545,000 US tech jobs vacant, says Robert Atkinson.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: If more than half a million tech jobs are lying vacant in the US for lack of skilled personnel, as Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation wrote in an editorial, then should the US wait for home-grown talent to fill it, or extend more work visas to foreign workers?
There is conflict on the issue of increasing the flow of foreign workers. GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio favor increase in legal immigration; Scott Walker and Rick Santorum are against it.
Democrat Hillary Clinton has voted for comprehensive immigration reform, which included raising the cap on H-1B visas. President Obama has championed increasing foreign work force, to boost the economy.
Going by Atkinson’s lament, Silicon Valley is in the throes of despair, or so it seems, as more than 15,000 H-1B visa petitions filed by top companies located there are likely to be rejected this year, due to the lottery system in place to distribute the annual quota of 85,000 of those coveted visas.
That number, of course, includes the 20,000 reserved for students who graduate with advanced degrees from educational institutions in the country, regardless of STEM-based or not.
“Silicon Valley’s advanced, traded industries power innovation and growth throughout the US economy. But denying companies access to the skilled workers they need is like asking them to work with one hand tied behind their backs,” wrote Robert Atkinson, in an Op-Ed in the Courier Post. “Instead, the United States should raise the cap on H-1B visas and broaden overall high-skill innovation so that our economic engine can be fuelled by the brightest minds from all over the world.” He adds: “This gap stymies growth in advanced technology industries and hurts American competitiveness.”
Atkinson reasons, “The deleterious impact of the STEM shortage and low H-1B visa cap is particularly bad for Silicon Valley. The region files more than 10% of the nation’s H-1B visa petitions. In this year’s lottery to allot scarce visas, more than 15,000 visa petitions filed by companies in the Silicon Valley are likely to be rejected. This will cause the region to forfeit an opportunity for significant growth in advanced industries.”
So, what is the solution?
Here are a few things the US government could do to alleviate this issue:
1. Create a new section of H-1B STEM visas to cater to only science, technology, engineering and math related jobs for foreign workers, with special restrictions, including: for jobs that command at least a salary of $100,000 plus a year, do not displace an American worker; and the candidate should have a degree from a reputable institution, if not from the US.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services received more than 2,33,000 applications in five business days this year for the 85,000 available H-1B visas. Since the top five requested jobs are all tech related, it makes sense to have at least 35,000 of those visas to be in this special STEM category, and to take it from the 65,000 general quota. The graduate students’ category of 20,000 H-1B visas should be kept intact for all jobs as the US do not want to be known as a destination for only STEM subjects. University jobs, of course, are exempt from the H-1B ceiling cap.
2. If indeed, the US wants to increase the H-1B ceiling, and immigration reforms are again taken up in Congress, the government should remove the blockage at present which legal immigrants face in receiving their Green Cards, especially those who are from India and are stuck in the EB-2 and EB-3 category for permanent residency. Fix the system, before expanding it. With hundreds of thousands of H-4 visa holders joining the work force, it’s important that the US remove the country caps, especially for those from India. Also, create a new law that says: if you have waited for 10 years for a Green Card, and are sponsored by a company based in the US, then you qualify automatically for it, if in good legal standing.
3. Reform the investor EB-5 visa program, which gives a Green Card to foreign investors and their family, for a contribution of $500,000. It is unethical and should be deemed illegal as well to dole out green cards to anybody who can ‘buy’ a green card, when millions of legal immigrants, who contribute to the economy and shape the country’s future are waiting for a Green Card, living in the US.
If anybody wants to receive the EB-5 visa, then that individual should commit at least a million dollars to start a business on the US shores, and hire at least 15 employees annually for two consecutive years, with at least 5 of them in the tech arena.
At present the EB-5 rules give investors the leeway to pump money into even developing commercial and residential buildings, with a guaranteed profit down the road, and a Green Card too as a ‘gift’. This is wrong, and should be done away with. A testament to the unfairness of it, and the myriad loopholes in it, are the numerous scams that have surfaced due to the present laws of the EB-5 visa program.
(Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar)
13 Comments
There should be a quota on how many visas/green cards indians and chinese get. Way too many of them are trying to abuse the system
I’ve been reading comments by people from all sides for quite a while now (many years, to be precise). I felt I had to say something that was less of an answer and more of a big picture argument.
