The mere presence of H1-B workers depresses wages systemically.
That H1B labour allowed other firms to build tech, which kept those firms competitive, creating a deeper economy and experienced bench.
That depth then enabled more advanced tech firms to be born.
At least thats what I think they are saying.
The analogy would be that China took over low tech manufacturing, and then because of that were able to develop expertise to move up the value chain.
At the same time, supply demand curves are real. If you have more workers, it should result in competition that drives down wages. (ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL)
There was a distinction being made between Tech and IT, which I am not too sure about.
Sort of a meaningless statement when all things are definitely not equal.
If there are 5 million people in a country, or 200 million, the theory of too many workers means the 5 million people country should be paying everyone vastly more.
But that is trivially untrue.
Economies grow and shrink and adapt around the number people.
> Sort of a meaningless statement when all things are definitely not equal.
Hey, don’t look to me for a defense of the weaknesses of economic models.
At the same time you can’t really discuss complex systems like economies where one part affects another, without holding some of the factors in stasis.
Centris paribus does extreme amounts of heavy lifting.
So software engineer salaries have gone up dramatically in the last 35 years H-1B visa has been around. In fact, the H-1B visa is the reason the salaries have gone up. Without it the industry would be stagnant, just like non-tech S&P 500 companies and most companies in Europe in the same time period.
As others have said, H1-B has been good for companies, and bad for American workers. The same companies who were found to be colluding to keep wages down.
Europe is stagnant because of regulation, not because of immigration.
I am saying the reason silicon valley exists is because of the immigration of the smartest people from around the world. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US.
Consider the seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need"). It was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration been bad for American workers? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, without them the center of tech would be Beijing.