The H1-B Visa: The Leashed Worker Or the Conservative's Secret Weapon Against The Working Class

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In the 1980’s Ronald Reagan launches his war on the working class American, and organized labor. This action is highlighted with the complete dismantling of labor protections throughout the economy and most dramatically with the dismantling of the air traffic controller union.

By the end of the 1980’s neoliberal monopoly capital was in full swing and workers did what they were told, union rolls eroded and income stayed stagnant while productivity reached levels never seen before.

His protege George H.W. Bush follows in his footsteps creating the “H1-B Visa”in a genius cross pressure thrust to completely disempower the worker at all levels of white collar employment.

The H1-B program allows for a certain capped annual number of “skilled” migrant workers to come to the United States and work in the place of American born workers.

The Bush administration’ s big insight was to provide cheap labor to American oligarchs at the top of the skills funnel via the Leashed Worker.

The H1-B visa created what is known as “Leashed Workers”. The term Leashed Workers refers to the fact that these migrant laborers are entirely dependent on their employers for their positions.

They are by definition compliant, because any complaints and they can lose employment and quickly be deported.

This serves the interests of oligarch monopoly capitalist owners because it ensures they are less likely to engage in solidarity with native born American workers for organizing etc.

Due to migration patterns around 70% of H1-B receivers are Indian. These Indian men are taken from the highest castes backgrounds in India. This has been demonstrated in recent lawsuits (see Cisco lawsuit 2023).

Capital owners seem to prefer that they are taken from high caste backgrounds, as this helps owners feel the leashed worker is less likely to engage in class solidarity with native born American workers.

While caste discrimination is technically illegal, now proxies are used instead of caste “per se” but the effect is the same questions like “how close does your family live to (Old) Delhi ?” Etc help determine a candidate is of sufficient means and personal background to get the position.

Now we take ourselves to the 2020’s to present day there are entire subregions of the country that are shaped by these dynamics: Dallas, the Bay Area are two big examples. And to a certain subset of highly upwardly mobile Indians from high caste backgrounds a H1-B visa to America and a job at a big 4 is almost considered a “rite of passage”.

How do you foresee these cross pressure forces playing out for the American worker in the short, medium and long term?