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Comment by genxy | Hacker News Reader

You give away your bias when it is the other way around.

The H1B is a byproduct and a tool of corporate greed.

Or it’s a way for the less fortunate (geographically) to seek a better future.

They more or less got rid of it last September, yet the job market has only worsened. Scapegoating minorities, whether it be trans people, brown people, Muslims or immigrants, doesn’t work. All it does is destroy lives.

> You give away your bias when it is the other way around.

How so?

American corporations could care less about giving anyone a better future.

archagon was attempting to paint declan_roberts comment as blaming H1B workers on working conditions, which they did not do. But H1Bs will be used to suppress wages by working more hours 996 under worse conditions (oncall, etc). This is low rhetoric. To call out how H1Bs are being used is not scapegoating nor is it racist. It makes zero difference where they come from. The cause is corporate greed, the effect is more H1Bs.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-h-1b-hiring-faces-1230...

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/05/20/amazons-33181-h-...

Amazon has cut, what 30k+ folks while increasing their H1B allocation.

Now, with the $100K fee which has turned H-1B workers into indentured servants, they could and will be used for that, sure. But prior to the EO, they had the freedom to leave the country and reenter whenever they'd like to, so long as they were employed or had an offer on hand. Getting laid off wasn't the end of the world. Travelling wasn't a huge risk. Switching employers was relatively stress-free. While still not on par with that of citizens, the leverage and the bargaining power was there, preventing the longer workweeks under worse conditions issue you're referring to. The concern trolls claiming otherwise had no concrete evidence to show for their claims.

I never said it's racist, unsure where you got that from, but it absolutely is scapegoating, when the issue isn't immigrants, who are powerless and cannot fight back, but the admin that's vilifying them while being the actual villain.

The power dynamic is definitely worse now, but it has existed ever since I first touched corporate tech in the late 90s (microsoft).

The problem isn't with immigrants specifically, but how they are used by these corporations to suppress wages and reduce the agency of labor. I don't want to see anyone hurt. But the way the H1Bs are being used harms everyone.

I'm not convinced it existed before - not to the extent where it actually harmed people. But you know what will harm people for certain and a lot? "Ending H-1B ASAP". So why end it (let alone make it worse by making H-1B workers significantly more exploitable) instead of increasing the unemployment grace period, making travel less of a gamble, giving the worker more flexibility with work schedule and location?

I agree with all those things, AND preventing Amazon from firing 15-30k people and then turning around and hiring H1Bs. We are not talking about the same thing, enough that there isn't a disagreement.

No country is ever going to be able to create a functional local software economy if every good engineer get sucked out of the country.

In many ways the current system is cruel to every international company which forces their local wages to compete with the United States.

I don't care about "every international company" or any company. Kicking out immigrants is cruel to people.

Also, why shouldn't those companies be forced to compete with US wages? Do only Americans get to have nice things and a strong purchasing power?

Why not both? It is a feedback loop. When the US allowed railroad/mine workers from China, it is true that Chinese labor wanted a better future and that capitalists want to use Chinese labor to suppress American wages. For instance, look at the animosity towards Chinese workers in Wyoming by European workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Springs_massacre

Do you think the European workers were in the right? Is the solution to kick out (let alone slaughter) the Chinese, or is it to make them less exploitable by companies?

US workers are left with almost no systemic power to fight corporate exploitation, which creates a brutal race to the bottom. That's the structural context I was pointing out. But let’s be clear: turning that frustration into killing Chinese workers is never acceptable. The issue isn't the foreign workforce; it's a broken system that exploits everyone.

So, when foreigners want to come to the US to work, these foreigners find the working conditions (say, 996 of today) is better than working for the corporate and the government exploiters in their home countries.

So erase that worry for them of having to go back to their home countries instead of doing the opposite and kicking them out? Extend the unemployment grace period from 60 days to a year. Make travel easier. Make it so that companies can't exploit them. What does the admin do instead? Introduce an exorbitant fee, making

- travel a gamble on whether you'll be able to re-enter

- a layoff pretty much the end of your ability to stay and work in the US

... in other words, making the workers far, far more exploitable. Make that make sense.

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