Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

As an American, let me preface this by saying that I am in no way opposed to immigration. I am in no way opposed to other cultures. Many of my good friends are not Americans.

Here is my problem, though - I look around my floor in a NYC office (I'm a software engineer) and I see very few people who are American citizens.

To me, that is very discouraging. It shows that me that Americans who live in the US are becoming less competitive than people from other countries when it comes to technical careers.

Again, let me strongly state that I'm have no problem with people from other countries coming to work here - I'm just making an observation that it is somewhat sad that American companies simply cannot find enough Americans to do jobs in America.

So what happens if we make the immigration process far easier? I see a lot of complaints in this thread about how difficult/how long of a process it is. But what happens when people from other countries flood in? What happens to the fewer competitive Americans here? Suddenly, it's more expensive to hire them. More expensive to keep them on.

I think I have legitimate concerns. They make me less inclined to support making the process easier. Maybe I'm wrong about what I suspect will happen if we let people flood in - and if you think I'm wrong, I'm more than happy to examine any resources that you feel might help me change my mind. However, I don't think I'm wrong. I think it would be a disaster for American workers.

If you have capital, you are free to deploy it wherever you feel it can make the highest return. Why should the same not be true of Labour? I'm an H1B from the UK (admittedly Scotland rather than London) and my earning power is twice what it is back home.

What happens if the number of H1B's doubles? Suddenly availability of candidates skyrockets. The number of job openings plummet. Perfect setup for employers to get away with paying people much less, IMO.

...and wages around the world balance out giving everyone a fair crack of the whip. Whenever someone suggests raising taxes on the rich, the answer is always "we can't do that because they'll just take their money/jobs and leave". Workers around the world will only get a fair deal when that is possible for them too.

You're right that in the short-run, US workers will suffer but in the long run, everyone wins because it means that when setting policy, governments would have to consider the possibility that workers (as well as employers) might be able to find a better deal elsewhere. That's what I like about the US federal system. This would just be rolling it out across the whole world.

You do realize that US workers' wages dropping would pump more money into the rich corporations that they work for, right? Those corporations are going to go right on exploiting people - the only difference is that it would now be easier to exploit US workers in addition to workers in other countries.

It's not just US workers that would suffer. Workers in other countries would suffer when US workers stop spending ask much money on more expensive things, like, say, imports from other countries.

Sure, wages will balance out. But if everyone gets screwed by that, do you really think you've given workers a fair deal?

Finally, you say: governments would have to consider the possibility that workers (as well as employers) might be able to find a better deal elsewhere.

Disregarding the fact that it is prohibitively expensive for most people to just pick up and move to another country, wouldn't governments just end up saying "well damn, our workers are getting screwed - let's erect some barriers to foreign workers to fix it", thus bringing everyone back to the same place eventually?

I just don't think it makes sense to open the floodgates to foreign workers. I think a better answer would be US foreign policy that encourages other countries to invest/nurture their high tech sectors.

I think it depends on where you work. I work at a large internet startup in NYC, and out of 250-ish employees we have, maybe only 10 are foreign.

True. My experience is probably not unique, though - however, I would agree that it definitely would vary from location to location.

You can tell by looking across your office if your coworkers are citizens? Do they keep their birth certificates on display?

If you're implying that I can tell by "looking" at them, I certainly didn't mean it that way. However, I do overhear things, and I'd guess that at least half of the people on my floor are here on a visa. Granted, it's not a huge floor. But still, I doubt that my experience is unique.

Fair enough.

I'm actually working in the US on a visa. I think my situation benefits everyone. It would have been easier for my employer to hire a US citizen, but they decided my skill set would be able to earn them enough extra money to make the effort worth it for them. So in theory the US economy as a whole should be better off.

I find the cash for citizenship proposal both amusing and arrogant. It implies that the US is so good that citizens of other countries should be willing to pay their life savings to live here.

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