Housing Values May Drop Over 50% In Silicon Valley (Palo Alto: house, tech jobs)

[Perma Bear]

Originally Posted by Machiavelli999

This OP is a lot like Trump. 90% racist drivel and exaggerations, BUT with 10% of important truth. And that truth is that an immigration crackdown really can hurt SV companies and consequently hurt property values.

And that 10% is a good thing. Skilled immigrants can easily succeed but the property values need to crash

[joejerryronnie]

Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat

This is a thinly-veiled political screed masquerading as the silliest dire prediction about Silicon Valley property values I've ever seen.

Throw in an undertone of racism and xenophobia and fluffythewondercat has hit the nail on the head.

[lvmensch]

San Jose is about 5% Indian as is Palo Alto. Cupertino is 25%. In virtually all there are more Chinese than Indians though Asians are a big block.

So it is very hard to see how an H1B crack down would do much with respect to housing. Might change the employment demographics a good bit.

[WestCoaster99]

Here is how it would, not very difficult to understand.

According to reports 74.3% of tech employees in SV are Asians. (Including all Asians).

With their departure, either voluntarily or involuntarily, the tech giants will have to hire Americans, at twice the wages. A new pending legislation mandates all companies to hire Americans first.

They will no to do that remaining in SV.

So they will move out of the area, taking ALL jobs with them. If they have to hire Americans, why should they remain here to pay them twice as much, they can be in Texas at half the price.
The main reason they are here, because Indians love this place, and want to come here as cheap labor. They paid them a salary of 65K per year (mandated by H1b visa). Would you as an American engineer work for 65 K in SV? We all know the answer.

Tech giants, like Google, Apple, Facebook etc. would have a small administrative offices here, but their workforce, which would now be American would be elsewhere.

Many tech companies are already planning to move out, and Trump has been in office only a little more than a month.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by simboticus

This is complete nonsense, OP you obviously don't work in SV. Sure there are a lot of asians, but only a small % are H-1B, and many of the rest are Americans. And, H1b workers are paid competitive wages, the government sets minimum salaries based on education, title, responsibilities. Companies can't just pay them whatever they want.

https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wages.cfm
FLCDataCenter.com

My wife handles the H-1B visas for her company, salaries have to be approved, and are the same as US workers. At least at her company, maybe there are abuses going on at some firms.

Even still, the number of H-1B workers is too low to have a drastic impact on the local economy.

It is true that the workers can't change jobs easily. That's fair though since the sponsoring company has to pay ~$10K in legal fees to get someone setup on an H1B visa.

And its also true that there are shortages of qualified American workers in some technical fields.

BTW I'm a white middle aged male Republican FWIW

No, they're not. Several have posted her over the years, after being offered a job but before moving to the US, and the salary they posted was--if what you say is true--at the lowest extreme of the official range, if it was within any official range at all. Some of these workers have families they're planning to bring over, on a salary that can't possibly support a family. The salaries aren't even enough, according to our members, to support a single adult in the Bay Area.

The H1b program is not being used merely to fill a gap where there are insufficient qualified Americans. Come on, don't pretend you don't know about the many employers nation-wide who have fired ALL their American tech staff to replace them with H1b's!

OP, most of those people live in Fremont, and other lower-rent burgs. If some have to leave, it's not going to affect the economy in SV proper, much. Companies are not paying the H1b's 50% less, OP. It won't be necessary for companies to relocate. Where would they relocate to, anyway? Do you mean--overseas?

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by WestCoaster99

Here is how it would, not very difficult to understand.

According to reports 74.3% of tech employees in SV are Asians. (Including all Asians).

With their departure, either voluntarily or involuntarily, the tech giants will have to hire Americans, at twice the wages. A new pending legislation mandates all companies to hire Americans first.

They will no to do that remaining in SV.

So they will move out of the area, taking ALL jobs with them. If they have to hire Americans, why should they remain here to pay them twice as much, they can be in Texas at half the price.
The main reason they are here, because Indians love this place, and want to come here as cheap labor.
Tech giants, like Google, Apple, Facebook etc. would have a small administrative offices here, but their workforce, which would now be American would be elsewhere.

