For a tech job, yes. Doubly so in a country that has no universal healthcare and has a joke of a social security system. Triply so on a precarious visa.
When an American wants 100k to pay off their student loan debt…
Yeah, that’s a 40% pay cut.
It’s one of the last remnants of the middle class. And if it happens people will be less likely to go to school for it without that high pay to pay off the loans.
Which means at a point we’d have to rely on these visas.
Also prevents the chance of someone being able to cobble together some type of competition
Most H1-Bs are filling jobs that pay $200k+. Most Americans don’t know but tech jobs pay between $200k-$1m, and almost all of those jobs are taken by folks on H1-B visas. Rather than sourcing and training Americans for the best paying jobs in the country, the tech industry has lobbied Congress to flood the market with labor from India and China. We can only imagine these wages would be higher without the influx of these workers. But, the wages are still high, and they would love to flood the market with even more cheap labor if they could uncap H1-Bs to further drive down wages.
Additionally, H1-B workers are easier to control. They all fear layoffs or firings because losing your job means losing your visa, if you can’t find a job within 2 months. So, there is incentive to neglect work-life balance and change the culture of a company into “996,” which means working from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
And, there is widespread fraud and discrimination against American workers too. When entire departments come to be filled with people from a certain country, they tend to keep hiring people from that country. One reasons for this is tech companies tend to hire from contracting agencies like WiPro, InfoSys, TCS, Cognizant, and HCL (WITCH), all of which originated in India and source exclusively from India, so they don’t focus on diversity at all (there have been lawsuits). Many of those contractors are doing jobs that should actually be filled by full time employees, but companies flagrantly ignore labor laws. When they do need to hire full time employees, they often convert these contractors. Also, many of these workers don’t have the actual qualifications for the job, so they falsify their resumes. I’ve interviewed candidates claiming 15 years of experience with a language, that cannot write a single line of code in that language when prompted.
There’s a mention in Bernie’s tweet of associate accountants getting 58k, but his point there is we have plenty of Americans who can fill that role, and there’s zero reason for a h1b.
60K is the minimum you need to get paid for an entry level job using H1B, if not your visa won’t get approved. It used to be around 58K and now it has gone up. A lot of companies offer this minimum so people who are desperate for a job will take it. Also companies use consultancies to fill these roles so you’ll have to check their salaries.
That’s the salary level at which h1b is uncapped. So ~70,000 h1b visas are allowed to make less then $60,000, but any amount can be approved if it’s “high paying” and above that salary. It’s supposed to make it so it’s more expensive to hire foreign talent, but that becomes irrelevant if it’s not actually high paying and most Americans demand well above that cap. Then there’s no incentive to hire Americans.
This is why a lot of people, even Elon, advocate for raising the cap to an actually high wage, and tie it to cost of living, because $60,000 in coastal California is poverty.
$60,000 a year is low wage?
Depending on career, yes.
That’s poverty level in Southern California.
In a high cost-of-living area, it absolutely can be. And lots of tech jobs are in HCOL areas.
That’s the minimum, but they usually get about twice as much.
For a tech job, yes. Doubly so in a country that has no universal healthcare and has a joke of a social security system. Triply so on a precarious visa.
When an American wants 100k to pay off their student loan debt…
Yeah, that’s a 40% pay cut.
It’s one of the last remnants of the middle class. And if it happens people will be less likely to go to school for it without that high pay to pay off the loans.
Which means at a point we’d have to rely on these visas.
Also prevents the chance of someone being able to cobble together some type of competition
Most H1-Bs are filling jobs that pay $200k+. Most Americans don’t know but tech jobs pay between $200k-$1m, and almost all of those jobs are taken by folks on H1-B visas. Rather than sourcing and training Americans for the best paying jobs in the country, the tech industry has lobbied Congress to flood the market with labor from India and China. We can only imagine these wages would be higher without the influx of these workers. But, the wages are still high, and they would love to flood the market with even more cheap labor if they could uncap H1-Bs to further drive down wages.
Additionally, H1-B workers are easier to control. They all fear layoffs or firings because losing your job means losing your visa, if you can’t find a job within 2 months. So, there is incentive to neglect work-life balance and change the culture of a company into “996,” which means working from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
And, there is widespread fraud and discrimination against American workers too. When entire departments come to be filled with people from a certain country, they tend to keep hiring people from that country. One reasons for this is tech companies tend to hire from contracting agencies like WiPro, InfoSys, TCS, Cognizant, and HCL (WITCH), all of which originated in India and source exclusively from India, so they don’t focus on diversity at all (there have been lawsuits). Many of those contractors are doing jobs that should actually be filled by full time employees, but companies flagrantly ignore labor laws. When they do need to hire full time employees, they often convert these contractors. Also, many of these workers don’t have the actual qualifications for the job, so they falsify their resumes. I’ve interviewed candidates claiming 15 years of experience with a language, that cannot write a single line of code in that language when prompted.
Where did you even get that number from?
There’s a mention in Bernie’s tweet of associate accountants getting 58k, but his point there is we have plenty of Americans who can fill that role, and there’s zero reason for a h1b.
The average Tesla pays one of those is 71k
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Tesla-Associate-Accountant-Salaries-E43129_D_KO6,26.htm
So yes, comparitively speaking it’s a low wage…
60K is the minimum you need to get paid for an entry level job using H1B, if not your visa won’t get approved. It used to be around 58K and now it has gone up. A lot of companies offer this minimum so people who are desperate for a job will take it. Also companies use consultancies to fill these roles so you’ll have to check their salaries.
That’s the salary level at which h1b is uncapped. So ~70,000 h1b visas are allowed to make less then $60,000, but any amount can be approved if it’s “high paying” and above that salary. It’s supposed to make it so it’s more expensive to hire foreign talent, but that becomes irrelevant if it’s not actually high paying and most Americans demand well above that cap. Then there’s no incentive to hire Americans.
This is why a lot of people, even Elon, advocate for raising the cap to an actually high wage, and tie it to cost of living, because $60,000 in coastal California is poverty.
Yes