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I can’t believe I’m about to use this stupid term, but this is such a “woke” take.

“My political bubble doesn’t think highly of this job, and so we shouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to do it.”

And yes, it IS an opportunity for some people. Just because you’re a dev that makes $150k/year doesn’t mean everyone can do that.

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It may not be so far from the truth. As an example Canada has a temporary foreign worker program that has been abused by employers to keep wages low, work conditions abysmal, and threaten the workers with sending them back home to ensure compliance under these conditions.

The US, I believe, similarly uses its ample illegal labor supply in similar ways.

A similar argument can be made about the H1-B program. I don’t know if this is still the case, but a few years ago the stats on all H1-B visa-holders showed they were paid on average around $80K despite mostly being in technical roles at F500 companies. The stats are openly available from the relevant US gov website.

I don’t doubt that companies have abused H1-B as a means of spending less on specifically SWE talent.

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