My reply (or shall I call it an “article”) wasn’t supposed to be like this, but it turned out this way as I felt everyone only knew half of the story (or maybe less), and I couldn’t tell just half of my knowledge. I had to get it out after I read all the comments! And as an Indian who has worked in India, studied here, paid my tuition, as someone understands the social and political scenario and sentiments of US citizens, and having worked here for quite a while it’s my duty – whether you agree with me or not – to give my perspective. I don’t mean any disrespect, we don’t have to agree on anything, and certainly I may not be 100% right about everything. Esp. my comments about “most Americans” mean mostly Americans who don’t want foreign workers in the US. Ironically, most Americans who think rationally actually welcome us here!.
I agree with most arguments about so many H1B workers working for cheap (<$70,000/yr). It makes them slaves, working long hours, drives down the wages and overall hurts the economy. The H1B program needs a strict enforcement esp. in terms of the wages (i.e. they should not drive down the wages). The economics will automatically take care of driving down the # H1B's, as many people suggested. OR, it may actually attract more people as demand increases, drive up the wages, and improve the US economy. Then it'll be a win-win situation (remember that these are legal law-abiding tax paying immigrants who contribute to the economy, start tech companies to possibly create jobs for Americans). Although I would like to add that the median household income of Americans is <$50,000 (not necessarily tech jobs) the last time I checked, and $70,000 would sound quite good to these people; (largely because of the Republicans who won't allow minimum wages to rise, and the money in the system. I should mention that many of the "go back to where you came from" sentiments also come mostly from Republican supporters. So in a way it's ironic).
But, do you know why they are working like slaves for <$70,000? It's largely because of 2 reasons: 1) Obviously, tech companies don't bother to tell them that they are working for such low wages. They bill more and keep half of it while the worker is toiling away. If they lived here for a while and understand the economics and demographics, they probably wouldn't be happy. I certainly am not happy with this system.
And 2) and probably the most important reason. There are very less "portability" options available for these workers; if you ever sit down and read the process for filing for Green Cards (a.k.a permanent residency) for foreign workers, you will find that it's EXCEEDINGLY difficult for Indians/Chinese to get a GC; that's primarily because of the 7% cap on GCs issued each year. It would take you a few days just to read and understand how this difficult process works, what nuances have to be considered, and what options are available. And if someone applies for it, it's 10+ years of wait time (more if you dont have a masters degree). Since employees have to stay with a company for so many years, else restart the GC process if they switch, most get stuck in this cycle. If getting a GC was quicker than this, you would NEVER see any truly talented professional individual working for <$100,000 in Silicon Valley. They would quit their slave job the next day and take a better paying job, companies won't send people over to work as they'd have to pay more, thus driving down the so-called "illegitimate H1Bs" : talk about driving up the wages for everyone!
Compare our GC system to MOST other developed countries (Canada, UK, Germany, NZ, Aus etc); talented immigrants get citizenship in less than 5 years in some cases. Heck, Canada can give an indefinite work permit to talented individuals even before they are there, and a GC and citizenship within 3 years (someone like me with a Masters and PhD, who is already in a high paying US job, and a Canadian job offer, can apply and get a permanent residency while sitting in the US! I've even considered moving there, but I love my present job!).
In the US, it is more than 15 years. And if you're thinking "then why are all Indians coming here", they're not. The largest population of Indians is in the UK (and there's an increasing trend of Indians moving to Germany: they just made education free over there even for international students, why would't they go!). And good news for you, there is actually a reverse brain-drain going on where people are getting fed up of US immigration system and moving on to other countries, even back to India as the Indian economy booms. It's not huge, but the numbers are significant enough for Obama to consider action. If the GC system here was really great, it would solve all the issues that everyone mentions.
Our regressive immigration policies that might drive us away, might seem attractive at first for most US citizens who don't want us here (they might even be thinking "well, good riddance"), to protect US jobs. But consider the fact there there are over half a million vacancies in tech jobs that are not filled! Even if we had unlimited number of H1Bs, only half of them would get filled as we get about 260000 H1B applications per year. There are still a quarter million vacancies in those fields. Why are these not getting filled? Because there are no US citizens to fill those positions! Even if there were only 200,000 vacancies instead of half a million, why are they over 100,000 vacancies not getting filled each year by US citizens? Thus, although some arguments of H1Bs taking away US jobs might hold in some cases – those individual cases that are largely discussed and publicized – they do not if you actually look at the numbers (for the tech industry; number for other industries are far different).
