Bernie Sanders says Elon Musk is wrong about H-1B visas: 'Low-wage indentured servants'
Bernie Sanders waded into a heated online debate between the tech right and the MAGA base, calling for reforms to the H-1B visa system.
Fucking oligarchs and their ridiculous double speak." No immigration! Unless it's my work force, tee-hee."
Can we eat this idiot yet please?
You can't even vote the guy out as Musk isn't even elected but he still wields quasi presidential power. It's like the grand vizier of America.
Something something, 3 boxes....
Most H1-Bs are filling jobs that pay $200k+. Most Americans don’t know but tech jobs pay between $200k-$1m, and almost all of those jobs are taken by folks on H1-B visas. Rather than sourcing and training Americans for the best paying jobs in the country, the tech industry has lobbied Congress to flood the market with labor from India and China. We can only imagine these wages would be higher without the influx of these workers. But, the wages are still high, and they would love to flood the market with even more cheap labor if they could uncap H1-Bs to further drive down wages. There are people willing to work for $60k/year just for the promise of an American visa.
Additionally, H1-B workers are easier to control. They all fear layoffs or firings because losing your job means losing your visa, if you can’t find another job within 2 months. So, there is incentive to neglect work-life balance and change the culture of a company into “996,” which means working from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
And, there is widespread fraud and discrimination against American workers too. When entire departments come to be filled with people from a certain country, they tend to keep hiring people from that country. One reason for this is tech companies tend to hire from contracting agencies like WiPro, InfoSys, TCS, Cognizant, and HCL (WITCH), all of which originated in India and source from India, so they don’t focus on diversity at all (there have been lawsuits). Many of those contractors are doing jobs that should actually be filled by full time employees, but companies flagrantly ignore labor laws. When they do need to hire full time employees, they often convert these contractors. Also, many of these workers don’t have the actual qualifications for the job, so they falsify their resumes. I’ve interviewed candidates claiming 15 years of experience with a language, that cannot write a single line of code in that language when prompted. Those that can write code, don’t always follow best practices and can churn out cheap, hacky solutions that ultimately just need to be redone.
This is all an open secret in the tech industry. It isn’t more widely talked about because there are few Americans to actual witness what is going on. And, those criticizing the system risk being painted as xenophobic. It is good to see Bernie coming out against these practices because people on the right and left should be critical of it.
Most Americans don’t know but tech jobs pay between $200k-$1m
No, they do not. More like $50k-200k. But the rest of your comment is pretty much right.
Most common is $80-160k, the companies formerly known as FANNG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) are more likely $160-340k. A large part of that is their geographic area. Basically they primarily want workers who are already vetted by the other FAANG companies, so they're all in the same geographic location, and competing over the workers willing to live there.
Basically they're idiots creating their own problems that Elon wants to solve with H1-Bs.
Legally, the H1-Bs need to get paid roughly the same as American workers. We all know that's a bit slippery, but it does help keep the wages up.
The real benefit is that they either do what Elon says or they get kicked out of the country. Guess who's willing to put up with the most shit.
Like the other commenter suggested, check levels.fyi. If you’re in a major tech hub like Silicon Valley, $300k is average, and many people are pushing $500k. Some who are in highly specialized roles, or who hit the jackpot on the timing of their equity grants can get over $1m.
The app Blind has a lot of people sharing info on this.
I'd love to see the stats on this.
Average H1-B salary by state:
https://www.myvisajobs.com/reports/h1b/work-state/
These are salaries not including equity, which is usually the same or more per year as the salary itself.
USCIS estimated there were 583,420 foreign nationals on H-1B visas as of September 30, 2019.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
Why is the US government giving half a million jobs that pay $200k+ to foreign workers on visas when the median annual wage in the US is $48k. Most of these workers do not have special training or education that an American citizen could not acquire if given the right training program.
Musk is wrong about pretty much everything so there is that.
Calling them "low-wage indentured servants" will sell it to the corpos that run this country.
Bernie spot on as always
He’s not
And this is a bad thing, why?
*Meaningful Shareholders
Which may or may not be CEOs of a company, but are still the ones demanding MOAR at any cost including blood, and the direct beneficiaries of that malice.
