• Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Adding mandated wage requirements would undermine the whole H1-B program, which is great. I don’t think we should allow H1-Bs for jobs that we have adequate domestic supply for and it should be a pain in the dick to get.

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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      4 days ago

      Ok I have an idea, why don’t we just pay a living wage to US tech workers whether they are immigrants or they were born and raised in the US?

      • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        They are generally paid well over a living wage for a position that a citizen could occupy at a market wage that is even higher. Median tech job income is over $100k, twice the national average.

        Hiring a citizen costs more, so profit chasing dictates hiring an immigrant that can be paid less than market rate. Hiring an immigrant under an H1-B not only is cheaper in wages, but also gives the company more power over the employee because they can fire that person and then they get deported for not being sponsored.

        Hiring an H1-B at a cheaper rate also suppresses wages for citizens.

        Unemployment in tech is like 3%, we don’t need H1-B visa for tech jobs. We don’t even need H1-Bs for the industries with the highest unemployment, they need to increase wages to attract the nearly 7 million unemployed in the US, and there are even more people that are underemployed or have given up because wages are too low across the board.

        • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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          4 days ago

          I am not disputing the details of anything you are necessarily saying, what I am saying is that you are even still leaning into the lie that there isn’t enough decent work to gone around for all of us.

          You need to get that out of your head, fundamentally, before we can begin to envision a humane path forward for tech work in the US, either for immigrants or people born and raised in the US.

          • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Last part of the last paragraph, we agree.

            We need wage increases across the board, not importing new workers to fill roles at lower wages because we have plenty of workers that only need higher wages to fill those vacant roles.

            • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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              4 days ago

              You aren’t understanding me, you keep trying to debate from the axiom that this is a zero sum game.

              In otherwords when I say

              “We need to increase wages and employment opportunities across the board for immigrants including tech worker immigrants”

              You hear

              "We need to hurt tech workers born and raised in the US who are already hurting.

              My point of issue is that I did not say that, rather you are applying an axiom that those two MUST be inextricably linked and if there is even a remote chance we can improve the wages and general quality of life of tech workers born and raised in the US AND tech workers that want to immigrate to the US than the logic of applying that axiom becomes fundamentally questionable.

              The US is the richest country on earth, or was… it is a lie the oligarchs and ruling class tell us that we cannot afford to pay US workers a living wage, tech workers or otherwise and it is a further lie that hopeful immigrants (tech workers or not) are a threat to the wellbeing of the US, far from it, immigrants are certainly the lifeblood of this country if there is anything still yet redeemable to it.

              That is what you don’t realize or refuse to realize.

              This is NOT a zero sum game between tech workers who want to immigrate to the US and tech workers who were born and raised in the US.

              The future is a shared solidarity not an increasing division, don’t take my word for it, notice rather that large corporations favor this kind of atomization of workers into nationalisms, it makes the job of people oppressing workers in the US and abroad far easier when we take your perspective.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        us tech workers paid well though, just not the visa holders, thats why these tech companies are mostly hiring them now or in the future. my bros both earn 100k+, the older one earn 300k+ which is why they laid of the highest paying ones in 2023.

    • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 days ago

      Would it though?

      If the requirement is “worth paying 50% more for than the average worker” then instead of picking someone worse for cheaper at random then you’re making sure that only jobs where there likely isn’t an adequate supply for due to how bell curves work,