For nearly every job title that an H1B is brought in on, they are paid more than the prevailing average wage. The idea that they are coming in as underpaid foreign scabs is mostly a myth.
Burying job listings is part of the kabuki theater, but it's being misrepresented here. Usually companies already have a candidate in mind when they do this. It makes no sense to run a complete hiring process in the US, and then turn around and run a second one for international candidates. You may as well do a complete candidate search and then post the canned jobs again if you need to get Visa sponsorship.
> For nearly every job title that an H1B is brought in on, they are paid more than the prevailing average wage. The idea that they are coming in as underpaid foreign scabs is mostly a myth.
Source? But also what difference does that make? Just pay American workers more.
It's literally baked into the H1B law was confirmed by a congressional report on the program: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/O...
> Just pay American workers more.
If we set aside software engineering - 40% of rural doctors in the US are here on H1B visas. There's not a "pay them more" button we can hit that generates more domestic doctors, especially not in under 10 years. All you'd do is compete amongst a limited supply.
> There's not a "pay them more" button we can hit that generates more domestic doctors, especially not in under 10 years.
That's literally how the button works. An undersupply in the market, increases prices.. kids and students deciding what they want to do with their life, see the wages and decide 10 years of school is worth it... and after 10 years you get more doctors.
If there's an undersupply, that's a clear indication that young people are looking at the field and deciding the wages don't justify the investment.
By short-circuiting the process of the free market, you're guaranteeing the shortage will continue.
As an American who grew up in one of these underserved markets, you couldn't pay me enough to work there. My mom works at a rural hospital and loathes every minute of it. The reality is, American workers value more than just dollars. Especially professionals with options.
Immigrant doctors may also hate working at these facilities, but the prospect of raising their family somewhere in the USA is a huge value add for them.
> As an American who grew up in one of these underserved markets, you couldn't pay me enough to work there.
Eh I think this is sort of BS. First yes literally you could be paid enough. Everyone has a price, including you, and you’re not fooling anyone. Second you can find arrangements that perhaps enable you to spend a few years doing what amounts to public service in exchange for maybe no debt or higher pay and then move on - this is a very common thing in the labor market.
Also, what does that say about you that you hate being around your fellow countrymen more than someone from outside of your country?
I really don't think this is true.
The problem is that the relationship is non-linear. The data shows that at a certain amount of comfort and income, most people really aren't willing to make drastically uncomfortable lifestyle choices for any amount of money. I'm not suddenly going to become a lineman even if it pays double what I make now.
How many kids in our culture are actually looking at earning potential as the #1 factor when they choose a career?
The pay for doctors does not matter for recruiting more doctors when the bottleneck is residencies.
There actually is a pay them more button that the federal and state government controls, but I doubt they'd hit it. Many of those rural docs are compensated heavily by Medicaid (EDIT: have a high % of Medicaid patients - compensation is a separate story), but the reimbursement structure often penalizes those rural docs vs. those that take positions in suburban and urban environments. Some states permit a flat reimbursement structure where patient volume is the only difference, but other states further penalize the rural docs by "shaping" reimbursement rates such that more funding goes to the urban and suburban areas.
This administration could address that, but if anything, they seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
Rural medical specialists are compensated very well. In my experience the bigger obstacle to getting those roles filled is more social, for example, unless you are already married the dating pool in a rural area is a consideration for new doctors, or if you are married and your spouse has a career moving to a rural area may require them to give up that career which they may not be willing to do. Cities better support dual-career households b/c they have a density of industries. Also - after 10+ years of school a lot of new doctors want to live it up a bit in a place with things to do and see.
Sure there is, we can make school affordable.
And stop degree inflation. A doctor with 4 years of med school and a year internship from 60 years ago can diagnose your sniffles or refer you to a specialist just as well as a doctor with an unrelated 4-5 year BS degree then 4 years in med school, then a year of internship followed by 3-4 more years of residency.
At the same time, the doctor with just 4-5 years of school and hundreds of thousands less debt can not only treat patients more cheaply, but will have more years of practice too.
That would be like DEI for American workers, no? Not to mention, discrimination based on nationality is illegal.
> That would be like DEI for American workers, no?
No for a couple of reasons which you’re aware of. Plus liberals say DEI is good so they can’t be against it.
> Not to mention, discrimination based on nationality is illegal.
Sort of - but you’re taking a narrow view here. We discriminate (nothing wrong with that, all countries do it) who we let in to the US for example. Many universities had or have de facto race quotas, and by being an American you can’t be discriminated against as a nationality outside of being an American. Let’s say you are Chinese American. You’re American, not Chinese. There isn’t anything to discriminate against. Welcome to team USA. All the way baby. But if you aren’t an American then we just decide what we want to do with you and whether it fits our needs or we send you back home or whatever.
The parent was asking to "just pay Americans more". That is just illegal.
I’m the parent. Society makes up laws. We can just make up a new law for whatever purposes we want.
Would be a bit difficult to change the constitution, but yeah, nothing is impossible.
It is literally a requirement for that kind of Visa.
> Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b
Yes and no. Why is the prevailing wage what it is, and how does bringing more supply in affect the prevailing wage? There are secondary effects.
> There are secondary effects.
There are also tertiary effects in that bringing in young working families into the US is overwhelmingly good for the economy.
If bringing in workers shrinks an economy, then how does one go from a country of 40 million to 400 million without 360 million people being unemployed? Because wage earners actually contribute more to the economy than they crowd out.
No one in their right mind would argue that having kids is going to put downward pressure on the job market, and yet we have the idea that grown, educated adults will. (Not to mention these grown, educated adults cost us nothing in taxes in education or retirement, so overwhelmingly less of a burden on our economy)
100% as someone who sponsored someone yeah they are and the government kind of wants you too
Speaking from personal experience, this is not true. Myself and every H1B I know was paid significantly below the prevailing wage.
I have worked with a lot of H1B's in tech.
I have not met a single one who was not over qualified for the job they were doing.
I have only met a couple who were (to some extent) getting screwed because of an agency in the middle. However I would not have found the wage unreasonable and the markup was well within the industry standard.
H1B is a path to import talent that mostly wants to stay here... We need to fix the portion of the process where it is onerous to go from H1B to green card and citizenship.
My experience and sincere belief is that your experience is not representative.
> H1B is a path to import talent that mostly wants to stay here...
There is truth to this, certainly. In software engineering or related positions? I don’t think so, generally. If this was the case we wouldn’t also outsource positions.
> If this was the case we wouldn’t also outsource positions.
Invert your argument: If outsourcing was so great, we wouldn't have any software jobs in the US.
The reason to outsource, to offshore are far more nuanced than "cost".
That’s not the inverse though. I didn’t claim outsourcing was bad.
I've met hundreds.