I don’t understand why USCIS and other tech forums spend so much time and energy on H-1B rules.
How is it possible that 85K non immigrants with no rights are blamed for decimation of entire tech sectors.
For comparison , the US allows one million immigrants (green card holders ) every year into the United States . Most of these immigrants come over in the family based immigration category. They are free to take any job, start any business and do any legal activity as US citizens.
Yet it is the H-1B visa holders that are blamed for lowering of wages in the tech and engineering sectors and we spend a lot of political energy to make life difficult for them.
Also whenever articles related to H-1B are posted, the most upvoted comments are usually comments that point to gross changes to the H-1B program. Those are just pipe dreams. There has been no meaningful legislation changes to H-1B program in over two decades and I don’t think that there is political capital to make those changes .
To me this is all political. With the election coming up, its in Trump's interest to look tough on immigrants. H1Bs are easy targets, they don't have any political rights, and a large number of them will likely never have those rights.
You can't target family based immigrants because their families might already have been naturalized and have voting powers. The family GC recipients would also eventually get naturalized, and you don't want to upset potential voter base (however, tiny it might be).
> There has been no meaningful legislation changes to H-1B program in over two decades and I don’t think that there is political capital to make those changes .
This makes it even better. You get to throw punches which makes you look tough, but also doesn't really hurt the other side. Sort of win-win. Although I do think the other side in this is the H1B sponsoring employers and not the folks actually on H1B.
How is it possible that 85K non immigrants with no rights are blamed for decimation of entire tech sectors.
For comparison , the US allows one million immigrants (green card holders ) every year into the United States . Most of these immigrants come over in the family based immigration category. They are free to take any job, start any business and do any legal activity as US citizens.
Yet it is the H-1B visa holders that are blamed for lowering of wages in the tech and engineering sectors and we spend a lot of political energy to make life difficult for them.
Also whenever articles related to H-1B are posted, the most upvoted comments are usually comments that point to gross changes to the H-1B program. Those are just pipe dreams. There has been no meaningful legislation changes to H-1B program in over two decades and I don’t think that there is political capital to make those changes .