Ashish Vaswani: India
Noam Shazeer: USA
Niki Parmar: India
Jakob Uszkoreit: Germany
Llion Jones: USA
Aidan Gomez: British Canadian
Lukasz Kaiser: Poland
Illia Polosukhin: Ukraine
Another country invested 20 years to train a 130 IQ person from birth to tertiary educated.
And then the US gets to skim the top 0.1% off that expensive process without paying a dime.
These immigrants then generate consumption, scientific discoveries and found companies in their prime working years, which boosts the local country's power, economy, job opportunities and prosperity. They take 1 job but create 2, but the 2 is hidden behind layers of indirection (scientific discoveries, consumption, etc) so dumb people can't see the positive sum reality for what it is.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is a profound misunderstanding of the global value that these immigrants create, even if they locally compete for a specific job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
There's a reason Eastern Europe and East Asia are struggling. There's a reason China and South Korea have probably peaked. There's a reason Hungary will continue to be a shit place to live. It isn't because of too much immigration. It's because of too little.
The US, since its founding, has been a country of immigrants. It's a necessary condition behind its prosperity and strength.
The reality is that the H1B program is being used not to bring in individuals with 130+ IQ, but essentially anyone with a bachelor's degree, which can be easily obtained from diploma mills. In some third-world countries, you can even buy your degree outright.
For the top 0.1%, there are O1 visas, as well as EB1 and EB2-NIW visas — the latter two don't even require an employer and can be self-sponsored. Plus, they grant you a green card, unlike the H1B, which ties you to an employer.
However, to qualify for these visas, you need to demonstrate that you're genuinely valuable to the U.S. They are designed for top-tier entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and artists with a verifiable track record. These visas can also be gamed, but it's much harder than with the H1B program.
O1 has an incredibly high bar and not something that "this person has a PhD from a top institution and a strong publication record" can guarantee.
Also, I am not against visas intended to fill labor shortages. But it needs to be done in a way that incentivizes hiring local talent over foreign. Currently the H-1B works the other way around. This has to be dealt with. Like raising the minimum salary, making it significantly more expensive to hire an H-1B worker than a local one, and removing the exploitative leverage employers have over visa holders — people shouldn't have to fear negotiating for better terms due to the threat of deportation. That would likely fix it.
https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-americ...
If you want the best and brightest, pay for the damages created by badly formed policy.
I am an immigrant so 1,000,000% not anti-immigration, everyone around me besides native americans is also an immigrant. I am also former H1B-er. the program is deeply flawed and is used for exploitation more than anything else
But the large majority of voices on social media are using this as an opportunity to sling broadly anti-immigration and nativist catchphrases, framing the H1B as a zero sum contest between the immigrant and the local. It's factually the opposite of the truth. Even if H1B doesn't get any reforms, it's better than nothing for both the immigrant and the US, but that would not be the impression you would get from the avalanche of people committed to the Lump of Labor fallacy.
I’m not so sure this is the average H1-B.
Wealth inequality has followed a trend of concentrating towards the top over many decades. (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...), exacerbated by events such as 2008 recession and Covid. Even with increased productivity, salaries have not always kept pace with inflation or cost of living in many US cities (https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...).
Not only do US workers already have to compete with offshoring (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/10/15/the-global...) which is now impacting formerly safe white collar jobs like accounting and engineering, education costs in the US are also some of the highest in the world, raising the barrier to entry and putting domestic workers at a competitive disadvantage against global markets (https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-ed... ).
HN obviously tends to skew towards tech and Silicon Valley; an industry and location that has been somewhat insulated from these effects, but its a very real struggle for many people throughout the US across varied fields from finance and accounting, to medicine and engineering.
It is in this environment in which the current H1B debate exists. While there may be a net benefit to the US economy overall from skilled immigration, much of that benefit (similar to higher productivity) tends to increasingly be enjoyed at the top socioeconomic level. The “layers of indirection” are in many cases owned and controlled by corporations through IP law, patents, copyright, non-compete and NDAs, and other legal mechanisms, which can delay their benefit to society at large, and create further perverse incentives if not regulated fairly.
And while globalization as a root cause might be inevitable, it can certainly be managed through regulation in a way that more equitably distributes the benefits. It can also be manipulated by regulatory capture to enable corporations to lower costs and increase profits at the expense of US labor. There are many examples of this occurring before now. Any sound policy change regarding the H1B visa program needs to take all benefits/risks into account, and I personally would like to see a little more nuance from the incoming executive administration in this regard. Folks like Musk and Ramaswamy have a lot of profit to gain from importing cheaper skilled labor, with a higher degree of control over domestic employees vs those located overseas. I also have a hard time believing any corporate executives would have predominately altruistic intentions, and there is an obvious conflict of interest in them being involved in any policy decisions that impact their balance sheets. I realize this doesn’t negate a net positive benefit, but when that benefit is largely realized by a select few through regulatory capture, and is easily abused, it’s not anti-immigrant to criticize policy implementation.
Those other 64k people contribute as well. If you want to argue the other side (I don’t know why you would) feel free.
the main reason for american tech supremacy is american military budget. and also that is next 876 reasons. H1B program won’t crack top-1000
We don't know, but we can't afford losing the supremacy.
There probably should be some level of difficulty between H-1B and O-1 in my view.
In market terms, H1B workers are simply a better product - slightly cheaper (because companies can game the system) and more predictable (because they can’t show the employer the middle finger).
I’d call it something more along the lines of “regulatory capture” than a freely operating market.
It's been like that for quite some time. A lot of political power coming from economic power is a sure way for a democracy to transition into a kleptocracy.
> who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize)
The companies don't want cheaper labor. They want slave labor.