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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 thought that part of Cali was in the valley? You sound like you are closer to the Bay Area which hasn’t hit peak dystopia yet.
Better than the alternative, believe me.
That sounds quite mercantilist.
For a couple million bucks I can implement Oracle ebs for you…
The other thing I’m wondering about is, since it appears from the comments here that a lot of the work done by H1Bs is computer programming, why do they have to physically be here? Wouldn’t it be even cheaper if they worked in place? There must be some aspect of their jobs that requires physical presence?
Mercantilism would insist something more like “If America does not accumulate specie and keep both imports and exports very low, then it will lose.” Mercantilism is close to autarky and very gold-buggy. It does not view trade very favorably at all, unless you are strictly limited to selling at profit.
I don’t have that kind of money. Just be glad you’re not trying to sell me SAP, then I’d have to shoot you.
There’s a lot that can be settled in a face to face discussion (or heated argument even) than can be dealt with remotely, especially on really tricky coding projects. I employ a couple of engineers, and while there’s some work they could do from home, often their work is much better when they’re all under 1 roof or physically at a customer’s plant. You can do in 3 hours what might otherwise take 3 days.
The spouse of an employee of mine works in IT at a big bank, and they have a lot of their code work done in India. The delays and problems this brings are immense, but they’ve got the time and money to throw at it. Still, a few days can be lost if you are dealing with someone 12 hours off from you, who only ever reads the first line of any email (and ignores the rest), and who then needs another 24 hours to code (wrongly) what you asked for, then another 12 hour delay before you see it and can react. Wash, rinse, repeat, etc.
Telecommuting and code outsourcing (in my experience anyway) seem to work best only when you have time and money to throw at the infrastructure to support it.
It’s like the adage that only a rich man can afford to live like a pauper – example being a rich man can afford to buy $500 shoes that will last a lifetime, while the poor person has to buy $50 shoes every year for 20 years. In the end the poor person has spent more, but poor person can never get the scratch to buy those expensive shoes so has to make do with what he can.
Moderator Note:
Personal attack and reading of intent.Then change your policy to allow telecommuting and hire @stina, [redacted].
Teleconferencing, which also allows visual confrontation helps. Also hiring someone you can trust. But that might cost more.
There are a lot of reasons why it can be advantageous to have programmers in house from collaboration to management. But I would reverse that question: why wouldn’t you want someone here if they are working for a US company? I’d rather have the money circulating in our services economy wouldn’t you?
I had a different comment that was *way* snarkier (and less funny) than that one though…
We all have those moments, it’s what keeps the moderators busy.
I’m paraphrasing a line from Anne of Green Gables, I think the retort is “you say what comes out of my mouth is strange, but really you’d think better of me if you knew what I wanted to say, but didn’t.”
I resemble that remark. And Anne is my literary hero. I’m a fake redhead. No red, just temper.
A comedian (Larry Miller?) had a line about “If women knew what we [men] were really thinking, they’d never stop slapping us.”
Not necessarily. Look at the problems detailed in the OP by the physical presence of these workers. They pose other costs to our society.
Even now, in some far-off tropical land, there is a young man who dares to dream. That dream has a name, and the name is: Muncie, Indiana.
(I’ve been to Muncie. I’ve been to Terre Haute too. Terre Haute ain’t no Shangri-la, but it kicks Muncie’s butt around the pond and down the lane. That’s okay: it’s his dream, not mine. Could have been worse. Could have been Gary.)
If this young man comes over here and by dint of his hard work, dedication, and peerless CNC wizardry keeps Muncie Valve & Sprocket in the black, he not only benefits his green eyeshade wearing corporate masters, but also the grocers, the car dealers, the Walmart greeters, and all the rest of those poor benighted souls stuck in Muncie.
We are better off if he’s here rather than back there.
I almost did a spit take on that, partly because I thought you were talking about McVey at first.
That occurred to me when I was trying to decide between Gary and Ft. Wayne.
Gary won.
….Till he, or his wife, or teenage kid radicalizes and kills some of the Muncie-ites…..
Count up the number of H-1B visa holders who have radicalized.
Except that Jamie Lockett has quite explicitly stated that his H1B visa workers are not hired for their “wizadry”. They are hired because they use our of date code, and he puts them on projects which he says have no future. Please don’t try to tell us that these folks are all geniuses.
I agree, but the argument assumes there isn’t, among the 360 million people in the United States, a U.S. citizen equally capable of bringing about that wonderful outcome.
I’ve known so many people who were very talented and just had trouble connecting the employment dots.
I don’t understand why American businesses look overseas rather than at the myriad colleges and universities and tech schools and state employment offices and online job websites for U.S. citizens in need of work. The only thing I can think is that for some reason, getting an H-1B worker is easier than finding a qualified U.S. citizen employee.
I think the H-1B workers are found and vetted by global employment agencies. I think that’s the way most of them are entering the country.
In other words, getting an H-1B is cheaper and more convenient, less risky, than hiring a U.S. citizen.
And that’s what we need to fix. Make a better domestic employee placement service.
Agreed, but it aren’t H1B visas right now contingent on remaining with the employer who hired you? In other words, if you leave the job, you run a high risk of being kicked out of the country. That must provide a great deal of motivation to please the boss; I don’t know how Americans can compete with that aspect. It’s like a form of indentured servitude; apparently, some businesses think that it’s easier to deal with indentured servants than it is to employ free citizens. I understand why they would feel that way; why we should help them is another story.
Sorry. This is a case of me trying to be clever at the expense of being clear. You will always see ads for CNC programmers. It is far from a common skill that requires experience more than anything else, and experience is not easy to get. It is not particularly high tech, but people who can do it are in demand.
No, the vast majority of H1b visa holders are from India (so the least likely of all ethnicities in the US to be on public assistance in the first place) and the vast majority of these are Hindu (so unlikely to do jihad).
That’s encouraging! So,they might actually help us adainst our present scourge, their traditional enemies……but then in 20 years or so we’ll be dealing with Hindutva.
You’re importing them to do programmer work – perhaps you should manage your expectations.
Do you mean that “programmer work” doesn’t require importing people of any great intelligence and drive? Or what?
Britain imported a buncha Pakistani Muslims to shore up its dying texitile and steel industries after WW II. I guess that’s what we’re doing now. And it’ll end up the same way: with a Muslim mayor of New York and/or D.C., threatening the rest of us unless we facilitate continued invasion. Or maybe a Hindu mayor! All I meant to do was give Hindus credit for their glorious martial past. I saw “Bajirao Mastani”–great movie!
Thanks for this information. H-1B visa system is a slave program.