Everywhere I look the downturn is because of “outsourcing”, “India taking our jobs!!”, “cheap overseas labor” and never, never ever porky’s fault. It’s the dirty immigrant labor, not the guys who talk about having “properties”. I’ve always seen this shit floating around in white collar jobs as long as I’ve been working but it’s been really amped up the last few weeks. I am not surprised that people are just this racist on their own but at least some of it feels very manufactured.
Labor is already significantly cheaper overseas than via H1B visas. There are many influences on business location besides employment costs. For example, Disney is a high-profile abuser of the H1B system, and I hopefully don’t need to explain why Disney might want to remain in the US, even if it means paying workers a little more.
It’s true that there’s other factors, but the scales are currently in a precarious equilibrium. Taking away one of the few remaining things that gives a marginal benefit to companies to keep operating in the US after 1970s globalization (read: rise of finance imperialism) is a more significant force in the direction of getting companies to set up shop abroad entirely, rather than replace cheap labor with expensive labor.