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Comment by zjaffee | Hacker News Reader

Except this isn't about H1B this is about the PERM process for EB2/EB3 greencards.

The truth is we should be much more open to temporary work permits, and much less open to this sort of thing for granting permanent residency. Tons of people getting employment based green cards hold jobs that could easily be filled by an American.

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"You can only stay in the country if you're sponsored by an employer" creates an environment where workers have low bargaining power, decreasing the pressure for good working conditions (e.g. high pay), which – among other things – has impacts on the working conditions for locals. One might say it "affects what the market will sustain" (personally, I don't think calling everything a "market" is insightful).

From a purely economic perspective, the ideal is no borders, and total freedom of movement – but, of course, there are reasons that people don't want that: the real world doesn't run on economics. Pretty much all of these measures are compromises of some description, with non-obvious (and sometimes delayed) consequences if you start messing about with them. Most arguments involving "$CountryName jobs for $Demonym!" ignore all that, and if that leads to policy decisions, bad things happen. (That's not to say there's no way to enact protectionist employment policies, but you'd need to tweak more than just the one dial if you wanted that to work.)

From an economic perspective the ideal is no borders if there are no significant differences between countries that would create an infinite surge in mobility. It's like electrical current, if there is zero resistance and a difference in potential, any short circuit will potentially destroy the entire circuit.

The "infinite surge in mobility" phenomenon only occurs if we model countries as infinite sources / sinks of people, and assume population movement has no impact on either country. Given both of these assumptions, the predicted phenomenon wouldn't cause any problems. Of course, neither assumption holds in real life; and if you re-do your models with more sensible assumptions, the phenomenon goes away.

> Tons of people getting employment based green cards hold jobs that could easily be filled by an American.

Could be filled by an American, sure. Is the American willing to do the work? Probably not...

This is not a uniquely American problem.

In tech, I've always felt it was hard to hire Americans because it seems there's such a push for degrees in business/law etcetera as opposed to engineering.

How hard are you looking? I was looking early last year and despite hundreds of applications, got nothing but automated rejection emails, if that.

I also know many new grads looking for jobs and having a lot of trouble.

Unfortunately, their experience is telling their younger peers not to go into tech - it's full.

I'm not the first filter, there's a recruiter upstream for me. And this wasn't for new grads but senior positions.

What I'm trying to say is that all the 'good' resumes that made it through were almost exclusively for non citizens or naturalized people.

I’d qualify as a senior and like I said, hundreds of apps and not even an interview - very different from 5+ years ago, where almost 50% of apps resulted in an interview.

When you’re a hiring manager, you need to do whatever it takes to be the first filter, or at least get the permissions needed to see candidates excluded by recruiting/hR.

This is crazy and I don’t understand it but HR and recruiters do not pass along the majority of strong candidates. I have no idea why, often the resumes are indistinguishable from ones they forward on, and plenty of the candidates they forward to me are just prima facie not qualified.

You cannot compare between years like that. There are ups and downs, currently we're certainly not in an up except for special skills I guess.

5 years ago all of big tech massively overhired, they let go a lot of people later, so that's not a fair comparison.

Also, you cannot expect a hiring manager to do everything. If the company decides I shouldn't be spending my time screening candidates then that's not what I do.

It sounds like you’re saying the job market imploded in the last five years. In that case, it seems like we should halt h1b visas until it recovers.

> Also, you cannot expect a hiring manager to do everything. If the company decides I shouldn't be spending my time screening candidates then that's not what I do.

Maybe it’s different for you. I hire people I have to work with, so I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure I get good candidates. I can’t imagine a better possible use of my time.

> It sounds like you’re saying the job market imploded in the last five years. In that case, it seems like we should halt h1b visas until it recovers.

In tech, yes. In general I don't know and not all h1b's are tech

> I hire people I have to work with, so I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure I get good candidates.

Same, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do the work someone upstream from me has already done again

Americans would be more willing to do the work if they salary was higher, and the salary would be higher if the supply of workers was reduced due to not allowing cheap imported labor.

Americans aren't willing to pay the prices needed for the vast majority of things to be made in America or made by non immigrants. Immigrants will do the hard work in very bad conditions by American standards for very little money.

To me it's hilarious how on the one hand America is outraged about how all manufacturing has left the US, then after venting about that they buy a super cheap phone charger on Alibaba...

Put your money where your mouth is. If the customer had rejected overseas cheaper products then more jobs would've stayed in the US. Those salaries are a lot higher though so the products are more expensive...

It sounds like we need high tariffs to exclude products made in countries without living wages and strong worker protections from the American market, in addition to cutting off the pipeline of cheap labor to the US.

They might be living wages in those countries. You can save a lot of money by not living like the average American.

It's the standard of living that Americans expect. In order to afford that you need x amount of money. For example, if people in a different country don't need a car (let alone 2) and live in a 800sqft home with a family of 4. What does that mean for an acceptable minimum wage?

I don't even know what you mean by cheap labor. If you mean illegal practices below minimum wage, sure. But the average farming salary for example is over 17 [1] dollars an hour. Meanwhile in China, the average manufacturing salary was 97500 yuan [2], which is ~13680 dollars a year. That's 13680/12/168 = 6.8$ an hour.

So knowing this the basic question is: Is the American consumer willing to pay more for the same product because American workers need to be paid 2.5x more. The answer is just simply no.

Can you impose tarifs to offset that difference? Sure, the end result cannot be anything other than prices going up

1: https://www.indeed.com/career/farm-worker/salaries 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/743509/china-average-yea...

As someone who worked in the farming and restaurant industries, and whose family continues to work in that and construction, it’s always baffling to me to see people insist Americans just won’t do it.

But yes, undercutting the labor market with immigration policy is wrong for Americans as a whole and a big giveaway to the business class. Yes, paying Americans a higher labor rate would raise prices to their natural level (much less than you would think in most cases, particularly food) and reduce income inequality.

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