if you want to pick who you want to work with, maybe start your own company

and then you will probably figure out yourself that you need the H-1Bs

Because you compete with other businesses. If labor regulations allow companies to do X, and one or more companies actually do X, then others have to follow suite and do X or be undercut. It’s simply the prisoner’s dilemma but the prisoners are companies and exploiting labor is defecting.

Are you asserting that there is enough American talent to satisfy the job market and that they are being unjustly suppressed? It’s an interesting idea. Do you have any reading relevant to the topic that supports this assertion?

Absolutely. And I would go even further and say that many of the people we hire from overseas aren't even that good. They're just cheap labor and that's what makes them attractive.

Maybe the article that created this thread?

> I want to work with people from my town

Nobody forces you to work with people from across the world, quit your job and find one that only hires people from your town

Sounds impractical to me. In fact every company I've worked for is flooded with non-Americans. It would be tough to find a company that only hires Americans.

I think a better solution is to end H-1B. Nobody is forcing people to come here.

SpaceX apparently

Work for defense/intelligence contractors. 100% of the people they hire are Americans.

> Nobody is forcing people to come here.

That's the whole point, that's why H1B is apparently still very popular. People will take lower salaries just to get to the US because they apparently want to move there at all cost and have a chance to stay.

What’s the point of a country? To protect and empower its people or to use them to empower a rich few at the top?

As it is, the H1B system only benefits H1Bs in a limited manner at the cost of American citizens. All so that rich investors can make more money.

The latter. To think otherwise is to ignore thousands of years of human history that has consistently proved it through many different forms of government. Whatever the initial idea of any new system of government might be, after a few generations it degenerates into serving the elites first and foremost. The problem is human nature.

US has historically low unemployment past several years so idk who you think they are taking jobs away from but most let go are almost immediately re-hired elsewhere. With little to no slack in the local unemployment pool it only makes sense to hire from elsewhere.

Why are Americans more deserving of jobs then other people?

Because this is in America.

And in America we earn our keep. Life is not fair, if someone's willing to work for less, you simply show up and do a better job and demand a better salary. Entitlement is not America, it's communism

Life isn't fair, but we could do a lot better than imposing even more unfairness. Sexual harrassment and sexism, LGBT discrimination, racism, nepotism, etc. We're not quite living in a meritocracy.

I know you're joking but some people actually think that way and it's so disgusting. No borders no nations no walls

I am not joking. Countries are made to protect their citizens first.

Disgusting nationalist garbage. American lives aren’t inherently more deserving because they just happened to have been born on one patch of soil instead of another.

America is a country of immigrants, nobody would be here if people didn’t immigrate.

People immigrated there because it was needed at the time. What was good centuries ago may not apply today.

Yes permanent residents in the US/Iceland/Australia/Spain/whatever should get priority over temporary visa holders in their respective country.

This is the whole point of countries.

No, people immigrated here because it was better here, and it was better here because people immigrated.

And no, permanent residents do not have anything about them that is inherently more deserving of anything. That is in no way what a country is for.

A country provides social services to people in exchange for some control, so as to keep order. If you give control, you get services.

Land borders are not an important aspect of a country’s decision of who to provide services to, who that country can provide order to is.

Once we reach level 4 or 5 of replies I think it's not really worth pursuing so I'll just give my take on this one and leave it there. That's probably a case where principles/values or whatever you want to call it differ too much for anything to come out of it.

People were allowed and welcome to immigrate because there was a gigantic country to fill. Now this policy makes no sense so rules have changed. It's just common sense. The way a country was built/populated doesn't need to persist forever and should adapt to whatever works best at a given time.

Otherwise let's push the logic: mostly white people immigrated at the beginning, should we stick to this? It makes no sense.

It's not about "deserving". It's about the common good of the population. I believe in helping people who are already here better their life instead of relocating someone.

One could argue that having access to good jobs is part of the nebulous "social services" you mention.

As a side note, it's interesting how the interest of the immigrant seems to always be superficially taken into consideration. Immigrants don't all want to move. I would bet a lot of them would much prefer to have a better life where they are to begin with.

You keep getting stuck in the bureaucracy, presuming it results in just outcomes. It doesn’t.

If the concept of citizenship was simply an agreement to the social contract, open to all, you could start to favor those who’ve agreed over those who haven’t, though even then you can’t say from a moral perspective the lives of those who’ve agreed are superior.

However you seem overly attached to the concept of soil and citizenship, both of which can be manipulated by bigots to hurt the people they’re hateful towards. This is why “Americans” can’t be considered first; what even qualifies is set based on a wildly racist past, riddled with hateful people making nationalistic laws that remain in effect today.

