H1B Visa

[David Schwartz]

The problem with discussions like this is that while anecdotes are fine, they aren’t a substitute for solid facts. 

Facts seem to be rare as hens’ teeth these days, and when people bring them up, they’re villified for it.

I don’t know what you guys read, but every city and state that has raised their minimum wage to $15/hr is experiencing significant growth. REALLY. 

(Sure, Breitbart regularly reports just the opposite. They make up most of what they spew out to people. Very little of it is grounded in reality.)

Making stupid assertions that “well, I heard that after Seattle instituted a $15 minum wage, restaurants shut down and lots of businesses fired their minimum-wage workers.”

You know what? Businesses are always coming and going, and the turnover of minimum-wage workers is the highest of ANY demographic EVERYWHERE. This is a meaningless assertion, aside from the fact that it does not reflect reality. Seattle did not need to raise their minimum wage and most of the same businesses would have folded. 

Are you aware that restaurants have the #1 highest failure rate of ALL businesses EVERYWHERE? So what’s the point of using an example saying another few of the highest-risk businesses failed (coincidentally) after that happened, and … OMG … it did nothing to reduce the turnover of minimum-wage employees! Sheeeiiiitttt!  It MUST BE A VERY BAD THING!!!

Ever notice how companies in the high-growth high-tech industry have VERY FEW people working for them who only earn minimum-wage? The worst-off people are usually the security guards. Even the janitors at most of these places earn a "living wage”. Not because the law requires it, but because they don’t want to have to deal with the employee turnover and other problems endemic with paying people too little to survive.

Back in the day, working full-time in a minimum-wage job was a REAL “living wage”. I made $2.25/hr while I was in college working half-time, and I earned enough to pay for everything that my loans and grants wouldn’t cover and then some. If I was working full-time, I would have earned enough to pay 100% of my college expenses, room board, books, car, EVERYTHING!

Working a minimum-wage job today, in 2016, you have to work about 70 hours per week just to afford MEDIAN-PRICED HOUSING in most large cities! No food, clothing, car, insurances … that’s ANOTHER 20 hours per week!

Unlike in the past when many of us greybeards were in high school and a minimum-wage job DID pay a “living wage”, it’s woefully inadeqate TODAY, in 2016.

Even worse, unemployment insurance in AZ pays something like $225 PER MONTH! What’s THAT about? When I was living in Reno, I got $414 PER WEEK for unemployment insurance.

FACTS … why do people hate them so much today?

Back in the mid-2000’s in the Phoenix area, greedy apartment owners saw what was happening to real estate prices, and OVER HALF of the apartments in Phoenix were converted to condos and sold-off. That’s a FACT. The vast majority of these apartments went for $600-$900 / mo. The apartment owners pocketed HUGE profits, way beyond what they would have earned if they simply sold the apartment complex to another buyer.

Many of the people who bought these conds were over-leveraged because of the fraudulant “NINJA” loans being written at the time, and a bunch of them (~30%) were foreclosed upon by the banks. These $600/mo apartments were being sold for $150k, leaving mortgage payments over $1000/mo in their wake. (These folks mostly had bad credit and very low income and had no business qualifying for a loan of that size.)

Up until a couple of years ago, there was not a single new apartment complex built in the Phoenix area, even though the market was at 99% occupancy and there were tons of people looking for the kinds of apartments that were sold off as condos.

Then, suddenly out of nowhere, we had a housing boom. There are apartment complexes popping up all over the Phoenix area!

Only they don’t rent for $600-$900 / mo. They’re called “Luxury Apartments”, and they rent for $1500-$3000 per month! And they’re mostly being rented by millineals who don’t want to buy homes, typically from “immigrants” — people from out-of-state who think that paying $2100 for a one BR / one BA 1000 SF apartment that’s brand spanking new with a ton of amenities is a SCREAMING DEAL! 

The housing for minimum-wage workers in Phoenix is virtually non-existent today. People are renting out spare rooms on AirBnB for $40-$75 / nt and making more than they’d make renting to someone earning even $15/hr. Why deal with low-income roomates when you can have people visiting for a weekend who make really good incomes and are happy to pay 3x-5x more than you could get renting the room separately?

These are FACTS! 

I can share anecdotes about my own life that seem contrary to this, but as far as the entire Phoenix area goes, the housing boom is being fed by people moving here from out-of-state. It’s doing absoutely nothing for people who’ve lived here for decades. And a HUGE portion of those folks are REAL foreigners … people from India, Pakistan, China, and elsewhere who are here on an H-1B visa.

I was living in Reno for 4-1/2 years and moved back to the Valley of the Sun in 2014. Now Reno is having a housing boom that’s making everybody else look like pikers. It’s because of Tesla and other businesses locating in NW Reno. Cheap-ass apartments that were going for $500/mo are now going for $1200/mo, with NO “upgrades”! The housing market is totally saturated there. People are setting up trailer parks in large empty lots and renting them out for $3000/mo! People on unemployment cannot afford to move. Many people in minimum-wage jobs are getting evicted and have nowhere to go — minimum-wage is not “living wage” there either, especially now.

(Planners are estimating that Reno needs to build 5000 new residences per year through 2022 to accomodate the expected growth that Tesla and other companies are forecast to bring in. Their average number of new homes (including apartments) has been under 3000 for over a decade. This is a MAJOR PROBLEM for a city that funds everything from sales taxes in a state that has no income tax, being run by right-wing politicians who think “growth is bad” and “minimum wages are too generous”.

It’s easy to say, “Well, I’d accept full reponsibility for that if it happened to me!” but honestly, none of these people had anything to do with Tesla or the other companies moving in there. Many are teachers earning $22k/yr salaries. Nevada pays their teachers worse than AZ does! Teachers are bailing out left and right. Schools are going on split-sessions and there are 80-90 kids per classroom. If they raised the minimum-wage to $15/hr, over half of all teachers in Nevada would all get a RAISE! But the Nevada legislature passed a law that prohibits cities from raising the minimum wage, just like Ohio just did. It’s KILLING the schools!

But you know what? Nobody is talking about that. Because the people moving there are all earning $75k-$125k and they have no problem affording the overpriced housing and private schools for their kids. And again, a HUGE percentage of these people are FOREIGN-BORN, here on H-1B visas.

So lets’ not talk about how H-1B visa are somehow hurting the folks who get them!

I’m going to post another reply about this H-1B topic.

-David "The Tool Wiz" Schwartz




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