I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support, CRM managemetn, Marketing, Project Managers, and all sorts of basic office work. The idea its used for the best and brightest is absurd. When you also count the massive fraud in H1B, people looking for kickbacks, racial preferences, lying on resumes (I once interviewed an H1B with 4 pages on their resume, couldn't answer a single question from what I pulled out of the resume, and got overruled by the manager on the hiring board). There is a massive amount of office work that can be done by a bright high schooler or community college grad, but gets shunted off to a body shop who mass applies H1B. Several years ago Disney fired their IT staff and replaced them with H1B, this was in the news. There was obviously not a talent shortage, and plenty of American citizens can pass the A+ or various microsoft sysadmin certs that "qualify" someone for IT work.
> I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support [...]
Working in non-FAANG corporate America, these types of roles are the only thing thing I've ever seen H1B hires used for. They've run the gamut from incompetent to quite good, but none have ever been the "best and brightest".
It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
There are a lot of office / IT jobs that can be done by anyone with an education. Instead of a team of H1B from TCS doing BI dashboards, why not a bunch of local college kids? You dont even need a CS degree, any business degree student can do that with a couple days of training. Hell an associates degree should be more than enough. Companies used to hire local people, give aptitude tests and place people.
With H1Bs you get people who will do anything to keep their jobs because that's what keeps them as a legal resident of the country, i.e. people you can underpay and exploit.
If you try to make some College kid work 10-20 hours of unpaid overtime a week they'll just walk.
The entire point is exploitation and downward wage suppression.
Western college kids are not nearly as subservient and likely to keep their own interests in mind and not offer dog-loyalty to a company that will lay them off at the any sign of turmoil.
> It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
We basically do not have a left wing party in this country. We have a center right party with "progressive" social views that has a few economic left-wingers under its tent, and then we have a reactionary right party.
Bullshit. Our left wing party has to moderate itself to be electable, but talk to Democrats about where they would like things to be and you will find out you are completely wrong. On healthcare. On social safety nets. On human rights. You are just 100% wrong, I'm guessing because the makeup of the United States doesn't allow the outcomes you want reality has you wrongly blaming Democrats. But the reality of the American voter base doesn't mean the party and party members putting in the slow/hard work of changing things are center right.
What you are saying is like saying the people feeding the poor during the limited schedule a city allows don't really care about feeding the poor because if they did they would do it at all hours. No, they are putting in the hard frustrating work, even when the limits they have to work withing suck.
You know, they used to. Bernie spoke against relocating refugees (from Serbia or something) back in the day due to the fact he had unemployed local Vermonters. They used to care. They had cared less since the second Reagan admin, but completely abandoned any pretense after GW's first term win.
What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
You're right, they used to care or at least said the right things. Then I guess they realized that they could get more voters by simply importing them lol...
>What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
This destroys their entire argument about the necessity of the imports, even if it is relatively rare. (Note that I don't think it's rare to be replaced by foreigners. I think it's rare to be forced or incentivized to train them, especially with knowledge that you will actually be replaced.)
Recently I heard something crazy like 9 of 10 new jobs since the pandemic is held by foreign-born people, even as many US-born are unemployed. 20% of US-born men is unemployed. This is not a primary source but it should get you started if you're interested: https://www.numbersusa.org/blog/nine-out-of-ten-new-jobs-hav...
Not sure about you but I am fully supportive of the $100k H1B fee. In addition, I am considering voting Republican because of the disregard of qualified U.S. citizens. This is despite me not leaning towards that party in particular. The biggest problem I see is that companies just directly hire abroad now. All engineers at Amazon music have been fired and replaced with Indian workers abroad.
Dont be fooled. The Repugnant Party doesn't give a damn for the worker either. Its all just talk to get you to vote for them. The Dumbocrats try to sell their story by claiming they support DEI to sucker those who lean that way into voting for them. Both parties are for the corporate overlords 100%.
As with many sociopolitical issues today, the problem here doesn't seem to be the core issue being discussed but what I like to call: Officials Not Doing Their Damn Job
If the H1B visas were awarded as intended this would be non-issue
You will find that many issues we face as a society are simply this same thing happening in different areas of public service
Conversely, I remember seeing a documentary which showed a massive room full of students in china, an absolutely massive hall, all taking some advanced exam. The stat was provided: China produces more Masters students per day, than the US produces humans!
Well, if that's the case, then meritocracy demands population replacement.
China is of course producing tons of great engineers, finance, mathematicians, science, etc. But China is also trying to provide good jobs for Chinese. A big reason I think China is seeing success is that on top of their education, they are then creating a pipeline for Chinese students to become workers. China doesn't want their people going overseas. They want them working, building industry, and developing technologies and skills locally.
Thanks for the compliment, I never thought so highly of my racism.
While we're being racist, has anyone noticed that when it comes to low/mid level managers from a certain country, the men are frequently ass-covering and politicking types whereas the women tend to be the ones who "just get it" when it comes to American business culture, leaving your ego at the door and getting shit done?
If you were educated, you'd know that anti-immigration was traditionally a left wing issue. Instead you list talking points like the tired "lump of labor fallacy" in the hope that you will be let in through guilt tripping the oh so horrible and apparently dumb white people.
That is very easy. Indians males are allowed to focus on education and take our jobs while white males have to consider that they'll be replaced by an H1B and study something different like law or medicine that is not so easily replacable.
Can you explain why with this intellectual dominance Indians contribute very little to open source but go straight for the CTO positions where they do nothing? Where is the Indian Linux kernel?
Utterly hideous. I hope to live to see the day this mentality is once again absent from the United States of America, and the English-speaking world in general.
> People not realizing that code is about the easiest thing in the world to ship back and forth between different countries: if a company is hell-bent on being cheap, they'll outsource rather than bring someone in.
We can tariff software, I just need Trumps phone number to let him know.
> An H-1B hire should not simply be marginally better than an American counterpart. They should provide such a leap forward in capabilities such that the rest of the company is elevated in their own knowledge and expertise.
This is an important thing that was recently addressed by the new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H-1B visa. It is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [1] since the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing do not meet the bar of "leap forward in capabilities". A US company is welcome to sponsor (and pay for) a visa for a truly exceptional worker. But not just anyone because they're cheap and minimally-capable.
Seems more likely to just lead to larger offices in India, reducing high earners here in America (even if only temporary) and reducing the amount of money that is recycled through American cities.
this seems like common retort. hire h1b or else....
we open a role on linkedin for a data engineer for about 6 hrs and we got 500+ applicants and vast majority were indeed qualifed on paper. I am baffled by employers who cant seem to find anyone in the country that doesnt need work authorization. Love to hear what types of roles and where this is happening.
Have you interviewed any of these candidates yet? I doubt that you have 500+ real candidates. My experience in the past 12 months of hiring is that you'll have maybe 10 "qualified on paper" candidates, and 490 AI-generated profiles.
That might be true if you're applying for a megacorp like AWS or something but hard to feel like that's a valid argument when you're applying to a company with 2 open roles.
Its not that they can't find them. It's that if they can't exert the same control that they have over H1B visa holders, they would rather pay a lower salary (overseas).
The US government could disincentivize companies from moving jobs over seas instead of hiring local, but the current administration seems more concerned with corporate profit and stock prices than anything else.
>if they can't exert the same control that they have over H1B visa holders, they would rather pay a lower salary (overseas)
Not that I am calling you a liar, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Though, any evidence would be great... so how do you know that?
Also, if you go by the Lisep TRU article (whose premise I mildly disagree with) over 20% of Americans are “functionally unemployed” then that says American employers are screwing their compatriots by bringing in lower wage substitutes and moreover they bring them in not because we don’t have people, rather we/they don’t want to pay the going rate.