If the contract is this simple then is it surprising that existing control givers (aka permanent residents) may have a sense that as long as they're still 'giving' they should still be 'getting' or at least have a place in line to 'get' ahead of a prospective 'giver' (h1b).

Existing control givers are corrupt and selfish, possibly evil.

Where's the joke? The purpose of any government ought to be to benefit its citizens. Certainly there's a moral obligation to not unduly wrong others in the course of that pursuit, but it is contrary to the mission of a government to benefit foreigners at the expense of its own population.

The purpose of government is to provide social goods to everyone who agreed to give up some freedoms to be part of that government.

Non citizens have equal right to feed their families, and anyone who has agreed to the social contract has equal rights to the social services the government has agreed to provide, regardless of citizenship.

replace the word "citizen" with "consenter" to understand where the mistake is in your argument.

Do you have walls and doors in your house?

Idiotic argument, nobody's house is 3.7 million sq miles, nor do 350 million people live in anybody's "house".

So it's inconvenient for you to open your house to anyone?

If my house were like a country, it would be quite convenient and I would indeed open my home to everyone willing to participate in my social contract.

But my home isn’t in any way like a country, so this question isn’t meaningful.

So your logic doesn't apply for your home, for your neighborhood or your city? Does it hold for you state or do you need to become completely independent country?

Huh? My home isn’t a commons and requires no management of a shared resource.

You need a bureaucracy once you have a shared resource, and at that point no one is entitled to the resource more than anyone else.

You don't share it with your wife or kids, roommates,...?

The people who share ownership are entitled to the resource and can decide how someone can join.

The land your home is built on is part of a shared resource: the space available for the community.

If we apply your logic there s nothing wrong with immigrants showing up and colonizing natives - be it in America, Australia, etc - shared resource bro!

Because a nation should put its citizens interests first. This isn’t a hard concept.

There’s plenty of companies though that don’t do h1b. Major telcos, defense contractors (those are us citizen only), a lot of small hedge funds, etc.

No, a nation should not put just its citizens first, that’s nationalistic garbage. Firstly it presumes a nation decides who its citizens are through some fair system, and secondly it presumes its citizens are somehow inherently more deserving than its non citizens.

Anyone who agrees to the social contract gets to benefit from the nation. That’s what a country actually is.

Your premise is flawed. If I create a new nation and my nations social contact is one norm: no outsiders, then you can't simply be a national by agreeing to the contract.

In practice, nations prioritize their own citizens, in the same way you will prioritize your family. Do you abandon taking care of your family because it would be "more fair," to take care of someone on the other side of the planet?

Your countrymen should have aligned values, cultures, goals, missions, etc that prioritizes them. That's the fabric of society.

The problem you’re ignoring is that there is not a 1:1 correlation between citizenship and people who agree to the social contract.

Everyone who gives up freedom to the state is entering into a social contract with that state, citizenship or no. Once those people enter into that contract, they deserve all of the rights and services the contract provides.

By tying the contract to citizenship, you provide a way for racists and nationalists to steal from the people arbitrarily determined to be noncitizens, usually along racial lines.

Preach it fellow human. I sometimes am baffled by how little a damn people in privileged positions can give about others. All they're interested in is preserving their position of privilege, and their political views and philosophy on life will typically reflect that. Personally I would give citizenship and a free house to any good hearted hard working individual and not give a damn where they come from. Our whole society would benefit if we didn't have to waste so much of our brain power just on surviving.

At the same time, if a surplus of noncitizens enter and suddenly the country's ability to provide for all of its people is strained, wouldn't that be a grave disservice to the citizens? What would be the difference between a citizen and a noncitizen then? Not that a country like the US is reasonably providing for a large portion of the populace anyways, so I suppose that's a moot point right now.

No, as these people who are part of the influx, once accepting the social contract, are no better or worse than anyone else who has agreed to the social contract, citizen or no.

Besides, all evidence suggests immigrants benefit a society substantially more than they harm it. In the US for example, noncitizens consume significantly fewer national resources while still paying the full amount of taxes expected of citizens.

I don't deny that immigrants are beneficial at the moment. However, some people aren't going to have jobs. Besides, it's not as if noncitizens should be paid less just because they can survive with those wages. I'm saying that if the US actually cared for all of its people, I'll say present immigrants included, there won't be room for an arbitrary number of new immigrants. Are you going to try to stretch that limit until something bad happens? I have no interest in excluding people of "other races" or something like that, but pragmatically, I think the line needs to be drawn somewhere at some point.

