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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
The US is not an economic zone.
While the implementation is cruel (giving people out of the country essentially 24 hours to return), this had to happen.
The 2008 housing collapse could arguably be blamed on the appraisers. They were going along with the scam and giving 20% annual appreciation to houses, while the rating agencies were fudging the quality of the debt being sold. People were supposed to be watching each other, but they weren't and everybody was getting rich.
In US tech jobs, the blame lies on the HR departments. The obvious fake resumes the obvious nepotism and discrimination between Indian hires, etc.
Everybody who works in this industry has seen how this scam functions. You get one Indian in a position of power in your company, and shortly thereafter, the entire company is Indian, and the quality of work has dropped to 0. HR doesn't understand because the resumes claimed that these were all "high quality" employees with tons of certifications (fake) degrees (fake) and experience (fake).
Yes this benefited many Indians, benefitted India, and may have benefitted some American companies, but it was all at the detriment of middle class Americans.
Again, we are not an economic zone. The H1B system was blatantly abused, specifically by Indians, and now it's ending. Good.
(Although my guess is that this get's reversed over the weekend, I'm still going to enjoy the few more hours where it's real)
What does this mean? Like, policy-wise, this idea would seem to suggest support for social services and doing our best to ensure a minimum standard of living for all Americans. In practice, it seems like the people who say "the US is not an economic zone" are the people most prone to treating the US like an economic zone - indifferent to the welfare of their fellow citizens and primarily interested in making the country a captive market for the purposes of rent-seeking.
If only the party that historically supported those two things would treat their country like a community rather than an economic zone.
There's been a realignment. Trump (a pretty standard '80s New York liberal) reunited the FDR coalition. It started with Bill's (sold as "temporary, for the sake of winning") economic "triangulation," and evolved into this.
It is OK to think a community's culture needs time to adapt to change; it is OK to think this means immigration sometimes needs pauses; it is OK for a country to control immigration; it is OK for a country to decide how much immigration it wants right now; it is OK for that amount to be different at different times. (Runaway "none of that is OK, all of it is racist" is what led to this; but I'm sure you've heard that before.)
People have repeatedly voted to control immigration and had politicians not act on that. Members of the political class will sometimes allow that they are unshakably convinced that the economy needs immigration, needs more and more immigration, or else it will crash, period--and that's why they ignore the will of the people. Thus complaints about treating the community like an economic zone.
Not to mention the repeated "This will economically help more people worldwide than it hurts, and we'll have social programs to help out those it does hurt." Reality: We got the "giant sucking sound," we did not get the social programs. I'm old enough to have seen that happen over and over. I know that's frustrating when the party intended to do both, but there comes a point where intent doesn't matter. Right-wing (libertarian) economics without the left-wing social programs to ameliorate their effect is just...right-wing economics. Thus, again, complaints of treating a community like an economic zone.
We are in a predicament: We have an economic system designed around constant growth, yet actually, constant growth is not physically possible (see, you know, The Limits to Growth?). The political class' attitude has been to accept the former but not the latter. And to hope that immigration can prop up continued growth. Regardless of any negative externalities it...becomes clearer and clearer it does have (Bowling Alone etc.) Because if not, well, then what?
It still has those negative externalities, so.
What does that have to do with immigration?
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