Comments

2
Trump puts our tech companies in peril. Asian, Indian, Arab, and other populations have amazing engineers whom have the patience and attention to detail to develop software, much of it mentally exacerbating, that would bore a lot of Americans to tears.
3
Radical new method to combat the influx of bros in baseball caps on CH: assault them.

http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2017/0…
4
Your second paragraph on the H-1B story is spot-on, Charles.

The reality of economic and cultural interrelatedness in the present day is more interesting than puritan ideological adherences, no?
6
As someone who works in the tech industry, I could share all kinds of stories, and then some, about the evils and abuses of the H-1B visa program, both glaring and insidious. A Slog comment thread is really not the place for me to get into that, and I certainly don't want to waste my morning getting into a back-and-forth with facile observers like @2.

Suffice it to say for now... From the original story: Microsoft and other companies say the visa program is necessary, because there is not enough tech talent in the U.S. to fill jobs. I don't want to outright say that's a lie, but on the continuum between lie and truth, it's a heck of a lot closer to the lie end, and for reasons that aren't entirely obvious.

While I think it would be dangerous to eliminate the H-1B program, I believe it would be a great improvement over the status quo to significantly restrict and curtail it.

This reminds me. Just because Trump is a monster doesn't mean he isn't right about some issues. Or let me state that more precisely. Just because Trump is a monster doesn't mean he didn't position himself on the right side of some issues. (And these tend to be the issues where I feel Bernie was on the right side and Hillary wasn't. And yes, I voted for Hillary of course.)
7
@6 is mostly correct about tech companies
8
Oh, and one thing I meant to add @6. A reduction in H-1B visas would, to some extent, lead to more offshoring. That's fine by me. There's only so much you can put the globalization genie back in the bottle.

P.S. I see d.p. has finally resurfaced @4 after his coming out on the wrong end of the Sound Transit 3 vote. D.p., I really thought we would no longer be graced by your presence. My condolences to you on us idiot voters of the central Puget Sound region not listening to your wisdom and voting in favor of the largest mass transit expansion in our history. I'm sure our diversity contributed to that too.
9
Did Ben Carson's mother tell him that before or after he attacked her with a hammer?
10
@6: I also lay claim to your opening clause, as do dozens of others on Slog, so you really have no credence in that regard to characterize the experience of others to bolster your subjective comments.
11
Huh, Cress?

ST3 turned out much as I predicted: Despite all the billions of pandering useless hinterland nonsense contained therein, the proposition lost in East King, lost in South King, lost in Pierce. It squeaked by in Snohomish, but only thanks to voters in Lynnwood, who were assaulted by an active disinformation campaign and reportedly believed they had to pass ST3 just to retain the already-funded ST2 segments. Congrats on selling the same thing to the same population twice, at 3x the cost.

Again as predicted, ST untimately relied on a supermajority of Seattleites desperate for anything in order to force $54 billion worth of counter-best-practice mediocrity on the entire region. Seattle voting patterns precisely mirrored density statistics -- which (sadly) the planned Seattle lines do not, not even remotely.

So basically well-intentioned urban-identified people voted for a bunch of trains to nowhere, which they were fraudulently told )and desperately want to believe) will be easy to access and helpful for myriad stuff-of-life trips, but which all of established world precedent says will not.

Congrats on your "big win". Seattle will now suck to get around forever.
12
H1-B visas are a kind of corporate welfare. It's modern peonage or serfdom.

The program is a loophole for business to bypass worker rights protections and get cheap labor. The claim that they use this program for highly skilled workers rarely stands up to scrutiny. In Florida Disney had customer service call center workers train their H1-B visa replacements. Qualified workers obviously existed: they were right there doing the training, about to be laid off. The difference was the guest workers got paid less.

Even more insidiously, the status of the guest worker is totally insecure. They will be deported immediately if they displease their employer. Even if fired illegitimately, what can they do? They're out of the country. The don't dare blow the whistle for abuses. They can't join with other workers in any complaints or even gentle pressure for working condition improvements. H1-B visa workers are entirely at the company's mercy. They can't refuse to work long days. They can be made to work off the clock and won't say a word. They are business's dream workers: totally docile, no enforceable rights.