The article doesn't address what I think are the main complaints about H-1B: that it is mostly used to cut costs and hire people who have very little freedom to switch jobs. That and all the trickery with ghost jobs meant to only give the appearance of hiring stateside. The example given is also not great. Von Braun was one remarkable foreign expert in a leadership position. On the other hand, in my experience, many H-1B hires tend to occupy low-level jobs; ironically the very ones that the author says will be filled by motivated Americans. I mean...just try working at any American FAANG. The evidence is totally in your face.
> The article doesn't address what I think are the main complaints
Over the last 20 years, I've noticed this is most of political journalism today.
Post a headline refuting the thing, ignore the primary issue from the thing you're refuting. People who don't already deeply understand the issue don't know any better.
Everything can be factually correct. It's all just framing by what you choose to leave out / ignore.
That is the real reason. Immigrants are cheap and will work hard maybe at the cost of quality. Companies will to hire cheap or will outsource to cheaper countries. I think every generation had cheap foreign labor coming to America which fueled the growth. Right now it is H1b labor.
When I was in high school, I took a physics class. I think I scraped by but one thing the teacher said that has stuck with me ever since was "when you want to test a hypothesis, set the variables to extreme numbers". Very useful framework IMO!
If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. In isolation, this would be great for US companies. In reality, 95% of the local population would riot.
If we pursued "only hire Americans", then our growth as a country would be stunted, and we'd lose our global competitive edge.
Somewhere between is a balanced medium.
Side observation: I've noticed tech leaders/CEOs/PG have been choosing (or succumbing) to what the algorithm wants them to say or how phrase. I stopped following all of them because I can feel my emotions being manipulated whenever I read what they have to say.
[1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
The reality is you couldn't hand over jobs to the most qualified person. In most cases the most qualified person already works for you (or is you!), and just needs an assistant who by definition is less qualified.
Suppose you found someone at your competitor who is doing your exact same job (already unlikely - their have a different structure in some way that is important) who is better than you. Would they be willing to move to where you company is? Would your company be willing to pay enough to make them join? Even if the above are true, all those structures your company has that are different mean there will be some time before they are better than you.
Most jobs don't need the best person. Is my doctor the best in the world - probably not - but she is more than good enough for my needs.
Though I have to object to your 95% number. Most people in the world do not have the education that the US provides. Most people are not fluent in English which is almost always a critical part of working for a company in the US. Once you add those requirements, the something closer to 50% of the most qualified people for your job live in the US (now if New Zealand was your country 95% of the most qualified don't live there - and most probably wouldn't want to move even though it is apparently a nice country)
Which is to say even if there was unlimited immigration allowed, your best hire in the US will be an American in most cases.
Though it doesn't matter who is most qualified you need to a plan to mentor and train up the younger generation. (who then grow old and train the next generation)
Your hypothesis straight up assumes that a) Americans have the best possible education required for the work (we don't; functional illiteracy has never been higher in the last few decades). And b) Americans are the most fluent in English (again see a.).
Even if the above assumptions are true the set of Americans who are qualified will be completely outnumbered by, say, even 2% of qualified people from a huge population like China/India/etc.
Your first assumption is completely and utterly wrong. I do not require anyone to have the best education. America does have a great education system. Do others do better? Well, that's very, very arguable, but let's accept it for discussion. The American education system is still very good. For most purposes, the American education system is more than good enough for the job at hand, and so it doesn't matter that an arbitrary education system is better since better doesn't matter once you've crossed the line of knowing the required material.
As for English, most Americans have English as a first language. Now there are certainly accent differences, but that actually plays in the favor of Americans when you're in the U.S. I can understand someone from Australia. However, they do speak a little different and I have to work a little bit at it. That makes them worse at any communication they would have to do with me. The majority of the world does not speak English as a first language. Some people are better than others, but the vast, vast majority of people I've heard who don't live in America have poor English skills. Sure, in countries like England or New Zealand, they will have great English skills as well, but when you get to Germany, some have great, some can just barely get by, and some, despite years of studying, can't actually speak it. Germans are one of the more likely people to have good English skills. If we were to go to China or India, English gets really really hard to understand. Their grammar is typically very very wrong.
Two billion people between India and China with rough numbers, two percent of that is about the population of the US. You're not looking at overwhelming the number of people in the US with only 2% of your population, at most half, and that is before we get into it, there are a lot of people in India and China who are older and not well educated. By contrast, your older people in the US are still likely to have had a fair amount of school and so be better.
> If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. [1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
This would be true if you're talking about randomly picking people from around the world to live in the US for their formative years and go through the US education system (at which point they barely count as "foreigners"). This isn't reality, though, and if you're talking about hiring a worker today, a large swath of that 95% won't speak English, or won't be literate, or will have never received a formal education, all of which are disqualifying for pretty much every job in the US.
I don't follow that "Most Qualified" would mean 95% of jobs going to foreigners. I get that the U.S. is 4-5% of the world's population, but if I live in San Antonio, Texas, the pool of plumbers for my house must also live in San Antonio, Texas, meaning that 99.9+% of the world is not remotely qualified for the job.
I mean, this debate is about immigration, right? So current location doesn't super matter, assuming you can amortize the cost of relocating a plumber across several years' worth of plumbing work.
In practice, you hire the most qualified within the pool of people that can reasonably work for you: right to work in the right country, compatible hours, is able to connect socially with the rest of your team, etc.
It wouldn't be 95%. The US is like 5% of the world, but it disproportionately contains the most qualified workers in many fields. Also, in many cases, even if a worker was somehow qualified, they would be lacking some basic skill like English proficiency or basic cultural compatibility, that would make them actually unqualified on net. But your overall sentiment is right. There are hundreds of millions of people who want to come to the US and make less than you.
It is also a fact that "most qualified" is fuzzy. It comes down to something more like, performance per dollar, or "culture fit", or some other thing. Unless you are trying to absolutely have the most advanced shit in the world at any price, "qualifications" or "talent" are not the ultimate factors. Having been in this industry for a while, most foreign workers obviously aren't "the best" like that. They're not even more talented or hard-working than the average American worker. But they usually work for less and the job gets done (roughly speaking), and their mere presence drives down everyone's wages.
You clearly have worked in a bubble. I find more qualified people in the usa than out of it, this is more of a payment issue than a lack of skill issue.
One of the issues is conflation of IT jobs and High Tech jobs. Those making laws don't understand the difference -- they are all "computer jobs" to them. IT does not require immigrant labor. Companies such as Infosys and Tata don't need to be operating in the US. There are plenty of US workers available to do the job.
But High Tech is different. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US. The US leads the world in tech not because the best ideas were all American but because the best people in the world immigrated to the US. Stopping this will be ruinous to American prosperity.
The seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration undercut Americans? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, and their innovations create jobs.
I think everyone (or virtually everyone) is OK with actual world-leading researchers coming to the US. But what we don't want is the labor market flooded with foreign "talent". The system is designed to try to get the researchers and noteworthy people, but corrupt people have found ways around all of it. There are paper mills, degree mills, cheating rings, etc. Plus firms that exist solely to funnel foreigners into the US for a fee.
There is always an economic argument to be made for importing the cheapest or allegedly "best" labor, but it's mostly about saving money even if it means destroying domestic workers. It sounds better when we're talking about a scientist instead of a construction worker or meat packer, but it's kind of the same problem. There are many cases of American workers being forced to train H1-B replacements, or being blatantly discriminated against for being, shall we say, obviously American.
If foreign researchers are able to prove themselves abroad and contribute as you say, I assume they can continue doing that in most cases without coming to the US to take jobs. If immigrants are such a great resource, why are poor countries not trying harder to keep those people from leaving? Why doesn't China import a bunch of Indians for IT work, or vice versa?
Agree with your first two paragraphs, disagree with the last.
> If foreign researchers are able to prove themselves abroad and contribute as you say, I assume they can continue doing that in most cases without coming to the US to take jobs.
They can't prove themselves abroad. Consider the example of "Attention is all you need" paper. That paper came into existence thanks to talented people from around the world coming together in one place and then collaborating. It would not have happened if the contributors stayed in their own countries.