There is no "pragmatic" limit. As more people arrive, more jobs are needed to support them, more jobs are made available as a larger pool of workers able to do a wider variety of tasks for wages that allow for corporations to turn a profit. It's a self sustaining cycle.

The general rule here is that unless there's an obvious reason to deny equal people something you've given other people, you shouldn't deny it in the first place.

> The general rule here is that unless there's an obvious reason to deny equal people something you've given other people, you shouldn't deny it in the first place.

Of course. The problem is that your view of the economy is optimistic, perhaps dangerously so. Let's hope we never reach the limit and have a concrete problem on our hands, I guess.

My view is not optimistic, it's reflective of reality.

As much as a weather forecaster's is, I suppose.

I’m not predicting anything.

This viewpoint appears somewhat naive and unrealistic. It's important to consider that there are literally billions of people who might be willing to make certain sacrifices and agree, or at least pretend to agree, to a social contract just to migrate to the US. What would happen in such a scenario? Society could collapse. To get a clearer perspective on this, it's worth examining what started happening in the European Union around 2015 when there was a substantial influx of immigrants from Africa and Asia. It created huge social tensions. Look at the rising crime rates in Sweden (majority from immigrants, that's not some right wing propaganda but actual statistics, just google it), the increased popularity of far-right parties like AFD in Germany or neo nazi parties in France or Italy. I am grateful that this perspective is in the minority because the consequences of the proposed decisions could potentially harm society. There will always be individuals who exploit divisions and tensions between groups to gain power. Don't forget that Hitler was elected in democratic society.

Society would not even come close to collapsing, that is unrealistic.

> Your countrymen should have aligned values, cultures, goals, missions, etc that prioritizes them. That's the fabric of society.

12% of the US population are second generation immigrants [0]. Obviously, third generation percentage is even higher.

Good luck reconciling that with your thoughts on what a "nation" should be.

[0] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

You throw a lot of half baked assertions on this thread but it doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Who should a nation put first then?

I dont see the connection between how citizenship is acquired (AFAIK each nation is free to set the rules/laws that they think is fair) and if citizens should get special treatment or not.

If citizens can't get "special" treatment over non resident in their own country what's the point of countries?

How people become residents and what "rights" they have die to this status is part of the "social contract".

A nation supports the people who agree to the social contract upon which the nation is founded, citizenship be damned.

Citizenship in the US is a profoundly broken system with a horrendous and racist past, and using it to decide who deserves the benefit of the social contract and who doesn’t is actively buying into the nationalistic and false idea that Americans are superior just because they were born somewhere and foreigners weren’t.

You wouldn’t argue that black slaves weren’t worthy of US protection and services until the 14th Amendment was passed, would you? You wouldn’t pretend like the US granting and then revoking citizenship from Mexican settlers repeatedly in the 19th and 20th century was acceptable, would you? Was the Chinese Exclusion Act acceptable?

A foreign life is worth exactly the same as an American life, and the difference is completely arbitrary.

You're now blatantly strawmaning. Nobody is talking about the value of a life or people being superior to others. We're discussing employment policies.

That’s exactly what is being discussed, even if you don’t realize what it is you’re saying.

Americans are not more deserving of jobs than foreigners, Americans are not better than foreigners.

Americans are free to rule their country as they wish that is basically the premise it's founded on. Deserve means nothing in this context.

Deserve means everything in this context, because I, as an American, am discussing with my fellow Americans how our country works and the principles upon which we ought to rule ourselves.

Those principles are heavily founded in “deserve”. You are watching some infinitesimally small part of that “ruling” process.

Citizenship is meant to limit external actors influencing the vote of who should represent the people of any given area, and being qualified to represent the people by virtue of a sustained commitment and longevity.

No, it's meant to determine which people have agreed to the social contract. Citizenship is not some sacred thing you must earn; simply agreeing to give up some freedom is all it takes to benefit from the social programs offered by a government.

The bureaucratic concept of "citizenship" is just a way for people to construct barriers of hate around the benefits offered by a nation while still forcing people to accept the sacrifices.

Are you putting other people before your family, friends or neighbors?

My family and neighbors aren’t occupying 3.7 million square miles and aren’t numbered in the hundreds of millions, so the analogy does not hold.

At what square footage does it start holding then? At what point do you start caring more for others than your family and vice versa?

When you aren’t the sole owner of the resources being managed. Once you establish a commons, you need a bureaucracy of some kind to manage it.

Like a shareholder company? So they should pay dividends to non stock holders?

No. But they shouldn't restrict sales based on birth / color, and allow everyone to buy-in. The problem here is that people who actually want to join/buy/agree cannot do so.

