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A simple solution for the H-1B problem [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-04
Most of the problems we face as a nation could have simple solutions, it not for artificial barriers erected by those who stand to make billions of dollars from a perverse, distorted system.
I’ll keep this short and to the point. We can immediately solve the H-!B controversy by adopting a very simple solution. The argument of Musk and the others fighting for these visas is “Lordy, we’d just love to hire unionized, highly-paid American workers, but golly, there just aren’t any qualified workers, so we must be allowed to hire foreign workers instead.”
Calling their bluff
My proposal takes Musk et al at their word. All we have to do is say, OK, you can have all the H-1B visas you want provided:
You pay these workers the same compensation a similarly skilled American worker would earn (that is in the law already)
You pay a 500% tax on their salaries
For example, you need to hire a database specialist and the prevailing wage is $100,000/year. Fine, here’s your H-1B. You pay the worker $100,000 a year and you pay a tax of $500,000 a year while the worker is here. If the skills are really unavailable with American workers, then they will pay that $600,000 cost if it is essential to their multi-billion dollar business.
Wait, there’s more
And the proposal has a very important second part. In the process of dispensing these visas and collecting the taxes, we will accumulate important data about the skills that Americans are not developing domestically. The tax will generate a lot of revenue; $32.5 billion dollars a year if all 65,000 H-1B holders received a salary of $100,000.
$32 billion dollars can fund free 4-year college, even PhD-level education for thousands of Americans to gain the skills that Musk and friends so badly need. That money could fund a quarter million full ride scholarships.
Bottom line
We must stop arguing everything on the terms that the Trumpsts define. We need our own big ideas. This is an idea that is simple, yet straight to the point. We need to be offering big ideas like this in EVERY area of dispute we have with the Trump billionaires. We might find that many of the MAGA people will actually like some of these ideas.
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