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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

> OTOH many H1Bs come with the intent of moving to the US and permanent residence eventually. Which makes our workforce stronger.

Sure. But we are arguing about two separate things here. I am pro-immigration. But I am also against using immigrant primarily to depress wages.

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So the replacement is the talent stays in their own country, making local wages there where their talents are leveraged via offshoring instead. They still work to their skillset, wages remain suppressed but their country of origin get their personal taxes instead. But at least the talented individual gets a lower quality of life, that will teach them to roll the dice wrong on the geography they were born into.

We can still use policy to disadvantage the economics of offshoring, we just haven’t gotten there yet. This took time, that will take time.

Does it suck that billions of people were born into lesser global economic circumstances? Absolutely. Does that mean we should allow corporations to exploit labor (both imported and citizens who have to compete against that imported labor) at the disadvantage of domestic citizens? No. This is workers vs capital, not immigrants vs citizens.

There's a logically fallacy in there. Throwing up border walls does not stop capital. Capital can still exist outside the borders and work with the supply chains of the other countries minus 1. And pick an inflow metric that capital cares, and the US does not control more than 50% of it. number of consumers, GDP, income growth, all of it. The capital will continue to service the bigger number that remains offshore through cutting the US out of that pie reciprocally.

The US as a feature of it geography and population (Japan, UK and the Philippines) can choose isolationism as a policy. But the rest don't have it as an option due to direct contact to neighbors or economics too small to sustain. Most of the world will not follow the on-shoring path, because they cannot.

There is nowhere else to invest. China, Russia, and Africa? No trust. Europe and Japan? Too old. That leaves India, which may or may not attract material capital inflows.

https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep...

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

https://www.columbiathreadneedleus.com/institutional/insight...

Who, funnily enough, will probably be the largest impacted by such things as locking down H1Bs.

Old and still accessible beats inaccessible. BTW the source of the USAs demographic resistance to aging has been the sheer fact it was that immigration melting pot of bringing in young talent to offset its local aging population. A few decades of this path and the US can be just as dismissed as Japan who have taken this path decades in advance.

All countries will end up like Japan, it’s just time (explained in the links I cited). Some countries are likely willing to eat some economic gains out of other preferences. That’s a choice. It’s not all “line goes up.”

India’s total fertility rate is already 1.9, below 2.1 replacement rate. Its demographic dividend (and any potential capital investment opportunities) is already on borrowed time. So capital would rotate and reallocate there, while there is still time, regardless.

https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/dont-panic-over-falli...

Per slide 8 of your second link: Except Africa and half of Asia who will still be above replacement rate for the remainder of our natural lives.

Per exhibit 5 of your first link: The US still to be as bad as Europe and Japan you disparage as "old" and that is based on 2024 analyses. A few more years of these events if sustained will drop that further.

And per Exhibit 1 of that same link, sure India will be at 1.9. And the US was at 1.6 two years ago, which is worse.

> Per slide 8 of your second link: Except Africa and half of Asia who will still be above replacement rate for the remainder of our natural lives.

https://www.science.org/content/article/population-tipping-p...

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/15/5-facts-a...

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-worlds-birthrate-may-already-...

Most of the world will be below fertility replacement rate by 2030. This is important, because the faster fertility rates decline, the faster the light cone of capital returns into the future shrinks (people = profits = returns).

So, to tie this all together: for the reasons I’ve laid out in this subthread (with citations), I’m not too concerned about the need to cater to the demands of capital. It needs returns more than humans need it considering population growth is almost over, and it will continue to slowly exhaust investment opportunities as the global demographics transition continues.

Yes I would prefer just faster road to skilled immigration. It also doesn’t help string people along with this distant hope of permanent residency

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