[kouohhashi]

I know most of tech community believe open USA. But I think that view is heavily biased because most tech guys in Silicon Valley is relatively rich and many of them are even foreigners. In order to understand the problem, I want to know opinion which support H1B visa restriction. Anyone who work for tech and support H1B visa restriction?

[hiram112]

I'm an American who worked for a year in India and another few months for a large H1B "WITCH" company in the US. It was an interesting experience, but it took me about 2 weeks to understand how it was not about "best and brightest" but about US multinationals gaming the system to push down wages and use indentured servants.

If it were up to me, I'd set the limit at something like $250K tied to average home prices in the area where the H1B worked. If home prices go up, so must the minimum salary.

This would push wages up rapidly for medium IT and software jobs for Americans, including American blacks, hispanics, etc. who Corporate America pretends to care about while employing 80% Indians in their tech departments.

Google, Apple, and etc. could still pick the cream of the crop from around the world, while all the banks, IT staffing companies, and others making CRUD apps on AWS would be forced to hire and train Americans at higher wages which would push more smart students into the field and out of law, finance, etc.

Companies that play games like opening offices in India or Canada or wherever would eventually be caught by the local cities and states who need that tax revenue more than ever, so I don't fear a huge loss of talent and jobs overseas.

[sg47]

The problem with training Americans is that due to at will employment, they can leave as soon as they are trained and can get a better job. Whereas if you can find someone who already knows how to do this job, even if they leave in a 2 years, you get 2 years of work out of them.

[Eratosthenes]

Good point. You know what would be great for corporations? If we could just bring back slavery. Then we wouldn't have to worry about churn at all! Except when we work them to death. But life is all about tradeoffs.

Really, the only two viable options are either H1-B's or slavery. You can't honestly expect corporations to promote people in accordance with their skill, or increase people's wages in accordance with their skill, right? Next you're going to tell me they should compete with other employers for their employees! Hahaha just imagine that.

[sg47]

I'm not saying H1B should be the option. Just pointing out why corporations don't train employees. Even if they could, maybe the bigger ones can afford it but what happens to the 20-person startup that's trying to get by with Series A funding.

[codeisawesome]

How is opening an office in India or Canada “playing games”? On what authority can local cities and states ban the activity? (They simply can’t.)