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0 pointsDig1t10d ago0 comments

Exactly. The fact that H1B's get paid less than Americans across the board is all you really need to know about the issue. There IS no reasonable counter argument.

It's supposedly a program for importing the best and brightest talent that doesn't exist in the US but somehow those best and brightest people get paid LESS than their American counterparts? It was never about the best and brightest it was always about bringing in cheap labor that can't leave.

Sadly I don't think we'll ever fix it either, right leaning industrialists support it because they benefit from cheap labor, and the left leaning politicians get to continue importing people who overwhelmingly vote for them. As usual the loser in the equation is the middle class American worker.

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greedo10d ago

How many H1B visa holders become citizens eligible to vote for those "left leaning politicians?"

I don't think having an H1B helps you accelerate your citizenship application in anyway, and for many countries the wait for legal citizenship is decades long.

Dig1tOP9d ago

The ones who get citizenship and their children.

Just look at the data for how people vote by demographic group (race).

Nonwhite groups overwhelmingly vote blue, H1B's are overwhelmingly nonwhite. This is not controversial.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...

https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/aoodm8/how_the_...

greedo9d ago

You didn't answer the question at all. Getting an H1B visa is merely the first step in a very long process towards citizenship. Decades long. For example, if you're from India and you get an H1B, it'll be roughly a decade before you can get a green card. From then you have a mandatory 5 year waiting period before naturalization. And this assumes a normal, functioning immigration process; something we definitely don't have in the US.

This can be sped up if they marry a US citizen, speeding up the process quite a bit, but it will still be several years. Now their children would be citizens, but that's another 18 years before they can vote. Politicians aren't known for playing the long game...

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SilverElfin10d ago

> The fact that H1B's get paid less than Americans across the board is all you really need to know about the issue.

Except this is literally false. Every single study I’ve seen that claims this has no real evidence - just speculation without knowing the details of the jobs or the people being hired, based on their own self-serving false comparisons to make dubious claims that similar jobs are paid differently.

Since you said “across the board”, do you think Google or Amazon pay a software engineer at the starting level differently based on immigration status? No, they don’t. Literally every manager at big tech could tell you this confidently.

Dig1tOP9d ago

I have worked at Apple for a decade, H1B's absolutely do get paid less. We have many H1B's that literally just sit around and push buttons and file bug reports, and barely know how to code. Some of them can't code at all. Ofc some of them are good engineers, but they are not even in the majority.

There is plenty of data to back this up.

>A total of 60% of all H-1B jobs are assigned wage levels that are well below the local median wage.

https://www.epi.org/press/a-majority-of-migrant-workers-empl...

SilverElfin9d ago

The EPI report is one of the commonly cited baseless reports. Dig in a level beyond their press claims and you’ll find no real method behind it that justifies their claims, because they have no actual way to compare one worker to another to know they’re equivalent and comparable for the purpose of compensation.

As for your claims about Apple - I am guessing you aren’t a manager and don’t know about how their pay scale works. I’m not doubting your claims about the quality of some workers - although I bet you’ll find plenty of non immigrant people not doing work as well. But I know the claim on pay is wrong, once you adjust for performance ratings and levels.

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greedo10d ago

How many H1B visa holders become citizens eligible to vote for those "left leaning politicians?"

I don't think having an H1B helps you accelerate your citizenship application in anyway, and for many countries the wait for legal citizenship is decades long.

Dig1tOP9d ago

The ones who get citizenship and their children.

Just look at the data for how people vote by demographic group (race).

Nonwhite groups overwhelmingly vote blue, H1B's are overwhelmingly nonwhite. This is not controversial.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...

https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/aoodm8/how_the_...

greedo9d ago

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SilverElfin10d ago

> The fact that H1B's get paid less than Americans across the board is all you really need to know about the issue.

Dig1tOP9d ago

There is plenty of data to back this up.

>A total of 60% of all H-1B jobs are assigned wage levels that are well below the local median wage.

https://www.epi.org/press/a-majority-of-migrant-workers-empl...

SilverElfin9d ago

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse