Your number you admittedly pulled out of your ass threw me off. Median income is $51,000. It’s more like 45 million making $60k or more, not 6 million. And 600,000 visa holders aren’t all abuses of the system. Numbers matter!

Absolutely valid argument.

Some does not equal a lot. There are some. They are outliers. Most are not abusing it. Some are. Not a lot. Some.

Fine. I work for a robotics company. Happy?

No. Full stop. If you pay someone on an H1-B visa less than $60,000 then they are automatically reviewed, because they aren’t a skilled worker. They must be paid at least $60,000. There are ZERO Wal-Mart workers or gas station attendants getting $60k.

Dude. Yes, some companies are abusing it. Not all of them. Not mine. Not several others I know of personally. It’s not about doing jobs Americans won’t do. It's about not being able to find Americans as highly qualified.

Of the US workforce...see previous comment. My point is that 100,000 or 200,000 jobs doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the US workforce.

And are you seriously trying to tell me that a wikipedia entry with broken citations is “better information?” I could edit that right now and make up a bunch of shit, throw in pretend citations, and make any argument I want to.

I’m not being coy. I work in a very small field and I don’t need to identify myself on the interwebs. That’s why I don’t mention it.

That’s still less than 1/10th of 1 percent.

That last part is a great and thoughtful argument. The potential is high. However, to say “a lot of companies” are abusing it just doesn’t have any data to back it up. It just serves as a rallying cry for anti-immigrant folks to rail against foreigners coming to take our jobs.

You’re missing the point. Even if every single H1-B visa holder was a low cost replacement for an American, it wouldn’t affect anyone in any meaningful way. The numbers just don’t add up. They are capped at 85,000. And you can’t prove that literally all of the H1-B visa holders are just lower cost replacements. I…

Anecdotal evidence doesn’t make a trend. And they aren’t countless. You actually can count them. Even if all 85,000 H1-B visa holders were cheap foreign replacement it’s still a tiny fraction of the workforce.

I understand what you’re saying, but it’s over simplistic. I work at a small firm, about 50 employees. We’re not Disney and we can still get two highly qualified PhD/Masters level engineers...we also pay them the same as everyone else. We hired them not because they were foreign workers, but because they were very…

This is why this whole argument is a red herring, and it’s impossible for H1-B visas to be pushing down middle class wages.

That’s just straight racist shit. Bobble head? Go fuck yourself.

It’s the term H1-B slave labor. It’s a dog whistle for foreigners coming in and taking our jobs, which is A) not happening, and B) race baiting.

One instance involving 300 people, many of whom were hired back, doesn’t even come close to temporary farm workers. BTW, if you didn’t have those farm workers tomatoes would be $9/lb.

You specifically used the term “slave labor.” That means something. That means that they are being held against their will or being paid an illegal wage, and accepting it because they want to keep their visa. H1-B visas are specifically for high-skilled workers. If someone is abusing that system, then they should be…

I just have to say, that these are better than the x-temp version, which are too damn tight.

I just have to say, that these are better than the x-temp version, which are too damn tight.