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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

Really? It's pretty obvious.

If you're working in another country, you're not spending money on tax, rent, food, utilities, etc. in your home country, you're spending them in the host country. Most of your income is spent in the host country. For your own example, most H1Bs want to live and spend their money in the US, not send money back home.

So it's actually a terrible 'trade' for the originating country, they lose skilled workers to the US, workers they paid to train and educate, for nothing in return.

What's the 'trade' you talk of? Labor is not trade because what does the home country get out of it?

Free trade is a completely different kettle of fish to free labor markets.

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Everything you say also applies to foreign trade of goods or capital with just a little tweaking. Would you consider it "trade" when capital flows out the country, builds facilities in a foreign country, employs people in the foreign country, sells goods to people in the foreign country, and then stores most of the profit in the foreign country?

I'm sure you have heard of Jaguar/Land Rover (the luxury car brand). Do you know who owns it? It is an Indian company called the "Tata Group". Tata Group acquired it from Ford Motors when the luxury brand was on the verge of bankruptcy. This is a brand that is "Made in Britain". Even though Tata Group is an Indian company, it operates the Jaguar facility in England and employs locals rather than Indians for its facilities. The profit is also stored by the foreign country (UK in this case).

Do you also know that many hotels in the USA are acquired by the Tata Group? The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Boston is one good example. Again, the group employs only locals and has it's profits stored in the foreign country (US in this case).

There is no reason to believe that trade of goods or capital is lopsided to only harm the United States.

I was really just illustrating that the same incomplete (bordering on dishonest) portrayal of the movement of labor can also be applied to the movement of capital.

Remittances from emigrants account for ~4% of India's GDP.

Remittances are possible only once you have savings. By necessity, a certain percentage of immigrants' income will be spent locally.

Sure, but considering the differences in wages, that percentage may be greater than the whole income that worker would have made in their home country.

Also adding to that most of the intelligent people who are moving out and settling else would have studied with governments money from premium institutions

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