Comment by Demiurge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Demiurge | Hacker News Reader

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> In almost all cases immigration replaces the need for native births - the latter being a key component for a strong, safe culture that creates a happy median population.

Immigration in USA has multiple components, but it seems to be you're undervaluing the amount of opportunistic intellectual workers, who come here to participate in high level education, and entrepreneurial capitalism. But, here are the numbers across multiple sources (thx GPT):

  - High-skilled (H-1B + EB green cards + PhD retention): ~200–300k annually.
  - Low-wage (H-2A + H-2B + others): ~500k+ legally, probably >700k when including unauthorized inflows.

This a pretty good amount of brain power absorption, not just farm work.

Most Americans want a country that benefits Americans. High skilled immigrants:

1. Take jobs an American would otherwise fill, which would not be a problem except 2. The economy disproportionately benefits the capitalist class (billionaires). Bringing over immigrants to boost the economy doesn’t help the median American, and it creates competition for natives

I’m not undervaluing it. Im saying it provides no value for the majority of Americans. And this on a purely economic axis - social and cultural angles are arguably all negative.

> Take jobs an American would otherwise fill

That's a big assumption. Yeah, take out all the H1b immigrant that came to this country since 1985, what do you think the US economy looks like, filled exclusively with Americans? Where do you think US economy would be? Where do you think the Silicon Vally would be now? Do you think US and Americans would be better off? Do you think that the economic input of the immigrants is net negative?

I don't think you need to answer. I think you've already said no, these workers, and their contibutions are net negative. I just don't see how that makes any sense, given they're clearly a big part of the economy.

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