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Comment by DeusExMachina | Hacker News Reader

> Cancelling visas or deporting them will not get American workers their jobs back.

When Microsoft lays off 6.000 American workers and then refills those positions with H1Bs, I would argue that cancelling visas will definitely bring those jobs back.

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The implication here is that the laid-off 6000 American workers are citizens. That is untrue. No company I know of bases their layoff decisions on citizenship status. When an H1B worker gets laid off, that person counts as an American worker that’s laid off: the dataset where this comes from (the state-based WARN Act disclosures) does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. That is an unfortunate inaccuracy in how these numbers are reported, and this inaccuracy is something that politicians like Vance loves to exploit.

Basing layoff decisions on citizenship is likely illegal, and that's why no company does that. It does not mean, however, that they can't do it by proxy. If you lay off people above a certain salary and justify it as cost cutting, yoiu are likely targeting mostly nationals. The few H1B caught in the net are just collateral damage. Then, you can hire imported workers that are willing to work for far less just to have a chance to come to America.

Yeah I think the best solution here is to forbid underpaying H1B workers so there is no cost advantage to hiring H1B workers.

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