US to hike H1B visas, merit will count for green cards

[cascadiance]

159. These "rules" have been touted before and haven't been enforced.

The rules for decades that those hiring H-1B jobs need to pay the "prevailing wage" of American citizens have been gamed by "body shops" who only hire H-1B's and therefore claim they can just pay all of their employees the same *LOWER* rate because they aren't measuring it against permanent American citizen employee salaries, and don't hire out their employees as "contractors" but as a "contracting service" to hide what they are paying the employees from being on the books and used in this capacity.

There will be more games to work around these green card rules. The priority should be FIRST to not even TALK about changing the H-1B Visa quotas, but to fix the broken immigration system that helps expedite foreigner's applications to become citizens here and to get green cards so that they can be more on an even playing field and help those who want to become real IMMIGRANTS and not just temp workers here.

I never said that people working temporary jobs around the world are facing "easy" situations. Many of them do have it tough. And they are being used by the system just as much as we are. And we should be on an international basis, ESPECIALLY with our screwy trade agreements like the even worse TPP coming up, be looking to help fix some of these situations instead of making it worse. But THERE is where the congress needs to make their situations better, not making their situations better by expanding a program that screws Americans more to offer them jobs so that those at the top can save more bucks in their race to the bottom.

YOU are insulting Indians if you are saying their free education system (through a bachelor's degree) is worse than that of the U.S.'s free education system (which only provides you a high school diploma). Our higher education system has been better for a long time in terms of quality of education IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT! Much like our health care system (IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT!) If you want to say it is something that "we do well", you have to factor in if the average American can take advantage of it without being put in to huge debt. Now student debt is replacing consumer debt as the biggest amount of debt in our country too, which is a bad sign in this area.

If Americans could get a free bachelor's degree here in our country and go some place like Switzerland to get their graduate degree, be guaranteed at least a reasonable tech job here without that, and by getting a graduate degree in Switzerland be able to work temporarily there to make more money to build some savings and come back here, then yes, a lot of Americans would be better off. But that reality doesn't work for most of us. And if it was done on the same scale, citizens in Switzerland would be up in arms about people like you coming in to take their jobs too and rattling their government's cages to change the rules as well.

Not everyone in India is living well. Many don't have the 'caste' or other privileges there to get in to a good school and avoid living in areas where they have to farm to make a living. But those that do have tech degrees do have good choices there. And those are the people that are coming here to get graduate degrees and to get H-1B Visas subsequently. Not the poor starving Indians. We have to make sure our own people are taken care of first and not allow the 1% to take all of our wealth, which they are doing with programs like H-1B before we can be serious players in helping other people around the world with their situations. That's probably part of the reasons for H-1B too, and so many other laws in this country that keep blowing up the middle class. They WANT to disempower us so that we have to worry more about the survival layer of Maslow's pyramid instead of self actualizing and working towards helping other's situations around the world also be better too.

Now pardon me, as I need to take off for the rest of the day to do real work here, and not interrupt it posting on boards like this.