I think there are lots of options that could be explored. One is if these are for truly research types of things, maybe keep a smaller amount of the visas, but only for that. And make it easy for them to become full citizens if they wish. Make it easy for them to float between entities (corps, universities) so that they are truly free agents in the marketplace, etc., even if they don’t opt for citizenship.

Another would be to find ways to fast-track truly rare talent right to a path to citizenship that is not tied to an entity at all. Or maybe it is, but for maybe three months as a trial run, then they are full citizens free to work for anyone (or not at all, or go to school again), and vote, etc…

But as for stacking the deck for corporations with lots of compliant cheap labor to be used in IT and engineering, keep American workers in line, and drive down wages…nah.

The supposed aims and the rationales given for the H-1B are easily punctured the minute you ask - wait a minute, if these are such precious commodities that cannot be found here, why the fuck would we send them packing in 3 to 6 years? Why wouldn’t we do everything possible to entice them to stay and become full citizens? Surely they’ll end up starting up businesses of their own, etc…it’s truly the American dream. Why are we subbing a 3 - 6 year gig for the American dream, FFS?

Companies will always look for the cheaper option. If you ban H1B1 visas then they will just outsource the whole thing if it’s cheaper than hiring local talent.

I think serious consideration should be about closing up that loophole, too. If companies want to enjoy access to American infrastructure and the American market, they should be willing to pay Americans a competitive wage for that. If companies start using offshored talent, there is nothing stopping that from being taxed so high as to make it cost-prohibitive.

Because without those visas, the non-American talent can’t be employed, and the US simply doesn’t have the local talent to fill those spots.

LOL. America has tons and tons of local talent. The job market is actually very tough right now since there is so much of that talent.

Companies just want to drive down wages to much lower levels, and claim they cannot source local talent here, which is a blatant lie in every case I’ve seen - which is in IT.

There is no law of nature that could not be taxed accordingly, too, but the country needs to have this option presented as part of the conversation.

That threat is always thrown out there to keep people from questioning H-1B as if we need to answer to wayward corporations, instead of the other way around…

It was a good thought, but it’s being heavily abused now.

I’m not sure when it was a good idea and I also don’t know a time when it was not being abused, if I’m being honest. At least in IT (and in general, engineering, or so I’ve heard) going back to the 90s…

Now, the other threat they hold over our heads is that companies will just outsource if we don’t allow this, but that’s not a law of nature or anything, either. There is no reason we should not tax such services like that, too.

America kept telling their youth (and probably keep telling them) to “learn to code” because those were the jobs they were told Americans should aspire to, etc. Since I’ve been in IT since the 90s, I have more than my share of doubts about this promise, since I’ve seen how we are treated and the strong desire in the corporate world to suppress wages, benefits, any sense of autonomy, etc…if America is serious about this message, maybe they ought to look out for the workers.

It was getting abused since at least the 90s, at least as far as I could see. Sure, it was anecdotal as far as what I saw, but you’d hear others saying similar things.

The sad thing is that even after the dot-com bubble, we still had H-1Bs, when something like that should have been an obvious trigger point to shut them down to zero, at least within IT jobs, and only raise them above zero once some other trigger point is reached, and even then, only very cautiously.

If companies really need to find such rare talent, maybe they find some kind of way to have Congress build them a path to bring someone in as a full citizen and work. We’ll see how many “shortages” of local talent they have once all that rare talent are also free agents entirely capable of finding another job, LOL. I think the real “shortage” they are talking about is a lack of workers beholden to them, and willing to work for less than the prevailing wages…

I have long thought - since the 90s - that the H-1B program needs a lot of oversight and a revamping on exactly how it is governed, but I don’t for a minute think that MTG understands the nuance here. Trying to talk about this in certain company is always fun, because it’s like trying to talk about Israel in the early 90s - you’d get accused of being a nativist or whatever immediately w/ almost no thought, just like talking about Israel in frank terms would get people called “antisemitic”. It seems that, like the Israel thing, it’s kind of broken through into the national conversation at least vs. just people within IT only. Unfortunately, it seems to be nativists like Bannon and MTG trying to make the counter H-1B arguments, and I hate that.

