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Comment by goodSteveramos | Hacker News Reader

Will this affect the number of H1B visas issued in 2023? Across the tech industry the number of layoffs are almost as large as the number of temporary work visas typically issued in a year. Will the Biden admin make companies hire the laid off American workers or will it keep approving the normal number of H1B applicants?

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You and I both know that the H1B system won't stop, it will only be expanded. Its purpose is to suppress the wages of American knowledge workers for corporations so they can keep more profit.

I'd disagree, H1B prevailing wages are around $115k/yr now. That plus USCIS backlogs have started pushing WITCH to use the Canada pipeline instead (bring H1B type hires to Toronto, where developer wages are easily 60% of what they are stateside).

That said, companies who want rockstars with foreign citizenships have been heavily using the O-1 route now though. Even YC and VCs have been using it to help facilitate immigrant founders

The explicit and only function of the US H1B program is to provide workers to tech companies who cannot find enough workers at the price they want to pay

No offense but I think you are being obtuse. When applying for an H1B for an employee you need to pay the prevailing wage, or the application will most likely be rejected by USCIS. At this point, the costs of hiring an H1B are much much higher than offshoring to cheaper locales like Canada or India or Europe. As such, any sort of downward salary pressure is less due to immigration and more due to globalization.

He is not being obtuse. You can't just say "it's the prevailing wage" when the whole purpose of H1B's is to increase the supply of knowledge labour, thereby decreasing said prevailing wage.

Prevailing wage is a minimum wage the USCIS generates per job type for the H1B. You need to pay at least the prevailing wage to get an H1B for your employee. Not doing so becomes immigration fraud.

To quote Rick and Morty, "think before you talk shit"

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62g-h1b-require...

It is a low number, too low, and prevents citizens being paid what they're actually worth in a market without this government intrusion. Corporate welfare.

They derive that number by looking at the current market, which is depressed via H1Bs.

Spouting basic knowledge at people and then telling them to "think before talking shit" does not engender curiosity, and is inappropriate for this site.

I think its more complex than this. For sure H1Bs push down wages for certain positions in certain circumstances, but also it does also fill a skills shortage. There are some skills which no amount of offering higher pay will fix, you need to bring in the actual people with those skills. And when USA gets those people, that can make companies thrive and expand which then improves employment for Americans and pushes up wages for certain positions which helps Americans. I think its pretty hard to disentangle what the effect is really.

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