First let me say that I support the underlying intention of this piece of writing. However and this is crucial - it is based on a factually wrong premise which invalidates the entire hit piece. Unfortunately that also makes the surrounding discussion and angst misdirected.
I am urging you to go into the rest of this comment with an open mind.
H-1B visas require a “prevailing wage” which the foreign worker must be paid at or above in order to get a visa. Prevailing wages are made based on the area the worker will be in and their title, and are published on the DOL website: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/wages
Before being allowed to hire a foreign worker a company must advertise the position in the US. This could be improved as right now you can put the ad in the most obscure newspaper you can find or on TV at 3am. But you do have to do something.
The decision to grant or deny a visa is made by a consular officer - a trained human - who carefully considers all the foreign worker’s case materials (called a “petition”).
All this is to say, they thought of this “bringing in foreign workers depresses wages” problem way back when they created this program and invented prevailing wages to mitigate it. They thought of “bringing in foreign workers denies locals opportunities to apply for those roles” way back when they created the program and invented job ad requirements to mitigate it.
Don’t get me wrong the H-1B is definitely being exploited. Bodyshops are a thing. But it’s not at huge scale. It is a problem to be fixed with better enforcement and targeted reforms, not pitchforks.
Mr. Sanders’ argument needs to be backed up differently. As it stands he is misleading the public. It’s surprisingly out of character.
Bernie’s right on somethings here and wrong on others.
There’s already a “best and brightest” visa and it’s not H1B. It’s O1.
That said H1B is essentially the only reasonable way for people to immigrate to the United States through employment. Most employers are not going to stick out the convoluted process to obtain an EB2/3 immigrant visa for a worker they haven’t any experience with especially since they can enter the country and immediately work for someone else.
Outsourcing is 1,000% worse.
If you like this topic then you might also like the investigative report dicusseed here:
I moved to US using H1B a decade ago and worked in FAANG earning 300K - 1.2M a year as an IC engineer. It never screams EXPLOITATION louder than this.
H1-B visa jobs should have a minimum salary of $200,000 a year for the US median cost of living.
> And one way to help make that happen is to substantially increase the guest worker fees large corporations pay to fund scholarships, apprenticeships, and job training opportunities for American workers. This is something that I have advocated from my first days as a U.S. senator.
This is the proper solution. Ideally, the H1-B program would remove quotas and lotteries and switch to a pure auction program for the fees. E.g, a Dutch auction for the X thousand available slots where the fee can be deducted from federal income taxes. If companies really want the best talent in the world, they should be willing to pay for it.