[marcholagao]

> exploitation plan only works as long that labor can't walk

That's not true. If H1-Bs were not a good deal for the guest workers, there wouldn't be a 10 year waiting list to get one. Living standards are so much higher in the United States due to massive infrastructure investments than in the countries most of these guest workers come from that accepting a lower wage than an American would otherwise earn is still a once in a lifetime opportunity for them. The workers being exploited by wage depression here are the American ones, and that's not even addressing the infrastructure costs of a growing population which is distributed evenly instead of being born solely by those incurring the cost.

> Companies also have to do prevailing wage checks, which often results in pay increases.

How? In my experience H1Bs always make less because they are taking a hit in pay in order to benefit from the public services they wouldn't get in their home country.

[amf12]

> That's not true. If H1-Bs were not a good deal for the guest workers, there wouldn't be a 10 year waiting list to get one

How about this: If below minimum wage illegal work wasn't a good deal for guest workers, there wouldn't be illegal immigration to the US.

This doesn't mean its not exploitation, although not every H1B is being exploited.

> The workers being exploited by wage depression here are the American ones

85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages when the population of the US is 300M+. Especially when there is record demand across industries. Look at tech, every company wants to hire more and is competing with high salaries.

> and that's not even addressing the infrastructure costs of a growing population which is distributed evenly instead of being born solely by those incurring the cost.

I don't understand this point. Isn't every citizen benefiting from the improved, expanded infrastructure? Legal immigrants like H1Bs pay the same taxes as any citizen or a permanent resident.

[paulgb]

> Legal immigrants like H1Bs pay the same taxes as any citizen or a permanent resident.

Moreover, primary H-1B holders are basically by definition selected to be the subset of the population that poses a negative burden on society. They have a steady job (if they lose it they get deported); they have health and criminal background checks; they are college-educated. Some other country took the burden of educating them and took on the risk that they’d turn out to be a deadbeat, and the US receives them as a taxpaying adult.

(Full disclosure, I was an H-1B holder.)

[Spooky23]

The “abuse” of H1 is mostly for lousy operations and legacy sustainment jobs.

There’s no way your state labor department or insurance company is going to pay a premium for US workers to train for and work a dead end, low satisfaction job updating 50 year old COBOL or 20 year old J2EE. So they contract out the work on-prem or setup a technology center in Nowhereville, New Mexico to grease the skids and make the hiring process work.

The reality is, without the H1 folks, those jobs would just be outsourced abroad anyway. The calculus is easy: the company benefits from greater control, the country collects taxes from people who may not ever collect benefits, and we get a pipeline of skilled immigrants.

[crate_barre]

85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages

I was at a large company in Silicon Valley where over 50% of employees were Indian. A large, white American, company.

I’ve seen this shit with my own eyes. I don’t know man, is SQL Migrations and web development so hard to find in fucking Silicon Valley? Lol.

This stuffs a scam.

[thaumasiotes]

> 85K new H1B's a year aren't enough to depress wages when the population of the US is 300M+.

Well, this is obviously false.

Compare these numbers from 2017 ( https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing... )

> According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were.

> Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers.

"74% of the employment pool just isn't enough people to make a dent in salaries" is not an argument that can pass the laugh test.

[jmpman]

There’s too much money being left on the table. The government should be levying a hefty tax on every H1B, like $20k/year. That tax should then be used to fund merit based scholarships for US Citizens pursing a degree in the field of the H1B. If the argument is that we don’t have the skills in the US, then let’s use the H1B program to create those skills.

[yes_really]

> That's not true. If H1-Bs were not a good deal for the guest workers, there wouldn't be a 10 year waiting list to get one.

Are you confusing H1-B with the Green Card queue? I'm not aware of any queue for H1-B - just the annual lottery.

[MathMonkeyMan]

Exploitation is exploitation even if it affords better opportunities than taking a pass.

That said, I don't know any of the subtle points of the visa system.

[nunez]

Precisely. Getting into a job that accepts H1-B's seemed like big business in India when I was there. Saw ads for it and everything. Not surprising; even a low-end H1-B wage is many multiples over what you'd get for the same job in India, and the living conditions are way better.

[ec109685]

Companies also have to do prevailing wage checks, which often results in pay increases.

[geraldwhen]

Supply lowers price. H1bs lower the pay of software developers in the USA, full stop.