It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.
I have no problem with someone getting a green card, citizenship, TPS, etc in the US. I think there should be a lot faster routes for that. Let the software devs come in and become citizens or permanent residents, I don't care about that.
What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment. That means they'll accept lower wages and worse working conditions as they can't simply quit and switch jobs. The entire thing is designed to suppress wages in general.
There's a bunch of levers you could pull to stop it from being such a huge negative, faster paths to citizenship, looser requirements for switching jobs, higher minimum salaries. All these things would improve conditions for the H1-B applicant.
That's why I call it a bad program.
They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them. It may reset the timeline for applying for a green card, depending on the location and job type of the new job. Generally, if it's the same type of job in the same city, it doesn't reset.
People (including Indians) do it all the time.
Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
TN visa
TN visa is much more restrictive than H1B. Only for citizens of two countries, and only for certain professions. I know Canadians who have no hope of getting a TN visa (wrong profession), but have come on H1B.
> What I do care about is the fact that H-1B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment.
I am merely pointing out that most countries lock employment visas to the employer. It's fine not to like it, but I'm highlighting that this is pretty normal - the US is not an outlier.
> Do you know counterexamples?
> By counterexamples, I meant other countries where you get in via an employment visa and don't have your presence tied to the employer.
That's a much smaller pool of companies. The company already has to be participating in the H1-B program in order to sponsor someone.
> Do you know counterexamples?
Most of them happen under the likes of the EU where citizens of member nations have the freedom to migrate.
But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.
Yes, but this isn't the same. As a US citizen, I don't have that freedom in the EU, correct?
> But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.
True, but we're talking about employment visas. What the US has is likely standard in most countries when you don't have permanent residence.
Not to mention that many (most?) countries have a much more difficult path obtaining permanent residency compared to the US. You want to live there? Get an employment visa and stay on that visa forever.
If you are from Cuba, you don't have access to the H1-B program. All nations have restrictions one which nations can and can't participate in their immigration and to what extent.
So yes, it is the same, the US just isn't a part of the EU. The relationship between EU nations is much closer to the relationship (pre-trump) between the US and Canada.
> True, but we're talking about employment visas.
No, actually what you specifically asked for was
> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
A green card is not a visa, but it is a mechanism to go to a country for employment without having you legal status tied to a specific company.
Yes, but the restrictions on which countries' citizens can be part of the H-1B program is tiny compared to the list of countries that cannot participate in the EU program you're mentioning. With the US, it's practically a rounding error (or was, at least pre-Trump).
> No, actually what you specifically asked for was
>> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
Yes, I said "Going to a country for employment". If you have a green card, you are not going to the US for employment. You are in the US, or going to the US to receive the green card. Getting employment is incidental.
I used to work as a contractor in the earlier stages of my career, that meant that sometimes jobs only lasted 3 months.
Not one single tech person I know in person has ever been "pro immigration" or "anti immigration". They all want reasonable immigration, and part of that has always meant not harming the livelihoods of existing citizens. That's the subjective part.
Edit: This is also a good example of the problem where we assume a person's opinion when they are not loud/explicit about a topic. E.g. a tech person might not have loud opinions on H1Bs, or they might loudly denounce e.g. Trump's immigrant detention centers, and you might falsely then slot that person into a blunt binary like "pro immigration". Then, when their lives are negatively affected by H1B policy, they speak against it, and you then think of them as a hypocrite even though they did nothing hypocritical.
I'm sure this is at least partly a case of the loud minority, but it's hard to tell sometimes
Their strange notions of what democracy looks like might feel dangerous to the current government.
One need not (always) invoke racism or xenophobia to explain why folks might take issue with high levels of immigration.
It’s so politically charged now that people’s brains just turn off and everyone calls each other Nazis. But it is a discussion that does require nuance, especially as things like aging populations are really changing things immensely.
What's worse is when people's brains just turn off and they defend and support an actual trillionaire Nazi with immense political power and an international propaganda platform.
You're replying to someone who is on the record defending Musk's Nazi salute by calling people names and attacking anyone who recognizes it for what it is or points out how it aligns with everything else Musk has said and done.
