[potato3732842]

> do not think anyone is making that point.

There are a whole lot of weasels who are adding a bunch of filler words and alternate phrasing to stuff that amounts to something akin to that point or some point built around that core.

>From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry,

If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?

>Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US.

First off, most H1B workers do not have american degrees so this blanket assertion is laughable on its face.

Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.

>except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.

Now reconcile this with the prevailing HN wisdom that the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe.

What makes one ok but not the other? This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.

[pcthrowaway]

> If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?

At this point, software job opportunities are pretty low on the list of things tearing the nation apart.

[happytoexplain]

This is exactly the opposite of reality. It's always been the economy. It's always been jobs. Everything else, no matter how important and worthy in other ways, is ultimately subservient in the long run, in the context of national mood/wellbeing/politics. Everything else can be traced to some degree back to jobs. Jobs are what primarily drives every single person's life experience and therefore, directly or indirectly, everything else.

[soco]

"the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe" uh, nope. That the billionaires should pay their share of taxes, and thy are definitely not "middle class" by any sane definition. And so is in Europe too. I'm sorry that I don't buy this fake antagonization, we all know the really wealthy pay next to zero taxes claiming all kinds of loopholes they created for themselves. Actually that would be a good measure to define middle class: those who _still_ pay taxes are middle class, and once you get the taxes decreasing it's a sign you moved into the riches land.

[Hizonner]

> If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?

If it does what now? Fearmongering that intentionally whips up nativist xenophobia might do that. I'm not seeing how work visas in themselves would do it.

> Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.

I honestly don't know which institutions and people you're talking about. I can think of several fundamentally different candidates.

> This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.

You're being self-contradictory. Either you have principles to which you hold regardless of whether "this nation is in the shit", or your only "principle" is "do whatever works to keep you out of The Shit(TM)". Which isn't really a very inspiring principle. Anyway, as soon as you start doing things for instrumental reasons, you lose your deontologist card.

If your principle actually is "stay out of The Shit by any means necessary", then you have to prove that what you want to do actually works to keep you out of The Shit. Starting by defining what "The Shit" means to you. Maybe what works is building up industry.

What you've offered only works on exactly the same kind of "principles" as doing things "to build up US industry".

An actually principled approach to H1Bs might, for instance, be to convert them into permanent residencies or citizenships, because indentured servitude is ugly on principle. That'd also have the practical effect of making people less beholden to specific employers, thus reducing the negative effect on anybody they might be competing with, but that's not the principled part unless you can say what actual, specific principle it serves.

... and, by the way, for any actually reasonable definition, your nation (no longer mine) wasn't particularly "in the shit" until recently. Just normal fluctuations. It hasn't actually even really landed in "the shit" yet, although the people running Trump have succeeded in breaking its last hold on the the catwalk over the shit vat.