Federal judge temporarily neutralizes President Trump's blockade against visas for foreign techies, other workers

President Trump's proclamation in June that barred companies and other organizations from bringing in foreign workers into the US under various visas like the H-1B has been temporarily, partially blocked. On Thursday afternoon, US District Judge Jeffrey White, a George W. Bush appointee to the Northern District of California, …

[DiViDeD]

Hypocrite Much?

"Immigration has contributed immensely to America’s economic success ...

Interesting point of view since these guys are not immigrants, but "non immigrant foreign workers", as the visa program clearly states. What Pichai, Cook and their partners in crime are saying is "Oh Noes!! We may have to train domestic people and pay them more than the bottom end shelf filler wages we pay at the moment. AND we won't be able to just pack them off home if they offend us or we don't need them anymore"

It's all part of their "Look at us! WE don't manufacture offshore, we manufacture right here in the Good Ole US of A. It's just the workers we import" fake virtue signalling.

Lying Bar Stewards, the lot of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

The fact that your rant ignores, is that the US education system doesn't produce enough of the kinds of people with the skills to fill the vacancies. That's not something that can be solved overnight by cancelling the visa programs.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

Why do the course if you are competing with low-paid H1B imports? It has to stop somewhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

I briefly worked in Sillycon Valley, and the money for my H1B colleagues was excellent. It had to be, otherwise they'd go elsewhere with a better standard of living (Germany for example) since the US doesn't really have much to recommend it what with the racism, shit healthcare and crime.

[big_D]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

You have to do both. You need to train people up and once there are people capable of doing the job locally, as far as I understand the visas, those being imported to do the job will no longer be eligible for a visa.

You also need to throw in things like forcing equal pay, so that it isn't "cheaper" to import workers.

So, you can gradually reduce the number of visas as people come out of training in the USA and are there to fill the jobs.

When I went over to the US in the 90s to do a training course on a product I had written (UK HQ had implemented a new global system and I was there to train up the US employees), the first question I was asked at immigration was, "could a US citizen do this training?" I was lucky. My employer told me to tell immigration that I was only there for a meeting, but tired and "zombied" out after the flight, I just blurted that I was there to train the users. Luckily the immigration officer let me through, as I was only there for 2 days.

[HellDeskJockey]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

Stem education is hard. Most people aren't going to put themselves through that for nothing. There needs to be a reward at the end. If there is real money to be made then folks are going to take the courses. Otherwise why bother.

[big_D]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

Because it is interesting? Because you feel you can achieve something?

I did STEM, because I found it fascinating. My mother wanted me to study to be an accountant, because there is no money in IT. After 1 year, I was so bored with accountancy that I switched to an IT course, because it was interesting and I was good at it.

But this problem needs to be tackled from both sides, you need to get people interested in STEM and you need to incentivise companies to employee local staff - E.g. make it mandatory that visa staff get paid the same as local staff and receive the same benefits.

[DiViDeD]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

Good for you!

Same for me - did mathematics because I loved it, and went into accountancy because there was money to be made. I lasted 4 years before getting curiously attracted to what all those madmen (no apologies - it was men back then!) were doing in the "computer" department.

Took the first job on offer (minding overnight batch updates and print jobs, collating paper, bursting forms, feeding the card reader - very low level), took a 70% or so pay cut, and never looked back.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hypocrite Much?

Pichai is an immigrant, I think his salary is probably okay. Certainly not bottom end shelf filler. I don't think they can hire a lot of people in Sillicon Valley these days without paying them at least enough to afford renting a place in Sillicon Valley, and that already sets the bar pretty high. There might be companies using H1Bs to hire cheap labor, but not those you mention.

[yoganmahew]

Hoocudanode

That paid for education wouldn't provide the levels of training required for non-fungible knowledge economy jobs.

[IGotOut]

Damn...

Curse those pesky laws getting in a way of a dictatorship.

[First Light]

Re: Damn...

And pesky judges . . something You-know-who has done his best to change at all levels of the federal judiciary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Damn...

... and pesky CEOs having unwarranted influence over the immigration policy, when the elected representitives (president, congress, judges) are employed to represent the will of the people. Yet when were the people last consulted about this?

