Maybe the visas should be tailored to only that, then. Or come up with a specialist visa meant entirely for that.

As is, they are also used by IT bros…

She might want to heed Michelle Obama’s warning…

The original (presented) heart of the visas were to pull in some of the best and brightest of other countries to fast track them to become Americans, thus bolstering the output of America.

I think if you’d ask most (non-racist) Americans about this, you’d probably get a willingness to find some way to get exactly that kind of result. Seems like a win-win all around, except for corporatists only looking at next quarter’s profits.

The underlying rationale seems well-founded - there are smart people everywhere, how can we get entice some of them to come here and work for us? Hell, whether it was true or not, that used to be very much America’s brand, too.

Unfortunately, the charade and exploitation that is where the H-1B very quickly ended up is very much our brand, now, too, and that just sucks. I’d love to find a way back to that original idea and find a way to live up to it…

It’s more about mashing up “Pedo” with “Donald”.

He’s not wrong.

Pedonald is threatening Colorado with unspecified “harsh measures”; it might be that someone in Colorado caves to this asshat even if I’m sure most of Colorado’s citizens want her to serve all of her term under Colorado’s watch.

This is the least shocking thing about their squabble.

Gee, I wonder why they cancelled the jobs data, too.

I’ve been working decades in IT and for decades I’ve heard fraudulent claims from companies saying that they cannot find local talent. That’s nonsense.

And knowing that companies have been shedding workers for some time now after over-hiring during Covid and hearing how long it is taking for people (in some cases, people I know) to land new jobs is an indication that there should be plenty of people to hire within America without resorting to H-1Bs.

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.