You contributing to supply would still suppress wages though no?

As an American citizen formerly at Google - no, not really.

The supply of engineers that can pass Google's slightly ridiculous hiring bar is still fairly small, and Google tends to take whoever meets it regardless of how many people it has already hired. It's not like they're short on cash, after all, and there was plenty of work to go around while I was there.

Anti-poaching agreements, proprietary tech stacks that are useless outside of Google, a broad prohibition on moonlighting, standardized salary bands (which actually blunt the impact of immigration on wages), and a tendency to offer non-monetary perks like free food and private Cirque du Soleil shows over more cash - those depress wages. Immigrant coworkers are not a significant concern.

There are tons of studies that show that high-skilled immigrants create more jobs than they occupy and overall boost a region's economy, but all of those are conveniently ignored whenever someone wants to make a point. Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without the H-1B visa.

Yes, there are companies that abuse visas and pay low wages etc. Why not focus on improving enforcement rather than rant about immigrants?

Also last quarter, 65% of Apple's revenue was from outside America. And, yet, looking at their total H1B numbers, only about 9% of their employees are H1B holders.

If American companies earn money from the rest of the world, is it really that unfair that they hire a small percent of international people to work at their company?

1) https://www.immihelp.com/employer/APPLE+INC/205136/applicati...

2) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/02/apple-reports-first-q...

The 9% only includes H-1B folks who are directly employed by Apple.

Apple also has hundreds of contractors employed by Tata, Infosys etc on H-1B's, in Apple's internal IT department ("IS&T"). These people are paid less than the 9% of people above, and would not count towards Apple's own H-1B numbers.

Like how many?

3000 if I remember right

This is true. High skilled are desired and add to the economy; unfortunately, in an attempt to ride on the coattails of legal immigrants, supporters of illegal immigration purposefully conflate the two and dilute the former's repute, unfortunately.

One major issue you're going to have with studies like this is the same as with studies on any social or economic issue - there's room for 'massaging' the data to fit any narrative. It's the same thing with things like minimum wage. In Seattle after the city increased the minimum wage they commissioned an independent study from the University of Washington study to try to assess the overall results. The study indicated that they'd lost ~5,000 jobs and the changes were hurting lower income workers resulting in fewer hours and an overall loss of $125 per month per worker. So they canned that study which was supposed to run for 5 years, and commissioned an individual well known for evangelizing wage increases to carry out a new study. There's a writeup on WaPo here [1] about that. The Michael Reich individual they quote, in that article is the person who was commissioned to carry out his study. And he managed to report that wages are up and there was no increase in unemployment.

H1-B (and immigration in general) is not only a fairly hot political topic, but also one where there an immense number of massive corporations that benefit substantially from the system. There have been an large number of reports, including government reports during the former administration, indicating a substantial depression of wages due to H1-B visas. [2] I hate to cite Wiki, but really - there are a ton of reports there and me giving dozens of links in this post is less reasonable than just linking Wiki there.

So on this issue, your phrasing is already hinting at some angling and I'm not sure you even realize it! In the US there are a huge number of STEM educated individuals who are not working in STEM. Certainly many of them are doing so voluntarily, but it's equally certain many of them are doing so involuntary. Filling these jobs domestically would of course create at least as many jobs, but on top of those created jobs it would also allow citizens to also occupy the 'creating' jobs, all without the wage depression of H1-Bs.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-s...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Wage_depression

40% of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families. A large number of jobs and companies wouldn't exist today without work immigration.

Short term may be. Long term companies like Google will be forced to expand where high skill talent is, so you loose jobs and slightly long term, you run the risk of loosing the entire silicon valley. Have you seen Detroit ? Imagine San Francisco like that.

Wealth creation is not a zero sum game, nice try

Why are people unlucky enough to be born in the wrong part of the world less entitled to "suppress wages" compared to the hordes of Americans entering the field?

Why is there no bike lane between me and work?

I guess I should just not work for a living, then. I'm hoping that people making such an observation have native American ancestry.

