Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

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> If you are at your job as part of your Visa process, you are essentially a slave with a slave's rights to match, and you are better off not rocking the boat if you want to complete the process.

No, you are not.

That's taking the premise way too far. Slaves were owned as property. You are not property of a corporation just because your job is connected to a visa. You don't have slaves rights (almost entirely non-existent human rights, specifically). You chose to immigrate, there is a system involved in that, you knew that ahead of time, you chose to go forward regardless. You did not become a slave in the process, you did not sign on for 'slaves rights' in the process, you did not abdicate your freedom. Your employer may not dispose of your life as it sees fit. You are free to leave and go back to where you came from if you do not like the system, just as you were free to never sign on in the first place. You are not a slave at all in any manner. That's not an argument in favor of the backwards US immigration system, it's an argument that very, very clearly you are not a slave just because your job and visa are bound together. Immigration to N country is not a human right, it's a privilege (which is why I - and a billion other people - can't freely immigrate to Norway tomorrow and begin enjoying the associated perks).

Came here to say this.

I've been on H1B. It's not a perfect system, but making 6 digit salaries in Silicon Valley was infinitely better than picking cotton in Mississippi in 1840 where you could be murdered by your boss/owner at a whim.

Try to control your self pity, people!

That's an odd analogy knowing USA went into a bloody civil war to fix that.

You're comparing a broken system with an older and even more broken system that we already fixed and trying to find merit in current broken system by that comparison. Of course it's better to be alive than being squashed by a dinosaur. But how's that relevant?

It's relevant if someone just claimed that being alive was the same as being squashed by a dinosaur, to stick with your metaphor.

Or plainly: Someone said that H1B was the same as slavery. I called it bullshit.

Ok, that makes sense.

I suppose indentured servitude is a more apt metaphor.

It's not. You're free to leave as an H1B at any time, it's just that you have to leave the country also (or find a new job really fast). It sucks for employees, and it has negative effects on the job market, so there are many good reasons to kill it with fire - but no, it's not indentured servitude, and people who choose this, choose it of their own free will, and can withdraw that decision (and be back to where they were when they made it) at any moment.

Source: was an H1B (and L1 before that).

Of course it's not literally slavery or indentured servitude, but it does share some common elements that are useful for our analysis. In particular, they both involve voluntary commiting yourself to restrictive labor in exchange for coming to the US.

I partially understand your point, but I don't think "free" is necessarily a better description than "slave".

One is always free in a literal sense to choose between available options (e.g. a slave may choose to escape, an employee to quit). However, ability of a second party to attach consequences to those options (e.g. corporal punishment or death, deportation away from one's family, removal of healthcare from sick loved ones, etc.) amounts to restricting the freedom of the individual.

I don't accept that legal freedom equates to practical freedom, e.g. you have the legal right to quit your job therefore in a practical sense you are completely "free" to quit your job. If your employer can attach extremely negative consequences to quitting, then your freedom has been severely limited.

I also have trouble with arguments that the choice to immigrate was made of free will, therefore all consequences are one's own responsibility. It's not legal nor ethical to allow people to "freely choose" to sign themselves into slavery.

Anyway, this is obviously a contentious and charged issue, but I hope this helps communicate a different perspective.

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