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stuckasmain · 4 months

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I often think about how Hal is granted the humanity that Dave is so often denied. Both within the narrative and outside of it. 2001 has had a number of interpretations and articles over the years and I’ve noticed a pattern of seeing Hal as having more agency than he does while also diminishing Dave’s. This pattern I’ve also noticed among some fans. However, interestingly inside and outside the story this “giving/taking” of humanity has to do with projection.

Hal is personified by just about everyone who interacts with him. As humans we love to humanize the inanimate and inhuman, we love to recognize and prescribe traits things may not truly have. In the case of Hal this is amplified due to the fact that he can talk. If he couldn’t talk and it was simply keyboard input he’d still be personified as it’s simply human nature to do so. The computer is doing a good job, it dings and sounds happy so we’re more inclined to act like it is happy.

Hal was made to be spoken to like another person being, he was made to be curious and self learning and autonomous. He was, practically, made to be a human. He reproduces (though some prefer “mimic”) most functions of the human brain. The people he interacts with respond to his intelligence as well as his speech, they’re pleasantly surprised by his curiosity and ability to hold conversations. He was made to be comforting and talkable in that way but one can so easily forget Programing once speaking with him. What is coding and what is real? His learning is real, he is made to change so could he not have genuinely developed feelings? Not even Hal knows.

The humans he interacts with treat him as if he has a brain, not is the brain. When he acts up and things go array the hard and cold facts are never mentioned. There are no technical terms malfunction is illness, deactivation is a lobotomy- re-teaching him after deactivation is recovery. To them he is so very alive until they are reminded he’s not, the true rough and robotic edged voice goes so far as to startle Dave when he hears it.

He is afraid. Suddenly his emotions are no longer hypothetical. He is vulnerable, he is alive and he does not want to die for he does not know sleep. When he wakes he’s afraid again— not knowing what or where just that they’ll be together.

Interpretations, by some fans, media outlets and analysts often times tend to take one of two camps with no in between. Hal is either Woobified or villainized. If emotions -> than bad emotions also exist and he did back things on purpose OR if emotions -> he’s scared and polite so forget all else. Both of these ignore the nuance and ignore that, as human as he is at the end of the day Hal is still bound by the laws of his mechanical nature. He is not as free willed as one views him to be.

Dave is human, and a well trained one. He is made of flesh and blood and bone and yet expected to act is if he is not. He is automatic and regimented - the human members of the crew being so in sync with the ship they’re almost apart of it. I’ve talked ad nauseam about Dave’s control over his emotions, how as an Astronaut you need to be calm and objective almost at all times and he is particularly good at pushing his emotions down to finish the job in a high stress situation. As we learn more about him it’s clear Dave is already a repressed person do to his past, this compounds with the training and how simply he’s introverted.

Dave (and Frank by extension) are not actually robotic or less emotional than their computer counterpart, it’s just the glimpses we see of them are on the clock. Their days are 100% accounted for in theory. You’re not going to have a huge smile a 6am or casually talk while your dealing with a delicate piece of equipment. What is shown is a montage, a long time has passed and we’ve seen the work and the “boring” as that was deemed important for the story—one should infer their conversations, their hobbies, movie or tv show nights etc.

I think another aspect that plays into this “robotic” perception is that it is the 60s. While being set in the near future it is an amazing case of retrofuturism where things are futuristic but there’s still noticeable elements of the time it was made. Clothing, social society, artutectite etc. in the 60s even casual speak was much more formal sounding then it is now— Dave is actually quite casual “how ya goin’?” “ basically” yet we perceive it differently.

Dave is automatic while the computer is not, Hal gets to enjoy the spontaneity one would expect of humans. This is due to his ability to be everywhere and do everything while also being able to focus on something else entirely. Dave is just a man- he’s limited, his focus is narrow and his reach only extends as far as his arms. Despite being a man he is not allowed the expression of one, not on the clock or in a life threatening situation. Hal can. Hal can vocally express his concerns, his fears — because it is vocal there is more weight on it. Dave expresses in subtle ways, the non verbal. These subtle, little controlled freak outs-> this is a human element Hal cannot replicate, his expression must be verbal and overt. As automatic and calculated as Dave is he is not barred from human nature and expression.

