[pixelatedindex]

> and paid over $100,000 in taxes last year alone

Genuinely curious, what does taxes have to do with it? Everyone pays taxes, legal or illegal in some form.

I don’t think paying your dues should make you more likely to get through the pipeline. After all, you paid those taxes because you made good money, which is what people come here for.

[bonsai_spool]

I think the point is that they are contributing to the US, and were the best option for their employer, and are supporting their communities, etc.

All things that we should be supporting if we are indeed wishing our nation to prosper.

A plurality of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, so we’re essentially turning away someone who is building up our country.

[morpheuskafka]

> A plurality of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes

What does a plurality even mean here? This is a binary question, so plurality and majority are the same thing. And I don't think it is factually correct that the majority of Americans do not pay income taxes.

[bonsai_spool]

I apologize on the wording, but this is an easy thing for you to Google!

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

I didn't look hard but that's the first thing I found. Famously, Mitt Romney complained that 47% of Americans don't contribute to federal income tax revenue, which is what I was thinking of.

[matwood]

Side note...I hate this stat because it makes it sound like the rich are paying their share of taxes. The reality is that people who make large w2 income pay a large part of federal taxes, and while they would be considered rich they are not the ultra-rich we see in the news every day.

[bonsai_spool]

> .I hate this stat because it makes it sound like the rich are paying their share of taxes

Yes! I agree, I don't mean to sound like I support the status quo. In this particular case, I wanted to clarify that green card-holding immigrants carry a disproportionate amount of tax burden (but that is not to support the current state of things).

[matwood]

I didn't mean to imply you did support the status quo. And you're right about GC holders as they tend to make good money and fall into the worst spot tax wise - having a large w2 income.

[drdec]

People who complain about people not playing income taxes ignore payroll taxes.

[bonsai_spool]

Payroll taxes are just that - payroll taxes!

Income taxes are not payroll taxes

[zeroonetwothree]

Payrolls taxes are a tax based on (some of) your income. So they are a type of income tax in the broad sense.

[drdec]

Yes, technically payroll taxes are not income taxes.

And people who that x number of people do not pay income tax are implying they are paying no federal taxes when that is not true. It is a disingenuous argument.

[ipaddr]

Someone else would have taken that job maybe for a higher salary.

[dnnddidiej]

But then they gave up a tax paying job and thus the net effect is zero.

Looking holistically the person leaving the US (or lets say 100 people to make it easier to see the point) means 1 to 30 less startups and so maybe an entire company or more not being started. That is less revenue for US.

What most people from the "they steal our jobs" mentality (not saying that is you, but this a seperate point) don't get is productive people create jobs by being a customer of many businesses.

[ipaddr]

Then someone lower got a better job and someone out of work ends up in a job.

[konschubert]

This is called the "lump of labour" fallacy:

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

[Saline9515]

So the job market doesn't exist? Interesting!

[dnnddidiej]

But a jobs worth of GDP was lost due to the lost consumption. Harder to measure for 1 person but imagine 100k people suddenly left a city. That would be felt somewhere. Dry cleaners, cafe, supermarkets etc.

This might be less true if there is resource starvation but we have transport and imports and exports. You can accomodate more people and feed them.

[bonsai_spool]

There are not enough qualified people in any particular country for all the possible new technologies that could be deployed. You're not likely to hire your plumber to program a webapp.

That doesn't mean your plumber isn't qualified—just that people looking for webapps want to hire workers who know how to make them.

[ipaddr]

So many computer science grads can't find work many have left the field. I don't think we will run out of workers.

There is the other side plenty of workers successful at programming language could be trained to fill any gap. That's what happened in the 50s and 60s..

[throwaway85825]

Writing web apps is not the most skilled of jobs. Despite what some egos would have tou believe.

[Ntrails]

Those seem like bold assumptions about % of startups created by green card holders?

I feel like the better argument is that the greencard holder was the best candidate and thus will be more productive in the role. It is just efficient resource allocation. That, even without new companies, will drive profit/expansion/more jobs

[konschubert]

More likely there would have been one less job.

There isn't a "lump of labour" that gets distributed in the economy.

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

[bubblethink]

Humans tend not to be fungible.

[bonsai_spool]

At a certain point, there aren't enough Americans for these jobs. So the choice is to let other nations absorb these skilled laborers, or simply hire the best people.

It's funny how we forget about meritocracy as soon as the median American is threatened.

[pixelatedindex]

> At a certain point, there aren't enough Americans for these jobs

Is that really true? I’m sure in some fields where you need rare experts I believe it. For the average engineer who is just another cog in the wheel of big corp, I highly doubt it.

[bonsai_spool]

> Is that really true? I’m sure in some fields where you need rare experts I believe it. For the average engineer who is just another cog in the wheel of big corp, I highly doubt it.

Have you ever hired someone before? Did you decide to take the best person you found or did you pick an American?

