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Comment by galaxytachyon | Hacker News Reader

Why should someone be penalized for something they have no control over?

What is the differences between a person being of specific race or gender and a person born in a specific country? All of them are not a choice they made. If there is no safety reasons, i.e coming from a hostile country, why should a person born in India get treated completely different from someone born in the US? That is just racial discrimination to me.

I read it somewhere and still think it is true: if a native can't compete with a foreigner on their home soil, it just means the native lacks qualifications.

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>why should a person born in India get treated completely different from someone born in the US? That is just racial discrimination to me

That would be nationalism or xenophobia, not racism.

Generally speaking it's an organizational issue, determining who can do what on a mass scale.

Because it is not a penalty despite it looks like one. They got a privilege they normally do not have (the visa) which has an expiration date.

Do not get me wrong, this is hard for every single person and sucks in a general economic turndown where the issuing country is no longer in need of foreign specialists.

The "privilege" to work should not be a privilege.

And there is absolutely a penalty. Every step of hiring is more difficult for a foreigner than a native, down to the interview step. The need for a sponsorship is a barrier for hiring since that is an extra cost. Approving and reporting a foreigner to the IRS is more involved. Requesting an SSN and doing background check on someone from another country is more expensive. Maintaining a foreign hire is risky due to H1B lottery, etc. And yet the companies are legally required to pay these H1Bs the same salary on top of all the extra costs. Those are definitely penalties for hiring a foreigners imposed so that a native hire is more desirable.

You can argue those are not meant to be punitive policies, but in effect they are acting as deterrents. And yet everyone is still hiring H1Bs. How many Indian and Chinese do you work with? That should say just how much the US economy depend on these high skill immigrants. Yet they get treated like disposable slaves.

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