Posted on 02/22/2019 10:27:29 AM PST by rintintin
When it comes to U.S. workers in many fields, there's another factor here that nobody wants to talk about:
1. A U.S. college graduate with $50,000+ in college debt is going to command a higher salary just to cover this expense. This is true in any field, but it's really destructive in "commoditized" STEM fields where skills translate easily across borders.
2. In many of these fields, the average U.S. graduate is no better than foreigners in the same field -- and in many cases may even be worse (especially for foreigners educated in British systems who don't have the same language barrier as others). Does anyone here wonder why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez graduated with top honors from Boston University and was working as a bartender at the age of 28?
1. The unemployment rate IS effectively zero. The vast majority of people unemployed today are either unable to work or have no interest in working.
2. That's a good point about "labor shortages" by sector. I agree with you for most sectors, but what you're overlooking is that many sectors are competing for the same labor -- and collectively there actually may be a shortage across multiple sectors. I wish truck drivers could be paid as much as medical doctors, for example ... but if that were the case then there would be a "shortage" of medical doctors as many of them change careers.
>We need to start giving 10 year no interest loans to qualified >applicants of Coder Camps.
I’ve yet to hire anyone from a Coder Camp. It’s not so much the ability to code but the ability to think about problems and how to solve them.
I tend to hire from a local university along with the big wig schools. We don’t have a single H1-B at our small company, my previous company had 1 or 2 and w had about 370 employees before exit.
It’s an end run around the free market for labor. We have plenty of STEM people, we just don’t have a bunch that’ll work for third world wages. Even if we didn’t have enough American tech workers the numbers would quickly ramp up once the high paying jobs became available. The market dictates that students aren’t going to pursue degrees in these fields if the jobs available are paying third world wages that are kept artificially depressed by importing foreigners. Employers say there aren’t enough workers but the real reason they’re not there is the jobs don’t pay what they’re worth. Allowing foreign imports distorts the natural price of labor. I have to pay the going rate for services in my area, an employer should have to pay the going rate for labor too.
It’s the same on the low end of the market. We pay people 50k a year in welfare then let in illegal workers to do jobs that “Americans won’t do” according to Obama. If I was making $50k a year in welfare I wouldn’t want to accept a $25k a year job either. The reason you can’t find an American to pick lettuce is because we pay them more in welfare than they could make working. Employers don’t want that to end because they’d have to pay more in wages so we keep letting in illegals. Nobody wants to fix it because they’re scared of the backlash if some suburban housewife has to pay $3 for a head of lettuce.
Probably because she majored in some completely useless field like "Latino Studies" or "Women's Studies" (though PR and advertising firms now love to hire those idiots).
A U.S. college graduate with $50,000+ in college debt is going to command a higher salary just to cover this expense. This is true in any field, but it's really destructive in "commoditized" STEM fields where skills translate easily across borders
The bottom line is that college debt or no debt, American workers in all walks of life demand higher wages than their Third World replacements. When upper management (interesting that they and they alone are never replaced by guest workers or outsourced) says there is a "labor shortage," what they really mean is that they can't find Americans willing to work for Third World wages. Americans can write code as well or better than Hindus or Chinese, they just expect to be paid more for it. Similarly, Americans can do construction work as well or better than Mexicans or Central Americans - they just expect to be able to buy a house on their wages rather than a tin roof shack with the street as a sewer.
This has been going on since at least 1997. That is the first time it directly affected me. This is pure slave labor, nothing more. Here is the condensed way it works.
A Company, like Koch, pretends to go through the prerequisites to hire an American, and then claims they need an H1. There is a US citizen who can do the job, speaks fluent English, went to a University here but the rate for his service is $80/hour.
In comes the Indian H1 firm. They offer an Indian to do the job at $50/hour. They bring in an Indian, house him in a low rent 3 bedroom apartment with 5 or more other Indians. They pay their Indians just enough to buy groceries. Maybe $10 - $12 /hour.
