[carom]

>Recent immigrants tend to earn less than U.S.-born workers because of their lower level of education, lack of English, and in some cases because they are working without permission. They might also compete with existing workers with less education and put downward pressure on their wages, too.

This is my biggest problem with immigration. It is a handout to corporations. If we think about the poorest Americans, this is doing them a massive disservice. Not that there is any shortage of jobs in tech, but you also have to wonder where the salaries would be at in tech, and how many more citizens would be training for these roles if it weren't for H-1B visa.

For the most part, America serves corporations through legislation and policy though. I dream of a country where the politicians serve the people and not companies, but I also have to wonder if the U.S. would be the economic power house that it is if things were different.

[pavlov]

> "you also have to wonder where the salaries would be at in tech, and how many more citizens would be training for these roles if it weren't for H-1B visa"

On the flip side, you have to wonder where the American tech industry would be without immigrants.

Nvidia was founded by the son of Taiwanese parents who sent their children to live with an uncle in the US. That's one of the many immigration paths that the MAGAs want to close.

Was the creation of Nvidia a "handout to corporations"? Intel sure would be happy if Jensen Huang had never made it to America.

[carom]

I don't disagree, getting smart and ambitious people to move to your country is a really good policy overall. It is just worth weighing it against the opportunity cost for the citizens of the country.

[indoordin0saur]

One thing I seldom see discussed is how if you're attracting the best and brightest it is leaving the original country poor. These places invest in their children hoping that they'll start businesses and then all that investment just ends up going to those countries that are already the richest.

I certainly don't blame anyone for wanting to move to improve their situation (I did it too!) but I wonder if developing countries would have caught up to the West decades ago if this brain drain wasn't going on.

[pacerier]

What opportunity cost? Expensive healthcare? Expensive housing? Hey pal, why not everything else under the sun?

Immigrants have made the country rich enough to give everyone ubi free housing and free healthcare. But Then Billionaires.

#immigrants-are-the-new-jews #stop-blaming-the-hand-that-feeds

( Of course, it's not billionaires per se, but Greed. Eg in countries like singapore, the Politicians are the problem. )

For a living example, take a look at UAE, although I'd say they could have treated immigrants a bit better.

[the_real_cher]

doesn't it beg the question though... if they're so good for America why aren't they good for their own country?

[shiroiushi]

Because their country doesn't offer the same opportunities to achieve the things they believe they can in their new country. It's the main reason people emigrate. No one's going to build Nvidia in India or China, for instance, at least not back in the time that it was created in America.

[the_real_cher]

America didn't used to be the country that offered those opportunities.

Yet people built it and made it that way.

Nothing is static people csn change anything

These people need to do that in their own countries.

[surgical_fire]

Kind of ironic, considering the whole original population of America (the whole continent) was mostly replaced by immigrants, starting some time after 1492 AD.

[shiroiushi]

The people that built it and made it that way in America were all immigrants.

[pacerier]

> didn't used to be

That's false. By definition none would have come if there wasn't opportunity. You don't need to be a geography student to see that it wasn't just irreligious opportunity.

[echelon]

The value and commensurate compensation of talent depends on location. Proximity to colleagues, decision makers, and capital.

[the_real_cher]

Somebody has to sacrifice to be the first to start something like that in their own country.

In America we built companies art and music out of our garages just for the love of it... not because "that's where the compensation was."

[t43562]

You guys move around for opportunity all the time.

[pacerier]

What are you talking about? Is this fact or romance? The country certainly did not become what it is through love of sacrifice.

[foldr]

They are. When a doctor immigrates from Nigeria to the US, then that's broadly speaking good for the US and bad for Nigeria.

[the_real_cher]

is it though...

[foldr]

Both countries have a shortage of doctors, so yes.

[asimpletune]

It makes sense for big fish to seek big ponds

[the_real_cher]

India and China arent big ponds?

[pacerier]

Many pockets of the pond are not yet deep, making it unsuitable for many species.

[pacerier]

But they are. Yet men being men will go where they think the money/food is.

