Skilled immigration policy very typically targets skills shortages where they cannot be recruited domestically. Simply firing a workforce to get those same skills cheaper, which is what is happening here, is a terrible move for a countries workforce.
- Wages wind up going backwards.
- Wages fail to keep up with inflation meaning lower discretionary expenditure flowing into the economy.
- You wind increasing involuntary unemployment.
- With rises in involuntary unemployment you wind up increasing crime, from petty theft through to more major crime.
- With lower returns to economy on an individual basis you economically have less to invest in things like health, education, infrastructure, creation of export businesses on a per individual basis, despite growing GDP. You've created a hole but made it look like growth.
You don't need to go full domestic industry protectionism to avert the above, but you absolutely should not be firing an existing skilled domestic workforce with the explicit intent to replace them with skilled immigration if you want to perform better as an economy.
Because individual businesses can and will try to exploit the issue, this is why it should be regulated. To fail to do so hurts the economy at large when you are not filling a genuine skills shortage.
The H1-B program allows a large number of people into the US, and frankly they vary a ton in how 'skilled' they are. Some are super-smart, some are mediocre, some are just bad. This really confounds the human tendency to make simplistic snap judgements about things.
From my experience, the best H1-Bs go to the FAANGs (or whatever we're calling them these days). The middle of the pack go to consulting companies like Accenture or Wipro. And the subpar ones are C2C consultants for dodgy sweatshops, the kind who fill our inboxes with their 'hotlists' (if you know then you know). While most of them got a STEM Master's here in the US, if you look at the resumes of the weaker ones it's generally from some college you've literally never heard of- Northern North Dakota State or something. I would imagine that they're basically running a borderline diploma mill that's profiting off of foreign families who hope their child will get a Green Card
Actually, as a hiring manager, you can't discriminate between whether someone is a U.S. Citizen or an H1B. So in reality, you're going through a stack of applicants in order. If your HR group puts a bunch of H1B's in front of a citizen candidate, that's it.
So no, your assertion that there is an implicit "there is no American we can hire to fill this" is false. We can't even consider that.
You absolutely can discriminate on the criteria of 'will this person require a visa now or at any point in the future', and tons of companies put that requirement right in their job postings. If your company told you otherwise they are mistaken
> The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate with respect to hiring, firing, or recruitment or referral for a fee, based upon an individual's citizenship or immigration status. The law prohibits employers from hiring only U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents unless required to do so by law, regulation or government contract
Your quoted text says 'unless required to do so by law, regulation'.
H1-Bs would legally require a visa transfer to switch employers, and the company can simply choose to not sponsor or transfer that visa. Thus, the worker is not eligible to work for them. Here are 3 immigration attorneys explaining this in another way https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-company-refuse-to-c...
Also, what hiring manager is letting HR decide in what order their candidate pool is meritorious? HR can barely judge a local talent contest let alone someone's ability to undertake skilled work. If I say to my HR that a candidate needs to know Python with environmental experience I'm just as likely to have a candidate put forward who was a wildlife carer 20 years ago since they handled pythons as I am to find someone who can script and understands climate data. They will probably also give me someone who is good with Java, since it's all just computer programming.
Look, like it or not, we all have to work with our HR apparatus. If I have the choice between running their department and keeping mine functional, I have to accept that they at some level know what they are doing. Not to mention, when your HR head has the JD, and you don't, what you think you know is outweighed by their credential.
Now, was I misinformec by an HR person during my time as a hiring manager? Maybe. But guess what, I didn't control their pipeline, and I had work to make sure got done. I'll definitely be adding HR people to my list of groups to talk to when interviewing companies interested in hiring for a hiring manager position though, because the sheer amount of hell that experience came with was beyond unreasonable.
97% of the population of the United States has family trees that immigrated into America less than 500 years ago. We're all bringing parts of our culture with us. We're all creating America together. That's what America is.
This isn't a question pro/against immigration, this is a question of did Tata break existing laws protecting domestic labor.
> If anything, we should change the law to encourage much more high-skill immigration.
I don't think any reasonable person would argue argue against importing highly skilled laborers to increase GDP per capita, that is, to fill a genuine labor shortage that domestic supply cannot fill within a reasonable span of time.
All increases in the number of people doing work and creating things can increase GDP per capita (especially if you count the increase in the income of the person who immigrated, as you should). Inexpensive Indian IT guy makes IT cheaper, which is good for everyone except those who directly compete (and even for them it's not really that bad). This makes it so more things that are complementary to IT can be done. Broad-based benefit that outweighs a narrowly-experienced cost.
- Wages wind up going backwards.
- Wages fail to keep up with inflation meaning lower discretionary expenditure flowing into the economy.
- You wind increasing involuntary unemployment.
- With rises in involuntary unemployment you wind up increasing crime, from petty theft through to more major crime.
- With lower returns to economy on an individual basis you economically have less to invest in things like health, education, infrastructure, creation of export businesses on a per individual basis, despite growing GDP. You've created a hole but made it look like growth.
You don't need to go full domestic industry protectionism to avert the above, but you absolutely should not be firing an existing skilled domestic workforce with the explicit intent to replace them with skilled immigration if you want to perform better as an economy.
Because individual businesses can and will try to exploit the issue, this is why it should be regulated. To fail to do so hurts the economy at large when you are not filling a genuine skills shortage.