Did you hear all the BS being thrown at Elon and Vivek about H1-B visa workers? Talk about a tempest in a tea pot. The left will do anything to derail MAGA, and this kerfuffle proves it.
I’m the first to vote to shut down all illegal immigration, and without exception send any illegal aliens we find in the US back to their country of origin. The law is the law, no matter how Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas define it and Merrick Garland misinterprets it. Entering the US at any place except a port-of-entry is a crime. Overstaying your visa is a crime. Entering the US without papers (a visa or work permit) is a crime.
These people are criminals. Admittedly not major criminals, but criminals nonetheless. And criminal should pay the penalty for their criminal activity. In this case the penalty is deportation back to their country of origin.
What about the children? That is an issue whose solution depends on where the child was born. Currently a child not born on US soil is still an illegal alien, and should be deported with its parents. A child born in the US is technically a citizen, and deporting them is not a legal solution to their parent’s illegal entry.
My solution to this is to leave the solution to the parents. If they choose to take the child with them, that’s their right as parents. If they choose to take advantage of the child’s US citizenship, they must leave the child in the care of someone who will “adopt” that child and be responsible for them as if the child were their own. Without an adult to be responsible for the child, the child cannot stay. The child may, upon achieving adulthood, reenter the US as a citizen.
We’re supposed to be talking about legal entry into the US by those with skills needed by industry, usually holders of H1-B visas, so let’s get back to that.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. These roles typically require the theoretical and practical application of specialized knowledge and a minimum of a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in the specific field. Some key features of the H1-B program are:
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Eligibility:
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The applicant must have a job offer from a US employer.
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The job must qualify as a “specialty occupation,” requiring specialized knowledge.
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The applicant must have the required qualifications for the role.
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Validity Period:
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Initially issued for up to three years, with an option to extend it to a maximum of six years.
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Employer-Specific:
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The visa is tied to the sponsoring employer. Changing employers requires filing a new H-1B petition.
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So what we have here is a work permit, tied to a specific employer for a fixed amount of time, and limited to people who have a required skill set and the education to support it. So the argument that workers in the US on a H1-B visa are taking US jobs may not be true.
But wait, there’s more!
H-1B workers should not legally earn less than an equivalent US citizen for the same role. US law mandates that employers pay H-1B visa holders the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid to similarly employed workers, whichever is higher. This requirement is designed to ensure that H-1B workers are not exploited and that their hiring does not undercut wages for US workers.
So there’s no actual benefit to hiring an H1-B permitted worker excepting filling a job opening that there are no US educated and trained applicants for.
It seems anyone who complains that the H1-B program is not in the US best interests is full of BS. If an employer has to pay the same wages and benefits to a permit employee that he has to provide for a US citizen, what is the advantage to hiring the H1-B employee?
Nothing that w
e can see makes H1-B employees better than US citizens except they’re available, and the US does not have the trained and educated workers to fill the positions.
Are there abuses to the system. As long as men are involved, there will be abuses. That doesn’t mean the whole program should be scrapped because of some abusers. Maybe the government needs to spend more time monitoring those here on a work permit, but the system seems to provide skilled workers that we just don’t have.
I believe the need for H1-B workers should be a call to action for universities and colleges to recruit more science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students. There is certainly a need for people with these degrees in our job market.
Should we have them, the engineers, the mathematicians? Of course we should, however our institutions of higher learning don’t emphasize STEM like they used to. We became too used to being a service economy rather than a manufacturing economy, and that change shows in the degrees being issued. Where we used to graduate engineers of one type or another we now graduate hotel managers. Lord knows we need more of them.
When young adults have borrowed thousands of dollars to pursue higher education, one would think they’d go for a degree with a job built in on the back end. It’s not that hard a plan to create. Foreign students do it by the thousands every year.
Here’s the foreign student’s plan. It’s also a complaint (that the foreign students do it) from those who want to get rid of H1-B. Foreign students (paying full tuition, by the way) come to our universities, they usually study STEM, get their degree in STEM, intern summers in STEM, and then get H1-B jobs in STEM in the companies where they interned. Smart thinking on their part. While working under a H1-B visa, these foreign workers do whatever they can to qualify for a green card and eventually citizenship. Smart on their part. Legal to do, and it wouldn’t be an attractive option if US colleges graduated enough STEM workers. They don’t.
So until we get our act together and start producing the skilled workers with the educations we need, H1-B is a good option. When we start producing the STEM workers we need, we can look to cut back on H1-B.
Till then, those who make a big deal out of industry needing H1-B employees should take their liberal arts degree and shove it.
We can’t ask often enough that you contribute to a charity or organization that is taking care of the hurricane victims. Winter is here and people still need help. We recommend Samaritan’s Purse or Mercury One as already on the ground and doing excellent work. Thank you.
Continuity planning, civilian and military
UALR, located in the middle of the state with significant manufacturing and construction all around should have had a full blown engineering school decades ago. UALR built out its printing department so it could print diplomas instead of shaping itself to fit the needs of its community.