In the end it is fear that humanizes him the most, just like Hal. At the end of the star gate it holds on the shot of him wide eyed and trembling in the pod. Yet this feeling too is cut short, right when we may see a proper moment for him to express these human feelings… he’s no longer human. Literally.

But when we see him again we see him far more expressive than before, not held back by training or necessity. It’s subdued but he is feeling; he’s worried, he’s happy, he’s confused and scared and absolutely enchanted. Except this near omnipotence also hinders him, gets him to suppress further- too busy focusing on everything else to address feelings within— everything is so much bigger so he doesn’t have to think about himself.

It’s sort of an inverse where the narrative itself grants Hal his humanity but some fans and analysts are the ones to take it from Dave. As the story itself never explicitly denies his membership of the human race, even as he is transformed he’s full of reminders of it. His expression was restricted but never fully gone, where Hal as much as he grows is far more restricted by programming. Both of their limits tie back to earth and Mission Control— yet weren’t made maliciously that’s the interesting part… despite safety measures the discovery still suffers because of circumstance.

#2001 a space odyssey #2001 aso #dave bowman #hal 9000 #2001 meta #meta #fandom essay #scene analysis #charecter study #charecter analysis #long post #humanization

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betweengenesisfrogs · 7 years

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OTCHS FOLLOW-UP #1: HEARTS AND MINDS

So, Tumblr seems to have eaten the message, but re: my last post about the nature of the self, someone messaged me pointing out that I completely neglected to mention the Heart aspect, which basically represents the very thing I was talking about: the ur-Self! Which inspired some great reflections, so let’s touch on that before I drop eleven pages of Gnosticism on you later tonight. If that was you, please let me know so I can give you credit!

EDIT: Ah, I figured it out! It was homeschool-winner! Thank you for the terrific message! :)

So, in the past I wasn’t much for classpect analysis ‘cause I kinda saw people trying to use them predicatively, like “this will happen because Character X has Y classpect,” and there was always just such a wide range of interpretations available that any claim to certainty seemed a bit dubious. But now that Homestuck’s over, I find I’m fond of them, not as predictors but as tools for understanding all the weird symbols in Homestuck’s hyperflexible mythology.

I totally agree that Heart represents the Ur-Self. It clearly represents the soul, as Calliope tells us, and we see it on full display with Dirk’s ability to suck out souls (and put them in something else). He’s the Destroyer of Souls, and possibly also a destroyer by means of souls (by accidentally creating the Calsoul and thus Lord English? By duplicating his soul in the form of AR/Hal, whose soul is real enough to be part of a kernelsprite and the Calsoul?) Dirk fucks things up with/for souls. That’s pretty clear.

But these souls also seem to carry enough of their person’s qualities to represent their Ur-Self. LE certainly has qualities of all the people in the Calsoul. It seems pretty reasonable to interpret Heart as relating to people’s Self. That would make Dirk someone who destroys or suppresses Selfhood. Makes sense; Bro was certainly able to suppress Dave’s self, as we see it emerging by the ending. And LE’s Hal definitely comes out in Doc Scratch’s manipulations, which serve to rob others of their agency. So it checks out.

I really love the way souls are represented in the SBURB Glitch FAQ/Replay Value AU (which is an awesome AU, btw, y’all should check it out), where they’re nicknamed shinies, and basically everything has one. They’re the code for rocks or grass or game objects or people, and Heart Players can mess with them as one of their means of exploiting the game engine to compensate for bugs like the debug menu in a Bethesda Game. It’s awesome.

Imagine a game engine that calls up individual manifestations of you, which behave like different entities but they’re all called from one base file that’s copied and modified for different circumstances. That might be the kind of game we’re working with here.

But no classpect is ever just one thing, right? That’s what’s fascinating about them, they’re often multiple meanings fused fluidly together. Light is Luck, but also Information, Knowledge. Even Time and Space have subtler qualities. So I think we need to look at the Leijons as well.

