I mean, no kidding. Half the people I work with are H-1B.
The program takes jobs away from Americans and should be illegal.
I want to work with people from my town, not people from halfway across the world.
The program takes jobs away from Americans and should be illegal.
I want to work with people from my town, not people from halfway across the world.
And I want to work with the brightest people from all over the world. I guess we are at an impasse and are best off leaving subjective preferences out...
Go figure, people who want to stay in the country will jump through some ridiculous hoops and we’re all worse for it.
I have never found a reason to believe any folks on H1B are smarter than their non-H1B peers. By any stat, never seen it.
I'm certainly not one of them, but love working with bright people.
> you understand that labor prices are set by supply and demand. The H1B process increases the labor supply and thus decreases the price of labor.
The pie isn't fixed. I believe it will grow and there will be more for everyone if we allow everyone to thrive. New people create demand and maybe reverb start some new companies. Further, the labor could also happen entirely in another country which would be much worse for US workers.
IMO the biggest issue with H1B is that it restricts worker choice and thus creates a somewhat captive class of workers who can be paid less. The best way to solve this is to reduce constraints on H1B holders
Many countries offer work visas (for many good reasons), although they are often used in unintended ways. It is very much a stretch to say these programs shouldn't exist at all because they "take away" jobs.
Also, if half of the people you work with are on H1B, very likely you are not in a midwest "town" with 3,000 population, but rather a decent metropolitan area with a large immigration population, and the company you work is of decent size. I wouldn't be surprised if even half of the Americans in your company relocated from a different "town".
Finally, I like working with people that are productive and easy to communicate, instead of looking at which country they come from or their visa status. If anything that's my boss's concern.
Therefore, if you want to actually see any change, maybe (1) become the CEO of your company, fire all H1B and only hire US citizens (2) join a different company (3) start your own company, or at least (4) call your senator and advocate for anti-immigration bills, or sue USCIS, instead of posting these useless and borderline racist comments on HN.
Nobody forces you to work with people from across the world, quit your job and find one that only hires people from your town
As it is, the H1B system only benefits H1Bs in a limited manner at the cost of American citizens. All so that rich investors can make more money.
I think a better solution is to end H-1B. Nobody is forcing people to come here.
That's the whole point, that's why H1B is apparently still very popular. People will take lower salaries just to get to the US because they apparently want to move there at all cost and have a chance to stay.
(Btw, I see your point and am not necessarily criticizing it. However, you do see that these companies operate globally and having the workforce reflect that should be considered ok?)
and then you will probably figure out yourself that you need the H-1Bs
There’s plenty of companies though that don’t do h1b. Major telcos, defense contractors (those are us citizen only), a lot of small hedge funds, etc.
Anyone who agrees to the social contract gets to benefit from the nation. That’s what a country actually is.
In practice, nations prioritize their own citizens, in the same way you will prioritize your family. Do you abandon taking care of your family because it would be "more fair," to take care of someone on the other side of the planet?
Your countrymen should have aligned values, cultures, goals, missions, etc that prioritizes them. That's the fabric of society.
Everyone who gives up freedom to the state is entering into a social contract with that state, citizenship or no. Once those people enter into that contract, they deserve all of the rights and services the contract provides.
By tying the contract to citizenship, you provide a way for racists and nationalists to steal from the people arbitrarily determined to be noncitizens, usually along racial lines.
Besides, all evidence suggests immigrants benefit a society substantially more than they harm it. In the US for example, noncitizens consume significantly fewer national resources while still paying the full amount of taxes expected of citizens.
The general rule here is that unless there's an obvious reason to deny equal people something you've given other people, you shouldn't deny it in the first place.
Of course. The problem is that your view of the economy is optimistic, perhaps dangerously so. Let's hope we never reach the limit and have a concrete problem on our hands, I guess.
12% of the US population are second generation immigrants [0]. Obviously, third generation percentage is even higher.
Good luck reconciling that with your thoughts on what a "nation" should be.
[0] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
Who should a nation put first then?
I dont see the connection between how citizenship is acquired (AFAIK each nation is free to set the rules/laws that they think is fair) and if citizens should get special treatment or not.
If citizens can't get "special" treatment over non resident in their own country what's the point of countries?
How people become residents and what "rights" they have die to this status is part of the "social contract".
Citizenship in the US is a profoundly broken system with a horrendous and racist past, and using it to decide who deserves the benefit of the social contract and who doesn’t is actively buying into the nationalistic and false idea that Americans are superior just because they were born somewhere and foreigners weren’t.
You wouldn’t argue that black slaves weren’t worthy of US protection and services until the 14th Amendment was passed, would you? You wouldn’t pretend like the US granting and then revoking citizenship from Mexican settlers repeatedly in the 19th and 20th century was acceptable, would you? Was the Chinese Exclusion Act acceptable?
A foreign life is worth exactly the same as an American life, and the difference is completely arbitrary.
Americans are not more deserving of jobs than foreigners, Americans are not better than foreigners.
Those principles are heavily founded in “deserve”. You are watching some infinitesimally small part of that “ruling” process.
The bureaucratic concept of "citizenship" is just a way for people to construct barriers of hate around the benefits offered by a nation while still forcing people to accept the sacrifices.
Is it about land superficy or about ownership? Can we establish a clear framework here instead of constantly jumping from one wishy washy thing to the other?
You aren't the sole owner of your house either. Even without a mortgage you are not. So if someone adhere to the social contract in your house I assume you let them in to do as they please (within the limit of the contract of course.)
It’s about how to manage shared resources amongst people who all have equal claim, which is everyone who has agreed to the social contract. When you agreed is irrelevant.
Frankly, I would argue that many people born in the US do not hold up their end of the social contract, and should thus take a backseat to immigrants who would come here and care deeply for the social contact in their place.
Yes, you are done.
When you willingly leave your family out in the cold, thanksgiving winter; to have space to provide random passersby into your house to eat your turkey, lets talk!
Non citizens have equal right to feed their families, and anyone who has agreed to the social contract has equal rights to the social services the government has agreed to provide, regardless of citizenship.
But my home isn’t in any way like a country, so this question isn’t meaningful.
You need a bureaucracy once you have a shared resource, and at that point no one is entitled to the resource more than anyone else.
The land your home is built on is part of a shared resource: the space available for the community.
If we apply your logic there s nothing wrong with immigrants showing up and colonizing natives - be it in America, Australia, etc - shared resource bro!
Too bad people from your town are not smart enough.
Jokes aside, the irony of this assertion coming from an American is too rich. Wondering why "23andMe" was such a popular term not that long ago.