"One might conspiratorially attribute the allocation of H1-B visas by lottery rather than by salary ... for its ability discipline labor across the salary spectrum"
Design intention seems less significant here than "do the firms* recognize what it gives them and still want it"
You've put into words things I have intuited over the last few years. Something I thought as I read this, the H1-B is purposely (cynically) created this way. It give the rich guys an exploitable high value workforce, while (purposely) making high value workers mad at immigration feeding the hate.
Would you keep the existing processes and regulations for immigrant visas, in particular PWD and PERM? Immigrant visas are much more costly and difficult to obtain than H-1B, and take a lot longer. Many employers won’t even start the process until after several years of employment.
I think these are dimensions it’s fruitful for employers to lobby to streamline, rather than fallback to H-1B. Prevailing wage determination, in any case more bureaucratic hassle than effective control, is less important when the recruit will have a green card and can quit for better work. 1/
In any case, however much the process annoys employers, I think the EB visas are generally fully subscribed to their cap. That’s not to defend rationing them by bureaucratic hassle! It’s a bad form of rationing. 3/
But we’d know we’d have a problem if we fold H-1Bs into the EB cap but employers fail to use the extra slots. We should still reform the process (as people constantly suggest of the H-1B program too) so slots are allocated neither randomly nor by makework. /fin
A lot of employment-based immigrant visas are for people who start out in H-1B. I can’t predict the levels, but I do predict substantial changes in composition. Few smaller employers and startups would be willing to take on the cost of PERM for someone who is not already working there.
I appreciate the post, I would argue that firms wanting to employ high-skilled and high-paid workers need to do something to create the American worker that can do the same job 1 for 1. Otherwise you absolve corporations of any part in solving the problem.
but employment-based visas, which H-1B proponents characterize their program as being, bringing in necessary talent, are not controversial even without an exploitation surplus… 2/
I think this post would be more interesting if it considered more completely this outside argument: ~1870-1940 was a time of huge corporate profits, huge exploitive immigration, but also a massive surplus to this day. I’m here because of my poor immigrant ancestors. My house was built then, the…
…sewer pipe in my neighborhood that keeps our city sanitary is still in service from that time.
Okay, it was bad in many ways. But immigrants competed with natives. Corporations profiteered. And yet modern life exists on the backs of their work to this very day.
What are you asking, really? Can immigration be a positive sum game over time, even if it arranged in ways that harm the native working class in the short-term and contribute to inequality? Sure. 1/
But if that native working class has the political power to block such immigration and punish politicians who arrange it on those terms, won’t they? 2/
(Note the “everybody better off” part of 20th C history also depended on transitioning from the Gilded Age to the New Deal. The inequality might have persisted, widened, in which case the history would not even generations hence be so whiggish and happy.) 4/
Immigration is incredibly controversial in Singapore; the opposition's main argument against the government is "they let in foreigners" and a common rallying cry is "jobs for foreigners, national service for Singaporeans."
And also, the post should mention the average H-1B salary is like $140k.
Comments
Design intention seems less significant here than "do the firms* recognize what it gives them and still want it"
I would think "yes"
Okay, it was bad in many ways. But immigrants competed with natives. Corporations profiteered. And yet modern life exists on the backs of their work to this very day.
So how do you reconcile that? 2/2
And also, the post should mention the average H-1B salary is like $140k.