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Im amazed at the level of protectionism expressed in this thread, in this community. I will make an argument for the cynics that believe they should be protect

Im amazed at the level of protectionism expressed in this thread, in this community. I will make an argument for the cynics that believe they should be protected from competition: that immigration restrictions and caps like the H1B curtail the freedom of Americans to buy services from who they want to. American people that run American businesses are prohibited from hiring people they believe to be best suited for the job. There is not "gaming" the visa or "outsourcing companies". US consumes software engineers from abroad at 100x its software engineer immigration, only that they don't pay taxes to the US and export close to 100% of the their trade. It would be much better for the us to bring the people inside America to pay taxes and provide more value for Americans. Incredible to see software engineers buying an apple phone made in china and argue that Americans should not be able to employe chinese software engineers.

pnw_hazor 7y ago
Trump has proposed merit based immigration which would reduce the need for H1B non-immigrant visas.
fred_is_fred 7y ago
Until other countries also decide to drop all their protections we'd be suckers to do it first.
president 7y ago
> I will make an argument for the cynics that believe they should be protected from competition: that immigration restrictions and caps like the H1B curtail the freedom of Americans to buy services from who they want to. American people that run American businesses are prohibited from hiring people they believe to be best suited for the job. This argument makes sense from the point of a business owner but not necessarily for the average American who will lose his job to a foreign worker that will work ungodly hours for considerably less pay. And over time, working ungodly hours will then become the norm and get worse and worse over time as the cycle continues. But yes, there is plenty of money to made if you're a business owner who can hire plenty of cheap and willing workers.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  If your model is that there is a fixed number of jobs, then bringing in one immigrant deprives one American of a job. The obvious consequence of this model is that if a country has a 5% unemployment rate, then it should simply expel 5% of its population, and suddenly the number of people will perfectly match the number of jobs. Of course, that's not how things work. It's not true that adding one person to the economy adds one person to the ranks of the unemployed, because adding an additional person also increases demand for goods and services, thus increasing the demand for labor.
  - unimployed 7y ago
    I would like to add an additional layer of economic nuance here, beyond Econ 101 and BA Econ. While it is true that an economy is not necessarily a fixed “lump of labour”, you also need to take into consideration many more factors before making another blanket statement about how labour and an economy works. There are localized crowding effects that take place at all levels of labour (bottom to the top), and various market frictions which you ignore talking about. The economy is not perfect, perfectly efficient, or perfectly distributed. I won’t even get into monopolies and monopsonies, but suffice to say that market forces can be highly skewed. Markets are typically highly constrained in relative size and don’t freely grow independently. Adding 1000 more H1Bs this year does not mean the tech sector will grow by an additional 1500 U.S. citizens as well. Labour growth is organic and requires training and experience to grow. If most new tech positions are created for visas, citizens will never enter the field, or gain training and experience to compete. When crowding in a market increases, the market is very slow to react and expand. This is especially true in a more mature system like the USA, where the frontier days have mostly ended, and future growth is slower and more expensive. The U.S. economy has certainly shifted (perhaps especially so around 1970) into growing the pie less, and more growing your slice. Let’s not be naive either, because we know that visa data is publicly available. We should not rely too much on economic theory from Exon 101 when we can check the theory against what actually happens and is measured (empirics). As an experiment you should compare the annual H1B visa cap against the number of new “tech hires” in the economy. The trend you see is that every year, tech grows by ONLY the number of visas they are granted for that year. You probably think I’m pulling your leg, but please check for yourself. Now please tell me honestly... From the data, which theory of the labour market do you think best describes the history of the tech sector in the USA? Hint, the lump of labour fallacy is not always a fallacy. Now your follow up question is, if the labour market experiences localized crowding, and citizens may be in direct competition with non-citizens for their jobs, what might happen to citizen wages that are under this competitive environment?
PeterisP 7y ago
You can't avoid protectionist arguments when discussing H-1B process which is explicitly designed to achieve protectionist goals with protectionist-friendly means. You could have a very different immigration system, but there's no sign that the currently elected representatives or the voters targeted for the next election want to have or even would tolerate a non-protectionist system.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  In a conversation about which poison to drink, the only reasonable voice is the one advocating for not drinking any.
cat199 7y ago
> American people that run American businesses are prohibited from hiring people they believe to be best suited for the job. Or american people in positions of power are free to use that power against their fellow citizens by importing people to do the same work for cheaper? 1859 Atlanta Ga called, they want their labor market back..
- conanbatt 7y ago
  I hope you didn't post this from a computer made abroad, and collaborated in the exploitation of your fellow nationals.
whenanother 7y ago
corporations are allowed to exist because the provide jobs to it’s citizens. h1b visa abuse is literally going against the whole purpose of their existence.

