Or imagine if an employee works for you and this happens to them.
Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
The main constraint is re-entry into the US and being able to travel outside the US. If one stayed here, there was no problem switching schools, programs, jobs, adjusting status to permanent residency or naturalization. On the other hand, for re-entry, one needs a valid visa stamped on a passport which necessitated a trip to one's home country. This stamping visit could be unpredictable.
Ideally, one would like to travel freely to see family and friends but I see a lot of comments implying that one is forced to leave. It might be true now but a lot of comments here are conflating several issues together.
Everything post-2025 has been a shit-show. There's no predictability or clear guidance, either from our lawyers or from the state department.
Predictability matters a lot in business. If you know what the procedure is and how long it will take, you can plan around it. If the rules change in the middle of the game you're left scrambling to keep up.
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
But that's the point, isn't it? Some foreign workers who "worked the US for the benefit of the US" are now unable to come back to the US. Isn't that bad for the US too?
Is every natural-born American entitled to a job that pays what they want, for the hours they want, in the location they want, regardless of their qualifications for the job?
I would understand logic of bringing people from other countries when there is a shortage of workers but with current market it doesn't seem to be the case.
In the world you're imagining, is x+y potentially infinite?
There is no developed country on earth where labor shortages are addressed by "just increase the salary until you find a native-born person to take the job."
> "labor shortages"
This is a misnomer is _my_ point. A labor shortage has a trivial solution, "pay more". It's intentionally framed as "labor shortage" by capital who would prefer the labor pool be near-infinite so they can pick the best for the cheapest. No, no company is going to like it. And that's okay, immigration, and government policies more broadly, should not be about "what would maximize private capital profits?" They should serve the broader American public.
If companies can't find a farm laborer at 100k/yr then that sounds like it's an *incredible* situation for the average worker.
Whenever you think a solution to a problem that plagues an entire nation (especially one the size of the US) is "trivial", you should ask the question: if it's so trivial, why hasn't it been fixed after so many years? And if your answer depends on some sort of conspiracy, you know you're wrong.
There are so many problems with "pay more". Let's start with a simple one: it's based on the assumption that the employer's only alternative to paying more is going without the output. In a lot of labor markets, this just isn't the case.
Jobs get mechanized/automated. They get outsourced to a different country. The employer reduces output (reduces staff) and in many cases at the same time increases prices. Sometimes, as has been seen with restaurants and retail, hours get cut or they go out of business.
Another problem with your "solution" is that in many markets, especially those related to healthcare, it's not just pay that limits hiring. It's things like caps on residency slots due to Medicare funding, a lack of clinical placements, a lack of faculty, etc. You can't pay more to hire workers that don't exist because the market structure doesn't allow for those workers to exist in the needed numbers.
> If companies can't find a farm laborer at 100k/yr then that sounds like it's an incredible situation for the average worker.
Except this experiment has been tried. Look up the Bracero program, which was terminated in the 1960s to increase wages for domestic farmworkers. I'll give you a hint: a study comparing states heavily exposed to bracero labor against states that used little found basically no wage or employment gain for domestic farmworkers.
The farm doesn't survive with a bunch of recent university grads who studied CompSci picking fruit at $100,000/year. The farm mechanizes, where possible, and switches to crops that require less labor. And the market fills the demand for the crops that were switched out with imports.
And let's also be honest: the average 20-something native-born American doesn't want to pick fruit in 100+ degree heat in dusty small farming towns where there's nothing to do, the male-to-female ratios are out of whack, etc. This too has been tried: UFW ran a "Take Our Jobs" campaign about a decade ago and...wait for it...literally nobody wanted to.
That's because adding people to the economy creates more demand
In times of recession, things might be different - but immigration tends to take care of itself in that regard. When a country has unfilled labor demand, immigration goes up. When it has no labor demand, immigration goes down.
Will I ever be able to retire, doubtful. Have a family, probably not. Are these personal failings I need to take responsibility for, absolutely. Still my expectations are very low and my earnings and lifestyle reflect this.
Where do you want me to move? What job do you want me to take? What more do you want to take from me? Do I deserve less, more, just enough? Why do I have to listen to you about that?
You have _no_ clue what you are talking about.
That's entirely reasonable but for you or anyone else to get such a job, two things are required: you need to have the capability (knowledge/experience/skills) to fill an open role and a prospective employer needs to offer you compensation that you're willing to accept for filling it.
> Where do you want me to move? What job do you want me to take?
I don't want you to do anything. If you want a job, don't you have to figure out what you can do and where you can go to find one? I'm not going to suggest it's always easy, because it's not, but if you can't find a job that can pay a wage that meets your needs and expectations, don't you have to look at what you can offer and/or where you can go to find such a job?
What is the alternative?
> Do I deserve less, more, just enough?
