No it is true. But H1B is only a portion of it. OPT is unlimited and gives the employer the incentive of not paying FICA tax. Plus OPT candidates are willing to accept a fraction of the salary in the hopes that they can convert to H1B. Plus there are several other visa types being abused H4 EAD, CPT, O1.
On top of all that the commonplace practices of ethnic nepotism and hiring kickbacks.
I think many engineers are extremely naive about what is going on in the industry, which is why these abuses only continue to increase.
Those jobs aren't meant for you... they post in the classifieds with the hopes nobody responds. All to game the labor market test allowing their visa worker to get a green card.
US courts have held, in multiple cases now, that creating a massive network of datapoints over time, aggregated together, can be a 4th amendment violation in a way that a single datapoint is not.
Without a physical human operating the camera, at the site, yes, it should not be allowed.
This is actually the distinction in many EU countries, i.e. it’s allowed to record a movie if the operator is present, but doing the same thing remotely requires permission from a special authority/agency (that’s not in cahoots with the police).
If those people recording on their cell phones are going to coordinate and provide mass surveillance to the government, then yes, I would hope most people are against that.
The concern is that these cameras can track all your movements in a vehicle (you can make a graph of license plate locations and times), continuously record audio, collect information from other sensors, and that is an affront to the right to privacy. For some reason despite all this surveillance the drugs still flow on the streets. A very Orwellian situation.
It's a network of nation wide cameras tracking movement, which can include foot traffic from people's phones. You're giving police and a private company a lot of power with that sort of data. There was a case of a sheriff in Texas town using a nation wide search to find a woman who had an abortion using Flock cameras after claiming it was used for a missing person case.
This because Texas has a hard on for trying to prosecute women who have abortions.
I feel like none of the replies are really cutting to the core of what the problem with your logic actually is—because your way of thinking is incredibly common in tech since it's what we do all day. The fallacy is scale invariance, that the nature of a thing doesn't change when the scale does. Anything you can do you can put in a for loop.
And the equivalence you're drawing is that the fundamental nature of someone recording a video with their phone is the same as a digital panopticon.
So you know how like, "the government" and "private citizens" aren't the same thing, right? Like there are different obligations for both? You do know and understand this, correct? The government has a constitutional requirement not to perform undue/unnecessary search or seizure.
Pretty sure "search" includes "building a panopticon from which all citizens can be viewed at all times", but explain why you disagree.
What magical skills do the "damn foreigners" have that none of those 30,000 laid off employees don't have? What was the intent of the H1B? To find skills that don't exist in this country. What is H1B actually used for? Labor arbitrage, nepotism, kickbacks. There's really no excuse for defending it anymore.
H-1B exists to make unfathomably rich corporations and people even more unfathomably rich. That's the only reason. That's why we don't have single payer. How can corporations function if employees don't equate job loss with total economic and social ruin?
Not necessarily.
Many of the technological revolution started with refugees and immigrants before, during and after ww2. And technically you should even count the NZ that were brought to create the rocket programs
Anyway, I feel that you need read this guy comment
I appreciate the information. However, labor Arbitrage affects millions of American workers. It probably affects tens of millions. I just cannot fathom that companies today have any positive ethical reasons for wanting to participate. It gives them another stick to use against both groups of workers. Also, H-1B was started in 1990, so well after World War II.
Or the bootlicker olympics for those who want everyone else to ignore the constant lies because they think bigger, more powerful government is utopian.
It gives me more insight than a blank resume with just job titles.
The rest we can hash out in interviews, reference checks, and reaching out to mutual network connections at higher levels. Nobody gets hired just off their resume.
That is to say: All line items are verifiable if we care enough. Tech is small :)
I think anyone working with the global talent can tell you there are absolutely no controls around measuring their quality. The skilled talent simply isn't skilled at all. They are willing to engage in kickback schemes.
Even the O1 "genius" visa is being given to onlyfans models. Immigration is completely broken and it's by design.
This is what I am getting at; the system is bringing skilled immigrants with some unskilled and some abuse, the baby and the bathwater. We should be focused on keeping that skilled immigration flowing, instead all these attempts are presupposing that all immigration is inherently harmful.
Your take only applies to recent developments. For the entirety of the H visa program, it has brought in very valuable talent, which stayed here to generate incredible wealth for the country. "onlyfans" is a recent thing. The kickbacks are a relatively new thing. Sure immigration is broken, but that's what happens when the government is intent on breaking the country.
The fact that these visas are abused by people in power is completely different and in the end minor issue. I would bet vast majority of EB-1 are pretty out of the ordinary.
This is just derailing the discussion. Visas for privileged individuals bad = immigration bad.
Well you are right about one thing. Government is intent on breaking the country. But rampant immigration immigration fraud and abuse has been around for decades.
Who are you to claim the talent isn’t skilled at all? Maybe you’re the unskilled, unemployed one who is now asking the rest of us for a protectionist tariff to save your employability. The business owners who are hiring these people are making the choices that are the best for their business, and they’re judging the quality. It’s their money, and they’re betting with it - and confidently too.
But let’s assume you’re right. Even if 90% of them were unskilled, the other 10% is still incredibly valuable for the American economy and taxpayers. And it’s not even a difficult decision. That “loss” is tiny compared to the extreme benefit we receive, that literally NO other country on the planet can replicate. Unless we give it away, like you’re proposing to do.
I think the US should prioritize training permanent residence over temporary residents that may take their skills (and wealth) back to their home country.
If the h1b program was a perm residence visa, then your argument holds water. When they return home, they will take their 15 years of experience and offshore their capital.
Whereas if a perm resident had that same job, they would keep their money invested in American businesses (and real estate).
If our goal is to brain drain the world, lets replace the h1b visa program with a program with a clear attainable path to perm residency.
