In terms of very long term policy, you could try to train people to be able to do this. But, for advanced industrial processes (eg batteries) the way to do that is to establish a bunch of production lines. And that will NEVER happen in the US today without bringing in overseas experts to spend months starting them up.

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pylua a day ago | parent [-]

Sure, but bring them over on the proper visa! Have them train — not compete against the U.S. worker on wages!

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lokar a day ago | parent [-]

There is no practical visa to get. If they had to follow the letter of the law there would be no plant. They are not competing against US workers, there are no US workers to do the job.

And, FWIW, when I worked for big multi-national tech firms, it was the same thing having people from the EU offices visit. They were not doing jobs that Americans could do. We already hired all the Americans we could, and these people worked 50 weeks a year in the EU.

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pylua a day ago | parent [-]

There are plenty of diverse visas available. Arguing that specific visa is not available and therefore you do not have to follow the law is not an argument I can follow. In my mind that is tantamount to fraud.

America is a very large country and I’m sure if you paid enough, and took the time to train the workers you can find people to do the work. If you have planned your budget and timeline around not taking this path then it seems unethical to me.

I’ve witnessed tech jobs done where there are plenty of capable people in the us available to do the work. They just cannot afford to post us wages and train the workers in the us.

I completely understand that some projects are different, and you need a specific skillset. But if you are going to do work on us soil you have to follow the law.

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lokar a day ago | parent [-]

And I've interviewed many many hundreds of people for jobs at big tech companies, and there is no easy source of US people to fill these jobs. The non-US people brought over to fill them, and the people hired in overseas offices were dramatically better qualified than the US people we declined to hire.

	▲	pylua a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've also experienced this, and I completely agree. The reality is that you have to pay a very high salary in the US if you want someone to do a very good job. You probably have to recruit from the top universities, or the top candidate from other universities. Also, for a fraction of a US salary you can hire the very best bands in other countries, which is obviously a logical decision for any company to make. That does not, however, excuse anyone from following the law. I could be wrong, but the intent of the law is to encourage companies to train candidates to make them ready for the job. If you are just bringing in workers from other countries to work on us soil, even though there are us workers that can you do the job, in my mind you are essentially circumventing the intent of the law. This weakens the country for everyone. Part of the problem right now with regards to skills is that there is essentially a threshold that has been crossed for outsourcing where the skills are just more prevalent in other countries. That's obviously not a great look for the United States.
	▲	s1artibartfast a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Not surprising, but since when is something being hard or expensive a valid excuse to break the law?