How would I be able to answer that? What you actually get in today's market is a function of many things, including the skills and experience you have, where you live, the demand for what you can offer versus supply, etc.
> What more do you want to take from me?
Please explain how I have taken anything from you.
> Why do I have to listen to you about that?
You don't have to listen to me about anything. I'm not a prospective employer, and I'm not a politician creating immigration policy.
> You have _no_ clue what you are talking about.
With all due respect, you don't know anything about the personal situation of anyone you interact with online. You started your reply out with a discussion of your difficult experience, and while I empathize with your experience and think it's indicative of America's problematic economy, it doesn't make you uniquely qualified to tell other people that they don't know anything.
Demographics are real. Immigration is a given in developed countries with aging populations. The idea that there's ever going to be a way to guarantee every native-born American (or Canadian, or European, etc.) a job before an immigrant gets a job is just fantasy.
There are many problems in today's labor markets. Youth unemployment. Underemployment. Wages that haven't kept up with inflation. The cost of living crisis. But salaries just aren't going to grow without limit until employers find a native-born American to do the job. It doesn't work that way and it never has.
And it is uncontroversial in most countries that a country should do this.
So this isn't a contradiction. Indeed america is capitalist. And it is also prioritizing its own citizens. There is nothing weird about that.
You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens. That is a perfectly normal and rational thing to do.
Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism, nor does the uncommonness of fully achieving a lofty but possibly valuable goal also has nothing to do with what capitalism is, nor does it say very much about how valuable that goal is or the value in attempting to aspirationally achieve it.
OK. You can't handle context, noted.
>That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens.
The free market is what prevents it. The purpose of capitalism is the creation of capital and its transfer to the capitalist class, and the purpose of corporations is to maximize profits to facilitate that process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Neither capitalism as a system nor corporations have an obligation to improve quality of life for their employees beyond their market value, or to "prioritize" the social welfare over profit, or to hire more people than they need.
It's simple supply and demand and there isn't a demand for American labor.
>Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism
which is weird because you're arguing that capitalist companies need to prioritize "citizen" labor in order to reduce unemployment, or that governments need to force them to.
If by capitalism as a system, we are refering to countries that are capitalists, it seems fairly uncontroversial to say that such countries can prioritize their own citizens.
It is not weird or controversial to say that countries, even capitalist ones, prioritize their citizens in certain cases, nor is it weird to suggest that they aught do so.
> which is weird because you're arguing that capitalist companies need to prioritize "citizen" labor in order to reduce unemployment, or that governments need to force them to.
I am suggesting that it is compatible with being a capitalist country, and is not weird, unusually, or bad to do such a common thing as prioritizing your own citizens.
I wouldn't say that they need to. Merely that it is a normal and compatible, and in many cases desirable goal for said citizens.
Do you... think that people who are pro capitalism believe that their own ideology is harmful? Obviously proponents of a belief think that their ideas and philosophy help their own citizens.
> I'm all for socialism
Thats only because you have definitionally defined socialism as "When you do things that are good", not realizing that other people think that their ideas are also good.
The reason why people support capitalism is specifically because they think it is a good idea and benefits a country, and its citizens.
Capitalists come out of the woodwork to denounce things like the minimum wage or unions that distort the fair market value of labor because they want to pay as little as possible and not a cent more. Why do you think automation and outsourcing exist to begin with? Why are we putting Manhattan Project scale effort into AI? Wages are an inefficiency in the market that capitalism has always sought to ruthlessly optimize away.
Globalism has ruined that entirely, and there’s no amount of implying these people are closed minded or incurious that will make them change their mind on this issue.
Let’s say that tomorrow we need 1M nuclear physicists. How can money help? You still need to wait for the talent pipeline to divert.
One of the math problems recently publicized as having being solved by was actually just discovering that a German mathematician had published a solution in the 1950s.
My point of your thread was disagreement with the immediate transfer of knowledge: “Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained.”
I disagree with most jobs can easily be trained or cross trained, there is more of a time sync between that.
>I disagree with most jobs can easily be trained or cross trained
People just overestimate how complicated their job is because it makes them feel important. If anything immigrants take longer to get up to speed which is why companies usually only hire them when its cheaper. Or nepotism.
“People just overestimate how complicated their job is because it makes them feel important.” I do hate to say but I also really doubt this anecdote for majority of workers. Wasn’t there a ford factory that laid off workers in favor of llm (that were trained to replace them) only then to be rehired? 2
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/09/child-lab... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/30/ai-backfi...
*you know what practice takes? Time
I.e. how long would it take to train a regular driver to drive the inde 500 vs buying a racers contract
People in the recent past were not so short-sighted.
Edit: actually, what job do you have in mind that never changes? Honestly it sounds relaxing
*let alone anything tech wise
Just a generation or two ago we went to the Moon. Now, you refuse to train an intelligent person with overlapping skills.