> If immigrants are such a great resource, why are poor countries not trying harder to keep those people from leaving?
>They can't prove themselves abroad. Consider the example of "Attention is all you need" paper. That paper came into existence thanks to talented people from around the world coming together in one place and then collaborating. It would not have happened if the contributors stayed in their own countries.
I think this is a stretch, especially now that we have the internet. I also wouldn't be opposed to non-immigrant research visas, perhaps a specialized type of H1-B visa (since most of these people are not independently wealthy). But what I don't want is any random foreigner who has their name on some academic papers to be considered top talent. There are paper mills that crank these people out (putting their names on papers without any involvement), and besides that most research is just not that good. Why would we want a bunch of mediocre foreign researchers to come and take jobs away from mediocre American researchers? As we know, getting jobs in academia is very difficult as-is.
You got me on China trying to stop talent from leaving. It's an authoritarian country though. You can't even travel around freely inside the country lol! I threw China in there because a lot of H1-Bs and students are actually Chinese, but China is not where most of them come from.
You also got me on China allegedly trying to get talent to move to China. Their people seem to have had a predictable reaction. That's really something, considering that they can get in trouble for criticizing their government. I guess they thought it was worth the risk, because doing nothing would screw them even harder.
I'm surprised you can't find something to agree with in the first paragraph. I feel compelled to restate and clarify points I glossed over, to see which one you disagree with:
1. Foreign researchers can communicate with colleagues fairly well over the internet (in real time, even). Physical presence is not required to do academic research, at least in mathematics or CS.
2. Degree mills, fake credentials, paper mills, etc. exist to get names on stuff for a fee. This is used to game the immigration system.
3. Many US degree programs are used as a vector for immigration more than education, and people who immigrate this way usually try to meet the minimum requirements to stay in the US and do little beyond that.
4. Even when it comes to research, most research just isn't that good and doesn't contribute that much to society.
5. Getting jobs in academia is difficult.
6. Immigration lowers wages due to the basic laws of economics.
7. Given the fact that we have mediocre researchers in abundance, such that they can't find work in academia, there is negligible societal benefit to importing mediocre foreign researchers en masse. Additionally, this is devastating to the local labor market.
8. All other things equal (to the extent it is reasonable to determine), a country should try to ensure that native citizens get priority in hiring, rather than importing replacements.
If you disagree with #8, perhaps you should consider who is going to be willing to spill their blood and give up their treasure to defend a country that undermines them at every turn.
where do satya and sunder fall in that spectrum. sundar started out as regular project manager and satya as lowly engineer. neither of them were world leading researchers.
"The H-1B program was started with the vision of finding von Brauns across other industries and bringing them into the US"
Is this true? I thought the the "O" visa accomplished this. H-1B is for specific worker shortages. Of course, a "shortage" from a company's perspective is "no Americans are applying for my position", which isn't necessarily because there are no qualified Americans to hire...
That isn't what it means to have a shortage. In many cases Americans are discouraged from applying for these jobs. They can overspecify the criteria or be overly skeptical about your resume, write the job listing poorly, or hide the job listing entirely. What a shortage really means from their perspective is that they can't find enough workers for the price they want to pay (as opposed to what they can afford). However, I don't find that satisfying. I might have a legitimate business idea that would work only if I could find 100 great engineers willing to work for far below average. That would be considered insane in isolation, but if several large companies get together and issue the same complaint like "We can't move ahead because there are not enough engineers in our price range" then they call it a shortage. But I don't think American workers should have to tolerate these people flooding the market just because they can make money by doing so lol...
We are mostly in agreement. I'm pretty sure we need to sympathize with employers in situations like this, at times, though. It doesn't help anyone to reduce every shortage to a supposed moral fault in the employers lol. At what point do we become sympathetic to them? When their business is crucial to society and can't function without the workers at the given price? Or is it when the market rate for a job is offensive to other kinds of workers at jobs of similar difficulty? I think the societal need is a plausible reason, but it leads to this slippery slope we started off complaining about. It boils down to: who's to say how expensive is too expensive, or that a business should fail because of a politically imposed scarcity of labor?
Yes, it’s true. The H-1B program was redesigned that way in the Immigration Act of 1990 that introduced the O visa category; before that, the H-1B criteria formally required that recipients have “distinguished merit and ability” and perform services “of an exceptional nature requiring such merit and ability”.
H1B is not about finding geniuses, this is O-1 Visa program.
The H1B exists to find laborers in areas where we have a shortage of qualified people in US. Given the fact that in many fields we have lots of American graduates that struggle to get jobs, H1B currently has no legitimate purpose in America. It should be abolished entirely.
O-1 is about as far as you can get these days. Just search O-1 on x.com and see the type of people that have it - often designers, 'product' folks, etc. working for no-name YC startups.
"There is plenty of international talent that can and should be leveraged in the appropriate places and the proper ways. There are many instances where you’re going to want to hire a leading expert in a technical field. But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..]
We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring."
> But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..]
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring.
It's tough to square this noble thought with what's actually happening in corporate America. The culture of investing in training and mentoring to foster employee growth has been eroding for the past 40 years (if not more), to where it only seems to exist in limited capacity in legacy institutions and is completely absent in new (tech) firms. How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
> The culture of investing in training and mentoring to foster employee growth has been eroding for the past 40 years (if not more), to where it only seems to exist in limited capacity in legacy institutions and is completely absent in new (tech) firms. How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
With engineers in the big tech companies mostly only staying for maybe 1-2 years I can understand employers not being very interested in training and mentoring to foster employee growth.
40 years ago engineers frequently stayed at companies like DEC, IBM, and HP for 10 to 20+ years.
> How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
There are precisely 1.0 ways to do that: make all of the alternatives more expensive.
That's it. Nothing else will move the needle.
I don't believe it is possible: every policy one can imagine, short of establishing a GULAG system to compel compliance, has powerful opposing interests, including workers themselves. It would require the sort of comprehensive and sustained focus that a nation aspiring to nearly suicidal liberalism can not deliver.
Every system I can imagine as a real unintended consequence that is worse than what we have. The ideal should move to needle back - but there is no way to make that happen that isn't worse than where we are now.
When nobody is going to work for the same company for decades what is the point? This is both management's fault for not valuing the people they have (it is very common for cost of living raises to not match inflation or much less increased value as people get better), layoffs; but also workers for looking for a new job (only partially because of the above) when they have one.
I think in the ideal world 30-60% of the people who retire from your company should have started there just out of school. Much less than that and you don't get the value of experience built up over time. Much more and you miss out of good ideas others are doing. However there are many ways the world will never be ideal...
That is easy to say. You can put it on a political mailing "vote for me and I'll"... However details matter. I've yet to see any detailed proposal that isn't obviously worse than where we are now.
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring."
Ergo, laws will be required to "encourage" the corporate paperclip maximizer apparatus. When did asking nicely ever work? "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising the lawnmower."
Of course, but there’s a wide gulf between slamming into a wall at 80mph and gently rolling to a stop. The latter requires foresight and action, however.
I don't think the famously young-skewed tech industry is at any risk of slamming into a wall. If Google finds in 2035 it's running out of good seniors in their 30s because they haven't been mentoring college grads well enough, there'll be plenty of experts in their 50s and 60s to pull back in from management or FIRE or age discrimination.
Thank you for the kind words. I remember everything I’ve ever read, it’s simply how fast I can aggregate links and threads based on keywords from HN search and my internal knowledge base/graph.
Objective data, evidence, and facts are important as a shared foundation to discuss upon.
The open secret of the H1B program is that the credentials are fake. The system whitewashes candidates to provide the illusion of these credentials, but they are in fact no more qualified than an American candidate.
