[jorgen123]

For those not reading the linked article, it was not about tech (although valid discussions here). I had not expected this (this is about rural Alaska):

> “In some rural districts, visa teachers make up 50% to nearly 80% of the teaching staff. School districts already invest $6,000 to $12,000 per teacher to recruit and sponsor educators through the H-1B visa process. Adding a $100,000 federal visa fee has made it financially impossible for many districts to continue hiring the teachers their students depend on.

[randyrand]

There are an excess of teachers in the USA already. It’s a big reason they aren’t paid that well.

No good reason to import them except to pay them even less.

[janalsncm]

Is there an excess of teachers in Alaska?

I can understand why rural schools would need H1Bs. They would probably need to pay a premium to attract teachers from out of state, not to mention Alaska. And rural schools are the least able to actually do that.

Maybe if the current admin really wants to keep the $100k fee, they can extend an olive branch by either waiving the fee or helping to fund American teachers to move to fill those jobs.

[Starman_Jones]

My sister was a schoolteacher in Alaska. They pay a premium, but it’s still not a life that most Americans are cut out for, including me. That means the schools have to choose between giving these kids subpar teachers who are happy to live up there, or miserable teachers who are only doing it for the money. Or, we can hire foreign teachers who are qualified AND are happy to teach up there.

[BoingBoomTschak]

> foreign teachers who are qualified AND are happy to teach up there

But are they? Or are they just willing and here for the money and foot in the immigration door? Sincere question, though I have negative views of the whole H1B thing in general (not a US national, though).

[sinuhe69]

If you care, you certainly can find a lot of information about it nowadays. Of course, whether you want to believe it is another question.

https://youtu.be/FSmtbSYE8pg

[pseudalopex]

You thought this video proved what?

[Starman_Jones]

At a general level, it is a simple fact that there are more qualified/happy candidates globally than there are just in the United States. For the second part, no, I assume that money/opportunity are WHY they’re happy to teach up there. If that’s the motivation that keeps qualified teachers from turning to alcoholism or suicide, that’s a good thing for the kids.

[BobaFloutist]

Same issue as rural doctors, to be honest. It's hard to pay an American with a medical degree enough to live and work in that environment, so if we want to keep rural hospitals (and independent practices) staffed, we need to allow immigrants to do the work.

The alternative isn't that rural communities get doctors born in the US, it's that they get no doctors.

[m463]

I thought the medical board could assign doctors to locations.

(But I don't know how it really works, maybe it was residency only?)

[snozolli]

the schools have to choose between giving these kids subpar teachers who are happy to live up there, or miserable teachers who are only doing it for the money.

1) Why is that the dichotomy?

2) Do you say the same thing about well-paid oilfield workers living in RVs, away from their families and social networks?

3) Do you think the foreign workers are happy to be in Alaska for the sake of the Alaskan experience?

For some reason, people are convinced that teacher salaries have to be suppressed, lest the "wrong people" take the jobs. As if stressing about making rent is a critical signal of virtue, exclusively for teaching.

[Starman_Jones]

1) because there aren’t enough teachers in-state + coming out of the lower 48 to meet demand.

2) Pay alone can’t make people happy, which is why there’s a very high alcoholism/suicide rate among oil workers, despite it typically being a more temporary gig than teaching and paying considerably more. I also hold teachers to a different standard for on-the-job demeanor than oil workers.

3) Per my brother in law, they’re happy to be in Alaska for the American experience.

4) Foreign teachers in Alaska aren’t suppressing wages. That would be true for free market jobs where schools can simply decide not to teach students if it’s not profitable, but teaching isn’t like that.

[snozolli]

1) Because of the low wages.

2) Pay attracts workers. "Happiness" is a separate and personal issue.

3) Anecdata.

4) The fact is that far higher wages would attract American teachers for short periods. It is a free market, until exploitable labor is introduced. Foreign teachers absolutely are suppressing wages, as evidenced by the fact that the wages aren't high enough to attract American teachers.

[sidewndr46]

They pay a premium or the state pays tax dollars to all residents as a premium?

[throwaway85825]

There's as many teachers in Alaska as they're willing to pay for.

[nsagent]

Having lived in bumblefuck Alaska for a year, I can honestly say that they do in fact pay more, but it's also super expensive to live in rural Alaska.

Likely a bigger issue is that very few people want to live in a town of 3000 people or less that isn't connected to the interstate road system. Money can only do so much to fix that.