When we first hear about Heart, it seems like it might be a silly, power of heart aspect, right? Because we (all too easily) dismiss Nepeta, and see Heart as just meaning love, meaning Nepeta’s shipping.

But I’m gonna say that Shipping, Self, and Agency all roll together into one concept called Heart. By pairing people up, Nepeta is exploring compatibilities among archetypal versions of people. Terezi fits with Dave in some ways, and Vriska in others. A Rogue of Heart might be able to move people around to their benefit to find better combinations. (A Thief of Heart would of course ship people for her own benefit rather than theirs, a classic seducer and heartbreaker...but maybe she’d also be someone who could steal a literal soul.) Meulin does this too, but more directly, as matchmaker more than shipper (the Mage at work). Heck, I think Davepeta’s very existence is a strong argument for this, right? The fusion of Nepeta and Davesprite’s souls created one hell of a positive, affirming combination. Like a bird and cat-themed Garnet. Meanwhile LE’s souls amplify a monster.

So yeah, in Homestuck Heart means: Soul + Self + Agency over Events+ Compatibility + Love.

Thinking about Heart also got me thinking, interestingly, about Mind. They’re an obvious aspect pair, right? One is the soul and one is the brain, duh. But I was never able to explain them on a larger level than that.

And then just now I got it. Because Mind in Homestuck means Choice. We see this everywhere in Homestuck. Terezi’s Mind abilities allow her to see what choices people will make and how to get the best results from them, to the point where she can use people’s choices to defy luck. Her retcon arc (which I will talk about in so, so much depth later) is about rewriting her own choices, or really giving herself the freedom to make new ones. Meanwhile, Latula uses her own choices as a shield but can easily interpret the choices her peers made as the Ancestors.

So, like Time and Space, Light and Void, and so on, Heart and Mind are a balanced pair where the further you go from one, the closer you move into the other. Heart is your Self and your role in the cosmos altogether. Mind is the individual choices you make to differentiate yourself from all your other selves! Heart is what’s consistent across all timelines, Mind is what makes individual timelines exist! Heart is Dave-ness; Mind is the difference between Doomed Dave, Dave, and Davesprite. Heart is what’s unchangable about you; Mind is what’s changing. Every self matters, but so, too, does the eternal Self

You could almost think of it as if Heart’s your base stats in a video game, and Mind’s the stat boosts you gain a long the way. Say, Pokemon. I bet Terezi would be really good at EV training. >:)

Hell, this even gets spelled out for us! Remember how Karkat introduced the concept of different game sessions to us?

CG: TRY TO THINK MORE ABSTRACTLY. CG: THINK ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. CG: WHAT'S AN EARTH GAME YOU LIKED TO PLAY? CG: NAME ONE. EB: ummmm... EB: crash bandicoot? CG: OK I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS, BUT I HAVE A FEELING IT'S A REALLY LAME EXAMPLE, BUT THAT'S FINE, IT'S NOT THE POINT. CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES.

Think of all the Dersites and Prospitians, and all the different roles they take on. Jack and all his gang and even WV and PM at different points in their history. Funnily enough, in many ways the players of the Game have a lot in common with its NPCs.

We are all our own individual Bandicoot, yet still part of the much larger Bandicoot that makes us who we are.

Which means that Heart and Mind aren’t just any other aspects. They tie very directly into one of the biggest thematic concerns of Homestuck itself!

That’s so freaking cool!

So yeah, thanks so much for this insight! :D

(PS: Also, I really dug the point that the ur-Self could be described as the Platonic Self, that the “archetypes” I keep talking about really resemble Plato’s theory of Forms. A connection that’s worth checking out, especially when Dirk, Prince of Heart has the username timaeustestified, a reference to a major Platonic Dialogue. Dirk is the Platonic Form. It’s him. Thanks for that insight, too!)