There is also no guarantee that the people you hire do not have criminal or psychological issues because these things are not checked or shared internationally. For example, a woman in my college got killed by a foreign PhD student because she rejected his romantic advances. I also find people can have high degrees of education on paper but hold beliefs that seem more aligned with people in the 50’s. I don’t want to work with people who think yelling and obeying the boss blindly is appropriate.
It's not a matter of economics, corporate policy or belief in people -- it's a strategic matter. A country needs a secure and stable pipeline for personnel as much as for any other strategic asset.
A country also needs to keep up and learn from other countries. That means working with and integrating technologies, ideas and, yes, personnel from other countries.
It's a balance thing and Anduril has a hard job in trying to strike the balance, but they have to do it. The defense industry is not simply a number-goes-up operation.
It's funny how the loyalties of imported "talent" are not front and center in any discussion of how their presence is "strategically important." I think we are getting strategically shafted by lax immigration laws.
There's no such thing as an innate most qualified person. Zuck was never the most qualified to be CEO of Meta. He is now, because of what he's done. At the same time there's an infinite number of jobs he is poorly qualified for.
Strict qualification can only be measured in a extreme niche cases. You founded an area of research, so you're the most qualified to work on that at Google. You have a massive Linux project, then maybe Torvalds or his core maintainers are the only ones who fit.
But outside of that, people become qualified because of what they do, and before they did it, they were unqualified.
As an example, I'm sure there are many people at OAI and Ant who are today world experts at research and training and infra. But they became that by just doing the job. Take their same resume from 5 years ago and they may not even reach the interview if they applied for the same role. The what does qualified mean, how do you measure and define it?
Countries need to develop their own talent and individuals need to develop themselves.
I don't like the implied assumption that you can only do one or the other. To use the author's own story, the US had both von Braun and Johnson. Also, there are just many scenarios where you can't afford to train someone from scratch or tolerate a potentially poor hire and that's just reality. Sometimes you really do need the best person you can find.
False dichotomy. An H1B hire who has graduated from a US university and will receive a green card in a few years and become a US citizen after another 5 contributes to "the next generation of US talent" in the same way as John from Chicago.
You present the false dichotomy without qualifying 'the same way'.
Is it in terms of collective taxes paid? Does that include or exclude family? Or is it in terms of money spent in the local economy? Or in terms of money sent abroad to other economies? Maybe it's in more direct terms of contributing to the next generation of talent, like volunteering, coaching, or hosting scholastic events for the community? Or maybe it's an entirely other class of event, like a club exclusively for specific races/citizens of a specific country?
Almost all of my co-workers who were educated in the US but came from abroad send their earnings abroad, were part of 'X Country Citizens' clubs in college, and don't socialize too much outside of their native language. I don't think that's a problem, and it's just anecdotal, but it's certainly not the 'same way as John from Chicago'.
EB-2/EB-3 green cards which an H-1B holder usually pursues are quota-capped per country of birthplace. An Indian born applicant may have to wait for over 100 years.
With AI rapidly exceeding the tech knowledge of even the most qualified workers, is the benefit of an H1B worker that significant? General communication and strategic skills might be stronger in domestic workers.
I have multiple friends who studied CS and graduated in the last few years and couldn't find a job. These are people who grew up in the states, paid taxes here, came from (sometimes generations of) families who paid taxes here. I myself have pay $XXX,XXX in taxes a year.
It's absolutely bullshit that H1B and O1 visas can come here and take routine CS jobs that US citizens are more-than-qualified for. The narrative of the need for these visas is pure corporate-shill speak.
Let me put it this way: the US school system sucks. It produces great drama artists, athletes, and marketing specialists but not STEM professionals.
You can see it here: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 - just 6% of US school graduates go to study engineering (there are almost no foreign-born students doing bachelors in the US).
The US is a big country so it's hard to generalize. But if you take the "default" US culture, it has been either ambivalent or hostile toward nerds for a long time. People who rightly point this out get shouted down as being anti-American (see Ramaswamy's infamous post). They shouldn't shoot the messenger. They should help their kids tinker with cool garage experiments.
It's not just the culture, it's the school system. Nerds are distrusted pretty much everywhere. But if you have a school system that rewards achievement in STEM disciplines, you get better outcomes in STEM disciplines (see: China, xUSSR countries, India, South Korea).
Why do you think GCCs are a thing and Google India wages [0] are now reaching Poland levels [1] for mid-career Googlers.
These are multinational companies - not American companies.
No one complained when Google and their like moved hiring from the Bay Area and New York to North Carolina despite both having diametrically opposing politics.
I don't like that immigration is framed as a left-center vs right issue. Around 1900 the socialists were against immigration because it displaced local workers and capitalists used it to drive down wages.
So, ironically, Paul Graham supports the right wing position and Luckey the left-center if you frame it that way!
The most qualified for physical jobs are the healthiest. By allowing unlimited immigration, you literally let in the healthiest and most persistent to the detriment of less healthy locals. Eugenics? You can frame it that way, too.
Being born in a desirable country has disadvantages now. People from all over the world buy property and drive up prices, people from all over the world compete for local jobs, take university places (almost free in the EU). That is locust capitalism and the distinction between the von Brauns and the regular H1Bs that the article makes is sensible.
I see this debate as not really being about immigration, but as a facet of the eternal war between plutocrats and socialists. Plutocrats prey on socialist countries, exploiting their high standard of living and high social trust. Socialism more often than not arises when plutocrats have hollowed out a country and left it fallow, and interferes with the plutocrats second phase where they "brain drain" the now-desperate people and use them as shock troops in their next campaign. Plutocrats want to restrict immigration to the needs of business, while socialists want immigration to be as egalitarian as possible. As such, socialists and plutocrats are natural enemies. Socialist countries sometimes manage to shake off the plutocrats, and in fact America's "melting pot" idea was a well-timed inoculation against them.
Few facts to add color to different point of views:
- PG wants cheap labor so that we can get cheap/hard working employees for startups with a fear of deportation
- Palmer cannot hire people on visas because they cannot easily clear security clearance that is required to work in Defense sector. Its better to align with current Government to get contracts.
I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support, CRM managemetn, Marketing, Project Managers, and all sorts of basic office work. The idea its used for the best and brightest is absurd. When you also count the massive fraud in H1B, people looking for kickbacks, racial preferences, lying on resumes (I once interviewed an H1B with 4 pages on their resume, couldn't answer a single question from what I pulled out of the resume, and got overruled by the manager on the hiring board). There is a massive amount of office work that can be done by a bright high schooler or community college grad, but gets shunted off to a body shop who mass applies H1B. Several years ago Disney fired their IT staff and replaced them with H1B, this was in the news. There was obviously not a talent shortage, and plenty of American citizens can pass the A+ or various microsoft sysadmin certs that "qualify" someone for IT work.
> I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support [...]
Working in non-FAANG corporate America, these types of roles are the only thing thing I've ever seen H1B hires used for. They've run the gamut from incompetent to quite good, but none have ever been the "best and brightest".
It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
There are a lot of office / IT jobs that can be done by anyone with an education. Instead of a team of H1B from TCS doing BI dashboards, why not a bunch of local college kids? You dont even need a CS degree, any business degree student can do that with a couple days of training. Hell an associates degree should be more than enough. Companies used to hire local people, give aptitude tests and place people.
With H1Bs you get people who will do anything to keep their jobs because that's what keeps them as a legal resident of the country, i.e. people you can underpay and exploit.
If you try to make some College kid work 10-20 hours of unpaid overtime a week they'll just walk.
The entire point is exploitation and downward wage suppression.
They don't hire americans because Americans don't come with the "right" culture for what bad managers want in these roles
> why not a bunch of local college kids
Western college kids are not nearly as subservient and likely to keep their own interests in mind and not offer dog-loyalty to a company that will lay them off at the any sign of turmoil.
> It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
We basically do not have a left wing party in this country. We have a center right party with "progressive" social views that has a few economic left-wingers under its tent, and then we have a reactionary right party.
