Comment by davidf18 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidf18 | Hacker News Reader

If you read the entire article, you can see that President Trump is on the side of the American IT worker and President Obama was working against Americans by allowing more immigrants to work here outside the legal H1-B Visa system through an executive order.

People seem to think that Trump is the bad guy and Obama the good guy, but then how do you justify Obamas actions? Trump is right. Obama is wrong.

It was Trump who spoke out against Disney of Florida's abuse of H1-B Visas displacing 250 American IT workers. Except for Sanders and Trump all of the other candidates were for replacing American IT workers with immigrants and depressing American IT worker wages.

"This is an argument which Trump has weighed in on in the past and a point of contention between the President Elect and Barack Obama. It was almost one year ago when Obama raised eyebrows by issuing an executive order which would allow these H-1B visa holders to receive green cards and stay in the country even if their employment was terminated. This led observers to note that he was essentially corrupting the entire purpose of the H-1B program and overload existing immigration quotas. (Numbers USA)"

http://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/19/disney-lawsuit-may-dra...

From the article you linked:

    "What is going on is he is effectively giving Green Cards to people on H-1B visas who are 
    unable to get Green Cards due to the [annual] quotas… it could be over 100,000."
    
    The INA states that no country may receive more than 7 percent of the total number of green 
    cards available in a given year. The executive action would bypass the INA per-country caps 
    for H-1B workers, essentially providing them with a fast track to U.S. citizenship.

This is a misunderstanding. There are no extra green cards handed out. All this provision does is that it removes the 7-percent-per-country quota restriction. This restriction is unfair to applicants from populous countries, and the administration was planning to remove those. Please don't spread misinformation here on HN.

From the quote you gave, "What is going on is he is effectively giving Green Cards to people on H-1B visas who are unable to get Green Cards due to the [annual] quotas… it could be over 100,000." [emphasis added]

The article states effectively which means that while they aren't given out in reality, they are accomplishing much the same thing in practice and that 100,000 more people are working here than should be according to the intent of the law. For every one of those workers working here, there is one less American working here.

When Congress passed the law, they knew what they were doing. 7% is about 1 in 14 for a world with over 180 countries. Instead of an executive order, they should probably change the law through Congress.

If you want to talk about fairness, then talk about how unfair it is that American workers have wages further depressed and have a more difficult time finding jobs because of this change in executive order (and not the law). The President is supposed to represent American citizens who vote him in office, instead represents the elites (e.g. Silicon Valley firms and Wall Street firms) who want depressed wages for American STEM workers.

H-1B, the input stream for these skilled immigrants, do not have any such per-country limits. But the green card process does. This brings into existence a large number of skilled immigrants who have their stay in the country tied to their job. This weakens their negotiation power, and contributes significantly to the wage depression you talk about.

Even NumbersUSA do not oppose removing this [1] restriction. Yet, you are _for_ keeping the per-country quotas. Why?

[1]:https://www.numbersusa.org/content/news/november-30-2011/sen...

I'm (selfishly) for keeping them because I don't want to get stuck in line with the huge backlog of people from India and China. That's a lousy reason though.

I'm not going to spend a decade living a shitty life waiting though. So if the per country caps go I might just give up.

> I'm not going to spend a decade living a shitty life waiting though.

Obama administration estimated that with the per country quotas removed, the backlogs for everyone will be gone in under 5 years. Sure, that is worser than getting your GC in a year.

No it doesn't.

India has a massive backlog of green card applicants. Obama's order makes it so taht people who are already here working under H-1B laws can cut ahead of that line and start getting green cards. That's a change in priority.

Otherwise these people are stuck here tied to a company for a decade+. That's shitty for everyone but hte company.

If you really want H-1B visas to not be abused then you should be in favor of more reasonable paths to PR and citizenship.

> " That's shitty for everyone but hte company."

Not true. The limitation in "job liquidity" means less competition for Americans for jobs that immigrants might underbid.

If the law were rigidly enforced so that only jobs allowed under H1-B were a job that no American could do then there would be far, far fewer than 85,000 H1-B Visas granted per year.

In many cases, I'll bet the companies intentionally put the jobs not where people want to live (e.g., NYC, Boston, DC, ...) but in places they don't necessarily want to live.

> The limitation in "job liquidity" means less competition for Americans for jobs that immigrants might underbid.

What is stopping the employer from trapping a "job illiquid" immigrant into such a job you want to apply for?

> If the law were rigidly enforced so that only jobs allowed under H1-B were a job that no American could do

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that there is no such law.

According to law, H1-B Visas are only for those jobs which cannot be filled by Americans, that is no American has the skill to perform them. The law has been greatly abused, but that is in fact the law.

I find it really, really hard to believe that there are 85,000 jobs per year (the H1-B Visa limit) that cannot possibly done by Americans.

As I have pointed out the issue is that firms do not want to pay prevailing wages for IT people so they back reforms that allows the import of lower-wage labor. (Former Republican) Candidate Rubio cared not for his Florida constituents, 250 IT workers who lost jobs from being displaced by low-wage immigrants and instead took $2 million from Disney and wanted to increase the H1-B Visa limit to 250,000 from 85,000.

Trump was backing the 250 workers who lost their jobs to H1-B Visa abuse and wants Disney to give them their jobs back.

Many of the elites who want to pay less money for IT work backed candidates who wanted to depress IT wages and make more Americans unemployed. Hilary and all of the Republican candidates were for this. Only Sanders and Trump spoke out against this.

Hilary and others called Trump racist, etc. but they never addressed the fundamental issue which is not exporting American jobs overseas and not importing labor to depress wages and cause unemployment among Americans.

> According to law, H1-B Visas are only for those jobs which cannot be filled by Americans, that is no American has the skill to perform them.

This, I believe, is a misunderstanding of the H-1B program. There is no requirement that there "is no American has the skill to perform" a job before it being filled by someone on H-1B. Please see the Wikipedia page here [1]. The employer only has to attest that:

  The employment of H-1B non-immigrants does not adversely affect working
  conditions of workers similarly employed.

At this point, I think it is advisable for you to get educated about the program you so vehemently oppose here on HN.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Protections_for_U.S....

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