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Comment by paul | Hacker News Reader

Given that I also mentioned state and local government, it should be clear that I'm referring to more than just immigration issues.

I get your point though. I'm an evil capitalist who doesn't want to fund Americans because they are unwilling to give up 7% equity, or something like that. Maybe you think that Sergey Brin and Paul Graham stole their jobs from some hard working, native born Americans.

That's the problem with zero-sum thinking. You believe that in order for a foreigner to get ahead, an American must be pushed back.

I have the opposite view. I believe that much of America's success is rooted in having an open and inclusive culture that attracts smart, ambitious, and determined people from around the world who come here and pursue their dreams. And that when they succeed, we all benefit. To me, anti-immigrant is anti-American, both economically and ideologically.

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Well, in some cases it's that the people coming from overseas are willing to get paid less for the same job. The 'evil capitalist' sees this as a way to get cheaper labor.

I think that this can be alleviated without being anti-immigrant though. For example, make it easier for H1Bs to move between jobs and/or start their own businesses so that they don't have to feel so tied to the employer that they don't want to risk 'rocking the boat' too much. Or make it so that switching jobs doesn't 'reset the counter' on building up towards citizenship (or is it just a green card, I forget).

Again, it's a zero-sum thinking error to assume that there's some fixed number of jobs and therefore more people equals lower pay. I would have made substantially less at Google if it weren't for all of the foreigners making the company a success :)

I agree that H1B transfer restrictions are bad though. If people are good enough to let into the country, then they should be free to switch jobs just like anyone else.

> Again, it's a zero-sum thinking error to assume that there's some fixed number of jobs and therefore more people equals lower pay.

I'm not stating the "more people" == "less pay". I'm stating that foreign workers are willing get paid less money, regardless of what the job pool is. They have fewer options available to them, so they accept "worse" pay for what maybe essentially the same job.

Also, the amount of jobs that are available at any point in time is fixed. Jobs are created when a company has a need to fill. Jobs aren't created just because there is an excess supply of unemployed people. They don't spring into existence out of nowhere.

Do companies create more positions just to accommodate the influx of foreign workers? Or do the amount of jobs stay the same regardless?

New people consume stuff too. Hence yes, companies most certainly create new jobs to cater to their needs.

True, but the amount of new people matters. Does 1000 people per year really move the needle all that much? How many jobs does that indirectly create?

edit: Wikipedia say that (e.g.) H1Bs are capped at 65k/year. Spread across the US, I'm curious how much this affects job creation? I could see an argument if they were concentrated in one place though.

> in some cases it's that the people coming from overseas are willing to get paid less for the same job.

Agreed that this is the case in a lot of industries, but the problem in Silicon Valley and the tech industry generally isn't the cost of workers, it's finding enough highly-skilled workers to allow companies to grow and achieve their visions.

> Maybe you think that Sergey Brin and Paul Graham stole their jobs from some hard working, native born Americans.

Straw man. Sergey Brin didn't immigrate to the US, his parents did and he came along for the ride as a child.

Nobody begrudges the success of children of immigrants to the US (which by definition is everyone but the native Americans), but middle aged, unemployed American programmers may well resent companies that claim there is a shortage of programmers whilst stuffing their IT departments with foreign visa workers who won't rock the boat or ask for a raise because their continued residency in the US depends on employer sponsorship.

>which by definition is everyone but the native Americans

Uhh, you do know Native Americans aren't actually native, right? They're from Africa like the rest of us.

My point is you're asking for visa changes to directly benefit, well, you. With most likely only tenuous benefits for others.

And frankly, I do believe that Google -- and yes, YC too, viewing YC as somewhat of an umbrella organization of the companies it has incubated -- bear a certain responsibility to Americans that importing foreign workers has helped you sidestep. There's plenty of engineers here who can't / don't want to make large life sacrifices to live in the bay area. Where is your (or Google, or YCs) leadership on things like: community problems in the bay area (housing, transportation), education, engineering pipelines, etc. Google and YC's diversity numbers are pathetic [1], and that lack of diversity represents lots of potential employees that are already here.

Given the way you defend your proposed changes is to claim opposing them means you think foreigners are stealing jobs or some such stupidity, I think it clarifies our positions.

[1] http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.htm

I think you misunderstood my point about YC and Google -- they would not exist without their foreign born founders. If you think the existence of Google is only of tenuous benefit to others, then I don't know what to say :)

I'm saying the marginal benefit of 5k founder visas is of tenuous benefit. Nobody (I assume?) is debating the value of google's search engine, or thinks like book search / digitization.

From the demographics, it's quite clear that SV has no problem with non-whites. And if you compare the graduation demographics in technical disciplines with hiring demographics, you'll see that all groups are fairly represented.

If certain groups of non-whites are not receiving the education required to contribute in SV, that isn't the responsibility of SV to fix. That's the job of the government and the schools. And it's on the communities where those underrepresented minorities grow up to change their toxic cultures so they don't look down on being educated as "acting white."

Nice talking points, both of you. However, neither of you are actually addressing how to design the immigration system to function as a positive-sum game for both Americans and immigrants.

This is a discussion that needs to be had, because the current immigration system is tilted, like so much else about USAian government right now, towards "give the capitalists whatever they need and if everyone else survives that's good".

For instance, as I proposed upthread, if the H1B system was really about bringing in high-skill workers to fill shortages, visa allocation would go by auction, with the bids being proposed salaries. For N visas, the N proposed jobs for immigrants with the highest salaries get the visas, and the salaries are then legally binding.

This design is absolutely nothing like the current H1-B system, which is why most of the top users of H1-B visas are Indian outsourcing firms.

Then why make it about auctioning and highest bidder? It's a US visa for people to work in the US in hopes of benefitting US citizen. Then why not limit H1Bs to US companies (HQ in the US and not subsidiaries of international companies) only. Solves your stated problem of how the H1B system is currently misused without favoring big corporations over startup companies.

>Then why not limit H1Bs to US companies (HQ in the US and not subsidiaries of international companies) only. Solves your stated problem of how the H1B system is currently misused without favoring big corporations over startup companies.

Because I'm not favoring big corporations. I'm favoring workers.

Very true! Just to think that today a Sergey Brin or an Alexander Graham Bell or a Jerry Yang or a Pierre Omidyar might not have been able to start their billion dollar businesses that employ millions of Americans, if they just happened to have not won a LOTTERY. The system has always been broken. But it gets more and more broken as time progresses. Sad.

> I believe that much of America's success is rooted in having an open and inclusive culture that attracts smart, ambitious, and determined people from around the world who come here and pursue their dreams.

Agreed. But who decides who fits that criteria [smart, ambitious, and determined people]?

Today - it's money and tomorrow it'll be the same.

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