Bullshit. Our left wing party has to moderate itself to be electable, but talk to Democrats about where they would like things to be and you will find out you are completely wrong. On healthcare. On social safety nets. On human rights. You are just 100% wrong, I'm guessing because the makeup of the United States doesn't allow the outcomes you want reality has you wrongly blaming Democrats. But the reality of the American voter base doesn't mean the party and party members putting in the slow/hard work of changing things are center right.
What you are saying is like saying the people feeding the poor during the limited schedule a city allows don't really care about feeding the poor because if they did they would do it at all hours. No, they are putting in the hard frustrating work, even when the limits they have to work withing suck.
You know, they used to. Bernie spoke against relocating refugees (from Serbia or something) back in the day due to the fact he had unemployed local Vermonters. They used to care. They had cared less since the second Reagan admin, but completely abandoned any pretense after GW's first term win.
What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
You're right, they used to care or at least said the right things. Then I guess they realized that they could get more voters by simply importing them lol...
>What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
This destroys their entire argument about the necessity of the imports, even if it is relatively rare. (Note that I don't think it's rare to be replaced by foreigners. I think it's rare to be forced or incentivized to train them, especially with knowledge that you will actually be replaced.)
Recently I heard something crazy like 9 of 10 new jobs since the pandemic is held by foreign-born people, even as many US-born are unemployed. 20% of US-born men is unemployed. This is not a primary source but it should get you started if you're interested: https://www.numbersusa.org/blog/nine-out-of-ten-new-jobs-hav...
Not sure about you but I am fully supportive of the $100k H1B fee. In addition, I am considering voting Republican because of the disregard of qualified U.S. citizens. This is despite me not leaning towards that party in particular. The biggest problem I see is that companies just directly hire abroad now. All engineers at Amazon music have been fired and replaced with Indian workers abroad.
Dont be fooled. The Repugnant Party doesn't give a damn for the worker either. Its all just talk to get you to vote for them. The Dumbocrats try to sell their story by claiming they support DEI to sucker those who lean that way into voting for them. Both parties are for the corporate overlords 100%.
But which party (or faction of it) is at least talking about it? You can find corporate rent seekers in both parties sure.
As with many sociopolitical issues today, the problem here doesn't seem to be the core issue being discussed but what I like to call: Officials Not Doing Their Damn Job
If the H1B visas were awarded as intended this would be non-issue
You will find that many issues we face as a society are simply this same thing happening in different areas of public service
Conversely, I remember seeing a documentary which showed a massive room full of students in china, an absolutely massive hall, all taking some advanced exam. The stat was provided: China produces more Masters students per day, than the US produces humans!
Well, if that's the case, then meritocracy demands population replacement.
China is of course producing tons of great engineers, finance, mathematicians, science, etc. But China is also trying to provide good jobs for Chinese. A big reason I think China is seeing success is that on top of their education, they are then creating a pipeline for Chinese students to become workers. China doesn't want their people going overseas. They want them working, building industry, and developing technologies and skills locally.
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>Extreme racism.
Thanks for the compliment, I never thought so highly of my racism.
While we're being racist, has anyone noticed that when it comes to low/mid level managers from a certain country, the men are frequently ass-covering and politicking types whereas the women tend to be the ones who "just get it" when it comes to American business culture, leaving your ego at the door and getting shit done?
No? Just me?
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> I think people from all background can be great
Some have better odds than others. Is it culture? Is it genetics? Is it upbringing? Who cares it's not like you get to choose any of them.
If you were educated, you'd know that anti-immigration was traditionally a left wing issue. Instead you list talking points like the tired "lump of labor fallacy" in the hope that you will be let in through guilt tripping the oh so horrible and apparently dumb white people.
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That is very easy. Indians males are allowed to focus on education and take our jobs while white males have to consider that they'll be replaced by an H1B and study something different like law or medicine that is not so easily replacable.
Can you explain why with this intellectual dominance Indians contribute very little to open source but go straight for the CTO positions where they do nothing? Where is the Indian Linux kernel?
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We've banned this account.
Utterly hideous. I hope to live to see the day this mentality is once again absent from the United States of America, and the English-speaking world in general.
You still won't get in.
> People not realizing that code is about the easiest thing in the world to ship back and forth between different countries: if a company is hell-bent on being cheap, they'll outsource rather than bring someone in.
We can tariff software, I just need Trumps phone number to let him know.
> An H-1B hire should not simply be marginally better than an American counterpart. They should provide such a leap forward in capabilities such that the rest of the company is elevated in their own knowledge and expertise.
This is an important thing that was recently addressed by the new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H-1B visa. It is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [1] since the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing do not meet the bar of "leap forward in capabilities". A US company is welcome to sponsor (and pay for) a visa for a truly exceptional worker. But not just anyone because they're cheap and minimally-capable.
[1] https://thefederal.com/category/news/h1b-visa-indian-tech-wo...
Seems more likely to just lead to larger offices in India, reducing high earners here in America (even if only temporary) and reducing the amount of money that is recycled through American cities.
It also reduces the number of Indian people who physically reside in the US and can influence the American political system.
They can't vote.
this seems like common retort. hire h1b or else....
we open a role on linkedin for a data engineer for about 6 hrs and we got 500+ applicants and vast majority were indeed qualifed on paper. I am baffled by employers who cant seem to find anyone in the country that doesnt need work authorization. Love to hear what types of roles and where this is happening.
Have you interviewed any of these candidates yet? I doubt that you have 500+ real candidates. My experience in the past 12 months of hiring is that you'll have maybe 10 "qualified on paper" candidates, and 490 AI-generated profiles.
Hard to be too mad at the applicants when a similar percentage of the roles might also be fake.
That might be true if you're applying for a megacorp like AWS or something but hard to feel like that's a valid argument when you're applying to a company with 2 open roles.
Small companies I've worked for are "always hiring". They leave job descriptions posted in case they get some miracle applicant.
you only got 10 qualified applicants to a generic software engineer position? i am having hard time beliving that sorry.
Its not that they can't find them. It's that if they can't exert the same control that they have over H1B visa holders, they would rather pay a lower salary (overseas).
The US government could disincentivize companies from moving jobs over seas instead of hiring local, but the current administration seems more concerned with corporate profit and stock prices than anything else.
>if they can't exert the same control that they have over H1B visa holders, they would rather pay a lower salary (overseas)
Not that I am calling you a liar, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Though, any evidence would be great... so how do you know that?
Economic growth is not valued universally as we are seeing very clearly. There are more anti-growth people that you think.
What good is "economic growth" if the citizen/voter does not think it benefits them?
More people frequenting local business and spending the income in the local economy is generally viewed as a good thing.
It's usually about how much weight is placed on perceived negative externalities.
Also, if you go by the Lisep TRU article (whose premise I mildly disagree with) over 20% of Americans are “functionally unemployed” then that says American employers are screwing their compatriots by bringing in lower wage substitutes and moreover they bring them in not because we don’t have people, rather we/they don’t want to pay the going rate.
The article doesn't address what I think are the main complaints about H-1B: that it is mostly used to cut costs and hire people who have very little freedom to switch jobs. That and all the trickery with ghost jobs meant to only give the appearance of hiring stateside. The example given is also not great. Von Braun was one remarkable foreign expert in a leadership position. On the other hand, in my experience, many H-1B hires tend to occupy low-level jobs; ironically the very ones that the author says will be filled by motivated Americans. I mean...just try working at any American FAANG. The evidence is totally in your face.
> The article doesn't address what I think are the main complaints
Over the last 20 years, I've noticed this is most of political journalism today.
Post a headline refuting the thing, ignore the primary issue from the thing you're refuting. People who don't already deeply understand the issue don't know any better.
Everything can be factually correct. It's all just framing by what you choose to leave out / ignore.
That is the real reason. Immigrants are cheap and will work hard maybe at the cost of quality. Companies will to hire cheap or will outsource to cheaper countries. I think every generation had cheap foreign labor coming to America which fueled the growth. Right now it is H1b labor.
