[NikolaNovak]

>> Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?

I think you have the mindset where there are X jobs, static, unchanging, God given or government ordained or whatever, and if an immigrant takes a job that job is gone. Array, counter, n=n-1, done.

That's... Not my mindset, and I don't think that's how it works.

Those million people don't take a million jobs from some enumerated, inflexible list, and then shutdown. They live. They consume! They earn and then they turn around and they spend, they need homes and food and clothes and education, all of which is jobs.

I think you imagined a swarm of people who displaced others, but imagine literally a million people coming and creating a new city. So of the million, some are techies and some are janitors and some are farmers and some are doctors and they have a nice little self sufficient city and don't bug or impact anybody outside of that city.

If/when/once you visualize the concept of that self sufficiency, now we can discuss the more complex case of them joining an existing city - because yes of course it's more complex than people coming in and living independently, but it's also more complex than them stealing jobs off some imaginary closed list.

[philosophty]

Let's not imagine scenarios that may or may not have anything to do with reality.

Answer this question: what evidence would you accept to show that major American tech companies are using skilled immigration to drive down their labor costs as the expense of American citizens?

[NikolaNovak]

I cannot keep up with the moving targets. My honest, sincere impression based on my best read of your posts is that you are making a sweeping claim against immigration along all axis and skill levels. I disagreed.

Now your claim is that massive American tech companies are profit-focused, narrow-vision entities with no social qualms or human values, and I could not agree more :-). But that’s orthogonal to the wider immigration discussion.

[philosophty]

1. I didn't move any targets and your impression is clearly not at all sincere.

2. That is not my claim at all, since you're dropping half of the claim.

I think we're done here.