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Comment by YR372zm87 | Hacker News Reader

As an American, workers born in the USA are more important to me.

I care more about my neighbor's employment status, safety, and happiness than the family down the street. I care more about the guy down the street than the family across town... etc etc etc... I care more about some family in some US state that I'll never visit than a family over in India.

The closer they are to me, the more their success and problems will affect me either directly through interaction or indirectly through taxes or how they're likely to vote for something crazy in a future election out of desperation.

Local people even on a national level should get better chances if for no other reason than they've been here hopefully contributing to our system longer and they should be first to get some benefit out of it.

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Sort of like, "As a white person, white people are more important to me."?

Do you think it is permissible for your town to pass a law that requires your neighborhood coffee shop to preferentially hire a barista from your town?

Let me quote the parable of Sam and Marvin by the philosopher Michael Huemer to explain why I don't think your reasoning works.

Excerpted from - http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/immigration.htm

"Sam coercively prevented Marvin from reaching the local marketplace, on the grounds that doing so was necessary to prevent his daughter from having to pay a higher than normal price for her bread. This action seems unjustified. Would Sam succeed in defending his behavior if he pointed out that, as a father, he has special obligations to his daughter, and that these imply that he must give greater weight to her interests than to the interests of non-family members? Certainly the premise is true—if anything, parents have even stronger and clearer duties to protect the interests of their offspring than a government has to protect its citizens’ interests. But this does not negate the rights of non-family members not to be subjected to harmful coercion. One’s special duties to one’s offspring imply that, if one must choose between giving food to one’s own child and giving food to a non-family member, one should generally give the food to one’s own child. But they do not imply that one may use force to stop non-family members from obtaining food, in order to procure modest economic advantages for one’s own children."

> Sort of like, "As a white person, white people are more important to me."?

Not at all. Because being born with skin pigmentation is not the same as building a community together, that shares local resources and markets.

Your view seems to be that some communities are allowed to prevent outsiders from working in the jurisdiction of those communities in order to accrue modest economic advantages for community members. It seems like communities that share local resources and markets do have this property and communities that share skin pigmentation do not.

Why?

Typically people belong to multiple communities, say family, city, state, world. What kinds of actions are permissible in order to secure modest economic advantages to each of the these communities? What if there is a dispute between the various jurisdictions. What if the "world community" votes overwhelmingly in favor of open borders? What if a NYC block (which is certainly a community that shares local resources and markets) votes to ban black people from living/working there? Why is this wrong but the American community banning Indians from working in America not?

What makes the US border so much more meaningful than a state border? Why do you care about somebody living potentially 3000 miles away from you on the other coast more than somebody who lives much closer in Canada or Mexico? Why is immigration from places like Kansas to the valley seen as a positive sign but immigration from India to the valley is seen as stealing jobs?

Immigration must be (1) strategically planned, (2) closely watched, (3) carefully governed. It is a lot of money, who (and why) is going to pay for it? There are no other problems left to solve?

I care more about the Americans because they're Americans and we're on the same team and that's what teammates do. Also, how they feel affects how they vote and how they vote affects me. We have to look out for each other because the Canadians, Mexicans, and Indians sure aren't going to look our for our best interests ahead of their own. Why would they?

I don't understand why this is such a strange concept to so many people.

but these h1b holders live in your town, and possibly your next door neighbor.

gotcha!

Only because they are here by breaking the intent and possibly the letter of the law. If they are here because they have real skills, great. I care while they're here. If they are drones used to illegally displace workers, boot them out. The reason it's not an "everybody's equal" thing is that a person in another country has less of chance of directly contributing to the betterment of the US. A native US has a higher impact since they are in the ecosystem. So given the Bayesian odds, I'll back the native.

Edited for grammar

fair argument. I will agree with you.

How is that a fair argument? It's anti-immigrant BS.

All things being equal, when it's between a native(citizen, green card holder) who got his/her job displaced by an h1b, then our preference is naturally for the former.

Many green card holders started out on h-1Blocker visas.

That isn't bringing anything to the argument. The topic at hand is should the We be concerned about people that abused the system or the people that followed the law?

It's a high level question. Do we want people that are governed by law or skirt it? I argue the system is more stable and thus the preferred result when people follow the law. As a consequence I believe that we should protect those that follow the over those that break it.

I do feel bad for unskilled H1B slaves. Their poor circumstances are often better in the States than if they stayed at home. Unfortunately they are here illegally. There presence is making our country worse by locking wealth in the hands of the companies rather than making it part of the local economy.

I'm actually pro immigration. One of my biggest issues with H1B is the difficulty of a citizenship path. I would prefer to court true H1B holders. I want the US to be the number one country for all the high skilled people of the world.

The current H1B system abuses both native and traveler when cheated.

I care less about them than they natives they displaced by getting visas handed out for reasons other than their intended purpose.

I know my next door neighbors. Not H1B holders.

Don't be an troll.

the core of your argument does not make sense. You state your level of empathy is geographically based, per the individual in question. We're not talking about outsourcing to off shore. We're talking about H1B visas.

Your neighbors could be H-1B holders.

I can respect the economic arguments for it, even if I often disagree with them. This is just... not racist but it's about as foul in it's own way.

> but these h1b holders live in your town

Temporarily.

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