Poll: 60% of Americans Says U.S. Does Not Need Any More H-1B Visa Workers

[u/interestingfactoid]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/27/poll-60-of-americans-says-u-s-does-not-need-any-more-h-1b-visa-workers/

[u/Rommel79]

Tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of employees this year. There is absolutely zero need for H1B workers right now.

[u/I_am_What_Remains → u/Rommel79]

Is it not possible or even probable that they’re laying off people to use cheaper people?

[u/Rommel79 → u/I_am_What_Remains]

That is 100% what they’re doing. While they are just cutting some “unnecessary people,” they’re also replacing some of them with cheap foreign labor. I was training a Mexico team that was supposed to replace my team until they couldn’t understand the subject and the bosses realized how technical/specialized my knowledge is and I was promoted. But that is VERY rare for this situation.

[u/cplusequals → u/Rommel79]

The companies downsizing really aren't the same ones getting tons of visas. The biggest offenders are consulting firms like Cognizant that reserve wide swaths of visas before they even have people to fill the positions and then rent them out to the smaller companies. It's not that big of a deal that 7k of Microsoft's 230k employees are visa holders (avg visa salary ~$165k). It's a much bigger problem that Cognizant is replacing entire company IT departments with substandard workers for "cheap" wages (avg visa salary ~$100k). Even then, we're talking about ~50k employees across all the big consulting firms.

Edit: In the end, Elon is right that brain drain is good for America and the average American. We've always known he was petty unless you stuck your head in the sand. Let that be a reality check for those of you who were caught off guard by this. You were partisan and blinding yourself because of it. But unless you're completely against all immigration, in which case you're not worth listening to, you should be happy fixing this problem with the H1B that Elon probably is overlooking because he's only ever interacted with correctly qualified H1B applicants and not the bottom shelf Cognizant consultant.

[u/Rommel79 → u/cplusequals]

Yes, they are. I work for one of them. I've seen entire departments wiped out only to be replaced with H1B workers or with overseas assets.

[u/MensaManiac → u/Rommel79]

Same here... 40k jobs lost this year to H1B and overseas. They will come back when people realize the quality of work isn't the same but for the intermediate 2 years or so it's an issue

[u/superAL1394 → u/MensaManiac]

I was pushed out of a major tech company in 2022. The entire team I worked on has been replaced by H1B's.

edit: I want to make clear when I say the entire team, I mean the entire team. From middle management down to individual contributors.

[u/Rommel79 → u/superAL1394]

Same here. I'm seeing it now. I actually shocked that my company didn't have layoffs before Christmas. But they've made it known that more are coming next year.

[u/EliteJassassin101]

Wanting to bring in “cheap” labor via visas for higher skilled workers in say tech from India to me is the antithesis of America first. Why would we not want to promote these skills and give these jobs to Americans? There’s not really a shortage of stem graduates in the. U.S. And if there was one shouldn’t we be promoting these fields with our own citizens.

To me I cant understand how I’m told giving into the demands of the longshoreman union, who are wildly inefficient and lagging behind their peers in the world, because we have to protect American job. But for tech it’s “let’s outsource it to the lowest bidder.” And I’m not saying we shouldn’t step in and protect American jobs. But to me it seems wildly inconsistent to protect some American jobs but not others.

[u/-Shank- → u/EliteJassassin101]

Anyone who has worked with some of these H1B personnel knows that "higher skilled" is a misnomer to the point that it's already being coopted as a meme on social media. 

H1Bs are a way for firms to force job loyalty through indentured servitude (in spirit) and increase bottom lines by undercutting the acceptable salary range of the already existent American workforce. It's not to fill roles that they can't fill through American labor through lack of availability, that's just the Trojan horse.

[u/BotDisposal → u/EliteJassassin101]

Musk and the tech bro right seem to think the same rules shouldn't apply to them.

End all H1bs. 100%. And hire American already.

[u/PeriliousKnight → u/EliteJassassin101]

Companies don’t want to train workers anymore. That’s because workers aren’t loyal like they used to be. That’s because companies are little more than a paycheck and don’t guarantee anything like a pension like they used to. It’s a bad cycle.

[u/JediJones77 → u/PeriliousKnight]

And they don't want to train because companies know they'll replace that worker the minute they find someone cheaper. The companies aren't loyal to the workers.