If you support immigration, then make it easier for anyone to cross borders, work without fear of being deported, and compete on a level playing field. Calling opposition to H1-B racist is like calling opposition to peonage racist.
13
(Also, thanks for revealing to us your complicated relationship with your Young White Male Techie entitlement in your apparent concurrence with President Cheeto.)
14
Shorter @11:

"ST3 totally would have lost, if'n it hadn't been for all those voters who voted for it."
15
Reading comprehension much?
16
@13, now there's the d.p. we've all come to know and love. I'm reminded now that one of d.p.'s favorite epithets was "ad hominem." Project much, d.p.?

d.p., clearly there's more than one issue on which you have a winning way of winning people over to your side. It's just a shame I have no interest in debating our federal immigration system with you. And there's no point in our going back and re-litigating ST3. It would be like old times, though, wouldn't it?
17
Lest you forget, Cress, this did start on a different topic, and prior to your personalized interjections.

Anyway, I'll leave it up to you to determine to which ominous figure in current events your lack of self-awareness and inability to process facts that challenge your heroic narrative suggest the closest similarity.
18
d.p. @17, you're absolutely right. Vindictive, ad-hominem personal attacks are perfectly fine, so long as they're in response to some topic other than the one the post is about.

Which is why I'm fine with your comparing me to Hitler. Oh, sorry. Current events. Hmm, which current public figure would d.p. consider the modern-day Hitler for which our 2017 Godwin's law should apply? ...

Ah! I got it. Do you mean Dow Constantine or Ed Murray?
19
Somebody buy this kid a mirror.
20
@18:

And he's just as witty as ever - why the bon mots just flow right out of him like piss from a Russian hooker.
21
Whatever. I appreciated Charles' acknowledgment that the challenges of globalized labor lack easy answers, much less ones that fit squarely in ideological boxes. I expressed my appreciation to Charles in type, without making any kind of pronouncement on H1-Bs themselves.

Cress, of course, saw my handle, and swooped in to hijack, distract, belittle, and generally be a dick. That's just what he does. He's a dick.

He's also reliably fatuous and impervious to facts that he finds disagreeable. I imagine that makes him quite annoying in person, and that this will eventually come back to bite him karmically. Shame, when so much of his arrogance appears to be derived from his position of entitlement within Seattle's lauded bubble industry.

[shrug]
22
The H-1B "we can't find qualified workers" is almost always "... because we'd have to raise our offer 10%". A tiny fraction of the people at the high end are truly hard to find.

H-1B supply definitely holds wages down (my wages), and companies are full of shit about it, but I think it's still a positive for the country when used at the high end. It helps bring good and valuable people to the country, many becoming citizens, who wouldn't be here otherwise. And high end tech workers are still doing fine.

H1-B use at the lower end is hard to defend, though, holding down wages for workers who can't afford it and the people brought in are less valuable in skills.

At the high end, my concern is for the visa holders, who can get screwed by their employer because they're indentured. The visas should be made transferable to other employers -- if the holders are not just filling a slot for one company, but are valuable to the country, why not?
23
d.p. @21, if the important point you want to come on these boards to make is that, regarding me, "He's a dick," well, you've got no argument there. I do find it amusing that you assume I'm a he. I'd feel more comfortable with a gender-agnostic "dick" designation.

Anyway, I'll just have to let you stew over the fact that my tax dollars as a City of Seattle resident are now going toward building a second dedicated subway tunnel through downtown. I realize that must be a profoundly bitter realization.
24
You do you, @23. Far be it from me to assign you a normative binary gender, no matter how closely your style of belligerent fallacy-filled argumentation resembles every "dude" trolling for a fight in every online forum ever.

My point about ST3 -- again, a topic I did not raise -- is that treating it as a triumph of regional planning consensus with broadly endorsed net-positive mobility outcomes makes about as much sense as Trump claiming a popular mandate. The facts and the votes do not agree with you.

25
Charles Mudede, confirmed racist.

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