4 ms·

It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society,

by Sol- 12d ago

It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.

tekla 12d ago
It is pretty interesting to watch. "I'm pro immigration EXCEPT specifically the kind that directly affects me"
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
- happytoexplain 12d ago
  This is the fallacy of inventing a hypocrite by combining individual opinions from multiple people. Not one single tech person I know in person has ever been "pro immigration" or "anti immigration". They all want reasonable immigration, and part of that has always meant not harming the livelihoods of existing citizens. That's the subjective part. Edit: This is also a good example of the problem where we assume a person's opinion when they are not loud/explicit about a topic. E.g. a tech person might not have loud opinions on H1Bs, or they might loudly denounce e.g. Trump's immigrant detention centers, and you might falsely then slot that person into a blunt binary like "pro immigration". Then, when their lives are negatively affected by H1B policy, they speak against it, and you then think of them as a hypocrite even though they did nothing hypocritical.
  - r_lee 12d ago
    I've seen the whole "nobody is illegal" be quite a popular sentiment in recent years and that (when talking about the US) that as long as they're ok people, they should be let in, seemingly oblivious to the incredibly strict US visa requirements for people from Europe etc. I'm sure this is at least partly a case of the loud minority, but it's hard to tell sometimes
    - rbanffy 12d ago
      > oblivious to the incredibly strict US visa requirements for people from Europe etc. Their strange notions of what democracy looks like might feel dangerous to the current government.
- r_lee 12d ago
  I mean that's what it's always been about, be virtuous about everything unless it actually affects you and your gated neighborhood
  - switchbak 12d ago
    If you live in a nation, you do have some say in the policies that directly affect your livelihood. This is the whole reason we have nations. One need not (always) invoke racism or xenophobia to explain why folks might take issue with high levels of immigration. It’s so politically charged now that people’s brains just turn off and everyone calls each other Nazis. But it is a discussion that does require nuance, especially as things like aging populations are really changing things immensely.
    - DonHopkins 11d ago
      > It's so politically charged now that people's brains just turn off and everyone calls each other Nazis. What's worse is when people's brains just turn off and they defend and support an actual trillionaire Nazi with immense political power and an international propaganda platform. You're replying to someone who is on the record defending Musk's Nazi salute by calling people names and attacking anyone who recognizes it for what it is or points out how it aligns with everything else Musk has said and done. Set showdead=true and read his posting history. If he didn't want people reading his full-throated defense of Musk's Nazi salute and his attacks on anyone who disagrees, he shouldn't have posted them. Nevertheless, he'll attack you for merely reading it, as if you're the weirdo for reading what he intentionally posted, rather than him for posting it publicly. Ask him to post a video of himself performing that Nazi salute and he flips out and calls you names. So he plainly understands what it means: he thinks it's defensible when a trillionaire oligarch does it on international television, and feels obligated to defend it himself, but would never perform that exact same Nazi salute himself -- and becomes irrational and hostile when asked to explain why not. By "calling people names," I mean his own words: Political: "social justice warriors," "in an echo chamber," "literally fascism," "a bit fascist," "silencing the opposition," and "censoring others." Mental-health smears: "lost their mind," "consistently hostile," "frustrated," "so upset," "getting angry," "unhealthy," "unhinged," "What is wrong with you?" and "Maybe they can get you the help you need." Dishonesty and stupidity: "are you pretending to be stupid here?", "your 'act'," "projecting," "lying and spreading lies," and "I'm here in good faith (unlike you)." Personal attacks: "emotionally attached," "unable to take criticism," "convinced that no matter what, you're right," "used to always having your way," "reevaluate your life choices," "I find your conduct pretty embarrassing here," "You need to self-reflect," and "You need to cool down." That's his argument technique: replace evidence with ideological labels, personal attacks, tone-policing, reality-reversal, and amateur psychiatric diagnoses. Precisely the nuance-free, brain-off political name-calling you rightly warned against.
- switchbak 12d ago
  Or you know, you could take issue with specific concerns of specific implementations. Driven mostly by corporate greed and cynicism, over a great many decades. Also in an industry that you’re in and know something about. You’re still allowed to have opinions, even if the situation does directly affect you. In fact, that sounds like exactly the situation you ought to weigh in on. Immigration or otherwise.
- sensanaty 12d ago
  I'm not a yank but it seems to me the actual argument here is that H1Bs suppress the wages of locals, either directly by hiring foreigners which are less price-sensitive in terms of wages compared to locals or indirectly by moving jobs overseas, thus eliminating the jobs altogether. You can be pro-immigrant while also being pro-not-fucking-people-over, for example by forcing companies to have a baseline "minimum wage" for H1Bs that match what a local would be paid (or higher!) for the role. It doesn't have to be a "let in a gazillion people or 0", you can choose a middle value.
