I for one am ecstatic about this. I want less competition for my role, not more. It is hard to compete when the top 5% of every other economy comes in and crowds me out.
AMA (American Medical Association) has successfully lobbied congress to cap residencies at 100K a year, essentially restricting supply. Foreign doctors have to go through a gauntlet of exams, tests, and licenses that keeps market from being flooded with cheaper talent and diluting local doctor salaries.
Software Engineers have failed to unite like this, so the MS+FAANGs and consulting companies have lobbied for free flow of cheap labor under the guise of innovation. There are no board certifications, no licensing exams, and no restrictions on supply. This is why software salaries have been artificially suppressed for two decades.
The AMA is opposed to the current cap, and has been active in both lobbying for increasing Medicare funding for residencies and in building up alternative sources of funding residencies: https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-con...
This seems to be a persistent myth on HN. Do people just assume the AMA's position hasn't changed in 23 years?
Actually, this is a great example. By restricting medical professionals, medical wages went high. Great for them!
But for the rest of America, this SUCKS. Medical expenses are through the roof, care cannot be had without selling all your money and often, specialist shortages mean appointments can be had only 3 months later. The lack of liquidity of healthcare professionals has made American healthcare the WORST in the developed world.
And this is in cities. Healthcare in rural America is pathetic.
Thanks for bringing to the fore how America has forever destroyed lives for the rest by trying to advantage the few.
Software development is not as physically constrained, any moves to restrict supply will automatically lead to offshoring similar to manufacturing.
Licensing does not limit offshoring. Accounting is the best example of this. There are many licensed CFAs in India and Philippines doing outsourced accounting work.
A lot of companies are hiring in Vancouver, Canada for example [1]. If you are a software engineer you want the software industry to grow where you live. Restricting immigration is not how you do that!
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/prope...
Factory workers in 80s and 90s said the same thing. All it did was price American factory workers out of the labor pool completely, moving jobs elsewhere.
American greed and I-got-mine-fuck-you attitude is exactly why US will not remain a global superpower country anymore.
Trump got elected in part on a platform of ending the globalist war machine and reducing the superpower footprint (and the machine has been fighting him on that every step of the way, see: Bolton's new book, where he says the craziest thing Trump did was not attack Iran). Americans overwhelmingly want that reduction. He's going to be the first President since Jimmy Carter four decades prior, to not get the US into a new war. There were only a few aspects of Trump's campaign that were widely popular, one of which was stepping back from being the world's everywhere superpower. Why would Americans want that if their ego is so tied up in it? Because it's not. The US economy is what makes it powerful (going all the way back to the Civil War era), not going around the world playing superpower. Regular Americans are focused on their own lives, making ends meet, not worrying about Libya-Egypt-Turkey-Syria-Russia.
Americans are very clearly sick of policing the world and how much it costs; they're sick of the cost of being spread around the world and involved in every conflict.
Before you make the next comment, please check out UK stock indices and Japanese stock indices. Make sure you are ok with the inflated prices they have to pay.
Moreover, the current restriction has barely any bite. It only restricts workers who are not in the US from getting a visa until December 2020.
There are structural inequality issues and problems with upward mobility in the US which we urgently need to work on, but those problems are not caused by high skilled immigration, and economic stagnation would just make them worse. Telling the smartest people in the world that America doesn’t want them coming here any more (which is a side-effect of how the Trump administration has handled immigration issues so far, whether or not the intent), makes them a lot less likely to try and come here, and robs our future of the many incredible contributions those people would make in our communities.
I understand the economic fear that many in the US feel. I spent years unemployed and then underemployed after 2007-2008, and it was brutal. But I fear the US turning it’s back on it’s own history as a nation of immigrants, and it’s role as the aspirational “best place in the world” for the ambitious to come live and work, leaves us even poorer.
also a lot veiled xenophobia re: developers from poorer countries which is absolutely disgusting (and it's something that hits me particularly).
Moreover, an individual can collaborate constructively with immigrant coworkers on a personal level, while also advocating politically for a more restrictive immigration system.
There is nothing unethical about that. The role of government is to protect the natural rights and interests of its own constituents.
Educated immigrants grow the US economy and increate the total employment of the country in the long run. That's who is being kept out here.
This isn't an action that's being taken to help fix issues with the H1B visa system. It's simply to stop immigration to the US.
I'm saying we shouldn't hurl epithets at people for commenting on political concerns that affect them, just because we don't like their point of view. There's a difference between "anti-immigrant" and "anti-H1B."
Look up the definition of "bigotry." People on both sides of the issue should be tolerant of reasonable commentary from the other side.
EDIT: I made a mistake, you made the comment two posts above, not in the prior post. That's why I didn't see it when I came to reply; I looked at the immediate parent rather than going back a ways. But it's right there two posts above, you're decrying "anti-immigrant" commenters. When you set up the debate in that way, there's no consideration of the argument on the other side. You just write it off as being somehow hateful or motivated by prejudice. I don't dispute that some people are prejudiced, but that isn't the only basis upon which H1B policy can be judged. There are tens of millions of unemployed people in the USA right now. Suspension of H1B prioritizes those people over foreign nationals. It's not necessarily a question of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Many more comments are non sequiturs about the various shortcomings of the H1B program which has nothing to do with why it was suspended. My comment doesn't label every participant in this thread as anti-immigrant.
You can't ignore the overall ramifications of the policy just because you believe that the policymaker has a particular nefarious motivation.
And you shouldn't box people out of the debate by accusing them of hatred just because they don't condemn a policy that you see as being hatefully motivated.