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Comment by mikert89 | Hacker News Reader

Employers just hire experienced h1bs instead, they won’t leave after being trained, no reason to hire an American

There are ~700k h1bs out of ~157 million American jobs. So about 99.6% of jobs in America are held by Americans and 0.4% by h1bs.

Now do the tech industry (high paying American jobs)

Why is tech high paying exactly? Maybe low supply of qualified labor? Maybe that can be solved with qualified immigration? We can call such a program H1B, for example, and it would benefit the American economy overall at the cost of slightly reducing compensation fir the already extremely highly paying tech jobs.

@crossbody that makes too much sense though

Immigration is about short-changing the natives to make the billionaires wealthier, yes, we know.

People are also now learning this fact, which is why you’re getting unpalatable politicians elected.

"I'm being short-changed!" claims rich minority whose high pay even fresh out of university leads to SF rents being unafordable by key workers.

Irony is, that doesn't prevent such sentiments as yours leading to people like Trump. I had a chance to live in the USA years back, I'm glad I didn't bother to take it.

I didn’t say anything about tech workers.

Motte, Bailey. You responded in a thread about tech workers and H1Bs, on a tech forum.

> Now do the tech industry

Do you have numbers? If you don’t, the appropriate baseline is population.

Are convenience stores getting h1bs for their shelf stockers? How the hell is the baseline population an appropriate metric for evaluating a niche role?

And Americans leave because employers will just replace them with offshoring and h1bs to save money. It's a self perpetuating cycle. Loyalty goes both ways. Employees finally realized that they should be treating employers like employers have always treated employees. That's capitalism.

Oh good, I was worried this thread wouldn't have any anti-immigrant sentiment.

When immigration is a leading factor on why the modern college graduate has less marketability in the workforce, leading them to believe the ROI on their degree is not worth it compared to generations past, you really should have expected it.

The h1b program can essentially be eliminated tomorrow. Trump could theoretically make h1b visas non-transferable, charge a high annual renewal, etc.

Trump could cancel H1B but most likely he won't. If for no other reason than as a favour to his billionaire friends. They are more important than the popular idea of America first, American jobs etc. here Trump literally says we need H1B because we need talent, and USA doesn't have the talent. Not a good look for a supposedly America first president.. https://youtu.be/U2XUNKcKtx0?si=GOFyMGxqUIbyGD6T

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