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I am VERY pro-immigration. I do have concerns about the H1B program though. IMO it's not great for both immigrant workers, as well as non-immigrant workers beca

I am VERY pro-immigration. I do have concerns about the H1B program though. IMO it's not great for both immigrant workers, as well as non-immigrant workers because it creates a class of workers for whom it's harder to change employers which weakens their negotiation position. If this is the case for enough of the workforce it artificially depresses wages for everyone. I want to see a reform that makes it much easier for H1B workers to change employers.

bdangubic 1y ago
amen! that will never happen though, nothing ever happens here that helps the workers and whatever rights we have now are slowly dwindling (immigrants or otherwise…)
- andrekandre 1y ago
  > nothing ever happens here that helps the workers and whatever rights we have now are slowly dwindling its almost as if we need a 'workers party' or something... though i'd imagine first-past-the-post in the u.s makes that difficult.
catigula 1y ago
I want to use you as a bit of a sounding board, so don't take this as negative feedback. The problem is that the left, which was historically pro-labor, abdicated this position for racial reasons, and the right was always about maximizing the economic zone.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  Employment-based immigration policy just isn't controversial outside of very specific bubbles. Everyone who's considered the problem seriously, left and right, realizes that the H1B system is bad a point-based system is the way to go, which is why it's been part of every immigration reform proposal for over a decade with essentially no controversy. If this were the only aspect of immigration issues, or if people felt it was important enough to pull it out of broad immigration reform, it would pass in a heartbeat.
  - catigula 1y ago
    My understanding is that Bernie Sanders used to say that mass immigration was a "Koch brothers thing" and his tune on this has since changed to align with "progressive" ideas, but I might be mistaken. I already know that the right-wing supports h1bs, Trump himself said so.
    - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
      Even in his most immigration-skeptical era (https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367869/bernie-sanders-h-1b-skeptic.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367869/bernie-sanders...), Sanders always acknowledged that some companies genuinely need a skilled immigration program to hire the global best and brightest. And note his line about "offshore outsourcing companies"; the issue's become even less controversial now that the balance of H1B sponsors is shifting towards large American tech companies who genuinely pay market rate.
      - catigula 1y ago
        I don't really think that is what's being discussed here. Even literal Nazis were exempted from immigration controls on the basis of extreme merit.
      - bradlys 1y ago
        What if tech roles at big tech roles actually paid more like the same prestigious firms in finance in nyc? People in tech are so quick to shoot themselves in the foot.
        fijiaarone 1y ago
        The job of the high paid people in finance at prestigious firms is to look nice in an expensive suit. Know many people in tech with those qualifications?
        bradlys 1y ago
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  I saw a report recently about the political left in Denmark, who are basically one of the the only progressive movements in countries that understood what it takes to maintain support, and hence Denmark has had much less of a rise in support for far right parties than other countries in the world. Here's an article, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/magazine/denmark-immigration-policy-progressives.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/magazine/denmark-immigrat.... Basically, progressives in Denmark have argued for very strict immigration rules, the essential argument being that Denmark has an expensive social welfare state, and to get the populace to support the high taxes needed to pay for this, you can't just let anyone in who shows up on your doorstep. The American left could learn a ton of lessons from this. I may loath Greg Abbott for lots of reasons, but I largely support what he did bussing migrants to NYC and other liberal cities. Many people in these cities wanted to bask in the feelings of moral superiority by being "sanctuary cities", but public sentiment changed drastically when they actually had to start bearing a large portion of the cost of a flood of migrants.
  - ajmurmann 1y ago
    Is there a reason social benefits must be available to immigrants? It seems like those could result be tied to citizenship or something like a minimum amount of lifetime taxes someone most have paid.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  I think the problems are more complex and much harder to fix and more depressing. The actual policies by the Democratic party have been "pro-worker". Biden was strongly pro-union. I am hard pressed to think of any policy by the Biden administration that was focused on racial issues. However, it seems like the perception of the Democratic party is largely mixed in with leftists who don't even like the party. I think the real problem is that the median voter is either unable to, has no time to or no interest to understand basic economics and second-order consequences. We see this on both sides of the aisle. Policies like caps on credit card interest rates, rent control or no tax on tips are very, very popular while also being obviously bad after thinking about it for just 1 minute. This is compounded by there being relatively little discussion of policies like that. They get reported on but not discussed and analyzed. This takes us back to your point about the perception of the Democratic party. The media (probably because the median voter prefers it) will instead discuss issues that are more emotionally relatable, like the