Comment by MikePlacid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MikePlacid | Hacker News Reader

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>Love the blatant exploitation of visa-"enslaved" labor.

Have American citizens ever tried to "check their privileges" and imagine how a life of a "visa-slave" changes after crossing the American border? I can give you some hints into my "living experience" of such a crossing.

Yesterday: an American lawyer sent some docs supporting my H1B visa over our Academy institution fax machine. The fax machine ran out of paper. The management asked me to pay for the paper, or buy them some. I couldn't afford the paper, so I borrowed $700, paid for the fax supplies and for a ticket to the US.

Today: I've got $5000 moving bonus, got $30k salary contract and got the first task, like: - We've sold something to Swedes today, you have 2 weeks to develop it. What do you need? - A Sun workstation, and an X.25 link to Sweden. - Done. And give your passport to Olga - you are going to Stockholm when done.

In 2 weeks our part was done, but Swedes were not able to finish their part and asked for 2 more weeks...

I was an employee #27, after that task and some other completed projects my salary was increased, then doubled, then again increased, then again doubled... our company went to #1 in its market, then IPOed, and 4 years after, still on the "slave" H1B visa I've found $1M on my bank account (unfortunately, it was an investment bank, lol, but that's another story).

So, my step through the US border on the H1B visa was not a step into slavery. It was liberation.

You have every reason to take pride in your work and how far you've come, but you're missing the point. "Slave labor" is of course an exaggeration (and an exaggeration that shouldn't be made lightly) but the point is you didn't have as much freedom in that job as your Western colleagues.

You had to work harder than the Swedes because the alternative was worse for you. It sounds like you're happy for your time at that company, but a lot of H1B workers find themselves in unpleasant work conditions that they don't have the same freedom to leave as their American counterparts. Their employers know they can subject them to a worse environment because they have more riding on it, whereas an American worker can simply leave and find a better job.

That's the point. It's more like indentured servitude than slavery in that regard anyway. The problem isn't that it doesn't make anyone's lives better in the end, the problem is that it's of concerning ethics on the part of the employer.

>you didn't have as much freedom in that job as your Western colleagues.

Very true.

>You had to work harder than the Swedes because the alternative was worse for you.

Not very true. I never worked hard in my life. I worked productively. Yes, I've done in my first 2 years in the USA more than in my 15 years in the home country. Because in my home country you had to share a Sun workstation with 10 other teams, and X.25 card? You can order it for the next year delivery, at it may be delivered, but never on time.

Swedes were late because they didn't know that you can implement the needed subset of the ASN.1 encoding using a simple, hand-made stack machine.

>American worker can simply leave and find a better job.

In my days the H1B quota was not immediately exhausted, so there was a window of opportunity each year. Raise the H1B limit - and you'll deliver almost the same amount of freedom to H1B workers.

>That's the point. It's more like indentured servitude than slavery in that regard anyway.

My point is that it's more complicated than that. The employer - in the present situation - can 1) hire an American worker, 2) hire an H1B employer. My point is that option 2 - in the present world - is actually an increase of liberty in the world, not slavery.

>the problem is that it's of concerning ethics on the part of the employer.

The ethics of the employer do not concern me that much. I can't change them. I can hope to change your ethics, ethics of a person I am directly talking to. And my concern is that you are labeling H1B program as an "indentured servitude", while it actually increases liberty in the world. That's my concern, or at least that's a paradox I clearly see.

Thanks for this. I hadn't considered the "total liberty" argument before. Congrats on all your successes.

Congratulations. You got lucky. Now say the same thing to the many Indians stuck in a dead end job and unable to leave during probably the best market for software engineers because they're worried about their visa status. Or the engineers worried about upcoming layoffs/recession and being forced to go back to their home country.

It always amazes me how Americans picture the companies doing "H1B" as evil and exploitative. But in reality it's only an opinion that people not using them have.

Any person using an h1b will tell you how happy they are of having it. Its they alternative/escape to their country's reality. But Americans having no idea what that means, are fast to dismiss it.

Reminds me of the comments about China workers working and living in Foxconn or similar manufacturing jobs: everybody was quick to judge how "bad" the conditions are there, while in reality the increase of quality of life for a lot of them was huge compared to their previous life in their rural towns.

As a Mexican living in Mexico I've seen some of those realities, and I'm sure most of the people that go to the USA from Mexico on a TN or h1b visa had it way tougher here.

People who express concern about H1-B "slaves" and evil exploitation are not doing so out of a genuine interest for the well being of immigrants. They are doing so out of fear that those immigrants are taking away jobs that they feel entitled to.