The H1B is dual intent. I was on one and now I’m here on a green card. Totally normal. The H1B has a clear path to application for permanent residency but permanent residency doesn’t have a clear path from application to completion because of the birth country caps.
You have to ask yourself what other implicit objectives you have because as it stands, raising the green card employment-based cap and raising the per-country cap would get you want immediately.
I think it would help, but we could still be better.
As an America living in southeast with ~40 years of life to plan for, I face the similar issue of: which country can I feel can be a 'safe' home for me to live in?
If Vietnam had a f1 -> h1b system (and no country caps), I would still not feel safe to call Vietnam my home.
- The h1b is a lottery. I could work my butt off and still just be unlucky.
- H1b is tied to employment. If I lost my job due to economic situations, poor politics, or personal health issues, I have 60d to find a new job or buy airplane tickets to leave.
Go ahead then. Explain how the US government measures the skills of work visa applicants. Because they just exposed millions are buying fake diplomas in India and getting visas.
On the contrary, you sound like an H1B worker defending your position to parasitically drain US resources.
Truly the worst part about the h1b invasion is listening to them talk about how Americans are so stupid and lazy and how America would be nothing without them.
Yeah, it should also be combined with the elimination of OPT, H4 EAD, and H1 visas that are harming the STEM industries in the same way to the tune of 6 million jobs. New grads can't compete with the tax benefits provided by hiring OPT workers.
Stupid me, I thought the US was about competition and boldness, a place where a man can work, be good at what he does and be appreciated for it. But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.
The purpose of the United States government is to benefit the people already here. It is not reasonable to assume that Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet.
>But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.
This meme needs to die. It was not some sort of accident that I was born in this country, it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions. I had a 0% probability of being born literally anywhere else. And as such, it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here.
> Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet.
You almost always do, with houw our world is set up. No matter what you believe.
> it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions.
Oh, yeah, you are worthy, the others aren't. Got it.
> it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here.
They are not, in fact, prioritizing the needs of your compatriots. They would if they cared about making your country more competitive.
But in fact, they are hard at work to alienate your allies, erase your competitive advantages and turn you into a dictatorship.
Good luck, you're going to need it. Don't worry, I know us across the pond are fucked too, but at least we are not throwing away our status as a superpower for the dumbest of reasons.
I think the hyperbole in your comment is clouding your point, which appears to be that you are skeptical that immigration restrictionism is on balance good for the United States, to which I’d say that immigration restrictionism is actually the default setting and the current era of high immigration is unprecedented and new. This is the same pattern in Europe as well. The US achieved its super power status during one of the more restrictionist periods for immigration in its history, so I don’t follow how moderating immigration just a little bit equates to “throwing it away”.
>at least we are not throwing away our status as a superpower for the dumbest of reasons.
If you would choose to believe, all of this is a strategic play to get off the resource curse (aka the Dutch disease), with resources in question being trust and US dollar being the world currency.
Throwing that away may be a good thing for US long term.
Are they harming the STEM industry, or are they a key reason why these industries are successful? Maybe those workers are just better than you and deserving of those jobs? If you don’t want competition, what you’re asking for is a tariff basically. In other words, you are pro inflation and pro passing on YOUR costs to the rest of us. No thanks.
65% of H1B jobs are in one industry, “computer-related” jobs as of 2023.
There are over 700,000 H1Bs in the USA, so almost half a million tech industry specific H1B jobs. Considering there are roughly 6-10 million tech jobs in total in the USA, that's 5-9% of tech jobs.
As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
There is nothing you can post that will change this. The people openly abusing the intent of the program are growing too wealthy for them to even pretend to understand the negative effects. Don't expect them to accept there ever being any consequences for themselves for what they have done. Cutting them off cold turkey and enforcing the laws they've been breaking is the type of ice water shock they need to come back down to reality.
There is no rampant abuse or fraud or nepotistic hiring. These are just the latest talking points from supremacists on Twitter / X, that they repeat without any evidence, to rage bait the gullible. I’ve not seen nepotistic hiring from my immigrant coworkers, just merit based hiring. Do you really think all these well run and successful companies are leaning into allegedly low skill workers and nepotism because it is good for their business? No - they’re leaning into merit because that’s what is making them great.
If you disagree, share your evidence. Oh and also, high tech unemployment is not a reason to stop the H1B or other programs. If you’re unemployed in one industry, go find another one - don’t steal from me for your protectionism.
"Oh and also, high tech unemployment is not a reason to stop the H1B or other programs. If you’re unemployed in one industry, go find another one - don’t steal from me for your protectionism."
directly contradicts the written purpose of the H-1B program.
H-1B is explicitly conditioned on labor-market protection: prevailing wage requirements, attestations that U.S. workers are not being displaced, and the idea that the visa exists only when qualified domestic labor is unavailable. “If you’re unemployed, go find another industry” does not fit with H1B and shows you are OK with and personally normalize it's abuse.
The fact that you’re such a strong defender of H-1B while rejecting its core statutory premise shows you’re arguing for something other than H-1B as it exists in law. That mismatch is itself evidence that the concerns you dismiss aren’t coming from nowhere.
These companies include the most valuable companies making record profits. They aren't struggling to survive. They are bowing to institutional investor demands to eek out another penny because the alternative is they get replaced by the board.
Fitness is a relative thing, especially when competing for limited resources, like institutional investor money. Everyone has to be prepared before it’s too late.
By the way, standing as workers, I wish they wouldn't resort to layoffs as the usual route when facing challenges, but sadly, excel competence is required to make it happen, and not many have it.
On top of all that the commonplace practices of ethnic nepotism and hiring kickbacks.
I think many engineers are extremely naive about what is going on in the industry, which is why these abuses only continue to increase.