If we really cannot find local talent for an endeavor, and it is truly something that is rather time-bound, sure, bring in people for 3-6 years, I guess.

But I think the terms that the person is under should not be something where they have much reliance on the good graces of a company. And I think finding easy paths for them to transition to full citizenship if they so wish should be there. And I think the requirement should be that they are paid 2x what the going rate here might be.

But using these visas for cheap labor for companies to exploit in things like programming jobs - most especially in a crappy job market exacerbated by things like AI - well, hell to the no. We have PLENTY of that talent in this country, FFS. Companies just want to suppress the cost of doing business here.

And for people saying that this is the alternative as opposed to shipping jobs overseas - bullshit, we can tax the shit out of overseas services, too. Apparently, Pedonald is even able to do such things as tariffs on goods without an act of Congress; it would be something that could be done on services as well.

I think what was most ridiculous was that the extremist right wing in this country set up a situation in which Biden had to issue pardons to try to preempt this nonsense from the moronic chuds like Taco and those that support him.

Came here to say this. The people who were queening out over it were the usual suspects. I really love it when leftist scolds team up with the extremist right wingers to finger-wag someone like Biden.

I love it when they all call each other RINOs. It’s just as hilarious as xtians all declaring that other xtians are not “true” xtians.

😆 🤣

As usual, the arsonist is putting out the fire and wanting us all to give him a participation trophy for it.

Peacefully tour The Capitol. I mean, that’s all The Peaceful Patriots wanted to do. The people doing bad things were either BLM, Antifa or part of the “Deep State” just trying to make The Peaceful Patriots look bad.

You should ask them why Pedonald keeps pardoning antifa.

This is a perfect title.

I want some journalists to ask him why reversing his taxes, oops, I mean, “tariffs” is a good thing, if taxes tariffs are so great?

I thought this was why so many Q-addled dumbfucks voted for the rotten orange? They thought that he was going to bring about “The Storm” to arrest all the pedos?

Why would Taco call these people soft for doing what he was supposedly there to do?

The irony is that I’m thinking the result will be that most normal Americans are going to try to do their best to forget this skid mark of a “president”.

He retorts back he watches and reads all kinds of news like Drudge Report, OAN, and New Max.

Holy shit, what an open mind. What is he, a LIEberal?

/s

It’s part of Murc’s Law. It’s just a given that Republicans can and will behave like broken individuals with psychopathy and arrested development and are completely incapable of getting any better or growing up. It is the responsibility of Democrats to reach out and coddle and “compromise” with such types, even if the Republicans’ policies have the end game of these people being erased or imprisoned or excommunicated or treated like second-class citizens…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc's_law

The idea reflects an asymmetry in press coverage, where Democrats are assumed to be responsible for policy outcomes and are expected to compromise, while Republicans are often portrayed as passive or structurally constrained. As Paul Campos summarizes, “American politics operates within a frame in which the party of the government is the Democrats, while the Republicans are the party opposed to the government. This holds without regard to which party happens to be in power at any moment … The Democrats think the government should do things, and the Republicans think it shouldn’t…”[4] He also describes the dynamic by noting that “Republicans are like rocks rolling down hill or perhaps sharks eating seals: they do what they do because that’s just what they are, so there’s no point in holding them responsible for anything, since they could not do ottherwise [sic]”.[4]

I’ve been noticing this for decades and could not put my finger on what I objected to, and now that it is named and properly described, holy shit, you just cannot unsee it. It’s not confined to the press, it is EVERYWHERE, all the time, and those finger-wagging nannies that try to pull this shit look all the stupider for it now that it has a name…

It just leads to the Overton window getting dragged even further to the right.

Purity spirals? How do you find the middle ground between freedom and fascism?