Because then the bigtechs will buy them all and everyone else gets nothing.
The current H1B program is terrible in that it has a lottery. A strict salary-based distribution is marginally better but I would hope that it should incorporate multiple factors.
It used to be the case, say, 15-20 years ago. It not need to be the case today. Since we're talking about big tech, let the minimal bid for a company be the median salary across that company's relevant line of work (engineering, sales, whatever). This would make hiring an H1B candidate a merit-based decision, not a cost-cutting measure. This would make hiring a US-born engineer and, say, an India-born engineer approximately equally expensive, so the company would hire the better engineer, not the cheaper.
If the price arbitrage were gone, I bet there'd remain enough H1B slots to invite better researchers, better flute players, better sea captains, etc.
If you really need the lower salary worker then sure, you can have them, but it will cost you.
I would also make the company sponsoring the H1-B visa responsible for all relocation costs when they fire someone on the visa.
The fee should scale with the cost of training a US resident to do the job. If the fee is too low than toss the application cause the applicant should just pay for somebody's training instead.
More revenue for the treasury and efficient allocation of resources
It might create a local maxima around revenue per visa, but "google bought all of the H1-Bs to make life harder for Apple" is both an entirely foreseeable outcome, and one that has such a wide range of negative externalities that even in the context of the local maxima, it would be a challenge to argue of efficient allocation of resources with a straight face (if that argument is, in fact, the goal).
If H-1B requires massive comp, there would be little reason for Big Tech to hire Jr H-1B developers unless the employer lock in is worth it.
Edit: Saw somewhere else in this post it was around 9k, after layoffs, so I stand corrected
Personally, I think we really need to take a hard look at all forms of immigration until average Americans can have good paying jobs, affordable housing, and affordable healthcare.
You are making big assumptions that the USA is a closed system that can generate its own prosperity, and that is far from the truth. Wrecking America's competitiveness (by not taking in skilled or unskilled immigrants) is just going to turn us from a rich country into a poor country, your goals are never going to be accomplished.
What value is the country getting richer if the people are still poor?
Wealth inequality is a real thing, and importing more labor competition for the working class people only devalues their labor, serving only to make the business owning elites richer while keeping workers poor. Bernie Sanders even said that himself.
The "line goes up" stock market and GDP numbers are abstract numbers for the working class people that don't reflect in their purchasing power or quality of life. The person flipping burgers at McD for $12 an hour, isn't gonna be better off now that Microsoft and Nvidia are worth 4 trillion instead of 1 trillion. It literally makes no difference to them.
So as long as there's no trickle down, why would people care about their country getting richer, when it's just the top 10% of the country who are seeing that richness and not them?
- You don't allow the US to import skilled workers anymore, and rather than hire locally from a non-existent labor pool they simply move the jobs abroad. What's worse, hiring someone from India on an H1B to work in your AI lab, or moving your AI lab to India?
- You don't allow importing unskilled workers and expect farmers to pay $30/hour to have Americans pick apples. Or maybe...they'll just figure out how to automate those jobs or go out of business since no one wants to pay $5 for an apple.
That's the same argument used against abolishment of slavery. "Who will pick all the cotton?"
Except today it's not slavery, it's indentured servitude.
I'm uncomfortable with how racist HN has become. Because your ancestors were white they were permitted a chance to work from the bottom up, but because today's immigrants aren't white, you think its either slavery or exploitation, and they should just stay in poor countries accordingly (a situation that was not forced on your ancestors, for your benefit). Or if it isn’t racism, what is your reasoning for pulling up the ladder today?
You’re the one that’s bringing race into the argument. I don’t care what race they are, I don’t want any illegal immigrants in this country.
America’s obligation is to its own citizens first and foremost. This should not be a controversial opinion. Every country should put the interests of its own citizens first.
Expand H-2A: Temporary Agricultural Worker visa then.
We shouldn't be encouraging black market activity. If as the US we want to have cheap imported labor pick apples then write it into law. If we as the US want to experience the Baumol effect [1] then don't. I think most people want to experience the Baumol effect as opposed to losing out gains to trade.