[throwaway85825]

Some people live in a pressurized bubble for a month for saturation diving. If the price is right you can get someone to do almost anything.

[fc417fc802]

That is true but I think the salient observation here is that it's only realistic to pay so much for education. So either you can't have children in such a town, or you're forced to homeschool, or (I guess what's being suggested is) you import someone willing to work an undesirable job if it gets them into the country.

I think there's an important difference between importing labor to undercut qualified americans in a populated area versus importing labor to do a job that the vast majority of qualified americans will have no interest in at any reasonable pay rate.

[allarm]

It doesn't matter how much money you have if you can't spend it.

[watwut]

I would be fully willing to live in a pressurized bubble for a month for saturation diving. Sounds cool and doable. Living for years in rural Alaska and being a teacher? Absolutely not.

That being said, there are not that many saturation divers, because being a month in a bubble is kind of least problem with it. The lifelong health impact is.

[s1artibartfast]

Yes, there is supply and demand. However, that doesnt mean a government cant restrict supply.

[dani__german]

It precisely and explicitly demands that the government restrict supply of foreign labor, as that increases the fair market value of American wage earners. It increases the opportunities for young Americans to trade their labor for a start in life, to support their families, and to make our nation stronger. Importing foreign labor makes it more difficult to justify hiring Americans, and undermines the nation's long term success for short term gains. It is effectively an Anti-investment.

[intended]

If the clearing rate is equal to the cost of an engineer at a tech firm in SF, the education budget for a small town in Alaska wouldn't afford it.

Your formulation isn't wrong, however it covers only one scenario. What happens when the locality cannot afford the cost to attract people to their region?

This is not even theoretical, its what happened to the rest of the world, as their best and brightest immigrated to America or Europe.

You could say "them's the breaks" and I would understand. However people vote for solutions, so how would you cover the worst case scenario?

[s1artibartfast]

This supposes and outcome where domestic wages are increased and investment is made. It supposes that americans are willing and capable of doing the labor at a price point that americans will accept.

It is also possible we will simply not teach these children (or build infrastructure, grow labor intensive crop, ect).

[esalman]

I hear this argument all the time. There's an excess of this, there's an excess of that. Seems it only comes from people who are not directly involved in hiring of such roles. We hired for an analyst role few months ago in the bay area and there was no qualified American applicants. My wife is in pavement consultancy and they hardly ever find qualified Americans for pavement design jobs.

[dmix]

People can’t seem to separate the issue of exploitation of H1B by (mostly Indian) consultancy mills to lower wages and bypass normal immigration vs the legitimate value of specialized skilled visas. You can fix one without killing the other.

It’s plausible Education might be one of the industries that gets exploited as they have no caps in the lottery like other H1 visas categories such as tech or doctors. But I don’t know enough about education visas personally.

[aprilthird2021]

Yep, H1B visa abuse exists and should be clamped down on, but it's also extremely vital to our sustained economic growth and frankly our biggest growth industry: tech

[adjejmxbdjdn]

No, it’s clear that H1Bs have destroyed the American software industry as evidenced by the fact that the American software industry saw the largest growth in wages relative to any other field in the U.S. over the past 2 decades while also seeing a massive growth in the numbers of employees over the same period, also outpacing every other industry here as well.

Clearly the H1B has been devastating to American workers unlike all those other industries which haven’t seen an influx of a capped number of H1B workers every year.

And that’s even before we get to how the U.S. software industry remains one of a handful of industries where the U.S. is the leader in the world and has generated trillions in wealth, and is largely responsible for the US’s continuing dominance in the world today.

[jsemrau]

> there was no qualified American applicants

I have been hiring for 20 years and find this increasingly impossible to believe. Please expand why that would be the case.

[realitysballs]

In order to find a qualified candidate :

(A) individual must be interested in job/benefits/comp. and decide to apply. This makes them a ‘candidate’ (B) candidate must be qualified per minimum requirements

It’s entirely possible to not have candidates if no one is interested in the position at the stated comp/benefit rate.

[esalman]

The original article is about a federal judge blocking H1B fee because there is a teacher shortage in Alaska. Can you believe that?

[cgag]

Every post I see from young people trying to get tech jobs is about applying to 500 places to get one interview. It’s a lie.

[duxup]

That quote isn’t about a tech job.

[dpark]

He posted on another comment. They were offering way under market. Shocking, really.

[esalman]

150k-200k base offered to a fresh grad for some python and low-level, data intensive work. Really shocking.

