What most folks in the USA don't understand, BYD manufactures two types of vehicles. One type is for the domestic market (cheaper and dangerous), the other is for export (meets some semblance of safety). I have heard that the export models are built to higher standards and are more dependable, hence the higher price than domestic models.
There are H1B armies of regular people, doing regular jobs, that require no critical skills, making decent wages, at the cost of the American worker/Graduate. Thank your Gov for allowing corporations to fill their ranks with slave labor. It all starts with a particular kind of CEO, CIO/CTO and it guts the technology department of American employees.
First of all, that's not the problem. AI companies are eating up so much of the economy and supply chain that your game console -- whatever it is -- now costs another $200. Crypto at least kept this limited to GPUs. They're also openly advertising on billboards that say things like "AI won't ask for a raise."
Second -- as much as abuse of this program does happen, the problem is that they aren't decent wages or working conditions.
The only requirements of this program are that you're not paying less to a local employee -- which functionally means you can pay the same substandard wages to everyone, and then go to the government saying "we can't find qualified talent in our area." Much like a minimum wage employer with a "NO ONE WANTS TO WORK" sign, at a certain point it's actually that no one wants to work for you... but we don't put strong enough requirements in place for it to function more effectively as a way of filling talent shortages and less as a welfare system for the worst employers in your area.
The solution to this isn't broad crackdowns, or obviously hostile nonsense like that $100k fee. It's actually better labor protections -- longer grace periods so that you can leave an abusive employer, market rate pay, reasonable limits on overtime, and more scrutiny around other violations of stateside labor protections. The problem isn't that specialized fields like tech still need visas to some extent, to attract talent at their hiring bar. It's that there's no validation that these are reasonable jobs that a reasonable person would accept. It's that we shouldn't prop up companies that can't hire on their own merits, or enable large scale market manipulation to every part of our working conditions -- by giving them to companies that are 996ing, or that violate labor protections, or that openly talk about how you won't be happy there if you value pay. Those things harm everyone, and lower our labor standards across the entire industry.
The problem across both is actually the same -- businesses that want to take shortcuts to get employees (real or otherwise) that won't ask for raises, speak up about their other working conditions, or leave for something better.
There is nothing "weak" about standing up for your own economic interests. The H1B program has largely been based on a fiction--using a handful of superstars as marketing cover for tens of thousands of mid-skill developers. But with AI now coming for everyone's job the pretext of a "skills shortage" is unsustainable.
Mid-skill developers? It's now become common to just contract out dev work to folks in Eastern Europe, for example. There are exceptional people there. And it's now really hard to get them to the U.S. so instead of having them pay taxes in the U.S. and spend their wages in the U.S. and maybe found their own startups and thereby grow the U.S. economy, they just do all that in their home country.
All that immigrant hate is so short sighted, it's hard to believe that you think that's actually in your own interest. Both common sense and history disagree with you.
(Though I admit that xenophobia has evolved in ancient human societies for good reasons. No reason to not realize it's bad though, not just morally but economically too. Very suitable for populism though, clearly.)
Immigration implicates economic and cultural issues, trying to reframe them as being about "hate" or "fear" is misdirection. When you see second and third generation immigrants waving foreign flags in western countries, you should realize that, even if you don't believe in nationalism, the immigrants themselves often do.
Similarly, dismissing the concerns as "short sighted" is just ignorant of history. Plato was thinking about the challenges of reconciling immigration with democracy 2,000 years ago. Alexander Hamilton presaged the destabilizing effects of immigration on democracy at the inception of the U.S. https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2016/12/21/hamiltons-actual-vie...
> When you see second and third generation immigrants waving foreign flags in western countries, you should realize that, even if you don't believe in nationalism, the immigrants themselves often do.
Indeed, that is a problem. The fraction of such folks is rather small though, if you take an honest look at the statistics. It's quite rare to actually see this, apart from videos at politically leaning talk shows or youtube or a rally of certain folks. At least in a menacing way -- nobody takes issue with a Swede waving their flag on midsummers eve or some 6th generation irish folks getting drunk on st patricks day eh?
It needs adressing nevertheless, I'm with you there. Helping immigrants to integrate better rather than just dumping them into ghettos would be an idea. But it's rather unpopular especially in affluent neighborhoods to let little blond caucasian princess share school with the dark skinned kid whose parents have a strong accent and don't celebrate christmas. Integration sure, but not at the expense of my precious darling!!!1
> nobody takes issue with a Swede waving their flag on midsummers eve or some 6th generation irish folks getting drunk on st patricks day eh?
A member of my wife's family is Swedish American. Her Swedish identity is superficial, a historical curiosity. Swedish Americans aren't glued together in any meaningful way by a common identity, they don't seek each other out to live near each other. Nor can you influence them by appealing to their Swedish heritage. By contrast, I have on multiple occasions gotten comped meals from hotel workers based on being Bangladeshi. Bangladeshis in the US and Canada feel real affinity for each other--they live in Bangladeshi neighborhoods, marry within their communities, etc. And you can influence them by appealing to their shared identity.
Irish identity is largely superficial today, but for a century it wasn't. They lived in Irish enclaves, they did favors for each other based on shared identity, and they organized politically based on ethnic background, not ideology or issues. And that had real social and political consequences for the country for a long time.
