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Comment by cmurf | Hacker News Reader

Why is it OK to protect American IT jobs with limited (or expensive) H-1Bs, but it's Ok to replace commerical drivers with autonomous vehicles? Why is one kind of protectionism Ok and the other overdue for being squashed?

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Because regulating who comes into the country is generally seen as the government's job, but regulating what labor-saving technology is used is generally not.

And government can always tax automation to provide an income to those who are redundant if other jobs are not available.

Technology replacing jobs doesn't directly benefit outsiders. Foreign labor replacing local labor feels unfair because foreigners are outside of the local people's psychological tribe. That explains why people are happy to have children even though those children are bound to grow up and take old people's job, possibly forcing them into early retirement and poverty. At least the job is being taken by another member of the same in-group so it doesn't feel so painful.

It would be a fair question, if the H1B programme actually did protect US IT worker jobs but look at this list:

http://www.epi.org/blog/top-10-h1b-guestworker-offshore-outs...

The top 10 users of it are all "consulting" firms.

One doesn't involve a flood of immigrants basically working as slaves.

People don't care about immigrants working like slaves because that's what they'll be doing in their own country anyway.

Do you really not see a distinction between allowing sewing machines and allowing unlimited immigration of sewers?

Because it's not actually about protecting jobs, it's about white supremacy.

I've seen a lot of white truck drivers if it makes you feel better. I'm even related to one.

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