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A lot of the time it's not even cheaper, it's costlier. Management just prefers to have a docile, more easily controlled workforce.

Management is also surreptitiously raising its own pay (by increasing coordination costs).

> A lot of the time it's not even cheaper, it's costlier. Management just prefers to have a docile, more easily controlled workforce.

Reminds me of something David Graeber said:

Given a choice between a course of action that would make capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and one that would transform capitalism into a viable, long-term economic system, neoliberalism chooses the former every time.

> I don't mind if they're better, but most of the time they're not.

Your employer should make that decision and they seem to think otherwise.

Not everyone wants to shop at whole foods.

Nonetheless, it is sometimes blatantly obvious to the person who is assigned the task of training the person or persons in the duties they perform, immediately before they find themselves without a job.

And when you repeatedly get feedback from several/many people in your organization, asking why this or that isn't done yet or continues to be wrong.

If Management really believes that "this is the right decision for us", with full -- or at least competent -- knowledge of what is going on and how it is working out, then they also are deliberately planning to irritate and inconvenience at lot of their other employees and extant work flows.

I've seen it. Repeatedly.

And, like the grand parent, I've worked with some outsourced/overseas people who were good. In my experience, over a number of years, they tended to be the exception rather than the rule.

This speaks to corporate outsourcing, from a U.S. perspective, rather than in general. Plenty of people elsewhere are very good at what they do. A lot of U.S. corporate outsourcing, in my experience, has drawn from a different and significantly less capable labor pool.

Meanwhile, the people structuring and running these transitions tended to collect their short-term consulting fees and bonuses and move on.

We have the same problem here in apartheid South Africa. For clarity i've had to give my job over 3 times in my career to black South African employees, including for Cisco (my last employer before the current one) The rules are not being applied, but for me it's quite simple. If you want to bring a black worker in, you need to advertise it on a government website for a month. These details will include salary, role, skills, the sponsoring company as well as the one they will be ultimately working for. I spent the last 5 months unemployed, but i'm normally a devops/sysadmin. I know my job went to a black South African. I don't mind if they're better, but most of the time they're not. I didn't claim unemployment benefits as I didn't want the shame and the hassle, including having to spend 20 hours a week looking for work on the governments website. If this website included the details of the jobs that allegedly couldn't be filled by a white South African i'd be far better equipped to get a job I am good at where a company is trying to cheap it out. Note - I am not trying to get at black South Africans here - the RF guys at my last place were superb and better than anybody in white South Africa as we don't train enough of them here - but I am very annoyed where a company can twist the system to avoid paying white South African wages for a white South African job.

Oh fuck off. This has nothing to do with civil rights.

It's a bunch of rich corporate board members trying to game the system and further enrich themselves through abuse of foreign indentured servants.

I happen to be one of these 'foreign indentured servants'. Or rather someone who would gladly be a 'foreign indentured servant' if only the H-1B lottery picked me. I am also pretty sure that there are probably millions if not tens of millions of people just like me.

You realize that by leaving, you would be negatively impacting the economic development of your native country, correct? Mass exoduses of capital and the most capable members of a nation's society have historically had disastrous effects. It would be harming orders of magnitude more people than those who benefited slightly by leaving.

Sort of like how the 'slight benefit' of allowing the most capable blacks to go work in predominantly white companies had disastrous effects on blacks?

Also, I'm not arguing that H-1B should be restricted to only the most capable members of a nation's society. I am super into allowing the least capable members of India to work in the US - for instance programmers who would only command $20K per year in the US job market because they are not very capable.

I happen to be one myself and I think your argument is a poor one.

I didn't really spell out an argument in detail so let me try to clarify my argument and then we can productively disagree?

1. There are lots of people who would be better off (using any reasonable definition of better off that you chose) working as an H-1B worker in the US despite all the potential for abuse (real and exaggerated) that the status entails. They'd be better off because the pay would be higher. They might be better off because they like american culture better than that of their home country. They might be better off because their is greater scope for career advancement. They might be better off because they might learn more from their peers in the US. Etc.

2. H-1B workers do have the option of quitting their jobs and going back to their home countries if they decide that the abuse is too much. I understand that this is complicated by the fact that they might have taken out loans, or developed attachments to America. However, I don't think that, on net, this justifies banning them from the US labor market.

Perhaps the strongest claim I'm willing to make is that the vast majority of workers ( >90%? ) currently in H-1B status in the US don't wish that the H-1B option wasn't available to them. And that the vast majority of wannabe H-1B workers would still choose to come to work in the US even after they are made aware of all the abuses.

