As an American citizen, born and bred, I would literally, physically fight you on behalf of keeping Waterloo grads in America.

Many of the best coworkers I've had the pleasure of working with, not to mention the founders of the company I spent over a quarter of my career at (Pagerduty).

>American citizen

Post hand.

What about the "masters" diploma mills?

Of course visa mill down votes..

Because you believe Canadians should have access to the American dream in place of actual Americans?

These Canadians hired fellow Canadians not because they were the only workers available but because they felt like it.

There are American families that didn't get access to the American dream because it was given away to Canadians instead.

I think most of your fellow citizens would consider it a slap in the face to the country that made these founders rich.

I have all the love in the world for people from any country but I do think it makes sense for a country to prioritize its own citizens.

Maybe visas for founders makes sense because they create jobs but visas for employees that take jobs away from citizens? How does that make ethical sense?

A zero-sum mindset on a website dedicated to programming of all places? Where we literally create wealth out of nothing but coffee and the strength of our minds?

My love for my country means I want it to be the greatest in the world. Waterloo grads make America better. Period.

Some games (founding companies) are non-zero sum. Some (like employing Americans vs non-Americans) are zero sum.

You're just hand-waiving away reality, which is a very non-programmer thing to do.

A wonderful Book on immigration, math, history, facts, and zero sum

From an American author

(Illustrated, to reach those who talk about "stealing American jobs from Americans!!!" a lot).

From Amazon Canada, because I like fun too :-)

"Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration"

https://a.co/d/7GrrzzE

I've never met anyone that argued for open borders that wasn't capable of isolating themselves from the negative effects. Like say, a tenured professor like Bryan Caplan.

Open borders might be net-positive but would very predictably devastate the lives of poor people in America. Not that most people who advocate it know anything about being poor.

Hang on, are we upset that immigrants are taking the jobs of poor people in America?

I thought based on original post we were upset immigrants are taking high paying specialist jobs from the rich techies in San Francisco?

Or are they just just taking all the jobs while miraculously not spending any money and not creating any demand and not participating in economy at all?

I just want to understand this evil scourge appropriately.

P.s. (And oh, boy, will I compete in the "knowing about being poor" with anybody on HN :)

Poor Americans are the most in need of the opportunity tech jobs provide. That's how they can become non-poor Americans.

Poor Americans are also the most vulnerable to unskilled immigration making them even poorer than they already are.

It's not that complicated.

If they are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, that would imply that they are unskilled themselves. I don't see how they will be able to take advantage "opportunity tech jobs provide"--a highly skilled set of jobs.

I agree that poor Americans are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, but suggesting that highly skilled tech jobs are a solution is just not realistic.

Many poor people could make it into the middle class by learning to do skilled jobs if given the opportunity.

The number of opportunities is significantly reduced when companies have the easier and cheaper alternative of hiring non-Americans.

And those poor people that don't have the capability to become skilled workers can at least not be kicked while they're down.

> but suggesting that highly skilled tech jobs are a solution is just not realistic.

I went from homeless to six figures thanks to tech.

I think you are missing that tech is one of the few well paying industries that doesn't have socioeconomic gatekeeping with degrees.

It’s probably negative sum because you end up hiring more offshore workers but still end up spending less

Seeing this pablum on Hackernews is quite startling. It seems like its going to remain the "global warming is fake" of the economics world.

"Oh but I know of this study that.."...I know..I know.

Your argument is that all games are non-zero sum and supply and demand don't apply for some magical reason?

Seems like I'm making the sound economic argument and you're just casting aspersions.

I think the general overall notion is:

1. If, say, an immigrant earns 70k, they will also spend 70k. It's an equilibrium - they "create" as much jobness as they "take".

2. The easiest intuitive explanation I have is - imagine a million immigrants move in. They're basically a self sufficient city - with police and doctors and teachers and mechanics and salespeople and whatever. Doesn't bother me.

In fact, America is by definition (unless one is native American) the land of immigrants. It is clearly factually historically obvious that immigration was not zero sum and it continually expanded overall prosperity and might of the American empire. It's only when we zoom into the very here and now that some people, for some reason, freak out and feel "omg immigrants!!".

1. Immigrants send to their home countries very significant amounts of their income, so it's always going to be net-negative in that sense.

2. Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?

Of course America is a land of immigrants. And of course immigration can be positive-sum.

That doesn't prove that it's always positive-sum.

It's easy to see many situations that are not positive sum. Huge amounts of unskilled immigration is, at least in the short-term, going to be extremely zero-sum because they will consume far more public resources than they pay for, depriving the existing users. This has played out many times.

In other words:

Too much skilled immigration takes good middle class jobs away from citizens that need them.

Too much unskilled immigration takes public resources and jobs away from citizens that need them.

Given those facts, the argument should be about how much is too much of any particular kind of immigration for any particular time and place.

Lol. Called it. Always with the moving goal posts.

Oh but remittances are high! Think of the short term effects.

I will mention my Indian coworkers parents use the remittances to buy Netflix subscriptions, Coca-Cola and American Corn but it won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough.

Constant-pie thinking is an all consuming identity not a rational viewpoint that can be reasoned with.

Funny how you applaud yourself for being correct but make no actual arguments.

What are you claiming? That immigrants do not actually remit significant percentage of their income? That all or most remitted money comes back to America? That short-term effects do not matter even if they're highly destructive?

You're claiming that I believe in a fixed pie which could not possibly be further from the truth. But I do believe that some pies are fixed, some of the time, in some places. Are you claiming the opposite? That pies are never fixed?

You're the one who isn't arguing in a rational way.

>> Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?

I think you have the mindset where there are X jobs, static, unchanging, God given or government ordained or whatever, and if an immigrant takes a job that job is gone. Array, counter, n=n-1, done.

That's... Not my mindset, and I don't think that's how it works.

Those million people don't take a million jobs from some enumerated, inflexible list, and then shutdown. They live. They consume! They earn and then they turn around and they spend, they need homes and food and clothes and education, all of which is jobs.

I think you imagined a swarm of people who displaced others, but imagine literally a million people coming and creating a new city. So of the million, some are techies and some are janitors and some are farmers and some are doctors and they have a nice little self sufficient city and don't bug or impact anybody outside of that city.

If/when/once you visualize the concept of that self sufficiency, now we can discuss the more complex case of them joining an existing city - because yes of course it's more complex than people coming in and living independently, but it's also more complex than them stealing jobs off some imaginary closed list.

Let's not imagine scenarios that may or may not have anything to do with reality.

Answer this question: what evidence would you accept to show that major American tech companies are using skilled immigration to drive down their labor costs as the expense of American citizens?

I cannot keep up with the moving targets. My honest, sincere impression based on my best read of your posts is that you are making a sweeping claim against immigration along all axis and skill levels. I disagreed.

Now your claim is that massive American tech companies are profit-focused, narrow-vision entities with no social qualms or human values, and I could not agree more :-). But that’s orthogonal to the wider immigration discussion.

1. I didn't move any targets and your impression is clearly not at all sincere.

2. That is not my claim at all, since you're dropping half of the claim.

I think we're done here.

“Demand is fixed, they're coming or your jobs” is your “Temperatures always rise and fall, there is no global warming”.

I'm sorry to be this dismissive, but I've had this conversation too many times and you will simply see what you want to see. There is no convincing coal workers of global warming.

Your arguments are so convincing you don't even need to make them and there's no chance you're the one that's refusing to acknowledge reality. Okay...

> Some games (founding companies) are non-zero sum. Some (like employing Americans vs non-Americans) are zero sum.

Not even wrong

> Americans make america great. We got the moon without indians.

Yeah but we got to the moon with imported Nazi German rocket scientists. Still "immigrants" of a sort.

yup,Operation Paperclip. This program brought over 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, many of whom were former members of the Nazi Party and some with SS affiliations, to the U.S. for government employment between 1945 and 1959.

The flip side should also be said, Canada and many other countries have talent drained by the US since they can't compete on pay.

It's hard to say, but who knows what could have been if the top Canadians had have to start or join Canadian companies and didn't have the option to take a higher pay in the US.

> Canada and many other countries have talent drained by the US since they can't compete on pay.

What's the relevance here of this? Canada should make better opportunities for their citizens.

And the reverse of that is that folks in the US should agree to work for less; so that they get the jobs. Neither one is as easy as it sounds.

