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Comment by ahmeneeroe-v2 | Hacker News Reader

>A better solution would be to hand a greencard to any immigrant who has worked for 5 years and has earned a certain high salary as proven by the W2.

Huge non-sequitur. Why is this better? Better for whom?

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Better for everyone because the talented H1B employee is no longer shackled to their employer and can leave demanding a higher wage and raising wages for everyone.

Well you just answered why they don't/won't do this.

The H1B employees being shackled and thus having little to no leverage to demand higher compensation or better working conditions is (from the point of view of the companies abusing the system) a feature of the system, not a bug.

Well, which is exactly why we should do this

> can leave demanding a higher wage and raising wages for everyone.

This is simply not believable. More competition for a limited resource (jobs) means lower wages, not higher wages.

I guess you’re proposing eliminating the h1b program to raise wages. That would maybe work but our companies would theoretically be less competitive globally. If we’re going to allow immigration based on professional skills then these people should be fast tracked to having the same employment rights as natives otherwise it creates a subclass of workers that depress wages because those that belong to that group will be too risk adverse to ask for more money knowing that they’ll likely have to leave the country if they get let go.

Yes, eliminate H1B.

>otherwise it creates a subclass of workers that depress wages

Again, we can just skip the middle-man here and fix wages by ending H1B.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

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