MrBuddyCasino 12d ago
If you believe that the market sets prices via supply and demand in general, do you believe this is true for the labor market as well? If not, why?
- sunshowers 12d ago
  Unlike offshoring, immigration increases supply and demand at the same time. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
  - happytoexplain 9d ago
    This fallacy gets pointed to constantly, but it's not actually part of most arguments. I.e. it's a strawman. Bad immigration policy can and does negatively affect opportunities and salaries. Immigration in general does not necessarily do so, and an argument to that effect would be an example of the Lump of Labor fallacy, but that is not the argument being made.
- bijowo1676 12d ago
  Elon Musk was H1B after his study at UPenn, since then he created a lot of companies, jobs, and wealth for investors and himself. Do you think Elon Musk (and every other foreigner who founded US company) diluted supply of labor, or expanded supply of jobs ???
  - happytoexplain 9d ago
    Even disregarding his incredible antisocial disorder which does real harm to our entire society, what does the most extreme individual have to do with statistics? That's the opposite of a good example.
    - bijowo1676 9d ago
      Its not an extreme example, you can google or ask chatgpt for more example of foreigners who founded the biggest companies and created trillions of dollar of value. For ex Microsoft was a failing company and losing market share under white american Steve Ballmer, reaching $230 bln market cap. It took an Indian ceo to make microsoft a two trillion dollar company, there countless examples like these. I am not even talking about how fundamental research by foreigners gets converted into billions of dollars of gdp and market value (and jobs ofc). The argument that foreigners “steal” jobs is fundamentally flawed and is coming from ignorance/bigotry
cogman10 12d ago
This isn't a MAGA thing. H1-B is a bad program. I have no problem with someone getting a green card, citizenship, TPS, etc in the US. I think there should be a lot faster routes for that. Let the software devs come in and become citizens or permanent residents, I don't care about that. What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment. That means they'll accept lower wages and worse working conditions as they can't simply quit and switch jobs. The entire thing is designed to suppress wages in general.
- superxpro12 12d ago
  I remember when twitter was sold and Elon "Nazi" Musk fired like 4/5 of the staff, all that remained were H1B's
- emodendroket 12d ago
  If you look at it in a vacuum sure. When the same administration is actually floating the idea of making the program more coercive by making it so you can be deported immediately after losing your job I think it’s pretty reasonable to recognize the coercive nature of the program isn’t their concern.
  - cogman10 12d ago
    Exactly. My entire problem with H1-B is the coercive nature of it. That is the thing that is ultimately designed to suppress wages. There's a bunch of levers you could pull to stop it from being such a huge negative, faster paths to citizenship, looser requirements for switching jobs, higher minimum salaries. All these things would improve conditions for the H1-B applicant. That's why I call it a bad program.
    - emodendroket 12d ago
      Put another way I don’t think this policy is a good way to address the issues you’re talking about because it’s just moving jobs out of the U.S. altogether.
sunshowers 12d ago
all H1B posts turn into Klan rallies.
- azinman2 12d ago
  Except that’s clearly not the case here.
tokai 12d ago
So if you're not pro social dumping you're anti immigration? Weird when both are about chauvinism against foreigners.
cheney_2004 12d ago
Its time to have a politics which puts the workers needs at its center. I can confidently say that the current system harms both workers and immigrants.
WarmWash 12d ago
"Middle America hates immigrants because they are racists. I don't want H1-Bs because companies use them as cheaper labor, undercutting my value." Absolute peak "lost in the political sauce". Most people aren't aware that Bernie Sanders has historically been very anti-immigration, before just becoming an old guy who echos whatever the current young people vibe is.
- LastTrain 12d ago
  Was he “let’s put some limits on the number of H1Bs” anti immigration or was he “let’s deport 100 million people and shoot some innocent citizens in the face while doing it” anti immigration?
  - WarmWash 12d ago
    We won't ever know. I know this sounds like a cop out, but Bernie isn't Ghandi just because he thinks socialism is cool. The immigrants who got shot were "fascist riot inciters" and it all just vanishes into the news media abyss. Same thing how the left media does full lifetime bios on deported immigrants while the right media only reports on the gangsters and rapists who get deported.
    - LastTrain 12d ago
      Oh we know. What I also know is: I can be friends with someone who disagrees with me about whether Bernie Sanders policies are good for America. I cannot be friends with a person who is an apologist for ICE wearing masks, driving unmarked cars, illegally detaining American citizens, and killing innocent people with zero accountability. Have a nice day.
      - WarmWash 12d ago
        I don't see anywhere that I apologized for it? My observation is simply that we don't know what Bernie's immigration enforcement would look like.
      - 9d ago

by Sol- 12d ago

It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.

