So, the moral of your story is: minority employees are underpaid because they never say "no" to low salary they are offered? Or maybe you are saying that possessing some basic negotiation skills you don't have makes me evil? I don't follow your logic here.
To me the beauty of JEE on the backend is:
1. Scalability - the application server creates as many instances as needed - until it hits either the JVM limit or the machine limit.
2. Declarative transaction management so I can write reusable code that interacts with the database without having to worry about transaction boundaries.
3. Excellent and portable Object Relationship Mapping (Java Persistence Architecture).
On the front end, with JSF webpages can be developed very quickly.
There are a lot of other things you get with JEE like Asynchronous Messaging (JMS) - built in.
There is a reason mature organizations worth billions of dollars and with highly skilled architecture teams have settled on JEE as the defacto standard for their information systems.
There is definitely a learning curve with JEE, and someone fresh out of school will need a year or two to really understand how it fits together - but when you write something in this framework, it is easy to read, maintain and rarely needs to be re-written.
Most importantly, the framework will continue to be developed for the foreseeable future - I mean multiple decades.
On the other hand, some of the newer javascript stuff - is horrible broken spaghetti code that is glued together by spit and prayer. 99% of these frameworks will fall out of fashion with the associated problems that come with falling out of fashion - the canonical example being Ruby On Rails.
You're looking at this ecosystem after we've already gone through multiple versions of EJBs that are all very different from each other, several different JMS implementations from many vendors now deprecating them (IBM is deprecating a couple of their JMS implementations for cloud services in favor of a hosted Kafka offering, for example), and the endless XML-based configuration of all services and their components combined with a lot of tight coupling requiring different services to be re-deployed upon updating their EJB entities or face class unmarshalling problems. I'm not a fan of sloppy configuration, but there is historically far too many things that were necessary to configure to get a basic JEE service started.
A lot of what's in JPA now came after Hibernate became such an industry-wide standard and because EJB 2's EntityBeans were so awkward. For early adopters in the 90s, EJB 1.0 was really, really difficult to work with and overall a frustrating experience compared to using Spring + Hibernate. This pain was much more keenly felt for enterprise software start-ups that couldn't afford release cycles and deployments that take so much time.
JMS is not the end-all be-all of enterprise messaging either and the J2EE ecosystem made certain technology innovations more difficult due to its byzantine nature. The AMQP working group came out of their frustrations with JMS and it includes a lot of experts with JMS implementations from the usual vendors.
I challenge you to find communities of developers other than H1Bs, older, offshored, and other disadvantaged (and in no way technically deficient either!) workers that are writing anything with EJBs for their jobs these days. Look at the career possibilities for these places as an engineer - do you imagine IT outsourcing and banking backends is something highly motivated and talented engineers would find fulfilling when there's other options? Furthermore, I challenge you to find operations teams that enjoy supporting these systems compared to architectures built around microservices / SOA using lightweight containers using, say, Kubernetes. J2EE architecture is simply not easy to maintain in production with typical enterprise sysadmins despite the billions spent on improving them over multiple decades now (and due to the hostile atmosphere of enterprise software vendor-client relationships impeding technical progress since time immemorial), and this is a deal-breaker for large organizations that are trying to reduce operations costs.
Even though ultimately we as an industry seem to be reinventing the wheel constantly probably to keep ourselves busy rather than to build highly maintainable software, this is preferable to millions of developers around the world in a monoculture writing constantly refactored and improved COBOL and Fortran if we approached the world of software with the JEE vision. It's been shown academically that for software reliability and maintainability, if you need to rewrite more than a certain percentage (I believe it was around only 30%) of the software, it is more economical and practical to rewrite it all. It is the rigidity of the JEE vision and competing enterprise standards that made interoperability and thus freedom for motivated, creative developers difficult that pushed them away from both larger companies and toward smaller companies united by open and probably less stable ecosystems. Moreover, it is really difficult to argue that the MIT Approach [1] fits everywhere in the software world and also that there is no merit to Worse is Better.
It's funny that you mention RoR in that there's been some concern by the community that it's becoming more like J2EE. It's a bit sad in a way because if everyone writing mature software winds up ultimately implementing J2EE, it has shown how little progress we've made as a software community despite so many different software design philosophies gaining market traction.