[dpark]

You ended up getting a fresh grad because you asked for 4+ years of experience both broad and deep.

150-200k is probably reasonable for a new grad in the bay (not certain what starting salaries there are now) but not for what you actually asked for.

I’m not hating on you. Your budget is what it is. But you’re well under market and that’s why you didn’t get the applicants you wanted.

[fc417fc802]

> there was no qualified American applicants.

But are there qualified Americans who could easily switch to that job for one reason or another? Is the issue a lack of qualified professionals or is it a lack of interest by qualified professionals in the listed position?

It's very easy to receive no applications from qualified professionals that do in fact exist by simply not offering to pay them enough (among many other things). That shouldn't mean you get to undercut the domestic labor market; rather you should be forced to rethink the business plan.

[Grombobulous]

One of the problems is that geography and demographic movement trends within that geography is a very real thing.

Let’s say a rural town has lost population in the last 20 years, and most of the population that left is educated.

Now they need a teacher, which requires a bachelors or even masters degree.

The rural town’s unemployment rate is 10% but there are no qualified teachers who are unemployed.

So now we want to move someone in from a nearby urban center that has a big market of educated people. But the unemployment rate in that big urban area is 3%, and the area is wealthier with a higher salary rate for jobs across the income spectrum.

Let’s say my local teacher salary is $50,000, the big city teacher salary is $90,000, and the big city high school diploma career salary is $50,000.

I have to find someone who is a qualified teacher who isn’t already a teacher and isn’t already working someone where else that’s still paying better than my local area. Plus, that person has family, friends, and prefers the big city with all its amenities and infrastructure. I can tell you right now that you would have to pay me far above market rate to get me to move because I’m already employed and happy.

In contrast, someone in a foreign country is potentially getting a huge upgrade to move to the US or another developed wealthy country and is way more motivated to make that leap.

I imagine these programs exist because the cost benefit just makes sense. Not only do you solve the imbalance faster, easier, cheaper, but now the wider country has gained educated population which is generally an economic benefit.

Certainly there are flaws in the system that need to be fixed. I don’t mean to advocate for it necessarily, just explain why I think it exists.

I would also point out that it’s not necessarily the case that the local labor market is being undercut (see the geographic example I gave above), it’s being expanded, and that includes adding someone who is paying taxes, buying stuff from local businesses, etc, which they do even before they become citizens.

[ryani]

> I can tell you right now that you would have to pay me far above market rate to get me to move

If everyone feels that way, then it's not an above-market rate, it's by definition the market rate. The market rate for a job might be different at different locations.

(Note that I'm not taking a position on whether or not using the H1B program to reduce the market rate here is a good idea)

[fc417fc802]

Yeah I agree with all that but notice that the comment I responded to was either about an analyst in the bay area or a stream of pavement design jobs in unspecified locations. I wouldn't necessarily object to the metric of "do qualified americans exist" being limited to a certain geographic area as long as the resulting criteria was sufficiently difficult to abuse.

[aprilthird2021]

The bay area's existing talent pool is hugely immigrant in nature. It's totally within expectations to put a job post for an analyst of some kind there and only get immigrant visa holders applying. They also make a lot more than many Americans who wouldn't be qualified but still live in the area.

[icepush]

What salary range were you offering ?

[dani__german]

"We were unable to attract highly experienced data analysts, and we REFUSE to ever train anyone for any role, so we should be allowed to use scab labor to undercut American wages"

[esalman]

I have replied to another comment - we ended up hiring a fresh graduate with relevant research experience who is being trained for the role.

[KingMachiavelli]

Isn’t it a self-fulfilling issue? Dependence on H1B and other visa dependent workers leads to lower salaries which discourages local talent from that specialty.

What requirements did the role have and what’s the salary range?

From what little I gather from online job listings, most foreign labor dependent positions are trying to pay 90K for a masters degree, maybe 120-140K Bay Area. Additionally, many of these job listings want extremely specific degrees or certifications that frankly are of little interest to US citizens - but F1 students will take any masters program despite the program having little salary benefit - the degree is a requirement for the visa.

I have a hard time believing you can’t find a US civil engineer who could learn the subject matter right out of college. Although saying that I know first hand low starting salaries have pushed students towards mechanical engineering or CS if inclined.

[esalman]

> What requirements did the role have and what’s the salary range?

4+ years in product development. Python/R + a low-level language. Terabyte-scale data stream and batch processing. HPC knowledge (vectorization, memory access, distributed computing) to build efficient algorithms. Degree in a quantitative field (Math, Stats, Physics, CS, or Engineering).