Is this backlog because of the # Indians already in the US, of course it is! But consider that Indians in US comprise of only about 1% of the US population. Compare that to the more than 30% of Latinos and other ethnicites. But out of those 1%, over 35,000 are physicians/surgeons. The rest are mostly working in STEM fields which are vital for our economy as they're mostly high-paying jobs, which means that individuals have the options to open startups, buy more stuff, pay more taxes which positively contributes to the economy.
Also, remember that unlike other special interest groups, we do not have lobbies in congress, we are not pouring millions of dollars to fund congressmen to take decisions that benefit us. We voice what we can through petitions. No one told George H.W. Bush and Congress at the time to create the H1B program; it has been here since 1990, even when there weren't that many Indians here; it is a program driven by market requirement!
As to the H1B program for students graduating from US universities; you cannot argue that they are not talented. How else would they get a Masters+ level degree where ALL students – whether they are international or local – are judged by the same standards. Surely, there should be a different STEM category visa for these international students right? Or they will just take their talents back to their own country, or some other country willing to use their talents. In the end, universities get their money, America loses talent, and these people who might've created startups creating jobs for Americans are gone. And if you're thinking that American students will fill that gap: they won't because after 4 years of Bachelors most of them don't bother (I know this from personal experience). Either because they get a job, move on to something else, or they have to pay exorbitant about of money for student loans. More than half of MS students are Indians,Chinese, Iranians,… you name it. But then how come Indians are able to come here for the same degree program, where the fee is 3 times higher in $$ for international students? Most universities don't even give funding to these students: It's mostly because of the life savings of our parents that we are able to do this! Or the students loans that we take in India that we have to pay back! And believe me, if Indian students (or for that matter any international students) realize they cannot work here after getting such an expensive degree, they won't come here; they'll go to Canada or Germany, and tons of money will be removed from the economy. America has always been a land of immigrants (dating back to the 1600s). We come here because it attracts us with all the opportunity. Notice that I said opportunity, not for the glamour, not just for the $, and certainly not because we would otherwise be living in hell. Notice how Indians hardly go anywhere as refugees! Even European Americans and their descendants have been immigrants at one point or the other throughout history. Imagine if the US government had stopped letting people in in the 1800 with similar sentiment? (Hell, even Native Americans crossed the Bering strait thousands of years ago to settle in the new world. As far as I'm concerned the only true non-immigrants are the African people who migrated through Sinai 70,000 years ago.)
And this brings me to my last point: immigration. It's a big hot-button topic in politics, but mostly for Latinos because politicians want the 30% votes on their side. Who cares about the 1% Indians who are honestly waiting to integrate into this society for more than a decade! I can understand, and have even heard many sentiments going around which are mostly like "they should all f**in leave!". Consider what would happen if ALL Indians liquidated assets and left US: it would create a HUGE hole (potentially) crashing the Silicon Valley and many other tech hubs. Imagine if 35,000 doctors left the US in a day; it would crash the already crippled healthcare system. It would cause many other cascading problems, while other countries will be happy to accept so much money and talent.
To conclude, do I think that the H1B system is perfect? Of course not! Do I think it can be changed without pissing of people from one side or the other? Of course not! Do I think it should be eliminated altogether? As an Indian, of course not! But even if I was not an Indian, I would think that as extremely irresponsible for all the reasons mentioned above.
This is where I sign off! And kudos for making it all the way through to the end of my extremely long, sentimental, and boring explanation of what I think
1) $100,000/year is a mere pittance for STEM talent in the major cities. Doesn’t even buy a middle-class lifestyle after considering the huge amounts of time out of the workplace and money that STEM people have expended on their training. Minimum pay for a H-1B should be at least $250,000/year.
2) There are not 500,000 openings in STEM. A typical STEM job advertised online, if it is a legitimate job, is replicated no fewer than 10-20 times by 3rd party recruiting firms looking to score a commission on referral. Many postings are fake or are not posted by companies looking to hire in good faith. Many Silicon Valley tech companies even create fake postings to mislead competitors as to their future competitive direction, or to create an aura of growth when no such thing exists.
3) There is no limit on “best and brightest” people who can be brought into the country to work on the O-1 visa. The O-1 visa requires that a tech worker actually be “best and brightest” though, typically with compensation that reflects such.