When I was in high school, I took a physics class. I think I scraped by but one thing the teacher said that has stuck with me ever since was "when you want to test a hypothesis, set the variables to extreme numbers". Very useful framework IMO!
If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. In isolation, this would be great for US companies. In reality, 95% of the local population would riot.
If we pursued "only hire Americans", then our growth as a country would be stunted, and we'd lose our global competitive edge.
Somewhere between is a balanced medium.
Side observation: I've noticed tech leaders/CEOs/PG have been choosing (or succumbing) to what the algorithm wants them to say or how phrase. I stopped following all of them because I can feel my emotions being manipulated whenever I read what they have to say.
[1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
The reality is you couldn't hand over jobs to the most qualified person. In most cases the most qualified person already works for you (or is you!), and just needs an assistant who by definition is less qualified.
Suppose you found someone at your competitor who is doing your exact same job (already unlikely - their have a different structure in some way that is important) who is better than you. Would they be willing to move to where you company is? Would your company be willing to pay enough to make them join? Even if the above are true, all those structures your company has that are different mean there will be some time before they are better than you.
Most jobs don't need the best person. Is my doctor the best in the world - probably not - but she is more than good enough for my needs.
Though I have to object to your 95% number. Most people in the world do not have the education that the US provides. Most people are not fluent in English which is almost always a critical part of working for a company in the US. Once you add those requirements, the something closer to 50% of the most qualified people for your job live in the US (now if New Zealand was your country 95% of the most qualified don't live there - and most probably wouldn't want to move even though it is apparently a nice country)
Which is to say even if there was unlimited immigration allowed, your best hire in the US will be an American in most cases.
Though it doesn't matter who is most qualified you need to a plan to mentor and train up the younger generation. (who then grow old and train the next generation)
Your hypothesis straight up assumes that a) Americans have the best possible education required for the work (we don't; functional illiteracy has never been higher in the last few decades). And b) Americans are the most fluent in English (again see a.).
Even if the above assumptions are true the set of Americans who are qualified will be completely outnumbered by, say, even 2% of qualified people from a huge population like China/India/etc.
Your first assumption is completely and utterly wrong. I do not require anyone to have the best education. America does have a great education system. Do others do better? Well, that's very, very arguable, but let's accept it for discussion. The American education system is still very good. For most purposes, the American education system is more than good enough for the job at hand, and so it doesn't matter that an arbitrary education system is better since better doesn't matter once you've crossed the line of knowing the required material.
As for English, most Americans have English as a first language. Now there are certainly accent differences, but that actually plays in the favor of Americans when you're in the U.S. I can understand someone from Australia. However, they do speak a little different and I have to work a little bit at it. That makes them worse at any communication they would have to do with me. The majority of the world does not speak English as a first language. Some people are better than others, but the vast, vast majority of people I've heard who don't live in America have poor English skills. Sure, in countries like England or New Zealand, they will have great English skills as well, but when you get to Germany, some have great, some can just barely get by, and some, despite years of studying, can't actually speak it. Germans are one of the more likely people to have good English skills. If we were to go to China or India, English gets really really hard to understand. Their grammar is typically very very wrong.
Two billion people between India and China with rough numbers, two percent of that is about the population of the US. You're not looking at overwhelming the number of people in the US with only 2% of your population, at most half, and that is before we get into it, there are a lot of people in India and China who are older and not well educated. By contrast, your older people in the US are still likely to have had a fair amount of school and so be better.
> If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. [1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
This would be true if you're talking about randomly picking people from around the world to live in the US for their formative years and go through the US education system (at which point they barely count as "foreigners"). This isn't reality, though, and if you're talking about hiring a worker today, a large swath of that 95% won't speak English, or won't be literate, or will have never received a formal education, all of which are disqualifying for pretty much every job in the US.
I don't follow that "Most Qualified" would mean 95% of jobs going to foreigners. I get that the U.S. is 4-5% of the world's population, but if I live in San Antonio, Texas, the pool of plumbers for my house must also live in San Antonio, Texas, meaning that 99.9+% of the world is not remotely qualified for the job.
I mean, this debate is about immigration, right? So current location doesn't super matter, assuming you can amortize the cost of relocating a plumber across several years' worth of plumbing work.
In practice, you hire the most qualified within the pool of people that can reasonably work for you: right to work in the right country, compatible hours, is able to connect socially with the rest of your team, etc.
It wouldn't be 95%. The US is like 5% of the world, but it disproportionately contains the most qualified workers in many fields. Also, in many cases, even if a worker was somehow qualified, they would be lacking some basic skill like English proficiency or basic cultural compatibility, that would make them actually unqualified on net. But your overall sentiment is right. There are hundreds of millions of people who want to come to the US and make less than you.
It is also a fact that "most qualified" is fuzzy. It comes down to something more like, performance per dollar, or "culture fit", or some other thing. Unless you are trying to absolutely have the most advanced shit in the world at any price, "qualifications" or "talent" are not the ultimate factors. Having been in this industry for a while, most foreign workers obviously aren't "the best" like that. They're not even more talented or hard-working than the average American worker. But they usually work for less and the job gets done (roughly speaking), and their mere presence drives down everyone's wages.
You clearly have worked in a bubble. I find more qualified people in the usa than out of it, this is more of a payment issue than a lack of skill issue.
One of the issues is conflation of IT jobs and High Tech jobs. Those making laws don't understand the difference -- they are all "computer jobs" to them. IT does not require immigrant labor. Companies such as Infosys and Tata don't need to be operating in the US. There are plenty of US workers available to do the job.
But High Tech is different. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US. The US leads the world in tech not because the best ideas were all American but because the best people in the world immigrated to the US. Stopping this will be ruinous to American prosperity.
The seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration undercut Americans? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, and their innovations create jobs.
I think everyone (or virtually everyone) is OK with actual world-leading researchers coming to the US. But what we don't want is the labor market flooded with foreign "talent". The system is designed to try to get the researchers and noteworthy people, but corrupt people have found ways around all of it. There are paper mills, degree mills, cheating rings, etc. Plus firms that exist solely to funnel foreigners into the US for a fee.
There is always an economic argument to be made for importing the cheapest or allegedly "best" labor, but it's mostly about saving money even if it means destroying domestic workers. It sounds better when we're talking about a scientist instead of a construction worker or meat packer, but it's kind of the same problem. There are many cases of American workers being forced to train H1-B replacements, or being blatantly discriminated against for being, shall we say, obviously American.
If foreign researchers are able to prove themselves abroad and contribute as you say, I assume they can continue doing that in most cases without coming to the US to take jobs. If immigrants are such a great resource, why are poor countries not trying harder to keep those people from leaving? Why doesn't China import a bunch of Indians for IT work, or vice versa?
Agree with your first two paragraphs, disagree with the last.
> If foreign researchers are able to prove themselves abroad and contribute as you say, I assume they can continue doing that in most cases without coming to the US to take jobs.
They can't prove themselves abroad. Consider the example of "Attention is all you need" paper. That paper came into existence thanks to talented people from around the world coming together in one place and then collaborating. It would not have happened if the contributors stayed in their own countries.
> If immigrants are such a great resource, why are poor countries not trying harder to keep those people from leaving?
They are. See here: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-restricts-o...
> Why doesn't China import a bunch of Indians for IT work, or vice versa?
They are trying. See here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/world/asia/china-stem-vis...
>They can't prove themselves abroad. Consider the example of "Attention is all you need" paper. That paper came into existence thanks to talented people from around the world coming together in one place and then collaborating. It would not have happened if the contributors stayed in their own countries.
I think this is a stretch, especially now that we have the internet. I also wouldn't be opposed to non-immigrant research visas, perhaps a specialized type of H1-B visa (since most of these people are not independently wealthy). But what I don't want is any random foreigner who has their name on some academic papers to be considered top talent. There are paper mills that crank these people out (putting their names on papers without any involvement), and besides that most research is just not that good. Why would we want a bunch of mediocre foreign researchers to come and take jobs away from mediocre American researchers? As we know, getting jobs in academia is very difficult as-is.
