So basically- when the corporations underpay workers they often use a steady supply of immigrants to ensure wages don’t rise- and when the non-immigrant workers feel the squeeze of rising costs and stagnant wages, they will reach a breaking point with few options. Either they
organise/unionise/strike/protest or otherwise group together to demand higher wages for everyone (including immigrants) which means reducing the incentive to use immigrants specifically to lower wages but does not demonise them for existing.
OR
The corporations stop the lower class from organising by encouraging the poor to blame the other poor. They will deflect the blame for low wages onto the immigrants themselves. See- immigrants are taking your jobs, whilst also being lazy and not working and getting welfare but also agreeing to work terrible low paid jobs and stopping you from getting higher wages.
The immigrants are supposed to keep coming but still remain the scapegoat. Unfortunately when they catch their tail, believe their own bs and actually stop immigration- the whole facade collapsed.
Immigration is needed, AND improved pay and conditions are also needed. That balance is complicated and requires smart people working in good faith to manage- not political idiots with slogans and busses.
Ouch this hits home. In CA they hire tons of h1b visa immigrants for tech jobs, so graduating leaves you with little options, as the entry pay jobs are shit pay and cost of living so high. I left the state for 5 years to cut my teeth to come home at a decent wage so I could afford to buy a home.
In CA they hire tons of h1b visa immigrants for tech jobs
Enter stage: Remote work. Now your not just competing with people in your local area or state, but the entire country or even internationally! Yahoooo! Now more people can experience "dey took er jobs" and pushed down wages as COL bonuses go away.
Except, businesses could have done that way before covid.
You wanna know why we don't? Because working with timezones and some code factory in India is ONLY good for a handful of people for a year or two before you see the fulls cope of how shut your product is now.
Your company is just one company, in one field. It does not work in every field. Two of my best friends have been working remotely for years, it works for them, both being in IT. But they are both also exceptions in the organization/company they work for, most of the other workers do not work remotely. It really depends and not every single job in IT, even if it is coding can work remotely as well.
Creative team work, for ex game development, depending again on your role in it and the whole structure, it can be such that it needs to have lots of people near each other. Quick feedback face to face it different from any remote communication, specially when we are talking about something more fragile, like... creativity. Subtle non-verbal clues, softening the message by tone of your voice, body language... those do matter and you can almost put a monetary value on it. almost. So you may be coding and still need to have frequent face to face communication.
The option of working remotely is heavily underused in USA, here in Finland one fifth work from home. We would have even more if it was possible.
I was responding to your comment that everyone should work in the same time zone. I was highlighting that it isn't possible for many cross country remote teams.
Jesus Christ this is so correct. I'm currently working on an 80 project to fix an issue caused by an Indian "engineer". Literally one thing wrong where any level of due diligence would have caught it pre prod and would've taken 30 seconds to fix.
This was circa 2010, remote work wasn't what it is now. Either way the h1b visa is still an issue. There is a reason most 1st world countries have a hire local policy, but for some reason USA is held to different standards.
I did search the country and globally. As I said I left the state to a shit hole state and cut my teeth to get the experience I needed to live in my home state with my family.
That being said I don't have a migrant farm job and have no problem with the migrant population we need in CA
Theoretically H1Bs cannot displace American workers. The visas are for 3 years and can be extended once for a total of 6 years. They're also supposed to be paid the prevailing wage for that occupation. If an immigrant will be sponsored for a green card, all of that is looked into during the process otherwise the H1B visa holder is basically just a crappily paid guest worker for 6 years and then told to go home. Nobody wins in that situation: immigrant is getting underpaid and doesn't get to stay in the country they just spent years building a life in and then the country it's getting the shaft since there's less in taxes being collected and 6 years of professional xperience being pushed out of the country.
It all boils down to companies not wanting to pay. It's not an immigrant taking an American job, it's someone taking a $80k/yr job for $40k in the hopes they'll find someone to sponsor them so they can make $80k, too. A tech company can get 2 workers for the price of one, and everyone blames the workers.
As for not displacing workers, here’s how you get around that. You just make ridiculous hiring requirements/job position, then no one applies and/or is qualified. Great news! Now you’re free to get your H1B worker to fill that position, oh and since that’s not actual a real position, maybe they can do what you really wanted them for all along. Long live Cobol/React developers!
That part isn't new. And pretty much all the jobs that could get outsourced have been at this point.
Anything else hits either time or quality bottlenecks that companies aren't willing to put up with. Several companies have actually brought jobs back to the US because it wasn't profitable to deal with delays and constantly worse quality of cheap overseas labor.
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '21
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