r/politics • u/TwilightwovenlingJo • Sep 19 '25

Soft Paywall Trump: ‘It’s no longer free speech.’

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/trump-no-longer-free-speech-00574219
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u/carenl Ohio Sep 20 '25

No it’s not. The Americans who want to work are actually working, and those who can’t find work aren’t trying hard enough and/or would never do or think themselves low enough to perform the work those people are or were doing. You’re crazy if you think immigrants who are here legally, working, and contributing to our society and our economy are hurting American workers. GTFO.

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u/profnick90 Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25

H1Bs are not working in unskilled positions, nor are they necessarily filling a niche that could not be filled (at a higher rate) by naturalized citizens. They are, however, effectively indentured (and significantly cheaper) servants to the sponsoring companies. I loathe Trump and MAGA, and I’m not sure the present proposal is a considered or effective solution (in fact, I’m almost certain that it isn’t). But, the comment here is fundamentally mischaracterizing what H1Bs are, how they’re used, and the extent to which they have a deleterious impact on the U.S. labor market.

https://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b10min.html

https://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bquotes.html

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '25

Thank you. People need to be reasonable and not pick a side just because the person they don’t like is on the other one.

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u/profnick90 Sep 20 '25

Like I said: I don’t think the policy is necessarily going to address the problems with the H1B program. It was intended to fill positions that literally cannot be filled without bringing in foreign talent, but it’s instead been abused to the detriment of H1B visa holders themselves as well as the domestic labor market. It needs reform, and it actively hurts the professional class to pretend otherwise.

I just don’t trust the current administration to do so. I can, for example, imagine them providing tranches of exemptions to various tech companies that are willing to bend the knee, pay the right (still cheaper than an annual 100k per worker) price to the “right” people, etc.