4) Visas such as OPT basically destroy the careers of young US STEM graduates by allowing foreigners essentially first crack at American STEM jobs. Even top US citizen graduates don’t get interviews after graduation if they don’t have the “3-5 years of ‘experience'” arbitrarily demanded by firms. But conveniently, OPT opportunities are abound for non-citizens.
$500,000 is not a small amount,
particularly when you dont know that this investment is going to come,
if at all the money is going to be recovered,
remember that this $500,000 the investor has earned it his hard way
and not won in state lottery or lotto.
just for your information, the same EB-5 also has an option to invest $1 million and create and sustain 10 jobs for two years
new jobs in any segment are good for economy,
why insist on have the new jobs in tech sector only !
when you know that the hard earned $500,000 invested doesn’t come back even after 8 years
and that too if it comes back !
and that too without any return,
with such a big risk on hard earned money,
is it fair to say Green card as a gift to the investor ?
it
is unfortunate of you to consider hard earned money parted with you,
without any confirmation of returning of capital for 8 years, to be
talked about in such a demeaning manner.
I agree with all your points of supporting H1B , H4 and all other categories,
but does supporting one category have to be at expense of another category,
no.
May God bless you.
The current scam is to buy a house in Arcadia, tear it down, and then hire a bunch of people to build a McMansion. This is being done by wealthy Chinese people. There’s your 500k investment, and 50 jobs created or whatever is required. Losses are unlikely.
The H1B Visa Program is detrimental to the American middle
class.
It’s a simple case of Economics 101: The Law of Supply and Demand.
Tech labor is a resource that follows this natural law. If
you flood any labor market with outside labor, the wage rate is pressured downward, thus harming or destroying the careers local workers.
If there were a shortage of tech/STEM labor in America, we would see wage rates
skyrocketing. But the wage rates of American tech workers have been going slowly down since their peak in 2001.
Why? Because of a massive inflow of H1B Visa tech workers from abroad, mainly from India.
The H1B Visa Program is destructive to American workers and American families and should be terminated.
Suggestion #1 is a good idea, but that should apply to all visas issued, and the allotment reduced to 35000. #2 is a bad idea, because by design, it would allow for more green card holders that could potentially take jobs that would otherwise go to U.S citizens. Robert really should write to his Representative in Congress to enact the changes in the law that he wants.
Everything about this article is a lie.
You think that you can control the outcome because you control the comments on one insignificant web page. You’re wrong. You may win a battle or two but you’ve already lost the war. You just don’t know it yet.
“due to the lottery system in place to distribute the annual quota of 85,000 of those coveted visas”
Stop it.
http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h1b-fy-12-characteristics.pdf
The number of H-1B petitions approved decreased 3 percent from 269,653 in FY 2011 to
262,569 in FY 2012
“it’s important that the US remove the country caps, especially for those from India”
Yeah, because it’s not enough that 64% of all H-1B’s are from India, and it’s not enough that those H-1B’s work for primarily Indian offshoring companies operating in America — companies which in the majority do not hire Americans. The scales need to be tilted even more in favor of India.
“so that our economic engine can be fuelled by the brightest minds from all over the world”
If these are indeed ‘the brightest minds from all over the world’ why, again, are 64% of them from India? Why do a majority of them have no more than the equivalent (equivalent being a BROAD category in H-1B visa law) of a bachelors degree?
If these are indeed ‘the brightest minds from all over the world’ why do 50% of current H-1B visa holders make less than 70,000 per year?
The H-1B guest worker visa program is a scam to provide the tech industry with cheaper labor. Period. Full Stop. But don’t believe me. Drive along Arques Ave in Sunnyvale CA. Go into some of those massive buildings that Apple Computer owns and talk to some of the overridingly Indian employees working on Apple outsource projects for Cognizant, Wipro, Infosys, etc. in those buildings.
