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Why the H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed
Billionaire businessman Marc Cuban insists that the H-1B visa racket is a feature of the vaunted American free market. This is nonsense on stilts. It can’t go unchallenged. Another billionaire, our president, has ordered that the H-1B program be reformed. This, too, is disappointing. You’ll see why.
First, let’s correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets are intertwined. Trade, including trade in labor, is not free; it’s regulated to the hilt. If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an example of a government-business cartel in operation.
The H-1B permit, in particular, is part of that state-sponsored visa system. The primary H-1B hogs—Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian firms), Microsoft, and Intel—import labor with what are grants of government privilege. Duly, the corporations that hog H-1Bs act like incorrigibly corrupt rent seekers. Not only do they get to replace the American worker, but they get to do so at his expense.
Here’s how:
Globally, a series of sordid liaisons ensures that American workers are left high and dry. Through the programs of the International Trade Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, and other oink-operations, the taxpaying American worker is forced to subsidize and underwrite the investment risks of the very corporations that have given him the boot.
Domestically, the partnership with the State amounts to a subsidy to business at the expense of the taxpayer. See, corporations in our democratic welfare state externalize their employment costs onto the taxpayers.
So while public property is property funded by taxpayers through expropriated taxes; belongs to taxpayers; is to be managed for their benefit—at least one million additional immigrants a year, including recipients of the H-1B visa, are allowed the free use of taxpayer-supported infrastructure and amenities. Every new arrival avails himself of public works such as roads, hospitals, parks, libraries, schools, and welfare.
Does this epitomize the classical liberal idea of laissez-faire?
Moreover, chain migration or family unification means every H-1B visa recruit is a ticket for an entire tribe. The initial entrant—the meal ticket—will pay his way. The honor system not being an especially strong value in the Third World, the rest of the clan will be America’s problem. More often than not, chain-migration entrants become wards of the American taxpayer.
Spreading like gravy over a tablecloth, this rapid, inorganic population growth is detrimental to all ecosystems: natural, social and political.
Take Seattle and its surrounding counties. Between April 2015 and 2016, the area was inundated with “86,320 new residents, marking it the region’s biggest population gains this century. Fueled in large part by the technology industry, an average of 236 people is moving to the Seattle area each day,” reported Geekwire.com. (Reporters for our local fish-wrapper—in my case, parrot-cage liner—have discharged their journalistic duties by inviting readers to “share” their traffic-jam stories.)
Never as dumb as the local reporters, the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Cuban are certainly as detached.
Barricaded in their obscenely lavish compounds—from the comfort of their monster mansions—these social engineers don’t experience the “environmental impacts of rapid urban expansion”; the destruction of verdant open spaces and farmland; the decrease in the quality of the water we drink and air we breathe; the increase in traffic and traffic accidents; air pollution; the cellblock-like housing erected to accommodate their imported IT workers and extended families; the delicate bouquet of amped-up waste management and associated seepages.
For locals, this lamentable state means an inability to afford homes in a market in which property prices have been artificially inflated. Young couples lineup to view tiny apartments. They dream of that picket fence no more. (And our “stupid leaders,” to quote the president before he joined leadership, wonder why birthrates are so low!)
In a true free market, absent the protectionist state, corporate employers would be accountable to the community, and would be wary of the strife and lowered productivity brought about by a multiethnic and multi-linguistic workforce. All the more so when a foreign workforce moves into residential areas almost overnight as has happened in Seattle and its surrounds.
Alas, since the high-tech titans can externalize their employment costs on to the community; because corporations are subsidized at every turn by their victims—they need not bring in the best.
Cuban thinks they do. High tech needs to be able to “search the world for the best applicants,” he burbled to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Yet more cr-p.
Why doesn’t the president know that the H-1B visa category is not a special visa for highly skilled individuals, but goes mostly to average workers? “Indian business-process outsourcing companies, which predominantly provide technology support to corporate back offices,” by the Economist’s accounting.
Overall, the work done by the H-1B intake does not require independent judgment, critical reasoning, or higher-order thinking. “Average workers; ordinary talent doing ordinary work,” attest the experts who’ve been studying this intake for years. The master’s degree is the exception within the H-1B visa category.
More significant: there is a visa category that is reserved exclusively for individuals with extraordinary abilities and achievement. I know, because the principal sponsor in our family received this visa. I first wrote about the visa that doesn’t displace ordinary Americans in … 2008:
It’s the O-1 visa.
“Extraordinary ability in the fields of science, education, business or athletics,” states the Department of Homeland Security, “means a level of expertise indicating that the person is one of the small percentage who has risen to the very top of the field of endeavor.”