That is not the reverse. Canada should make better opportunities for it's citizens and so should the US.

That's "homeless people should just buy homes" level of thinking.

A wealthy country's government, by most standards, is comparable to a homeless person?

I like the way you think. As a Canadian, I’m disgusted that we educate our youth and then send them to the US to take jobs from Americans and pay taxes to the Americans. We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America.

/s, but not really.

> We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America

OK...I'll bite. Every Canadian government, of either party, has agreed with you for the last sixty years. Your country has excellent universities, the infrastructure is decent, the politics are non-violent...and yet people bail. I could say the same about the UK as well, but it's harder for their brains to drain to the US.

So: why is Canada failing to hold on to their homegrown talent? Is it a "push out" of Canada (driving talent away) or a "pull in" to the US (America having something irresistible)?

The sudden explosion in zero-sum thinking in the right wing will be studied for generations

It's a defining characteristic of reactionary thought and it's already studied.

Funny how H1Bs are responsible for the destruction of the American labor force but also happen to be represented most in the jobs whose salary and size have grown the most in the U.S. over the past 2+ decades.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that H1Bs are most represented in the industry that has generated nearly all the growth that has been generated in America over the past 2-3 decades.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that slave labor is most represented in the industry that generated nearly all of America’s economic growth during the 18th and 19th century.

Is the argument you're making, which is ridiculous.

The success of an industry says nothing about how exploitative or unethical its practices are.

Not sudden.

The way many people like yourself seem to have been completely fooled by major corporations wanting cheaper labor to exploit (through both legal, semi-legal, and illegal immigration) will be studied for generations.

Their favorite trick (which you've adopted here) is to accuse people of being "racist" and "right wing" for objecting.

For the record, you would have to search long and hard to find someone more opposed to Trump and his minions than myself. Bernie Sanders has the same basic viewpoint I've expressed.

I have absolutely no hatred for anyone based on their origin or race.

I am completely in favor of allowing as many people into this country as we can sustainably absorb, and even a little more. At the same time, I strongly object to prioritizing the desire of major corporations to exploit cheaper labor at the expense of American citizens.

I don’t really know what you’re responding to

Your suggestion that these are "right wing" ideas when Bernie Sanders says the same thing and for the same reasons. You might accuse him of being "zero sum" but you can't accuse him of being right wing.

The American dream in silicon valley was built in part by these folks. They stay here and become Americans both culturally and legally and it's fantastic. Some of them even become Republicans.

As others have pointed out it's not a zero sum game since human capital begets growth.

“Canadians”, touché.

Not only is this mindset disgusting, it is completely wrong. Labor is not zero sum, jobs create more jobs. Immigrants are what has made this country great, allowing immigration was critical to the US becoming the industrial/financial/tech capital of the world. Shutting down immigration will weaken our economy, it will cost americans jobs.

there is no more american dream, and anyone who “creates” jobs in this economy and era of rampant hypercapitalism isn’t really enabling or transferring wealth.

if there were ample americans to do these jobs, they should be able to get them.

nationalism is a silly idea, anyway. and we should have free trade and movement with our biggest two allies. american exceptionalism is a joke

You're arguing that Americans have no more right to success in America than non-Americans. I don't think many Americans will agree with you.

And neither will most people from any other country agree about their own country's success.

> Americans have no more right to success in America than non-Americans. Americans literally voted to defund the education system, voted for administration(s) that will amplify spending money to hire foreigners to keep America center of top talent/skill across domains and most importantly voted for extreme capitalism.

Indians or Canadians are not forcing US to hire them bud, https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...

Major corporations are hiring them because they're cheaper not because there aren't well educated Americans available.

There are more than 60 million college educated Americans. That's 50% more than the entire population of Canada.

It's a very big and well educated country, bud.

There have never been more unemployed new college grads studying computer science and computer engineering. There are ample americans ready to take these jobs.

Boomers promulgated lies about "shortages" for years to lobby for relaxed visa schemes. Ironic you mention nationalism being silly, since Indians are some of the most openly caustic nationalists I encounter on a daily basis.

hear hear! I've worked with exceptional people from all sorts of backgrounds, but pound for pound, Waterloo CS grads are significantly better on average than grads from any other CS program. They start off way ahead, but also maintain that edge throughout their careers.

