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Trump's Next Immigration Move To Affect H-1B Visas; Require Tech Companies To Try To Hire Americans First: Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
AdamnSelene writes: A report in Bloomberg describes a draft executive order that will hit the tech industry hard and potentially change the way those companies recruit workers from abroad. The H-1B, L-1, E-2, and B1 work visa programs would be targeted by requiring companies to prioritize higher-paid immigrant workers over lower-paid workers. In addition, the order will impose statistical reporting requirements on tech companies who sponsor workers under these programs. The order is expected to impact STEM workers from India the most.
Penguinisto adds: If (perhaps when) the president follows through, his next move could limit or at least seriously alter the way H-1B visas are distributed, putting U.S. citizens at a higher priority, and possibly restricting H1-B visas tighter. From the article: "If implemented, the reforms could shift the way American companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple recruit talent and force wholesale changes at Indian companies such as Infosys and Wipro. Businesses would have to try to hire Americans first and if they recruit foreign workers, priority would be given to the most highly paid. "Our country's immigration policies should be designed and implemented to serve, first and foremost, the U.S. national interest," the draft proposal reads, according to a copy reviewed by Bloomberg. "Visa programs for foreign workers should be administered in a manner that protects the civil rights of American workers and current lawful residents, and that prioritizes the protection of American workers -- our forgotten working people -- and the jobs they hold."
its not racist when you can SEE with your own lying eyes that the bay area companies (I live here) are going out of their way to hire folks from india and china, first. the ONLY reason they do this is for money and servitude reasons.
when I interview and everyone on the table is indian, I can tell that there is a total loss of BALANCE in racial and cultural mix. the bay area is very india-populated but not THAT much that 99% of the folks I talk to in every single interview are all indian, with occasional chinese.
it simply does not represent the population mix and that's obvious to anyone who spends even a week here.
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I believe it's to hire the more expensive foreign workers, so they won't be able to low ball US worker salaries. I could be wrong though.
Interesting you should say that. Looks like Reagan had an unusually low percentage of kept promises compared to other presidents.
But you know, they didn't call him the teflon president for nothing. The way his legend has grown over the years, seems like embalming fluid must have been fortified with teflon.
Currently there is a lottery every year to see which companies get the H1-Bs, they are not prioritized. (Other than having a couple types of H1-B).
> Thing is, this is already how H1-Bs are supposed to work.
It's already WHY, not HOW. Currently, companies (mostly a few staffing companies) put in applications in which they simply *state* that talent isn't available locally. They provide no *evidence* that Americans aren't available to do the job. There is then a lottery, and H1-Bs applications are randomly approved. The staffing firms, who submit hundreds of thousands of applications, then essentially resell the H1-Bs at a profit.
Trump's order is to give preference to applications which provide *evidence* that there is no local talent available because the employer is willing to pay the H1-B a high salary. A company wouldn't pay an imported worker $200,000 if an American will do the same job for $150,000. Therefore the high salary proves that the H1-B is being used as intended.
As I mentioned before, this plan is of course not perfect, but it's clearly an imprpvement. Perhaps Congress or the4 administration will make further improvements next week, next month, or next year - he's only been in office ten days.
I worked for Microsoft north of 15 years. My division hired something like 70 new H1Bs this year alone (all straight out college). I was one of the ones who trained three new hires. My job was gone in the next round of layoffs. Any company has massive layoffs should be mandated to first atleast consider the laid off staff before getting H1Bs. BTW, as an older and experienced person I command more than the younger H1Bs. It is baloney that the companies cant find talent locally. It is just the companies do not want to pay for it. BTW, I am of Indian ancestory.
The old way was a lottery, with H1-B applications approved randomly. Oh and companies would say there were no American workers available, pinky swear.
Trump's draft order has taken a hint from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's approach - if people are motivated by money, you set it up so that they make the most money by doing what you want.
The draft order says that instead of approving H1-B applications at random, via a lottery, as it's done now, they are to use a different approach. Preference is given to applications paying the highest salary. If a company truly can't find American workers with the required skills, if the imported labor actually has special skills, the company will be willing to *pay* for those skills. Companies wanting to import cheaper entry-level prpgrammers won't pay them $180,000 / year. That's why Trump's order is to prioritize H1-Bs by salary. You want to import someone and pay them $40K? Go to the back of the line. You're willing to pay $200K salary because there truly aren't any Americans available with those skills? You're at the front of the line.
It totally removes the motivation to use H1-Bs as cheaper replacements for American workers, because it makes H1-Bs cost more than American workers. The company who wants to minimize costs will hire Americans, whenever possible.
Though it's not perfect, there is a certain genius to using their desire to minimize costs to get them to avoid H1-Bs. The founding fathers wrote about doing something similar. They deliberately set up a power struggle. It's designed so that a president could increase their power mainly by taking power away from Congress. On the other hand, Congress is a bunch of people who like having power and won't give it up easily. So to fight the President's desire for power, they used the Congresscritters' desire for power.
just about the worst pres we ever had.
war on drugs almost killed us. 'trickle down' just was someone pissing on my pants leg. I did not see any gain but the rich fucks sure did!
ronny set us back a good 20 years. I hope he burns in hell.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Guess what. Technology workers like you and me aren't immune to the same damn laws of capitalism. Businesses will find a way to reduce costs and punch up their profits, no matter what populist measures are passed by the politicians.