Once you get out of toy frameworks that won't scale, refactor or "age well" - you end up with a JEE style framework.
It's like that famous cliche about unix - "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
You are right about older versions of JEE being a pain in the ass to use - but that critique hasn't been valid since 2004 when EJB 3.0 was released - 13 years ago. JSF is really slick for front end development.
But even prior to the release of EJB 3, can you name any EJB equivalent (from the pain in the ass xml era) that is still used, supported and actively developed?
We literally still have 15 year old EJB's - that "just work". People just inject them into the new EJB's they write and they work!
You might think rewriting services to keep up with the latest and greatest fad is a productive use of your developers time - but I prefer to have my developers focus on solving new - revenue generating problems, with building blocks that have already been written instead of constantly reinventing the wheel.
We have a mix of American developers (junior, mid-level and senior), offshore developers in 6 countries, and H1-B developers - all of whom are paid at or above market rate for their work (150K+ for the State side workers). I don't think any one of them considers themselves "disadvantaged" in any way because of the technology stack.
They understand that they have problems to solve and JEE are a tool to solve their problems and I am sure they grateful we aren't making them re-write 15 year old code to keep up with the latest fad.
If NASA doesn't have the funding for landing humans on Mars, this isn't "news" to them.
This is whole article is actually designed to get attention at a time when the CJS (Commerce Justice and Sciences) appropriations bill is being marked up[1]. The CJS subcommittee (of the House and Senate Appropriations committee) decided how NASA money is spent.
It is no surprise that articles like this are popping up - at literally the same time as CJS Appropriations bill is being marked up.
The way things work, is at times like this, even if NASA had the money to go to Mars, they would never admit to it - because appropriators might start cutting (do more with less... yada yada yada...)
I say this as a big fan of science and space exploration, but thought that fellow HN'ers might appreciate a look behind the curtain to better understand what is really going on here.
The US skills based immigration system is based on bringing in indentured labor to enrich corporations.
L-1 visa holders _cannot_ change jobs.
H-1B visa holders have to go through an expensive and cumbersome process to change jobs which effectively restricts their job mobility.
Obviously, outside super-hot job markets like silicon valley, US workers have a hard time competing with indentured labor.
This visa would have created brand new class of "entrepreneur" indentured to deep-pocketed VC firms. They would actually be worse off than H-1B and L-1 workers because - not only would they be beholden to the VC firms for funding (thereby their jobs) in the United States - but they would have to part with their ideas.
No nativist here - just saying how things are working on the ground once you shave off the corporate propaganda.
You picked just about the most inflammatory word you could ("indenture") and repeated it several times. That is exactly the wrong way to comment on a divisive topic here. It leads to shallow discussion and flamewars. So please don't do that. We're hoping for thoughtful, substantive discussion, not rhetorical escalation.
This is indeed a politicized topic, and moderation is hard, but FWIW I see no issue with the parent comment. The point has been discussed here before using similar terms.[1][2]
It isn't just a question of the word, but of using it as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological argument. That leads to flamewars so when we see people doing it we ask them not to.
It's also not ok to use HN primarily for political or ideological battle, since that isn't the purpose of the site. Obviously some topics are more political and commenting in such threads is fine, but it's not to use an account primarily for it.
It's actually a pretty accurate use of the term. Immigrants end up taking less money and putting up with very bad workplace situations because many of them end up forced to work for a particular employer or return (at great expense) to their home country. I don't think that's rhetoric. The work permit system in Canada is much less problematic.
While I get that the comment sounds like a divisive/incendiary and thus non constructive comment, I would not argue that it's an unreasonable exaggeration Or likely to derail substantiative discussion. Just my two cents.
The phrase 'have a hard time changing jobs' seems fine. You could even, if you wanted to, make an argument that this has some things in common with what was historically called indentured labor. But to use a charged phrase as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological battle, which you clearly are doing, is the wrong kind of comment for HN.
The same goes for swipes like "you are kidding right?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745448). Using escalating rhetoric on divisive topics causes internet discussion to erupt in flames. Mostly it's negligence rather than arson but the result is the same. If you're going to comment here, please don't do these things.