Indeed, Americans underestimate how different Irish and Swedish Americans really are from Anglo Americans even today. Americans descended from different European countries remain quite different in fundamental attitudes (e.g. social trust, views towards saving, etc). And they still vote quite differently as a result. It's also obvious just going around America. As a foreigner, it's blatantly obvious which parts of the country was settled by Italians, Scandinavians, Germans, different kinds of British, etc.
I think this is largely a function of when those waves of immigration happened, and how long ago it was. In another hundred years we'll see the Bangladeshi-American descendants having a fully superficial, historical curiosity type of connection to their heritage, like you describe for the Swedish-Americans. It just takes a few generations.
Studies show that 50% of the variation between cultural attitudes in European countries is still present in descendants of those people in the U.S. If you look at which communities have the highest levels of social trust, conservative attitudes towards spending and saving, etc., it’s exactly the places you’d expect based on where those same attitudes are prevalent in Europe. And obviously we’re starting from a much larger cultural delta with Bangladeshis to begin with.
But even putting that aside, there was a lot of pain for “generations” when we had Irish and Italian enclaves and the ethnic political machines they created. So we put up with that burden for 50-100 years and for what? To get, in the best case, a Bangladeshi version of the Jersey Shore?
I don't think that's what's happening here. It's pretty clear importing thousands (10s of thousands?) people into an area has an effect on the local residents that's not good.
I think that's their point - the subjects of the article should be working instead of hiking. But someone with an H1B visa, yet lacking any special skills, has a job instead of them.
I don't agree with their premise, just restating it.
Wages aren't the primary determination of slave labor, it's control. I suppose "indentured servant" would be even better, but there are an enormous number of restrictions on H1B holders in how they move (both between employers and countries).
(I don't love this analogy and consider it extreme and not overly accurate)
I doubt you'll find many HN users who don't know what a H1B visa is. That's regardless of my opinion that comparing H1B holders to slaves or indentured servants is a bad analogy.
Then let them. If they want to offshore, let them have the associated pros and cons, and free up real estate that American workers can use to start competitors.
They've been offshoring as much as they can for decades. The H1-B program hasn't stopped it and if it were eliminated there wouldn't be a huge surge in offshoring. Many companies have already hit the limit on offshoring and had to pull things back onshore.
Wrong. I'm SE Asian background but American. Why should Americans compete with Indians from India in America? Just because globalists enable it, it doesn't mean Americans are OK with it.
No problem, the American military will now have a job to invade other countries for its new colonies. I support going back to colonialism. This time it will not be the British East India Tea Company. Can we call it American East India Tea Company?
They just have to go to any large corporate campus and take a good look. I know of a particular one in TX where 90% of the IT employees are of one particular nationality and at least 90 % of that group do not have any kind of permanent status in the USA. I am not talking about 100-200 employees, I'm talking about 1000 plus.
Thats not what the issue is, it's that they aren't free to job-hop in the way that other people are. H1B keeps their wages artificially depressed and they have a sword of damocles over their heads threatening deportation.
Random refugees coming into the country "takin my jerb" isn't happening. Large companies importing skilled labor for specific positions to either drive down sector wages or acquire workers who are more willing to put up with bad working conditions (this is nursing right now) is a different beast.
The old myth of "immigrants are taking our jobs". The American economy (and all western countries) would be substantially weaker without all those immigrants, highly skilled or not. Without them, the agricultural sector would collapse, the health care system would barely hang by a thread, and next time you go use a toilet at your companies office or a random shopping mall, try to find out who cleans it regularly (hint: that person is most certainly not born in your country nor highly educated).
Immigrants grow the economy, if anything. They make your life better.
That I even have to read this nonsense in a place with so smart and highly educated people as HN makes me pretty sad.
>who cleans it regularly (hint: that person is most certainly not born in your country nor highly educated).
If there was no immigrant willing to do it for a bare minimum wage, the mall would have to pay a local more to keep it clean. If there was no immigrant to work on farms for the bare minimum, farmers would have to pay locals a decent wage to make them do the same work. There's no such thing as a worker shortage, only wages that are too low to attract workers.
Employers have tried this and there is no possible wage that satisfies the supply/demand curve and doesn't use immigrant labor for some jobs. Not sure about cleaning mall bathrooms, but this has already been demonstrated for many crops: strawberries will rot in fields rather than American-born workers picking them, for any price.
When the "economy" grows, that doesn't make my life better. My life gets better when I can command a higher salary for my labor, something I can't do when companies are allowed to flood the market with low cost foreign labor. This is so obvious I don't understand how supporters can be so smug and wrong at the same time.
What a display of ignorance. You assume this is just a problem with will power. Have you ever thought it could be related to genetics or hormonal issues?
Are you not aware of the other benefits that have been discovered and are not related to weight loss? Evidence that it helps with arthritis, kidney and heart disease. It appears to also help with addiction like alcohol and nicotine. There are plenty of reasons to make this available to anyone who needs it. It can mean the difference in living a healthier and more productive life for people suffering from other problems and not obesity.
Looks like his startup was some kind of translation service. So yeah he is totally qualified. It's a miracle how Jeetu Patel was able to find Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy or even know that he was under employed languishing somewhere in the bowels of CISCO. I wonder if they know each other from India?
His startup was acquired by Cisco so not weird for Cisco's CPO to know the startup's founder/CEO. That said, not sure how knowledge on speech translation means he's totally qualified on rewriting infra/networking/cybersecurity (Cisco's primary fields of operation) code. Unless the legacy code expected to be rewritten is constrained on related services/solutions, e.g. CVP or/and WebEx.
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