Tech companies condemn Trumps H1B visa ban

[RhodesianSon]

Of course they would. Rather than allow the supply and demand rise and fall effect labor prices, they’d rather continually bring in foreign workers to suppress the wages they’d have to pay Americans. So they can maximize profits for shareholders.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook condemn Trump H1-B visa suspension in court filing — Fox News

The country's biggest tech companies are condemning the Trump administration's decision to suspend temporary worker visas amid COVID-19.

apple.news

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Rather than allow the supply and demand rise and fall effect labor prices, they’d rather continually bring in foreign workers

Given the increased reliance on remote working (some of which appears to be permanent or long term, even if COVID-19 were eradicated) it might not be strictly necessary to bring someone in to do work. One of my incomes is from an entity in another country. I’ve never stepped foot in the office of the employer nor have I met them in person. I think it was about 20 years ago that I had concerns about work being outsourced from the USA. But I’ve since have learned to navigate it. Right now it looks like STEM is a good field to be in; in getting my plans in order should I be laid off I’ve found a number of potential job positions within and outside of the USA I could move to while staying home.

Not that anectdotes are data.

 

[RhodesianSon]

If that’s the case than the visas are no longer necessary anyway.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Bravo to Trump for standing up for Americans in American jobs!!!

I found the H1-B’s coming for my job years ago. Rather than fight the trend, I made a wrenching and difficult career change into a line of work that cannot be outsourced. The person who took my old job found himself having to train his replacements. I’ve never forgotten the look on his face when he found that out as he had accused me of crying wolf about it.

The original purpose of the program was ostensibly to find highly specialized expertise not readily available here. But this was corrupted very quickly into a program responsible for supplying cheaper and more compliant labor force than native Americans. Consider: an H1-B holder has little recourse should they find the conditions of their job becoming intolerable. They can’t leave for another job as they’re beholden to the staffing agency that employs them and would have to find another sponsor employer. They can’t agitate for higher pay and/or better working conditions. Or they’ll get fired and put on the next plane home. Big Tech likes that just fine, thank you. Cheap, pliable, compliant workers they can run into the ground with little in the way of consequences. While the benefits flow upward into the executives’ pockets. No wonder Zuckerberg, Nadella et al fight so hard to keep them.

There are now a few million H1-B visa recipients after over two decades. On top of that there is another class of visa workers who take jobs from Americans: OPTT. The OPTT programs allow alleged graduate students to take jobs from Americans; further they’re subsidized in that the employer isn’t obligated to pay SS for their OPTT employees which results in considerable savings in employing them over native US citizens. There have been abuses in these programs in that fake graduate programs have been put together for the purpose of benefiting the companies that want these employees in lieu of US citizens.

Here we are saddling new college graduates with tens of thousands in student loans and then forcing them to compete with foreigners brought over specifically for their cheap rates and their compliance. Going to end up with a lot of disaffected young people that way.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

If that’s the case than the visas are no longer necessary anyway.

I think they would be a lot less necessary, but not completely unnecessary. There are instances of hardware or data that isn’t allowed to cross international borders, in which case a person would have to at least by in one of the territories of a nation for some activities.

Some places in Barbados and a few other countries are accepting applications for people that want to come there and work remotely. They are ensuring they have necessary connectivity and support hardware for anyone looking to do so.

 

[Sarcelle]

Remote work has a lot of potential.

I can stay at a place with a low cost of living while working for one of those Silicon Valley employers.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I can stay at a place with a low cost of living while working for one of those Silicon Valley employers.

I’m on assignment to one of those companies now. The assignment is how I was able to keep one of my jobs, otherwise I would be laid off. This company’s normal security procedures require that all contractors be on the property. As that isn’t something that they can do now, that security policy has been relaxed; people can work from home. So I can now work for this California company from Georgia. I work on a West Coast time zone (which kind of sucks when someone decides to have a meeting at the end of the day) which further helps the lack of co-location be apparent to the people with which I work.

 

[RidgeSprinter]

I work from home.
Management don’t have that option. They have personal office space to be isolated in each day.
We have daily scrum meeting at 9AM via zoom. We were using Microsoft Teams, but it has too much overhead and becomes erratic.

Security has not be relaxed.

Contractors were given the option: get laid off or come into the office and work at your own risk.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Security has not be relaxed.

Contractors were given the option: get laid off or come into the office and work at your own risk.

That sounds like a loose loose situation.

I don’t have any kids, but I wonder how some families are coping with school systems that are not doing remote learning. Or, parents that have to go to work where there is no place to take the child.

 

[Ridgerunner]

A long time ago, I did H1B and H1A work for medical people only. In my opinion, given the aging of this population and the stranglehold universities have on the number of physicians, that should continue.

But in other fields like STEM there is no artificial constraint on the numbers who can be educated to the functions. I therefore oppose expansion of those visas.