The guiding value of HN is intellectual curiosity (please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). We're hoping for thoughtful conversation, and using the site primarily for political or ideological battle is destructive of that, so we ban such accounts. In particular, it's not ok to create an account here just to do that.
Ok - that "you are kidding" was an unwarranted swipe. I won't do it again.
Regarding "indentured servant" - that is the factually correct term to describe the situation. Even H-1B visa holders themselves use this term.
Here is a video of an H-1B visa holder using the exact term "indentured servant" with Congressman Darrell Issa at some policy event about the H-1B visa in Washington DC: https://youtu.be/2Tgc9m1IwNc?t=35m47s
The term "indentured servant" is exactly the right term to describe the employer-employee relationship between Guest Worker visa holders and their employer's. As demonstrated in the video, even the H-1B workers themselves are saying that they feel like indentured servants.
I personally feel that politically correctness is somehow having the effect of normalizing this very abnormal employee-employer relationship (at-least here in America).
As the guest worker in the video says, if he loses his job - he has to take his kids out of school, sell his car, sell his house and leave. This is not in any way a normal employee-employer relationship.
I would like to think the points I am raising are thoughtful. well researched and articulate. Apart the "swipes" - which I will tone down on - I don't think I am guilty of any other transgressions.
The bigger problem is the one you didn't respond to. You're showing up in an HN thread with a single-purpose account armed with seasoned ideological talking points. That's very much not what this site is for, regardless of which battle it is and which side you're on.
> You could even, if you wanted to, make an argument that this has some things in common with what was historically called indentured labor. But to use a charged phrase as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological battle, which you clearly are doing, is the wrong kind of comment for HN.
You are right, I could have absolutely talked about the history of indentured labor in America - but I don't think that was germane to the implications of the Regulation or the implications for the current (sorry) state of Guest Labor in America which what this discussion was about.
Regarding:
> The bigger problem is the one you didn't respond to. You're showing up in an HN thread with a single-purpose account armed with seasoned ideological talking points. That's very much not what this site is for, regardless of which battle it is and which side you're on.
I am a geek, who has frequented HN for a long time, and before that digg and before that slashdot (I still go there BTW).
I usually don't post very much.
And "seasoned talking points" - cmon. Doing my research before shooting my mouth off - is a GOOD THING and I would like to think that I am elevating the level of discourse.
Infact everyone else (except projectramo - who I did mishandle and doesn't disagree with my characterization of H-1B/L-1 workers) who has weighed in seems to think my comments are very apropos:
Probably I misunderstood you but this is because your posts don't differentiate themselves from someone using HN just for ideological purposes. If so, there's an easy fix.
That's specious reasoning -- there is something to be said for Silicon Valley's capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry. This critical mass is difficult to achieve and your implication that it can be replicated elsewhere is just deceptive equivocating.
The rationale behind this legislation is that employers have been driving wages down via a self-sustaining lower class of tech workers, where low-cost temporary foreign workers constantly trickle in. This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.
> capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry.
You mean the industry that includes tons of companies founded by immigrants or their children?
I'm not saying SV can be replicated elsewhere. But the code you're writing can be, if the price differential is big enough. Outsourcing is a PITA, so if the price differential is not big, why bother. But... if it's big enough, innovative people will find a way to make it work.
> This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.
Or a foreign office without all the bureaucratic, nativist BS.
I think you need to explain why you think an entrepreneur is "indentured" to a VC.
The entrepreneur has a lot more leeway in making decisions than an employee, and has more freedom in how to spend the company's money.
Do you think that a VC would choose a foreign entrepreneur just because they are foreign? Don't you think other factors (product, team, strategy etc) would play a larger role?
You're missing their point. Suppose you are an engineer in India making $10k / year. You have the same skills and ability as American citizens in San Francisco. So, a startup comes to you and offers you a $60k / year job. You take it, because you can make 6 times as much as you did in India!
However, when you get to the US, you realize that American citizens make $80k - $100k / year for the same job. What do you do? You can't switch jobs, because the H1B program makes it very difficult to do so. You can't threaten to quit, because then your visa only gives you a few months before you have to go back to India -- and back to the $10k / year job. You have no choice -- if you want the $60k / year job, you have to to stick with the company who hired you. So you stay.
