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Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

> And don’t try to convince me that a Java developer from India possesses skills that our university graduates don’t.

Skills? Not necessarily, but there's something a lot of immigrants possess that your university graduates don't: freedom from the weight of student loans.

I'm not from India, so I can't speak for them. Plus, I imagine that the situation in India changed over the years and it's probably not the same as when this trend started. But I can speak for myself and people I know from many other countries, including China. Most of us have had an education that is on par with a lot of American colleges and universities, but without the crushing cost.

Get rid of all immigrant workers and the industry will collapse, because your graduates need to pay off a huge debt that immigrants don't have.

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> Most of us have had an education that is on par with a lot of American colleges and universities, but without the crushing cost.

> Get rid of all immigrant workers and the industry will collapse, because your graduates need to pay off a huge debt that immigrants don't have.

You went to university because you decided (in expectation) the present value [1] of the future earning were worth the college fees and the opportunity cost of getting a university degree. So, don't complain about the debt: by your decision you computed that this decision was worth it. The only thing that you need to complain about is yourself that you did a wrong calculation for such a life-influencing decision of going to college.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_value

> You went to university [...]

> by your decision you computed that this decision was worth it

> The only thing that you need to complain about

> you did a wrong calculation

Is that a general "you" or are you replying directly to me? Because if it's the latter, you need to read what I wrote more carefully.

I'm one of those immigrants I wrote about. My education, back where I was born and grew up, was both free and top-notch.

The point of my reply was to explain why "if we eliminated all H1B workers, Americans in the IT industry would be at full employment" is a disturbingly naive idea.

Speaking of disturbing oversimplifications:

> The only thing that you need to complain about is yourself that you did a wrong calculation for such a life-influencing decision of going to college.

If you think that life is as simple as that, you either haven't lived very long or were privileged enough to live in a bubble where things are so cut-and-dried black-and-white.

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