Re tech immigrants specifically: the low wage slave idea doesn’t hold up.
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The folks I used to work with are now in London, Toronto, Berlin, Singapore. Many still choose the U.S., especially those who have access to far more cutting edge type of work. They’re not going to be compensated for that type of work anywhere outside of the U.S. coasts.
They’re very different from the ‘Cognizant and Wipro sends in 1000 workers’. The only thing they have in common is the visa they’re on.
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Personally, I come from a country with so much money and so much opportunity that the only place that offers more of it is California. I would never have gotten off my arse to leave my nice life in Singapore unless I felt something about it was worth it.
Some days, I think about how someone like me or my friends who do similar jobs in Bangalore would move to SF far more easily than someone from a smaller city in the U.S. (in spite of the visas and challenges of international immigration, the proximity to that type of work is shorter because of networks). We’ve done a lot of this work in often many other places. It doesn’t mean we are better.
It means that global tech hubs have far more in common with each other than other American cities.
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@skinnylatte
Still, there is the underlying problem that US schools are not providing the quality education that is needed for a lot of these tech jobs. -
@JoeBeam many immigrants come from places with poorly resourced education systems too. This take is true but it is also benchmarking the average population of the U.S. generally to the top of other countries’ talent. It doesn’t mean that the immigrants are better necessarily, just that the immigrants who want to come are at the top of their field in their society and probably globally too.
Even if U.S. education got better over time and things were fine, H1B immigrants still end up creating more jobs and increasing salaries especially as they become citizens shortly after.
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@skinnylatte I have friends here in India who get paid these numbers by EU/US companies as remote workers and they won't even entertain the idea of moving at their current salary. The whole wage slave thing is so infuriating to hear every single time it comes up, people act like the US is such a dream land that Indians would leave everything behind for meager pay just for the privilege to exist on US soil.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by [email protected]
Some confusion in the comments, but H-1B company and salary info is public.
Look up any big tech co, even Trump’s companies. You’ll see that these foreigners are here on well paid jobs (it’s also the basic comp, doesn’t include stock). It’s the govt saying ‘we won’t approve this visa for this job title unless you pay at least 150K / 200K / 300K’.
I get people are upset, but spreading the lie that all these workers are wage slaves doesn’t help.and insulting to slaves. There are other issues with exploitation, the idea that they’re only getting these jobs so they can be exploited doesn’t help.
If you’re of the opinion that high paid jobs should only go to Americans, I can’t help you with that.
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@msfjarvis yes, and I have hired remote folks in India at similar rates. It’s frankly insulting
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@msfjarvis @skinnylatte I remember talking to multiple Silicon Valley recruiters a few years back. And they felt so arrogant insinuating “why wouldn’t you want to move to the greatest country in the world?”
And all I could think of was
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fJh9t9h6Wn0 -
@fj @msfjarvis lol I feel like that’s changed a bit coz of the last couple of years
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@skinnylatte Your arguments are logical, and I believe you. I worked at Caltech in the past and I never worried about losing my job to people at that level because they didn't want my job.
But the incoming government here is likely to abuse the visa system if they can, to help corporations drive down wages and union-bust, even as recent layoffs have already flooded the market with qualified applicants. They also lie a LOT and say divisive things to cast blame off themselves and onto others.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Michael Potter last edited by [email protected]
@mpotter yes they are, and I don’t trust leftists and democrats to push back because they ate already getting it wrong. They not fighting the things that matter and they’re going to end up harming more immigrants just to be ‘right’
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Colin Lee supports #BLM 🇺🇦replied to Adrianna Tan last edited by
@skinnylatte I have a cousin who came here on an H1B.
You can't ignore the fact that they aren't allowed to stay here without finding a new visa sponsor. They can't just leave their job if work conditions are bad because it'll be heck to find the next sponsor to take over their visa.
Companies say these immigrants work harder, but there's also definitely a stick as well as a carrot.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Colin Lee supports #BLM 🇺🇦 last edited by
@colintheshots I’m not ignoring that. I am an immigrant myself. I am fully aware. I’m saying people claiming to want to speak for us should use facts to advocate for us. There’s a lot of FUD
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@skinnylatte there’s a certain kind of protectionist populist narrative on the left that tends to have a blind spot on issues like this.
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@yaygya yeah im really tired of the ‘I really care about labor issues that’s why we have to close the doors’ narrative
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@skinnylatte I've been trying to work out the clearest way to express what I think is wrong with the left/Democrats right now. We're a dog that's been wagged, an ant hill that's been kicked. We've been convinced to throw ourselves under the bus.
If we can collectively learn some psychological opsec, and stay frosty in the face of the outrage machine that's being used to keep us muddled and angry, we can turn things around.
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@mpotter Bernie just threw immigrants under a bus, so we can start with him and other white people in the system.
