As an aside, its also a a reason why immigration from poor countries is so dangerous - people in the 2nd/3rd world have much simpler lifestyles and are thus willing to accept much lower salaries.
Note, I am from Ukraine, and I am speaking from personal experience moving to the USA. My American friends eat out all the time, buy very expensive home appliances, and tip extremely generously.
I live a frugal life since this is the standard of living I am accustomed to from my homeland. I was also willing to accept the lowest salary legally possible just to get into the country, which is already a huge upgrade to my income.
I also can't then change jobs easily, since the visa is tied to my employer.
If Tech workers want to maintain this state of demand, they should really oppose immigration from poor countries, such as requiring that the H1B visa has a maximum cap of 10% from any one country, which will have the effect of limiting the number of Indians who enter. Setting an additional maximum cap of 49% males from any one country would also be good to encourage gender diversity, instead of flooding in male migrants and then forcing companies to do it.
I see your point and agree with thing you’re saying in general. However, this impacts US workers due to the following:
- Visa workers paid less for a job with a higher rate of lay is illegal. The paperwork and justification to offer jobs to visa workers clearly makes the company liable for Fraud, Illegal Hiring, etc, etc. problem is to stop it things just happen:
- they must be turned in
- the US Govt must stop turning a blind eye
- companies at fault and convicted must face real consequences (fining a company $5 to $10M for this when savings over multiple positions over time has saved them 10x, 100x or more than the fine is useless
- CEO, CFO, etc jailed no less than 10 years per instance (10 year min time served)
- company fined out of business on 2nd or 3rd instance
NEXT…
- Americans can leave on lower lifestyle cost but refuse (tech high pay jobs, obviously not everyone)
- Americans need to be educated in jobs as well. Many times positions go infilled as no available US worker or the $150k per year doesn’t allow to live and eat in places like the Bay Area and Americans while forced to share housing here couldn’t imagine to share a room with 4 or 5 or 6 others.
Yes visa worker process needs to be massively reworked and politicians need to stop screwing Americans for lobbyists pouring money, etc at them to bend to the business needs. But a lot is also caused by Americans keeping up appearances and government allowing the cost of housing and living to be so out of control.
I am actually in a very similar position to yours and agree with most of your points. I also assume you are in tech. I don't know what the immigration situation as a whole is, but I'm not sure tech is a good example of immigrants driving salaries down. Also, isn't it technically illegal for a company to pay the immigrant less? Rather than imposing limits on immigration, which I think is what the average conservative mindset would push for, I'd argue that companies should be punished for exploiting their workers -- regardless of where they come from.
