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Comment by chii

7 hours ago

> program itself is racist as hell

why is it racist to find workers willing to accept a lower wage to do the same quality work?

The problem with H1B and some of the other employment visas is its really difficult or impossible for the worker to change jobs. JD Vance calls them indentured servants. I suspect the situation for actual indentured servants is a bit worse but in any case the workers dont have a lot of options at their disposal. They cant just leave without losing their visa. So their “choice” to work for less money isn’t really a choice at all.

Now is the answer to make things worse, as they’ve been doing (removing the 60 day grace period after losing a job)? Or is it to liberalize the program. Maybe increase standards but make it easier for workers to move jobs?

  • If it were me, I would make companies "bid" on the visas, where their bid is the salary (including all benefits, minus ALL expenses) they will pay the employee.

    Employers who really need employees for high-skilled work would thus get visas. Employers who want to underpay their foreign labor will not.

  • It sounds like these changes won't even touch H1B

    • Well it does impact h1b because h1b has a maximum time of 6 years unless the visaholder has an approved green card application. So, by blocking new green card applications (at least the most common path) this effectively puts a ceiling on the number of H1B visaholders.

H1B visa's are a modern form of indentured servitude. The employer knows you can't quit, and if they fire you, you have 6 weeks to somehow find a new job (which is already hard if you are a US citizen or green card holder) or you have to leave the country.

Because of this, H1B workers have no choice but to accept bad pay and working conditions.

Lower wages with the same quality is an MBA fantasy. The old saying "you get what you pay for" applies to tech as well as any other topic.

Paying people less because they came from somewhere else and can get away with it, sounds a bit exploitative to me.

The employer knows full well that they can pay workers on a visa for less and they have them on a metaphorical leash (in the UK it was 5 years before they could apply for permanent residency).

I've seen this happen personally, I've seen an English engineering manager keep the Indian employees behind by telling them they couldn't leave and he wouldn't have dared said the same thing to me and didn't.

One of the Indians (who I think lived in the UK for a while) said to me in the morning after the incident while we were grabbing a morning coffee "You can see now why the British had India for so long", I took that to mean that he thought that Indians are more placid. I have no idea if that is the case generally, but he certainly thought so.

  • Unrelated to immigration but not for stupid managers. Friend of mine was promised a raise which was basically an adjustment of compensation.

    He was fed up and he went to a meeting and he had to hear "what are you going to do about it?" Manager knew his wife was pregnant and wanted to use it, or I suppose it was it. He told he would pack his stuff and leave. So he did. He packed his stuff, shared the news and another senior manager rushed after him to bring him back to his team with the raise.

    I left the company few years ago but now and then I think about it. How someone can be so opportunistic with to the point of trying to abuse someone about to be a father for few thousands of dollars that do not even belong to him. And EVEN if he got a bonus or something it would have been much much less than that to the point that, if it was me, I would be so ashamed to admit that.

    Possibly he would have done that with anyone in a special situation. And I am sure this is more common than not, but how f'up it is to hide behind "it is just business" cover to act like this.

    • I decided to leave a company before my probationary period, and the HR woman was visibly angry with me; she was one of these lifers at the company.

      Some people just identify with the company and/or like the power they get through the position.

The most racist part of the program is the per country quotas. Right now they are granting EB3 for Indians who applied in 2014 while EB3 visa for the French from 2024. So that's an extra 10 years Indians are stuck in limbo. And, no, this is not just because there's more Indian's immigrating.

  • It is not based on race, but nationality. If you are an Indian but are a citizen of Singapore your quota will be based on Singapore quotas, not based on you being ethnically an Indian.

    • It's actually based on country of birth. If your parents were French but were living in India when you where born, you will be in the India quota, even if your nationality is French.

  • >And, no, this is not just because there's more Indian's immigrating.

    yes it is right? am i mistaken here?