My reply (or shall I call it an “essay”) wasn’t supposed to be like this, but it turned out this way as I felt you only knew half of the story (or maybe less), and I couldn’t tell you just half of my knowledge. I had to get it out after I read all the comments! And as an Indian who has worked in India, studied here, paid my tuition, as someone understands the social and political scenario and sentiments of US citizens, and having worked here for quite a while it’s my duty – whether you agree with me or not – to give my perspective. I don’t mean any disrespect, we don’t have to agree on anything, and certainly I may not be 100% right about everything:
I agree with your argument about 50% of H1B workers working for cheap (<$70,000/yr). It makes them slaves, working long hours, drives down the wages and overall hurts the economy. The H1B program needs a strict enforcement esp. in terms of the wages (i.e. they should not drive down the wages). The economics will automatically take care of driving down the # H1B's, as you suggested. OR, it may actually attract more people as demand increases, drive up the wages, and improve the US economy. Then it'll be a win-win situation (remember that these are legal law-abiding tax paying immigrants who contribute to the economy, start tech companies to possibly create jobs for Americans). Although I would like to add that the median household income of Americans is <$50,000 (not necessarily tech jobs) the last time I checked, and $70,000 would sound quite good to these people; (largely because of the Republicans who won't allow minimum wages to rise, and the money in the system. I should mention that many of the "go back to where you came from" sentiments also come from Republican supporters).
But, do you know why they are working like slaves for <$70,000? It's largely because of 2 reasons: 1) Obviously, tech companies don't bother to tell them that they are working for such low wages. They bill more and keep half of it while the worker is toiling away. If they lived here for a while and understand the economics and demographics, they probably wouldn't be happy. I certainly am not happy with this system.
And 2) and probably the most important reason. There are very less "portability" options available for these workers; if you ever sit down and read the process for filing for Green Cards (a.k.a permanent residency) for foreign workers, you will find that it's EXCEEDINGLY difficult for Indians/Chinese to get a GC; that's primarily because of the 7% cap on GCs issued each year. It would take you a few days just to read and understand how this difficult process works, what nuances have to be considered, and what options are available. And if someone applies for it, it's 10+ years of wait time (more if you dont have a masters degree). Since employees have to stay with a company for so many years, else restart the GC process if they switch, most get stuck in this cycle. If getting a GC was quicker than this, you would NEVER see any truly talented professional individual working for <$100,000 in Silicon Valley. They would quit their slave job the next day and take a better paying job, companies won't send people over to work as they'd have to pay more, thus driving down the so-called "illegitimate H1Bs" : talk about driving up the wages for everyone!
Compare our GC system to MOST other developed countries (Canada, UK, Germany, NZ, Aus etc); talented immigrants get citizenship in less than 5 years. Heck, Canada can give a work permit to talented individuals even before they are there, and a GC and citizenship within 3 years. In the US, it is more than 15 years. And if you're thinking "then why are all Indians coming here", they're not. The largest population of Indians is in the UK. And good news for you, there is actually a reverse brain-drain going on where people are getting fed up of this system and moving on to other countries, even back to India as Indian economy booms. If the GC system here was really great, it would solve all the issues that you mentioned.
Our regressive immigration policies that might drive us away, might seem attractive at first (you might even be thinking "well, good riddance of the Indians"), to protect US jobs, but consider the fact there there are over half a million vacancies in tech jobs that are not filled! Even if we had unlimited number of H1Bs, only half of them would get filled as we get about 260000 H1B applications per year. There are still a quarter million vacancies in those fields. Why are these not getting filled? Because there are no US citizens to fill those positions! Even if there were only 200,000 vacancies instead of half a million, why are they 115,000 vacancies not getting filled each year by US citizens? Thus, although your argument of H1Bs taking away US jobs might hold in some cases (those individual cases that are largely publicized), but not if you actually look at the numbers (for the tech industry; number for other industries are far different).
Is this backlog because of the # Indians already in the US, of course it is! But consider that Indians in US comprise of only about 1% of the US population. Compare that to the more than 30% of Latinos and other ethnicites. But out of those 1%, over 35,000 are physicians/surgeons. The rest are mostly working in STEM fields which are vital for our economy as they're mostly high-paying jobs, which means that individuals have the options to open startups, buy more stuff, pay more taxes which positively contributes to the economy.
Also, remember that unlike other special interest groups, we do not have lobbies in congress, we are not pouring millions of dollars to fund congressmen to take decisions that benefit us. No one told them to create the H1B program. It has been here since 1990, even when there weren't many Indians here; it is a program driven by market requirement!
