Trump Alarms Lawmakers With Disparaging Words for Haiti and Africa

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Look at how the abuse of the H1-B program has affected the IT industry. It’s so bad I found myself sidelined and eventually I had no choice but to change careers to something they can’t outsource or give to an H1-B.

That could stand a lot of reform. But listen to the tech CEO’s who have to have the cheap labor.

Admit the stranger is one thing. But at yours or your neighbor’s cost? I got screwed. I’ve done work in areas where other people got screwed. My government isn’t looking out for me or them. Dem or Repub, they’re both complicit. Democrats want minority voters since more white people don’t want to vote them anymore. While Republican allies of big business, tech CEO’s and the Chamber of Commerce love that cheap labor.
 
Theo520 said:
In either case, the University jobs market isn’t adapting to give US citizens incentive to become professors.

All businesses face a similar problem of competing constraints, nothing magical about the public sector here.

I expect you also are well aware that professor salary increases aren’t what has driven up Univ costs the past couple decades. Adaptation to pay higher wages or to provide more security over the shift to adjunct positions might come from simply changing spend priorities.

Schools hire foreigners in less secure adjunct positions because they can get away with it.
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So the flaw really isn’t with bringing in foreign workers (the US has been doing that for much of its history), but rather either poor regulation or poor enforcement (and probably a bit of both) by the Federal government when allowing foreign workers into the country.

The fact is that at some of the lowest unemployment rates in modern history, the US needs workers. Yes, it can gain some efficiencies and even see higher employment rates of traditionally higher unemployment groups (like the disabled, for instance), but that isn’t going to be sufficient to the problem. At some point, if the tight labor market continues, you’ll start seeing parts of the country cannibalize other parts of the country for workers, not to mention you’ll start seeing productivity fall offs as firms run up against a lack of people to do the jobs they require. That will ultimately put some industries at a severe disadvantage compared to international competitors, and if you think just hiking tariffs to protect domestic industries will help, sooner or later consumers will revolt at higher costs, and you know what else consumers are; they are voters.
 
Theo520 said:
I expect you also are well aware that professor salary increases aren’t what has driven up Univ costs the past couple decades. Adaptation to pay higher wages or to provide more security over the shift to adjunct positions might come from simply changing spend priorities.
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I make 3-4 times as much as I did 25 years ago and I teach fewer students. So while professor salaries don’t explain all of the increase, they are not an insignificant part of the problem.
Theo520 said:
Schools hire foreigners in less secure adjunct positions because they can get away with it.
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Actually, we hire very few foreigners as adjuncts. Almost all that we have hired already have green cards. Universities in general don’t jump through hoops to hire adjuncts. Our H1-B visa hires are full time positions and if we don’t support them to get on a path for a green card, they will move to another university. Our foreign hires are actually more marketable than you would think.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
H1-B visas should not be a path to a green card.
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Whether they should or not is a separate debate. In my field, we have consistently had a shortage of American workers. So the foreign workers we bring in are not displacing anyone.
 
Theo520 said:
My interpretation fits with prior references that we should be more like Canada and Australia. Are you also claiming their systems are racist?
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I don’t think their immigration criteria go to issues of race. Yes they examine skills, health, criminal history, family reunion factors and the like, but not racial or religious factors.

Refugee intake is separately assessed around need.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
Whether they should or not is a separate debate. In my field, we have consistently had a shortage of American workers. So the foreign workers we bring in are not displacing anyone.
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Perhaps some fields need more foreign workers, I’ll grant that. But certainly fewer than big business is asking for. The H1-B visa has been sorely abused. I would have been one of those replaced by an H1-B worker if I hadn’t seen it coming and changed careers before the axe came for me. The H1-B was originally intended for the exceptional specialist they couldn’t find domestically. Now it is mostly about cheap labor importation with little to no care for the workers replaced. Not to mention the managers of these workers actively discriminate against native Americans. See Southern California Edison and Disney for examples of cases that have been brought to light. The reason we don’t hear about it more often is because those laid off are required to sign non-disclosure and non-disparargement agreements as a condition of receiving any severance benefits.

