[anticonformist]

American universities sell out their limit capacities to foreign students for huge amounts of money. This forces out huge numbers of American students from attaining the educations they need to get the jobs many H1B workers take.

Space at top American universities is currently a zero sum game by design. Many top universities could easily afford to expand. They choose not to for purely unethical reasons.

And then American tech companies hire these (and more) foreign citizens to avoid the expense of investing in the American education system as well as directly drive salaries and increase employee retention.

And that's not even the worst part. The fact is that big tech companies are almost never using the H1B as intended. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all of them are hiring (using the H1B) for roles that could in 99% of cases be filled by Americans. It would just drive up costs significantly if foreign workers were not added to the labor pool. The data is all public and plain for anyone to see.

The price of real estate in the Bay Area is also currently a zero sum game.

American tech companies and universities, in conspiracy with corrupt politicians, have betrayed the country that made their existence possible.

Just as all American organizations have an ethical duty to pay taxes, they also have an ethical duty to benefit American citizens above foreign citizens when there is a conflict in their interests.

There is nothing wrong with an ethically oriented "America first" policy. Putting your family first above strangers is perfectly reasonable and good.

And yes, I agree Trump is an unethical incompetent. But his nose for unethical scams is what makes the H1B scam so transparent to him. He has also exploited the H1B scam himself and probably laughed about it with his fellow assholes.

[gautamdivgi]

>Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all of them are hiring (using the H1B) for roles that could in 99% of cases be filled by Americans

I have a hard time believing that statement. The salaries these companies pay is really competitive. Their interview process is pretty clear cut. They have a pretty steady stream of applicants. I doubt they need to game the system.

I understand your statement in the general sense though. The system is gamed. But it will still be gamed. If roles are "remote" and not needed on site, they will be filled in Canada where getting a work visa I believe is a whole lot easier. What you're asking for is a law that says you can't hire non-US contractors for any job that can be done in the US. I doubt that's happening anytime soon.

The zeroing in on h1-b abuse is probably 15 years too late at this point. Large corporations needing something like it have moved to fill those roles in Canada or opened centers in Canada. This freeze is doing nothing more than pandering to the base.

[zamalek]

My foreign friend recently joined Amazon. Her PERM process (where an employer has to advertise a job to Americans before they can green card an employee) was instantaneous, no 3 months, no cooldown. Why? Amazon currently has multiple open positions for her position, that they can not fill, and she was able to fill one of those positions that had been on the market for months. The PERM process is already complete, multiple times over, with honest advertising. At a ludicrous salary, at that.

What you are saying is absolutely true for parts of Amazon, and I'd bet good money on it being true for the others.

[corporateslave5]

I work at amazon and I’m pretty sure I’m the only American in my whole org

[hiram112]

I get solicitations from Amazon on a monthly basis.

I don't even bother answering them because I've already dealt with the process and am not interested, based on the amount they're paying for the (awful) work conditions for which they're known.

This is like many companies in my area. Word gets around.

So the point is, these companies set their salaries, interview process, and work conditions explicitly low because they know they can just use foreign workers if they're not good enough to attract enough Americans at the skill levels they need.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. They use tons of indentured servant Indians whose green card they promise to sponsor, pay them low, burn them out, and then cry they can't find Americans who don't want to work for similar pay and conditions, but don't need the green card.

[sumedh]

> The salaries these companies pay is really competitive.

They might be paying good salaries, lot of companies dont. Even if the salary is good the company knows the employee is not going anywhere since switching jobs on H1B is not easy and their is 10+ year wait for Green card applications from Indians and Chinese.

[SomeoneFromCA]

That would have been relevant if they did not use "contractors" on their premises. "Contractors" work on their, FAANGs premises, report the bosses employed by FAANGs, but are technicaly hired by likes of Tata, Wipro, HCL etc. They bring their employees at the lower rates from India, or hire at lower wages Americans, who is willing to work for less, such as recent graduates. So yeah, curtailing H1B abuse, and then, extending the program if necessary is right thing to do. In any case abuse of laws should not be tolerated, even if you believe the law is outdated. It either has to be repealed on kept and enforced.

[gautamdivgi]

You're assuming that the contractors will always be on premise. With covid-19 (and even before), most of these companies have established bases in Canada. The only obstacle has been management resistance to remote work. With covid-19, that's not going to be an issue.

What I'm trying to say is that just because h1-b's are curtailed it won't result in contracts not going out to these companies. The contracts will still exist because the rates are extremely attractive. The workforce will just be filled up in Canada.

[dragonwriter]

> American universities sell out their limit capacities to foreign students for huge amounts of money. This forces out huge numbers of American students from attaining the educations they need to get the jobs many H1B workers take.

For many American public universities this is the opposite of the truth, they take a large share of foreign students because they are permitted by their governing law to charge them much higher tuition, and use that to support their domestic, especially in-state, student populations, for which public subsidies have been drastically cut over time. (To the extent there is a problem constraining US students, it's not the universities accepting foreign students to pay the bills, it's the states for cutting public subsidies.)

> Space at top American universities is currently a zero sum game.

No, it's not. Lower surplus revenue from foreign students means lower total sustainable student populations.

> The fact is that big tech companies are almost never using the H1B as intended.

They are using it for exactly what motivated businesses to lobby for it and their pet Congresscritters to vote for it.

They might be using it contrary to the way it's been sold to the public, but that was always a lie. While labor shortages in particular areas are possible, they aren't common, and H-1B isn't even well adapted to address them (for one thing, if you were concerned about labor shortages, you wouldn’t tie visas to an employer but to employment in the field with the verified shortage.)

> The price of real estate in the Bay Area is also currently a zero sum game.

Since people can and do bid that price up without being present in the US, legally or otherwise, I'm not sure, even to the extent that you could define a sense where it is zero sum, how that is even relevant to the discussion.

[trhway]

> The fact is that big tech companies are almost never using the H1B as intended. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all of them are hiring (using the H1B) for roles that could in 99% of cases be filled by Americans. It would just drive up costs significantly if foreign workers were not added to the labor pool. The data is all public and plain for anyone to see.

>The price of real estate in the Bay Area is also currently a zero sum game.

So, it sounds like you're saying that if Google hired Americans it would pay them more. Then wouldn't those supposedly higher salaries result in the prices of the Bay Area housing market increasing even more?

[randompwd]

> Then wouldn't those supposedly higher salaries result in the prices of the Bay Area housing market increasing even more?

Are most of the people currently buying houses in those areas software engineers?

If not, then we would see the true market value of software engineers vs others such as lawyers/finance/doctors who have a much more closed system of competition(regulatory domestic barriers such as domestic licensing/local market specific licensing and regulations)

That's even with keeping the potential num of people in area the same. In likelihood, it drops and these companies are forced to expand/create their other US offices or outsource some of the work to 3rd party companies.

All of which is good for the wider US citizenry.

[checker659]

> Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all of them are hiring (using the H1B) for roles that could in 99% of cases be filled by Americans

Yes, but a non significant portion of their revenues comes from outside US too. Would you prefer Apple setup offices in UK and hire people there instead. Wouldn't that be a bigger loss for you?

(For 60% of their revenue coming from outside US, ~10% of Apple's corporate employees are on H1B.)

[randompwd]

> Would you prefer Apple setup offices in UK and hire people there instead

Apple already do that? They have >20 office worldwide.

> Would you prefer Apple setup offices in UK and hire people there instead.

Less competition for local resources would be better for the people already in the area.

[corporateslave5]

Totally agree with this, I’m baffled that people can convince themselves it’s the opposite.