The general opinion Ive seen (havent seen anything else tbh) is that its then better not to bring them in at all.

Which to me comes across as an extremely privilegied take!

I'm not American and know how great it feels to come to the US. I also know the feeling of getting citizenship and the freedom it gives me. I also know that many of my Indian friends will never see that privilege because of how long they would have to wait before they get a greencard.

I'm advocating for a better path to citizenship that's more reasonable than this insane system of H1B lottery and greencard waitlists that we have currently. I'm not sure why that's such a divisive position.

> I also know that many of my Indian friends will never see that privilege because of how long they would have to wait before they get a greencard.

There's A LOT of Mexicans that go to the US under a TN Visa which will NEVER have that privilege due to the nature of that Visa. They are still very very happy to have the visa and work there.

Is what you are describing what they call trickle down economics?

> Have American citizens ever tried to "check their privileges" and imagine how a life of a "visa-slave" changes after crossing the American border? I can give you some hints into my "living experience" of such a crossing.

Why should they? Why should they care about you coming in and dumping their wages?

I am not American but EU and it is similar here.

Ah, the old "dey took err jerbs!" fallacy has hit HN too.

I don’t think anyone is saying “they took our jobs”. I think it’s not so black and white.

1. There’s a race to the bottom to show infinite growth. This is the way of American capital markets. And this leads to cost cutting, bringing down wages and perverse incentives.

2. H1B and other programs that were intended for people with exceptional skills are handed out in mass to immigrants - particularly Indians - and we can be okay with that.

But the reality is, there are often times no exceptional skills here. The test taking and interviewing has been designed to cater to Indian nationals. They’re great test takers, which doesn’t necessarily translate into productivity or being a top worker or producer of value.

This is a corporation importing foreign workers as a cost cutting measure. An engineer from India will be happy earning 75% of the wage since they also get to move their family to the US, with healthcare and all the benefits.

The tragedy is that existing top talent doesn’t necessarily want to work at a company like Amazon. And so Amazon will import Indian nationals, because they’re willing to put in longer hours. They have little choice. They’re risk averse, and the last thing they want is to get managed out and have to return to India.

Amazon does this at scale. It reflects in the quality of their products and services.

Nice stereotype man. Again, I am Swedish and I consider myself a leftist. Can you argument and not resort to ad hominem?

How is it a fallacy when it is real?

Here is an example from the building sector here: The Vaxholm Conflict https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/06/swed-j27.html TL:DR Building company wanted to employ Latvian workers at a lower rate of pay than Swedish workers.

I, personally, was also affected when Polish workers where just plain cheaper in IT so they fired all of us.

Now, I of course blame the companies, the capitalist systems, but I also blame the people. It is only human.

How is it a fallacy when it is real?

> I, personally, was also affected when Polish workers where just plain cheaper in IT so they fired all of us.

How did that go, for the company? Transferring knowledge about a large software project can be hard ... Almost impossible if everyone gets replaced at the same time?

(I wonder if you were building software or doing more sysadmin things)

Workers and companies will move toward the money. That's a constant. Here's the fallacy: we have only ourselves to blame. We are the voters in these republics. We can set the rules of who gets to come, who gets to work and how they should be treated. The citizens are the only check on this capitalist, free-market system.

It is mentioned in the article actually!

We voted Sweden into EU thinking that the Swedish model would persist within. That was false and we had to let the flood of cheap labor in.

The union hostile organization "Svenskt Näringsliv" and companies wanted this of course and lobbied for it. Including calling people in the union racists for not wanting to wage dump.

And high skilled workers should get to come and work, no strings attached. The fact that some people complain of facing legit competition in such high-wage jobs and even call themselves "leftist" is quite sad. I suppose that when you're that privileged, actual equality feels like oppression.

> facing legit competition

What they are "competing" in is a lower salary. That's it.

Its what they bring to the table and companies love it of course.

I will not comment on the rest of whatever you think of me and how I live.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31235911 explains it better for you :)

What's the fallacy about pitting your own citizens against foreign workers who must work for low wages and crap wages or face deportation? Jobs are a zero sum game. Don't forget - once you bring in a firehose of foreign workers, the ability for workers to collectively bargain is harmed. I have seen firsthand the drop in quality of life in enterprise software companies over the past decade due to the H1B system producing scores of yes-men, incapable of saying no to their superiors over fears of losing their job.

Not a fallacy at all. USD has extremely favorable exchange rates to the vast majority of currencies. In my country, it's currently 1 USD = 5 BRL. A 40kUSD/year salary will make someone quite rich here. This obviously devalues the work of people operating in the developed nation. They won't pay the normal salaries if they can get away with it.

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