Summary
Senator Bernie Sanders criticized Elon Musk over his support for the H-1B visa program, calling it a tool for corporations to replace good-paying American jobs with lower-wage foreign labor.
Sanders cited data showing U.S. companies laid off 85,000 American workers between 2022 and 2023 while hiring 34,000 H-1B visa holders, arguing this undermines U.S. competitiveness.
Musk, who credits the visa program for his success, defended it, stating he’s ready to “go to war” over the issue.
The debate has divided MAGA conservatives, exposing rifts within Trump’s coalition.
My dad came on a H1B and he was very well paid when he got his green card. I’d say that makes him an expert sys admin
I’m not going to argue he wasn’t an expert. The program is designed for them. The problem isnt people like him. In fact, the problem isn’t any of the workers I’ve worked with either.
The problem is that outsourcing staffing agencies use the H1-B visa to hire out to bigger companies looking for a cheap fast way to get things working.
By law, the employer sponsoring an H1-B holder has to pay competitive wages for the work they will do. The staffing agencies do that by paying the people they bring in pretty low and similar wages. Of course, the agencies pocket the difference from the contract and what they are actually paying these workers. In practice, even those wages are lower than what an FTE should get paid.
It has a compounding effect on people who are permanent residents or citizens: it’s an effective way to suppress wages artificially for a lot of these jobs. And of course, many of these H1-B holders get the boot right at the end of 4 or 5 years because then things get dicey about sponsoring them for permanent residence, and that is when costs start really going up.
We really don’t need to expand the H1-B cap, and it is in desperate need of stricter regulation.
The reason this topic is one that “sounds” like one that “both the left and right” agree on is that it’s for entirely different reasons. The right comes at it from the racist “they took r jerbs” aspect, and the left comes at it from the anti-capitalistic exploitation aspect.
You don’t have to look further than who advocates for expanding the H1-B program.
Well said, truly.
You’ve just exposed your bias lmao. Thank god you daddy gave you an anecdote so you can totally speak with confidence about shit you don’t understand.
Those of us that ACTUALLY work with H1Bs…. We see what’s happening.
I’m glad your daddy wasn’t used and abused but that is NOT a common experience. Go ask the twit H1Bs that were forced to stick around for Elon’s takeover. Read the thoughts and feelings of devs who escaped that shit show. It’s not rare, Sanders is right H1B visas are horribly abused for cheap controllable labor.
H1B visas are SUPPOSED to be for jobs that no American can actually fill. Anything else IS ABUSE of the system and damaging to the American economy, not to mention unfair to the actual H1B workers.
Yeah, I’m biased because I would be getting bombed in my apartment right now if we couldn’t immigrate
I work with h1bs, I’m in tech. There are incredibly sharp people who come on this visa