Although, with some exception where protectionism ensures high pay, the higher the paying the work, the less concerned the market is with degrees. This is more due to the fact that high paying jobs are high paying because it's difficult to find people, and you can't be choosy when your options are already limited. But the secondary effect is that with the high pay, the benefits of "debt control" is lost anyway, so there's still no reason to look for workers with degrees.
Hence why the reasonably high paying software industry couldn't care less about formal education, but lowly office jobs that barely pay minimum wage expect the world from their applicants.
I might agree that a hypothetical crappy employer would want those things. Every employer I've worked for wanted good programmers, and that's all they wanted.
I wonder if this would be the case even for people who don't care about progress towards the green card? E.g. literally being in the US just for the job, no plans to settle down.
My first employer actively encouraged its employees to get into debt (cars, housing, etc). Sadly it took me some time to connect the dots and realise what they were doing.