Upper limit on compensation was 200k.

> Although saying that I know first hand low starting salaries have pushed students towards mechanical engineering or CS if inclined.

You answered your own question. The American engineering pool consists mostly of high school diplomas who can't pass PE exam at multiple trials.

Edit: coincidentally, my wife was offered a state civil engineering job in Bay area. Didn't take up because the salary offered was below 100k, even with 5 years of experience.

[zdragnar]

There are a ton of jobs that pay as well or better with lower requirements, even outside the bay area. Anyone with that level of experience, Python and a low level language isn't going to take you up.

I'm not normally in agreement with the "you're not paying enough, there's plenty of people" crowd, because I've been on the hiring side too and know what a crapshoot it can be... But you're definitely offering too little for those requirements.

[esalman]

I responded to the point someone made- there's an excess of workers in America. Firstly, when there's an excess, wages are supposed to lower, even for Americans. Secondly, even if there is an excess, there was no evidence of that in my experience. In addition to the full time role we also interviewed interns in fall, and in my experience they were all either immigrant or children of immigrants.

[aprilthird2021]

I'm sorry you think $200k/yr to sling Python for a 26 year old is too low?

Come on man be real right now

[DrJokepu]

I mean I don’t have a horse in this race, but I don’t think this is a good example.

If this is a senior enough position to justify expecting this level of specialization, that compensation is not nearly high enough, so issuing this H-1B would add downwards pressure on the compensation of American worker.

If this is not a very senior role, the American worker’s interest is that you find someone with a less specific background, compatible enough so that they can be trained.

[esalman]

Yes we hired a fresh graduate with relevant research experience who is being trained.

[SilverElfin]

> Dependence on H1B and other visa dependent workers leads to lower salaries

It does not generally. H1B employees are more expensive usually. In most companies - like any notable tech company - they are paid exactly the same due to fixed compensation plans, but cost more to the company once you include legal fees, processing fees, and especially the time delays and risks. It’s not even close in terms of a cost comparison. This isn’t a controversy among people who are actually involved in hiring and compensation - it’s well known. But this perception persists.

[fc417fc802]

They don't have to undercut their coworkers on an individual level. When a position that could otherwise reasonably be filled by an American is gated for any unnecessary reason, be it undesirable pay or excessively specific requirements or whatever else, that effectively removes that position from the domestic job market. When that is repeated many times the end result is the same number of domestic applicants competing for fewer positions. That results in downward pressure due to basic supply and demand.

That's fine if there's a genuine need for a specific sort of specialist and the US simply isn't producing enough of them. But when it's silly hyper specific requirements it becomes detrimental.

[bijowo1676]

tech salaries have only increased and never decreased. Not in 2000, not in 2008, not in 2020.

Your narrative runs against the facts on the ground.

Not only foreign workers were part of the reason US tech dominates the world, they also greatly contributed to every single major invention in tech, including the Attention paper which led to Transformer based LLMs.

All of these stupid anti-immigrant narratives are exploiting either ignorance (foreigners undercut wages, while wages have tripled and more) or motte-and-bailey tactics (WITCH bad and H1B fraud bad, lets abolish all immigration)

[winrid]

Were you actually involved in the hiring? What is qualified? College degree and $30/hr?

I know people who are actively looking for data analyst roles. Email me

[anon-3988]

Does your wife's consultancy business have a growing number of clients to handle? It might also be an issue of distribution.

[esalman]

No such issues. It's actually not a solo business, it's a civil/geological engineering consultancy firm with a mix of state/local government and private clients.

[corndoge]

We need to incentivize more kids to get pavement design degrees to increase the supply

[esalman]

The reason US is in this mess is because in the 50s and 60s there was a liberal arts education boom in the US, and STEM education boom in India/China.

[hdgvhicv]

Anyone educated in the 50s and 60s has retired

And in China they were far more occupied with a cultural revolution than any form of advanced education. At best you could argue that they were teaching basic literacy to more people.

[aprilthird2021]

We had a STEM education boom in the last decade in the US

[bsder]

Capitalism has an answer for that ... it's called "higher salary."

Everybody loves capitalism--until they are on the other side of the arrow.

[jlarocco]

Pay more.

[wesleywt]

But you Americans hate taxes. You spend like a European country and tax like an African one.

[esalman]

I have added compensation information in another reply.

