[obstinate]

Do you know of Republican plans to improve this aspect of immigration? My impression is that their intentions are every bit the opposite. Trump has spoken against H1-B visas, so it's hard for me to picture him working to make the situation better for this category of visa-holder.

[prostoalex]

He has spoken against H1-B visa abuse versus H1-B visas per se, which is an attempt to arbitrage on Department of Labor requirement on "prevailing wage" by establishing headquarters in the boonies of New Jersey / Georgia, filing H1 applications with local (extremely low) prevailing wages, and then sending the workers on the "business trips" that amount to full-time employment to California, NY and Washington.

The prevention mechanism is fairly obvious, and it's to rank the H1 applications by salary instead of the current lottery system. Genuine employers like Google or Facebook don't need to game the system, it's the outsourcing shops employ this tactic to boost the margins. They're welcome to join the game by boosting their salaries, though.

From the US government point of view a US salary paid in the US is a net win over a salary paid in Ireland or Switzerland, as it's still subject to federal income taxes, so net win on revenue.

[suryacom]

I have no idea. If Republican's tries to make the system better with the interest of American workers as priority, then there is a chance, it could help legal immigrants like me too.

With the current administration, their priority was totally upside down.

[obstinate]

There's always a chance, but, again, I think all the prevailing signals are that life will get much worse for immigrants, legal and illegal, over the next few years. Nationalism applies against all foreigners, not just those here illegally. Hopefully I'm wrong.

> I have no idea.

Also, respectfully, I think that you should have an idea how things are likely to effect you before you form a preference for one alternative over another.

[tomp]

But he does have an idea: that the Democrats don't care about this problem. Taking the chance to see if the other side does care seems like the reasonable thing to do.

[obstinate]

If the other side hadn't explicitly stated their antipathy, corroborated by all external signals, I'd be right there with you. As for him having an idea, it seems like his own statement directly indicates that he's not very informed on this issue. I'll take his word for it.