[pixelatedindex]

> Have you ever hired someone before? Did you decide to take the best person you found or did you pick an American?

Many times. Sometimes we don’t offer sponsorships so we hired who didn’t need one. Other times not. During the interview process where they’re from isn’t the matter at hand. Either way, there’s no shortage of good candidates - solely American / GC or not.

Though let’s be honest - there is a question behind the question, isn’t there? Why don’t you just ask that instead?

[ipaddr]

With AI taking a percentage of jobs there will be enough people to fill those positions and more. Why bring in workers when productivity is taking away positions.

[bonsai_spool]

> With AI taking a percentage of jobs there will be enough people to fill those positions and more. Why bring in workers when productivity is taking away positions.

Have you ever hired someone before?

[ipaddr]

AI is forecasted to remove 30% of white collar jobs in the next few years. People are not hiring now.

Do you work in hr?

[jaharios]

So we should strive to maximize companies profits over the citizens?

[rjbwork]

>It's funny how we forget about meritocracy as soon as the median American is threatened.

What meritocracy? This is a myth pushed to justify a kind of "just world" interpretation of our social ills. Nepotism is increasing, social mobility decreasing. To believe in meritocracy in the face of this is to deny reality.

[light_hue_1]

Or it would have moved overseas forever.

I can already on the ground see the effect of the Trump policies. So many tech jobs that would have been in the US are being lost. And companies are learning how to be effective with overseas teams.

[ozgrakkurt]

It is questionable if US has the education system or people capital to support all the science based sectors it has IMO.

Immigrants doing a very large portion of tech work can't be just because they get paid less

[hunterpayne]

"Immigrants doing a very large portion of tech work can't be just because they get paid less"

It is solely about that. Remember, immigrants didn't really play a role in the US tech industry for half of its existence and didn't play a major role until a decade ago. This is despite the fact that US colleges openly and actively discriminate against US citizens for grad school spots for 2 or 3 decades now.

[ModernMech]

> This is despite the fact that US colleges openly and actively discriminate against US citizens for grad school spots for 2 or 3 decades now.

Can you provide a citation for this specific claim? I used to do admissions to a grad program in the US, and we ended up admitting mostly foreign students soley because very few US citizens actually applied (probably only 10% of apps). Whether that's because they were not qualified or couldn't afford it I do not know. But it's not because they were openly and actively discriminated against.

[ytoawwhra92]

> Remember, immigrants didn't really play a role in the US tech industry for half of its existence and didn't play a major role until a decade ago.

Bell, Wang, Fairchild, Intel, Sun...

[mlnj]

>US colleges openly and actively discriminate against US citizens for grad school spots for 2 or 3 decades now.

Isn't this just because foreign students pay more than citizens? Isn't this just capitalism and the free market efficiently allocating resources?

Something about 'having the cake and eating it too'.

[jakeydus]

Not just that, universities (especially smaller research universities) love having grad students whose research is paid for. China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil (less so now than in the past), Qatar, and others have all had programs for years where they paid the tuition and research costs of students at universities. Why would the university not pick that over a local kid who the university has to pay for out of their own coffers?

[gottorf]

To be fair, not many parts of the US higher education system can be accurately described as free markets or capitalism.

[convolvatron]

I've been involved in .. applied CS for 40 years, and the industry has been filled with people of a wide variety of backgrounds for that entire time. Even during the time I worked for the US DOD many of the people I worked were international.

[dukeyukey]

> and didn't play a major role until a decade ago

Sergey Brin? Paul Graham? Elon Musk?

[qaq]

You do realize every major tech company has offices in EU and in India. You make it hard here they will hire more there

[parineum]

> So we’re essentially turning away someone who is building up our country.

They're not being turned away. There's a requirement to be in the country for 5 years with a green card before citizenship. It seems to me that they are just upset that they have to follow the rules which aren't hurting them at all.

[bonsai_spool]

> They're not being turned away.

They are actually in fact being told to return to their country before completing a process that previously - legally! - could be done in the US. That = being turned away

> There's a requirement to be in the country for 5 years with a green card before citizenship.

That is absolutely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Until next week, or whenever the current system is again upended haphazardly.

> It seems to me that they are just upset that they have to follow the rules which aren't hurting them at all.

It seems to me that they were all following the rules. The rules are now being capriciously changed with sly marketing words to confuse everyone.

[harimau777]

> which aren't hearting them at all.

They are effectively being ruled by a system that they have no say in. That's incompatible with America's democratic values. Of course it's reasonable that we don't allow non-citizens the vote; the problem as I see it is that if someone has worked here for 25 years for all intents and purposes they are a citizen, the government just doesn't formally recognize the reality of their situation.

[peyton]

I strongly disagree. That person retains the option of returning to their origin country and having a say there.