[hvb2]

And you pay for this, how? Because typically that would mean taxing something more.

I've seen those kind of proposals as ballot measures that get voted down.

[fc417fc802]

Tough. The undesirable consequences needs to be forced to occur so that the voters have no choice but to deal with it. You shouldn't get to just rip the bottom out of the market and proclaim to have fixed the problem.

[tastyfreeze]

Rural Alaska is a special kind of rural that most people won't take to. Communities off the road where you fly in on a small plane, take a river boat, or snow machine in the winter to get there. Most are tribal and insular. Getting anyone to move there is a big ask. For a H1B teacher it is a foot in the door.

[rented_mule]

I think a lot of people don't understand how different it is to live in rural communities in general, and then to your point, how much more extreme rural Alaska is than "regular" rural areas.

I live in rural California. During the pandemic, a lot of people moved here and didn't last six months before leaving (I can relate, there's a lot I miss about living in SF!). There are so many services people expect, and they expect them to be prompt. We have the opposite of economies of scale in our small town. We have zero options for meal delivery. The nearest full size grocery is a 20-30 minute drive. Costco and Trader Joe's are a 90 minute drive. There are so few auto mechanics around that many of us drive 90 minutes for car service if we don't do it ourselves. Power outages often last 3-10 days. Large snow storms (4+ feet) typically make our roads impassable for 3-7 days. When the power goes out, internet follows 90 minutes later. There's no cell coverage inside or out, even when the power is on.

All of that is worse in almost all of Alaska. My brother worked on Alaska's North Slope for a few years - if you've ever seen the TV show Ice Road Truckers, that was his job. They'd fly him up north for a 1-2 week long shift, then fly him back to the little town he lived in for a week-long break. You have to worry about crazy things like hoping the summer doesn't get too warm, because roads will melt and collapse into what was previously permafrost. Uh oh, someone left a loading bay door in the warehouse open and now there's a polar bear in there breaking expensive stuff. Then you go home and can't go inside because a moose decided to go to sleep right in front of your door - better drive 50 miles and fuel up because you might be sleeping in your vehicle tonight and you don't want to freeze to death if your fuel runs out. These are all things my brother experienced. The pay was great, but he finally gave up and moved to Anchorage to drive a truck locally there.

[culopatin]

But evidently they don’t want to move to rural America.

[pseudo0]

Rural Alaska... Just about the most inhospitable climate in the US, remote, and with a very high cost of living. Teachers can find work just about anywhere, they have little incentive to stay in Alaska.

The solution for this is simple - pay them more. There are plenty of recently graduated teachers who would work in Alaska for a few years if it paid off their student loans or let them save up a down payment on a house.

[tastyfreeze]

Alaska will already pay off loans for teachers that will teach in rural communities. My friend taught in Yakutat for 5 years to pay off loans before moving to a larger town. But Yakutat is well connected as far as rural towns go. They have jet service and a ferry in the summer. Not many takers to go live in a tribal town 200 miles up a river.

[culopatin]

And who pays that extra? Who are you taxing in the middle of nowhere?

[Analemma_]

The Alaska Permanent Fund from their oil revenue is worth $90 billion and they send every resident an annual $1,000 check on top of heavily subsidized fuel. I think they can pay competitive teacher salaries.

[Brybry]

Alaska is already in the top 8 median elementary school teacher salaries nationally, with ~$79,260 in 2025 compared to 2024 national median of $62,310 (couldn't find 2025). They were #2 and #3 in education spending as a percent of state GDP in 2024 and 2025. [1][2][3]

It would need to be more than just competitive, it would probably need to be doctor-tier "I'm giving up my life plans for this salary in Alaska" level (which is what I assume it's like for foreign labor).

It's possible they can afford it. I would think they would need to double or more their education spending (~$2.77 billion (24/25), ~45% -> wages) state wide which would be most of what the Alaska Permanent Fund pays out per year ($3-4 billion) [4][5]

I imagine it would be politically very unpopular for obvious reasons.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/kinde...

[2] https://data.bls.gov/oesprofile/?major_group=250000&occupati... (increase records to see Alaska)

[3] https://www.schoolfinancedata.org/annual-reports/2024

https://www.schoolfinancedata.org/annual-reports/2025

[4] https://alaskapolicyforum.org/2025/06/alaskas-schools-are-ro...

[5] https://apfc.org/the-fund/fund-structure/

[tastyfreeze]

The Alaska Permanent Fund is not a general government account. It is legally separate from state government funds.

