Comment by winter_blue | Hacker News Reader

Comment by winter_blue | Hacker News Reader

- Firstly, there are a bunch of false points here. The HN user ones_and_zeros lives in an alternate reality where H-1B visa holders cannot switch jobs to other companies (that are willing to transfer their H-1B visa). The fact is most tech companies will do a visa transfer. Yet, this facetious lie is oft-repeated on HN, and with attaching terms like "slavery" or "corporate welfare" (which is frankly, offensive).

- Secondly, right now, it is the only pathway for legal immigration. If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amount of hate I see piled on people trying to come here via the employment-based immigration is insane. The thing that infuriates me about the dialogue on H-1B visas is that they are effectively trying to ban skilled immigration, and exclude people like me from coming. I've written about my personal story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13530886

- Thirdly, the HN user ones_and_zeros is one of the most immigrant-hating users on HN, and is capable of spewing incredibly hateful vitriol against immigrants, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11313462 To begin with, he believes in a bunch of lies (like the not being able to change jobs part). But even if he got his facts straight, his views are so extreme that only a total and complete ban of all immigrants might satisfy him. It's better not to engage with balls of hatred like the HN user ones_and_zeros. Talk to him enough, and you realize that he just hates every immigrant from the depths of his heart.

I can appreciate why you'd feel strongly about this, but HN's survival depends on us all not personalizing conflicts the way you've done here. This community is divided on all the issues that our surrounding societies are divided about. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect otherwise. That means you're going to get HN users arguing all sides of major issues.

The internet has an evil-genius ability to push all our buttons and drive us all crazy. There often isn't enough information to know for sure what anyone else means or intends, and imagination—drawn from our personal experience, i.e. data about us, not the other—fills in the gaps. This happens especially when strong feelings come up. At that point we start responding not to the real others, whom we have next to no data about, but to evil cartoon characters who vaguely resemble them. We end up feeling surrounded by our own demons.

The way out of this dynamic is for all of us to give one another the benefit of the doubt. It's a big risk, so we all need to be scrupulous about it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598500 and marked it off-topic.

Hey man, I know this is probably stressful for you and I don't want to be adding to that for you. I'd be willing to take this offline if you'd like but can you please not call me a liar, immigrant-hater, accuse me of being a ball of hatred or that I hate immigrants from the depths of my heart?

I think you know all that isn't true and I think the readers can see through those accusations and it ultimately devalues your input to the discussion.

(For the record I want an automatic green card for skilled immigrants and a higher bar for what counts as a skilled immigrant. I want a massive expansion of refugee immigration into the US. I want automatic green cards for unskilled immigration where they have created roots in the US)

You expressed in a comment, directed to me, that you wanted people like me kicked out of the United States, and that I was not "entitled" to be here. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11313462

Honestly, there are no words more hateful than what you said, for an immigrant. I've been in the United States for 10 years now, since I was 17. It feels like home now, and my friends, my community, are all here now. To quote Justice Louis Brandeis, "[deportation] may result also in loss of both property and life; or of all that makes life worth living." You want to destroy my life.

If I'm mistaken about you, and if you truly want to have a constructive private conversation about this; add your email to your profile, and I'll contact you.

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