• supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Ok I have an idea, why don’t we just pay a living wage to US tech workers whether they are immigrants or they were born and raised in the US?

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      They are generally paid well over a living wage for a position that a citizen could occupy at a market wage that is even higher. Median tech job income is over $100k, twice the national average.

      Hiring a citizen costs more, so profit chasing dictates hiring an immigrant that can be paid less than market rate. Hiring an immigrant under an H1-B not only is cheaper in wages, but also gives the company more power over the employee because they can fire that person and then they get deported for not being sponsored.

      Hiring an H1-B at a cheaper rate also suppresses wages for citizens.

      Unemployment in tech is like 3%, we don’t need H1-B visa for tech jobs. We don’t even need H1-Bs for the industries with the highest unemployment, they need to increase wages to attract the nearly 7 million unemployed in the US, and there are even more people that are underemployed or have given up because wages are too low across the board.