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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
I mean, we're constantly told that H1B's are for absolutely essential roles and skills that can't be found in the US at all for any price.
Ok. Then companies will gladly pay another 100k for that, no H1bs should even be affected - being so essential and irreplaceable, right?
I mean, the only way this move could actually wreck the H1b system is if... somehow... in defiance of everything we're constantly told... those skills DO exist in the US, and for less than 100k extra. But... that would mean the entire H1b system is just state-sponsored undercutting of American labor, and always has been. Strange.
Watching people argue themselves in knots about this issue has been quite amusing. I mean, we're told that cost is not even a factor - not even a factor! - in hiring H1bs. No no, the skills simply don't exist among American workers! It's not that we're dramatically undercutting the labor market and that the skills ABSOLUTELY exist, and in quantity, but for 50k more a year. It's not that we're importing foreigners as scabs against American labor, the skills just DON'T EXIST.
But if that's true... why does raising the cost of H1bs by less than the median tech salary suddenly destroy the entire edifice? I mean, if these skills really don't exist in the US, I guess American companies just need to pony up. But it's not companies panicking about the extra cost that they just HAVE to eat, is it? It's H1bs and the entire grift industry around it that are panicking. Wait, but... that means... cost is a factor. In fact, if H1bs are panicking that costing 100k more to be employed is going to make them unemployable... that necessarily implies that cost was the ONLY factor that led to them being employed... So, the entire system is, was, and always has been a lie. It was always and only and forever about hiring foreign workers for cheaper than Americans. Oops, the Emperor has no clothes.
While I am totally on board that H1Bs are an excellent wage suppression tool. My business autism compels me to point out that it's simultaneously possible for an essential skill/thing/McGuffin to be required but also have a higher marginal cost than the marginal revenue it provides. Your business doesn't work if this is true, but it's not impossible.
Isn't any sort of immigration a wage suppression tool?
Yet we, the United States, need it. We have 4% of the world's population and a fertility rate of 1.62 (also for the "race conscious crowd" amongst us, don't look closely at which race has the top fertility rates here). We need immigrants to maintain our long-term economic domination, or at least to slow down our decline if it is inevitable. If China or India gets their shit together, they'll out-compete us on demographics alone, and it's increasingly apparent that at least China is getting its shit together.
If we need immigrants, I rather they be from the top percentiles of other countries.
Chinese demographics are much worse than the US, I’m pretty sure they are sub-1 fertility rate and have been for years at this point. Sure the population is large but if half of their population is 50+ they are long-term not going to turn into some superpower
China graduates several times as many scientists and engineers as the US every year. Even if each of them is of lesser quality and their future demographic collapse is certain, that doesn't mean they aren't a rival in the short-term.
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