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Comment by PorciiVorbesc | Hacker News Reader

>We have had the ability to recruit the top talent from around the world for generations.

Except these programs weren't importing top talent, but the same talent the locals have, to suppress their wages.

Good luck telling people affected by mass layoffs and getting rejections that the country need to import more talent because there's a "talent shortage".

Top talent means Nobel laureates, distinguished fellows in niche research fields, etc , not more full-stack devs and Microsoft Certified IT specialists, that's not top talent, that's average working class jobs, and the former category already has a red-carpet express-way through the US immigration system called an O-1 visa or "Operation Paperclip" in case of emergency, but H1B workers and diploma-mill grads aren't that, they're corporate welfare in human form.

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In my experience H1B workers are consistently exceptional. At big tech most employees are pretty good so it doesn’t stand out, but at random fortune 500s tech teams are often led by h1bs who are clearly the most competent employees on the department even though they usually aren’t involved in management. My experience from around 5 Fortune 500 non tech companies. These companies would have big problems if they couldn’t recruit exceptional foreign workers

>In my experience H1B workers are consistently exceptional.

I never said they're bad at their job, I said they're just doing the same jobs the locals can do, nothing exceptional.

And I disagree. There are not enough locals who are able and willing to fill these roles at non prestigious non tech companies in omaha. If the H1Bs leave these companies I dont think they would be able to realistically replace them. Obviously they could find someone to take the job, I just think theyd be worse at it. Worse enough to materially change outcomes.

> There are not enough locals who are able and willing to fill these roles at non prestigious non tech companies in omaha.

Maybe those companies pay shit or offer shit work conditions?

> If the H1Bs leave these companies I dont think they would be able to realistically replace them.

What about "muh free market supply/demand capitalism"?

Because when a company can't find a worker to accept their jobs, then the government gives them a foreign worker visa to fill it, but when I can't find a job, the government doesn't give me a job or deport a foreign worker to free up a place for me, it's considered my fault or skill issue. So where's the free market capitalism there?

Yea maybe it possible for these firms to poach top talent from tech companies, but I doubt it. Even if they pay the same prestige is worse. And employees at this level are often making a mil at tech companies, non tech just cant afford that. Much more likely that they just move all tech ops overseas.

Well, the market rejected your skills, so that's how free market capitalism works. Get good, then get employed.

But no, people only take the parts of insert preferred political flavor here that they seem beneficial to them and they discard the parts that are not.

There is no such thing as free market absolutism, obviously. "The market" isn't conscious, and didn't do anything. People did - and now people are doing another thing. Prevailing opinion is that this should be regulated, in some form. It already is, in fact. The call is for changing regulation. There's nothing unreasonable about that, as a concept.

And yes, of course people take political stances that are beneficial to them, to their families, to their communities, to their country, in their (maybe wrong) opinion. Again, totally reasonable. You're suggesting that people should pick one of a few political flavors and blindly support every single thing that leans toward that flavor, or else they're a hypocrite? That's ridiculous. In fact, it's what's killing my country.

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