Ok, lets walk through a scenario, how that might work in practice.
- A law is enacted that says that H1b workers must leave US after training their replacement.
- One of the big five companies puts out a requirement for a Software engineer with 10 years of experience who is also a US US citizen.
Currently, there are about a thousand job openings for software engineers with 10 years of experience in all big 5 companies combined that they are not able to fill, so a change is law is not required for this and won't do any good here.
- So say they relax the rules and say anyone can apply and will get trained.
- A laid off steel plant worker applies for the position of a software engineer.
- Once hired a H1b worker starts training him for the job that he was doing. Which might take a lot of years. Nothing against steel plant workers, they are just as honest and hardworking as any engineer. It would have taken me the same number of years to be good at steel manufacturing, just the transition takes time.
Now if I am any of the top 5 companies I am thinking, it will take a decade for us to hire these replacements and make the transition, and they are right. So what do they do, they come up with their own plan. They send that H1b worker home (india/china) and say 'you know what work from home' or they send him to a third country like Ireland or Canada and get him to work from there. Effectively its a sum negative for US economy because a tax paying job has now left US.
Well I really don't think any of this is good for the world, it will lead to a more closed societies, suspicion, mutual hatred and wars. If anything, we need to move in a direction were companies of all countries are allowed to compete freely across the globe and employees and employers are free to choose who they want to work with.
PS: I was sarcastic in my previous comment, only to highlight the fact that protectionism in US will be met with protectionism in other countries as well and thats terrible for human progress and well being.
// After 10 years of living in this country I have sincerely come to believe that majority people in this country support open societies based on merit rather than closed ones based on alliances and privilege of birth.
I am a H1b worker and a Indian national, I did my masters in one of the top universities in US and in the past 10 years that I have been in US, have worked at 2 of the big 5 companies. Yes for past 10 years I have been on H1b Visa, why you might ask ? because you see, Indians don't get green cards for decades (vs a Australian national or an Irish national you can get a green card in less than 3 years), so we are forced to be in H1b visa, until we get a green card.
But I agree with you, go ahead and remove the H1b visa and send all of us back home. All I then ask is that Indian government enacts laws similar to China (which I think it will, given the current Prime Minister of India) and blocks US companies from operating freely in India, so Indians get a shot at building their own Google, Facebook and Uber. Force local companies to use homegrown cloud rather than the one that Amazon and MSFT sells. After all why use services of these companies if you don't get a chance at building them. Make it a patriotic mission not to use IT from US firms and build it ourselves. To steal your words, anything less of a response than that is deeply and tragically wrong.
Remember, europeans built ships and explored the world because turks closed access land route via Constantinople. Go ahead provide us with that impetus, we will compete with US firms on a global stage.
- A law is enacted that says that H1b workers must leave US after training their replacement.
- One of the big five companies puts out a requirement for a Software engineer with 10 years of experience who is also a US US citizen.
Currently, there are about a thousand job openings for software engineers with 10 years of experience in all big 5 companies combined that they are not able to fill, so a change is law is not required for this and won't do any good here.
- So say they relax the rules and say anyone can apply and will get trained.
- A laid off steel plant worker applies for the position of a software engineer.
- Once hired a H1b worker starts training him for the job that he was doing. Which might take a lot of years. Nothing against steel plant workers, they are just as honest and hardworking as any engineer. It would have taken me the same number of years to be good at steel manufacturing, just the transition takes time.
Now if I am any of the top 5 companies I am thinking, it will take a decade for us to hire these replacements and make the transition, and they are right. So what do they do, they come up with their own plan. They send that H1b worker home (india/china) and say 'you know what work from home' or they send him to a third country like Ireland or Canada and get him to work from there. Effectively its a sum negative for US economy because a tax paying job has now left US.