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> There is a lot of underpaid, highly qualified talent on the international remote market

Maybe the laws need to be updated. Nobody anticipated remote work when the laws on visas/green cards were written. It seems like an exploit that you don't need any to work for an American company potentially taking the spot of an American worker. American taxes aren't even withheld in this case apparently.

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Most companies don't hire international remote workers directly because of the costs associated with international tax reporting. If a worker is in another country, that means tax withholding / reporting in multiple places. So it's usually done as contract work through an international recruitment firm which handles all the payroll / tax stuff, or not at all. In any case, even if an American employer hired an American on contract, the full brunt of payroll tax would be on the contractor. Companies only pay half the payroll tax for employees classified by W-2s.

remote work makes local laws useless.

If they make laws in the US to make it harder to have remote workers to protect local people then the companies will use an existing foreign office or open a shell office some place where laws are friendlier and hire from there.

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