Tesla replaces laid-off U.S. workers with foreigners using visas pushed by Musk
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An H1B program that addresses these power dynamics and stops undermining the rights of worker will reach equilibrium and show what American workers can do and what should be hired for externally.
This issue is about capital vs labor, don’t miss the forest for the trees.
But what I fear is the belief that it is better to have a poorly educated populace plus imported talent than it is to have a well educated populace. That seems to be the real policy issue here and it’s kind of terrifying.
I’m not anti H1B at all, I more think it’s a shame how limited they are to just tech. Please oh please bring us more doctors. Our stupid arbitrary caps on annual doctors produced is part of the healthcare cost problem. Even if we dropped that, we’ve already brainwashed ourselves to believe med school is a 6+ figure expense
Control. They are easier to control and bully than people working remotely.
It’s cheaper to transport Indian services than transport Indian goods.
If you want the best and brightest, it shouldn’t be a problem to pay for the damages towards citizens.
It’s the same reason the government never really cracks down on illegal immigration. Illegal immigration could be cut by an order of magnitude by strictly enforcing the laws against employing them. This is never done, or even proposed. Why? Because large business interests benefit from the way things are. The purpose of the system isn’t to prevent illegal immigration, it’s to provide a underclass of cheap, powerless labor.
Until this government capture is reversed, we’ll never have rules that are beneficial for the average American or the average immigrant, except possibly by accident.
In a free market, businesses are supposed to use regulations to their advantage. If the regulations don't achieve their goals, legislators are supposed to change them. The latter part often doesn't happen in the US. Not because the Congress is captured by business interests, but because it's dysfunctional.
And the society as a whole is somehow unwilling to admit that the US needs large-scale immigration to function. Just like almost every other developed country. At the high end, every developed country is a net importer of talent in industries where it's above the average (relative to the size of its economy). And at the low end, there are essential jobs that are inherently too bad for most citizens and too demanding for most of those who can't find better jobs.
The best practice these days is making temporary work permits industry-specific. If there is labor shortage in an industry, just let in anyone with the skills and no obvious red flags. And if there is labor surplus, only let actual talent in. If an immigrant loses their job, they can try to find another in the same industry without excess bureaucracy. And then give a straightforward path to permanent residency for those who have been in the country for N years without causing too much trouble.
Illegal immigrants largely work in fields such as agriculture, construction, and maintenance. The pay is inherently low, because the fields are labor-intensive the outputs are expected to be affordable to most citizens. Many jobs are seasonal, and many require you to live near the worksite (instead of with your family). Most are physically demanding and require a good work ethic. Once a country gets rich enough, it usually discovers that citizens who can't find better jobs often don't have what it takes to do these jobs.
On the other hand the 1965 Hart-Celler Act started the importation of asians under the guise of abolishing "racist" policies that restricted immigration and mostly let in people from the west. Frankly it should have never been passed and the country and labor market would be MUCH better off.
Bush Sr sealed the deal by bringing in the H1B. Between the Bushes, Clintons and Obamas we've been systematically screwed over and debased.
In retrospect, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot were spot-on correct about practically everything.
- make it mandatory for H1-B visa holders who came to the US directly (i.e., didn't go to college here) to leave the US within 5 years.
- enforce equal pay: "if you hire an H1-B, you should pay them the same amount as you would a domestic worker."
- allow H1-B visa holders to move between jobs; don't tie it to one company.
- Obviously, put a cap on #H1-B approvals per year and make sure this number doesn't exceed the number who are leaving (see #1).
This kinda already exists. H1-B is is 3 years and can be extended to 6, but after that you can only get an extension for specific reasons (such as pending naturalization actions like a green card.)
> enforce equal pay: "if you hire an H1-B, you should pay them the same amount as you would a domestic worker."
That's how it's 'supposed' to work, that said I think that's part of why we see 'junior' software engineering roles wanting a decade of experience (since the H1-B will take the lower title/pay.)
> allow H1-B visa holders to move between jobs; don't tie it to one company.
IMO this is a big one and contributes a lot to H1-Bs getting abused by employers.
I'm not super familiar with the rules, but there is a way to transfer to a new company, and IIUC, that's not part of the cap, and I think you're allowed to start at the new company while the application is pending rather than needing to wait for it to be processed.
I don't know if this is current, but I had heard that pending permanent residency applications would reset if you switched companies. That's a huge deal if your birth country has a long backlog on greencards because of the per country limit.
The issue is about how a nation serves its people, and whether it protects American people and their culture.
America is not an economic zone but a nation with a responsibility to its citizens not random foreigners handed visas.
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
The United States was built on welcoming immigrants and achieved its greatness in no small part on the efforts of immigrants.
Woefully out of date. We don't even politically understand the concept of freedom anymore. Hell, just look at how much of our jurisprudence is pinned on the "Interstate Commerce" clause, which somehow applies to purely Intrastate commerce.
Furthermore, the vaunted "freedom" provided nowadays is the freedom to die for refusal to accept the current yoke of the "captains of industry" who ran off with the reins of our legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
The United States is post any ideal expressed on that plaque, and too afraid of the people already here to even live up to it's founding ideals as written. The only way anyone wants to get anything done is to ship in people who ultimately won't suffer the consequences of the work they're doing, then weaponizing the output of that work against the group of people here who refused to enable them in the first place.
The poem was written one year after the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In the Immigration Act of 1917, the US excluded people from British India.
Hardly an example of "welcoming [all] immigrants."
Everyone understood the necessity to properly assimilate foreigners, and therefore there were periods of moratoriums to preserve American culture.
OUR economy is not growing when there are millions of men who sit at home staring screens all day bumming off the government and their parents, many more million are in prison. Either cancel free money and food program, draft them for much needed infrastructure work or run them out of major cities to fend for themselves, trimming the fat.
I for one am fine with the most intelligent and driven workers coming into the country, they are the ones that make life worth living. I am not fine with lazy countrymen who think billionaires own them something.
Absolutely.
I believed it only after reading the article an following the links. Of course, they can't replace all of them, just 10% of laid of workers (3% of all visas given out). And want's to remove government restrictions.
Recent updates, for context:
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/12/17/dhs-strengthens-h-1b-pro...
Oh maybe because Tesla knows about how to produce EVs efficiently and what things cost? And he also owns the largest charging network and knows all about that too? I think you know better and you're just playing apologist for Biden now.
Not inviting Elon to an EV conference is like the least significant thing they did against him and his companies for political reasons. The list is so long now that I don't feel like trotting it out, because you're the type that won't appreciate it anyway.
GOP reps have also shown a cooperative spirit by giving Elon backchannels to their ongoing negotiations.
https://electrek.co/2024/12/30/tesla-replaced-laid-off-us-wo...
Who is he threatening.
"Electrek pointed out that Musk entered the U.S. on a student visa. Musk's brother later admitted that they were in the country illegally when their Zip2 startup company was launched."
https://electrek.co/2024/12/30/tesla-replaced-laid-off-us-wo...
- forbid companies from laying off H1B people for a number of years after hiring them - allow H1B people to change jobs at will - maintain the higher pay requirement
thus giving them even more power than American employees, disincentivizing replacement of Americans?
Were these factory workers? White collar jobs? Managers?
Overall a perfect storm of political consensus and will. The cherry on top is the ease with which the program can be curtailed or limited. It's not like solving healthcare... All of this points to major immediate action.
Did they? Trump just recently made a couple of statements, siding with Musk on that issue. He has no other choice, as money comes from Elon, not from MAGA.
He also reversed his stance on EVs during his campaign, openly admitting that he had to due to Elon's contributions. So basically, Elon is the president now.