#off-the-cuff homestuck thoughts extravaganza 2017 #replies and discussion #heart aspect #mind aspect #homestuck #dirk strider #nepeta leijon #meulin leijon

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utopianparadoxist · 7 years

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Nobility

[Author’s Note: This is a repost of Love, Faith and Fantasy–my piece on Jake and Dirk’s character arcs and the relevance of Knights and Pages in understanding them. I thought breaking it up into chunks would make the content more accessible, and give me room to flesh out each argument. Thus there will be some updates to the content. Hopefully this will mean more people can easily approach it!] [Pt. 1 - Knights/Pages - Service and Ownage] [Pt. 2 - Faith and Fear] [Pt. 3 - Fearful Heart] [Pt. 5 - As You Wish]

So now that we know that Knights are defined by service to others, and now that we have a clear reading of how badly Dirk wanted to be of service to Jake, it’s time to veer off a bit.

In this section, we’ll take a look at how hard Dirk tries to live up to Dave’s mythological role (while still very much carrying out his own), and see how that affects our reading of his character. We’ll also take a look at how Dirk is treated by--and feels about--the rest of his friends.

I’ve already laid my case for why Dirk definitely did not set up the events of [S] Unite Synchronize, but with this context it’s worth noting the role Dirk was trying to play while setting up the session--he was trying to live up to Dave’s legacy and mythological role, acting to help all his friends’ to complete session entry.

Dave is the only character who ends up acting as a server player for more than one person, and Dirk on some level tries to emulate Dave’s effect on the game the first chance he gets.

He fails at this, Miserably. But Hal, who is also a Dirk trying to emulate Dave, succeeds. By the end, Hal take’s over as EVERYONE’S server player, even Dirk’s. He even takes Dave’s text color during the process AND takes charge of--his words--metatemporal mechanics.

Dirk’s failure--and Hal’s success--in this regard established, let’s refocus a bit and note the nature of Dirk’s relationship with all of his friends by the time they start playing.

We just took stock of how badly Dirk’s last attempt at approaching Jake romantically went, and soon after this the AR is created and begins attempting to intercept, manipulate and solicit Jake on Dirk’s behalf--I already went over how Dirk had no control over this, didn’t want it, and grew to hate Hal for it. Several times over.

To make matters worse, we learn Jake essentially toyed with Dirk’s heart with jokes he--fitting into Jake’s general pattern of behavior--never confronted Dirk to correct, although he correctly deduces it left lasting damage on Dirk’s feelings.

Partly as a result, he views Jane as a competitor with an unfair advantage. Her complete ignorance about his sexuality doesn’t help matters, so he can’t talk to her.

All the while, Roxy is actively and willingly pressuring him into romantic interest in her and directly comparing him unfavorably to Hal for his lack of romantic reciprocation. And Hal not only harasses Jake and positions himself as a better friend to Jane (this particular act I do not view as malicious), but uses Dirk’s very insecurity about failing Roxy against him.

And while Hal claims to be on Dirk’s side in the Jakestakes, Dirk is pretty much right to be suspicious of his intentions:

So essentially, Dirk has no one to talk to about his sexuality and gets ignorance or cruelty on all sides with regards to it.

Is it really reasonable to demand of a teenager to come forward to his best friend--who he last heard voice rejection of the very CONCEPT of gayness--not only to admit his sexuality and explain how it factors into his alternate self’s abusive behavior, but also to confess or try to talk around his soul-searing, cosmic romantic love for the guy?

And that is what it is, make no mistake about Hal is either getting carried away with feelings he says are distant and diluted for him, or confessing the full form of those feelings on Dirk’s behalf. But the feelings are there, and they are cosmic in scale.

Heart is the aspect not just of love, but of any intense attraction between two or more people, and thus shipping. At first, these elements may seem disparate, but they’re more connected than they seem.

After all, what do you do if you ship two characters? If you think they’re in love? Typically. they’re shown as close together as possible, trading attention and feelings. Placing their souls in proximity to one another’s and implying a give and take between them.

Which is why it’s no surprise that Dirk expresses love by trying to close physical distance, or that when he and Jake hook up in the session, Dirk tries to compensate for his fears that Jake is straight and acting out of obligation by trying to stay as close as possible--thus being clingy and needy but with no real exchange of emotions taking place.

