Yeah I’ve always held this belief. It’s insane that we bring so many people over to do high paying work and at the same time don’t invest in our own citizens education to eventually be able to meet the need ourself.
If there was free, decent, college education in the US, we would be exporting tech workers..
Yes exactly. I’ve even proposed on blind before, that all foreign high skill worker pay a 1-2% federal tax on that’s earmarked specifically for training/education/scholarships for US citizens residents. If they are here and want to integrate then they should be willing to shoulder some of the burden to make America an opportunistic place.
I would agree. Particularly in the software field, they can motivate enough natives to not need many foreign workers. 1 year masters and leetcode hard ? Not so sure about basic research . You need to attract the best and the brightest. The numbers needed there are much smaller btw
Yes and that's what the remaining 20% is for, genuine international talent..
It’s because the bigger tech companies want cheaper labor so they bring in people on visas. Dropbox has no problems hiring for diversity and goes out specifically to find it (not just Indians and Asians). That can’t be said about Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Once a specific ethnicity’s numbers hits critical mass, 1/3-1/2 of the company becomes that because of nepotism and cronyism and also foreign workers are cheaper (inherit bias justified with business case).
See what imported nepotism is doing in older companies like Intel
Visa = cheap labor is an argument I hear over and over again and has been drummed around for quite a while. Yes there are people who might be working for less than avg, but there are many who make a lot more. Besides it’s the DOL who sets the minimum wage requirement for work visas. If you feel the wages are low and companies are hiring for cheap, you should have your Govt. increase the minimum wage requirement. BTW If you call 350k+ TC ( most of my friends on Visa’s make that or more ) cheap labor, you must be making a million. Well done Sir!
I think it comes down to this. As a business owner you can: 1. Drop 20k to relocate a foreigner, who has spent their life working hard to be the best engineer that they can, given their resources; 2. Find some white kid with a BA Psychology degree and try to get him to stop taking bong rips long enough to solve a basic college math problem. While I’d love for that kid to put down the bong and get serious, when it comes to my business, I’m going to drop $20k on Rahul every time.
Don't care about the psychology kid, the system should have enough support to the smart kid in the hood so he can get a CS degree instead of having to work at KFC
I agree with you. The Market currently is not incentivized to drive that, though. Government needs to drive tighter immigration policies - and more importantly - more affordable public education.
Importing true talent yes... The current system is not doing that
Don’t need to go postal on OP. He is genuinely participating in a respectable debate.
You are actually seeing a huge uptick in number of stem undergrads. There is a lag about when they will come to labor market , but they will soon. In this sense a clampdown on the low wage h1bs is not a bad thing. It’s just being done in an inhumane manner, which is hallmark of this administration
I just wanted to correct one thing - immigrants are not cheaper nowadays. Actually, USCIS requires companies to pay H1B employees above certain minimum wage requirements, so to protect citizens not to be forced out of the job market just because foreigners are cheaper.
In many cases it's not about being cheaper, it's about helping Americans to fill the needs of their own job market!
Oh I’m just responding to some other comments above that said tech company hire foreigners because they are cheaper.
Not sure I follow the argument- if it was that easy and Americans were just waiting to given the opportunity then - they would... If you have a good plan that will train more Americans to join the high paid workforce that's great, but should companies' growth be frozen while we wait for those highly trained individuals. The high amount of international engineers is not stopping them
If you’re talking about my argument stated on a thread above, it would have a low tax to help train Americans to work American jobs - high skilled foreign workers are still welcome, as training for different industries will always fluctuate. This will help meet the demand with supply from outside while also training up supply inside.
Corporate America does everything to increase the profit due to shareholder pressure and CEOs need to keep their jobs. They are also competing with each other; hence, they need to hire whoever they can find. But if this path is closed for every major US companies, they will be fine not doing it. There is no international competition in the software industry. US rules the game. Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Korea have some but their total sum is not even half of what US does. China is domestic for now (not as competitive yet to even compete against these smaller players).
Average Chinese and Indian internationals work way harder than your typical American College student. Can confirm because I hang out with all three.
I've a friend who worked in Beijing for few months, he said even though his mentees work over 12 hours a day productivity was low, it's just they stick around longer to appear that they work harder
If those Chinese and Indians were so productive in their home country, you will be seeing comparable GDP per capita to US. The truth is China is at 9k and India is at 2.5k while the US is at 50k. So much for working hard. I am an immigrant but respect the US system and education. I am here to learn as much as possible and hope to come back with this learning to my home country to improve the condition there (my home country is much more developed than China though). Some of Blind folks from China and India though try to teach Americans about education, work and etc. You should realize that is the very reason your home country is not doing as well as the US. Even the folks from developed countries like western Europe and Japan try to learn from here. Yes, immigrants here work harder because those are the selected people who are ready to work harder for the privilege of working in the US. Would they do so when they are in their home countries? Also, I was a teaching assistant at one of the top ranked US colleges and amount of cheating by Indians and Chinese were unfairly prevalent. American students in general were way better students but they didn't necessarily get a job in big tech because of a variety of reasons. Do not judge the people based on TC, the prestige of the workplace and etc. When you are a citizen of a developed society, there are way more important things than them. Your countries will one day follow this as did other rapidly growing countries like Taiwan and Korea. Your countries focus on going to top college, getting a job at big-name companies etc for a reason, often due to limited life choices and options. I am pretty sure your American born kids wouldn't want to live like you.
So easy right?
I mean you don't need to import tons of people for it
So according to you, universities should stop accepting international students. Just train americans with leetcode at code bootcamps?