border being "overwhelmed", trans athletes, etc. which makes it less likely to get people to think about economic policy. This causes a preference for simple policies that seem to aim straight for the goal. Rent too high? Prohibit higher rent! Credit card fees too high? Prohibit high fees! Immigrants lower wages? Have fewer immigrant! Telling the median voter that H1-B visa holders are lowering wages due to the high friction of changing sponsors and that the solution is to loosen the visa restrictions is gonna go over well with much of the electorate. Even only the portion of initial problem statement will likely reach most voters in the form of "H1-B visas lower wages". Someone who will simply take that simplified issue and run with cutting down further on immigration will be much more likely to succeed with how public opinion is currently formed. All this stuff is why I love learning about policy and absolutely loath politics.
  - DenisM 1y ago
    I’ve read some analysis than many swing voters supported Trump because they were unhappy with the economic situation, not due to culture wars. In their minds, and words, Trump may change at least something while democrats will certainly change nothing. Whatever pro-labor policies Biden had they didn’t move the needle. What do you think of that?
    - 1y ago
- c0redump 1y ago
  I mostly agree with you, but i think there’s something you got wrong. The democrat establishment didn’t abdicate their pro-labor position for reasons of racial equity- this was only ever a cover story. The real reason is that they are totally beholden to powerful business interests that benefit from mass immigration, and the ensuing suppression of American labor movements. The racial equity bit is just the line that they feed to their voters.
- bernawil 1y ago
  was the left ever truly anti-immigration? I genuinely ask. Because the last leftwing explicitly pro-union movement I can remember was the late 90s/2000s anti-globalists, the ones that used to protest the G7 summits and the like. But they were in favor of immigration, so it always seemed contradictory. Anyway, it's not like the right doesn't have its own equally contradictory positions.
kstrauser 1y ago
I agree with all of that. I've seen employers treat workers with H1B visas as slaves, basically. Local employees had a pretty decent work-life balance, but H1B employees got calls at 8PM on a Friday night to add a feature. And why not? What were they going to do quit (and have, what is it, something like 48 hours to get out of the country)? I felt enormous sympathy for my coworkers here with that visa. Their lives sucked because there was little downside for sociopathic managers to make them suck. Most frustrating was when they were doing the same kind of work I was doing, like writing Python web services and whatnot. We absolutely could hire local employees to do those things. They weren't building quantum computers or something. Crappy employers gamed the system to get below-market-rate-salary employees and work them like rented mules. It was infuriating.
- lokar 1y ago
  It sucks that people are treated that way. While working at Google I worked with many many amazing H1B (and other kinds) visa holders. I did 3 interviews a week, sat on hiring committees (reading 10-15 packets a week) and had a pretty good gauge of what we could find. There was just no way I could see that we could replace these people with Americans. And they got paid top dollar and had the same wlb as everyone else (you could not generally tell what someone’s status was).
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    I fully, completely support the idea of visa programs running like that. If you want to pay top dollar for someone with unique skills to move here and help build our economy, I am fully behind this. But wanna use it as a way to undercut American jobs with 80-hour-a-week laborers, as I've personally witnessed? Nah. My criticisms against the H1B program are completely against the companies who abuse it. By all means, please do use it to bring in world-class scientists, researchers, and engineers!
  - guestbest 1y ago
    If the foreign candidates were so much superior than locally born candidates as you explained, why not just open a campus in that country and thus save the best employees from having to uproot from their native culture?
Spooky23 1y ago
In context of tech, H1B is great for the money people in the US and India. It suppresses wages in both countries and is a powerful plum for employee “loyalty”. There’s a whole industry of companies stoking the pipeline of cheap labor and corrupting the hiring process. In big dollar markets, the program is used more for special skills. But when a big bank or government contractor needs marginally skilled people onshore, they open an office in Nowhere, Arizona, and have a hard time finding J2EE developers. So some company from New Jersey will appear and provide a steady stream of workers making $25/hr. The calculus is that more H1=less offshore. The smart move would be to just let skilled workers from India, China, etc with a visa that doesn’t tie them to an employer. That would end the abusive labor practices and probably reduce the number of lower end workers or the incentive to deny entry level employment to US nationals.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  How does H1B suppress wages in India?
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    All those people skilled enough to get hired in the US (for massive increase in wages) don’t try to get similar positions in India, thus, nobody has to compete to pay for them.
    - bernawil 1y ago
      I don't think so. You can argue emmigration takes away supply in the labor side. Why would prices go down? Quite the contrary. I don't think it necessarily raises salaries in India though, because that market seems to have a hard cap somewhere around 36k/year but it sure does opens up positions for newcomers.
  - antithesizer 1y ago
    Because it surpresses wages in the US, so Indian employers do not need to offer as much compensation to keep local workers who are considering emigrating.