The result? The salary for software engineers is driven down. The employer gets extra profits while getting the same work. The software engineers are now making less than they would be if either 1) the H1B program didn't exist, or 2) the H1B program were reformed so that switching jobs is easier.
(Trump did #1. However, #2, reforming H1B, is far better for all employees in the long run. Not surprisingly, #2 is not hugely supported by all companies).
This isn't at all how H1B visas work in Silicon Valley that I've ever seen.
There are definitely large contracting companies which abuse the H1B process in this way, but at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Yahoo/etc I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US.
Doesn't mean I don't agree the H1B system needs serious reform, but it's unfair to tar all employers with that brush.
(Best reform idea I've heard: the limited H1B slots go to whoever is paying the most for the job. Inherently prioritized the most economically impactful immigrants and also creates upward pressure on wages. Win/win!)
> I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US
I have. And based on the patterns I saw in hiring, I expect that it's the same across the industry, even when companies aren't trying to underpay immigrants. It's a fascinating perspective when you get involved with hiring at the offer stage and see the negotiations. You can send the exact same offer to an H1-B and a citizen and the counter-offers will be completely different. A citizen will ask for more comp and an H1-B will ask for an EB2 sponsorship. Both are entirely rational decisions the since employment flexibility of a green card is probably worth more to an immigrant than an immediate increase in comp.
> Best reform idea I've heard...
I still think the best idea is to impose ratios like other countries do. Let companies hire as many immigrants as the like so long as they're also employing, in similar positions, the requisite number of Americans as well. If the theory is that highly-skilled immigrants are bringing skills and knowledge that's in short supply here, we should be trying to have them work with Americans as much as possible so that Americans can learn from them. Companies that abuse the current system end up having nearly all-immigrant work forces. Meanwhile, smaller companies without large legal teams can have difficulty getting even a single H1-B hired. Ratios fix both problems and they also help immigrants assimilate faster because there's less chance they end up working with mostly other immigrants.
Your idea of using salary as the deciding factor is great in theory, but in practice we don't allocate capital wisely. We'd end up with a lot of H1-Bs in finance and almost none in science or any of the many lower-paying areas that require education and intelligence.
> I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US.
By pure economic logic, they must. Because the cost of the immigration attorneys and process has to be paid by the employee. If the employer absorbed that cost, it would be cheaper to hire local at the same price(salary).
Not only that, but the lower level of mobility an immigrant has means he cant switch jobs as easily, thus sacrifices potential earnings that a local wouldnt.
There is no way around it: any restriction you make will harm the person being restricted. It is thus that it think any kind of immigration policy aims at harming individuals at the request of others.
The best reform would be remove the requirement altogether and let companies hire who they want, and individuals work where they want to. While the US pertains itself to questions like how restrictive their visas should be, other countries panic at the constant brain drain.
Silicon valley H1B jobs are a tiny fraction of H1B jobs. Something like 90%+ go to InfoSys & Tata like consultancies which do exactly what the parent comment mentioned.
You're making an argument based on an infrequent exception to the rule
The parent comment was talking about H1Bs working for startups. Startups are not InfoSys or Tata. I agree with you and the parent comment, as I said, that H1Bs are widely abused by InfoSys and Tata and I would be very happy to see that abuse stopped -- but let's not tar startups with the same brush!
You're missing my point: this is not the H1B. This is an entrepreneur visa which is (presumably) less abusive.
The example he gave seems to indicate that the power dynamic you just mentioned carries over to entrepreneurs who have equity in the firm, who are empowered to make decisions and so on.
I'm not inclined to presume that it would be less abusive (or more abusive) or abused than any other visa program which creates financial incentives for domestic capital.
When the "entrepreneurs" very status in the US is dependent on being in the good-graces of anyone else - especially vultures like VC firms - these "entrepreneurs" are no better than indentured servants.
Think of it this way - any dispute with the "sponsoring" VC firm could snowball into a complaint to DHS which could result in the "entrepreneur" having to leave the country (and leave behind the carcass of a company the VC's will then proceed to digest).
Entrepreneurs might not understand or appreciate this yet, but they are better off going to Canada or somewhere else as landed immigrants with rights - instead of living in the US as indentured servants of some entity.