[bijowo1676]

there is already a program like that, its been running for ages, its called PLSF. Still not enough teachers.

https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation...

People who critique H1B always seem to assume that people actually hiring for labor are much dumber than those bright commenters and haven't exhausted each and every other opportunity to find qualified people.

No, you are not being smarter than lawmakers who enacted H1B program, and then refused to dismantle it at every opportunity to do so. You are not smarter than employers who have to hire via H1B and pay tens of thousands dollars to immigration lawyers for stupid paperwork.

Most of the critique of H1B in this post is just bigoted, hateful, and uneducated rant

[dani__german]

you said "smarter" in this comment when a more accurate term is "corrupt". Being unable to find a candidate for your given budget requires that you either increase the budgeted salary or decrease the requirements, and train on the job. If you cannot do either of these, your company MUST fail. It is inhumane to demolish the US working class by importing foreign scab labor. Too much labor supply (aka immigration) decreases fair market value for wages. That alone is more than enough justification for ending all immigration of any significant amount.

Handwaving away significant issues as "bigotry, etc" is unhelpful to the discussion. We haven't even covered the impact on housing supply, as illustrated by Canada's insane valuations.

[Qworg]

What are the knock on effects of lowering the total number of people/the velocity of money/the number of companies in America?

Canada's housing supply cost issues are driven by a wide variety of factors, very little having to do with immigration and far more with a small number of wealthy families owning a huge amount of land and a larger number of wealthy people holding many homes.

[bijowo1676]

OpenAI and Anthropic and others are paying millions to hire qualified people, yet they still have to hire H1Bs.

Dont tell me there are no Americans willing to take a million dollar job and these foreigners are causing wage decreases, despite tech salaries showing only increasing trend. Theres never been a year when tech salaries have decreased, not in 2008, not in 2000, not in 2020.

Its all hockey stick growth for tech people.

Housing supply is blocked by American citizens, mostly boomers, who oppose any development and oppose public transit. You cant blame foreigners for something that your fellow citizens are doing

Re Canada: I believe there is strong money laundering money flow in Canadian RE that has nothing to do with immigration. Its all illicit money being laundered by Canadians themselves

[jojobas]

Hardly an argument to import teachers on work visas.

[bluegatty]

It's literally exactly the argument.

If teachers were underpaid - it would be a poor argument.

But if there's an acute shortage of 'key' workers in jobs that require education, for jobs where wages are materially above market pricing - then this is where you want H1B type programs.

The idea is that it should not harm the local market for labour, and it's usually not reasonable to expect market wages to be a radical departure from where they would be otherwise.

Aka - if teachers are earning $80K on average, then it's not going to work out i some small towns need to pay $150K to bring people in from the city, it also creates problems for locals.

Special worker programs can be well utilized here in the right circumstances.

The 'bad' scenario is when labour market is flooded where those jobs would otherwise go to locals.

Tata/Infosys (generic IT workers) are alone probably 80% of the problem.

[AngryData]

This would hold more weight if teachers in rural areas weren't getting paid less than half your thought experiment average.

[bluegatty]

Your little comment would have more weight it had any factual substance.

Average teachers salary in US is 75K and it's over 100K in California.

[1]https://www.nea.org/nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/teac...

[jojobas]

Teachers are underpaid. No occupation paying under median wage in the area should be granted work visa.

[bluegatty]

'Teachers are underpaid' is a qualitative statement, separate from what is 'median wage'.

Teachers earn about the median wage in the US and slightly above the median wage in California and Alaska.

I think that pay structure is about right and given the way education is paid for and lack of willingness of people to move to rural areas, H1 seems about right for acute cases and specialized subjects.

If you can't get a physics teacher to move to 'Wherever Alaska' - you have a problem.

[culopatin]

It’s a matter of incentives. The avg American grows up with certain “American dream” that clashes with that rural America life. There is no incentive to leave everything behind and go be basically alone. Immigrants have a “lower” baseline or just want the experience of being abroad, or are willing to put up with rural living because from wherever they are, it looks better. You’d have to entice a city teacher to move to rural America.

You’ll say “pay them more”. But who are you taxing more? Because no one is happy when the gov starts looking at being more efficient and starts laying off some admin people either.

[jojobas]

Teachers were like 4% of all H1Bs. Using CS/AI H1B proceeds to increase pay to rural teachers more seems like a no-brainer. The current Alaskan teacher pay seems to be below median, which seems like an good threshold to disallow H1B workers altogether.