Their reasoning is plain wrong anyway ....

If they really want to "expand opportunity to all" they would do that by creating more lower paid jobs abroad than higher paid jobs in the US. This would also be more profitable for them. For some undisclosed reason they want to keep moving talented people from abroad to the US, like maybe the future hegemony of the US depends on it, and that's their true objective. Maybe the ordinary majority care more about having a nation to call their own, than playing the game of world / economic domination.

Also no sizable nation can be a "nation of immigrants" - the majority of people in the majority of nations were born there.

Claiming that you "stand with immigrants" implies you stand against the resident population, which means you're anti-democratic.You think the will of someone from outside a nation should overide the will of someone from a nation, when it comes to determining the future of that nation. The reason elected governments exist is to represent their OWN people, not immigrants.

[Version 1.0]

Go back and look at the formation of the USA

The US President is basically an elected king, the US political system was defined based on the history of the classical politics of Greece and Italy, modified to take into account the European political institutions to try and create a stable political system that mimicked the British politics that the US had just escaped from - kings were the standard in those days and the US simple stuck to the worldwide methods but started electing their king. The concept was that this would give the Americans the power to escape the problems that they had seen with the current systems at that time.

[First Light]

Re: Go back and look at the formation of the USA

I disagree. I believe the system was quite novel. It's all about checks and balances between the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial), and balancing power between the rights of individual states versus that of the federal government.

As here, the system works when the judiciary is able to push back against Presidential overreach. 45 has taken everything to a new level and strained the Constitution to its breaking point. We'll soon find out if he gets to destroy it.

[jelabarre59]

Re: Go back and look at the formation of the USA

...strained the Constitution to its breaking point. We'll soon find out if he gets to destroy it.

Nope, that only happens if we get President Harris and her ventriloquist dummy Biden.

[Version 1.0]

Re: Go back and look at the formation of the USA

You get an upvote from me regardless - the system was designed to be novel with an elected king instead of a birthright king who could not be removed and George Washington pushed the view further by deciding not to run again. The political environment has evolved for many years - OK, so it's got its wheels stuck in the mud at the moment but the US system has the ability to be way more flexible in the future and fix problems than most other political systems.

[Clunking Fist]

Re: Go back and look at the formation of the USA

"the US system has the ability to be way more flexible in the future and fix problems than most other political systems."

Really? From where I sit, it looks like an entrenched two-party system: Replublican-GOP and Republican-Democrat.

The "easiest"* and simplest fix in a long list of fixes required: bring in term limits for ALL elected representatives, not just the President. It amazes me how "ordinary folk" representatives are multi-millionaires after a few years.

(* Easy, as in, 99.999% of folk will be in favour of it, not so easy in that the .001 who oppose it wield all the political power.)

[First Light]

More STEM, less STEM?

I'm conflicted about the H-1B issue. As a former immigration lawyer, I believe the system is being manipulated by corps to pay peanuts. OTOH when limitations put on the program are poorly thought out, bad consequences result. Almost nothing this Administration has done has been well-thought out so no surprises there.

As to STEM shortages, although it's dated, I'm linking to a (long) 2015 article from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. It basically says that in academia, there is an oversupply and in the private and governmental sectors, either a surplus or shortages depending on the labor market segment. But it's certainly not as clear-cut as the large corporations want one to think. Definitely shortages in software and mobile app development, so that covers alot of this site's readership. But that is a limited segment of all STEM subjects.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htm

[jelabarre59]

Finger

Come on, giving the finger to Congress is *ALWAYS* in order.

[Mark192]

There's plenty of scope for an ideological approach to backfire.

Government incentives for apprentice schemes, so that companies can cheaply (and quickly) train domestic workers that have the aptitude, but not the job-ready skillset, would be an essential component of any approach to labor shortages in a fast-moving sector.

Setting minimum earnings limits for foreign workers would also ensure firms truly looked abroad only for skills shortages and not for skilled labour.

That said, sucking in the best from abroad in sufficiently large numbers, and at significantly lower cost to the employer, keeps your industry competitive while hobbling foreign competitors through brain drain.