Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

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Every time the topic comes up, I wonder how many of the HN'ers who are cross at H-1B workers because they are depressing wages are intellectually consistent (and honest) enough to accept that this position is part and parcel of the same system of nationalist thought that leads to a wall to Mexico and steeply increased tariffs on chinese import; of "America First"?

If you find yourself reconciling the idea of protecting against wage competition from H-1Bs, but are in favour of continued undocumented immigration from Mexico (or at least opposed to taking any substantial measures against it), in favour of NAFTA remaining in place and in favour of continued trade with China under current conditions, I'd be very interested in understanding how you model that?

(There is also a critique around the specific rules of H-1B being unfair to the worker, mostly around restrictions on changing employers. I agree with most of that and don't think it inherently incompatible with other views on immigration and trade, pro or con.)

The way I saw it, the "build a wall" campaign was more about mobilizing the frustration many felt about cultural changes and (perceived) social costs of illegal immigration and less about "they're taking our jobs" (though I'm not saying that argument was never made).

I think it was about people becoming upset at seeing their communities change for the worse, seeing signs and publications coming up in spanish, seeing mexican names in headlines about high-profile crime, seeing mexicans use EBT (welfare) cards at the grocery, hearing anecdotal stories about traffic incidents where "a mexican hit me and had no insurance..", and seeing mexican gangs come to their town.

I think a lot of those voters felt unheard and tired of the politically correct excuses used to defend them. And when someone finally stood up and said "I'm going to fight this [ one precursor that enabled these changes] ", they were immediately sold.

(I'm not going to put an "I'm not a racist" disclaimer here, you all should be mature enough to interpret whether or not I actually endorse those stances or whether I am explaining the motivations of others who do)

And I would add that people saying they are racist live in nice neighborhoods somewhere in SV with smart people and say but look at these engineer friend of mine who is so smart, intelligent and cultural.

Zuck building walls and buying islands to live alone and peace, without having slightest idea what is it to live in average neighborhoods who get to taste the immigrations bad (and good!) sides, while preaching no walls, no borders, mass immigration is good.

I think you're spot on, but I do have to question how much of this is empirical and how much of it is misdirected blame at the loss of social status these people's families have suffered.

In other words, would we see the same political fervor from these people if they had a median income of ~150k/yr?

Protecting against wage competition for H-1Bs: More money for me (U.S. citizen / permanent resident tech worker).

In favor of free trade: Cheaper goods for me.

It all boils down to "which collection of policies help me maximize my stuff?" Most people seem to take a more pragmatic approach, valuing tangible things over intellectual consistency.

or maybe intellectual consistency inevitably leads to maximising value for oneself

The wall equivalence makes sense to me, but you're stretching the analogy to include tariffs on foreign made goods.

With illegal immigration (wall) and H1B, you're describing the creation of a second class of workers within a country that depress wages within that country by having a separate, unequal workforce.

With foreign made goods you're describing a situation where workers from different countries have different protections, but those protections are consistent within the country.

Thats a big distinction to obliterate.

So that's a consideration, but it's more complicated than that. The H1-B system damages the ability of these workers to negotiate salary and move freely. It's not like H1-B visas represent opening up the labor market - they create disadvantaged labor that can't operate freely in the labor market.

I'm all for actually open borders. Depress wages by allowing brown people access to the job market, fine. Depress wages by exploiting brown people and not giving them access to the same wages as their western counter parts, eh. It's intellectually consistent to be opposed to that.

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