Most significant: There is no cap on the number of O-1 visa entrants allowed. Access to this limited pool of talent is unlimited.
My point vis-à-vis the O-1 visa is this: The H-1B hogs are forever claiming that they are desperate for talent. In reality, they have unlimited access to individuals with unique abilities through the open-ended O-1 visa program.
There is no limit to the number of geniuses American companies can import.
Theoretically, the H-1B program could be completely abolished and all needed Einsteins imported through the O-1 program. (Why, even future first ladies would stand a chance under the business category of the O-1A visa, as a wealth-generating supermodel could certainly qualify.)
Now you understand my disappointment. In his April 18 Executive Order, President Trump promised to merely reform a program that needs abolishing. That is if “Hire American” means anything to anybody anymore.
Published in Economics
I don’t know about other industries, but the tourism industries in the United States use a great many seasonal H-1B workers. I know that because when whatever tourist season is approaching, the local chambers of commerce start helping the local businesses obtain the H-1B permits. It’s a two-step process, as I understand it. First an entity has to apply for permits, then the individual businesses apply to the agencies that arrange for the workers to come here.
As a taxpayer, it has always bothered me that I’m indirectly subsidizing the businesses that are doing this. The businesses are going this route to save money. Which is what drives me crazy. How can it be cheaper for them when they have to provide housing and sometimes transportation? I would rather the companies say to me the taxpayer, “I need financial help, some type of subsidy, to keep the business afloat and keep the employees we have working, and I need temporary workers” than go around me and use the H-1B worker program to get that help, because that is costing me money in another account, such as healthcare.
The H-1B workers live in very crowded housing conditions. That’s not great if its a rental house built for four people and occupied by twenty. There are indirect costs to the neighborhood and community in that practice. But furthermore, they are not provided decent health insurance by their U.S. employers. Instead, they join the throngs of uninsured people who use the hospital emergency room for healthcare. The H-1B workers can’t afford health insurance on their meager earnings here.
It’s not quite that simple from an employer perspective. To qualify for the O1 and employer must demonstrate that the prospective employee is “at or near the top of their field” where as the H1B just requires a bachelors degree in the field for which you are hiring. So from say my perspective if I can’t find programmers for a very old language like Visual Basic (because our clients hold on to old systems for dear life) I sometimes have to bring in developers from other countries because US developers have moved on to more modern languages. Such a person would simply not qualify for an O1.
Or you could train someone already here who knows how to program, but not in that language. But I guess that would involve a cost to your business, so we can’t have that.
Very well said!
What I would like to see is a U.S. internal program that operates exactly the same way the H-1B program private agencies operate. We would create a class of employees that cost the same to employers as the foreign H-1B workers.
However the H-1B program is meeting the needs of American employers is what we need to duplicate internally. The employer makes one phone call and his hotel’s housekeeping staff instantly has all the workers it needs.
My understanding is that there’s getting to be quite a lucrative market for COBOL programmers as the baby boomers retire. Maybe I can make that a fallback if this whole Oracle thing doesn’t pan out.
No it’s more that US based programmers don’t want to move backwards. What value is there to them to be working in a dead language? How does that help them enhance their skill sets? In the real world hiring people in knowledge professions is as much about what opportunities you can provide them the better themselves and their skills as it is a simple paycheck.
In addition it is not good business to put your advanced and highly skilled programmers on legacy projects with no future. I’d rather put those developers on R&D and supporting current products. It’s better the the employee and better for the company.
Hey! You could hire me.
Money. See my earlier comment #96 on COBOL.
What part of India are you from?
Do you live in Los Angeles? Our corporate culture currently doesn’t support telecommuting.
Is your idea that these American workers would bypass the minimum wage laws (voluntarily) so as to gain employment?
Nope. And you couldn’t pay me enough to move to that hell hole. Safe housing too expensive, liberals too loud and obnoxious, crime not well controlled. And a state hell-bent on being distinguished as a completely different country.
I haven’t found a price that will get a programmer to work in a language that is economically feasible. I’m not bankrupting the company to mollify your politics. That would put the jobs of 30 other Americans in jeapordy.
This is the difference between theory and actually running a business.
Then I guess I’m stuck with my H1Bs.
Say! Maybe, if you can’t find people to move to YOU, you should move to THEM! If the people who qualify to work for you won’t move to you, than maybe you picked a horrible location to set up shop.
If that’s what it takes, then yes. I would absolutely go that way. Keep the money inside the country.
All things in business are temporary. The government moves its chess piece, the business world responds. Everything centers on tax policies and industry regulations.
Our government lumbers along like a big outsize bear. The businesses move around like fencing masters.
We need to be as flexible as the businesses are.
