3 ms·

This isn't a zero sum game for you and the H-1B visa holders. The H-1B and other skilled labor visas select for individuals who are intelligent, mobile, and ent

by ak217 12y ago

This isn't a zero sum game for you and the H-1B visa holders. The H-1B and other skilled labor visas select for individuals who are intelligent, mobile, and entrepreneurial. Those individuals and their families are here temporarily unless they can secure a green card (a tremendously difficult process that requires limiting their employment choices, handicapping them in their earning potential compared to you). Most Americans expressing your sentiment have no idea how much hassle immigrants have to go through in this process or every time they cross the border. Historically, the United States has relied on this enrichment process to invigorate its economy with not just cheap migrant labor, but cheap entrepreneurial, technological, and scientific expertise. Many countries have suffered severe brain drain at the hands of the US precisely because of H-1B and other immigration policies. The US owes its technological and scientific leadership in many, many sectors to these skilled immigrants, who had to come here to get the environment they could thrive in. Their potential would have been wasted elsewhere. Look around you. Many of the companies that constitute your labor market are built by people who took a chance and risked everything to move to the States, or people who moved here as their children. They helped the technology industry and the US as a whole to innovate its way out of the anti-utopia you describe, and will continue to play a key role in our worldwide technological leadership. They deserve to be here.

winter_blue 12y ago
> Most Americans expressing your sentiment have no idea how much hassle immigrants have to go through in this process or every time they cross the border. Exactly. Most Americans don't seem to know how incredibly hard it is to immigrate to this country. They think it's as easy today as it was for their ancestors who came here a hundred years or so ago. The fact is, if you are not seeking refugee or asylee status, and if don't have close family (a parent, sibling, or child) in the US, it is incredibly fucking hard to immigrate here. Most of the rest of the immigrants, in the Employment-Based Green Card quotas go through a process that starts with them entering the U.S. on an H-1B or an L-1, and then doing work of such high quality that the employer may be persuaded into going through the arduous process of securing him/her a green card. In my opinion what we're seeing here is just the plain old anti-immigrant fear mongering that been around since a very long time -- except that instead of bitching about Irish laborers pushing down wages in the low-income segment, it's about how smart, highly-skilled, college-educated immigrants are "destroying" the American economy and culture. On one level, it's stupid -- because these people actually contribute to the economy. On another level, it's plain old die-hard racism cloaked in a fable about job-theft. If you disagree on the race part, just run through some comment threads on this topic, and invariably there are many whose concerns have more to do with the fact that the would-be immigrant is of Indian (or some other foreign) heritage, rather than their claim about how he or she "stole" their job...
- nitrogen 12y ago
  One doesn't have to be racist to see the potential hypocrisy of laying off thousands of employees while claiming to be unable to hire locally. Arguments to the contrary might be better served by discussing why those employees couldn't do what an expanded allotment of H1Bs could.
  - winter_blue 12y ago
    It's been pointed out in other threads that 12,000 of Microsoft's 18,000 cuts are going to be outside the U.S. (primarily former Nokia employees), and the U.S. cuts likely include H-1B workers. If they don't, it's probably because Microsoft selected the most talented of the most talented for H-1B and EB-2/EB-3 sponsorship. Microsoft is known to concurrently apply for an EB-based green card along with an H-1B, and most employees simply remain on H-1B status while waiting for their EB-based green card (which for certain nationalities, can take a decade to procure). On the other hard, Microsoft having to cut jobs today, doesn't mean that all its arguments in the past decade have suddenly been undermined. A sudden bout of misfortune doesn't mean that its and Bill Gates statements on the utter brokenness of the U.S. immigration system was a lie, and in bad faith. If you remember, Bill Gates first testified in Congress about the problems with U.S. immigration system back in 2007, before the recession.
  - mnglkhn2 12y ago
    Here are a few arguments: 1. 12k out of the 18k employees let go are from Nokia, hence not in US 2. Out of the 6k presumably US employees let go, we don't know their functions: marketing, sales, etc. We just assume in bulk they are IT devs. 3. Nobody put on the table how many H1Bs does MS currently have on its workforce and at which annual rate do they bring in new H1Bs. It looks like MS has somewhere between 2-3k annual H1Bs. 4. Does anybody mention how many are H1Bs out of those 6k employees that were let go? Unless we discuss this with hard numbers in front of us, it is just arguing from our internal fears/demons.
- lgleason 12y ago
  A lot of us are not against immigration. The problem is that the current system is broken and the H1B is not the solution. It can be used to benefit everybody, but the current solutions are not.