pnw_hazor 7y ago

Trump has proposed merit based immigration which would reduce the need for H1B non-immigrant visas.

fred_is_fred 7y ago

Until other countries also decide to drop all their protections we'd be suckers to do it first.

president 7y ago

> I will make an argument for the cynics that believe they should be protected from competition: that immigration restrictions and caps like the H1B curtail the freedom of Americans to buy services from who they want to. American people that run American businesses are prohibited from hiring people they believe to be best suited for the job. This argument makes sense from the point of a business owner but not necessarily for the average American who will lose his job to a foreign worker that will work ungodly hours for considerably less pay. And over time, working ungodly hours will then become the norm and get worse and worse over time as the cycle continues. But yes, there is plenty of money to made if you're a business owner who can hire plenty of cheap and willing workers.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
If your model is that there is a fixed number of jobs, then bringing in one immigrant deprives one American of a job. The obvious consequence of this model is that if a country has a 5% unemployment rate, then it should simply expel 5% of its population, and suddenly the number of people will perfectly match the number of jobs. Of course, that's not how things work. It's not true that adding one person to the economy adds one person to the ranks of the unemployed, because adding an additional person also increases demand for goods and services, thus increasing the demand for labor.
- unimployed 7y ago
  I would like to add an additional layer of economic nuance here, beyond Econ 101 and BA Econ. While it is true that an economy is not necessarily a fixed “lump of labour”, you also need to take into consideration many more factors before making another blanket statement about how labour and an economy works. There are localized crowding effects that take place at all levels of labour (bottom to the top), and various market frictions which you ignore talking about. The economy is not perfect, perfectly efficient, or perfectly distributed. I won’t even get into monopolies and monopsonies, but suffice to say that market forces can be highly skewed. Markets are typically highly constrained in relative size and don’t freely grow independently. Adding 1000 more H1Bs this year does not mean the tech sector will grow by an additional 1500 U.S. citizens as well. Labour growth is organic and requires training and experience to grow. If most new tech positions are created for visas, citizens will never enter the field, or gain training and experience to compete. When crowding in a market increases, the market is very slow to react and expand. This is especially true in a more mature system like the USA, where the frontier days have mostly ended, and future growth is slower and more expensive. The U.S. economy has certainly shifted (perhaps especially so around 1970) into growing the pie less, and more growing your slice. Let’s not be naive either, because we know that visa data is publicly available. We should not rely too much on economic theory from Exon 101 when we can check the theory against what actually happens and is measured (empirics). As an experiment you should compare the annual H1B visa cap against the number of new “tech hires” in the economy. The trend you see is that every year, tech grows by ONLY the number of visas they are granted for that year. You probably think I’m pulling your leg, but please check for yourself. Now please tell me honestly... From the data, which theory of the labour market do you think best describes the history of the tech sector in the USA? Hint, the lump of labour fallacy is not always a fallacy. Now your follow up question is, if the labour market experiences localized crowding, and citizens may be in direct competition with non-citizens for their jobs, what might happen to citizen wages that are under this competitive environment?

PeterisP 7y ago

You can't avoid protectionist arguments when discussing H-1B process which is explicitly designed to achieve protectionist goals with protectionist-friendly means. You could have a very different immigration system, but there's no sign that the currently elected representatives or the voters targeted for the next election want to have or even would tolerate a non-protectionist system.

conanbatt 7y ago
In a conversation about which poison to drink, the only reasonable voice is the one advocating for not drinking any.

cat199 7y ago

> American people that run American businesses are prohibited from hiring people they believe to be best suited for the job. Or american people in positions of power are free to use that power against their fellow citizens by importing people to do the same work for cheaper? 1859 Atlanta Ga called, they want their labor market back..

conanbatt 7y ago
I hope you didn't post this from a computer made abroad, and collaborated in the exploitation of your fellow nationals.

whenanother 7y ago

corporations are allowed to exist because the provide jobs to it’s citizens. h1b visa abuse is literally going against the whole purpose of their existence.