If you hear Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos say they aren’t nearly enough American IT workers and they have to go foreign, well, with the exception of certain types of highly specialized software developers, that is false. There are plenty of us out there, just not at the price they’re willing to pay our foreign replacements. Many of us like myself have had to move elsewhere.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
Look at how the abuse of the H1-B program has affected the IT industry. It’s so bad I found myself sidelined and eventually I had no choice but to change careers to something they can’t outsource or give to an H1-B.
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Yes, the H1B program is abused. It displaces American workers AND it artificially depresses wages for all, since Rajesh from Bangalaru will work for less wages than his American “counterpart”.
 
I think the following changes to H1-B program would restore it to its original purpose: to find and bring here the IT specialist who can’t be found here.
  • make the minimum salary $150k per year for recipients in IT. The current minimum is $60k and that is very laughable in the high cost of living areas. It’s common in IT to see the replacement workers sharing a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment between 6 to 8 of them. An American man supporting a family can’t compete with that.
  • allow the H1-B recipient the freedom to move between companies. The way the program works now is that it is essentially indentured servitude in which the company holds the upper hand at all times, wielding the threat of dismissal and subsequent deportation to keep the workers from complaining about substandard wages, long hours and poor working conditions.
Other fields that depend on H1-B should have their own separate visa program(s) to determine the appropriate minimum salaries for those fields.
 
$150k might be a bit high, but other than that it seems a sensible proposal. But it means there will have to be enforcement, and punitive action where necessary.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
I make 3-4 times as much as I did 25 years ago and I teach fewer students. So while professor salaries don’t explain all of the increase, they are not an insignificant part of the problem.
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I think your personal salary experience is anecdotal and not representative. Over 25 yrs you’ve benefited from both career growth and inflation increasing your salary. When I searched, research indicated faculty salaries barely keep pace with inflation, while student fees have grown well above the inflation rate, especially for private universities. I’m open to correction on these two points.
stinkcat_14 said:
Schools hire foreigners in less secure adjunct positions because they can get away with it.
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I feel like you are mixing up adjunct and who sponsors the green cards. I’m also not disputing the immigrant hires are highly qualified to teach.

Higher Ed isn’t my field so I am very open to correction. My understanding is:
  • Univ fees have increased at a much faster rate than inflation or salaries, with faculty salaries mostly just keeping up with inflation
  • Tenure track positions are much harder to obtain than in years past, with colleges resorting more to lower cost adjunct hires to teach.
  • Adjunct positions pay less and often lack benefits.
Fewer tenure opportunities, combined with increased competition from highly capable immigrants puts a damper on your typical citizen targeting teaching as their career choice.

I assumed immigrant teachers were competing for both tenure and adjunct positions, but that was an assumption. It sounds like your school hires immigrants for tenure slots but natives for adjunct positions. How can you not see how that paradigm would make a teaching career unappealing to native born students?
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$150k is very appropriate for California, Chicago, Seattle, for sure. Some top veteran software developers in the Bay Area already make over $200k. Perhaps I’d be open to adjustments for lower cost of living states. But should be no lower than $120k anywhere in the country. Have to keep the bar high or the abuse will creep back into the program.
 
Theo520 said:
For your discussion, just assume we had a skill rating system like Canada or Australia. From there it would depend on the specific norwegian.
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Then we wouldn’t care whether they are Norwegian or Haitian, would we?
 
stinkcat_14 said:
Then we wouldn’t care whether they are Norwegian or Haitian, would we?
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Why must I always repeat myself with you?

The response was because the Dems in fact did care about earmarking a large number of visas for Haitians.

Give Nancy a ring and tell her to stop playing favorites to people from specific countries.
 
Theo520 said:
Why must I always repeat myself with you?
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We are not talking about democrats. We are talking about what Don said. At the very least it was a stupid thing to say, since country of origin has nothing to do with skills.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
We are not talking about democrats. We are talking about what Don said. At the very least it was a stupid thing to say, since country of origin has nothing to do with skills.
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Why are you so fond of proof texting???
Of course the context matters deeply.

What do you teach at the Univ, logical fallacy?
 
Jig_Saw said:
Well, I have accepted that some Catholics will willingly stick their heads in the sand and ignore it, like I’m sure Catholics in Germany ignored racism when their Jewish neighbors were carted away.
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Godwin’s law.
You lose.
 
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