The Effect of H-1b Quota on Employment and Selection of Foreign-Born Labor (2018)

Were the most innovative people actually "lost" or did they just switch to something like the O1 Visa which isn't subject to quota, and highly innovative people should qualify for?

drafting specific, targeted policies in the hopes of achieving a targeted outcome (without any unintended consequences) is very difficult - it's almost as if human minds are not smart enough to consider all possible outcomes, and all possible ramifications!

That's why i dislike gov't intervention - in most cases, these policies are drafted by vested interests, to the exclusion of some other group (who often then bear the brunt of the externalized cost of such a policy).

I doubt it was due to network effects. I’m probably one of those top quartile potential H1-B holders that never applied. My main reason for not applying is that the random nature of the lottery reduces the RoI on finding a US job so much that it becomes rational to stay in Sweden and focus on local / remote consulting opportunities. As I understand it the way those Indian IT firms get around that is that they hire locally in India and send in applications for more staff than they want visas for. So they can get around the lottery dynamics through collective action, something I can’t do.

Half the people complain about H-1B and the other half complain about outsourcing. Neither of them makes sense to me, but the outsourcing angle even less so. It's just labor cost arbitrage for knowledge work. And soon that arbitrage opportunity will perhaps shift from humans to llms. What is the issue with that?

> I am sure people understand that H-1B issues are just red herring.

I don't 100% agree. H-1B visa holders, if laid off, have 60 days to find another job or leave the country.

This means they have much much lower negotiation power and will likely try and avoid at all cost being laid off, and will accept worse condition to stay in the US.

This is a detriment to the whole working class, because:

- US workers are now competing with other workers that will accept worse condition

- US companies can leverage H-1B workers as leverage against the negotiation power of US workers

I've seen this with my own eyes. When my previous employer announced forced RTO, all holders of the equivalent of H-1B visas just accepted it automatically, because rejecting would have meant (most likely) getting out of the country.

And the company was able to easily let go (or accept the resignation of) workers with stronger rights.

An over-supply of workers just weakens labor power, it's basic supply&demand reasoning: it's crazy that people don't realize that open borders and unchecked immigration is the most anti-worker thing one could do.

Everything is a red herring to billionaires and corporations not being taxed/given unchecked power.