bdangubic 1y ago

amen! that will never happen though, nothing ever happens here that helps the workers and whatever rights we have now are slowly dwindling (immigrants or otherwise…)

andrekandre 1y ago
> nothing ever happens here that helps the workers and whatever rights we have now are slowly dwindling its almost as if we need a 'workers party' or something... though i'd imagine first-past-the-post in the u.s makes that difficult.

catigula 1y ago

I want to use you as a bit of a sounding board, so don't take this as negative feedback. The problem is that the left, which was historically pro-labor, abdicated this position for racial reasons, and the right was always about maximizing the economic zone.

SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
Employment-based immigration policy just isn't controversial outside of very specific bubbles. Everyone who's considered the problem seriously, left and right, realizes that the H1B system is bad a point-based system is the way to go, which is why it's been part of every immigration reform proposal for over a decade with essentially no controversy. If this were the only aspect of immigration issues, or if people felt it was important enough to pull it out of broad immigration reform, it would pass in a heartbeat.
- catigula 1y ago
  My understanding is that Bernie Sanders used to say that mass immigration was a "Koch brothers thing" and his tune on this has since changed to align with "progressive" ideas, but I might be mistaken. I already know that the right-wing supports h1bs, Trump himself said so.
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    Even in his most immigration-skeptical era (https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367869/bernie-sanders-h-1b-skeptic.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367869/bernie-sanders...), Sanders always acknowledged that some companies genuinely need a skilled immigration program to hire the global best and brightest. And note his line about "offshore outsourcing companies"; the issue's become even less controversial now that the balance of H1B sponsors is shifting towards large American tech companies who genuinely pay market rate.
    - catigula 1y ago
      I don't really think that is what's being discussed here. Even literal Nazis were exempted from immigration controls on the basis of extreme merit.
    - bradlys 1y ago
      What if tech roles at big tech roles actually paid more like the same prestigious firms in finance in nyc? People in tech are so quick to shoot themselves in the foot.
      - fijiaarone 1y ago
        The job of the high paid people in finance at prestigious firms is to look nice in an expensive suit. Know many people in tech with those qualifications?
        bradlys 1y ago
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
I saw a report recently about the political left in Denmark, who are basically one of the the only progressive movements in countries that understood what it takes to maintain support, and hence Denmark has had much less of a rise in support for far right parties than other countries in the world. Here's an article, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/magazine/denmark-immigration-policy-progressives.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/magazine/denmark-immigrat.... Basically, progressives in Denmark have argued for very strict immigration rules, the essential argument being that Denmark has an expensive social welfare state, and to get the populace to support the high taxes needed to pay for this, you can't just let anyone in who shows up on your doorstep. The American left could learn a ton of lessons from this. I may loath Greg Abbott for lots of reasons, but I largely support what he did bussing migrants to NYC and other liberal cities. Many people in these cities wanted to bask in the feelings of moral superiority by being "sanctuary cities", but public sentiment changed drastically when they actually had to start bearing a large portion of the cost of a flood of migrants.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  Is there a reason social benefits must be available to immigrants? It seems like those could result be tied to citizenship or something like a minimum amount of lifetime taxes someone most have paid.
ajmurmann 1y ago
I think the problems are more complex and much harder to fix and more depressing. The actual policies by the Democratic party have been "pro-worker". Biden was strongly pro-union. I am hard pressed to think of any policy by the Biden administration that was focused on racial issues. However, it seems like the perception of the Democratic party is largely mixed in with leftists who don't even like the party. I think the real problem is that the median voter is either unable to, has no time to or no interest to understand basic economics and second-order consequences. We see this on both sides of the aisle. Policies like caps on credit card interest rates, rent control or no tax on tips are very, very popular while also being obviously bad after thinking about it for just 1 minute. This is compounded by there being relatively little discussion of policies like that. They get reported on but not discussed and analyzed. This takes us back to your point about the perception of the Democratic party. The media (probably because the median voter prefers it) will instead discuss issues that are more emotionally relatable, like the border being "overwhelmed", trans athletes, etc. which makes it less likely to get people to think about economic policy. This causes a preference for simple policies that seem to aim straight for the goal. Rent too high? Prohibit higher rent! Credit card fees too high? Prohibit high fees! Immigrants lower wages? Have fewer immigrant! Telling the median voter that H1-B visa holders are lowering wages due to the high friction of changing sponsors and that the solution is to loosen the visa restrictions is gonna go over well with much of the electorate. Even only the portion of initial problem statement will likely reach most voters in the form of "H1-B visas lower wages". Someone who will simply take that simplified issue and run with cutting down further on immigration will be much more likely to succeed with how public opinion is currently formed. All this stuff is why I love learning about policy and absolutely loath politics.
- DenisM 1y ago
  I’ve read some analysis than many swing voters supported Trump because they were unhappy with the economic situation, not due to culture wars. In their minds, and words, Trump may change at least something while democrats will certainly change nothing. Whatever pro-labor policies Biden had they didn’t move the needle. What do you think of that?
  - 1y ago
c0redump 1y ago
I mostly agree with you, but i think there’s something you got wrong. The democrat establishment didn’t abdicate their pro-labor position for reasons of racial equity- this was only ever a cover story. The real reason is that they are totally beholden to powerful business interests that benefit from mass immigration, and the ensuing suppression of American labor movements. The racial equity bit is just the line that they feed to their voters.
bernawil 1y ago
was the left ever truly anti-immigration? I genuinely ask. Because the last leftwing explicitly pro-union movement I can remember was the late 90s/2000s anti-globalists, the ones that used to protest the G7 summits and the like. But they were in favor of immigration, so it always seemed contradictory. Anyway, it's not like the right doesn't have its own equally contradictory positions.

