[thatfrenchguy]

> The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?

I mean, the other question is: how many US jobs exist because of folks who came to the country on H1B? Clearly none of the big tech companies would exist in the scale they are without us.

[georgeburdell]

H1B was created in the 90s. The industry had been around for nearly 50 years at that point.

[bdangubic]

how many people were in the industry/needed 50 years prior? compared to 40 years later? any growth?

[gymbeaux]

I would challenge that by saying SO MANY "software engineers" are net-negative producers, be it offshore teams in Asia or Eastern Europe or U.S. citizens. Partially a result of coding bootcamps. The recent tech layoffs in ~2022 that we are still reeling from is further evidence that maybe we don't need H-1B for software engineering roles. Medical? Absolutely.

[Dig1t]

You are being downvoted but you are totally correct. The tech industry existed before the H1B and was growing rapidly. There’s no evidence at all that the industry would have stopped growing without the H1B or that any company started by an H1B wouldn’t have been started by an American.

[hshdhdhj4444]

44% of unicorns founders between 1997 and 2019 were foreign born. 20% of those were specifically from India.

It seems like if Americans were just so much more dominant, they’d form a much higher percentage of unicorn founders given that the percentage of foreign born people in the US was about 15% at the highest.

Looks like foreign born immigrants are punching about 3 times their weight as startup founders.

https://gfmag.com/capital-raising-corporate-finance/us-unico...