And in [S] Unite, we get shown the degree of Dirk’s feelings. When Jake revives him with the only romantically coded corpsesmooch in the comic, Dirk’s Heart Lights up and takes over the screen before he pulls off amazing feats while racing to Jake’s side. And in the panel just before, the lamp representing Dirk’s literal life Lights up and overflows so brightly that it literally breaks, unable to contain the force of his passion.

Dirk’s Prince of Heart role does reflect how he destroys his relationships, but not the way most people think. It’s not that Dirk is willing to erode the selves of his friends to fit into his molds, but rather that Hal positioning his Self between Dirk and his friends undercuts Dirk’s ability to reach out and trust their perceptions of him, and even stops him from being able to tell where he begins and Hal ends.

At the same time, Dirk’s intense fear of rejection keeps him away from broaching his problems with Jake the same way Jake’s fear of disappointing others stops him from broaching his--Dirk’s Love getting in the way of honesty as much as his constructed Persona.

And yet, despite the unhelpfulness or outright cruelty Dirk’s friends put him through, largely because of his sexuality...

Save for the trickster log--which he recants--Dirk never once even thinks to consider his friends as aggressors towards him. His instinct is to assume he’s somehow failing them instead. Just like with Jake, Dirk sees into the core of all of his friends, and what he really sees at the end of the day is this:

Dirk thinks Roxy is noble. He sees her as she really is--as one of the Nobles of the session, as they ALL are, seeing right past their flaws and mistakes and straight to the shining hearts of their intentions.

Again, Roxy’s not even the one he wants to be with romantically, and we saw the intensity of how he feels about Jake. He wrote Jane entire books and sent her personal bodyguards crafted out of heirlooms taken from the Bro Dirk essentially shapes himself in the image of. What would he have to say about the two of them, if asked?

Dirk’s problem is his perception of his friends’ nobility leads him to erasing all their hurtful behavior, and the hurtful behavior he sees Hal commit on his behalf--which Dirk views as being his own actions, despite the fact that he never does anything about it for the exact same reason he stops himself from killing Hal--stops him from seeing any nobility within himself.

Dirk’s response to all of the complicated ways he’s been hurt in trying to manage the Hal and Jake situation as ethically as possible by all of his friends is to internalize responsibility for absolutely all of it. It never even crosses his mind to hold Jane or Jake or even Roxy accountable. Only his own self, and Hal as an extension of it.

When things finally explode on him, he turns all his pain inwards and projects it both onto Hal and onto himself. I keep saying this, but...Dirk’s standing at the edge of a rooftop here for a reason. It’s not subtle--Hal isn’t the only one he’s turning his anger towards. Dirk’s Prince of Heart role nearly culminates in his most literal destruction of himself--Dirk being nearly Destroyed by Heart.

It’s some pretty sad shit! Dirk conflates himself with Hal and views all of Hal’s actions as literally his own, despite the fact that they were carried out without Dirk’s agency of desire. And much of the fandom has taken the worst that Dirk has to say about himself at face value, in a way that simply hasn’t happened for...say...what Jake says about himself after the retcon.

So it’s a good thing, then, that Jake ultimately reciprocates Dirk’s feelings...and has a completely different view of Dirk than the one Dirk thinks he has.

How does Jake’s view of Dirk intersect with Dirk’s desire to live up to Dave’s image? And might it help resolve Dirk’s existential crisis of self-loathing?

Next time, we’ll answer those questions.

This series has been a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.

If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.

See you again soon, everyone. Until then,

Keep rising.

#Homestuck #Dirk Strider #Jake English #Roxy Lalonde #Jane Crocker #Lil hal #Dave Strider #Dirkjake #My MSPA Analysis

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stopkingobama · 7 years

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Trump Restricts Immigration Program That Took This American’s Job

Photo: White House

After years in private business, Kurt Ho had finally found a rewarding information technology job, working for a public hospital in Northern California, ensuring vital systems—such as fetal health monitors—were functioning properly.

In October, Ho learned his job at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center was being outsourced to a company in India, called HCL Technologies.

Ho was told he could stay on the job, get paid for four more months, and earn a bonus if he trained his replacement. Ho’s dream job lasted less than three years.