[bijowo1676]

Have you considered the possibility that H1B teachers are simply better (at any price point) ?

H1B proceeds go to fund USCIS and its staff, they do not go towards local school districts.

This whole discussion is full of racists and haters who dont know anything about the subject beyond clickbait titles

[riknos314]

Are teaching and software engineering even job categories that overlap enough that they should compete for the same pool of visas?

It seems to me things would be better if they were classified as different visa categories.

[bijowo1676]

so you want to leave rural children without teachers?

[SecretDreams]

I think the commenter is volunteering to go themselves.

[thisisit]

Remind me who is at the forefront of cutting funding to government programs.

The people voting for these administration are the ones cutting government spending and lower taxes and then say “pay more”. With what dollars exactly?

[lokar]

It’s not the job, it’s the location.

There is a shortage of most careers that require and college degree in rural areas.

Also, rural areas don’t have the tax base to out pay urban areas.

This is about the stagnation and lack of vitality in rural towns in general.

[halestock]

Er, there is an excess of teachers because they are paid so poorly. Teaching (like nursing) is absolutely a labor of love and so they are heavily undervalued and underpaid in this country.

[zx8080]

> No good reason to import them except to pay them even less.

Then I'll tell you a good one. It's called profit.

[alephnerd]

And it's not just education - nurses, doctors, and plenty of engineers in the Energy, Mining, and Construction sector are also brought on H1Bs to Alaska.

Edit: can't reply

> Are they also using traditional incentive methods, like signing bonuses, for domestic prospects

Yes.

I have a good buddy of mine who is senior management at an ANRC and they will pay 6 figure salaries to non-natives irrespective of citizenship in a number of cases.

Heck, even the starting salary for unskilled federal roles like TSA agents at Utquiatvik was $70K last I was there versus $30-40k in the rest of the mainland.

Much of Alaska is literal villages that are disconnected from the outside world aside from the occasional bush plane, and amenities are nonexistent. You are talking about towns and villages where most of the residents are entirely depending on UBI (Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend) and subsidence hunting/farming.

As such, it's not enticing.

Also, a number of Alaska Natives prefer hiring Thai and Filipino immigrants over Americans (who statistically tend to be White, Black, or Hispanic) because if you're hiring outsiders you may as well hire outsiders who look like you and are viewed as more culturally aligned.

[imglorp]

Are they also using traditional incentive methods, like signing bonuses, for domestic prospects?

[Izikiel43]

Yeah, most of us think of tech, but the program affects doctors, nurses and teachers for rural America.

[bijowo1676]

This was the most infuriating part.

Big Tech has multiple carveouts to bring tech labor using F1/J1/L1/O1/EB-1 and various other visas, and they wouldn't even feel the 100k fee given their budgets.

While non-tech sectors were the ones most affected

[whateverboat]

Not refuting your point but...

Most people who work in tech are not eligible for O1 or EB-1. F1 is a student visa, J1 requires you to go back after finishing your stuff. L1 can actually work but needs to be converted to either H1b, O1 or EB1 at some point soonish.

[bijowo1676]

Plenty of people in tech work on O1 and EB1. F1 is probably the biggest feeder pool for H1. J1 does not always require coming back, it requires return only when funded by US government program, and return requirement can otherwise can be waived, esp if J1 is unfinished

[Izikiel43]

> it requires return only when funded by US government program

Not true, I had J1 visas without US government program intervention and I still had the home requirement. Since there wasn't any US government intervention I was able to get a waiver for the home requirement, but it took a couple of months.

[infecto]

Which is sadly very ironic.

[wyager]

Isn't the entire point of this order to prevent filling low-paying jobs with cheap foreign labor, in order to increase demand for domestic labor? "Rural district schoolteacher" sounds like exactly the kind of job where the H1B program has very low public support

[fg137]

You have been terribly misled.

[cryptoegorophy]

Not from USA, is there shortage of teachers in USA? Or government pays too little to have local teachers consider such jobs? Seems like a broken system

[trelane]

> is there shortage of teachers in USA?

No, there is a steady stream of teachers being fed into the maw of public education. The pay is low and job security is terrible until you get tenure. My wife was a teacher; I have heard horror stories.

You get paid based on a combination of how much money you earn your employer and how easy you are to replace. Schools get paid by taxes, and there are a ton of them produced every year. So, the pay is abysmal.