The Indians H1’s do this because they want a Green Card. The day they start, the clock begins toward their 5 years needed for the Green Card. If the sponsor company, the Indian H1 Firm, pulls the sponsorship, the Indian must immediately return to India and his time working in the United States resets to zero. These Indians will do anything to maintain their status and will allow themselves to be indentured servants because this is the price to pay toward the citizen status.
Before 1968 when we had a rational immigration policy we used to accept people from allover the world into our universities. The, when they got their advanced degrees in the sciences we made it easy for them to stay. That way we had a near monopoly on the scientific brains of the world. Then our priority changed to put skill-less uneducated people at the head of the line and to put Europoid geniuses to the back. Our unassailable pre-eminence in the scientific world is inevitably slipping and other nations, because we send the genius students back are challenging us. The fly in the ointment should we return to those rational days of yore now is the Chinese. Students from mainland China include a very high proportion of people under the control of the Chinese government and send all the information they meet back to China.
The sad truth is that foreign educated people are technically qualified to do the jobs. American education raised a bunch of SJWs who are illiterate in math and science.
Such people are not counted as officially unemployed. Only those actively seeking work (have applied for jobs in the past 6 months) contribute to official unemployment stats.
Corporate America only cares about 1 thing, maximizing profit. If they have to import workers who do an inferior job, but will do it at 2/3 the pay and not complain, so be it.
I like profit. But maximizing profit can come in multiple ways. If you create a culture of mutual appreciation, (employee and management), you’ll get more production and less complaining. Loyalty is earned, but once earned is valuable.
Treating people as if the are “human resources” that have no more or less value than a table, chair or computer, can impact profit, even with H1Bs. Few companies care to understand that.
No. There are still many unemployed Americans and foreigners refuse to hire Americans once they get in and it provides disincentives for Americans to get STEM degrees.
This is a strawman argument, because there isn't much cross-sector competition between skilled, unskilled vs. professional workers, except perhaps in times of economic crisis when the unemployment rates is in the double digits. The issue at hand isn't that truck drivers are paid less than medical doctors - the issue (which is a problem from the standpoint of management and pro-immigration politicians) is that American truckers demand American truck driver wages rather than Guatemalan truck driver wages, just as American computer programmers won't work for Chinese computer programmer wages.
“we” ( or rather the big corporations) “need” the cheaper and very compliant foreigners —- as long as they won’t hire qualified American workers for those jobs And this situation will continue until “we” Americans can overcome the corporations’ Hugh “pull” (influence) in wash DC.
That’s the wrong question. Do we really need more foreigners in the U.S. when we have damn near a third of our population that are unassimilated foreign nationals(both legal and illegal)?
Worse, most of these 3rd world riff raff vote 80%-20% dem.
Do we really need to import more foreign democrats and complete Obama’s fundamental transformation of America?
H1Bs help to keep wages flat. That’s why they use them.
Our company pursued them actively because it was hard to get talented people in our region at the pay that was common in our region. Without them, wages would have to rise, maybe substantially, to get Americans to leave the big engineering centers to come to our area.
As it was, we were able to recruit talented foreigners, keep wages down, and compete. I liked the people I worked with, so its not personal... but our joke was that Sears tire mechanics charged out at a higher rate than our engineers. And it was pretty much true, and it wasn’t that funny if you thought about it.
American kids don’t want to be engineers. That would change if wages reflected the real demand.
Screw that. It would have been better if you wage Nazi's has gone out of business. Hell awaits the traitor for money. == YOU.
As I’ve been responding to others in this thread, tell it to Trump. He needs to hear from his base on this issue
If you have a resume out there, put Google Voice to work for you. Put a Google Voice number on your resume. Let Apu talk to Google’s servers.
Google tries to translate those strong Indian accents into English text. Reading the translations can be very entertaining & you can tell immediately if you should waste your time responding.
You misunderstand. I was an employee there, and my point is exactly yours. Without H1Bs our wages would rise to market levels. As it was, our wages were relatively flat for years on end.
I am opposed to expanding H1B. I understand exactly why companies want them, and I oppose them.
Watching that piece of scammer scam was well worth the rainy friday afternoon time
Thanks
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.