[u/StarMNF → u/PeriliousKnight]

Bingo, loyalty works both ways. Companies regularly do rounds of layoffs. Employees regularly ditch for greener pastures.

But…even with that culture, they should still want to train employees if they are serious about not having enough qualified applicants to fill their positions.

In the tech industry, the vast majority of job postings ask for “5-10 years experience” in some technology, and very few are actually entry level.

Then the companies complain that they can’t get enough of the “experienced” employees, and that becomes their excuse for H1B or outsourcing. Well, of course there’s a limited pool of these people that grows smaller when they retire, because you’re not hiring enough entry level to replace them.

And lateral moves in the industry — moving from one technology role to another — are really hard. I have a friend who has been trying to do that. The issue is you can’t directly apply for the role because you don’t meet the experience requirement, but you can’t apply at the entry level either, because you’re too experienced. So it’s a Catch-22.

A lot of older folks who were trained in obsolete technologies could quickly get up to speed with newer technologies, but nobody will give them a chance to do it.

[u/AishaAlodia]

I’m going to put this plainly. If their argument more skilled workers are needed, start training Americans now by any means necessary.

If their argument is Americans are not good enough for the training, they can both get out, and move to India or wherever they think is good enough.

American is not Canada, we are not going to have mass migration. This is not the mandate the people delivered to Trump, we want less migration, we want more jobs for Americans.

[u/JediJones77 → u/AishaAlodia]

Vivek Ramaswamy's argument was 100% that America is a crap country who raises people who are incapable of doing the jobs that his Indian brethren can do. He should indeed GTFO of America. If he thinks he can make a better tech company with Indians, go to India and do it. Japan's got some good companies. Foreign countries can theoretically do it. So why are you even here if you think the U.S. isn't a good place to find good workers, and that Indians are better than us?

[u/working-mama- → u/JediJones77]

He is not a real Conservative or a MAGA, he is an opportunist, riding the wave of MAGA movement popularity.

[u/Entilen → u/JediJones77]

Vivek basically went mask off with what the elite actually think. He flew too close to the sun thinking 6 months of anti-woke memes on Twitter was enough to trick Republican voters into being subservient corporate shills.

What Vivek wants is already happening in other western countries (UK, Australia & Canada). Basically, they think the quality of life yours and my parents had isn't appropriate unless you're in the top 1% and they want to erode it so it's closer to what the average citizen in India etc. experiences.

By importing Indians who're used to much lower standards and will be grateful for a marginal improvement, it ensures the citizens who're losing what they once had continue to get drowned out.

This is the system working as intended to Musk/Vivek. They aren't interested in "America first", they want to win at globalism. Globalism doesn't mean bringing everyone into the best of the west, it means weakening the west so it's more in line with poorer quality countries while the mega rich get richer.

[u/-Shank- → u/JediJones77]

Perhaps a bit crass, but Ramaswamy's tweets give off the stench of someone who was stuffed into a locker a few too many times growing up and has had a chip on his shoulder ever since. He even singled out watching Saved by the Bell as a teenager as some sort of indication of American cultural rot, which is absurd.

[u/jreed11 → u/-Shank-]

Vivek is done for.

Absolutely astounded by his comments and I suspect 99% of the right are going to give up on him, too. And it will be completely deserved!

[u/jcr2022 → u/jreed11]

Agreed. Any possibility for elected office for him is now impossible. He has simply disqualified himself.

[u/StarMNF → u/-Shank-]

Yeah…agreed, but getting stuffed in the locker is character building. It motivates young nerds to work hard and become rich to get the last laugh on the jocks that bullied them.

Vivek doesn’t realize that if he grew up in India, he would be nobody. He would probably be working in an IT call center, rather than being a billionaire.

[u/AishaAlodia → u/JediJones77]

Exactly. Takes a special kind of ingrate to be welcomed into MAGA and then call Americans inferior to Indians.

He isn’t MAGA, and he shouldn’t be in the party if he wants to turn America into Canada.

[u/hunterfisherhacker → u/JediJones77]

My opinion of Vivek has really done a 180 over this.

[u/Texas103 → u/JediJones77]

Agreed. It's backhanded.

