Previous threads we've done: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts.
I know H1Bs working at $40/hour for jobs their American counterparts are making $75/hour. They can’t move to higher paying roles at other companies because of the visa.
Also the termed “highly skilled” is an absolute joke. I can teach a person off the street to be “highly skilled” in a few weeks, based on the standard of what “highly skilled” means in H1B.
H1B needs to be highly reformed. It’s the tech equivalent of hiring construction workers from the Home Depot parking lot and paying under the table wages. I am not generally a fan of tariffs, but I suggest a 100% tariff on H1B wages paid by the hiring company. And that tariff would be a sliding scale — the more H1Bs you hire, the higher the tariff. If you need that foreign engineer so badly, paying $100/hour shouldn’t be a hardship. That would incentivize hiring the American/permanent resident at $80/hour. We’d find that “shortage” going away pretty quickly. Drive up the costs of Accenture/Infosys/etc., to make them unattractive. The only reason those companies exist is to provide cheap labor to companies like Best Buy, etc. The money collected from that tariff can be used to fund tax breaks for companies that don’t hire H1Bs. H1B isn’t about highly skilled labor. It’s about “highly” skilled cheap labor.
Obviously this was to lower wage costs, but I was reading that and was in awe of the entitlement. Like.. the jobs belong to US personnel or to no one, EU devs don't deserve them?
Them whinging is not them being entitled or intending to insult you, they're just defending their self worth, just like you're doing by defending the jobs having come to your area.
Imagine the team had been replaced by fresh college greenhorns using the same seats. The rhetoric would still be the same outrage and resentment.
I really think the US is pricing itself out of the market in many places, and I almost never see anyone actually address this in discussions about international economics.