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H1Bs now require a $100k payment per year (I believe, seeing some remarks saying it might be per visa) to the government due to Donald Trump executive order, plus if you are currently overseas and hold a H1B you need to pay $100k effective immediately on your next entry into the USA if you are not within the country by the 20th of September.
As a foreign non-Lawyer I don't know how effective this is going to be/liable to be immediately derailed in the courts, but I do think it's a positive step towards ensuring skilled immigration is used for the genuinely effective instead of ye olde 'I can import a foreigner who I have more power over at a 10% discount rate to domestic workers'. I'm also deeply skeptical of the 'productivity' of the vast majority of tech H1B hires and wish them the best of luck in attempting to offshore the competencies required to make AI-powered Grindr for Daily Fantasy Sports
Trump admin replaces rules-based system with corrupt exercise of personal executive discretion, episode 2847. The big catch in all this is that the administration can waive the fee.
Also, it's probably illegal, though that hasn't been a major impediment so far.
This seems incoherent. H1bs are simultaneously undercutting wages but also not actually a replacement for domestic equivalents?
It is well known that academic and credential fraud amongst Indians is rife, which is why you see the most superhumanly qualified employees in the world apply for a job that pays 50,000 USD a year.
Come on. It doesn't pass the smell test. I am tired of addressing arguments to this effect. The only good faith reason I can see for people presenting arguments in this light is that they genuinely do not know anything about the subject at all. If that's the case, why do they bother 'just asking questions' over something that can be trivially researched. We have AI now, even. You don't even need to google search it anymore. They are undercutting wages by lying their asses off and credulous HR departments with no technical knowledge hire them because beancounters want to pump growth by cutting salaries this quarter.
I don't give a damn about your reverence for rules or processes. The human intestine is a process, but you don't praise its product: you flush it away. Breaking the rules in this case is a good thing. It should happen more.
Is it? I'm sure it's non-zero, but is it of an actual scale that we should care? "Everybody knows" weirdly doesn't seem to include anybody I know in the tech industry. Admittedly, these people are all employed, so they're not really worried about being outcompeted by an allegedly illiterate Indian software dev.
The pervasiveness of blatant racism amongst the "everybody knows crowd" does not exactly lend them credibility, and the severity of this supposed problem seems wildly overblown by people who want to use it as cover for more general anti-immigrant sentiment. (I'm old enough to remember when the nativists were promising it was only 'illegals' they had a problem with).
I know you don't, but you should at least care about naked corruption (but I know you don't care about that, either). Flawed processes should be replaced with better processes, not replaced with arbitrary and easily corruptible discretion from an administration that is already among the most corrupt in US history.
I don't have to be unemployed to be concerned about downward pressure on wages due to an increased supply of labor.
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