“Technically nobody should be “hiring illegals” (which is different from H1B arrangements, which tend to be contractors). It is banned. But the nation is falling asleep with the nodding and winking.
A contractor economy makes sense to nervous companies in a tight time with greedy, proud tyrants (not private enterprise, but government) presiding over it. I’ve switched to that mode and in fact am working cheek-by-jowl with H1B, which almost to a person are very decent.”
I think somehow that HighTech Redneck is making money off of these H1-B visa holders rather than working with them. I too am somewhat of a high tech redneck having grown up in Montana and working in IT for over 23 years.
Nobody’s arguing against a contractor-based economy but why can’t those contractors be Americans? Why should Americans have to suffer declining wages due to unfair foreign competition and then pay higher taxes to support the families of these H1B visa workers who tend to come over with the H1B scabs to fund medical care, subsidized housing, welfare Social Security payments, etc.?
The H1-B and L1 visa system has turned into a classic government boondoggle where the federal government, bribed by special-interest money from big corporate donors, shifts cost from corporations to the American taxpayer through taxes and onto the poor and struggling middle class workers through lower wages,!declining opportunity and inflation due to increased demand for products and services.
Thank you
I don’t know about in your neck of the woods but here on the east coast, many H-2B’s over stay their visas and become illegal aliens. Like other illegals they work through firms that hire them out and vouch for their legality.
Since they come from a heavily socialist culture they have no problem making liberal use of out safety network. No one questions their eligibility because they are ‘disadvantaged minorities’.
I worked on a contract with DEC and the folks here on an H1-B Visa were a mixed bag of good, indifferent, and poor, just like the situation with a lot of contracts where there were no H1-B workers. There were three guys with a Visa and working while two more were working while they waited on their Visa approval, and three more were working while they waited to have their Visa extended.
Basically, there were three people counted as being part of the H1-B program while in reality there were eight people working in jobs someone from this country wasn't even considered for. I contend not only that there's no shortage of skilled people in the fields the H1-B Visa program apples to, it also makes it more likely that there will be a shortage of people in those fields by suppressing wages.
None the less, people who yell about the free market are all for short circuiting the wage signals that are the trigger for increasing the number of people attracted to the fields they claim there's a shortage in. IOW, people claim to be all in favor of capitalism and free markets but fall all over one another to get in line for the government run abortion of the very market system they claim to be defending.
That sort of abuse is typical of every single Federal program like the H1-B Visa program. People have to be deliberately blind to pretend that while millions of people are illegally streaming across the border the same degree of abuse isn't intrinsic to the H1-B program. People supporting the H1-B program are getting fat and happy by making a buck off of screwing their fellow Americans out of jobs, that's the bottom line no matter what sort of trash they wrap their personal greed in.
After all, the Brits had many a self-rightous argument for forcing China to import opium which proves that those who see nothing wrong with shafting others to make a buck are never short of arguments for why what they're doing is wonderful if looked at properly.
I wonder whether it is a pride issue for folks who like myself had had long stints of service as a “regular employee.” That they feel it demeaning after that to be in a position like I am. I find it less demeaning than the welfare rolls, but YMMV. I understand rotten economies.
If I am making money in any manner off of them, it’s because my boss here is one. And I was floored to find he was one of the most gracious folks I had ever met in business. Compared to him, a lot of my other, “all American” bosses were jerks.