Yeah, so, any chance you could do a monthly-or-so post that explains, in legal terms (of course!) why referring to an entire, diverse bunch of people as "H1Bs" (which, as you know, is just a visa class and pretty much, as you also know, the only path to legally entering the US as an immigrant without family ties or, well, the future-Head-Guy-or-one-of-his-cronies fancying you) is, like, a crime against humanity?
Because that has always been a trope amongst HN commenters (a large subset of which is supposed to be future HN founders), and it bothers me. A lot.
I don't agree with that view/trope since my clients (granted, a limited dataset) are hiring H-1B workers because they believe that they are the best candidates.
I am not as anti H1B as the original poster and have no animosity toward my H1B visa coworkers. But let’s be real. There are thousands of unemployed citizens that could do the work just as well especially when you consider how many work for WITCH companies.
- Best retention since the visa is tied to the employer
- Best price, i.e. lower wage
All of that amounts to “best” without outright lying.
The bell curve (people tend to narrowly focus on IQ when it comes to “best for the job”) should look the same everywhere. So it seems a bit roundabout to look all over the world when you have a “culture fit” in your own backyard.
So it does seem to just come back to mutually beneficial exploitation of the employee. But the clients never have to talk about it in such plain terms.
It sounds like that term (“H1Bs”) is simply shorthand for foreign citizens that are potential candidates for U.S. work via an H1B visa. Why is that bothersome?
For tech folks in particular, I think that there are two particular pain points that cause H1Bs to be referred to pejoratively sometimes (which I think is what your underlying issue is with):
1. Companies like Infosys that are gaming the system aggressively, often times using dark patterns. Net loss for the economy, and unnecessary stress on the immigration system, imho.
2. Qualified Americans losing their jobs (e.g., relatively recent layoffs) and struggling to find work. Meanwhile, H1Bs remain employed and new ones are added regularly. This doesn’t pass the sniff test of “lack of talent” in the domestic market. Additionally, folks on the inside know that the reality is that either the company is gaming the hiring/h1b system and/or the company has a broken hiring process.
Note that I don’t necessarily advocate for a rapid and aggressive culling of h1b workers like some do, but the h1b system could definitely use some improved oversight and/or refined regulation. It’s being abused at scale by multiple actors.
> Why do you want to destroy market power for people on visas even further
Under what auspices are they supposed to have market power in the first place?
H1B folks are supposed to be here to make up for deficiencies in the labor market. When those deficiencies don’t exist, we don’t need to add more of those jobs.
There is definitely a humane way to do this (e.g., don’t just yoink people out of jobs), but the current situation with companies claiming no qualified candidates is often farcical.
> leading to even more exploitation than exists today?
Imho, poor implementation and oversight of the h1b program is the cause of a much of the exploitation that exists.
Right-sizing the number of h1b positions in the country based on data that’s in the ballpark of realistic is not an unreasonable ask.
As I have said elsewhere, I know and have worked with many h1b folks, and I love that the program exists.
That said, there’s no need to continue to allow the abusers to abuse it.
> Under what auspices are they supposed to have market power in the first place?
Labor rights? Equality? Freedom? Does today mark the day we just give up on these ideas?
> There is definitely a humane way to do this (e.g., don’t just yoink people out of jobs)
But you strongly implied exactly that with "Meanwhile, H1Bs remain employed". There is no reasonable reading of this which doesn't strongly imply that visa workers should be the first to be fired and the last to be hired.
> but the current situation with companies claiming no qualified candidates is often farcical.
Do you not understand that the oligarchs are the enemy? Not other workers, oligarchs.
> That said, there’s no need to continue to allow the abusers to abuse it.
You are very deliberately and carefully advocating for depressed wages. Later, you will complain about visa workers having depressed wages.
You can read here exactly what the terms of this are:
"The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States."
H1Bs writ large do not have "market power" as you say:
"The law establishes certain standards in order to protect similarly employed U.S. workers from being adversely affected by the employment of the nonimmigrant workers, as well as to protect the H-1B nonimmigrant workers."
If we can't find talent in the 380k people laid off in the last 3y there is a problem.
As for abusers abusing it, you don't have to go far to read about InfoSys and Tata who have been taken to court over their misbehavior re:H1Bs. The system should be overhauled, so that it lives up to its intent. If we want to brain drain other countries, we should continue doing that. However hiring a person to run a 7/11 in a flyover state for 30k a year on H1B is clearly a violation. The data is public, look for yourself.
I'm speaking in general principles of what's right and wrong, what's good and evil. As much as the oligarchs want you to pretend that morality is relative and that it is only down to the laws as written, it isn't.
Because that has always been a trope amongst HN commenters (a large subset of which is supposed to be future HN founders), and it bothers me. A lot.