[akjainaj]

>Companies would have to try to hire American first and if they recruit foreign workers, priority would be given to the most highly paid.

Wow, that's horrible. I mean, a country giving preference to their own kind. When is this nightmare going to end?

[kitsune_]

Yeah, it is horrible. Why limit your professional life, team, workplace and day to day exchanges to a tiny pool of people when there are billions of people who inhabit planet earth.

[Chris2048]

Reciprocity. People you have fewer bonds/relationships with are less likely to reciprocate, and more likely to compete.

> a tiny pool of people

Are you talking about the US (dev) population?

[mjmsmith]

This assumes that shared nationality is going to make for stronger bonds. The way things are going, the opposite might be true.

[Chris2048]

> The way things are going, the opposite might be true

like all those celebs that threatened to leave the US?

[cronjobber]

Because Dunbar's number

[JumpCrisscross]

To give context "Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships — relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

[icantdrive55]

Because companies do what companies do best; keep down costs, and exploit every angle they can get away with.

It's gone on too long. We all see the abuses, but are afraid to say anything.

Since there's such a "tiny pool of people" move the organization to---say India? Or China? They must have eager qualified candidates?

[ddorian43]

Damn no sense of sarcasm in here. Where's your pattern matching ?

[omginternets]

>where's your pattern matching?

Inside the computer.

[concinds]

The whole "major SV tech companies use H1B to employ underpaid slaves" accusation is bunk. Maybe H1B is abused by other companies, but the big Bay Area corps are giving perfectly fine salaries to their H1B staff, as others have shown on HN in the past. Like everything else Trump does, there is no purpose for corrective action, because the problem Trump sees does not exist. H1B is bad for workers' and immigrants' rights, but that isn't a problem Trump ever brought up.

[lgleason]

Outside of SV, in the rest of the country I have spoken with a number of people in IT recruiting who told me that a this has driven down wages. Especially when they opened the door for the L1 visas. Wanna know why so many SV firms are against Trump. Follow the money! The virtuous aspects (IE: humanitarian concerns) are a way to get the sheep to follow. They all have a lot of blood on their hands.

[threeseed]

Many SV companies are against Trump because their employees are prevented from leaving and entering the country. And since this decision was not communicated to anyone or timed appropriately it is caused widespread panic.

Chaos is antithetical to a successful business.

SV companies were largely supportive of Trump (due to the chance of corporate tax cuts) up until this point.

[empath75]

"brain drain"

Americans are going to start taking jobs overseas, you're not going to have immigrants coming here. It's going to wreck the US economy.

[ry_ry]

I was under the impression that an L1 or L2 currently required a candidate to have "specialist knowledge" that a company wouldn't be able to recruit domestically anyway?

I could be misunderstanding, but isn't this just bringing the h1b in line with that?

[fishywang]

"specialist knowledge" makes sense in L1 because L1 is for intra-company transfer. You are already working for this company (outside of the US), so it's possible that you have some "specialist knowledge" about the technology this company uses, and if they transfer you to the US instead of a local new hire, it saves the company money and time to train the new hire. H1b is not for intra-company transfer so this doesn't make any sense.

[ry_ry]

Fair point, I guess the specialism aspect would boil down to being really good, or having domain knowledge of similar products.

The latter being easier to demonstrate, not sure quite how you'd convince the govt that Candidate X is a superb programmer or whatever.

Guess we can look forward to whiteboard tree shaking and fizzbuzz at the airport! ;)