You got me on China trying to stop talent from leaving. It's an authoritarian country though. You can't even travel around freely inside the country lol! I threw China in there because a lot of H1-Bs and students are actually Chinese, but China is not where most of them come from.
You also got me on China allegedly trying to get talent to move to China. Their people seem to have had a predictable reaction. That's really something, considering that they can get in trouble for criticizing their government. I guess they thought it was worth the risk, because doing nothing would screw them even harder.
> I think this is a stretch, especially now that we have the internet.
We disagree on your first paragraph, agree on the rest.
I'm surprised you can't find something to agree with in the first paragraph. I feel compelled to restate and clarify points I glossed over, to see which one you disagree with:
1. Foreign researchers can communicate with colleagues fairly well over the internet (in real time, even). Physical presence is not required to do academic research, at least in mathematics or CS.
2. Degree mills, fake credentials, paper mills, etc. exist to get names on stuff for a fee. This is used to game the immigration system.
3. Many US degree programs are used as a vector for immigration more than education, and people who immigrate this way usually try to meet the minimum requirements to stay in the US and do little beyond that.
4. Even when it comes to research, most research just isn't that good and doesn't contribute that much to society.
5. Getting jobs in academia is difficult.
6. Immigration lowers wages due to the basic laws of economics.
7. Given the fact that we have mediocre researchers in abundance, such that they can't find work in academia, there is negligible societal benefit to importing mediocre foreign researchers en masse. Additionally, this is devastating to the local labor market.
8. All other things equal (to the extent it is reasonable to determine), a country should try to ensure that native citizens get priority in hiring, rather than importing replacements.
If you disagree with #8, perhaps you should consider who is going to be willing to spill their blood and give up their treasure to defend a country that undermines them at every turn.
where do satya and sunder fall in that spectrum. sundar started out as regular project manager and satya as lowly engineer. neither of them were world leading researchers.
"The H-1B program was started with the vision of finding von Brauns across other industries and bringing them into the US"
Is this true? I thought the the "O" visa accomplished this. H-1B is for specific worker shortages. Of course, a "shortage" from a company's perspective is "no Americans are applying for my position", which isn't necessarily because there are no qualified Americans to hire...
So even though O-1 is intended for extra ordinary abilities, it's far from one.
That isn't what it means to have a shortage. In many cases Americans are discouraged from applying for these jobs. They can overspecify the criteria or be overly skeptical about your resume, write the job listing poorly, or hide the job listing entirely. What a shortage really means from their perspective is that they can't find enough workers for the price they want to pay (as opposed to what they can afford). However, I don't find that satisfying. I might have a legitimate business idea that would work only if I could find 100 great engineers willing to work for far below average. That would be considered insane in isolation, but if several large companies get together and issue the same complaint like "We can't move ahead because there are not enough engineers in our price range" then they call it a shortage. But I don't think American workers should have to tolerate these people flooding the market just because they can make money by doing so lol...
"What a shortage really means from their perspective is that they can't find enough workers for the price they want to pay"
Exactly - we are in agreement
We are mostly in agreement. I'm pretty sure we need to sympathize with employers in situations like this, at times, though. It doesn't help anyone to reduce every shortage to a supposed moral fault in the employers lol. At what point do we become sympathetic to them? When their business is crucial to society and can't function without the workers at the given price? Or is it when the market rate for a job is offensive to other kinds of workers at jobs of similar difficulty? I think the societal need is a plausible reason, but it leads to this slippery slope we started off complaining about. It boils down to: who's to say how expensive is too expensive, or that a business should fail because of a politically imposed scarcity of labor?
Yes, it’s true. The H-1B program was redesigned that way in the Immigration Act of 1990 that introduced the O visa category; before that, the H-1B criteria formally required that recipients have “distinguished merit and ability” and perform services “of an exceptional nature requiring such merit and ability”.
Ah yes - the older H1 program started in 1952 (I was confused by the article calling the H1 visa "H-1B" - they aren't the same.)
H1B is not about finding geniuses, this is O-1 Visa program.
The H1B exists to find laborers in areas where we have a shortage of qualified people in US. Given the fact that in many fields we have lots of American graduates that struggle to get jobs, H1B currently has no legitimate purpose in America. It should be abolished entirely.
They both have similar roles, but O-1 is an immigrant visa and H-1B is a non-immigrant visa (a temporary worker visa).
Everything else is downstream of that.
Both are non-immigrant visas.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/h-1b-spec...
There's a playbook someone on X published (and bragged about it). Borderline fraudulent imho.
So even though O-1 is intended for extra ordinary abilities, it's far from one.
O-1 is about as far as you can get these days. Just search O-1 on x.com and see the type of people that have it - often designers, 'product' folks, etc. working for no-name YC startups.
The no name yc startup is fine, but the qualifications / proof of extraordinary ability is just non existent.
Conclusion:
"There is plenty of international talent that can and should be leveraged in the appropriate places and the proper ways. There are many instances where you’re going to want to hire a leading expert in a technical field. But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..]
We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring."
Related earlier post by Mark Atwood: https://markatwood.substack.com/p/america-is-an-idea-not-an-...
> But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..]
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring.
It's tough to square this noble thought with what's actually happening in corporate America. The culture of investing in training and mentoring to foster employee growth has been eroding for the past 40 years (if not more), to where it only seems to exist in limited capacity in legacy institutions and is completely absent in new (tech) firms. How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
> The culture of investing in training and mentoring to foster employee growth has been eroding for the past 40 years (if not more), to where it only seems to exist in limited capacity in legacy institutions and is completely absent in new (tech) firms. How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
With engineers in the big tech companies mostly only staying for maybe 1-2 years I can understand employers not being very interested in training and mentoring to foster employee growth.
40 years ago engineers frequently stayed at companies like DEC, IBM, and HP for 10 to 20+ years.
> How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
There are precisely 1.0 ways to do that: make all of the alternatives more expensive.
That's it. Nothing else will move the needle.
I don't believe it is possible: every policy one can imagine, short of establishing a GULAG system to compel compliance, has powerful opposing interests, including workers themselves. It would require the sort of comprehensive and sustained focus that a nation aspiring to nearly suicidal liberalism can not deliver.
Every system I can imagine as a real unintended consequence that is worse than what we have. The ideal should move to needle back - but there is no way to make that happen that isn't worse than where we are now.
When nobody is going to work for the same company for decades what is the point? This is both management's fault for not valuing the people they have (it is very common for cost of living raises to not match inflation or much less increased value as people get better), layoffs; but also workers for looking for a new job (only partially because of the above) when they have one.
I think in the ideal world 30-60% of the people who retire from your company should have started there just out of school. Much less than that and you don't get the value of experience built up over time. Much more and you miss out of good ideas others are doing. However there are many ways the world will never be ideal...
It’s going to need to be strong “encouragement”, either monetary or regulatory.
Because it is advantageous to be the only one who doesn’t invest in it while reaping the benefits from those who do. So very few do.
That is easy to say. You can put it on a political mailing "vote for me and I'll"... However details matter. I've yet to see any detailed proposal that isn't obviously worse than where we are now.
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring."
YC partner Ankit Gupta: hiring Americans first is DEI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49467325 - August 2026 (2 comments)
H-1B Middlemen Bring Cheap Labor to Citi, Capital One - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44398978 - June 2025 (4 comments)
India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43088906 - February 2025 (59 comments)
How middlemen are gaming the H-1B program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123945 - July 2024 (57 comments) [https://github.com/BloombergGraphics/2024-h1b-immigration-da...]
The Secret Way Silicon Valley Uses the H-1B Program - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-06/silicon-v... | https://archive.today/qffNT - June 2017
Ergo, laws will be required to "encourage" the corporate paperclip maximizer apparatus. When did asking nicely ever work? "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising the lawnmower."
