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Comment by jnbiche | Hacker News Reader

It's ridiculous to call this campaign 'anti-immigrant'. I'm very much for increasing our general skilled and unskilled immigration lottery quotas and our asylum allotment.

However, I'm very much against programs like H1B that are abused to suppress workers' salaries. Industries should not be permitted to bring in foreign workers (who are often not even citizenship track!) whenever the demand for a certain skill increases and salaries go up accordingly, all to bring salaries down to a level that's more "affordable" for those industries. It's wrong and it's anti-worker.

If the paragraph above sounds "racist" or "xenophobic" to you, I'd suggest examining the role you played in the election of Trump. It's not wrong, racist, or unethical for workers to protect their rights and their livelihood. I love diversity and immigrants, but H1B isn't designed for that, it's designed to suppress worker salaries, and also reduces employment opportunities.

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The H1B doesn't directly allow worker exploitation. There are two classes of H1 workers: the vast majority who work for consulting firms/body shops and the better skilled minority that works for "product" companies in the Bay Area, New York, Seattle and other tech hubs.

The second type of worker typically has employer sponsorship for green cards and skills that allow them to find new jobs. Green cards are given out on a per-country-cap basis. Because India and China have large populations, H1 workers from those countries have to wait a long time to get their green cards. Whereas people from almost any other country can have an employer sponsored green card in a matter of 2-4 years.

Fix the green card system and you'll mostly not have many H1 workers in SV software companies (only those waiting for their green cards to be filed). It's hard to make the argument that tech workers making $200k/year are indentured servants or exploited in some way or a "cheaper" alternative to domestic talent.

That then just leaves workers from the first category, body shops, which draws most of the H1 ire for being cheap and low-skilled . I don't have a good solution for fixing it and agree that the numbers there probably need to be reduced. If no employer thinks you're worth the cost of sponsoring a GC then your skills probably aren't that great and it's a more fair system.

I vouched for your comment and made it visible, even though I disagree with parts of it.

I agree that there are two "tiers" of H1B workers. But statistically, the vast majority belong to the body shop tier. And many if not most of those workers end up in cities where the salary for tech workers are definitely not making $200,000/year, and where it's much harder to find a decent programming job.

I agree that there should be a visa program for companies who cannot actually find workers with certain skills. Actually, there is such a program (forgetting the visa name, it's for immigrants with outstanding contributions to a field). Perhaps it should be widened. But such a program can never cover companies looking for cheap programmers for CRUD apps, like the current H1B often does.

Actually, I think I agree with all but your very first sentence, which the rest of your comment doesn't seem to support. A more accurate statement would be "The H1B doesn't always directly allow worker exploitation".

No. Stop with the "if you call people out for saying shitty things, then you helped elect Trump!" meme. It's complete and utter bullshit, and all it does is serve to empower the racists to say whatever they want without being called out on.

And yes, the campaign is incredibly anti-immigrant; just look at the group pushing it. Yes, one can say that the H1B system needs reform, and that it leads to a lot of abuse without being anti-immigrant. But if your solution is to just scrap the whole thing, that is anti-immigrant.

> But if your solution is to just scrap the whole thing, that is anti-immigrant

That is utter bullshit. Advocating scraping H1B is not anti-immigrant, particularly when many of us are also pro-DACA, and for increasing our general immigration quotas. But it's wrong to target specific workers for wage suppression, whether that's programmers, construction workers, or field workers.

And yes, if you go around calling people "anti-immigrant" (like you just called me) and "racist" who normally should be your allies, you are helping elect candidates like Trump. Because most people won't stick around with you when you do that. They'll defect to the other side, the side that's attacking you. It's human nature.

Scrapping H1B altogether, without advocating for a replacement program that would still allow those people to come here is extremely anti-immigrant, because you're saying those people should not have a path to come here.

"And yes, if you go around calling people "anti-immigrant" (like you just called me) and "racist" who normally should be your allies, you are helping elect candidates like Trump."

Only if those people are so childish that they cannot take a bit of criticism. And if a bit of criticism is all it takes for you to do an about face and join Trump, then you never believed in those positions to start with.

> And if a bit of criticism is all it takes for you to do an about face and join Trump

I would never join an overt authoritarian like Trump, but many people did for this exact reason. People resent being denigrated with terms like "racist" and "anti-immigrant" when they're trying to have a reasonable debate about immigration reform, and not suggesting totally blocking immigrants from coming here. It's wrong, but experiences being called names will often push people in the arms of a powerful figure who promises to put the people calling them names into their proper place.

I'm all for calling out Nazis and racists by their proper name, but if you believe that opposing H1B makes you "anti-immigrant", then you've lost the thread.

Scrapping H1-B doesn't end legal immigration.

Saying that you want to end immigration to the US, period, is anti-immigrant.

Saying that you want to end H1-B because you think these jobs should go to American citizens is not anti-immigrant.

"Saying that you want to end H1-B because you think these jobs should go to American citizens is not anti-immigrant."

Yes it is. You're saying that those people should not be able to immigrate to the US.

There are other ways to immigrate to the US besides H1-B? I don't understand you claim that H1-B is the only way anyone immigrates to America.

I’m pretty far to the Left on the issue of immigration, but I totally agree with you. As far as I’ve seen, the H1-B system is a means for some US employers to keep wages and benefits artificially depressed, through abuse of the system.

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