move intended to limit the use of visas to undercut wages that would otherwise be paid to American workers
Meanwhile: “AI will mean a 3-day workweek! …at the cost of entry-level jobs. The ones we fill with these visas.”
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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Excellent.
H1B was NEVER meant to be a way to save money, but that is exactly how it was being used. Employers were supposed to prove that they had no qualified candidates first. But they would do things like advertise a software engineer position exclusively in the newspaper, and then proceed to dodge questions if someone did try to apply to that newspaper ad.
This has the goal of lowering wages and preventing unionization.
I agree completely about the problem, but the way to fix it would be to fix the lottery-based system and move it to more needs-based or skills-based--which also means it needs more oversight.
The problem right now is largely big tech companies flooding the lottery with tons of applications, such that smaller companies have little chance of having their applications approved. This only makes that worse.
So that only the big tech companies can afford to apply.
Okay, but that just means that all of the Americans that want to work in the field will cost $100,000 less startup for smaller companies, right?
No because you don't pay the fee for American employees, only for foreigners who need the visa. This doesn't level the playing field for Americans so much as it makes it more expensive to hire from abroad. I'm not saying that is even inherently bad (the H-1B program really is abused, but it is largely the big tech companies who abuse it because of how the lottery system works), but I'm not sure it's a good solution to the problem it aims to solve.