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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34533 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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The solution to that problem is to allow H-1B workers to shift employers after say 1-2 years which is how Canada and Australia do it with their permanent residence process, plus put a penalty on the employer if a worker they sponsor leaves a job with them to go elsewhere (like for example restricting them from sponsoring further workers in the short term) to ensure they provide good enough conditions that migrant workers don't want to leave them.

I'd go further and let them take any job at any employer. Assuming the new employer will sponsor them. I think tying people to their jobs is generally bad. And if the market determines such a person is suited for a different job title with more or different responsibilities then they should be allowed to do it. The fact that they have to ask bureaucrats for permission to professionally grow by accepting new job titles with more or different responsibilities is horrible.

For instance, supposedly decades ago Massachusetts' enforceable non-compete contracts slowed their tech industry growth and resulted in California overtaking them. Locking employees into their jobs is enforced stagnation and yet another scheme to push down wages. Such contracts were greatly restricted in scope in 2018 and completely banned last year. Good riddance.

If an employer finds an underpriced asset who then leaves 2 years later they get punished? Kinda nonsensical implications even if employer working in good faith.

I'm a fan of three-strikes type rules. If one guy does it there are multiple possible explanations but if people keep leaving maybe something is going on.

Nothing prevents the employer from offering higher pay to the worker to keep them there. People, especially migrants who are new to the country will place a premium on stability so unless they're being paid significantly under what they could get on the free market and the employer refuses to budge the large majority of them will choose to stay put.

Depends on the enterprise. Employees can easily graduate the pay scale of one organization especially in tech.

This is also a key problem with the industry that would be solved if the market was less confounded by things like H1B visas. Very few people have to leave the car dealership they work at to get paid fairly.

Car sales jobs have some of the highest turnover rates of any job in the US. North American Dealership Association says 7% monthly turnover in 2019 on page 5 which works out to about 60% / year turnover.

It would be hard to come up with a worse example to demonstrate your point. I think you could rescue it by talking about defense companies, particularly aerospace, instead. Employees of those companies genuinely don't have to deal with pressure to be competitive in the global market, and those jobs are famously highly paid and offer great job security.

Why would Trump’s constituents, and the wider voting public, want this when they can just opt for the simpler solution and turn off the tap?

Why would you prefer a total overhaul of American labor law and work culture instead of restricting a program that’s very unpopular with the American public?

I think increasingly, day by day, it’s becoming rather easy to state the preferences of the Trump base and the American voter more broadly in polite society, and it’s increasingly difficult for the people who oppose it who vocalize their opposition without revealing hidden preferences.

What is the executive even allowed to do here? Does the law let the president turn off the tap?

Congress is so passive that presidents end up enacting policy through rather strained interpretations of existing law. The law says they get to impose processing fees? Then instead of $250 it is $100k. And then hope courts agree this is valid.

Congress is so passive that presidents end up enacting policy through rather strained interpretations of existing law. The law says they get to impose processing fees? Then instead of $250 it is $100k. And then hope courts agree this is valid.

No, it's much worse than that. There's a law (8 U.S.C. § 1182(f)) which says the president may exclude or restrict certain classes of aliens if they are detrimental to the interests of the United States. The proclamation uses that discretion to impose the fee -- it's a "restriction". The law does not mention fees. This is IMO the sort of thing the Major Questions Doctrine is supposed to rule out; you shouldn't be able to build an entire regulatory structure on what appears to be an emergency provision. I doubt the Supreme Court has the balls to go against Trump on this, though.

What is the executive even allowed to do here? Does the law let the president turn off the tap?

The executive didn't seem very concerned with this with the Tariffs or with DOGE. Why start now?

The tariff case is at the Supreme Court now. IIRC, Trump won on most but not all of the DOGE things.

Because turning off the tap doesn't prevent shitty employers from being shitty directly, while introducing proper employment protections and letting migrant workers switch jobs by right does this. Why go for the roundabout way where your stated preferred policy aims may be reified as a second order consequence when you can just legislate for it directly?

Regulations of workplace conditions being poorly implemented is so frequent that it is basically the iron law of workplace regulations. Your solution is akin to proposing amputation of a person's leg to solve their athlete's foot.

Because shitty employers access to a virtually unlimited pool of willing foreign serfs enables much of the shitty behavior in the first place, and it’s a much simpler and direct way to put upward pressure on employment conditions by siloing off the pool of potential ‘employees’ that would accept them in the first place.

Cutting the Gordian knot is always preferable to some theoretical future action that is so complicated and conditional its chance of success is slim.

The perfect being the enemy of the good and whatnot.

I’ll state again; the H1B program and its consequences are uniquely unpopular with the Trump base and broadly unpopular in the American voting public, therefore this attack on it seems very politic and straightforward. Is there some special reason you’re defending it?

As an American, I’m puzzled as to why I should emulate European employment practices that have resulted in such a weak economy and society rather than seek to return to the health and dynamism of the American past? Or construct a uniquely American future based on our own values?

return to the health and dynamism of the American past

That's right. Bring Ellis Island back. As long as someone is not a felon, bigamist or anarchist and has a ticket to their ultimate destination and $1780 dollars per person, let them come and work without recourse to public funds.

As long as the countries of origin stay the same, sure.

Or from 1921 - 1965 which saw America rocket forth in global dominance during a time of heavily restricted immigration.

and $1780 dollars per person

Was that when every $20 was backed by an ounce of gold?

No idea, I used the inflation-adjusted value of $50 in 1892.

Based on gold instead of CPI, that would be about $10,000. About the same as a coyote would supposedly charge for a Central American, except the immigrant gets to keep the money.

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