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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

A problem solved if visas are not associated to employers, because then an employer couldn’t hold onto the employee like this.

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No. Because it still floods the job market with off short talent that is willing to work for 30% less. Construction workers arent tied to a single employer (usually) and that drops the price of labour across the board even in union dominated markets.

The simple solution is for the government to put a tax on the visa. For each H1-B the company does, they pay the government an additional $200,000 per year (or some other large, arbitrary sum). If they really need them that badly, they'll pay up. What I think happens is that they discover they don't need them quite so much.

Tariffs on visas?

Great idea

It's one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard on this site frankly. For how "meritocratic" HN claims to be, they are totally fine with basically eliminating all competition in their own job sphere.

Imagine how quickly business trust in the government would go down if the government mandated a $200k head tax on H1Bs. It's absurd and only here would anyone hear it and think it makes sense

Why is this post so heavily downvoted? Oh wait, I guess this really hit a nerve:

    > For how "meritocratic" HN claims to be, they are totally fine with basically eliminating all competition in their own job sphere.

There is always someone willing to do your job for less. Protection against that isn't anti-meritocratic, it's anti-exploitation.

H1Bs at a lot of companies (excluding the actual criminals TCS, Wipro, etc.) are not always willing to do your job for less. Many of them make more than most US devs.

Many make what you would consider laughable wages. I worked for a university in their IS department years ago, and since the university had an office that dealt with visas, they'd bring in people for what was truly a mediocre job. Salary probably $45-50k back in the mid-2010s.

But since HN is San Francisco-centric, it can pretend otherwise I guess. Some very tiny fraction earn above what US developers earn.

Most people are self interested.

Having to compete with people in the third world who have no expectations isn’t meritocracy. My dad grew up in a literal village and I remember sleeping under mosquito nets. Americans shouldn’t have to put up with the things I’m willing to put up with.

You don't have to compete with people with no expectations. You have to compete with people who: often have an advanced degree (much more common for H1Bs than citizen devs), often have financial resources at home backing their ability to move up to a more expensive economy for work without security of a job, and are often just as good if not better than you.

H1Bs are often scapegoated by these forums as being hungry to not live in poverty, but they are often the top of their respective countries by most metrics.

And most of you all do not think that we should level the playing field between, say people who went to good schools vs people who went to bad ones, or people who can barely code vs people who can code really well. Only when it's foreigners do you not want meritocracy

It’s not comparable. Both my parents have advanced degrees back in old country. But the standard of living for someone in the top 5% back home is comparable to someone in public housing in the US. If people’s alternatives back home were so good they wouldn’t abandon all their family—my family was never from anywhere besides Bangladesh going back thousands of years—to come to the U.S.

You ignored all of my comment. The point is, people here want to eliminate more educated, more likely to have financial backing candidates for their jobs. But they would bristle at the suggestion of any such thing for business success, college admissions, academic awards of any kind, etc.

People want competition on a level playing field. Most people also don’t think it’s fair for American companies to have to compete with Chinese ones that don’t have to abide by environmental protection or worker protection laws. The same is true for having to compete with foreign workers.

The country I’m from just had rioters overthrow its government. In terms of what I’m willing to put up with at work or school, I just have a mindset and motivations that native born Americans shouldn’t have to compete with.

You can’t build a more just, fair society by filling it with foreigners who perceive the minimum standard as being so much lower because of their background.

> In terms of what I’m willing to put up with at work or school, I just have a mindset and motivations that native born Americans shouldn’t have to compete with.

Yeah, sorry. I actually believe in meritocracy unlike whiny HN'ers. Whatever mindset is best should win. That's how business is. That's how academics are. That's how every serious global endeavor is.

> You can’t build a more just, fair society...

If that's all you're optimizing for, just have communism. Easy path to what you want. If you actually want people to earn according to merit, to succeed according to making big bets that pay off, or any of those cruel, unequal things, then don't have a huge blind spot when it comes to only your job and no one else's.

I will make the case H1-B immigrants actually have an advantage to citizens when they arrive. Reducing everything down to just earnings potential and mindset doesn't cover the possibility that there are not equal opportunities available to everyone. I will give an example.

So for example, immigrants can come to the US and have the privilege of being able to pick where they want to live because they have no attachments. This gives them a huge advantage because they pick higher income locations but especially seem to prefer being near the limited number of good high schools. Most Americans do not go to a top rated high school and do not live near one. It's not even possible for all Americans to go to a top rated high school just by definition. People going to top rated high schools have a much higher chance of going on to top rated universities which are gateways to power. Universities and high schools are just not all the same product. A Harvard degree is not the same as a state university degree. Economics alone does not capture things like that. There are real advantages things like prestige ratings give to people. So H1-B immigrants fall into a professional class which goes on to disproportionately have power with more income and more roles available in government. I think there are implications here you can surmise. Lousy education in the US is a factor here and people bristle just as much at the thought of leveling playing fields in education, even pro education people. Everyone loves rankings and prestige. It hasn't escaped my notice that elite universities have massive numbers of international, first, second, and third gen immigrants leading to a new class.

Second, another reason I don't believe immigration is meritocratic is because of what you said earlier that often immigrants are the best from their own respective country and I think that is true. They are literally smarter, we are taking the top 1% from other countries but attributing a lot of their success to just hard work. Not everyone is mentally capable of being say a medical doctor.

Third, there isn't a general global open immigration plan. Most countries are closed to immigration and I think the thought of Americans en masse migrating to a foreign place like India or China is ridiculous and everyone knows they wouldn't allow it. But I doubt America is the only place on the earth Americans could ever work. Sure, there are expats yes but nothing like on the scale of people moving to the US. So in general it doesn't really seem like this system was designed to be a meritocracy, it was designed by people at the top for their goals (cut wages, import people they like, etc) and immigrants go because they profit, but I am not sure how that's a meritocracy. It just sounds like a conspiracy.

