[Chris2048]

> The post says their college graduate friends...not graduates in CS

Ah, I concede this. Maybe this isn't an issue in US as it is in the UK..

> They are not mutually exclusive: you can do both

What stops industry becoming dependent on it though? There are big advantages to H1B visa workers, there is a risk that it saps market demand. Immigration might be the path of least resistance to solving labor shortage, rather than any long-term native plans.

If technology comes to be seen as a reliable high-paid job, via being sustainably high-paid, then it's reputation will bring in more people. Immigration is a threat to this. You can argue industrial benefit to this, but how sustainable is it? What if the US lost it's attractivity, what would happen to the H1B workers then? The US needs to figure out how to produce workers - being able to skim the cream from other demographics is a benefit, but a dangerous temptation as well.

[pm90]

There is absolutely nothing that stops the industry from being dependent on it. It is a very real risk. But restricting immigration is certainly not the solution.

I've seen you argue for a market where demand doesn't meet supply as a desirable state for the labor market. If you do believe that, then there is really no basis for this particular debate. The principle of my argument has been that there is a problem, labor shortage which cannot be fixed by the solutions offered. If you're arguing that the labor shortage is not a problem, then that is a completely different debate.

[Chris2048]

> But restricting immigration is certainly not the solution.

Why not? A restriction signals immigration as an unreliable source of labor, hence de-incentivising business to depend on it on the basis that it is a risk.

> If you're arguing that the labor shortage is not a problem

There may a problem, but labor shortage itself, is not. An excessive shortage, or an industry-crippling shortage is another thing altogether; In either case, a shortage is a necessary, but not sufficient condition of the problem.

[unprepare]

then your argument ignores the problem that literally everyone else is talking about, which is.... very strange.

We are here talking about changes to the H1B visa program which are intended to curb abuse/fraud of the program.

and you are here to talk only about a labor shortage in one industry?

[unprepare]

>Ah, I concede this. Maybe this isn't an issue in US as it is in the UK..

You shouldnt, i later specified i was including CS grads - i was a CS major until i switched to MIS, so most of my college friends are from one of those two programs.