kstrauser 1y ago

I agree with all of that. I've seen employers treat workers with H1B visas as slaves, basically. Local employees had a pretty decent work-life balance, but H1B employees got calls at 8PM on a Friday night to add a feature. And why not? What were they going to do quit (and have, what is it, something like 48 hours to get out of the country)? I felt enormous sympathy for my coworkers here with that visa. Their lives sucked because there was little downside for sociopathic managers to make them suck. Most frustrating was when they were doing the same kind of work I was doing, like writing Python web services and whatnot. We absolutely could hire local employees to do those things. They weren't building quantum computers or something. Crappy employers gamed the system to get below-market-rate-salary employees and work them like rented mules. It was infuriating.

lokar 1y ago
It sucks that people are treated that way. While working at Google I worked with many many amazing H1B (and other kinds) visa holders. I did 3 interviews a week, sat on hiring committees (reading 10-15 packets a week) and had a pretty good gauge of what we could find. There was just no way I could see that we could replace these people with Americans. And they got paid top dollar and had the same wlb as everyone else (you could not generally tell what someone’s status was).
- kstrauser 1y ago
  I fully, completely support the idea of visa programs running like that. If you want to pay top dollar for someone with unique skills to move here and help build our economy, I am fully behind this. But wanna use it as a way to undercut American jobs with 80-hour-a-week laborers, as I've personally witnessed? Nah. My criticisms against the H1B program are completely against the companies who abuse it. By all means, please do use it to bring in world-class scientists, researchers, and engineers!
- guestbest 1y ago
  If the foreign candidates were so much superior than locally born candidates as you explained, why not just open a campus in that country and thus save the best employees from having to uproot from their native culture?

Spooky23 1y ago

In context of tech, H1B is great for the money people in the US and India. It suppresses wages in both countries and is a powerful plum for employee “loyalty”. There’s a whole industry of companies stoking the pipeline of cheap labor and corrupting the hiring process. In big dollar markets, the program is used more for special skills. But when a big bank or government contractor needs marginally skilled people onshore, they open an office in Nowhere, Arizona, and have a hard time finding J2EE developers. So some company from New Jersey will appear and provide a steady stream of workers making $25/hr. The calculus is that more H1=less offshore. The smart move would be to just let skilled workers from India, China, etc with a visa that doesn’t tie them to an employer. That would end the abusive labor practices and probably reduce the number of lower end workers or the incentive to deny entry level employment to US nationals.

rightbyte 1y ago
How does H1B suppress wages in India?
- Aeolun 1y ago
  All those people skilled enough to get hired in the US (for massive increase in wages) don’t try to get similar positions in India, thus, nobody has to compete to pay for them.
  - bernawil 1y ago
    I don't think so. You can argue emmigration takes away supply in the labor side. Why would prices go down? Quite the contrary. I don't think it necessarily raises salaries in India though, because that market seems to have a hard cap somewhere around 36k/year but it sure does opens up positions for newcomers.
- antithesizer 1y ago
  Because it surpresses wages in the US, so Indian employers do not need to offer as much compensation to keep local workers who are considering emigrating.