Comment by davidf18 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidf18 | Hacker News Reader

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> "I hate the exploitation of the H1-B program: but the H1-B is capitalism..."

Sure, there is capitalism, but there is also breaking the law. The abuse of the H1-B Visa program is breaking the law since it is only supposed to be used in cases where there is no American qualified to do the job. The law needs changing so that violation means jail time.

The EU has a similar problem with working class and hence BrExit as a result. Cheap labor from Eastern Europe has been displacing the British working class. Of course, the elites like this because it means they have to pay less money for labor and the NHS has to pay less for nurses.

The US has free trade agreements where there are no or low tariffs but not free movement of labor. NAFTA is one such example. The EU as part of their agreement has low-tariffs and free flow of labor connected and that is why BrExit happened.

Even though most Americans are against H1-B the politicians seem to be for expanding the program.

Here is Mark Rubio: http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h...

Trump won because he was basically the only Republican and along with Sanders the only other candidate that wanted American workers to get paid fairly.

> "The abuse of the H1-B Visa program is breaking the law since it is only supposed to be used in cases where there is no American qualified to do the job"

Isn't this basically an issue of "no american qualified to do the job" "at the price the market is willing to pay for that job"? It's not unfair to think that these American companies that save costs by using H1-B or offshored workers pass on those savings to customers and shareholders (since so many are public). Their products have an inherent savings because these companies are saving money using the H1B right?

I'm Indian and don't really care either way about this debate, but it just seems to me 'fixing' the H1B issue wouldn't really bring jobs back to the US. These companies are already used to such cheap IT labor and their final product/service pricing reflects that. You think they'll suddenly hire 50-60% more expensive US workers for those jobs? IMHO I think this will lead to more offshoring of jobs and the US will lose more jobs that were atleast situated in the US geographically and contributing to US taxes.

> "Isn't this basically an issue of "no american qualified to do the job" "at the price the market is willing to pay for that job"?"

It's called global labor arbitrage. The intent of the H1-B visa law is not to drive down STEM wage rates or replace Americans with lower wage immigrants, but rather to fill jobs for which no American is qualified.

It has been abused.

> "but it just seems to me 'fixing' the H1B issue wouldn't really bring jobs back to the US."

H1-B are immigrants working in America so by fixing the H1-B visa issue fewer H1-B immigrants will be working in the US and more Americans will be doing the work. I feel that those cases like Disney, Southern California Edison, Univ California San Francisco and Abbott Laboratories all cases where H1-B Visa workers were used to replace Americans in America should have the Visas cancelled the the firms prohibited from using H1-B directly or indirectly for 10 years.

Many US firms have tried to offshore computer programming and in many cases found that it does not work. Penny wise, pound foolish.

> fixing the H1-B visa issue fewer H1-B immigrants will be working in the US and more Americans will be doing the work

That's if you assume this work can only be performed in the US. For the difference in costs I'm guessing the companies will find a way to offshore it.

> Many US firms have tried to offshore computer programming and in many cases found that it does not work. Penny wise, pound foolish.

That's anecdotal. Majority of the firms that did outsource work quite well. IBMs largest staff contingent is in India. It's not just programming, analytics, tech consulting, pre-sales, some marketing, architectural work, etc.

David, I have read your comments on related threads before and I appreciate the amount of passion and follow through you have. It would be a pleasure hearing your feedback (and connecting with you)

> Trump won because he was basically the only Republican and along with Sanders the only other candidate that wanted American workers to get paid fairly.

Trump won because he made promises that no other candidate was willing to make because they were more experienced and knew better.

Sanders operates on a completely different level. He was the best of all candidates but we don't deserve the likes of Sanders. He will never win the presidency because he's too dedicated to his mission. He's the 60 year old programmer who's been at the company for decades nursing the company's legacy software while the fresh out of college MBA who makes 5x his salary tells him he's missing the bigger picture.

> but there is also breaking the law. The abuse of the H1-B Visa program is breaking the law

My understanding is that none of the companies are breaking the law.

They are surely exploiting the intent of the H1B but their final/end clients are U.S. companies looking to boost their profits by paying less in wages and benefits.

These U.S. companies create the demand for these Indian companies to exploit the H1B.

The H1B story:

U.S. Company: "I have a position for a Senior Bathroom Scrubber in Bumfuck, YZ that pays market rates of $XYZ/yr and sanitation gloves every month"

American Worker: "Those 'market rates' are years old. No way I am working as a Senior Bathroom Scrubber in Bumfuck, YZ for $XYZ/yr and janky sanitation gloves every month"

Subhobroto (worker from India): "Yeah, I have a M.S. from a U.S. University and don't mind working as a Senior Bathroom Scrubber in Bumfuck, YZ for $XYZ/yr if you apply for my green card. Sanitation gloves provided for me every month is awesome!"

U.S. Company: "Ding! Ding! Welcome! We don't have an issue applying for your green card. By the way, we can't promote you and/or increase your salary ever again because reasons A,B,C"

American Worker: WTF!

Subhobroto (worker from India): "Thank you. I know I'm getting paid less than what I would have made if I had better negotiating power but I will have that power after I have a green card and am not a temporary worker anymore legally required to leave the country immeidately if you fire me, so this is just the price of admission. Plus, I'm getting paid more than if I had worked for a company back in India anyways"

End of scene.

Subhobroto and U.S. Company walk away into the sunset (to divorce a decade later once the H1B matures to a greencard) leaving behind an angry American Worker.

Subhobroto is well aware that he and his future generations will be in the same shoes as the American Worker in a few years, but that's for scene 2.

As I show in https://www.quora.com/Are-H-1B-visas-causing-large-scale-une..., this is not unique to the U.S.

You can replace "American Worker" with "German Worker" and so on with no loss in generality.

Feel free to connect with me: https://www.quora.com/profile/Subhobroto-Sinha-1

Thank you for the information. Very helpful!

I am for fairness and global labor arbitrage importing labor through H1-B and other means is inherently unfair. One of the things that really angered me about NYT and WaPo and other MSM is that they were backing Clinton who in fact was very pro-H1B more like Republicans Bush and Rubio while Trump and Sanders were the ones acting more like Democrats being fair to labor. Trump cared not only for STEM / H1-B but also working class (illegal aliens drive down wage rates among working class).

I don't understand your example about bathroom person because I thought the law was that employers had to demonstrate that the skill were simply not available among Americans, regardless of wage rates.

"Hillary Clinton may be more aligned with Rubio and Bush than she is with Sanders on the H-1B issue. While serving as a U.S. senator representing New York, Clinton traveled to Buffalo in 2003 to mark the opening of an office of IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). That was 12 years ago, but the H-1B issue was very much a subject of controversy by then. TCS is one of the largest users of the H-1B visa.

The Clinton links to the IT offshore outsourcing industry have continued since then through the work of the Clinton Foundation, where Tata has been participating in its STEM education efforts. In 2011, former President Bill Clinton was paid $260,000 by IT services provider HCL to deliver a speech."

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3008726/it-careers/bern...

Most of the leaders of tech were for unfairness of driving down wage rates of STEM even though many of them are among the world's wealthiest people each worth over $20 billion. Greedy instead of being thankful to their workforce.

Did not know about Hillary's links to TCS/HCL! Thanks for the information. This is news.

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