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>If your company didn't have access to foreign H1-B guest workers, you would have two primary options: 1.) hire and train American workers, or 2.) recruit more

>If your company didn't have access to foreign H1-B guest workers, you would have two primary options: 1.) hire and train American workers, or 2.) recruit more aggressively by paying even higher wages. Or 3) offshore the work. This effectively gives smart people overseas on-the-job training, sends money into the economies of the nations of which they are citizens, and teaches them how to compete with US businesses. Protectionism _never_ works.

biocomputation 10y ago
>> Protectionism _never_ works. That's a very convenient aphorism, but it's not true. There are thousands of laws in this country that do a great job protecting people. Intellectual property laws and labor laws are a great example of "domestic protectionism" if you will. It's socially unjust to make American workers compete with foreign nationals for jobs. If the end game of a company is to simply offshore all their jobs, then they can also plan on giving up the benefits of being based in a stable democracy like the US. EX: it's highly unlikely that their assets will be nationalized.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  You realise that Singapore, Britain, most of Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are also stable democracies? Many of them notably more stable, in fact.
  - biocomputation 10y ago
    Yes, I do realize this. Would companies relocating jobs to these locations have any reasonable expectation of paying lower wages and less taxes?
    - RandomOpinion 10y ago
      I think you're losing track of your narrative: this is about finding skilled engineers, not about money. The EU, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. have plenty of talented people. Face it, even cutting off H1-Bs entirely, which thankfully is not what is being proposed by Trump, would not make weak candidates attractive to hire.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > If the end game of a company is to simply offshore all their jobs, then they can also plan on giving up the benefits of being based in a stable democracy like the US Or you take a trip a few hours north and you get a stable democracy which will happily take in skilled workers.

biocomputation 10y ago

>> Protectionism _never_ works. That's a very convenient aphorism, but it's not true. There are thousands of laws in this country that do a great job protecting people. Intellectual property laws and labor laws are a great example of "domestic protectionism" if you will. It's socially unjust to make American workers compete with foreign nationals for jobs. If the end game of a company is to simply offshore all their jobs, then they can also plan on giving up the benefits of being based in a stable democracy like the US. EX: it's highly unlikely that their assets will be nationalized.

jacques_chester 10y ago
You realise that Singapore, Britain, most of Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are also stable democracies? Many of them notably more stable, in fact.
- biocomputation 10y ago
  Yes, I do realize this. Would companies relocating jobs to these locations have any reasonable expectation of paying lower wages and less taxes?
  - RandomOpinion 10y ago
    I think you're losing track of your narrative: this is about finding skilled engineers, not about money. The EU, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. have plenty of talented people. Face it, even cutting off H1-Bs entirely, which thankfully is not what is being proposed by Trump, would not make weak candidates attractive to hire.
serge2k 10y ago
> If the end game of a company is to simply offshore all their jobs, then they can also plan on giving up the benefits of being based in a stable democracy like the US Or you take a trip a few hours north and you get a stable democracy which will happily take in skilled workers.