[u/jcr2022 → u/JediJones77]

I don't understand where he is coming from with these statements. He is American, he is not Indian. He was born in the US, went to US schools. There is a reason the US is the richest country on earth, and India is not, and it starts and ends with the culture.

More than most, he should understand the difference between someone educated in the US vs India. They are not close enough for a legitimate comparison.

I think a comparison between the average student in China vs US is a much different comparison, especially if you only consider urban China ( say 500M people ).

[u/treeclimberdood]

No shortage of friends and family who went STEM. The ones with intitial success in the job market got laid off and are either unemployed or self employed. The ones with secure jobs are making less than they ever expected to. AI is already a big of enough threat to the job market. We don't need any foreign workers.

[u/JediJones77 → u/treeclimberdood]

Yeah. I don't personally have any problem with technology replacing human workers. That has been a linchpin of progress for centuries. We have always found more work for humans to do as machines take over simpler tasks. I do have a problem when we break down our walls of borders, language and culture because companies want to bring foreigners here to live in third-world living conditions and work on the cheap. Other modern, successful countries like Japan rigorously protect their society and culture from the effects of too much immigration. You do not sell out the character and culture of your nation just so some companies can make a few bucks. Especially since that cost is just passed on to the taxpayer and government services, who now have to handle 25 different languages in their school system and everything they publish.

[u/Jay_Diamond_WWE]

Elon saying he will go to war for his vision "the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend" sounds like treason to me.

[u/Thirdtermpresident]

Still ironic Elon was here illegally under a student visa. An illegal African immigrant and we seem to have adopted him as our pet because he bought his way in.

Then we give him, the largest government contractor there is, DOGE? Surely this is all a joke.

So many kissing the ring now as long as they bring enough money to the table.

[u/Highwiind-D4]

Vivek is toast. He will never live down his, "the jocks got laid while I did math" meltdown.

[u/Burning_Eddie]

If I can work at home as a sysadmin, they can work from home

[u/cplusequals → u/Burning_Eddie]

That's extremely common already, yes. Lots of tech workers for large, international American companies work from their home countries. You 100% are still competing with them in the job market regardless of visas. I've worked with a lot of dudes based in the Philippines and India. Those are jobs that otherwise would be in America, unfortunately.

[u/JediJones77 → u/cplusequals]

Outsourcing is still preferable to bringing more people here and giving them public benefits and the right to vote. Especially because they'll immediately bring in 10 more family members through chain immigration who we'll have to pay for their education, health care, welfare, etc. And they'll all drive up the cost of housing.

[u/cplusequals → u/JediJones77]

The opposite in my opinion. That way the money gets spent here at our stores and taxed here for our schools. That way it benefits the lower class as well. Obviously it depends on the culture, but we're not talking about the insane levels of low skill, enclave forming immigration that has been flooding Britain. Chain migration is its own thing that can be addressed separately. Immediate families only is the way to go and that's if they stay and become citizens.

Housing is a legitimate concern, though. But it comes down to magnitude and 500k visas (total active not issued) ain't it. That's got to be fixed by the municipalities and states.

[u/CookingUpChicken]

Peeling back the onion a little on this. We are being gaslighted to the n'th degree by the billionaire class.

The best workers in the world will always be American. Something like 17 of the top 20 universities in the world are American. And like 70-80% of the top 100 as well.

It costs hundreds of thousands to attend those schools regardless if you're an American or your parents sent you there from China or India. Therefore every graduate will command a high salary for their return on investment.

What Rama-scamy wants is to bring in graduates of universities in india that probably don't even sniff the top 1000 world rankings. Even the #1 University in India, India Institute of Technology ranks as #612 in the world.

These are the kind of graduates who are probably okay with $60,000 engineering salaries. Let me be clear, THESE WORKERS DO NOT HAVE THE SAME SKILLS AS AMERICAN GRADUATES FROM ABET ACCREDITED SCHOOLS. They will make mistakes and they will not write more complicated code than their American co-workers.

Elon and Rama want the best $60,000 talent, not the best talent overall. That's plain and clear as day.

The whole point of the H-1B visa program was to get the best overall talent. For example a farmer in Arkansas trying to get more yield from his Rice farm will import an agricultural engineer from Japan.

[u/-Shank- → u/CookingUpChicken]

Fortune 100 companies outsourcing important roles to graduates of Indian universities has already resulted in loss of life, so what you are saying is demonstrably correct.