[jyounker]

When they leave their country it's called Brain Drain.

[yunohn]

> the son of Taiwanese parents who sent their children to live with an uncle in the US. That's one of the many immigration paths that the MAGAs want to close.

Is this an actual immigration path that still remains open? I find it hard to believe.

[pavlov]

It’s a patchwork. The latest policy to allow undocumented immigrant children to stay is from 2012 and still in effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_...

[varjag]

No not really. Maybe in Ellis Island days.

Most born Americans certainly have no fainest clue how hard it is to legally immigrate to the USA already.

[pacerier]

Actually it is incredibly easy. But keyword is not "productivity", it is "family".

Who knew.. that the racist plan to ensure the population stays white actually had the reverse effect.. 2024 and nothing's still being done about it because That's racist doh!

[varjag]

Family reunification with your uncle is impossible. You literally just proved my point.

[pacerier]

You can't do it with an uncle and that does not make it hard. It is in fact incredibly easy.

[the_real_cher]

there's a lot of businesses simply built around hacking the US immigration system.

the people most likely to immigrate aren't the smartest but the people with the most money who can pay to hack the system

[varjag]

There really isn't much "hacking" going on, it's mostly fraud. Fictional marriages, fake jobs and so on. I was talking about legal ways.

[cherryteastain]

> Recent immigrants tend to earn less than U.S.-born workers...because they are working without permission

This is the real problem. The Indian PhD grad on a H1B won't create the kinds of problems in the article. Media loves to put H1B/L1/EB1/EB2 holders with random people walking in via Mexico and doing odd jobs for cash in hand in the same category when their economic impact could not be more different.

[the_real_cher]

Their economic impact is to deprive opportunities from Americans just like the people walking in from Mexico.

There is a strong equivalency there.

More people graduated in computer science in the United States in the last few years than ever before and they can't find jobs.

Doesn't it beg the question...if they're so good for the economy in America why aren't they good for the economy in their own country?

[cherryteastain]

> deprive opportunities

Jury is out on this one. Japan has hardly any immigration yet their wages stagnated. Canada has a ton of immigration and their wages are also stagnant. Europe is somewhere between Japan and Canada, with also stagnant wages. Nobody disputes wages are stagnant, but the degree to which skilled immigration suppresses wages is an area where economists are unsure or even tilting towards a 'no' answer.

> if they're so good for the economy in America why aren't they good for the economy in their own country

There are so many jobs that are available only in industrialized countries. You won't find semiconductor fabs or airplane factories in undeveloped countries.

[the_real_cher]

> wages stagnated

I don't really think wages are a proxy for opportunity as central banks can make currency worthless. There's computer science graduates in America who would take a job in their field for pittances just to be working in their field.

> There are so many jobs that are available only in industrialized countries

Well start! Half the startups in the 90s Americans built out of their garage.

[cherryteastain]

A person in the US founding a startup has access and exposure to the deepest capital markets in the world, the largest domestic market in the world, a stable legal and political environment, and a phenomenal talent pool. A person doing the same in e.g. Vietnam has access to almost 0 VC funding, tiny domestic market, his efforts are hindered by a capricious and restrictive legal and political environment and a very low skilled talent pool. Someone with the same competency as say Bill Gates has an infinitely lower chance of making it big.

People do not risk their lives and leave their families behind because they really love going to Cheesecake Factory everday in the US, it's because opportunities often flat out do not exist in their country for what they want to do.

Even among successful businesses founded in (currently or formerly) less industrialized countries, you will see that a huge proportion are actually state owned or backed (e.g. TSMC, Samsung)

[the_real_cher]

Opportunities didn't exist in America until Americans made them exist.

Apple was founded in a garage.

Time for people in other countries to do the same for their own country.

A good product or a good idea will surface.

Your excuses fall on deaf ears.

[alephnerd]

Before the pandemic, tech companies were not as async.

The pandemic proved that operations can continue in a semi-async manner.

Now in the post-2023 market, companies have begun to make that shift to global hiring now that async is normalized.

