[kalkin]

Who's "us"? I don't know you, and I have friends who aren't Americans who have been prevented by immigration policy from taking jobs here that I know they'd have been great at. Why should I care more about you keeping your job--just because we were born in the same politically defined geographic area?

But if you need a self-interested explanation: because you don't want to be competing with people who have artificially-restricted bargaining power and so have to take lower wages. The H1B program as-is, like the old bracero program for farmworkers, is a "compromise" that benefits corporations at the expense of both native-born U.S. citizens and immigrants.

[ta2938489]

Why should you care? Possibly because you realize that undercutting your countrymen, the people you have to live with now regardless of whether they are employed or not, is something that makes your actual community now a worse place.

Call it self interest, but I want to live in a society that is functional and with neighbors that are happy. The alternative is to retreat further and further into an affluent bubble. Then, I admit, you don't have to care.

[matwood]

As soon as someone immigrates and becomes a citizen they are also your fellow countrymen.

Where the next huge industry starts, wherever that happens to be, will define the next super power. Having the US be attractive for foreigners to immigrate to and become citizens raises the odds the US will be that place. I don't want access to the Chinese or Indian stock markets, I want the best of their citizens to want to immigrate to the US and start companies here because the US is the best place for company formation (not arguing either way atm, just saying what I want). This type of environment raises all boats.

Instead we teach other countries best, send them home, and yield few of the benefits as they go on to start companies.

[ta2938489]

By that argument, it seems like you would be in favor of being extremely selective about who becomes your next fellow countryman. If he turns out to be a liability, you're just that little bit further away from being the next superpower. He may well not, but what if he does?

Could there be social welfare costs? Rising income inequality? Unemployment of current citizens?

If you want to frame the problem in economic terms, a frank discussion of the risks is mandatory. Right now we usually talk about it like a ca. 2008 banker might have talked about naked credit default swaps. Sure, there might be a risk. But think of how much money we can make!

[bharath28]

"Community" is loose term - choosing to limit the boundaries to "your country" is arbitrary. There is an argument to be made that having the people best suited for a job work on it will improve long term economic viability of the product itself and in turn availability of the product to the "community". There is also the risk of losing the best talent to an entity outside this arbitrary definition of community and then get crushed by a superior, competing product/service - where is the economic sense in that?

[ta2938489]

Borders are another way of saying "local control". If, all things being equal, you would rather that political decisions happen closer to you than further away, then you are in favor of (arbitrary) borders.

I think it's an error to view concepts such as "community" and "your country" as quaint abstractions while putting full faith in "the product" and "economic viability". Economic arguments are important, but not comprehensive to the human experience. All things being equal, I'd rather live in a decent place with a decent economy, than a terrible place with great economy, or the reverse.

So I am skeptical of arguments that demand economic optimality over all other competing concerns such as culture, "community", happiness, etc. Perhaps economic optimality has diminishing marginal returns?

[bharath28]

Economic optimality, in this case, is merely one of any number of quantifiable measures you can use to define what is decent vs terrible. How does the place of birth of people working jobs (that they are good at) change what you call decent or terrible - what is your measure?