Somehow.
For heaven’s sake, the government is a business. It needs money to remain afloat.
If its taxpayers are broke and unable to buy the government’s services, then the government will go belly up.
Just like a business.
We’re doing just fine. You want me to move 30 people to a different state because of one hire? Where’s the compassion for my current American employees?
My 30-plus years experience in the industry tells me that there are some very talented programmers who command a high price. These people get put on the high value projects.
There are also a lot of adequate programmers who took a couple classes at a tech school and are just trying to make a living. These people are perfectly suited to doing maintenance work on outmoded legacy projects with no future. You know, kind of like the interchangeable imports you’re trying to bring in to support those outmoded legacy projects with no future. Or are you hiring “advanced and highly skilled programmers” on visas to put on those “legacy projects with no future”?
I have had an open positions for a legacy programmer in VB6 and VFP for going on 18 months now. We have not had one applicant willing to work in these languages. It’s not like I haven’t tried [redacted].
Aww… c’mon. It’s not that bad. The progs might be loud but if I turn up the music I can hardly hear ’em. Besides, it’s been windy here lately. The noise of wind and waves is drowning them out.
Hey, here’s a thought. How about making some tweaks in the corporate culture to support telecommuting like, oh, say, most 21st century firms that develop software? Heck, some companies are entirely based on telecommuting. You might even get some kind of green energy/global warming tax credit from los bandidos in Sacramento.
Not every business model can adapt to telecommuting, even in IT and software development. The backend investment is high, and as last year’s attempt to change hourly and overtime salary work rules showed, the feds keep threatening to make it prohibitive for small firms to do so.
I find that with the type of agile project management we use that face to face interaction and collaboration is much more conducive to rapid build releases that our customers require.
Not you, specifically, but I can not comprehend the allure of major urban centers like San Francisco or NYC or Washington DC to live in.
People who are trying to raise families don’t typically pick places like these to settle in… they try to find suburban areas… and if they can swing the cost and the commute, rural. Why do businesses insist on settling in the very limited landscape of urban centers?
There are many places that are close enough to universities and colleges without being in urban centers that could attract, not only employees, but also encourage revival of business in those areas as services increase with the return of people working in a major company.
What makes SF so alluring to you as a business person? Why are these other places such a bane on the existence of businesses?
This is ridiculous. I assume this is happening on Nantucket? Because last I checked, employers in Massachusetts only have to pay waitstaff 2.01 dollars an hour; everybody else-cooks, clerks, hostsesses, etc.. gets minimum wage. Most American businesses in the tourist industry have found a way to make a healthy profit even though they have to pay some of their employees minimum wage; if the businesses on Nantucket (!) can’t figure out how to do this, then they are incompetent. There are plenty of young Americans who would love to spend a summer working in Nantucket, and they would do it for crowded housing and minimum wage.
I understand where you are coming from, Marci, with your idea of making it possible for business to pay Americans less, but as far as this specific case goes, I am not into it. The vast majority of tourist based businesses across America do fine paying minimum wage; if businesses on Nantucket can’t figure it out, then maybe they are in the wrong business.
I thought we were talking about maintenance work on legacy systems using obsolete languages like VB. Are you really doing rapid agile development in that space? Not that I know the ins and outs of your specific situation, but it sure sounds like the textbook case for “outside” [telecommuting] contract work.
The only point I was making was that I don’t care how they do it. I just want it done. :)
I don’t know the wage structures the tourist industry uses. I’m saying I would be okay with a government agency that was allowed to function the way the H-1B agencies do so that American workers have a shot at those jobs.
I do have some idea of the wage structure the tourist industry uses, because I have done a great deal of waitressing :) And they pay practically nothing, which is fine, because most income is made in tips. If 95% of companies can make a good profit with the present wage structure, why should the government get involved to help incompetent businesses who can’t make a profit? God knows, these businesses don’t care about Americans. Why should Americans care about them?
I think there are other issues that are at work here. Some of it is just the ease of finding 50 grounds keepers with one phone call. My apologies. I was unclear.
I’m talking about replicating the benefits businesses are looking for by using the H-1B workers. Whatever those advantages are. My understanding, by the way, is that it is not just the wages. It’s also the accounting for temporary workers. The agencies that place the H-1B workers take over all of the employment hassles–payroll and taxes, vetting the applicants, and so on.
I look at it as an Amazon.com issue. Bezos saw the marketplace, just as Sam Walton did, as a problem of moving things around. That’s what these global agencies have accomplished. They can guarantee the builder that he will have 16 qualified sheet rock carpenters by January 5 in Albuquerque at a price the builder can afford.
That’s the agency we need to create internally.