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Comment by FesterCluck | Hacker News Reader

I've personally witnessed the hiring of a contractor from India at a small development company simply to save on funds. There were plenty of skilled workers in our pool to fill the position, the owner simply didn't want to pay the price.

Weeks into his employment the developer came to me and asked if there was anyone he could report work complaints to. I gave him contact information for the state's employment agency. It took another week before I realized that he needed to be informed that the state agency protects him whether he's a citizen or not, and that he wasn't trying to report a former employer.

I know many talented people who have come to the US on H-1B clean and have been successful. I, too, do not blame the workers. The employers are abusing the system, and if it continues there must be much stricter oversight.

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So long as a loophole exists that satisfy the conditions of being relatively easy to exploit, weakly enforcement, and offer significant competitive advantage (i.e. savings on salaries), companies will exploit it.

Finding loopholes in the system to enhance profits and be more competitive is part of a game. So I find it difficult to blame employers. The problem lies in policy and enforcement; something is very wrong if it makes sense from a business and risk management perspective to break the rules.

Whenever people moan about enforcement of white-collar-crime laws, I can't help but think about the last scene in The Wolf of Wall Street: after a short stint in prison, DiCaprio's scummy businessman is still rich and admired, while the FBI guy who took him down shares a cheap subway ride with other poor, tired and depressed workers.

Incentives are wrong all over the place, Reaganism made authorities fundamentally powerless. Why would any civil servant sweat prosecuting big businesses, when he can just close an eye and wait for a revolving door to appear shortly after?

You've highlighted a contradiction in the general public which I find quite disturbing. The worship and admiration of the very people (or even companies, in some cases) who screw them over.

That applies to a range of social situations.

Ever heard the saying, "Treat them like dirt, they'll cling to you like mud?"

I agree, here's a great quote by Terry Pratchett on how I think the world should feel about these crimes...

“but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”

I know it is unfair but honestly I can't think of a system with any kind of equality in these circumstances with the unequal distribution of income that we have now. The poor are prosecuted very harshly because there are statistically a LOT more poor than rich and if there was no "stick", it would lead to a breakdown in law and order. While for the rich... you prevent them from causing more damage, but you know that they can't cause chaos in the day to day. At least I believe that was the reasoning until the 2008 disaster.

> Reaganism made authorities fundamentally powerless

Corruption between regulators and the regulated predates Reaganism by quite a lot. The problem here isn't a lack of authority on the part of the government. It's misaligned incentives and poor policy-making.

"Reaganism made authorities fundamentally powerless"

This topic is being abused by the most liberal companies in the most liberal cities. i get the feeling its mostly ignored and not prosecuted (like illegal immigration) is because they feel its better for everyone. I am not taking a stance on whether that is correct, but don't for one second blame that on Reaganism.

Reagan dismantled any ideological supremacy of the public good over private money, basically creating the "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" mantra that is now so popular. This creates a natural imbalance where money trumps everything else; at that point, big money is fundamentally unassailable by regulation, and all efforts to the contrary are little more than cosmetic - be it in immigration, finance or anything else. The Clintons are fundamentally Reagan Democrats, for example. This goes well beyond immigration (a topic that, at the time, wasn't really mainstream), it's an issue with the fundamental impossibility of public regulation of private companies' affairs when the money involved is beyond certain thresholds.

It took another week before I realized that he needed to be informed that the state agency protects him whether he's a citizen or not

Hmmm... that gives me an idea. Maybe the gov't should clearly lay out protections for foreign workers up to and including preserving their work visa even if their original employer is found to be breaking the law?

That would provide some serious incentive for sponsor companies to keep their nose clean if they realized that the the folks they bring over can get them busted and still stay in the country.

> Maybe the gov't should clearly lay out protections for foreign workers up to and including preserving their work visa even if their original employer is found to be breaking the law?

Those protections are already in place. Once the H1 transfer is complete, there's very little relation the worker retains to the original employer.

>Maybe the gov't should clearly lay out protections for foreign workers up to and including preserving their work visa even if their original employer is found to be breaking the law?

Why not let them have their work visa no matter what? Why should their visa be tied to their employer at all? That just invites abuse.

As for their employer, how about any employer found to be breaking the law with regard to foreign workers gets his citizenship revoked and is deported? We could use more hard-working immigrants, and then for anyone complaining about too many immigrants, if we ship out a bunch of our home-grown garbage (abusive managers) that'll free up room. We should deport all the HR people involved in these cases too while we're at it, because they're obviously complicit.

That sounds like free market though doesn't it? Hire the cheapest workforce that can do what you want?

Maybe it's the "selectively free market". Free when it makes things convenient for me (I can hire cheap labor), not free when it makes things inconvenient (I don't compete against cheap labor or other business which might be more competitive here if they could hire the same cheap labor).

Or maybe "we want fully free market for whatever we produce but not for when someone competes for my job"? :)

HN comments usually skew hugely against any kind of regulation and towards "free market will take care of it", except when it comes to jobs and pay it seems.

Yes, that's a good way of putting it. Free market is often a layer of rhetoric on top of arguments for whatever deregulation makes you the most money.

If the comments skew against regulation, I wonder how they skew toward a Communist like me. I don't usually get more than 2 or 3 downvotes, though maybe that's because I don't comment in threads that are very populous.

You can shortcut all of these speculative definitions by acknowledging that the free market doesn't exist.

Not quite IMHO. Free market requires equal conditions for the available workforce pool. Then, the worker is free to set his price. Not the other way around.

It's not free market but H-1B makes the market freer. If you want a truly free market, allow free immigration similar to what the U.S. did with some races before about 1910.

It wasn't free immigration even then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

True, it was racist.

Its not a free market if workers get deported if they quit or are fired.

Actually, a free market would be making them residents the moment they begin their new job and allowing the H1B visa to be transferable for free to any company the moment they enter the US.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but if government regulation is involved, then by definition it's NOT A FREE MARKET.

H1B, by design, interferes with the free market in hiring. Even worse, the current implementation clearly stacks the deck in favor of corporations and employers and suppresses wages for the entire tech workforce.

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