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The main problem I have with H1-B visa use cases (or at least my perception and understanding, based on the fact that I regularly see 8x2 grids of H1-B visa application stacks that go as deep as 2 novels posted as required by law at my work) is that they're mostly a vehicle to reduce wages or arbitrarily discriminate against otherwise qualified native applicants. In the former case, H1-B visa holders are basically 100% dependent on their employers for continued employment - if they lose it for whatever reason, they get deported. This leads to flagrant abuses on behalf of the employers - demanding overtime & lower wages that they couldn't demand from those employees' domestic counterparts. In the latter case, I work at one of the various companies that prides themselves on having an extremely high hiring bar. Of course, this doesn't really mean we hire the absolute best, it just means that we toss a lot of applicants in the bin because they weren't able to put on as good of a dog and pony show as expected - our interview process does not even kind of resemble what people at my company do on a day to day basis, or even measure the skills it takes to really succeed. So, of course, when we exhaust the local talent pool through arbitrary pickiness, we just add in the labor pool from abroad, rather than just... you know, reconsider our hiring standards and maybe give people who are already here, qualified, and looking for a good job one of those good jobs. This in turn dilutes the labor market - people who would have gotten that cushy job through merit are pushed down into positions that don't require as much luck to get, and the people who would have gotten those jobs are pushed into the jobs where you pretty much just have to chat up the interviewer, and so on. This whole inane process is pretty much the cause of the absurdity of the American tech industry, where you either get super lucky and wind up in a lower-mid 6 figure job with crazy benefits, or you wind up in a mid- to low- 5 figure job where your boss both shits on you constantly and simultaneously doesn't really understand what you're doing day to day anyway. There's a middle ground, but like barely if my last job search is anything to go off of. |