“If Something Cannot Go on Forever, It Will Stop.“ Stein's Law
Of course, but there’s a wide gulf between slamming into a wall at 80mph and gently rolling to a stop. The latter requires foresight and action, however.
I don't think the famously young-skewed tech industry is at any risk of slamming into a wall. If Google finds in 2035 it's running out of good seniors in their 30s because they haven't been mentoring college grads well enough, there'll be plenty of experts in their 50s and 60s to pull back in from management or FIRE or age discrimination.
"The labor market can remain irrational, adverse, and potentially fraudulent longer than you can remain solvent." -- me
Your ability to consistently cite relevant sources/articles in your comments is impressive to me.
It's a sign of a well informed person. Keep it up!
Thank you for the kind words. I remember everything I’ve ever read, it’s simply how fast I can aggregate links and threads based on keywords from HN search and my internal knowledge base/graph.
Objective data, evidence, and facts are important as a shared foundation to discuss upon.
> I remember everything I’ve ever read
How's that possible? Any tricks you can share?
The open secret of the H1B program is that the credentials are fake. The system whitewashes candidates to provide the illusion of these credentials, but they are in fact no more qualified than an American candidate.
There is also no guarantee that the people you hire do not have criminal or psychological issues because these things are not checked or shared internationally. For example, a woman in my college got killed by a foreign PhD student because she rejected his romantic advances. I also find people can have high degrees of education on paper but hold beliefs that seem more aligned with people in the 50’s. I don’t want to work with people who think yelling and obeying the boss blindly is appropriate.
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It's not a matter of economics, corporate policy or belief in people -- it's a strategic matter. A country needs a secure and stable pipeline for personnel as much as for any other strategic asset.
A country also needs to keep up and learn from other countries. That means working with and integrating technologies, ideas and, yes, personnel from other countries.
It's a balance thing and Anduril has a hard job in trying to strike the balance, but they have to do it. The defense industry is not simply a number-goes-up operation.
US higher education is that pipeline now, and it didn't exist in the 1930's and 1940's the way it does now.
It's funny how the loyalties of imported "talent" are not front and center in any discussion of how their presence is "strategically important." I think we are getting strategically shafted by lax immigration laws.
There's no such thing as an innate most qualified person. Zuck was never the most qualified to be CEO of Meta. He is now, because of what he's done. At the same time there's an infinite number of jobs he is poorly qualified for.
Strict qualification can only be measured in a extreme niche cases. You founded an area of research, so you're the most qualified to work on that at Google. You have a massive Linux project, then maybe Torvalds or his core maintainers are the only ones who fit.
But outside of that, people become qualified because of what they do, and before they did it, they were unqualified.
As an example, I'm sure there are many people at OAI and Ant who are today world experts at research and training and infra. But they became that by just doing the job. Take their same resume from 5 years ago and they may not even reach the interview if they applied for the same role. The what does qualified mean, how do you measure and define it?
Countries need to develop their own talent and individuals need to develop themselves.
I don't like the implied assumption that you can only do one or the other. To use the author's own story, the US had both von Braun and Johnson. Also, there are just many scenarios where you can't afford to train someone from scratch or tolerate a potentially poor hire and that's just reality. Sometimes you really do need the best person you can find.
False dichotomy. An H1B hire who has graduated from a US university and will receive a green card in a few years and become a US citizen after another 5 contributes to "the next generation of US talent" in the same way as John from Chicago.
You present the false dichotomy without qualifying 'the same way'.
Is it in terms of collective taxes paid? Does that include or exclude family? Or is it in terms of money spent in the local economy? Or in terms of money sent abroad to other economies? Maybe it's in more direct terms of contributing to the next generation of talent, like volunteering, coaching, or hosting scholastic events for the community? Or maybe it's an entirely other class of event, like a club exclusively for specific races/citizens of a specific country?
Almost all of my co-workers who were educated in the US but came from abroad send their earnings abroad, were part of 'X Country Citizens' clubs in college, and don't socialize too much outside of their native language. I don't think that's a problem, and it's just anecdotal, but it's certainly not the 'same way as John from Chicago'.
I meant in terms of contributions to the economy and talent pool, yes.
> don't socialize too much outside of their native language
If lack of socializing is an important factor, one should stop hiring introverts as well.
EB-2/EB-3 green cards which an H-1B holder usually pursues are quota-capped per country of birthplace. An Indian born applicant may have to wait for over 100 years.
With AI rapidly exceeding the tech knowledge of even the most qualified workers, is the benefit of an H1B worker that significant? General communication and strategic skills might be stronger in domestic workers.
I have multiple friends who studied CS and graduated in the last few years and couldn't find a job. These are people who grew up in the states, paid taxes here, came from (sometimes generations of) families who paid taxes here. I myself have pay $XXX,XXX in taxes a year.
It's absolutely bullshit that H1B and O1 visas can come here and take routine CS jobs that US citizens are more-than-qualified for. The narrative of the need for these visas is pure corporate-shill speak.
Let me put it this way: the US school system sucks. It produces great drama artists, athletes, and marketing specialists but not STEM professionals.
You can see it here: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 - just 6% of US school graduates go to study engineering (there are almost no foreign-born students doing bachelors in the US).
This has been the case since forever. So more than half of the STEM graduates of the _US_ universities are foreigners: https://www.ets.org/grad-school-journey/international-studen...
And if anything, the adult daycare (aka "school") situation has been getting worse for quite a while.
The US is a big country so it's hard to generalize. But if you take the "default" US culture, it has been either ambivalent or hostile toward nerds for a long time. People who rightly point this out get shouted down as being anti-American (see Ramaswamy's infamous post). They shouldn't shoot the messenger. They should help their kids tinker with cool garage experiments.
It's not just the culture, it's the school system. Nerds are distrusted pretty much everywhere. But if you have a school system that rewards achievement in STEM disciplines, you get better outcomes in STEM disciplines (see: China, xUSSR countries, India, South Korea).
Why do you think GCCs are a thing and Google India wages [0] are now reaching Poland levels [1] for mid-career Googlers.
These are multinational companies - not American companies.
No one complained when Google and their like moved hiring from the Bay Area and New York to North Carolina despite both having diametrically opposing politics.
[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...
[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...
I don't like that immigration is framed as a left-center vs right issue. Around 1900 the socialists were against immigration because it displaced local workers and capitalists used it to drive down wages.
So, ironically, Paul Graham supports the right wing position and Luckey the left-center if you frame it that way!
The most qualified for physical jobs are the healthiest. By allowing unlimited immigration, you literally let in the healthiest and most persistent to the detriment of less healthy locals. Eugenics? You can frame it that way, too.
Being born in a desirable country has disadvantages now. People from all over the world buy property and drive up prices, people from all over the world compete for local jobs, take university places (almost free in the EU). That is locust capitalism and the distinction between the von Brauns and the regular H1Bs that the article makes is sensible.
I see this debate as not really being about immigration, but as a facet of the eternal war between plutocrats and socialists. Plutocrats prey on socialist countries, exploiting their high standard of living and high social trust. Socialism more often than not arises when plutocrats have hollowed out a country and left it fallow, and interferes with the plutocrats second phase where they "brain drain" the now-desperate people and use them as shock troops in their next campaign. Plutocrats want to restrict immigration to the needs of business, while socialists want immigration to be as egalitarian as possible. As such, socialists and plutocrats are natural enemies. Socialist countries sometimes manage to shake off the plutocrats, and in fact America's "melting pot" idea was a well-timed inoculation against them.
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And then you have the Trump administration's war on competence.
Few facts to add color to different point of views:
- PG wants cheap labor so that we can get cheap/hard working employees for startups with a fear of deportation - Palmer cannot hire people on visas because they cannot easily clear security clearance that is required to work in Defense sector. Its better to align with current Government to get contracts.