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Comment by mvc | Hacker News Reader

> I am not anti immigrant but the immigration system disproportionately hurts American software engineers and American tech

Cry me a river. Do you also complain about internal migration towards cities like San Francisco and Boston. It's the same principal at play. Tech workers from all over the US flock to cities where the wealth is. Tech workers from around the world flock to the US because that's where the wealth is. It's not because we like stealing your job.

Developing software is an investment and the people that fund the investment seem to prefer (at least the core of the team) to live nearby. But if you put a hard-stop on immigration. Or if it gets too expensive for people to live nearby, they might just start looking for the talent wherever it is like @dhh.

Bring it on.

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The difference between a fair market where immigrants can compete for American jobs and the current state of affairs is massive.

The Visa lottery system keeps workers locked into lower paying wages that what they could get as full citizens under the same exact circumstances.

Big tech can leverage deportation against you because you can't "walk away" from a job offer with as low risk as an American could.

"No immigration restrictions" and 100% immigration restritions are both better solutions than the status quo.

I personally believe more lenient immigration laws will help everyone.

> The Visa lottery system keeps workers locked into lower paying wages that what they could get as full citizens under the same exact circumstances.

FYI - you can switch jobs in H1B. I don't live in the USA, but everyone I know who is from my home country (India) and is on a H1B and in tech, have switched jobs atleast once (mostly between FB, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Amazon).

OTOH, if you're talking about L1 Visa (which is NOT a lottery system), then everyone I know who is on L1 (interestingly they are all at Amazon and Microsoft), then I agree - none of them have switched jobs so far.

I wouldn't say 100% immigration restrictions would be better. Certainly not for any immigrant.

The H1B cap is ridicolously low. 65.000 a year for a country that has 350 million people, in a 7 billion world.

I'm all for more lenient immigration laws. But I'm not sure where this idea comes from that people with H1Bs are like indentured servants. I moved jobs twice in 6 years. Getting one in the first place is a lottery but once you have one it doesn't seem like much of a hurdle to get a renewal with a different company.

It's not about stealing jobs it's about jobs offering less compensation and benefits than what they would normally because they can exploit the inherent risks of immigrating to lock people into less substantial employment contracts.

Please do not be uncivil or use HN for political battle.

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