Can we just replace all headlines about this fuckhead with "Moral person with clue says Elon Musk is wrong, again"
I have a somewhat hot take.
The racists want to destroy H1-B visas, the rich (slavers) like H1-B as is, and neither is willing to help fix H1-B visas.
Slavery is easily the worst outcome. It might be worth siding with the racists to defeat the slavers and drive a wedge in their coalition.
Elon musk needs to stfu, all he wants is attention this attention that
Someone got all het up yesterday because I called H-1B holders indentured servants. This should be interesting.
Definitely not low wage. There are requirements that they have to be paid market rates. Despite that, I recall Banerjee and Duflo finding a depression of upper middle income wages from things like the H1B program.
$60,000 a year is low wage?
Depending on career, yes.
That's poverty level in Southern California.
For a tech job, yes. Doubly so in a country that has no universal healthcare and has a joke of a social security system. Triply so on a precarious visa.
When an American wants 100k to pay off their student loan debt...
Yeah, that's a 40% pay cut.
It's one of the last remnants of the middle class. And if it happens people will be less likely to go to school for it without that high pay to pay off the loans.
Which means at a point we'd have to rely on these visas.
Also prevents the chance of someone being able to cobble together some type of competition
In a high cost-of-living area, it absolutely can be. And lots of tech jobs are in HCOL areas.
$60,000 a year is low wage?
Where did you even get that number from?
There's a mention in Bernie's tweet of associate accountants getting 58k, but his point there is we have plenty of Americans who can fill that role, and there's zero reason for a h1b.
The average Tesla pays one of those is 71k
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Tesla-Associate-Accountant-Salaries-E43129_D_KO6,26.htm
So yes, comparitively speaking it's a low wage....
60K is the minimum you need to get paid for an entry level job using H1B, if not your visa won’t get approved. It used to be around 58K and now it has gone up. A lot of companies offer this minimum so people who are desperate for a job will take it. Also companies use consultancies to fill these roles so you’ll have to check their salaries.
where did you even get that number from?
That's the salary level at which h1b is uncapped. So ~70,000 h1b visas are allowed to make less then $60,000, but any amount can be approved if it's "high paying" and above that salary. It's supposed to make it so it's more expensive to hire foreign talent, but that becomes irrelevant if it's not actually high paying and most Americans demand well above that cap. Then there's no incentive to hire Americans.
This is why a lot of people, even Elon, advocate for raising the cap to an actually high wage, and tie it to cost of living, because $60,000 in coastal California is poverty.
Yes
That's the minimum, but they usually get about twice as much.
What the hell is he talking about? The average H1B employee has a six-digit salary.
I don't have the data, but in HCOL areas a six digit salary doesn't go that far. And the real point is how much downward pressure does it put on compensation for Americans who do have job mobility? How does the pay between these two population compare and change over time?
The H1B system makes it functionally impossible to change jobs, and employers can take advantage of that by depressing wages, worsening working conditions, and laying off other staff. Employers hold all the power in that relationship.
Six digits is "only" average in San Francisco, and well above average almost everywhere else. I'd say that being the average resident of an extremely expensive place to live in the USA is nowhere near "low-wage indentured servant".
Also, H1B holders can change jobs, as long as the new job gets them a new H1B. That makes it harder for them to change jobs than it is for Americans, but many tech companies are willing to get that visa for someone talented.
Edit: They also always have the option of leaving the USA and going back to their home country. They don't gain anything from Sanders' proposal - they just lose the option of coming to the USA in the first place, which is an option they really want to have. What Musk is proposing is clearly better for them, so Sanders shouldn't wrap his opposition in false claims of looking out for the poor foreigners who might get those awful American jobs unless he stops them.
The SWE H1B salaries are drastically under what is the market price.
And that doesn't even account for them continuously working overtime without overtime pay.
Imagine what it would be like without the flood of labor from abroad. Those jobs could pay $1 million/year and be filled by Americans.
Now imagine if they uncap H1-Bs, the market will totally flood and wages will easily drop to five-digits.
Not true and even if it were that's not a whole lot of money in large cities where it would be happening