[soligern]

If nothing else then because it works. Immigrants have founded 51% of our top 500 billion+ unicorns. Indian entrepreneurs alone account for 66 out of 500. How many jobs is that creating? Millions at the very least. At 1% of the population, Indian immigrants pay 6% of all taxes. These people also will become/are American citizens.

You have to be a hardcore racist and/or an idiot to argue with data that overwhelming.

[TechBro8615]

It basically costs nothing and it's a huge advantage for a country to be the dominant sink for international talent migration. Most countries have net brain drain where their smartest people leave... to go to the US. That the US has the opposite problem is really a trivial issue to complain about, and anyone invested in its success should want the imbalance to continue.

And frankly if you're an American high-skilled worker who is concerned about foreign talent "replacing" you (an absurd idea in a labor market where demand continues to outpace supply, and will continue to do so as long as technology advances), then are you actually as highly skilled as you think you are? If you're being outcompeted by foreign talent then you need to "get good" - it's a skill issue.

The argument for foreign workers replacing domestic workers in unskilled jobs makes more sense, because the demand is for commoditized labor and there's negligible difference between employees beyond how little they're willing to be paid. But for high skilled work, by definition, it's your skills that should differentiate you. If they don't, then that's your problem to solve. It shouldn't be up to the rest of society to lower the floor of high-skilled work to accommodate your lack of skill.

[linuxftw]

For now, H1Bs don't replace truly highly skilled workers. What they do have an impact on is companies not investing in hiring junior employees and training them up. Thus, the disadvantaged people that can't attend college, who would customarily be trained by their employers, are left out in the cold when you can just import already trained people from overseas.

[NeuNeurosis]

Your comment is very atypical in this thread. It is the only one that puts the impact of the visa in perspective. The displacement of risk from company to employee. This is my main concern of H1B's impact, lack of training or opportunity for existing candidates. It is telling how a few other comments mention the skills gap but all of them focus on it being a employees problem and to solve it they just need more college or training. While I can't argue with the positive impacts of H1B's creating value there is a continuing cost imposed on society to make the individual take the risk of training instead of the company cultivating a workforce. I think individuals do need to have some skin in the game when they receive a investment from a company but by completely displacing the cost on to workers and making up for lack of investment by allowing more H1B's seems to be a shortsighted solution.

[balls187]

Works for whom?

You argument is hinged as a defense against anti-immigration.

I’m not anti immigration. I am against simply making it easier for software developers to get visa’s, that doesn’t make America any better (than giving visas to non-developers)

Creating jobs that only go to skilled tech workers, and/or tech workers who live in tech hubs isn’t much of a benefit to America.

Create well paying jobs that any american can do with tradeschool or on the job training—those are jobs we need.

Not workers willing to make an internet enabled juice machine.

And if you have a great idea, have funding and customers, sure we can give you a visa, but in exchange the US tax payer gets 20% stake.

[bitsage]

The only source I could find on the tax discussion was a Georgia senator. When doing the math, on just income and not even payroll taxes, taking 6% of the Individual Income Taxes collected in 2022, 2,632 billion, and dividing it by the estimated number of Indians, 4.5 million, gives me at least about 35k collected in taxes per Indian. If I bothered to exclude kids and include appropriate payroll taxes, that number would be even higher. Anyways, since the IRS doesn’t collect the info, I think he might be doing some napkin math.

To address the crux of your point, America should continue to be a place where the best and the brightest head towards to start companies. However, I think it’s fair to value quality over quantity. We only need to look up north to see the potential pitfalls of loose migration policies.

[mavelikara]

$35K taxes implies about $120K salary, which in tech circles is a very reasonable salary. In places like Northern California, most people on H-1B pay much more than that in taxes.

[hn12hrtyekdosns]

> You have to be a hardcore racist and/or an idiot to argue with data that overwhelming.

Your argument hinges on natives not achieving similar results with I’m not sure is true.

Given history, I’d say it’s likely the natives would succeed (as there’s precedent for their ancestors succeeding). However it would come at a higher cost to the “business” - really, the few at the top who are disproportionately profiting.

Furthermore, given the state of the import’s homeland it’s likely the immigrants only succeed because of environment in America, not because of anything unique they bring. And there’s no precedent for them maintaining - much less creating - the culture that allowed them to immigrate to a new land and be so wildly successful.

On top of that, investing in a native population has long term benefits that vastly outweigh importing talent for immediate gain. Unfortunately our politicians are choosing the opposite and sacrificing long term health for short term profits.