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Comment by surferbayarea | Hacker News Reader

Also the total number of unemployed people in US is 6.6 million. The number of H1b visas granted every year is 65000 (that's 2 orders of magnitude). If you were put in charge of solving the unemployment problem of USA, would you focus on the 99% bucket or the 1% bucket? So you would agree that the backlash is driven by xenophobia and not any possible rational or data driven argument.

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More like 15%.

Arguably the total number of working H-1B visas (including extensions while waiting for a green card) (and working H-4 dependents) is the more relevant metric.

That number is not tracked directly, but it's about a million or so, all at significantly higher wages than the median US personal income of $31,099/y.

https://qz.com/949589/the-h-1b-visa-cap-tells-you-very-littl...

Multiply the yearly grant rate by six and you get abiutnthe total number of H1Bs, so not quite a million.

But regardless, it’s not like all unemployed are competing with body shoppers, while the HN crowd probablybisnt either.

Yeah it's different non intersecting sets. Also, if you add all the jobs created by companies started by H1bs, it's definitely more than a million.

Not many of us are against H1Bs in general, but it is easy to dislike the body shops because they don’t add much to the economy (not creating jobs).

Companies like Infosys, TCS, Accenture, Capgemini provide backoffice services for many Western business at a lower price point than what they could do themselves. That adds much to the economy.

The real leeches in this system are the consulting/placement shops.

Sure, it isn’t binary. Infosys is a good example of a mixture.

First of all, the annual number of H1Bs is over 85000: there are 65K general H1Bs, 20K for people who got Master's degree in the US and uncapped number for non-profits and other exempt orgs. And non-profit is not necessarily a shelter for orphaned kittens, NFL is one, for example.

Secondly - H1B can be extended indefinitely while the AOS process is pending, this is in the news right now since Trump's admin announced they are looking into ways to prevent this. The same news are saying over a million H1Bs holders will be affected if the admin succeeds.

And xenophobia is ok - it is a deep human flaw and an artifact of evolution and resource constraints. As smart logical people we should be conscious of our xenophobic biases. Not being aware of that is what leads to things like 1930s Germany.

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