H1Bs are slave labor and the program is used primarily by sweat shop consultancies who pay them less than Americans. This will be incredible for Americans looking for work. They don't have to compete with artificially cheap workers.
No, it won’t, jobs (especially local jobs) aren’t a fixed commodity that are going to get filled. This will kill jobs overall, and result in more of the jobs (including jobs that didn't take H-1Bs to fill but were associated with businesses that had such positions) that remain being outside of the US as a direct result, and those direct US job losses will knock-on effects that will kill even more US jobs.
How did we get to a point where people casually call H1B tech workers often earning $120K or more “slave labor”?
This creates an incentive for H-1B workers to tolerate working conditions that American workers wouldn't.
And while yes, if have an ongoing green card process which takes 12-18 months, you may have an incentive to stick around to see it to completion, anyone who has their I-140, does not actually “lose their place” in the green card process. They can file for a new I140 and retain their place in the queue by retaining the priority date from the previous application.
If you think US citizens don’t stick around for a bit in a shitty job for a variety of reasons, then you’d be lying. People (including US citizens) don’t just quit jobs whenever they want without a plan like you’re making it sound. At least not ones that carry a reasonable wage, health insurance and other benefits. Again, all with the caveat of me not talking about consulting firms, which obviously don’t exactly have the best workplace environments.
That’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, which is what I meant by depending on where they are in the process.
You have 2 employees at the same company in a bad job market.
If employee A gets laid off or fired, he has enough savings for a 2 year job search and can pay for COBRA for 18 months.
If employee B gets fired or laid off, he has 60 days to find a job and make it through the hiring process.
There’s been 1 round of layoffs and there are rumors there might be another. The boss asks both of them to put in extra hours, which one is more likely to say no?
And FYI, you have 60 days to search for jobs but you can convert to B visas and continue your job search for another year. USCIS has clarified that, so H1Bs are also not that constrained as you’re making it out to be.
A large percentage of American workers have a spouse who also works full time whose health insurance they can switch too. If a company fires an H-1B employee they can also withdraw their I-40, which means their spouse will lose their work authorization.
>Paying COBRA for 18 months is wildly expensive
It's $400-$700 a month on average for an individual. More expensive for people with families, but as I discussed above in the majority of families, both parents work.
Someone here on a visitor visa also doesn't qualify for any ACA subsidies that an American scraping by on contract work while job searching would qualify for.
At a population level, if you divide people into 2 groups. And you add significant extra consequences to being fired to group B, group B will work harder to avoid being fired all else being equal.
The stress level related to immigration status, whether or not it was worth risking a change, etc, was way higher.
Or give me your definition of slavery.
But you dilute the meaning of the term 'slavery' when you apply it to someone who has a 100% legally protected right to leave their place of employment and country at any time, without having to pay anything but the cost of a ticket. If an H1B employer holds a worker's passport and makes them work in slavery-like conditions, then that's illegal. If an employer treats an H1B like an indentured servant and makes them pay off the cost of their hiring and immigration, then that's illegal. It does happen in the US, which is bad. It happens far more often to immigrants in places like Dubai, whose conditions often are slavery.
Slavery is really fucking terrible. There is a reason we react so strongly against it. By saying H1B === slavery, you're being intellectually dishonest or using black-and-white thinking.
Dead wrong. Pay many years of one's and one's family life.
What is your point? Do you want to continue to debate the wisdom of diluting the meaning of the word 'slavery'?
Lets agree - some H1B was exploited by sweat shop consultancies who pay less than Americans. And this might be incredible for Americans looking for work.
But in what world does this kind of policy implementation is justified? How is this a functioning bureaucracy in a functioning democracy where people can suffer like this?
Worth reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour, it's not just the practice of chattel slavery, and various forms are still legal in the US.
Again, the resources I found in a quick search state about 5M slaves in Rome, and buying freedom was uncommon.