Set showdead=true and read his posting history. If he didn't want people reading his full-throated defense of Musk's Nazi salute and his attacks on anyone who disagrees, he shouldn't have posted them. Nevertheless, he'll attack you for merely reading it, as if you're the weirdo for reading what he intentionally posted, rather than him for posting it publicly.
Ask him to post a video of himself performing that Nazi salute and he flips out and calls you names. So he plainly understands what it means: he thinks it's defensible when a trillionaire oligarch does it on international television, and feels obligated to defend it himself, but would never perform that exact same Nazi salute himself -- and becomes irrational and hostile when asked to explain why not.
By "calling people names," I mean his own words:
Political: "social justice warriors," "in an echo chamber," "literally fascism," "a bit fascist," "silencing the opposition," and "censoring others."
Mental-health smears: "lost their mind," "consistently hostile," "frustrated," "so upset," "getting angry," "unhealthy," "unhinged," "What is wrong with you?" and "Maybe they can get you the help you need."
Dishonesty and stupidity: "are you pretending to be stupid here?", "your 'act'," "projecting," "lying and spreading lies," and "I'm here in good faith (unlike you)."
Personal attacks: "emotionally attached," "unable to take criticism," "convinced that no matter what, you're right," "used to always having your way," "reevaluate your life choices," "I find your conduct pretty embarrassing here," "You need to self-reflect," and "You need to cool down."
That's his argument technique: replace evidence with ideological labels, personal attacks, tone-policing, reality-reversal, and amateur psychiatric diagnoses. Precisely the nuance-free, brain-off political name-calling you rightly warned against.
> Nevertheless, he'll attack you for merely reading it, as if you're the weirdo for reading what he intentionally posted, rather than him for posting it publicly.
this is just false information and you know it, I have posted everything in plain view for you and everybody else, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49671155 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678118
again like I said:
"I have gone out of my way to be reasonable with you and argue with you in good faith, and you keep bringing insults and accusations and keep implying that I'm a Nazi or something.
Think about it, you're so upset over the fact that I don't consider a colored block drag and drop interface/system a real programming language that's used in the real world that you're doing all this and constantly attacking me and getting angry over my very reasonable arguments
It's unhealthy and you should maybe ask one of those friends if what you're doing is reasonable or not. Maybe they can get you the help you need."
full context is at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678118 along with his dead comments (assuming the mods removed them)
You’re still allowed to have opinions, even if the situation does directly affect you. In fact, that sounds like exactly the situation you ought to weigh in on. Immigration or otherwise.
You can be pro-immigrant while also being pro-not-fucking-people-over, for example by forcing companies to have a baseline "minimum wage" for H1Bs that match what a local would be paid (or higher!) for the role. It doesn't have to be a "let in a gazillion people or 0", you can choose a middle value.
> Bad immigration policy can and does negatively affect opportunities and salaries.
It is true by definition that some immigration policies are worse than others — for example, a policy of no immigration at all (which is a kind of immigration policy) would be very bad for opportunities and salaries.
Do you think Elon Musk (and every other foreigner who founded US company) diluted supply of labor, or expanded supply of jobs ???
For ex Microsoft was a failing company and losing market share under white american Steve Ballmer, reaching $230 bln market cap.
It took an Indian ceo to make microsoft a two trillion dollar company, there countless examples like these. I am not even talking about how fundamental research by foreigners gets converted into billions of dollars of gdp and market value (and jobs ofc).
The argument that foreigners “steal” jobs is fundamentally flawed and is coming from ignorance/bigotry
Absolute peak "lost in the political sauce". Most people aren't aware that Bernie Sanders has historically been very anti-immigration, before just becoming an old guy who echos whatever the current young people vibe is.
I know this sounds like a cop out, but Bernie isn't Ghandi just because he thinks socialism is cool. The immigrants who got shot were "fascist riot inciters" and it all just vanishes into the news media abyss.
Same thing how the left media does full lifetime bios on deported immigrants while the right media only reports on the gangsters and rapists who get deported.
My observation is simply that we don't know what Bernie's immigration enforcement would look like.