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> At a certain point, there aren't enough Americans for these jobs

Is that really true? I’m sure in some fields where you need rare experts I believe it. For the average engineer who is just another cog in the wheel of big corp, I highly doubt it.

[bonsai_spool]

> Is that really true? I’m sure in some fields where you need rare experts I believe it. For the average engineer who is just another cog in the wheel of big corp, I highly doubt it.

Have you ever hired someone before? Did you decide to take the best person you found or did you pick an American?

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> Have you ever hired someone before? Did you decide to take the best person you found or did you pick an American?

Many times. Sometimes we don’t offer sponsorships so we hired who didn’t need one. Other times not. During the interview process where they’re from isn’t the matter at hand. Either way, there’s no shortage of good candidates - solely American / GC or not.

Though let’s be honest - there is a question behind the question, isn’t there? Why don’t you just ask that instead?

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> Though let’s be honest - there is a question behind the question, isn’t there? Why don’t you just ask that instead?

You answered it - you picked the best person, who sometimes was not American.

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That doesn’t directly prove that there aren’t enough Americans who can do the job. Sometimes yeah, the non American is better like in photolithography.

Generally though, the foreign candidate is not so much better that hiring an American would have lowered the bar.

Sometimes it also comes down to leveling - I’ve had to down level people due to budget concerns. Americans can hold out for that better job, but the other cannot so companies take advantage of that.

My point is that it’s not a skill issue, it’s a wage + location issue. Foreigners will find that their wage is better than what they can earn at home, so they can undercut that citizens who’s held out for a better opportunity.

[bonsai_spool]

> so they can undercut that citizens who’s held out for a better opportunity.

Just to better understand, genuinely, do you mean that the company would increase their budget in the event that a foreign worker had not been available, and that an American would have taken the job at that time, given the higher wage?

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Why wouldn’t they? It’s a supply and demand thing, supply is lower so pay is higher to meet demand.

Other ways to solve is to settle for less if the job isn’t that crucial, or look for someone who lives in a lower cost of living area who can take the wage. But that also depends on the whole RTO fiasco.

To be clear, if you are doing leading edge R&D or some super special project like SpaceX, etc then yeah you need to seek the brightest minds across the globe. But to maintain your CMS or work in some ERP softwares, you can definitely find an American to do it.

The basic point I’m making is a large majority of H1B work can be done just as well (within an acceptable error rate) by someone here. There are reasons why you need some special talent but those aren’t as common.