Outside North America, the salary for the top 15-20% of SWEs is roughly comparable to each other in every country so it makes it easier to scale out teams and speed up product and feature delivery, especially now that American trained engineers on visas were the first to be let go during the 2023-24 layoffs, and for the past decade, CS majors from the top universities in China (Project 985 programs) and India (INIs) have largely stopped moving abroad except for graduate programs.

I warned this would happened in the start of the pandemic, and have kept saying it since.

[jyounker]

There is an easy solution: Don't require residency for employment. Everyone is entitled to full protections of labor law, document immigrant or not. This eliminates much of the incentive to abuse non-documented labor. Then make it even stronger. If a non-resident employee brings suit against an employer for violating labor laws in a significant way, and they win, then they are entitled to citizenship as repayment for helping to enforce our labor laws.

[carom]

So now workers have unlimited competition. That sounds like it will put a lot of power in the hands of corporations in terms of being able to replace workers.

[prewett]

My understanding is that Americans aren't willing to work a lot of lower wage jobs. I think that Mexicans harvest most of the crops in California. A friend of mine in California needed roof repairs and he says that all the American workers were pretty lackadaisical, while the Mexicans worked pretty hard. I believe a lot of hotel staff are immigrants as well, and after the pandemic smaller hotels were simply unable to hire staff. Lawn care is another industry. If anything, I think immigration as regards these areas may be a handout to farmers and homeowners needing manual labor.

H-1Bs are another issue, but since it's capped at something like 50k, I'm not sure how much it's really contributing to lower wages, especially given how software has some of the highest wages in the economy. I don't think the "poorest Americans" are going to be working in tech, though. I've worked with some of the kids in this category, and my conclusion is that poverty is a culture and a mindset. Those without that mindset (frequently children of immigrants) gain the skills necessary to leave.

[CrimsonCape]

I interpret your story as the American workers thinking "wow, I'm not getting paid enough to deal with this s***."

I also interpret your story as the children of immigrants realizing "wow, I'm not going to be paid enough to deal with the s** * my parents deal/dealt with." So they find a way to get a tech job or desk job.

One could just as easily denigrate the children of immigrants as being lackadasical, but that's not necessary. Why denigrate people?

[pacerier]

I'm not sure where the denigration is?

> to work a lot of lower wage

> all the American workers were pretty lackadaisical, while the Mexicans worked pretty hard

Truth

[carom]

>Americans aren't willing to work a lot of lower wage jobs.

Then the wages are not high enough in those jobs. They should either pay more or get automated. Bringing in desperate people who are willing to live and under worse conditions is not an ethically sound solution.

[pacerier]

> ethically

Don't start that pretend. This was never about ethics. Pretending that it's about ethics is instant KO.

(Ethics is measured by how many such desperate people you allow to come in, not how many you yet refuse, subjecting them to even worse alternatives)

[deepfriedchokes]

The jobs wouldn’t be lower wage in the first place if businesses didn’t have immigrants to exploit.

[alephnerd]

Wages are not significantly lower.

For example, Trump's H1B prevailing wages rules are still in place so at most the salary difference is 15-20% (which is basically nil as a hiring manager)

In "lower skilled labor" like manual Construction the average wages tend to be middle of the pack for those states [0]

For white collar jobs, the biggest driver for the slowing hiring market is the fact that companies have shown that they can operate in a global async manner, which means shareholders and board members like my Peers are increasingly pushing for hiring abroad as a way to speed delivery.

[0] - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472061.htm

[pif]

> It is a handout to corporations.

You are right, but unfortunately you are not completely right.

The problem lies in a universal truth: people buy cheap.

A corporation that can afford lower wages is a corporation that can maintain its customer base. If American corporations stooped their effort in reducing costs, they'd lose their effort to foreign corporations with easier access to lower wages and less ecological constraints.

