[blunte]

It's not easy for American citizens to get permanent work/live visas in most other countries either.

And it is often in the interest of each country to prevent an influx of additional (lower wage) workers in trades that already have enough workers.

A parallel can be seen of how Walmart entered rural and small town America years ago and killed many local businesses. It also lowered local wages, because the primary job became Walmart Checker.

If you are a country of 330 million people, and you do not put limits on countries 5X larger, then you will find your citizens less employed and lower income.

This is not racist, nationalist, or any other label. I suppose you could label it "localist", whereby you favor local resources over remote ones.

The excuse used by tech companies starting around 2000 was that there were not enough talented local workers, so importing cheaper (and often lower skilled) workers was the answer. That's not to imply that all foreign labor is lower skilled. However, displacing local workers with foreign workers without some quality control, especially where the pay is lower, will result in an accumulation of lower skilled workers.

[triceratops]

> It's not easy for American citizens to get permanent work/live visas in most other countries either.

Getting permanent residence in any foreign country is going to be a more difficult process than getting a tourist visa. I think you're underestimating how much harder the American system is, and how things really are easier for US citizens in other countries.

To take a random example, Americans can apply for work permits while physically within Germany[1]. After some years of residency (I think it's 3) one can apply for a EU Blue Card if one has a college degree and an employment contract of EUR 53k/year[2] (easily attainable by a software engineer in Germany).

So your average HN US citizen software engineer can:

1. Interview with a German company on video chat

2. Visit visa-free for an onsite interview

3. Sign offer, apply for work and residence permits after relocating. Permits are for the duration of the employment contract

4. Get a Blue Card after 3 years

Which honestly sounds like a breeze compared to what a foreign-born software engineer would need to do to work in the US:

1. https://www.internations.org/go/moving-to-germany/visas-work...

2. https://www.howtogermany.com/pages/eu-blue-card.html

[manas666]

except why would you ever migrate to Germany where wages are like 50% of the US salary for IT engineers and like 20% of silicon valley wages for senior folks.

supply/demand in action, and difficulty of the immigration process is just an indicator of that

[triceratops]

What about fields other than software?

Besides there are lots of reasons to emigrate to Germany besides the money - minimum 5 weeks' vacation every year, employee-friendly labor laws, cheaper healthcare and childcare, college, more interesting city centers all sound pretty good to me.

Also, "you can make a ton of money here so there's no need to improve our processes" isn't a great argument for the US to make.

[manas666]

Agree, every day companies merge and reduce their workforce and who's getting axed first? Expensive american workforce.

Pretty soon they are replaced by foreign nationals either onshore or offshore using "workforce augmentation" companies that are consultancies

Let's talk about the entire picture, if we want to discuss immigration "fairness"

[nraynaud]

my wife will have permanent resident visa for France in just a few weeks. It took me 7 months to get a k1 visa then 1.5 years to get a green card.

"localist" -> you're looking for "xenophobic".

[blunte]

Nope. Having an affinity for people you live near does not imply that you dislike others. It may be true for some people, but it is not a logical truth.

Isn't a K1 visa related to marriage? That's nice for people who happen to be marrying a national, but that doesn't apply to most people.