[geebee]

While I'm glad to see the NYTimes covering this issue, I am disappointed with the headline. The US takes over 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year. These new free and full citizens pursue educations and careers in response to their personal life interests and market signals. You know, that whole pesky freedom thing that corporations often despise in their workforce. Some enter high tech, some don't, and this article has absolutely nothing to do with this kind of immigration, at all.

This is about high tech companies lobbying congress for a special temporary guest worker visa (that allows for a dual intent to remain in the US), held and controlled by a corporation, where the guest worker resides in the US at the pleasure of the corporate "sponsor", on the grounds that there is such a shortage of critical tech employees that we need to empower corporations to bestow the right to live and work in the US on non-citizen who possess these skills. Some of these corporations have then turned around and fired US Citizens, some of whom are in fact immigrants, in order to replace them with workers brought in on this program.

While there is plenty of debate here on HN on the extent to which the new workers are "captive" in their jobs, I think we can all agree that the H1B workers absolutely are not free and full citizens, free to choose their own path in life, decide where they will live, what they will work on, what career they will pursue, and so forth. Even if they can change jobs, they need to find a new corporate sponsor who bestows the right to live in the US on them.

This kind of corporate power over individuals, on a massive scale, really bothers me. You can object deeply this while celebrating immigration that preserves the freedom and autonomy of the individual, and supporting general immigration (or even a more general version of skilled immigration).

[e40]

The US takes over 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year. These new free and full citizens pursue...

They aren't citizens right away. Getting even a green card takes about 5 years. Citizenship another 5-10 years.

[prostoalex]

Depends on the program. Winners of green card lottery, for example, are pretty much instant green card holders.

[whybroke]

Well said. In fact why not simply add 65000 to the net US immigration, abolish H1B and let the much praised market forces attract or repel people to those alleged unfilled jobs by rising wages.

[bsder]

Because immigrants have different economic value.

Adding 65,000 day laborers is very different from adding 65,000 engineers.

[dba7dba]

I mean no offense to those 65,000 H1B visa holders but many many of them don't deserve the title 'engineers'. No, not even the title of IT workers.

They are quite often simply bodies being pushed by the outsourcing firms to get fees. Many of these workers brought to Disney had to be trained for months.

[serge2k]

> I mean no offense to

has anything inoffensive ever followed this phrase?

[dba7dba]

Yeah, calling the H1B visa holders such is offensive. But so is how the workers are treated.

[whybroke]

If engineers have more value, then market forces will adjust wages to fill those roles won't they? If that doesn't happen then clearly your conjecture of their relative value must be wrong. Necessarily.

At least that's the story I'm endlessly told.

[dcre]

Very well said. I would add that "corporate power over individuals" applies to the fired employees just as well to the fired employees as to the H1B workers. Indeed, their power over the former depends fundamentally on their power over the latter.

[davidw]

It applies in different quantities though: the fired US people can apply for unemployment and look for a new job, or maybe take some time off and go surfing, or move elsewhere, or pursue a degree. The fired H1B people need to book a flight home.

That implies a lot more power over the latter.