[stego-tech]

I’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs.

1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…

2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers. It’s absolute protectionism, which means you just shift the negative trends (“credential” mills in particular) onto domestic shores. Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.

3) Unionize the technical trades. This lets the professionals set skill and comp floors, potentially offload benefits burdens to the Union itself rather than the fickleness of the employer, and even undermines the “contractor class” of companies deflating labor through precarious contracts by setting floors industry-wide. The downside is that Unions, like any power structure, can and will corrupt with time and incentive, leading to jams in the marketplace - less an issue in the age of AI, but still one worth noting.

4) Taxation. Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American? No tax breaks for you, pay up. This is a very bad idea on its face, because companies will just shift the transaction offshore to dodge that rule and gum up everything else in the process, but some form of punitive tax scheme for exploiting social safety nets in lieu of fairly compensating workers is sorely needed to stop, if not begin reversing, the current wealth pumps. For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program as a means of depressing their pay has robbed taxpayers of billions, increased the national debt, and robbed workers of the fruits of their labor. It must be fixed, somehow.

There’s a number of other policies to get into, but that’s the “highlight reel” as it were. The important thing to keep in mind is that the status quo only works for the monied interests, and neither the H-1B workers coming in nor the Americans being shoved onto welfare programs for corporate greed. If a program or system enriches the rich while harming everyone else, it’s a bad system, and needs to be replaced rather than overhauled. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it piss people off? Of course. Will it feel like nobody really won? Ideally, because that means it’s balanced compromise rather than a gift package.

[_DeadFred_]

After Tiananmen Square we let Chinese students in the USA stay. I gained a ton of great colleagues during that time. No one freaked out, no one cared. We need to bump up immigration and remove the artificial power H1B/sponsorship gives companies. Perhaps the difference was that those new Americans weren't able to bring their families in due to Chinese policy so racists didn't SEE a huge visible difference?

2. Rural states were what you state already historically. Hence the existence of the rust belt. The existence of lots of towns who's manufacturing was outsourced from Clinton on. They were already this model, just with small/midsize factories and/or call centers.

[hallole]

> Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.

Depressing labor costs, but only to a point, no? They would be subject to American minimum wages; and, presumably, American labor, even at its cheapest, is more expensive than the offshore alternative.

And, assume there is no price differential... Would Americans not be better off if companies outsourced to other American (i.e., not foreign) companies? Thereby keeping currency within the U.S.? I've been hearing that remittances represent a substantial outward cash flow nationally.

I've never heard of such "Data Sovereignty Schemes," but they seem like far and away the best option. And thanks for writing this up, btw.

[SkiFire13]

> 2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers.

How would this work with basically any foreign service?

[jen20]

Isn't the _point_ that it doesn't?

But to throw out one idea: a "safe harbour" style scheme that allows exporting this kind of work to places with equivalent policies could work.

[thatfrenchguy]

> 1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…

Do you know how long those take? Consular processing for green cards is painful as hell and somehow even longer than adjustment of status if you're in a non-backlogged country. The real solution here is obviously to allow self-sponsorship for employment based green cards.

> Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American?

I mean, do you want to tax a company that hires foreigners, sponsor their green cards, just because some of their employees decide to not naturalize (say, like Apple or Google or Meta?) ? That makes zero sense.

> For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program

H1B folks aren't eligible for any social welfare program, even though they, e.g. contribure to Medicare / Social Security.

[stego-tech]

You're deliberately conflating different arguments to suit your preconceived opinions rather than read them as the individual arguments they are. Even so, I'll respond in earnest to each counter-point you're attempting to make:

> Do you know how long those take? Consular processing for green cards is painful as hell and somehow even longer than adjustment of status if you're in a non-backlogged country. The real solution here is obviously to allow self-sponsorship for employment based green cards.

I do, actually. I've navigated the immigration system as a sponsor, and it's hell. It's deliberately engineered to make it as difficult and expensive as possible to navigate successfully, and it's needed an overhaul for half a century. Using that as a wedge issue to deny reform, however, also hasn't worked for half a century, and has only resulted in a fatigued populace embracing fringe populism and naked fascism in an effort to see any movement at all on the issue.

Seriously, this was a big topic leading up to the 2008 election. Congress has dropped the ball dozens of times.

As for self-sponsoring, I'm not ready to open that can of worms given the immense exploitation it allows (essentially indentured servitude - which, to be fair, so is H1B, so let's not shift that exploitation further down the ladder either).

> I mean, do you want to tax a company that hires foreigners, sponsor their green cards, just because some of their employees decide to not naturalize (say, like Apple or Google or Meta?) ? That makes zero sense.

Yes, I do. If an employee decides not to Naturalize, then they're free to seek other employment on the job market with employers not phased by such penalties. Employers will naturally shift to only hiring Citizens or permanent residents pending Naturalization, not Green Card workers. This shifts the exploitation further down the chain rather than up front via temporary visas with no direct pathways to Citizenship, but to be clear, it does not eliminate exploitation of immigrant labor.

Immigration to another country is a serious decision to make. It comes with tradeoffs. We should want people willing to integrate - not assimilate, necessarily - into the country's fabric, put down roots, raise kids, contribute back to communities, and be good citizens. We don't want or need more rich tourists stopping by for a decade or two as permanent residents before fucking off back to their home country where the cost of living is cheaper, not when so many of our problems require long-term thinking and strategizing to solve - something citizens are best equipped to see through.

> H1B folks aren't eligible for any social welfare program, even though they, e.g. contribure to Medicare / Social Security.

I'm aware. You're conflating every single proposal after the H1B point in bullet 1 with all of them targeting H1B specifically. In this case I'm referring to the fast food industry, the retail industry, the service sector, the multitude of American enterprises who refuse to pay livable wages by design, so that taxpayers have to spend more on SNAP, Medicaid, Section 8, and other welfare programs for the working poor just so Walmart, or Amazon, or McDonalds can pay their shareholders and leadership panels even more money. This isn't even an "open secret" anymore, it's literally the business playbook for some of America's largest employers.

You're making decent enough arguments, but you're not doing the barest minimum research before making them. C'mon, you can be better than this, I know it.