> Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.

How are Americans better off in this scenario?

A few ways:

1. An American company benefited from their labor

2. American consumers benefited from the goods / services they contributed to providing

3. American citizens benefited from the services provided by the taxes they pay

4. Other American businesses benefited from their patronage

That doesn't seem to be specific to H1B visa issuance does it? This seems to me to be more of a general argument in favor of immigration in general to spur economic activity, which as far as I'm aware is "correct", provided you have to also show your math with things like a potential rise in housing costs/rent, strains on services, perhaps some folks don't actually pay taxes, etc. Some of those items might be short term or temporary, some may not. I don't know.

But if we were to take your argument at face value and I generally do because that's what the economists say and makes sense to me, why don't other countries encourage this specific type of immigration? China, for example, or perhaps Japan or Korea? What about New Zealand or Switzerland?

All the countries you mention offer temporary work visas for skilled workers, of varying similarity to an H1B.

Sure, I agree, I guess what I’m trying to understand is why don’t they have even higher rates of skilled worker immigration?

Think back to what the person I replied to said about the economic benefits of immigration in general (again which I believe are true based on what I understand).

For that matter we can just say the United States offers temporary work visas for skilled workers through the H1B program. Case closed! In the case of maybe New Zealand or Switzerland they represent less than 1% of the global population, most of the talent lives outside of those two countries. Are they importing enough high skilled foreign workers? I’m not sure. Switzerland for examples seems very expensive to immigrate to and get citizenship. But I’m not an expert there, just what I’ve skimmed through online.

Or is there more to it?

I think I'm not understanding what comparison you're trying to make. I thought you were expressing some doubt about whether H1B, or temporary skilled worker visas generally, were beneficial for the host country. You asked, "why don't other countries encourage this specific type of immigration" and I pointed out that they do have similar programs. Now you ask "why don't they have even higher rates of skilled worker immigration?"

Japan's SSW program has close to 300k workers. The U.S. H1B program has about 700k workers, so by population, Japan's program appears to be a bit larger. New Zealand's AEWV program has 80k workers with a population of 5 million so proportionally that's much larger.

> What about New Zealand or Switzerland?

This is already the case. About 30% of Switzerlands population are immigrants (one of the highest percentages in the developed world) and it has a freedom of movement treaty with the EU.

I’m sure you have better data but here is what Wikipedia says:

  In 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population.[18] Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, accounting for 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).

That’s a bit different than what you seem to be implying - according to Wikipedia the immigrant population of Switzerland is just Europeans, mostly Western Europeans at that.

With respect to Switzerland, what are the immigration rules and polices if you are Indian, or Chinese, or Brazilian, or Indonesian, or Nigerian? I’m just picking on those countries due to a mix of population levels and relevance to immigration in America. It’s rather surprising to me that Switzerland seems to have little meaningful numbers of immigrants from these higher population countries. Why is that? Is there maybe a specific policy we could point to? Do people from Italy really like the Alps and the Chinese don’t?

And going back I think to what is implied by the person I responded to, if what they’re saying is true about the economic value of immigration, and I think it is, why doesn’t Switzerland have, for example, unrestricted immigration from all over the world? Why are half of its immigrants from Italy alone? (Again just going off the Wikipedia article and I am happy to look at any other figures)

Are they immigrants or just Italians living and working in Switzerland because of the EU?

You are missing alternative costs of the fact that more people compete for the same resources, Americans get much lower ROI for their education, it hollows domestic expertise. Companies become dependent on foreign workers. Local jobs pay less, people have less money to pay for products and services.

Short term - shareholders win, long term - everyone loses except the country of origin, where they can bring the knowledge back and develop their economy.

It's like outsourcing, just the foreign workers are onshore.

Seems like you forgot the American worker in the equation?

People who are purely consumers (usually living of real estate gains or entitlements) are of course a huge part of the population, and benefit from everything brining consumer prices down - including cheap labour.

And many people are both consumers and workers, so they are benefitted from lower prices at the same time as they're disadvantaged by lower salaries. If they've already got real estate and the biggest expenses in life paid, they are more interested in lower consumer prices.

Then you have the people who have a much bigger interest in higher salaries than in cheaper consumer goods. Primarily young workers who need to get a foothold in life. For them it is of utmost importance that salaries increase, even though consumer goods get more expensive, because without a foothold in life they have nothing to live for.

This is such an important distinction that gets lost so often...

That doesn't seem to play out in practice for average Americans.

The companies profits primarily go to the capitalists not to average people.

That seems to apply to, for lack of a better term, consumerist goods and services like TVs and clothing. Which isn't nothing. However, it doesn't seem to apply to things like housing.

America's social safety net is already very weak and only getting weaker.

Same as the first point. The benefits of business success primarily goes to capitalists not workers.

American companies are overwhelmingly owned and operated by Americans who can extract value from the H1B employees well in excess of their salaries (even with the new cap and fees)

Sure, in theory. Where are the financial figures to demonstrate?

That helps those few individuals who own those businesses. However, it doesn't help your average American worker much.

The more smart people we have working on the world's hardest problems, the more likely it is that we'll have breakthroughs that make the world better

Are the folks utilizing the H1B visa program working on the world's hardest problems? Or are they working on lucrative problems? Some kind of mix? Does anyone know what the breakdown is of H1B visa holders working on the world's hardest problems either today or historically?

I'm 62, I've been a mid-tier engineer all my life, working with tons of H1Bs starting in the '90s. My current employer is 90% Indian contractors now. None of us are working on "The world's hardest problems", we are building bog standard micro services.

They generated economic activity while they were in the US, no? That seems to be a net positive. You'd otherwise have to be able to argue that, if you replaced them with a US citizen during the time they were here, the greater economic activity would have been generated.

Please keep in mind I am specifically asking about what the OP wrote, not about immigration in general.

If you gave me a million dollars for a piece of paper and I gave you a million dollars for a different piece of paper we just generated $2 million in economic activity. It seems like a stretch to call it a net positive. Economic activity is a poor measure.

The weirdest thing about the zero-sum rhetoric to me is: when one person is demanding to benefit at the expense of someone else, if I'm neither of them, why am I supposed to care?

Suppose I'm not an American--like plenty of HN commenters--or alternatively that (as in reality) I am an American but I have good reasons to think that the personal benefit I derive from the presence of immigrants is greater than the cost to me as an individual, even were I to concede more generic economic arguments about wage competition. Then... why am I supposed to prioritize the interests of American tech workers over foreign immigrants?

I don't in general endorse an "I got mine, screw you" approach, nor one that says "hey GDP is going up so screw the losers", but if someone else is taking exactly that attitude just with a nationalistic inflection, it's hard to extend them a lot of empathy.

I greatly enjoyed your article and it saddens me the rise of this "us vs them" mentality. But people that think like you still give me hope.

Why thank you! That's kind of you to write.

I'm from the US, but lived in Europe for quite a while, and my kids have dual citizenship. I think that people moving to places where they are better off is a good thing.

Also: whatever you think of this issue, it's very much r/LeopardsAteMyFace in terms of some of the big tech companies cozying up to the administration.

Is it? When you consider that Trump can exempt the corpos that cozied up to him.

Good point. Looks like it's just more corruption and a way to exert leverage on companies.