tekla 12d ago

It is pretty interesting to watch. "I'm pro immigration EXCEPT specifically the kind that directly affects me"

deleted 12d ago
[deleted]
happytoexplain 12d ago
This is the fallacy of inventing a hypocrite by combining individual opinions from multiple people. Not one single tech person I know in person has ever been "pro immigration" or "anti immigration". They all want reasonable immigration, and part of that has always meant not harming the livelihoods of existing citizens. That's the subjective part. Edit: This is also a good example of the problem where we assume a person's opinion when they are not loud/explicit about a topic. E.g. a tech person might not have loud opinions on H1Bs, or they might loudly denounce e.g. Trump's immigrant detention centers, and you might falsely then slot that person into a blunt binary like "pro immigration". Then, when their lives are negatively affected by H1B policy, they speak against it, and you then think of them as a hypocrite even though they did nothing hypocritical.
- r_lee 12d ago
  I've seen the whole "nobody is illegal" be quite a popular sentiment in recent years and that (when talking about the US) that as long as they're ok people, they should be let in, seemingly oblivious to the incredibly strict US visa requirements for people from Europe etc. I'm sure this is at least partly a case of the loud minority, but it's hard to tell sometimes
  - rbanffy 12d ago
    > oblivious to the incredibly strict US visa requirements for people from Europe etc. Their strange notions of what democracy looks like might feel dangerous to the current government.
r_lee 12d ago
I mean that's what it's always been about, be virtuous about everything unless it actually affects you and your gated neighborhood
- switchbak 12d ago
  If you live in a nation, you do have some say in the policies that directly affect your livelihood. This is the whole reason we have nations. One need not (always) invoke racism or xenophobia to explain why folks might take issue with high levels of immigration. It’s so politically charged now that people’s brains just turn off and everyone calls each other Nazis. But it is a discussion that does require nuance, especially as things like aging populations are really changing things immensely.
  - DonHopkins 11d ago
    > It's so politically charged now that people's brains just turn off and everyone calls each other Nazis. What's worse is when people's brains just turn off and they defend and support an actual trillionaire Nazi with immense political power and an international propaganda platform. You're replying to someone who is on the record defending Musk's Nazi salute by calling people names and attacking anyone who recognizes it for what it is or points out how it aligns with everything else Musk has said and done. Set showdead=true and read his posting history. If he didn't want people reading his full-throated defense of Musk's Nazi salute and his attacks on anyone who disagrees, he shouldn't have posted them. Nevertheless, he'll attack you for merely reading it, as if you're the weirdo for reading what he intentionally posted, rather than him for posting it publicly. Ask him to post a video of himself performing that Nazi salute and he flips out and calls you names. So he plainly understands what it means: he thinks it's defensible when a trillionaire oligarch does it on international television, and feels obligated to defend it himself, but would never perform that exact same Nazi salute himself -- and becomes irrational and hostile when asked to explain why not. By "calling people names," I mean his own words: Political: "social justice warriors," "in an echo chamber," "literally fascism," "a bit fascist," "silencing the opposition," and "censoring others." Mental-health smears: "lost their mind," "consistently hostile," "frustrated," "so upset," "getting angry," "unhealthy," "unhinged," "What is wrong with you?" and "Maybe they can get you the help you need." Dishonesty and stupidity: "are you pretending to be stupid here?", "your 'act'," "projecting," "lying and spreading lies," and "I'm here in good faith (unlike you)." Personal attacks: "emotionally attached," "unable to take criticism," "convinced that no matter what, you're right," "used to always having your way," "reevaluate your life choices," "I find your conduct pretty embarrassing here," "You need to self-reflect," and "You need to cool down." That's his argument technique: replace evidence with ideological labels, personal attacks, tone-policing, reality-reversal, and amateur psychiatric diagnoses. Precisely the nuance-free, brain-off political name-calling you rightly warned against.
switchbak 12d ago
Or you know, you could take issue with specific concerns of specific implementations. Driven mostly by corporate greed and cynicism, over a great many decades. Also in an industry that you’re in and know something about. You’re still allowed to have opinions, even if the situation does directly affect you. In fact, that sounds like exactly the situation you ought to weigh in on. Immigration or otherwise.
sensanaty 12d ago
I'm not a yank but it seems to me the actual argument here is that H1Bs suppress the wages of locals, either directly by hiring foreigners which are less price-sensitive in terms of wages compared to locals or indirectly by moving jobs overseas, thus eliminating the jobs altogether. You can be pro-immigrant while also being pro-not-fucking-people-over, for example by forcing companies to have a baseline "minimum wage" for H1Bs that match what a local would be paid (or higher!) for the role. It doesn't have to be a "let in a gazillion people or 0", you can choose a middle value.