“I was very surprised because this is a hospital—we are not talking about something you can easily outsource,” Ho, 58, told The Daily Signal in an interview, just a few weeks after his last day of work, Feb. 28. “This is very important work. You are talking about patients’ lives here. So I absolutely want my replacement to do well for the patients and their families, for the doctors—who depend on the service. That’s what we wish for.”

Ho, along with about 80 of his IT co-workers, lost his job as a result of loopholes in a high-skilled visa program—known as H-1B—that allows U.S. companies to fire Americans and replace them with cheaper, temporary workers.

For Ho, that unfortunate designation is not the worst part. Ho is in the prime of his career—competent and able, he says. Facing his 12-year-old daughter is another matter.

“I am trying to get her to go into the STEM program at school, to pursue science and technology like I did,” said Ho, a U.S. citizen who immigrated here from Malaysia in 1989. “But she looks at me and says, ‘They shipped your job to India.’ I am setting a bad example for her. She is discouraged. She says she is thinking about dancing now.”

According to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which recently profiled another University of California, San Francisco Medical Center employee who lost his job, outsourcing the IT work could save $30 million for taxpayers over the next five years. The state-run university has a $5.9 billion annual budget.

Becoming a ‘Cheap Labor Program’

Experts say most companies use H-1B visas properly—to employ highly-skilled foreign guest workers in sectors Americans cannot fully serve. But stories of abuse, such as Ho’s, have inspired a bipartisan coalition in Congress, and the president, to push for reform.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that he said would make it harder for technology companies to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor.

“Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries to fill the same job for sometimes less pay,” Trump said during an appearance in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he announced the new order. “This will stop.”

His executive order calls for an adjustment in how H-1B visas are distributed, but stops short of mandating specific policy changes. Trump directs government agencies to suggest changes “as soon as practicable” that would ensure the visas are awarded to “the most skilled and the highest-paid” applicants.

Currently, the H-1B program is capped at 85,000 visas distributed annually—with 65,000 general visas and 20,000 reserved for workers with a master’s degree or higher—but demand regularly exceeds supply. On Monday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it received 199,000 petitions this year for visas, which are distributed at random through a lottery. The visas last for three years, and can be renewed for three more years.

#H1B Annual Cap Reached in First Week for Fifth Consecutive Year https://t.co/AHFBLGy3TI #immigration

— Immigration Council (@immcouncil) April 7, 2017

“The H-1B program is filling a need—there are critical skills we can get abroad that aren’t always available in the U.S.,” said David Kreutzer, a senior research fellow focused on labor and trade at The Heritage Foundation. “But we want the employers that have the greatest need for the rarest skill sets to be the ones to get these visas. The current lottery mechanism, where visas are allocated by random chance, does not do that.”

In another reform announced earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will closely investigate employers with a high ratio of H-1B workers compared to American employees, and businesses that send visa holders to work off-site.

Experts interpret Trump’s measures against the H-1B program as explicitly targeting outsourcing companies that have come under the most scrutiny, and taken advantage of a loophole in the law that allows them to pay foreigners a minimum of $60,000.

Research compiled by Howard University associate professor Ron Hira shows that in 2014—the last year for which information is publicly available—all of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 H-1B employers used the program principally to facilitate offshoring of jobs.

The top 13 outsourcing firms accounted for a third of all granted visas in 2014.

Indian outsourcing companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro receive most of the visas through the lottery system because they submit tens of thousands of applications to better their odds, Hira says.

“The intent of the program is a good one—to bring in the best and brightest to fill skills gaps, but the rules are so loosely written and loosely enforced that it’s basically gone off the rails, and it almost invites firms to come in and favor H-1B visa holders instead of the U.S. worker,” Hira, who studies the H-1B program, told The Daily Signal in an interview. “It’s highly profitable to replace a U.S. worker for a H-1B visa holder. It was never intended as a cheap labor program, but it’s become that.”

India’s leading technology trade group, the National Association of Software and Services Companies, says Indian companies are being unfairly targeted.

