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Comment by flavio87 | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it interesting that this country, which was filled up with everything from very low skilled to very highly skilled immigrants in the 17th, 18th and 19th century, that owes EVERYTHING to immigrants now has such a trouble of letting people from everywhere come in and live their American Dream? Removing the cap on h-1b visa is a very good first step. what about all the other people that would not qualify for h-1b but are still very skilled and/or ambitious?

Of course people are afraid of losing their job to foreigners, but if you look at the big scheme of things: every worker is also a consumer. Meaning every immigrant and his family will also buy more American products, go to the hairdresser, pay taxes etc. and thus indirectly create work for other people.

I really hope Obama is free market enough to make the moves in that direction.

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According to the Migration Policy Institute (http://www.migrationinformation.org), about 6,195,000 immigrants arrived legally into the United States between 1995 and 2000. I grabbed this pretty quickly off the web. I'd imagine the numbers were even higher between 2000 and 2005.

It always surprises me that people who are ok with a million immigrants a year, but maybe not ok with a whole lot more than that, are accused of being anti-immigrant.

I'm all for "letting people from everywhere come in and live their American Dream", but as a practical matter, I think there have to be limits. Well over a million a year, in my opinion, seems like a pretty generous limit, even for a fairly large country like the US.

> Isn't it interesting that this country, which was filled up with everything from very low skilled to very highly skilled immigrants in the 17th, 18th and 19th century,

One difference is that low-skill workers could make a decent wage until, say, 1950 or so. The current US economy doesn't work that way.

> Meaning every immigrant and his family ... pay taxes etc

Folks who don't make more than median wage don't pay significant taxes. In fact, they're a net-loss, tax-wise.

> what about all the other people that would not qualify for h-1b but are still very skilled and/or ambitious?

Good question.

If it's not fair that a foreigner can come here and take my job - what about people from other states? Why can someone from Idaho move to Ca and compete with me. There should be a quota on out of state workers and they should pay a payroll tax to work in Ca.

You have as much right to move to Idaho as someone from Idaho has to come to California. This isn't the case internationally.

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