The enemy of the poorest Americans are not the immigrants, but the richer Americans. As a thought experiment, imagine running a trade shop employing only American workers: start advertising the fact that you pay socially-acceptable wages to them; and explain your potential customers that, by paying more for the same service, they'll get the honour of helping their fellow citizens. I'm sure your phone will not ring that often!

[the_real_cher]

> The enemy of the poorest Americans are not the immigrants, but the richer Americans

it's both

[pacerier]

Tell that to the Emiratis who get to eat and sleep all day.

[ajkdhg]

Yes, it distorts wages as a function of supply and demand. Workers cannot bargain, because corporations simply import new people.

In the EU it is done by both importing people and extending the EU eastwards. The quality of life has dropped dramatically in the original EU countries.

[another2another]

> The quality of life has dropped dramatically in the original EU countries.

That doesn't reflect the reality that I see at all. The only area where quality of life is worse than previous generations is in property ownership - particularly in bigger cities and suburbs. But that's reflected across many industrialised nations from UK, Canada, NZ, Australia, so it's not a problem just limited to EU countries.

Otherwise the net price of "stuff" from electronics, cars, food, clothes, shoes and household accessories have fallen a lot in real terms and people have lots more than ever before - maybe too much ?

[raverbashing]

Yes we all have seen how the UK got rid of those pesky EU FoM Eastern Europeans and replaced them with Asians that accept an even lower salary

[biorach]

> The quality of life has dropped dramatically in the original EU countries.

This is, on the whole, bullshit.

[spwa4]

I think you'll find people in the EU compare their situation to the economic situation of their parents. That comparison goes very badly. In the 70s-80s-90s an uneducated worker could support a "suburban" house (newly built, that they'd own after 20 years or so and retire in), stay-at-home wife, car, send 2-3 kids to school and college and have money left over for a yearly holiday with 5 people.

Compare that to even a current PhD making 3k euros per month with house prices starting at 300k for pretty bad (certainly not newly built) and smaller than the one their parents had, and they find they can't afford it on 2 full-time wages.

So "quality of life has dropped dramatically". Yes. Yes it has. In other ways quality of life has advanced, yes, but the basics ... the basics are a disaster.

And this is the situation in the most economically prosperous side of Europe. Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Nordics, France, Germany. If you do the same comparison in the middle or south of France, Northern Italy or Spain it'll be 10x worse. If you do it in Portugal, Southern Italy or Greece, it'll be 100x worse, hence everybody is leaving. And if you do it in Eastern Europe it'll be even worse: everyone (who even remotely can) HAS left.

[pif]

> In the 70s-80s-90s an uneducated worker could support

Then the entire West started buying cheap from China and imposing rigid environmental constraints locally, and manufacturing jobs left forever.

[orwin]

Also we still had gas and oil from the north sea. Since the production peaked, energy is expensive, thus everything is.

[biorach]

your basic point is that the cost of housing has increased to levels that are making life difficult for most people.

However the language you use is exaggerated to the point of hysteria, which kind of undermines everything you say.

Also, your original point was about immigration. There is a housing crisis even in countries with relatively low levels of immigration, which indicates that other factors are at play.

> . If you do it in Portugal, Southern Italy or Greece, it'll be 100x worse, hence everybody is leaving. And if you do it in Eastern Europe it'll be even worse: everyone (who even remotely can) HAS left.

While there are high levels of emigration in these places, what you're saying is exaggerated to the point of being bullshit.

[fooker]

> how many more citizens would be training for these roles if it weren't for H-1B visa.

Yeah, Indian citizens, because the tech jobs can be done there just as well for a fourth of the cost. There is a massive push within companies to make this happen.

[roenxi]

If you want high salaries you can just multiply all the financial numbers by 100. Then workers all get to be millionaires. Doesn't help much though; "high salaries" are one of those distractions from what matters - high living standards.

The question is really whether a migrant will produce more or less over their lifetime than the resources they consume. If they produce less, then the balance has to come from existing citizens. But it has nothing to do with whether more labour is a net win for corporations or not. The problem is if they come in and do low productivity work that wasn't going to happen at all in a counterfactual where they didn't migrate.