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The issue with the H1-B is that those workers are then close to trapped in a specific company at specific terms. It would almost certainly be better to allow em

The issue with the H1-B is that those workers are then close to trapped in a specific company at specific terms. It would almost certainly be better to allow employers to sponsor immigrants for a green card, or a 6-year residency card or something of that ilk, because then the employee can leave a bad working environment/move to where they are better suited. Additionally, it is problematic that the government is encouraging developers to come and put people out of work. Fundamentally, that's what tech jobs are supposed to do: by making things more efficient, you have fewer people making more money. Funnily enough, immigration into the US has traditionally been to fill lower-class working roles. The slave trade was the first and most obvious example of this, but we also have Chinese, Irish and southern European immigrants in the 19th century. If immigration is what made our country an economic powerhouse (and at the very least, the slave trade was one of the primary contributors to our capitalist development), then we should be encouraging all immigrants, not just those who can be immediately identified as "strategically important."

VLM 13y ago
"and at the very least, the slave trade was one of the primary contributors to our capitalist development" You're going to get the amateur historians all wound up with talk like that. A better explanation was the Whitney cotton gin enabled mechanized processing about a century before the Rust mechanized harvester was invented, so you had explosive growth in a couple strategies for providing human cotton pickers ranging from ownership pre civil war to indentured servitude / peasanthood after the civil war. The gin wasn't enough to kick industrialization into high gear, although I'm sure it helped a tiny irrelevant bit. By the time they (the people) were made obsolete by the Rust Harvester, and shipped up north to the factories, we already had the worlds biggest factories to ship them to... so much for that argument. The south has never amounted to anything from an industrial standpoint until very recently and even that's a bit of a stretch. Or if you were alluding to the earlier triangle of unhappiness (whatever it was called, triangle of something miserable anyway) then we had pretty much maxed out molasses/rum/human transportation well before the industrial revolution. The limiter was like how much land can you cultivate in the Caribbean and how many slaves can you ship there, they didn't have industrialization in the new england rum distillation industry as a limiter to growth at that time so there was no pressure for improvement. Distillation is not much of a motivator for industrialization anyway. Every couple years I alternate between brewing/distilling doesn't get enough credit for industrialization and thinking they already get too much credit. A pretty good argument overall, other than getting the relevance of slaves in capitalism all wrong.

VLM 13y ago

"and at the very least, the slave trade was one of the primary contributors to our capitalist development" You're going to get the amateur historians all wound up with talk like that. A better explanation was the Whitney cotton gin enabled mechanized processing about a century before the Rust mechanized harvester was invented, so you had explosive growth in a couple strategies for providing human cotton pickers ranging from ownership pre civil war to indentured servitude / peasanthood after the civil war. The gin wasn't enough to kick industrialization into high gear, although I'm sure it helped a tiny irrelevant bit. By the time they (the people) were made obsolete by the Rust Harvester, and shipped up north to the factories, we already had the worlds biggest factories to ship them to... so much for that argument. The south has never amounted to anything from an industrial standpoint until very recently and even that's a bit of a stretch. Or if you were alluding to the earlier triangle of unhappiness (whatever it was called, triangle of something miserable anyway) then we had pretty much maxed out molasses/rum/human transportation well before the industrial revolution. The limiter was like how much land can you cultivate in the Caribbean and how many slaves can you ship there, they didn't have industrialization in the new england rum distillation industry as a limiter to growth at that time so there was no pressure for improvement. Distillation is not much of a motivator for industrialization anyway. Every couple years I alternate between brewing/distilling doesn't get enough credit for industrialization and thinking they already get too much credit. A pretty good argument overall, other than getting the relevance of slaves in capitalism all wrong.