Man that's some serious goal post moving happening on this thread. We go from land superficy to land ownership - with a little sprinkle of "muh racism" because why not.

Is it about land superficy or about ownership? Can we establish a clear framework here instead of constantly jumping from one wishy washy thing to the other?

You aren't the sole owner of your house either. Even without a mortgage you are not. So if someone adhere to the social contract in your house I assume you let them in to do as they please (within the limit of the contract of course.)

The house analogy makes zero sense, as my house is not a commons (I am sole owner, even with a mortgage, methinks you don’t have one of these), but if it were then yes, anyone agreeing to the social contract of the government of my home would be allowed in or out.

It’s about how to manage shared resources amongst people who all have equal claim, which is everyone who has agreed to the social contract. When you agreed is irrelevant.

Frankly, I would argue that many people born in the US do not hold up their end of the social contract, and should thus take a backseat to immigrants who would come here and care deeply for the social contact in their place.

Zoning laws, property taxes, liens, HOAs. You live a fantasy, you never answer any question in replies and just keep jumping from one thing to another. Completely unproductive. Done here.

All of which I consent to and benefit from? You don’t understand what ownership or citizenship means, clearly.

Yes, you are done.

"Judge a person by their actions, not their words"

When you willingly leave your family out in the cold, thanksgiving winter; to have space to provide random passersby into your house to eat your turkey, lets talk!

Everything you said is wrong

When you play sports and your team is winning, do you stop trying to give a chance for the competitor team?

when the star players of your competing team want to leave and join you, do you let them?

Do you like answering a question with a question?

only when the question is wrong

> I want to work with people from my town, not people from halfway across the world.

And I want to work with the brightest people from all over the world. I guess we are at an impasse and are best off leaving subjective preferences out...

Do you want to work with them even if that means a lower salary? Surely, since you’re among the “brightest in the world” you understand that labor prices are set by supply and demand. The H1B process increases the labor supply and thus decreases the price of labor.

> since you’re among the “brightest in the world”

I'm certainly not one of them, but love working with bright people.

> you understand that labor prices are set by supply and demand. The H1B process increases the labor supply and thus decreases the price of labor.

The pie isn't fixed. I believe it will grow and there will be more for everyone if we allow everyone to thrive. New people create demand and maybe reverb start some new companies. Further, the labor could also happen entirely in another country which would be much worse for US workers.

IMO the biggest issue with H1B is that it restricts worker choice and thus creates a somewhat captive class of workers who can be paid less. The best way to solve this is to reduce constraints on H1B holders

That’s true. I concede productivity isn’t zero sum.

Brightest in the world definitely isn’t what H1B recruits on. It recruits on who is the most desperate to do hundreds of leetcode problems in order to stay in the country.

Go figure, people who want to stay in the country will jump through some ridiculous hoops and we’re all worse for it.

I have never found a reason to believe any folks on H1B are smarter than their non-H1B peers. By any stat, never seen it.

If you are looking for someone to blame for you not getting your dream job, blame it on employers instead of the government. Companies like Verizon and Wells Fargo almost never hire anyone on a visa. Go work for those companies. Oh wait, they do hire foreigners with a green card. Are you going to find a company that only hires US-born citizens like the requirement for the US President?

Many countries offer work visas (for many good reasons), although they are often used in unintended ways. It is very much a stretch to say these programs shouldn't exist at all because they "take away" jobs.

Also, if half of the people you work with are on H1B, very likely you are not in a midwest "town" with 3,000 population, but rather a decent metropolitan area with a large immigration population, and the company you work is of decent size. I wouldn't be surprised if even half of the Americans in your company relocated from a different "town".

Finally, I like working with people that are productive and easy to communicate, instead of looking at which country they come from or their visa status. If anything that's my boss's concern.

Therefore, if you want to actually see any change, maybe (1) become the CEO of your company, fire all H1B and only hire US citizens (2) join a different company (3) start your own company, or at least (4) call your senator and advocate for anti-immigration bills, or sue USCIS, instead of posting these useless and borderline racist comments on HN.

> I want to work with people from my town, not people from halfway across the world.

Too bad people from your town are not smart enough.

Jokes aside, the irony of this assertion coming from an American is too rich. Wondering why "23andMe" was such a popular term not that long ago.

These companies do business all over the world (read: take money away from other companies in those countries). I'm not sure why Google having a lot of people from other countries is bad if it makes money from those countries).

(Btw, I see your point and am not necessarily criticizing it. However, you do see that these companies operate globally and having the workforce reflect that should be considered ok?)