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Comment by richwater | Hacker News Reader

H1B is completely abused and can be seen by anyone paying attention.

Just another scheme to pay people less money.

Frankly, I'm way more concerned that citizens get jobs after a layoff than foreign workers.

Maybe you have never emigrated to anywhere else in your entire live. But other people had and it's not because they are opportunists trying to "steal" work from other citizens. Many times it's not even about the money. Being a little empathic does not hurt anyone.

You conflated 'immigration bad' to 'immigrants bad' in dishonest way.

Lots of countries have 'immigration bad' as their core policy like south korea, japan ect. Are you blaming whole countries as lacking empathy?

I'm going to guess that someone in that person's ancestry immigrated to the US in search of a better life.

The point being, IMO, is that trying to pull the drawbridge up on new people immigrating is kind of ugly. We are not 'full' in the US.

The only reasons that citizens have such lucrative opportunities is that there is (to a greater or lesser degree) free flow of capital across borders. To me it seems unfair that there is not a corresponding free flow of workers across borders. These two should come hand in hand.

That’s based on the false assumption that a State is purposed with acting in the interests of its current citizens. It’s an observable fact that western States at least prioritize acting in the interests of “the economy” which is a term I won’t attempt to unpack beyond pointing out that the old question “who benefits” is germane as always.

Therefore it follows that if employing foreign immigrants instead of citizens is better for the economy then the State must set policies to support and encourage that.

Oh citizens can get jobs, alright. Record low unemployment. Wage inflation through the roof. We need citizens to get off their butts and take the jobs that are out there.

Asset price inflation is and for many decades has far outpaced wage inflation.

Combined with the widespread social destruction it's not really worth participating for most people.

Which ones? The retired ones? Disabled?

only if you are below 45, in tech.

Citizens do get the jobs. By design visa workers need to find a new job asap, while citizens can take their time to find something. From personal experience with recent layoffs, pretty much all the citizens took a break before resuming job search. Everyone has been burnt out since covid started. Companies milked record high profits from employees by making them work hard only to lay them off once they were burnt out. If given an opportunity most visa workers would also take a break.

Why the downvotes people?

I was tempted to downvote for the lack of empathy for people who are threatened with being kicked out of the country if they don’t immediately find new work, often after spending years or decades building a life here.

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