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H-1B visas were big in the Bay Area until the dot-coms went bust. Then the papers were filled with sob stories about foreigners who were out of work, just bought a car, didn't want to go back, yada yada yada.

The problem is, H-1B visas were supposed to be about jobs looking for people, not people looking for jobs. When the job goes away, we are not responsible for placing those people into new jobs -- we send them home.

Supposed to, anyway.

-PJ

a lot of people don't realize that h1b people don't pay into the social security tax. Congress has approved 195,000 per year for h1b. Of course, the actuall numbers of h1b people per year is lower than that, it reached a max of 165,000 one year. This year the government has a bit of brakes on it, so it may not even get 100,000. But it is still a lot of people because it is cumulative in that every year new h1b people are added. An h1b visa lasts 5 years, so for all those h1b workers there is no social security tax collected.

If we assume the max of 195,000 were used every year, then this would mean 9,775,000 people working on h1b at any given time. These people are working at an average salary of about 50,000 a year. But if it were not for h1b these jobs would probably pay 75,000 per year. So, when you consider that social security taxes are 15%, you get the idea that congress actually approved a reduction of social security funding of over 10 billion per year through h1b.

This is grossly irresponsible for congress to do.

Then the papers were filled with sob stories about foreigners who were out of work, just bought a car, didn't want to go back, yada yada yada.

Sad isn't it? How many sob stories does the same media do on Americans being put out of work because of this bogus program? Makes me wonder sometimes where the loyalty of these newspapers lie.