by ak217 12y ago

winter_blue 12y ago

> Most Americans expressing your sentiment have no idea how much hassle immigrants have to go through in this process or every time they cross the border. Exactly. Most Americans don't seem to know how incredibly hard it is to immigrate to this country. They think it's as easy today as it was for their ancestors who came here a hundred years or so ago. The fact is, if you are not seeking refugee or asylee status, and if don't have close family (a parent, sibling, or child) in the US, it is incredibly fucking hard to immigrate here. Most of the rest of the immigrants, in the Employment-Based Green Card quotas go through a process that starts with them entering the U.S. on an H-1B or an L-1, and then doing work of such high quality that the employer may be persuaded into going through the arduous process of securing him/her a green card. In my opinion what we're seeing here is just the plain old anti-immigrant fear mongering that been around since a very long time -- except that instead of bitching about Irish laborers pushing down wages in the low-income segment, it's about how smart, highly-skilled, college-educated immigrants are "destroying" the American economy and culture. On one level, it's stupid -- because these people actually contribute to the economy. On another level, it's plain old die-hard racism cloaked in a fable about job-theft. If you disagree on the race part, just run through some comment threads on this topic, and invariably there are many whose concerns have more to do with the fact that the would-be immigrant is of Indian (or some other foreign) heritage, rather than their claim about how he or she "stole" their job...

nitrogen 12y ago
One doesn't have to be racist to see the potential hypocrisy of laying off thousands of employees while claiming to be unable to hire locally. Arguments to the contrary might be better served by discussing why those employees couldn't do what an expanded allotment of H1Bs could.
- winter_blue 12y ago
  It's been pointed out in other threads that 12,000 of Microsoft's 18,000 cuts are going to be outside the U.S. (primarily former Nokia employees), and the U.S. cuts likely include H-1B workers. If they don't, it's probably because Microsoft selected the most talented of the most talented for H-1B and EB-2/EB-3 sponsorship. Microsoft is known to concurrently apply for an EB-based green card along with an H-1B, and most employees simply remain on H-1B status while waiting for their EB-based green card (which for certain nationalities, can take a decade to procure). On the other hard, Microsoft having to cut jobs today, doesn't mean that all its arguments in the past decade have suddenly been undermined. A sudden bout of misfortune doesn't mean that its and Bill Gates statements on the utter brokenness of the U.S. immigration system was a lie, and in bad faith. If you remember, Bill Gates first testified in Congress about the problems with U.S. immigration system back in 2007, before the recession.
- mnglkhn2 12y ago
  Here are a few arguments: 1. 12k out of the 18k employees let go are from Nokia, hence not in US 2. Out of the 6k presumably US employees let go, we don't know their functions: marketing, sales, etc. We just assume in bulk they are IT devs. 3. Nobody put on the table how many H1Bs does MS currently have on its workforce and at which annual rate do they bring in new H1Bs. It looks like MS has somewhere between 2-3k annual H1Bs. 4. Does anybody mention how many are H1Bs out of those 6k employees that were let go? Unless we discuss this with hard numbers in front of us, it is just arguing from our internal fears/demons.
lgleason 12y ago
A lot of us are not against immigration. The problem is that the current system is broken and the H1B is not the solution. It can be used to benefit everybody, but the current solutions are not.