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.
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.