The junking of this rule has potentially saved so many startups from being absorbed by entrenched players (Hello Google Ventures). The resultant dispersion of wealth/ideas and the increase in competition will benefit all of us.
"Think of it this way - any dispute with the "sponsoring" VC firm could snowball into a complaint to DHS which could result in the "entrepreneur" having to leave the country"
I don't know if you believe this to be true. How would this work?
VC: We have a complaint!
DHS: Yes?
VC: The entrepreneur wants to grant more options to their main people.
DHS: okay... so?
VC: Please dissolve the company, make my equity worth zero, and return this person to their country?
DHS: What?
VC: Good point, just make them turn their equity into MY equity and then kick them out
I just don't know what you imagine this rule to be. How do you think this works? On an H1b you can just fire the employee and they have to leave. I understand the mechanics of the power. For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.
VC: Hey DHS, Entrepreneur lied about something 2 years ago just before/after he came here.
Entrepreneur: That was not a lie - that was marketing. Every business does it.
DHS: "Get out"
> For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.
This is nice in theory, but in practice (especially in knowledge economy companies), the employees are the company - everything else is furniture, coffee machines, ping pong tables...
The VC can just start a new company with ideas stolen from the person they just kicked out. They can offer the (now unemployed) employees of the previous company slightly more equity and money then they would have received at the previous company.
I don't understand why you are defending a system like this.
Let's just understand what "the system" is in the first place.
Whether it is morally good or bad we can decide after we make sure we are talking about the same system.
It sounds like you are suggesting that DHS would kick out the entrepreneur if there was a falsehood on marketing materials?
I don't know what that example was supposed to illustrate so please clarify, because I don't think that is how it would work.
Secondly, I don't know under what conditions DHS is allowed to cancel visas.
But let's more on to the other matter, which is the relationship between the VC and the entrepreneur. You acknowledge that the "knowledge" is key, but you still think that they can replace the person who is running the company?
Finally, you agree that the person would still retain ownership in the company?
Suppose you're an Indian making 10k a year in India. Then you have an opportunity to make 60k in America so you go. Native born Americans get paid more than you but you understand that it's really an accident of geography and bad policy, but you don't care because the opportunity will help you break your family out of poverty and open up doors not possible in India. So you stay.
Why due to the accident if geography is an American entitled to a salary that an Indian would be willing to do for less? How is that fair?
> Why due to the accident if geography is an American entitled to a salary that an Indian would be willing to do for less? How is that fair?
I am not going to argue about "Fair" because it is a value judgment which depends on your moral and political predilections. This isn't the right place for such discussions.
However there is definitely no such thing as an 'accident of geography'. I see this all the time expressed as a implicit argument, which I believe to be a form of pre-scientific thinking that has crept into our world view.
Sperm cells are not randomly selected in some kind of bingo ball system in the ether when a woman is impregnated.
It is one of the least random things possible - the entire catalogue of back choices of your ancestors is present as part of that inception. All of history, culture, geography, must have been necessary for you to be born where you are born. If you think otherwise, then you must not believe evolution theory is real or you have to be compartmentalizing it away from the present somehow, as if it were theoretical pure math instead of an always present reality.
Those who were elected/hired to make foreign policy and immigration law do not have the word "fair" in their job description, or at least nowhere near the top.
I have a million dollars. I hire you to manage it for me. You decide that, you know, it's kind of lopsided that one person have all this money, so you distribute it to 99 others. Do you have the moral high ground in this situation?
That's a pretty weird assumption. There's not any direct relationship between the number of software engineering jobs and the number of (e.g.) housing construction jobs.
The question is WHICH X people should we let in. Should we let in X low skilled workers or X high skilled workers?
You could perhaps make the argument that the US should lower the TOTAL amount of people let into the country.
But if that is your argument, then there is no point in talking about software engineers. You should be worried about the construction workers wages that are being reduced.
The rule, as proposed, required foreign entrepreneurs to receive "significant investment of capital (at least $250,000) from [investors]" or "significant awards or grants (at least $100,000) from [the government]" to demonstrate "potential to have accelerated growth" and job creation. The entire visa is based on the idea that startups have "significant public benefit".
'Indentured'? I call hyperbole. Quit, go home. That's something a true indentured servant couldn't do.
