Trump’s DHS Starts to Import 85,000 H-1B Graduate Gig Workers

Breitbart ^ | 27 Mar 2020 | NEIL MUNRO

[metmom]

My one daughter is desperately looking for a job and they are doing THIS?!?!?!?!

It’s absolutely outrageous!!!!!!

[metmom]

If we are to insist on buying American, we also need to insist on hiring American.

Well said!

[gawatchman]

So we are importing more H-1B’s in the middle of a pandemic? I am in IT and on an all hands call Thursday and there was a hint that there could be layoffs coming when the presenter was asked . But , there is still a need for this? I have been saying all along this is nothing more than a scam and a state sponsored invasion of our country.

[NobleFree]

H1-B is normally people who already live here.

Evidence?

[NobleFree]

Just because it is Breitbart does not mean that we should not do our own checking.

Which part(s) of this article do you think need checking?

[polymuser]

I guess ‘Made in USA’ doesn’t apply to our workers.

Rather hypocritical...

[NobleFree]

Saw headline and knew it had to be written by Neil Munro.

Well, it's a gold star for you. Anything to say about the substance of the article?

[NobleFree]

Ideally, we would like to have enough working aged people to take care of and pay for the retirement of the larger boomer generation

H-1B is no help there - they work for less than Americans and drive down salaries.

[Seaplaner]

If we are to insist on buying American, we also need to insist on hiring American.

Say it loud!

.

[poinq]

H1-B requires an American company sponsor.

[combat_boots]

If we don’t know this, Indians will ordinarily hire only Idians; Somalis, Somalis. Etc.

YMMV

[combat_boots]

*Indians.

Have seen this phenomenon up close and personal.

[mo]

the native US population is so taxed, so burdened with college debt, and so spiritually malnourished that native population growth is all but impossible today

[poinq]

Most H1-B are required to work at a prevailing wage. In my experience with programmers it is at or above the level I would have paid an America if I could have found one.

But my daughter is a chemist. Chemist lab workers and software testers are full of Indian and Pakistani H1-B workers who flood the market and undoubtedly lower wages in both areas. My daughter could make more waiting tables than working in a lab as a chemist.

[indthkr]

"I guess ‘Made in USA’ doesn’t apply to our workers."

Consequently, American workers shouldn't think twice about working for a foreign controlled corporation. Many of them have operations here in the US.

[Lisbon1940]

Seems Breitbart is trending anti Trump. This is the third article I’ve seen with that kind of spin.

[NobleFree]

H1-B is normally people who already live here.

Evidence?

H1-B requires an American company sponsor.

And your theory is that an American company won't sponsor anyone who doesn't already live here? Why should anyone believe that?

[bgill]

This is one of Trump’s biggest failures. Shut down the program and put the US workers first.

[NobleFree]

Most H1-B are required to work at a prevailing wage.

Not so. From https://cis.org/Miano/Primer-Reporters-Looking-H1B-Program:

H-1B Is Designed to Allow Employers to Pay Foreign Workers Extremely Low Wages

The first problem in the system is that the employer determines the prevailing wage and the employer can use nearly any source for that determination. Prior to 2005, employers used this combined with the restrictions on enforcement to pay H-1B workers low wages. However, in 2004 Congress explicitly changed the law to allow employers to pay H-1B workers absurdly low wages.

Pettifoggers will tell you that H-1B workers are required to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage or the wage paid to similar workers. And golly gee willikers, it says just that right at the top of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(n)(1). That's enough information for the willful ignorami writing the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

But scroll down to 8 U.S.C. § 1101(p)(4). There you will find that the Department of Labor is required to take an existing wage survey and divide it into four skill level prevailing wages. Notice there is no requirement that the employer pay the H-1B worker at his skill level. Even if there were such a requirement, it would be unenforceable because skill is a subjective measure.

Under this system, employers classify

• 52 percent of H-1B workers at the lowest skill level, where they command a wage at the 17th percentile for the occupation and location.
  
  
• 30 percent at the next lowest skill level, where they command a wage at the 34th percentile.
  
  
• 12 percent at the next skill level, where they command the median (or actual prevailing wage).
  
  
• 6 percent at the highest skill level, where they command a wage at the 67th percentile.

Notice that H-1B workers are "highly skilled" when industry wants more of them, but those very same workers become low-skilled when determining what they have to be paid.

Also notice that if the H-1B program excluded aliens paid less than the actual prevailing wage, the quota would not come close to being reached.

For example, in Silicon Valley the prevailing wage for a programmer is $93,891. However, an employer can legally pay an H-1B worker $57,179. An employer can save $36,000 a year by going H-1B. It is no wonder that H-1B workers are concentrated in high-wage locations of the country.

But my daughter is a chemist. Chemist lab workers and software testers are full of Indian and Pakistani H1-B workers who flood the market and undoubtedly lower wages in both areas.

So you see how H-1B betrays its professed intentions.

[NobleFree]

Seems Breitbart is trending anti Trump. This is the third article I’ve seen with that kind of spin.

No "spin" - American workers are being shafted on Trump's watch. The buck stops with him.