Posted on 12/30/2024 9:52:53 AM PST by libh8er
Mumbai: The fierce row over Indian immigrants and H-1B visas that’s roiling Donald Trump’s team even before he takes office misses the point and isn’t borne out by data, said Aravind Srinivas, founder of Perplexity AI. Illegal immigration is the real issue, said the IIT graduate who’s worked at DeepMind and OpenAI, and is himself in the US on an H-1B visa.
“Clearly, it surprised everybody online and it's not exactly data driven--the claims that the H-1B or Indian immigrants are taking away the jobs of laid-off American tech workers,” he told ET in an interview. “Indians are also being laid off and honestly, the real problem… is the illegal immigration. That’s what the government needs to cut down on.”
The issue has polarised Trump’s top supporters, with the opposing camps being dubbed MAGA (Make America Great Again) and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head this proposed cost-cutting agency, have spoken out strongly in favour of H-1B visas, while Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer are MAGA supporters who have attacked their opponents, accusing them of being billionaire tech bros with little interest in working for the welfare of the Trump base.
Srinivas said it was unfair to drag Sriram Krishnan, Trump’s pick for AI policy advisor, into the dispute by citing his past tweets supporting H-1B visas and immigration. He’s also expecting tempers to cool down.
“If people actually took a look at the data and saw it for themselves, they wouldn't be this angry,” Srinivas said. “I feel it's going to all settle down. I think we should all feel good about someone as high calibre as Sriram influencing AI policy. People need to understand he has nothing to do with immigration, and stop taking his past tweets out of context”
(Excerpt) Read more at economictimes.indiatimes.com ...
I did not know that.
I keep seeing people here post that the border is the bigger issue . In many ways, yes.
But I suspect most of those illegals are not taking STEM jobs.
It’s a different invasion.
Both are problematic and need to be fixed.
Maybe Stephen Miller can make headway if he stops listening to the Tech Bros.
He’s both wrong and right.
Companies have absolutely gamed the H1B system to save money, sending tech jobs to foreigners. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes so this cannot be debated. He’s wrong to claim it isn’t so. Tighten up the rules and you can fix that.
He’s right in that the primary concern is illegal immigrants, and of that group, the criminal illegals. That’s problem #1, but again, this can be fixed.
We can work on both at the same time of course. This debate going viral in many cases is nothing more that an attempt to break up the MAGA movement.
In other words, the statutory limit on H1B jobs is 85,000 X 6 = 510,000.
The news gets worse...
H1B visas for non-profit entities (government jobs, university jobs, philanthropic entity jobs) have no quota, and are completely separate from the 510,000 limit.
Best estimate for un-counted non-profit H1B jobs - 200,000.
The news gets worse...
When a for-profit corporation sponsors a H1B employee for a Green Card, that H1B employee is removed from the 510,000 quota.
Best estimate for un-counted H1B-Waiting For Green Card foreign employees - 300,000.
Their MPs would never hear the end of it.
take a look at the other tax-preferred elephant in the room: The OPT visa.
“And competitive labor rates keeps more American outfits in America instead of shipping jobs abroad.”
Replace”competitive” with “artificially surpressing” is more accurate. 🙂
“...and it’s not exactly data driven...”
Oh, you mean all of the neophyte H1B “experts” probably needed to keep their traps shut?
Yeah, I agree.
Encouraging, but not decisive in any Democratic Party state.
Black - 8% to 12% GOP
Hispanic - 28% to 32% GOP
Asian - 27% to 34% GOP
I have not seen the FINAL 2024 ethnic numbers.
Only the election night numbers are available on the sources I check.
The National Election Pool does a very large mail out poll a couple weeks after the election.
NEP and Pew Research are the gold standard for ethnic voting in national elections.
When those polls come out, I will be happy to comment.
Given today’s work-from-home mentality, why do these H-1B workers even need to come over here? Just wondering.
Srini can F his own face.
Now do the needful.
Microsoft was once sitting on a pile of $52 billion in cash.
Gates and Ballmer et al were such utterly piss-poor businessmen, or so greedy, that they decided to give it all to sharehilders rather than fund new ventures or buy other companies with it.
If they had put it into goverment bonds the risk-free return would have enabled them to fund all US citizen programmers without
a) jeopardizing the prinicipal
b) dipping into the cash flow from the money machine that created that pile in the first place
We all know they chose greed.
Now we have Elon Musk, the richest person who ever lived. He is worth $400 billion.
He has requested H1-Bs as engineers at atesla for salaried roles on the order of $85k-$95k. This is not the pay scale of the 0.1% which he likes to jerk off over.
So he is so greedy thst even he is nickel and diming for 20% on salary to tip the wage scale in his favor.
But he told us to F our own face and he’d start a war over it, and that America became great over H1-Bs.
He forgot to mention the rule of law, where he doesn’t have to bribe a minor govt. official to do every little thing.
He forgot to mention our infrastructure, like roads, electricity, and manufacturing.
He forgot to mention all out top-50- or top-100 Universities worldwide.
He forgot to mention our capital markets and our banking systems.
And he forgot to thank our corrupt politicians who let him pay below market wages and pocket the difference while lying about it.
Maybe perplexity can hire H1-B visas to be customers for their pro service. It would be a shame if regular dumb Americans found a different AI chatbot to use.
But Vivek is a complete failure, fraudster and grifter. He is not even in the same league as those two, so why is he anywhere near Trump's inner circle? He was a leftist Democrat who promoted radical DEI and ESG policies in his (failed) pharma companies. He is the Indian Obama: a smooth talker, peddling nothing but bullshit. Trump needs to show him the door.
Arvind is saying that in few years, corporate world will have its own AI Agents who can do its workflows - in that case, most of business requirements that would need H1b workers will disappear too. No need to polarize MAGA base
Last time I read about it in news was during financial meltdown in US. American STEM Workers were finding jobs in India. As for ownership, it depends on who are the stock holders. Major international outfits are owned by investors world wide. Only single owner outfits are privately owned and are usually smaller.
Learn skills in demand in market place instead of coding. Coders are dime a dozen around the world.
So would you tell a physician that or a CPA?
Physicians have more jobs open than available workers. To my knowledge, foreign Physicians do not need H1-B visa to work in United States. They get green card visa immediately. I am not familiar with job demands for CPA’s.
Salries are down so the supply is down.
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