Its 'something like' indentured servitude, except it isn't. It isn't slavery either. Nor torture or any number of other emotionally laden words we could come up with.
Its an employment deal. Its an immigration option. Others exist. Don't choose it if you don't like it.
Educate us, which "others" exist? Also H1-B is a non-immigrant visa. You can petition for a green card after a few years, but there's no guarantee you'll get it.
I agree with the op, btw. To make things better for local workers, h1b workers should be offered greater mobility so as to create competition which properly values their skills. Earlier suggestion by the Trump administration that instead of a lottery only the highest paid h1b workers will be admitted sounds quite sane, too.
I dont think corporations profit from the H1B in an economic sense. Some can, but only very few: that is, copmanies whose H1B situation allows them to have a higher range of profits than other companies in the same space that wouldnt have access to the same visa.
If immigration where free, or almost free, then these companies would hire even more people, and all others would also do it. The amount of immigration the tech sector would have if people could go to the us, stay 6 months to acclimate, learn and pick jobs, would skyrocket and would increase the talent pool for companies.
The great supporter of such restrictions are the people that think their own wage would be reduced if more competition were brought up. And they would be right to fear that in the short term. In the longer term, lower wages would also mean higher profits, thus higher capital which would eventually rise wages again.
Any immigration policy is more often than not a problem of bias and misunderstanding from the public, and a matter of voters for the politicians.
When I think about entrepreneur visas, I think about people needing a ton of money (several hundred thousand USD, EUROs, GBPs, etc.) to come in and attempt to start a business. In a lot of ways it's simply buying your way into a country as a resident.
I didn't think about the aspect of people seeing VC funding; not self funded people.
Also, when I first read this article, I wondered what industry stood to gain from this move. Presidents are members of the 1% and their policies are dictated by the top income earners, not the opinions of most voters[0]. Although companies might publicly be against this, they must be secretly benefiting. Maybe big tech players don't want disruptive startups coming in and taking their markets?
Great post. So many things that are touted as evidence of our open-mindedness and generosity are actually motivated by the financial incentives they create for corporate owners at the expense of non-owners everywhere, including domestic workers, consumers, and the slave labor used to circumvent first-world labor and environmental standards (whether imported under restrictive visas, exploited due to their undocumented status, or employed in their native "lower-cost" nations).
While the plight of illegal immigrants and the stories of the lonely technical geniuses sorrowing as they fail to gain entry to the U.S. may be heartwrenching, make no mistake that the true interest of the powerful is keeping a labor force that is cheap and easily exploited. If you take away dubious immigration status, their employers lose that much authority over them.
I see correcting such conditions as Trump's primary interest. He is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game", and as a businessman who has tried many different things, he knows that there is a lowest common denominator effect in business. If your competitor is going to China and getting stuff made for a few cents, you are putting yourself at a major disadvantage by not doing so. You can't effectively compete if your manufacturing costs are significantly higher. Consumers assume that legal structures prevent unfair competition and exploitation by default, but this been slowly degraded under false political doctrines pushed by MegaCorps and wrapped neatly in the bow of egalitarianism.
Trump ran and won so that he could level the playing field. Trump's position, IMO, is "Make the rules bar exploitation of consumers and workers without breaking competition and entrepreneurship". This is a credible counter to the "trickle-down economics" theory of "Give owners as much money as possible and you'll get a share somewhere along the line", and that's the primary reason that the Republican power players hate him. Trump is offering a more fair route not by proposing government seizure/control, regimentation, or handouts (which are easy arguments to discredit), but simply by restoring the baseline rules of the marketplace that consumers take for granted.
Wait... I think you're confusing Trump's branding (leveling the playing field) with his actions. Mostly we've seen more of the same Wall St appointments and corporate boosterism from him that we've seen from our last 4 or 5 presidents.
Employer to (theoretically) underpaid/under-represented minority: I offer you x.
Underpaid minority: accepted.
Employer to market-rate perspective employee: I offer you x.
market-rate perspective employee: nope.
Employer to market-rate perspective employee: how about X+25K?
market-rate perspective employee: sounds good.
This bill tries to fix a symptom of the problem - but the underlying dynamics causing the pay disparity will remain.