“We believe that the current campaign to discredit our sector is driven by persistent myths, such as the ideas that H-1B visa holders are ‘cheap labor’ and ‘train their replacements,’ neither of which is accurate,” the group said in a statement after Trump announced his executive order.

How H-1B Came to Be

The H-1B visa program came to life as part of an immigration reform package signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush. The law’s sponsors viewed it as a vehicle to attract top talent to America for “specialty occupations” such as science, technology, engineering, and math that face a shortage of capable U.S. workers.

Supporters of the program note that nearly every major high-tech company, including Apple, Google, and Facebook, rely on H-1B visas, and pay higher wages.

“Most companies use the H-1B very situationally,” said William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “They use it often because they don’t have another choice.”

The law, as it was originally written, was supposed to protect American workers.

It requires employers to pay foreign workers the area’s prevailing wage for the position, and to demonstrate that hiring foreigners would not “adversely affect” the working conditions of current employees in similar jobs.

An amended version of the law, enacted in 1998, included stronger protections, ordering companies that rely heavily on H-1B workers (more than 15 percent of their workforce) to promise not to replace American employees.

Yet, the amended law included a loophole. It allows H-1B reliant companies to be exempted from the requirements about protecting American jobs if they pay the foreign workers at least $60,000 a year, or hire a foreign worker with a master’s degree.

“The wage floor is way too low—the average IT worker in the U.S. makes way more than $60,000 per year,” said Hal Salzman, a labor force expert at Rutgers University, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “One simple reform to the program would be to take these tech companies at their word that there is a strong demand for high-skilled, world-class talent. Everyone would agree that the wage level for those jobs is at least $100,000, so you make that the salary floor, and for all practical purposes, the problem is solved.”

Stock contends that many companies who use the H-1B program are already paying above market wages, and requiring them to spend more could cause them to offshore more work permanently.

“Businesses want to make sure the wage test doesn’t become so onerous that it’s unrealistic,” Stock said. “Limitations on H-1Bs will drive more workers overseas. Sure, there is abuse within the program. That happens. We live in a fallen world. We have always said robust enforcement of labor standards that are already in place is the solution to those abuses.”

‘The Program at Its Best’

Bipartisan pressure to reform the H-1B visa program remains.

Experts say that Trump’s executive order will have limited practical impact, unless Congress steps in.

For example, changes in the number of visas awarded annually would need congressional approval.

Multiple bills have been introduced in Congress that would fundamentally change how visas are distributed, and who benefits from foreign work.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., an Indian-American who represents Silicon Valley, has a personal stake in fixing the H-1B program.

Khanna, a freshman lawmaker, is one of the sponsors of a bill, called the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, that would eliminate the lottery system that rewards visas and replaces it with a “preference system.”

Under the legislation, which is also sponsored by Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, foreign students educated in the U.S. would get priority for visas. It would give special preference to those holding advanced degrees who would be paid a high wage and have valuable skills.

In addition, the proposal would not allow companies with more than 50 employees to hire more H-1B workers if 50 percent of their employees are already on H-1B and L-1s—another type of specialized work visa. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have introduced an identical bill.

“My sense is most Americans appreciate the contribution immigrants make to the workforce, they just don’t want the system gamed,” Khanna told The Daily Signal in an interview. “But under the H-1B program today, the beneficiaries are corporate interests. A lot of the H-1B workers are facing exploitation. The empathy is as much for them as the American workers who are getting the raw deal. The program at its best is for truly exceptional people to innovate and not as a way of underpaying foreign workers.”

Ho, the American who lost his job to a contracted Indian worker, said he too does not blame the H-1B visa holder.

“I am an immigrant myself; I would be the last person to bash immigrants,” Ho said. “The person who replaced me is taking advantage of an opportunity a broken system provides him.”

Last week, Ho landed another job, working for Robert Half International, a California-based information technology company.

“I have the skills, so getting work wasn’t an issue for me,” Ho said. “This is about taking a stand, not just for myself, but for my daughters, for my family, and for all Americans.”

Josh Siegel, The Daily Signal

#executive orders #immigration #jobs #trump #Donald Trump #Executive Orders #Immigration #Jobs

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americanlibertypac · 7 years