[zaptheimpaler]

This is so confusing. What does GC -> citizenship have to do with this? The rules work fine now because they apply for the change of status and keep on working until its accepted and leave if not. This new rule means they have to leave the country they are living and working in for anywhere from 1 month to 2 years, probably losing their job and majorly disrupting their lives for seemingly no reason at all. People who have lived in the US for a decade with a job, mortgage, family and children randomly need to leave to years, and what does that accomplish for anyone? If the govt. wanted to deport them, they could do it at any moment. The govt. can process their change of status paperwork exactly the same whether they're in or out of the country. So what is the point of any of this?

[imajoredinecon]

Taxes are supposed to pay for public services. An efficient visa system is a public service. If you pay tons of taxes but don’t get a public service that’s personally very important to you, it’s natural to feel let down

[pixelatedindex]

Yeah that’s fair, I feel let down all the time with how my taxes are (ab)used. Not a surprise, It’s been like this as long as I can remember.

[jezzamon]

You have to do a lot when you get a green card to prove you won't be a burden on the US tax payer. It's a big part of the system and a big part of the anti-immigrant rhetoric

[matwood]

> Genuinely curious, what does taxes have to do with it?

It's popular trope from the GOP that immigrants are an economic drain on the US. They get free <insert whatever you want>, so the US must throw them out to save money.

[JuniperMesos]

Just because someone pays some taxes (it's hard to avoid paying sales tax if you buy a thing in a store, regardless of your citizenship), doesn't mean they're a net economic benefit to the country they live in, depending on exactly what taxes they pay and what taxpayer-funded services they get.

Immigrants come to the US with a variety of financial situations. Some immigrants are blatantly scamming welfare systems designed for poor Americans or are outright committing fraud (this is much of what is going on with the federal investigation and charges of Somalis in Minnesota). Other immigrants are paying taxes comparable to what American citizens would pay (this is probably the case for most people on H1B visas in the tech industry).

[tybstar]

A lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric involves some version of the lie that immigrants don't pay taxes.

[cush]

Citizenship is tied to the right to vote and Taxation without Representation was literally the driving force for the creation of America itself

[lurk2]

> Taxation without Representation was literally the driving force for the creation of America itself

The issue of taxation without representation had far more to do with the founders’ status as Englishmen and British subjects than their status as taxpayers. Paying taxes by itself was not a sufficient qualification for political representation. Felons, minors, and women were also required to pay taxes in the 1770s, despite not being able to vote. Immigrants who believe that the taxes they pay entitle them to this representation have bought into a falsified version of American history that was popularized during the Civil Rights Era.

United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:

> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.

[_pdp_]

> I don’t think paying your dues should make you more likely to get through the pipeline. After all, you paid those taxes because you made good money, which is what people come here for.

https://www.trumpcard.gov/

[throw-the-towel]

One can reasonably argue that not paying your dues should exclude you from the pipeline.

[wiseowise]

> After all, you paid those taxes because you made good money, which is what people come here for.

You mean they’ve contributed generously for the compensation they’ve earned?

[adi_kurian]

Uncle Sam likes tax payers.

[array_key_first]

To show that they're not freeloaders. A lot of right-wingers have a belief that immigrants are implicitly freeloaders, and therefore getting rid of them will make the economy better.

Of course it's just not true. Like most current Republican talking points, it's plainly fabricated; it's an outright lie. But, since a lot of people believe it, it's useful to reminder everyone that its not the case.

[atoav]

A very common xenophobic narrative is that foreigners do two things at the same time (1) steal your jobs and (2) drain your social systems. Another even more vile one one would be anything to do with coming for your daughters and women, but for this you will have to favtor in race. Because a rich white Frenchman coming your daughter doesn't have the same ring to it for bigots.

If the US, a country with a too low birthrate, throws out even the best kind of migrant (namely the kind that generates a lot of value for the country), you're going to be in deeper shit than ever before for decades to come.

Now I agree that paying taxes or not should have nothing to do with it.

[Saline9515]

It's not just a narrative and has been proven true, at least for (2).[0]

For (1), I think that a good discussion with any business owner in a migrant-dominated field will tell you that hiring foreigners is done to keep costs low and avoid Baumol's law. As a result, locals don't want to work in such fields, reinforcing the need for migrants.

[0] https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/uploads/default/original/2X/9...

[atoav]

So what you're saying is that people arriving in a country don't earn as much as people with established ties there? Cool. I wonder how that could be? /s

Hours worked: https://cphpost.dk/2025-06-18/business-education/career/inte...

[Saline9515]

> people arriving in a country don't earn as much as people with established ties there

Not true as Europeans are not concerned.

> how that could be

It doesn't have to be like this; for instance, you could require that migrant workers earn at least 2x the median salary to get a visa. It would avoid the whole exploitation of third-world workers paid a subsistence salary to save on costs.

Do you know a country that does this? ... Danemark! https://www.nyidanmark.dk/pl-PL/You-want-to-apply/Work/Pay-l...

[taytus]

Signaling.