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Comment by hhmc | Hacker News Reader

At what workforce size/turnover do you run into the issue that you might churn through your entire countrywide hiring pool?

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There was a new article a few months ago about Amazon being worried about that very thing. So they're aware of it but corporate America has an ace up their sleeve they can always rely on: work visas. Politicians aren't going to say no when Amazon wants to import guest workers. Amazon done it for the white collar workers for decades, no doubt they'll be quite happy to do it with their blue collar workforce too.

I think there would be enormous political pushback by elements of both parties to expanding the guest worker program to unskilled labor.

There is significant political support for effectively open borders, which has the effect of importing unskilled labor without the permit implied by a guest worker program.

I'm sorry, did you and I experience the same 2016-2020? The one with a border wall, Muslim country of origin ban, and H1B visa cuts?

I'm not arguing these are good or bad (H1Bs especially are abused) but they definitely happened and have a massive groundswell of support from one party.

In what universe is "there's significant political support for {X}" contradicted by "{not X} happened" or even "there's significant political support for {not X}"?

In the universe of the United States Senate.

What in the I-485 are you even talking about? American immigration is hard as fuck for an Indian person making like half a million a year.

You think they’re going to try to lobby to get blue collar people in? “Effectively open borders”, my ass.

I didn't claim that there was support for specific special cases. I also didn't say that the general case supporters had gotten their way.

That said, if the general case folk get their way, I assume that your special case will be included.

I do note that folks who want lots of low-skilled immigrants (the "who's going to pick grapes" folks) might not care that much about every instance of high-skilled immigrants.

It doesn’t scale. Even if they took 100% of the current US work visas, that would cover less than a third of their current hiring.

oh, this question is so good. governments have history of getting millions of people into unpopular jobs. maybe, one day all people not rich enough, will have to serve 2-3 years at amazon logistics, when turning 18 years old.

New ones born every year?

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