[anticonformist]

Reforming the H-1B to do what it was intended to do would mean eliminating 99% of the visas that are granted.

It turns out that the entire H-1B program has been a massive scam. It was created and promoted by American Big Tech companies to make them money at the expense of American citizens. It's been a trillion dollar theft from lower and middle class Americans into the hands of the 1%.

Without the H-1B in place, these companies would be working to fix America's education system, paying more in salary to workers, and lifting more Americans into the middle class.

The program has been beneficial in many ways but the overall effect has been to use foreigners as a weapon against citizens.

One of the most reprehensible aspects has been the propaganda by the Big Tech companies. They're pretending to care about America's melting pot and helping immigrants, but they're importing primarily the wealthiest immigrants. They're damaging America and other countries at the same time, all in the name of money.

[fredfoobar]

I'm guessing the '99%' number is hyperbole, because that would roughly equal around 60K H1B active visa holders so far and it doesn't make sense at all.

Besides, most of the "legitimate" companies, pay good wages (this would be pretty much any company in the bay area). I'm not sure if you know this, but almost all H1Bs negotiate their offers in the valley (and in places like NYC/Chicago/Atlanta).

There's an additional overhead to the company hiring H1Bs as well, it's somewhat cost prohibitive in general.

Are you a software developer? Most people seem to underestimate the work software developers do, it's definitely not a simple "desk job".

That said, I've made my peace with this, if a majority of the people think that they don't want high skilled immigrants in the country (as opposed to say, low farm labor, which hires way more H-visas). I'm cool with it, I'm making my way to Canada anyway, and my current employer is ok with it.

The impression I get is that Americans don't want to do "dirty" jobs, like farm labor, clearly the latest Executive Order exempted them. Somehow, that it is morally acceptable to vie for the high paying jobs, while outsourcing the "dirty" jobs to immigrants.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

Citation needed. In both India & China, H-1B has given millions of talented people a pathway to learn new skills and earn a vastly increased income, and many of them have returned to their home countries to found their own companies and spread the wealth. So while the implementation of the program remains pretty broken, and the jury is out on their net impact to America, from a global POV the visas have definitely been a plus.

[belltaco]

>Without the H-1B in place, these companies would be working to fix America's education system, paying more in salary to workers, and lifting more Americans into the middle class.

Without this system, companies would move a lot of jobs to Canada(which has a much easier immigration system) and to India and East Europe etc. Which would hurt the general economy real hard.

[sagarm]

Those big tech companies already have international offices. Why wouldn't they have just expanded those offices?

Investing in education etc is not really the job of companies in our capitalist system. They could not capture enough of the value to justify the cost, especially given the very long lead times.p

[monoideism]

> Those big tech companies already have international offices. Why wouldn't they have just expanded those offices?

Because they still want to hire lots of Americans. They just don't want to pay them market prices. So they bring in H1-Bs to lower wages. If they hired them overseas, there wouldn't be that effect:

From the article above:

"Research by Daniel Costa, of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, and Howard University political science professor Ron Hira, found that 60% of H-1B workers receive lower-than-average wages for their job and region. Google, Facebook and Apple “take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill,” Costa and Hira said in an Economic Policy Institute paper."

I'd personally like to see the US adopt a systematic and generous immigration system like Canada's. But the H1-B system has mostly been a farce, used as a weapon against American workers. There are exceptions, but overall, it's most benefited the big tech company stockholders.

[nos4A2]

> Because they still want to hire lots of Americans. They just don't want to pay them market prices. So they bring in H1-Bs to lower wages. If they hired them overseas, there wouldn't be that effect:

Wow, it takes skill to come up with an argument like that. How do you imagine this conversation happens at MegaCorp_0 between HR and a Hiring manager?

HR: “I know you need someone who has Skill_0, but we want to reduce wages so it has to be a h1b...”

Manager: “But I already have Candidate_0..”

HR: “Nope has to be h1b!”

/s (in case it was not obvious)

[fzeroracer]

> So they bring in H-1Bs to lower wages

Let's say that this was honestly true. H-1Bs have been around for what, 30ish years now? If we assume that the sole purpose of H-1Bs was to lower wages, then we should've seen slow wage growth or wage depression for software engineers.

But the reality seems to be the opposite which is that salary growth for H-1B positions seems to be among the highest wages in the country. It seems absurd to make that claim considering many other countries pay software engineers far less and America is considered an outlier with how much we tend to be paid.

This isn't to say that H-1Bs aren't abused because H-1Bs themselves do tend to be paid a lot less and come with a whole host of restrictions that make job seeking difficult. But overall I don't think the claim that it depresses wages necessarily holds water. If anything what would be likely is companies expanding international offices (which many already are doing) so that they can have access to the same cheap labor pool and avoid paying the absurd SV rates for Americans.

[monoideism]

There are some convincing studies that suggest otherwise. Combined with the fact that tech CEOs speak openly that salaries are too high, and conspire with each other to lower them, it seems fairly likely this is what's happening.

Specifically, this study, which is convincing to me, but always interested in other ideas. This one is a kind of natural experiment so the data are randomized (because companies are awarded via lottery): https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/h1b.pd...

[moultano]

The H1B program is the only reason the US has a tech industry at all. 75% of silicon valley tech workers are immigrants.

[james305]

This is a ridiculous statement. Intel, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple were all founded by US Citizens.

[moultano]

Sergey Brin and Andy Grove were both immigrants.

If the people creating US technology weren't permitted to move here, the center of mass of the world's tech industry would shift somewhere else with sane immigration policies, probably Toronto. US persons who want to work in technology would have to emigrate to find jobs.

You can't just eliminate the vast majority of the people who work in an industry, and expect it to still exist.

[jogjayr]

Steve Jobs' biological father was an immigrant. So were Eduardo Saverin and Sergey Brin.

[masonic]

His biological father was not involved in his life and had no bearing on whom he became. That's like pointing out that the Night Stalker's father was an immigrant.

[Grakel]

Lol. The fact that the entire concept was invented here probably would contradict that.

[moultano]

Britain invented the steam engine.