That's the whole point. Unless you are a direct descendant of native Americans, you too are a guest of theirs, regardless of whether you are a first generation immigrant, or the grandchild of one. But strangely, nobody is in much of a hurry to ask for native opinions on immigration policy.

I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even more legally, given that immigration control is historically, a relatively recent phenomena. (At least, with respect to 'white' people. Let's not talk about the incredibly racist history of that institution.)

There's a certain oddity to having a country founded on immigration, without the consent of the native inhabitants, setting up rules for who can immigrate to it (which many Americans' ancestors would probably not have been able to meet), and then pooh-poohing someone who has met said rules for legally being here. It's a tad hypocritical.

Sounds fair. Why restrict yourself to US then. You should go to Venezuela, which according to you, you have an equal right to go to.

<< That's the whole point. Unless you are a direct descendant of native Americans, you too are a guest of theirs, regardless of whether you are a first generation immigrant, or the grandchild of one. But strangely, nobody is in much of a hurry to ask for native opinions on immigration policy.

That's an utterly fallacious argument and you know it. We're talking about current US immigration policy, not the history of the US, which no one is in a position to change. Your attempt to reframe this debate by painting all US citizens who are not the descendants of indigenous peoples as 'guests' only weakens your arguments because it is crystal clear that you're using US history as a straw man. Whether you like it or not, US citizens cannot be guests in the US, not legally nor otherwise.

Furthermore, this discussion isn't even framed around 'native' vs 'descended from people from elsewhere'. This discussion is about US citizens (people with US passports who can vote in US elections) and foreign nationals here in the US as guest workers. Start a different discussion if you want to debate the history of immigration to the US.

<< I am here under the same set of rules as any native born settler - which accurately describes most Americans - is. Maybe even more legally, given that immigration control is historically, a relatively recent phenomena. (At least, with respect to 'white' people. Let's not talk about the incredibly racist history of that institution.)

Your attempt to shift the discussion to various aspects of US history shows that you're apparently not willing to debate H1-B on its merits. As noted above, we define US citizens as people who hold US passports and who can vote in US elections. Immigration control is also not a recent phenomenon. People have been engaging in various forms of immigration control for thousands and thousands of years.

<< There's a certain oddity to having a country founded on immigration, without the consent of the native inhabitants, setting up rules for who can immigrate to it (which many Americans' ancestors would probably not have been able to meet), and then pooh-poohing someone who has met said rules for legally being here. It's a tad hypocritical.

This is talking out of both sides of your mouth. If you really believe the US was founded without the consent of the natives, then why are you here participating in a system that you describe as racist with its origins in colonization?

You either truly believe these things about the US and participate anyway (thereby nominating yourself for the hypocrisy prize) or you don't believe it, which means you're presenting baseless arguments that you don't believe.

You can't have it both ways.

Your recent comments have been abusing HN by crossing into incivility and doing political flamewar. We ban accounts that do these things, and have had to ask you not to do them in the past. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this.

It would be hypocrisy if after taking advantage of the system, I sought to change it, and lock other people out. Just because you live somewhere does not mean you are in 100% moral agreement with how every aspect of that place is ran.

I think you're missing the lede. To summarize:

1. Most Americans are settlers. They, or their ancestors, were immigrants.

2. Most of them, or their ancestors, immigrated when the rules for doing so were far more lax.

3. Some of them now seek to change the rules.

There's an argument that can be made that wage suppression is bad. Great. When I provide examples when wage suppression isn't happening, I'm told that's not the problem - apparently immigration in itself is bad (Because more people living here will suppress wages). See - points 1 and 2.

"You being here ruins it for everyone else, context be damned" is not quite discussing H1B on its merits - especially when that's an argument made by a fellow settler.

> It starts with R.

And ends with N? /s

?

Sure you can. But you have to go back first.

This is an extremely aggressive and rude attitude. How do people end up hating other people this much?

Normally we'd ban a new account for posting this way. Fortunately your previous comment was a fine one for HN, so we won't do that this time. But if you'd please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.