Good day all. The other day I wrote up a post on Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy making a bit of an “Oopsie” regarding the H1B visas. Many others were, in my opinion, rather vicious in their take down. I and others simply remarked that Musk and Ramaswamy were mistaken.
Now, Elon Musk has remarked that the H1B program is broken and needs to be reformed. Here are the details from CF.org:
In a recent development, Elon Musk, co-chair of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has called for major reforms to the H-1B visa program, aiming to prioritize American workers and address concerns of exploitation within the system.
I went over some of the problems with the current H1B visas in my other post, and they are many. The short version is that corporations use H1B’s as cheap replacement for American citizens and permanent legal resident aliens. Someone here on an H1B is basically locked into that job and can’t look for a better one. If they leave the job, they lose their visa and can be deported.
As of September 30, 2019, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) estimated that approximately 583,420 individuals were authorized to work in the United States under the H-1B visa classification.
That is an obscene number. That means some 500K Americans can’t find a job in their field. When the program was initiated, it was expected to cover a few thousand at most. Very quickly, corporations found they could use H1B’s as cheap replacements. There have been videos on YouTube of HR administrators describing how they can around the legal requirements that Americans have first priority.
Musk, an immigrant himself who benefited from the H-1B program, acknowledges its role in attracting top-tier talent to the United States.
I have no problem with importing top talent. However, the H1B is not the way to do it. If someone is that valuable, then they should come in as normal immigrants with all the rights of any other Green card holder. This includes quitting the job and moving to a better paying one without fear of deportment. (I also want them to become Naturalized American citizens too)
Musk previously wrote, “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.”
He added, “Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
Yes, Elon definitely put the old wedding tackle into the meat grinder and turned it on. While President Trump gave Elon and Vivek some cover, I have little doubt that behind the scenes that President Trump or some of his people let Elon and Vivek have it. Elon then changed his tune a bit.
After facing backlash for his comment, Musk offered clarification in another post.
“Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” Musk wrote.
“This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA. Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.”
Ok, if you are saying what I have recommended, bringing in top talent as regular immigrants, then we are on the same page. I suspect many others would agree.
However, Musk emphasizes the necessity for reforms to prevent potential abuses and to ensure that American workers are not disadvantaged.
Musk’s “Come to Jesus” moment was courtesy of an X user, Robert Sterling. He posted statistics on just how abused the H1B program has been over the years. Mr. Sterling showed that a lot of the H1B’s went into the Financial Sector. Google also brought in a huge number of H1B’s. He posted several screen shots showing where the vast majority of H1B’s were going.
You can see where I’m going with this. A casual perusal of the data shows that this isn’t a program for the top 0.1% of talent, as it’s been described. This is simply a way to recruit hundreds of thousands of relatively lower-wage IT and financial services professionals.
As I mentioned in my other post, I’ve worked with H1B’s. Some were damn good, some were complete duds. Most were just your typical middle of the road types who just happened to be a lot cheaper to hire then an equivalent American or Permanent Resident Alien.
Musk responded, “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically. I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform.”
If I recall correctly, and I freely admit I may be wrong, an H1B visa holder is supposed to be paid the same or better then the American that wasn’t hired. If this is correct, that’s another reason to junk the current system and start all over. One reform that would help stem the tide as it were, would be holding HR people and CEO’s criminally liable. Seeing some HR people and a CEO or two being perp walked would incentivize the rest that there are limits to outsourcing.
Now, an interesting aside. When I first heard that Elon Musk had walked back his remarks on the H1B visa, I started looking for details. Every article I found with two exceptions were India and Middle Eastern sites. I couldn’t find anything by the so called Main Stream Media, including Fox. However, every single one of these sites were quick to report and comment on Elon and Vivek’s earlier statements on H1B’s.
Now if I were a conspiracy minded person, I would think that they were trying to break Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and their DOGE project away from Donald Trump. Obviously. That’s just a conspiracy theory.
Thatisall
(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...
~The Angry Webmaster~