MrBuddyCasino 12d ago

If you believe that the market sets prices via supply and demand in general, do you believe this is true for the labor market as well? If not, why?

sunshowers 12d ago
Unlike offshoring, immigration increases supply and demand at the same time. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
- happytoexplain 9d ago
  This fallacy gets pointed to constantly, but it's not actually part of most arguments. I.e. it's a strawman. Bad immigration policy can and does negatively affect opportunities and salaries. Immigration in general does not necessarily do so, and an argument to that effect would be an example of the Lump of Labor fallacy, but that is not the argument being made.
bijowo1676 12d ago
Elon Musk was H1B after his study at UPenn, since then he created a lot of companies, jobs, and wealth for investors and himself. Do you think Elon Musk (and every other foreigner who founded US company) diluted supply of labor, or expanded supply of jobs ???
- happytoexplain 9d ago
  Even disregarding his incredible antisocial disorder which does real harm to our entire society, what does the most extreme individual have to do with statistics? That's the opposite of a good example.
  - bijowo1676 9d ago
    Its not an extreme example, you can google or ask chatgpt for more example of foreigners who founded the biggest companies and created trillions of dollar of value. For ex Microsoft was a failing company and losing market share under white american Steve Ballmer, reaching $230 bln market cap. It took an Indian ceo to make microsoft a two trillion dollar company, there countless examples like these. I am not even talking about how fundamental research by foreigners gets converted into billions of dollars of gdp and market value (and jobs ofc). The argument that foreigners “steal” jobs is fundamentally flawed and is coming from ignorance/bigotry

cogman10 12d ago

This isn't a MAGA thing. H1-B is a bad program. I have no problem with someone getting a green card, citizenship, TPS, etc in the US. I think there should be a lot faster routes for that. Let the software devs come in and become citizens or permanent residents, I don't care about that. What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment. That means they'll accept lower wages and worse working conditions as they can't simply quit and switch jobs. The entire thing is designed to suppress wages in general.

superxpro12 12d ago
I remember when twitter was sold and Elon "Nazi" Musk fired like 4/5 of the staff, all that remained were H1B's
emodendroket 12d ago
If you look at it in a vacuum sure. When the same administration is actually floating the idea of making the program more coercive by making it so you can be deported immediately after losing your job I think it’s pretty reasonable to recognize the coercive nature of the program isn’t their concern.
- cogman10 12d ago
  Exactly. My entire problem with H1-B is the coercive nature of it. That is the thing that is ultimately designed to suppress wages. There's a bunch of levers you could pull to stop it from being such a huge negative, faster paths to citizenship, looser requirements for switching jobs, higher minimum salaries. All these things would improve conditions for the H1-B applicant. That's why I call it a bad program.
  - emodendroket 12d ago
    Put another way I don’t think this policy is a good way to address the issues you’re talking about because it’s just moving jobs out of the U.S. altogether.

sunshowers 12d ago

all H1B posts turn into Klan rallies.

azinman2 12d ago
Except that’s clearly not the case here.

tokai 12d ago

So if you're not pro social dumping you're anti immigration? Weird when both are about chauvinism against foreigners.

cheney_2004 12d ago

Its time to have a politics which puts the workers needs at its center. I can confidently say that the current system harms both workers and immigrants.

WarmWash 12d ago

"Middle America hates immigrants because they are racists. I don't want H1-Bs because companies use them as cheaper labor, undercutting my value." Absolute peak "lost in the political sauce". Most people aren't aware that Bernie Sanders has historically been very anti-immigration, before just becoming an old guy who echos whatever the current young people vibe is.

LastTrain 12d ago
Was he “let’s put some limits on the number of H1Bs” anti immigration or was he “let’s deport 100 million people and shoot some innocent citizens in the face while doing it” anti immigration?
- WarmWash 12d ago
  We won't ever know. I know this sounds like a cop out, but Bernie isn't Ghandi just because he thinks socialism is cool. The immigrants who got shot were "fascist riot inciters" and it all just vanishes into the news media abyss. Same thing how the left media does full lifetime bios on deported immigrants while the right media only reports on the gangsters and rapists who get deported.
  - LastTrain 12d ago
    Oh we know. What I also know is: I can be friends with someone who disagrees with me about whether Bernie Sanders policies are good for America. I cannot be friends with a person who is an apologist for ICE wearing masks, driving unmarked cars, illegally detaining American citizens, and killing innocent people with zero accountability. Have a nice day.
    - WarmWash 12d ago
      I don't see anywhere that I apologized for it? My observation is simply that we don't know what Bernie's immigration enforcement would look like.
    - 9d ago