Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

It solves the problem of attracting American talent, not talent in general.

Immigrants get "paid" more than citizens to do a PhD in the U.S. because there's a green card "stapled" to each degree, which is of no value to citizens but of significant value to immigrants.

I called the argument "Devil's Advocate" because it is more than a little thankless to complain about someone working hard to obtain a privilege you were born into. It still hurts to have your dream job undercut by someone else, though.

View on HN

>It still hurts to have your dream job undercut by someone else, though.

What an absolutely atrocious way to think of your fellow man...

If someone else is getting the job you want instead of you, they worked harder for it than you did. If you want your dream job, you need to be prepared to compete for it, regardless of what color skin the competition happens to have.

I declare support for a cause dramatically against my own interest but mention that it "still hurts" to do so (on account, you know, of it being against my interest) and you call my feeling an atrocity? It's not enough to merely do the right thing, I must also revel in the pain it causes me?

That's sick, it's an atrocious way to think of your fellow man, and it's the very attitude that put Donald Trump in office.

> If you want your dream job, you need to be prepared to compete...

Your post history suggests you are an American. Unless you are an American PhD student, you are almost certainly benefiting immensely from much stronger protectionism at this very moment, so take your self-righteousness, and stuff it.

> If someone else is getting the job you want instead of you, they worked harder for it than you did.

No, that's not a valid generalization. They may have worked less hard and been more talented. They may have worked less hard, been less talented, but had the good fortune to have better social connections. They may have worked less hard, been less talented, but benefit from non-germane status-based discrimination. Or, well, lots of other possibilities.

I see this sentiment quite often on hackernews. Despite having more than enough, we are just bitter than we don't have more and it's blinding us from enjoying what we have. Immigrants are just the scapegoats.

Could you point at the part where I blamed immigrants? I knew when I posted that the HN crowd would likely hallucinate that I had done so no matter what precautions I took, but I want you to poke at that hallucination and watch your hand go through it.

I want you to understand that your mind created this mirage in order to protect you from the cognitive dissonance of telling someone to enjoy ruin at the hands of competition while simultaneously enjoying stringent protections from the very same kind of competition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com