I guess you missed it. The big bitch session about H1B's is that it isn't capitalism, it's cronyism. It's using government to interfere with the market by letting business use effectively indentured servants. They bring people in that don't have the knowledge about how much the job is actually worth, suppressing wages. Then when they find out they're getting screwed just like US citizens they have no recourse since if they raise a stink they lose their status and have to go back while the company gets yet another sucker. If this was capitalism then the foreign candidates would just work for somebody else that actually paid them what they're worth but with the H1B program they're prevented from taking any action. But hey, it's not as though this is the only time a company thought that using cronyism is a hell of a lot better deal than actual capitalism.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Actually, most presidents do in fact keep most of their campaign promises...
Actually they don't. Effort is not the same as keeping, which is the problem. You are one of the first people I've ever heard in 40 years to confuse the two but muddling the conversation with nonsequitors is a common troll.
A good faith effort is the same as keeping their campaign promises, considering no President is king and as such cannot guarantee anything. A good faith effort is defined as what a reasonable person would determine is a diligent and honest effort. That is all anyone can ever ask of anyone else in any circumstance.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It's widely abused. You've seen those job advertisements which require a dozen specific degrees and certifications, x years experience in one field, y years experience in another somewhat related field, and z years experience in a completely unrelated field? Those are H1-B ads. They already know which foreigner they want to hire, and they tailor the job requirements to exactly match that person. This reduces the chance that any American will "qualify" for the job to near zero, and they can honestly say that there were no qualified American applicants.
Pay attention to what he is doing now. He's already trying to put the post of President before that of all the courts in the land over something that is ultimately not especially important - a completely artificial emergency. How this fight plays out over the next week will show among other things if the Constitution remains binding (as in, do the courts have the power to overturn unconstitutional actions by a President) and if habeas corpus can be forced by the courts or not.
Besides, he's kicked the head of the joint chiefs of staff and his intelligence advisor off the national security council and elevated a Breitbart "journalist" into the role. If that's not freaking you out it should.
I thought he would stack the Supreme Court with enough people that he would get the numbers but now it looks like he's going to just defy the entire legal system instead.
The whole minimum-wage argument is based in bad economics anyway.
The best economic system is fiat currency with a fractional reserve system. Technical progress and trade both reduce the cost of goods, and population expansion increases the number of people who need money; this causes deflation, which is bad ju-ju. Instead, we insert money into the system by allowing the issuance of debt: fiat bought into banks allows fractional reserves to multiply the amount of loans made, and a steady rate of inflation slowly reduces the share of a person's income represented by debts the longer those debts stand.
That gives you a slight problem.
The only way for prices to increase (inflation) is for the wage-labor time (wage x hours) backing a product to increase. That means for a thing to double in price when you invent new technology to halve the amount of labor required to make it, you have to quadruple wages. 10 people make 20 units an hour instead of 10; you pay them $40/hr instead of $10; price per unit goes up from $10 to $20, but people have $40 instead of $10 to spend on the object. There's no way for people to not get richer, in general.
With an established minimum wage, the minimum-wage worker's buying power lags. The minimum-wage worker still has $5/hr, even though prices doubled.
Now there's a problem here: with lower-wage workers, we can buy more stuff--creating more jobs; but the above suggests that those workers are getting poorer and poorer, and so those jobs don't amount to much of anything. Obviously, we need to pay them more. That's an imperative fact of the minimum-wage model. Unfortunately, there's oscillation: as MW lags, we get more jobs; when we restore MW, we lose jobs--mainly MW jobs.
There are further considerations, such as what minimum-wage strategy to use. As you can see above, 100% inflation means a good that cost $10 now costs $20; to keep up with inflation, the $5/hr minimum wage must become $10/hr. At the same time, the purchasing-power of a worker making that $20 good must necessarily have quadrupled--to gain the same growth of buying power (fair share income), that $5 minimum-wage must become $20/hr, which will of course incur more jobs lost than a bump to $10/hr.
In actuality Walmart seems to be slowly realizing that its employment practices lead to high turnover, and the cost of training new employees is actually costing it money. There's something to be said for a decent wage and benefits if you're talking about retention.
From a business perspective, this is true. Essentially, a business can profit more at the expense of others: it can pay workers higher prices, retain more workers, get a better public image, and use its other advantages to exceed over its competitors. That can allow the business to expand and have more employees while ultimately reducing the number of jobs in the total economy and even the quality-of-life of everyone except its own employees (someone has to pay the prices that feed those wages).
Generally, people try to economize: if you do something that makes your product more-expensive than the guy across the street, your customers go there. That behavior doesn't create a standing optimal economy; it moves us toward one continuously, and tends to erode outright-harmful behavior.
In a nutshell, if WalMart can pay its employees better and only incur 0.01% more cost, well... that's some 21,000 American jobs lost in the endeavor, and an increase in prices at WalMart that nobody will care about (a penny here and there); it's utterly unimportant. If WalMart ends up bumping prices by 10% or 15% and causing a real decline in the purchasing power of its customers, they'll all shop at target where people get paid $8.50/hr to stock shelves and WalMart will eventually cease to exist.
Economics is complex. I complained the other day that most people are arguing economics that they learned in high school and ECON101, and someone su
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