Many tech companies are already planning to move out, and Trump has been in office only a little more than a month.

"Elsewhere" where? Seattle? Nope. Appalachia? Hardly. Remember, Microsoft started out in Albuquerque, which has a pretty cheap COL, but ended up moving to Seattle, because they couldn't attract workers when they were located in the middle of the desert.

RE: underlined--do you have an inside line on what they're planning? If so, please share. Wherever they move, they'd have to offer competitive salaries for the industry. They wouldn't be able to suddenly start offering Americans lower wages for the same work as before, just because they found a low COL niche.

[Ceece]

H1b's are not all highly skilled people who can/will do jobs Americans won't do for the same money. We aren't talking farm work here. There are plenty of Americans who would do the work but one of the problems is the SV culture. The working all the time start up attitude when it's no longer a startup, and it does take someone who is a bit on the desperate side to give their life to their work. H1b workers want to stay, they have that bit of desperation, but let's not pretend the skills are all there....we have a ton of training that goes on once people relocate here and they will be willing workaholics for as long as it takes. American college grads could be trained the same way.


And there have been too many stories reported about American workers forced to train their foreign replacements just to get severance of some sort. The number may not be statistically significant to some, but those stories are demoralizing not only to the fired workers but to everyone who hears about it.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by WestCoaster99

You keep asking me if I have ever worked for a tech giant in SV.

You should ask that question to Steve Bannon, the President's Chief of Staff. He used to edit an " alt right " blog, which is another name for white supremacist groups.
He has publicly stated to " Rid Silicon Valley of Indians ". He does not need to be living here.

They would do it, they have the authority to do it, and the public elected them to do it. They have a mandate by US citizens to rid the country of a large variety of foreigners, Indians working in SV are one of those groups.

Whatever the consequences would be, and how soon they would accomplish it; that can be debated, but the results are for sure.

As someone else pointed out, they can't completely rid SV of Indians, because many of them are US citizens, some born-and-raised.

Abuse of the H1b program does need to be curtailed; no argument there. If SV companies would be significantly "hurt", it would be mainly because they've abused the system in the first place, shafting American workers. Maybe if their CEO's would cut back on pay and perks to reasonable levels, they could afford to hire back some of their dismissed American workers? Ya think?

[WestCoaster99]

Since you asked.

Here is just one link:

B.C. tech sector to get surge of talent fleeing Silicon Valley: insiders - The Globe and Mail

Internet is full of news items, that almost every state in USA has sent emissaries to SV to get their business, they are negotiating with tech giants, right now as I write this. In addition, countries like Canada and Ireland are vying for their business.

It would be stupidity to think that these companies will stay in SV and pay high prices.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by WestCoaster99

Since you asked.

Here is just one link:

B.C. tech sector to get surge of talent fleeing Silicon Valley: insiders - The Globe and Mail

Internet is full of news items, that almost every state in USA has sent emissaries to SV to get their business, they are negotiating with tech giants, right now as I write this. In addition, countries like Canada and Ireland are vying for their business.

It would be stupidity to think that these companies will stay in SV and pay high prices.

From your link:
Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said he spent this weekend conducting more than a dozen client consultations with high-level engineers, managers and PhD or master’s students working in the U.S. tech industry. These prospective clients now want to move to Canada after Mr. Trump’s executive order last Friday blocking entry to citizens from seven Muslim countries, he said.

The employers and US master's/PhD degree students are looking to move to Van? So....the employers are moving to one of Canada's most expensive cities so they can.....employ American grad students?



Well, I guess at least they wouldn't have to provide health insurance as a benefit. Oooh, big savings! (sarcasm)

Thx for the link. (It always helps to back up your statements with a link.) We'll see how it all plays out. Housing costs are just as formidable in Vancouver as around the Bay.


It's not even about the H1b abuse issue; it's about the ban on immigrants from Muslim countries, according to the article. This doesn't include India. SV can still import Indian labor. If it were about the H1b issue, Russians, Romanians and other low-cost Europeans would be part of the purge, whether intentionally or collaterally.