Not just a closed mindset, but pure defeatism. Why even get out of bed in the morning, right? Might as well give up now.
Back to reality—I have an acquaintance who started work at JPL and finished her degree while working there. But according to you it’s just not able to be planned for! Thankfully defeatists are not in charge in Pasadena.
This is not me refusing to train someone, but acknowledging there is a time sink cost for training that may not pay off in the need to make a project, or the person could up and leave which good for them.
Thank you for accelerating my argument to 1000 when I was just going the speed limit and seeing the warning signs for the problems up ahead.
Others discounted the exaggerated emergency above so no need to repeat. And we know training worked for centuries up to my example of two years ago. Most people don’t study exactly what they end up doing and learn as they go. The US has a couple hundred million workers. All which point to training being more economically efficient than importing from abroad except in extreme cases.
Your closed-mindset, anti-worker ideas and position continue to harm the economy and wages. Enjoy the fruits of your war on the middle class, having to live in a luxury bunker.
(Oh and gas and steel prices don’t materially affect tech either.)
Training does work, and I agree most people don't study 1:1 what they end up doing. For cases where work is immediately required however and an Inde car needs to be driven next week (say the og driver got sick), a pre-trained Inde car driver would be better to be hired then not race and take months to train the replacement.
My "closed-mindset, anti-worker ideas" of wanting unions, the best people for a job, and wanting diversification of staff I suppose do go against your "halt everything and only train Americans" conservative position.
I suppose you have nothing new to offer to this conversation and will never hear me out with an open mind, so I bid you and this thread adieu.
(Gas && steel prices affect construction of llm data centers, regular data centers, fuel for travel to work, expansions of hardware, supply chain for ordering technology, and so on...)
Also your phrasing needs a lot of work. I recommend the Dale Carnegie books on communicating with others.
We saw how well the American bootcamps filled the market with completely trash talent when the market demanded a big number of SDEs.
So no, money cannot generate infinite specialized talent overnight as you naively assume.
Then it makes sense that they go to help the USA develop to that same level.
A nuclear engineer surely improves his country much more by sending home some money to his mommy and aunts than by building a new power plant.
Why should anybody be sympathetic to the so called "needs" of US companies hiring immigrants, but not be sympathetic to the needs of their home countries?
Sympathy for companies is usually conditioned on the fact that they give jobs to locals, or at least to citizens. If they're not doing that, then who gives a fuck if they aren't able to expand or profit at a rate that shareholders prefer?
But there is a class of people - most hackers included - who have had such comfortable lives that they aren't capable to even pretend anymore to sympathize with the producing class.
Many can’t find locals.
*for the price they want to pay.
All of the big tech companies I’ve worked for were founded by immigrants, and had many key immigrants in early Sr positions building the company.
still couldn’t answer a basic question. I know I wouldn’t be hiring you with this communication track record
And FWIW most of the people I worked with were from Europe, with advanced degrees
At these levels you end up doing a very broad range of stuff.
Tons of Americans are out of work. I’ve personally seen my wages drop by at least 20$ an hour as well as the work being less stable.
Gasp, you might need to train someone a bit or have employees that will say no if you ask them to work on Christmas.
If I ran the H1B program it would be an unrestricted work permit with an automatic pathway to a GC after 5 years. Don’t get *convicted* of a felony and here you go.
Why would this policy be beneficial to Americans?
Not everyone is capable of building FAANG levels of talent pipelines to convert interns into eventual staff eng
2) This posits that there must be a large pool of highly trained and specialized Staff Eng sitting idly in other countries just waiting to be poached. What are those countries doing which is generating a huge untapped pool of labor? If that _is_ the case, then why aren't entrepreneurs in those countries capitalizing on the idle labor?
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Maybe I'm entirely too cynical - but I simply don't believe that #2 is true. There isn't a huge Indian talent pipeline just pumping out hoards of incredible world-class engineers worthy of poaching, yet America is entirely incapable of producing the same tier of engineer. I think it's purely a function of depressing labor costs at the lower end of the labor ladder and over the last ten years has actually just been an immigration pipeline with pay-to-play schemes on both ends.
However each company would have to weigh the risks of bringing someone to the US and they then walking away.
We could even change it so instead of a 100k fee, you have to invest 200k in US bonds which only mature after 5 years. Of course even if it doesn’t work out you still get your money back.
Preferentially treat one group of people (non-white/women/Americans) even if in the short term the revealed preference of businesses is to hire a different group of people (white/men/immigrants), such that, in the long term, the first group of people can develop the necessary skills to compete with the second group.
Short term pain for long term gain.
Also, this ignores that the government works for citizens, no matter their race. Promoting racial equality among citizens is a function that the government might undertake. Pursuing policies that favor citizens over non-citizens falls in line with that same reasoning.