how terrible a candidate she really was.
Is it true that if there's a law that prohibits people from being paid less than a certain amount, it makes it harder -- impossibly, maybe even -- for them to get jobs?
What an amazing notion. And sort of obvious, in retrospect.
I wonder why no one has ever noticed this before?
Golly!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Inevitable because Indians are exporting their uncivilized Caste system to USA http://www.livemint.com/Opinio...
Casteism
Send Americans to India;
Indian education system will train them into highly skilled wage slaves;
Casteism
And there is a HUGE difference between a "degree" and experience.
I am not really a Java developer, more a Java "script" kiddie. But I am no longer surprised, when I turn to an H1B hired for a Java position to discover they are more clueless than I am. It's very common.
Also, I've learned during interviewing that it is not uncommon for half the credentials to boil down to they took a 2 week program or completed an online tutorial. And that there is actually zero business experience for stated skill.
That if you pay them $60K+ you don't need to do any of that.
America operates under a fascist economic model of strong collusion between the business elites and government, striving for a two class system - elites and laborers.
We utilize intellectual property laws, courts, legislation, etc to control markets. But even worse, the application of those regulations are often very one sided.