Disclosure: I'm a US citizen with multiple CS degree from MIT and my son is studying CS at Waterloo now.

Nice. I an researcher at MIT LL. In order to work at the lab you need to be a US citizen since a lot of it is federally funded. I tried to get my buddy, a Waterloo grad currently at Google, an interview but he is Canadian...

> Time to cull the waterloo crowd

Are implying that reducing the number of graduates from a single program (CS) at one specific university (Waterloo) from a country 10x smaller from the US (Canada) will help lower tech employment in California?

Apparently US graduates can't compete with Canadians, Indians, Eastern Europeans or Latin Americans in technology these days. If we ban enough immigrants and prevent outsourcing to these countries, surely America will be Great Again!

Why should US graduates compete with non-US workers in the US? Call me scared or incompetent or uncompetitive but I just don't want to compete in that way. All those people can stay in their countries and out-compete US grads there.

Because technology is a global industry and if you can’t compete with these workers you surely won’t be able to compete with these workers when the company that was willing to pay them $150k to work in San Francisco can pay them $50k to work out of Romania.

Instead of that individual now paying 80-90% of their income to US taxes and US businesses and saving the rest in U.S. banks providing even cheaper capital for US businesses, they will be doing the same in Romania.

And worse, if that person does create a new startup, the majority of employees hired will be in Romania, and only a tiny fraction would be Americans who moved there to work for that company, and would be competing with American companies with a much lower cost basis.

But hey, Romania will be pleased for sure.

I'll take the other side of this bet.

I'm sure there are other smart USians but shit there's a fuckload more globally and I get to work with them and it's great. And then if they stay long enough they become citizens.

My rule of thumb is if I'm the smartest person in the room then we've got serious problems.

If they're so smart maybe they should help their own country build companies...

Well that's how you get competent foreign competitors, congratulations.

I really appreciate this generation of my fellow countrymen who just completely ignore all the benefits of brain draining literally every country on the planet of their ambitious and intelligent youth.

Oh well, better tell em all to go back. Might as well tell our allies to rearm because we’re worried about being ripped off. I for one will not feel ripped off when Germany has a functioning military again. It has always gone well for the planet when Europe is armed and angry

Just because you are losing does not mean you can change the rules of the game midway. Who kicked off globalization in the first place?

I have no idea what your point is with your first sentence. For your second sentence, what size of organization are you looking for? There was no single person or entity who decided to kick that off unilaterally

if it means I can hire Waterloo graduates again here in Canada that sounds fantastic

I couldn't agree more! Canada has massive potential, albeit also large issues with their immigration system being gamed.

In my opinion, outsourcing is a larger evil. The money used to pay the salaries of outsourced engineers should be taxed at-least at 20% (along with remittances to India) akin to what we currently penalize foreign countries for maliciously suppressing the cost of physical goods. This is called Countervailing Duty or Anti Dumping Duty penalties.

I've reached my limit with the entitlement of these people in the united states. Especially systematically excluding americans or non-indians once they reach a hiring level / role.

Indian software wages are about 1/3 US. The U.S. would need to tax them much more to dissuade outsourcing.

How will you tax people in India sitting here in US?

Arguably, the purpose of a company is to generate profit. If US companies need skilled workers that they can't find locally, they will open or expand their international offices. At least the O1/H1B visa holders pay taxes in the US and contribute to the local economy.

The United States is not an economic zone.

Non-resident visa holders are not citizens and act accordingly against the interests of citizens and their families.

Arguably the purpose of a country is the furtherance of its citizenry. The US system should be set up to disincentivize US companies from bringing scab labor into the US.

In practical terms this would look like eliminating H1B/O1 programs.

It's not most people you meet, its most people you remember you meet.

https://dictionary.apa.org/distinctiveness-effect

Corporations are just absolutely devastated at the fact that they cannot hire an H1B in California for $150k but will now have to hire the exact same person in India for $60k in one of the most remote friendly industries in the world.

If your sarcastic comment were true they'd be offshoring wholesale even with the existence of the H1B program.

Take a guess where majority of google cloud hiring is these days

You honestly don’t think they already do that as much as possible?