I'm aware that I'm only comparing H-1B as is to no H-1B at all and that numerous other hypothetical arrangements exist that would be better than both.

I should have said analogy - your analogy to breaking apartheid was shitty and didn't imply that you had any good arguments, and perhaps were arguing that people against the H1B system were simply racist. Your follow up post appears completely unrelated and doesnt justify the initial analogy in any way.

I see. My bad! Let me try to explain the analogy to apartheid South Africa. I didn't mean to suggest that people are against the H-1B system because they are racist. I mean to claim that restricting foreigners from competing in US labor markets is bad for the same reason that restricting black South Africans from competing in the labor markets of white South Africa is bad.

In apartheid South Africa, it was illegal for blacks to work in the white parts of South Africa without getting a permit (sort of like the H-1B visa or the green card in the case of the US). Most people consider this to be wrong primarily based on the intuition that such severe discrimination on the basis of race is unethical.

1. Why is it not okay to discriminate on the basis of race but okay to discriminate on the basis of country of birth? Why is it not okay to require that only highly skilled, highly paid black South Africans be allowed to participate in the labor markets of white South Africa but okay to disallow less competent Indians willing to work for a lower wage access to the US/UK labor markets?

2. The South Africa analogy is particularly compelling because black South Africans were not considered citizens of white South Africa.

This analogy is not original to me. I stole it from Lant Pritchett. This is what he says in 'Let their people come':

"The analogy between apartheid and restrictions on labor mobility is almost exact. People are not allowed to live and work where they please. Rather, some are only allowed to live in places where earning opportunities are scarce. [...] The restrictions about who can work where are based on conditions of birth, not on any notion of individual effort or merit. The current international system of restrictions on labor mobility enforces gaps in living standards across people that are large or larger than any in apartheid South Africa. It is even true that labor restrictions in nearly every case explicitly work to disadvantage people of “color” against those of European descent."

The problem is that this is a form of discrimination against local employees in favour of cheaper labour which is often less competent.

There is no other reason for the continuing existence of H1B. It's simply a naive and rather stupid cost-cutting measure.

The analogy to SA is absolutely inappropriate, because SA was run on the basis that black South Africans were fundamentally morally, ethically, culturally, and socially inferior to white South Africans, solely on the basis of skin colour (as a proxy for heritage.)

With H1B, no one cares about anything except cost of labour.

Which is a problem, for reasons that may not be obvious. Consider the possibility that moving (say) Indian talent to the US will stall growth in India and move it to the US.

It may be a good deal for individual Indians, but it's not necessarily such a great deal for the Indian economy.

In fact you get a kind of reverse Ricardian effect, where free movement of labour can depress all the economies involved. The source economy loses talented people, and spending on wages contracts in the destination economy, which drives down consumer demand. (Profits increase in the short term - hurrah! - but if you drive down consumer demand enough, your economy falls off a cliff.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo#Comparative_adva...

Morally free movement of populations should be a human right. But you have to get rid of nation states and most notions of economic competition to make it work, and I'm not expecting those changes any time soon.

I find it very disheartening that you and other commenters in this conversation are so happy to brush away the the real harm to the foreigner who doesn't get to work in the first world. You for instance summarize the benefits of free movement of labor as 'profits increase in the short term - hurrah' and 'good deal for individual Indians but not for the Indian economy'. I feel like that is quite hurtful to H-1B holder whose life could be radically transformed by having the opportunity to work in the US.

I find the ease with which you are willing to draft me in a war that I did not chose to be disheartening. That somehow it is the duty of the talented people of the source economy to to grow it. How about you move to India the grow its economy? (Maybe you are actually a third-worlder who gave up the opportunity to move to the first-world to make your home country better. In that case I deeply admire your sacrifice. But if in fact you are a first-worlder who grew up with all the advantages that the first-world has to offer and still don't see the hypocrisy in asking a third-worlder to stay home because he/she happened to be born in the wrong country, you should engage in some self-reflection.

Your citation of the Comparative Advantage section of David Ricardo's wikipedia page does not give me too much confidence on your understanding of the economic theory of free trade (especially as it pertains to labor) and the shortcomings of that theory. You must be aware that Ricardo says exactly the opposite of your point of view since you label your point of view as the 'reverse Ricardian effect.'

At the very least, provide a reference to the 'reverse Ricardian effect' that perhaps quantitatively models how reduced spending on wages causes an economy to fall off a cliff?

Also, I'm not sure I understand your theory of what counts as unethical discrimination. Why is it wrong for an employer to prefer less competent but cheaper employees? And is this only a problem if the cheaper employees are non-local?