Seems like we agree on most things. Yeah skilled immigrants tend to do better than citizens. That's why you see so many of them in top tech firms. Meritocracy isn't about levelling the playing field. It's the opposite. The best win no matter how they became the best (barring crimes). If an immigrant has less attachments to jobless / lower income areas. If an immigrant has a better education and finances. Meritocracy welcomes that, and so do I. Meritocracy made the US the capitol of the tech landscape, and it will continue to do so

yes, but I think we drew very different conclusions.

This is a good example of my theory that skilled immigrants are disproportionately the more anti-social segment of the population back home. In much of the world, 80-90% of people wouldn’t emigrate even if they had the chance (https://news.gallup.com/poll/652748/desire-migrate-remains-r...). The ones who would leave a relatively comfortable place in their ancestral country to pursue money in someone else’s country must have a particular psychology.

Good reason to oppose skilled immigration!

Yeah, get rid of people who would be cutthroat for money. Surely American entrepreneurship is not for such people. And surely America's prowess in the tech landscape is not due to such people. We all know Zuckerberg was famously not ruthless as a businessman. He did not chase money at the expense of his relationships like a horrible 3rd world immigrant would do!!

It’s one thing to be aggressive in business, it’s another thing to be a grinder who pulls down the floor for other workers because they’re grateful to have reliable electricity. America’s tech prowess is due to Americans. Silicon Valley arose in the 1960s-1970s, when America had the lowest foreign born population percentage in its history.

L O L. Lots of companies and industries from the 60s-70s completely died out (Ford / GM's American workforce for example).

The continued growth and success of the dotcom and post dotcom era companies has been on the backs of H1Bs and you know it

I mean, I can think of a lot of things businesses could greatly benefit and grow from, but would have to do without if it came with $200,000/yr price tag.

IMO this is not about wether a business can do without X. Most businesses can do without a lot of things, just more poorly. IMO this is about finding the right balance between the benefits and drawbacks of hiring foreign specialized workers.

Ranked by salary is an alternative I've heard.

A lot of things "flood the job market". In 2021, >104k degrees CIS degrees were awarded by US colleges [1]. There's a flood of young people entering the market every year, and they're willing to work for >30% less than experienced engineers because it's their first proper job.

IMO as with all things money, it's all about negotiation. Of course a lot of negotiating power simply has to do with the market supply/demand, but a whole lot has to do with policy and rules. Giving more negotiating power to H1Bs would definitely put upwards pressure on salaries.

Re: construction workers. Same problem, worker's rights. A lot of construction workers are undocumented: an estimated 20 percent [2][3]. Undocumented immigrants have virtually no negotiating power. Allowing this solid 1/5th of the workforce to confront their employer without fear of deportation would go a long way increasing compensation for the industry as a whole.

[1]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_322.10.a...

[3]: https://limos.engin.umich.edu/deitabase/2024/05/28/undocumen...

"Allowing this solid 1/5th of the workforce to confront their employer without fear of deportation would go a long way increasing compensation for the industry as a whole."

It is strange to read this all typed out in earnest like that. Housing costs triple over night for the win? We'll all be homeless but those of us in construction will get a boost (or decreased competition from low cost imported labor).

> Housing costs triple over night for the win? We'll all be homeless but those of us in construction will get a boost (or decreased competition from low cost imported labor).

Your discourse is sensationalist and unnecessarily agitated. Paying workers a fair wage wouldn't triple housing costs, that figure is completely made up.

> We'll all be homeless

It also wouldn't lead to complete homelessness.

Precisely! The real discussion is how much would it decrease supply and what impact on the homeless rate would occur per unit change in labor input cost. Discussion of good/bad/better/worse is fruitless. We need data. But you take the first step by acknowledging these are related costs and social outcomes that exist in a delicate equilibria. Many would just say to heck with unintended consequences it's a matter of principal or ideological mandate. Gotta break a few eggs types.

Yeah it's fair to say that if suddenly a huge influx of people show up causing downwards pressure on wages then that can happen. Though I feel like construction work is a place where there is legitimately more limits to how many people who are willing to work in that industry (even if you paid me double a SWE salary, I'm not working in scaffolding all day) locally.

I do think that if you don't tie the visa to the employer, then it's _less interesting_ for an employer to recruit people from abroad. Especially for companies whose entire business model is "get cheaper IT labor, locked into mandatory service, in exchange for being an entryway to the country".

Like if you despise those shops, then you really should be lobbying to get rid of the employer lock-in.

First, GP wrote:

    > A problem solved if visas are not associated to employers, because then an employer couldn’t hold onto the employee like this.

Then you wrote:

    > No. Because it still floods the job market with off short talent that is willing to work for 30% less.

In many highly developed countries in the world, visas are not associated with an employer. We don't see people clamouring to post about it on HN. Why? Because the number of visas offered to skilled migrants is relatively limited.

Second, you wrote:

    > Construction workers arent tied to a single employer (usually) and that drops the price of labour across the board even in union dominated markets.

How can you be sure that this is true? Do you have a "natural" experiment where two similar areas in the US have construction workers where area A has workers tied to a single employers and area B not? Else, how can you say this with such confidence?

Source: I managed projects bigger than you can imagine as a very young person. I traveled between the United States, China, the Middle East and the Caribbean.You have to take my word for it, as I can't and wont dox myself. I might as well have a PhD on this subject. I don't care if you believe me or not, but what I say is true.

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