I forgot where I heard this, but the thought is that if a country takes the world's best and brightest, it means those other countries that they are coming from lose their best and brightest, making it harder for those other countries to succeed.
But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin#Elite_overproduc...). We've basically massively expanded the number of highly credentialed people in the country and this might not be a good idea.
>But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction.
Props for finding incredibly niche and out-there theories to support your worldview. This is kind of nice about HN. Normally, people would just cite the great replacement theory or other leftist slop to support protectionism, but you found something even more bizarre. It reminds me of how Vance talks. He'll bring up latin incantations like ordo amoris to justify otherwise mundane cruelties.
Oh yes, yeesh, my bad, this is for green cards only, there's some hilariously low bar for H-1B yet it still exists. But let's just go back to my point that H-1B is used to lower wages. You can just search for it unless you think it's a conspiracy theory. For all your frothing hostility, I noticed you didn't try to defend lowered wages. What are you defending here? Corporate profits? Some kind of moral issue? Do you have evidence H-1B was vitally necessary?
> incredibly niche and out-there theories
It's a scientific theory.
> support protectionism
I think that misses the point if you mean trade protectionism. I am saying H-1B (also EB-2 and other degree to green card pipelines) presents a danger of destabilizing society. I already think that's obviously the case.
Everything is used to lower wages. Uber, waymo, doordash, LLMs, etc. all reduce wages. There is no requirement in the statute that it should not lower wages. Congress considered the tradeoff and decided that it was worth having the program. It is a minuscule number, btw. 85k per year, which given the size of the US economy should not even register anywhere in any discussions. In any case, these econ 101 discussions are beyond the scope here.
That brings us to
Americans are too dumb to get these jobs so we still need it:
Americans are not too dumb but we need H-1B anyway for reasons:
The cap is 85k, which is never exceeded, as that is a statutory limit. There are other cap exempt categories for non-profits and universities.
>That brings us to
It doesn't bring us to any of these conclusions. The vehicle for the change you seek is the legislature. Lobby Congress to change the law. You have a house rep and 2 state senators. Talk to them about your concerns.
>the vehicle for change you seek is the legislature
I never argued the fee was legal for reference. And oop must've forgotten that Congress cared about my concerns, thanks for the tip!
I don't know if protectionism is the right word.