H1B is legal immigration. Not the same as illegal immigration. I like that we have stopped accepting H1B for the rest of the year. But, don’t confuse legal and illegal immigration.
A point that is completely lost here on FR. Completely lost.
The rub is that there are some companies that have used the H1B process to undercut American workers - primarily in the tech industry. I don’t think any of us support that.
I heard Kudlow talking about this after he joined the administration and he made some good points in that the plan for the administration was to grow the economy to the point that wages would rise and the skilled workers would have more competition for their services. He believed that it would fix itself in a booming economy and there is anecdotal information that he might have been right before Covid.
This issue will not go away, but I wish more people understood it better and did not lump it with low-skilled immigration. In a fast growing economy it can be a plus, but in a recession or period of job loss it is a curse to American workers.
As I try to look at it objectively I think my opinion is that we need to reach peak employment in a field before we allow companies to use H1B’s because otherwise we will drive wages down and that sucks. Based on this, I think there needs to be far more scrutiny on these lest we screw over American workers.
“....As I try to look at it objectively I think my opinion is that we need to reach peak employment in a field before we allow companies to use H1B’s because otherwise we will drive wages down and that sucks. Based on this, I think there needs to be far more scrutiny on these lest we screw over American workers.”
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Your “objective” look lacks clarity of understanding. You don’t seem to comprehend that it’s the companies themselves (along with their, frequently Indian, IT managers) that “determine” that there’s a shortage of available Americans for the jobs. GUESS WHAT THEY “FIND”? They always find the H1B approval is essential.
This approach is very similar to the mechanism the federal government uses to determine “needed” salaries for the federal civil service employees. They assign federal employees to make the determinations. GUESS WHAT THEY “FIND”? Hint: Most recently they found that federal employees on average make 26.71% less than their private sector counterparts. As someone who has had experience on both the federal employee side of the fence as well as in counterpart private sector jobs...THIS IS BULL CRAP! The private sector employees would love to have the public sector salaries and benefits.