As to the H1B program for students graduating from US universities; you cannot argue that they are not talented. How else would they get a Masters + level degree where ALL students – whether they are international or local – are judged by the same standards. Surely, there should be a different STEM category visa for these international students right? Or they will just take their talents back to their own country, or some other country willing to use their talents. In the end, universities get their money, America loses talent, and these people who might've created startups creating jobs for Americans are gone. And if you're thinking that American students will fill that gap: they won't because after 4 years of Bachelors they don't bother (I know this from personal experience). Either because they get a job, move on to something else, or they have to pay exorbitant about of money for student loans. But then how come Indians are able to come here for the same degree program, where the fee is 3 times higher in $$ for international students? Most universities don't even give funding to these students: It's mostly because of the life savings of our parents that we are able to do this! Or the students loans that we take in India that we have to pay back! And believe me, if Indian students (or for that matter any international students) realize they cannot work here, they won't come here, and tons of money will be removed from the economy. America has always been a land of immigrants (dating back to the 1600s). Even European Americans and their descendants have been immigrants at one point or the other. Imagine if the US government had stopped letting people in in the 1800 with similar sentiment? (Hell, even Native Americans crossed the Bering strait thousands of years ago to settle in the new world.)
And this brings me to my last point: immigration. It's a big hot-button topic in politics, but mostly for Latinos because politicians want the 30% votes on their side. Who cares about the 1% Indians who are honestly waiting to integrate into this society for more than a decade. I can understand, and have even heard many sentiments going around which are mostly like "they should all f**in leave!". Consider what would happen if all non-resident Indians left US: it would create a HUGE hole (potentially) crashing the Silicon Valley and many other tech hubs. Imagine if 35,000 doctors left the US in a day; it would crash the already crippled healthcare system.
To conclude, do I think that the H1B system is perfect? Of course not! Do I think it can be improved without pissing of people from one side or the other? Of course not! Do I think it should be eliminated altogether? As an Indian, of course not! But even if I was not, I would think that as extremely irresponsible for all the reasons mentioned above.
This is where I sign off! And kudos for making it all the way through to the end of my extremely long, sentimental, and boring explanation of what I think
What the U.S. really needs is an expedited Green Card program that is managed by the worker, not the company.
You really can’t put a fixed dollar figure of 100k on what is the appropriate value/cost per year of a worker. In Santa Clara (heart of Silicon Valley), the average job pays 105,000$/year. And this is because of the high cost of rent and home ownership. To affort the median priced home in San Francisco, you need a household income of 230,000$/year, and most of the rest of the Silicon Valley has equally high home cost of around one million dollars per house and/or 3500-5000$/month in rent.
I have no doubt, that at a suitable low prices, there are millions of jobs available in the United States, but the bottle neck is not in the number of workers. It is a result of the disparate distribution of entrepreneurs and venture capital, versus the location of affordable housing and workers.
So to bring in workers into say Silicon Valley you have to set the bar higher at around 140k per year. But to bring a worker say in the midwest, you can set the bar a little below 100k.
The H-1b system has been hijacked by companies that reap a huge financial reward by removing jobs from the United States. Absent these companies, we would have spare visas for several months may be the entire year.
No country needs a government program that promotes the removal of jobs. And in the U.S. this especially true given the jobless recovery we are experiencing. With half of U.S. IT and STEM workers unable to find work after five years of looking. The case of the computer worker in Texas whose wife asked President Obama, why can her husband find a job in Texas. The husband eventually found a job, by switching to a medical career. He didn’t want to relocate. And hence the need for Silicon Valley companies to stop whining and start ponying up the actual living wage cost of a worker in Silicon Valley.
Blindly increasing the number of H-1b visas will simply help the Offshore Outsourcing companies remove jobs faster, and exacerbate the jobless recovery.
An expedited Green card, would at least afford the requirement that companies prove (albeit by questionable practices and loopholes) that they tried to find a worker locally first. This would keep the job destroying Offshore Outsourcing companies out of the system and/or limit their destruction on the U.S. economy.
Bizarre, isn’t it, that working in the Bay Area’s premiere industry, even with double “average” incomes, isn’t enough to afford home ownership on reasonable terms.
And what about the San Jose police officers who earn, on average, 180k/year, and don’t have to worry every day about outsourcing and layoffs?
H-1B needs to be abolished entirely so that our top tech workers can restore some pricing power to their services, and our new grads, mostly locked out of the labour market for the past 15 years, can actually get the “time of day” from companies looking to hire instead of seeing their resumes/job applications falling on deaf ears.