Pro tip: in case of actual racism, use the flag button.
The claim is always made that if Americans have to do the work, food prices will skyrocket, but it's just not true. Labor is a portion of the wholescale cost of food, which is a portion of the retail cost. A lot goes to shipping, packaging, processing, marketing, etc. If all migrant workers were replaced by Americans being paid a competitive wage, food prices would go up a little, but you wouldn't pay double for apples, let alone several times more. Highly-processed foods like cereal and pasta wouldn't change noticeably.
Also HN hive mind…if we can’t import illegal immigrants working for subsistence wages, who will pick our crops?
My claim isn't that "if Americans have to do the work", my claim is that "Americans don't want to do the work", even at $30-40/hour most Americans still don't want to pick apples, and that is already an unreasonable price.
It might be that (barring automation) we simply don't grow/pick apples in the USA anymore, for the same reason that other industries/jobs have become obsolete because the economics simply don't make sense anymore. Farmers will grow something else that is more economical to deal with given the labor costs they have to deal with, they simply won't grow apples anymore if it no longer makes sense.
There is no evidence that this is actually true. Decades of illegal immigrant labor has suppressed wages and supplanted American citizens, so you have no way of knowing that’s the case.
Zero percent unemployment means that no one without a job is looking for one. It means no new entrants into the job market (since by definition, you are unemployed the moment you start looking for your first job). And it means that no one is transitioning jobs or careers without a firm job offer in hand. It means that no business ever fails. It means that it is remarkably difficult to find employees. It means that there are no employees that quit instead of doing something immoral.
You should look into the different types of unemployment, as well as the definition of "unemployed", and specifically, frictional unemployment since you seem very unfamiliar with the base concepts.
Again, people study this and have a name for it: structural unemployment. This is the unemployment level caused by employers needing to hire for skills that the market cannot currently provide. Think of the town with high unemployment due to a car factory closure, but a local business that needs scuba diving instructors can't find one. Plenty of labor, but no scuba diving instructors.
I think this is what you are getting at: If you want to hire someone foreign because the skills don't exist in the local labor market, you should be obligated to prove that the skill is being developed in the local labor market.
The argument (not mine, just an argument) against that is that individual firms should not necessarily be forced to bear the cost of training workers in a portable skill when you can just bring in non-local labor (H1B). Back to the Scuba shop example: it costs 5 figures and 6+ months to train a non-diver to the level of scuba instructor. It is good for the labor pool to force the shop to train a new instructor, even if they have to pay a massive cost for them to get certified, and the labor can quit the day they get certified. It is bad for consumers and the shop. They would much rather pay lower prices and bring in a foreign instructor than run short handed for months while they plow money into training someone in a skill that the worker can take to their competition.
My feeling is that H1Bs are probably useful in much more limited circumstances than they are used in now (probably something more like O-1 visas that are given for people who are leaders in their fields, or demonstrably and uniquely talented). If the H1B job can be done interchangeably, then it should be done by domestic labor. If you want to hire the one guy who just won a nobel prize to work on your time machine, that is when we should allow foreign labor.
I believe the common situation is a company pays for your masters degree but the two of you end up with a contract where you'll stay at the company for X years afterwards.
I don't see why there can't be a non-"At will" situation for the scuba instructor.
The hive mind is greatly exaggerated. The existence of cognitively dissonant opinions on a website is more likely evidence that the site has posters that have differing viewpoints, rather than evidence of a group thought process that is illogical.
Like if you showed up on a homeschooling moms facebook group and half the moms are spewing religious mumbo jumbo and the other half are spewing trans rights stuff it immediately begs the question how the heck are these groups coexisting without fighting at every turn without massive cognitive dissonance or not actually believing what they're saying. Same thing here with immigration, among other things (wouldn't have been my first pick of an issue to highlight the dissonance but here we are).
and whats wrong about this? Humans funneled into area with higher added value.