[thedufer]

Note that there's no value judgment being made here. Nor am I claiming that H1s are low paid. You're still arguing against the same strawman.

To reword: if an H1 gets a job, a qualified citizen is not getting that job. Except in very exceptional circumstances, this hurts said citizen, and by extension the labor pool of people who could be substituted in for said citizen.

[thrwy10]

You didn't specify 'qualified' in the original post. If it was implied and I didn't get it, I'm sorry. I agree that if there is a qualified local, they should get these jobs before bringing in foreign labor. Although, my argument isn't a straw man.

[thedufer]

I thought that "local labor market" implicitly only contained people who were local and could do the requisite labor, but that might not be the agreed-upon meaning. Sorry for the confusion.

Strawman-ness is contextual. You were arguing against an argument that is, in fact, used. However, you did so after quoting something that was not making that argument, but instead a weaker one, and one which your response didn't really respond to.