[throwawaytea]

My gf makes about $90k a year, tons of time off, at 35 years old in a California public school. If she wasn't a teacher, she admits she'd probably be a cop or 911 dispatcher, because government gigs are what her entire extended family recommends. She has trouble adding 50 cents to 75 cents, but luckily she only teaches English and social studies to middle schoolers.

[bijowo1676]

I have a kid who just graduated elementary and is about to enter Middle school.

Your post actually explains why every single classmate of my daughter has enrolled in private middle school ($50k+ tuition), despite being in the best school district (Palo Alto School District).

Apparently public middle schools are really bad in California, but you can still find decent high and elementary schools

All top private middle schools in the bay are oversubscribed and cannot accomodate everyone, and require ridiculous exams and admission process that rivals Ivy League, situation is really bad, and demand for good teachers is infinite

[throwawaytea]

I like the girl but I can't help but dislike what her and her social circle are doing to schools. I go to their social events after hours for happy hour or family events and I honestly don't think these people are capable of molding the youth into anything but lame 'nice' kind stupid people. Yes, being nice and kind are important, sure. But you get major problems when these teachers can not inspire or provoke thought. And they can't, because they are honestly borderline retarded. Half the kids are just nodding along, and the other half realize by around 7th grade that their teachers are stupid and start really mistreating them and ignoring them. Its a mess.

[TylerE]

> re---ed.

Please stop saying say. It's almost as bad as the n-word. There are a lot of neurodivergent people around here.

[saltyoldman]

What happened was there were a lot of boomers that taught my generation in the bay area. So when I was in high school around 94-98 the teachers were typically 40-50ish year old boomer generation. These people were pretty good at teaching. Mostly white. As generation X started getting into the game, and bureaucratic processes the introduced "core" and "new math". Both pretty bad. I was in the middle of the transition so I did get pre-new-math as well.

What happened next? Well pretty much all of us got jobs at Google, Apple and other places. The only way for any of us to have stayed in teaching would have been major compromises. We decimated the teaching industry because it didn't realize the salaries these companies were waiting to pay us. They had no chance.

[bijowo1676]

This situation rhymes with manufacturing jobs in the midwest.

Industrial and manufscturing jobs were offshored to Asia and Americans had zero chance to be price competitive relative to East-Asian labor

The diff is that Midwest didnt have Apple and Google to fall back on, they only had fentanyl to cope with their situation.

But now the situation is so bad, you cant even find talent in US even if you are willing to pay for it. Asian countries have better integrated supply chains that make manufacturing two to three orders cheaper than in US.

And nobody knows how to solve it, but there is only one solution.

End the USD as a global reserve currency, so that manufacturing in US has more power again, relative to financial industry. I dont see any other option long term

[TylerE]

The "Alaska" bit is very important. Very remote, very cold. Everything is very expensive because almost all of it has to be shipped in by air.

Yes, the US teacher pay is generally crap and we're short on teachers everywhere, but Alaska is a rather unique situation.

It's 16% of the US's land area, but only 0.2% of the population.

[brudgers]

Rural Alaska is by and large very very remote. Often small plane is the only practical access and then only in favorable weather.

Recruiting teachers to remote villages with extreme weather is hard and if you are at US university training to be a teacher you will probably have other options that are more attractive as a young person.

[lokar]

Even anchorage is pretty bad

[brudgers]

Yes, I mean there is basically one road to Alaska and from the nearest major US city (Seattle) it is 3600km to Anchorage…about the same distance as Barcelona to Moscow but entirely through sparsely or unpopulated wilderness.

And Seattle is a long way from most of the US…another 3300km from Chicago.

[nemomarx]

Teacher pay is low, but it also requires certification and a degree. And in exchange it will be relatively stressful and lacking in prestige.

[pastel8739]

And long hours!

[trelane]

My favorite teacher strike was when the teachers stopped doing work when they weren't being paid. The district quickly caved.

[Rebelgecko]

Little bit of both. Pay varies drastically from state to state, even taking cost of living into account. By the time you pay for a degree and a credential the ROI isn't great. Jobs in better paying areas exist too but are understandably more competitive

[JohnTHaller]

Teachers are paid less than they should be and and must complete specific undergraduate and graduate degrees as well as additional ongoing certifications. They are, unfortunately, not well respected by many groups. And right-wing folks have been making noise about augmenting and replacing teachers with AI. I have multiple friends who have left teaching due to lack of respect and support from student parents. I still have two teachers in my family.

[Integrape]

Reminds me of the plot from North Exposure.

[Integrape]

*Northern Exposure