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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
Yuh. What’s so extraordinarily smart about having a BA? I thought your argument was that H1B enables you to get “the smartest!” Or, uh, is this why you’re bringing ’em in, cuz they’re so far behind American programmers? Oh, I see….
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I don’t think that’s true necessarily. I know it’s true in some cases, but not always.
I think they are focused, as they need to be, on the bottom line.
If they didn’t do that, they would be out of business, and the country would be the worse for it.
But we, the American people and our government, need to look at their bottom line too and figure out how we can be part of that business so that they don’t use foreign workers but rather American workers.
Northeastern University and the Rochester Institute of Technology are masters at working with businesses for the sake of their students.
That’s what I’m looking for. That kind of creativity in government.
It enables me to get the employees with the skillset who will do the job at a price that makes the company economically feasible.
It never ceases to amaze me how many conservatives jettison basic economics when they don’t like the answer it provides.
I asked a genuine question in good faith from someone with experience I don’t have that may be able to provide some insight I could learn from…
And this?
Why are you so condescending?
We are considering making that change for legacy systems, but our software is compliance related at the state and county level and changes to requirements occur rapidly and often so we need to get builds out as fast as possible with requirement changes in order to mitigate both our own and our customers risk exposure. I won’t bore you with the details but the legacy systems weren’t built using the best design methodologies and involve a lot of hard coded stuff. Our modern produces reflect a different and more adaptable development methodology.
You know, Marci, if large numbers of tourist businesses were failing, then I would agree with you. But most tourist businesses do just fine hiring American workers and paying minimum wage. I just don’t see why the government should get involved to help out the 5%? or so who say that they just can’t do it. Most people can do it. If a small minority can’t, that doesn’t justify government involvement.
It would be nice if those business owners would avail themselves of that conversation and engage in it rather than constantly advocate for open borders and free movement of labor.
Me? You’re the one telling me I live in a hellhole unfit for raising my family. How about this – not everyone believes like you do and maybe, just maybe I and my employees like it here.
FoxPro? Seriously? That is going to be grim. May the shade of Ada Lovelace watch over you.
(The Hon. Augusta Ada Byron King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace: a sickly, alcoholic gambler of questionable virtue generally regarded as the first computer programmer.)
Tell me about it.
Moderator Note:
Hostile reading of intent.Considering the large swaths of Americans who refuse to move to “where the jobs are”, I think it a pertinent question to ask a business owner who settled his business in the SF area, as many business are wont to settle in heavy urban areas.
[redacted]
No, we’re questioning the apparent contradiction between
1: your stated desire to hire the best and the brightest
and
2: you can’t hire using the O1 visa because the job doesn’t require that much skill.
If you only need someone with limited skills, than it shouldn’t be a problem to train an american with limited skills instead of bringing in a foreigner with limited skills.
@cm @hypatia @miffedwhitemale @jamielockett
Folks, there is a lot of condescension in this thread, and it’s coming from all directions.
For instance, Hypatia’s “Oh, I see…”, for instance, Jamie’s “there are more things…”, or Miffed’s “what part of india…” remark are all snarky.
Lots of you are making undue assumptions about each other’s positions and arguments, or trying to tell each other how to run others’ businesses.
Make some effort here to take each other in good faith, and assume that each person here likely knows their own line of work better than you do.
By the way, I just finished watching The West Wing series, and so this point is fresh in my mind. The solution to vetting and moving employees around as industry needs them is right in front of our government in the way political campaigns work in this country. The Democratic and Republican Parties have migrant workforces that they move around the country as they need to. The senatorial and congressional races depend on this mobile workforce.
There is a vast difference between hiring the best people for the job and hiring people “at the very top of their field” as required by the O1. Now I’ve had extensive conversations with labor and immigration attorney’s on this and have made the decision that best fits my business.
The conversation is getting confusing. It has been so interesting too. Sigh.
I’ve got it worse – my accounting system is based on a DOS runtime-only Btrieve engine. I’m running out of bandaids an the senior partner here won’t let me replace the withered old beast.
Maybe instead of telling me how to run my business you should be looking for insight into what pressures require me to avail myself of things like outsourcing and H1B visas. Expand your knowledge instead of telling me what an awful person I am and that I’m keeping my family in some sort of Mad Max: Fury Road post apocalyptic hellscape.
Aren’t you in charge? Can’t you force the issue? My problem is recalcitrant customers not internal staff desires.
In my defense, it was funny as well as snarky.
Well, yes, but given how tense this thread has been it was a wee bit edgy.
It’s a partnership, so there is a division of authority. The senior partner is the CEO and has used this system for 25+ years. But he’s retiring soon and knows full well that it leaves with him.
I remember VB6 last good release before Microsoft totally mucked it up. And FoxPro. And dBase II. And the last great network operating system, Netware 3.12. Ah, theyz were the doze.
Years ago, I had a goat named Lady Ada Lovelace.
Exactly! So it comes down to cheap labor. Fair enough but then don’t obfuscate it with this brain-drain stuff.
That’s rough. I imagine the conversion process is going to be a bear.
“Oh, I see” is condescending? Oh, I se–I mean, “Aha!”
I can get all of the data exported as delimited text files, so I’m hoping it will be fairly clean. The existing system pretty well only does accounting and rudimentary inventory control, so relinking fields should go well, the complexity is fairly low.
Well this actually sounds like a business practice that I could encourage. It’s one thing to use the virtual world to cooperate with internationally based folks of like mind to build a great product. It’s quite something else in my eyes to import a cheaper labor force at the expense of your fellow citizen. The virtual world is changing the way businesses function, and I am all for it.
Heck I had trouble doing that between a legacy version of Quickbooks and the more modern version. I don’t even want to attempt what you are.