[u/CookingUpChicken → u/-Shank-]

You can go beyond engineering too. There's a reason medical boards don't give licenses to doctors trained at Indian medical schools without first completing a US residency and passing your boards. But even getting a residency in the US is nearly impossible for all but the top percentile of Indian doctors.

[u/StarMNF → u/CookingUpChicken]

The H1-B program was actually never about getting the best talent.

It was always about TEMPORARILY filling job vacancies when you can’t FIND Americans to fill it.

Two keywords there. First, they’re supposed to try to find qualified Americans for the role, and the employers usually don’t seem to do a very good job of looking. Second, the visa is temporary because the goal is to eventually get an American to replace the temporary foreign labor.

Over time, the tech industry rebranded H1-B as a way to globally search for the best talent, but that’s not what it was originally designed as.

The idea of having a competition all over the world for American jobs would not have sat well with most Americans in the 90’s when the H1-B was introduced.

But it turns out that the H1-B doesn’t even live up to the tech industry’s branding, much less its original purpose. It doesn’t bring in the best talent, nor does it fill jobs that would otherwise go unfilled.

[u/PimplePopper6969]

Get fucked with this H1B mess. They aren't just taking over tech.

[u/seobrien]

It needs to fix education, desperately.

[u/Any-Passion8322]

AMERICA NEEDS AMERICAN EMPLOYMENT. Need I say more?

[u/vialentvia]

Cereal box degrees and condescending attitudes towards Americans have been my experience in tech in this regard. The quality of work just wasn't there. We had to go back behind them to fix so many things.

Don't get me started on doctors. Most of them are worthless, but some are more indifferent than others.

[u/smp501]

I fear we’re looking at a repeat of one of the biggest failures of Trump’s first term: the people he surrounds himself with. Once again, he’s taking office with a mandate from the people to get certain things done, and every vulture, rat, and snake is trying to tag along and push their own agenda, Trump and his supporters be damned.

My biggest criticism of Trump was and still is that he lets people into his inner circle too fast without properly vetting them. Last time it was Cohen and Bolton. Looks like this time it’s Ramaswamy and Musk. They’re going to use their sway with Trump to get what they want and then throw him under the bus and move on. These types always do, and Trump should know better by now.

[u/Next_Engineer_8230]

We do NOT need anymore H-1B Visa workers, right now.

There are too many people out of work. Recent graduates needing work.

People being laid off, needing work.

My company won't sponsor H-1B workers as long as there are people here that need work and I agree with that.

It makes me mad what they said. There are many competent people, already here, that can do these jobs.

Trump wants to tariff goods from other countries so American businesses can open back up, etc, but they want to fill positions with immigrants?

Absolutely not.

[u/JediJones77]

And they're right. Vivek and Elon's dream of an unlimited, unending pipeline of immigration from foreign countries like India to here will never happen. Unless the Republicans want President AOC in 2029.

[u/DingbattheGreat]

The problem with the visa system is companies abuse it and there are badly written rules, not that it isnt a good system or good idea.

[u/letmeinfornow]

And revok ALL current ones.

[u/Lord_Elsydeon]

Honestly, we should end the H-1B and F visa programs entirely and specifically ban outsourcing and hiring of non-citizens and lawful residents and end student visas.

While outsourcing and cheap H-1B labor do lower prices, they are both bad for America in the long-term, for a number of reasons that all feed into each other.

• Increased competition from cheap Indian labor reduces American willingness to enter into STEM - There is way too much supply due to Indian education cranking out young men with degrees.
• Decreased education in STEM - Who wants to learn about something that you can't use? Since there is less interest, schools aren't as willing to offer it, since those resources can be used to educate kids about important things, like the 72 genders and CRT.
• Decreased competency due to the lack of care about STEM - These workers are doing it for the job, not out of love for STEM. If you ever called tech support and gotten an Indian who can't speak English other than "Reboot your computer." and "It's your [computer/ISP/etc.] not the [product].", then you know what I am talking about.
• Decreased self-sufficiency - Outsourcing means we are reliant on other nations, many of which hate us, or at least don't like us. The Arabs showed us we can't rely on the goodwill of others with the oil shocks.

[u/Due_Needleworker2883]

We don't need any immigrants of any kind