[johncolanduoni]

What is the market rate of a translator for an uncommon language in Alabama? Where are you getting your data that suggests $100k is not dramatically above market rates for any job where there is a lack of domestic talent and a surplus of foreign talent?

Median personal income in the US is $30k, so I don't think it's fair to assume every job is like tech and has market rates in anywhere near the same place.

[Retric]

Are there people in the US who know the language and are not willing to move to Alabama for 95k? Then the market has spoken.

The entire point of capitalism is not everyone get's what they want and price how that is decided.

[johncolanduoni]

Okay, that's fine as long as they are available and willing to move for something like $100,000. Doesn't have to be super close; requiring $100,000 to hire a foreign citizen when the market wage is $75,000 seems pretty reasonable to me.

But you don't appear to have data to back up that particular number for all jobs with no specialization whatsoever, and as far as I can tell the administration doesn't either.

[Retric]

Let's suppose you want someone to just watch a parking lot which takes zero skills and I advertise for minimum wage and don't find anyone. Then you show up and say I need an H-1B, yes it's the night shift, but as unskilled labor that's a minim wage job...

That's the point of around a six figure wage floor. It prevents people from understating the requirements then bringing in a H-1B. I could just Advertise for a secretarial job, then only accept people that happen to speak Farsi.

[johncolanduoni]

You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't even exist in the current H1B system. Where are all the H1B parking attendants? Do you really think "parking attendant, needs to speak random language for no discernible reason" is something USCIS can't filter? If it was that easy, Tata would just list all their IT jobs as requiring a Hindi/Bengali/etc. speaker and not need to bother with any of the crony capitalism. Also if the ceiling was specific to groups of jobs, you could enumerate the list of acceptable jobs and not put parking attendants on the list. Then you couldn't sneak one in for even $100k.

Why would the optimum H1B wage floor for every industry that suffers from a lack of local talent just happen to be the one that makes sense for tech? And why would it make sense for it to be the same everywhere when wages and living expenses vary so much with location? You're proposing actively ignoring the market wage, not taking it into account.

[Retric]

I am going to step back for some context:

The H-1B program is a tiny fraction of the overall workforce and if you want it to stick around you need to justify it. Saying industry X needs workers for wage Y, falls on deaf ears. No, it really does not because for the most part it get's by without them as there is just not a lot of H1B workers in any industry.

Having said that, at the societal level we can talk about gaps that a H-1B program can fill in the short term. If there is a sudden demand for people in machine learning then giving the US access to a wider talent pool has value. But, at the social level each industry needs to compete with every other industry or your talking about soviet style planned economies which don't work.

How do you separate companies wanting cheaper workers from gaps society is better off fulfilling? Well wage is by far the strongest indicator. If the oil drilling industry goes though a boom and can pay 200k for people working oil jacks for a few years then they should get most of the H1B pool as they may need it more than every other industry combined.

However, as the demand is met internally wages will fall then some other industry may have a larger demand.

Now the US is a horribly corrupt society with groups with a lot of power use it to get more power. Thus, the actual H1B program looks very different from what I described. But, again I am only saying there is a justification for an H1B program with a very strong salary floor not anything like our current system.

PS: Anyway, understating the requirements and advertising a job that's below market rates is one the main problems with the H1B system that's most often gamed. I have seen more than one advertisement for a junior job title with 5 years of experience and a masters degree. Lying on a form is easy, lying with money is harder.

[netc]

>The entire point of capitalism is not everyone get's what they want and price how that is decided.

You mean protected capitalism - protected by artificial minimum wages put in place by government?

[Retric]

Remove minimum wage and people are not going to work for 1cent per hour. Further, this is a finite world, with finite resources and finite people. Not every business is viable even without an enforced minimum wage.

[wan23]

The thing is that this is a problem caused by government regulations interfering with supply and demand. If there is a business that's willing to pay for a worker and worker willing to take the job then it should be good for the economy for that match to happen. However, in this case immigration regulations sometimes make the supply lower than the demand. Sure, that makes the price go up and that's good for workers but if there aren't enough workers to go around that's bad for American business.

[dragonwriter]

You are assuming that immigration has no externalized costs; I think it's pretty clear that it does. While I will certainly agree that the actual design of our immigration system is far from optimal in dealing with them, the idea that unregulated immigration so long as employer and employee find mutual benefit is desirable as that mutual benefit internal to the transaction implies total net benefit to society is, IMO, deeply flawed.

[Retric]

Companies are free to higher Canadian workers in Canida etc.

You can even get an Indian worker in Mexico and import the results free of charge. But, limiting immigration is one of the fundamental functions of government, and it's not going away any time soon.

PS: I also somehow doubt you would be OK with al qaeda corp setting up shop an then importing large number of people.

[johncolanduoni]

So the US wasn't a government until 1875 when the first immigration law was passed?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Act_of_1875

[Retric]

American Indians where removed from US soil long before 1875. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars further these go back to 1540.

[DrScump]

  You can even get an Indian worker in Mexico

Have you actually researched Mexican immigration law?

[ild]

Who gives a damn about what is good for business? Businesses are (very) important only up to a certain point, until their interests start to go against the interests of the people.