I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

wow, who hurt you ?

I love responses like this because they highlight how allowing broken systems to persist can so thoroughly warp their purpose. Did anyone go to law school and specialize in immigration because they felt called to be "the modern equivalent of the overseer on the plantation?" Probably not.

But if you want to sample the kind of vitriol that somebody living with the precarity of a H-1B "employer controls your life" environment, here's a paragraph of it to chew on.

It seems pretty obvious the H-1B system hurt him.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that immigration lawyers are "overseer on the plantation". That is an extreme imo. Lawyers are only there to help there clients navigate the laws of the land. They have serve both companies and immigrants as clients.

Though, I strongly believe that H1b problem is modern slavery. Especially for people from India and China. The law is carefully crafted to ensure a constant supply of captive labor who work hard, pay taxes and if they fail to be competetive then get sent back to their home country irrespective of how long they have lived here or their contribution to the economy/society here. Sometimes I wonder if the law would have been the same if it were to impact europeans the same way (Pls don't take this as racist. Nothing against European ppl. I'm just complaining about a racist law).

I know the counter-argument is always that "you can leave the job and go back if you feel it's slavery". That's true but like Europeans and like people from many other countries, we also want to live in this great country. This country has attracted immigrants over centuries. The problem is that the law is carefully crafted to ensure that not too many people of color become citizens here without having a clear race based restriction in the law.

Ah yes, those poor immigration attorneys just trying to get through life one day at a time on their six figure income, having to endure the unimaginable agony of reading the occasional snarky internet comment. Let me play you a song on the world's smallest violin while thousands of migrant workers get deported every time Elon Musk has to pay child support.

My personal favorite is the immediate follow up this conversation generates ( 'well, if you don't like the job, change it' ) while cynically omitting how we got here and that changing it is either near impossible or being actively hindered. You see it all the time. One would think the population would get better at pattern recognition after being stung once or twice.

This is an inappropriate question for this AMA. The person is trying to help out others by offering some free guidance, and your question is, "how do you sleep at night, you scum-sucking bastard?"

The person is not here to help others, he is here to promote himself and his business. Do you really think a professional multi-millionaire attorney with his own law firm came here in the middle of a work day just to socialize?

The U.S. has misused the law to exploit migrant laborers from Western Europe in the past, such as Irish immigrant workers building railroads a hundred years ago. The difference is, those Irish railroad workers were eventually able to ascend the social ladder and be treated as equals in our society, because they are white. They were similar enough to us that they could "pass" and be accepted in mainstream American society and not be looked upon forever as outsiders. Other exploited workers from that era were not as fortunate and continue to be dehumanized and marginalized even today. Every attempt they ever made to join the club and be participants in the great American Dream was systematically crushed, either by force of law or by force of mob violence. Because they are not white. We invented a whole victim-blaming narrative about this where we chalk it up to inferior genetics or lack of perserverence, but anyone with a brain can plainly see that it is the natural inclination for people to adapt to their surroundings and to do whatever they can to be accepted and welcomed into the social collective. It takes a powerful outside force to stop that from happening, to keep the outsiders from eventually turning into insiders, who will then start compelling us to share the commons with them.

If it's the H1B, why attack another person so viciously instead of attacking the system? By the way, it's the same story for immigrants almost everywhere. (African immigrant in Europe here—it's even tougher: companies literally expect you to be so grateful they gave you a job, as if you're not helping them generate profit and they did some kind of charity.) Conveniently, it's easier if you move from the U.S./EU to South America, Africa, or parts of Asia—remnants of colonialism, I guess.

The problem is the idea of the nation-state with borders and all. As long as we think being born in one part of the world gives you more rights than someone who just moved from somewhere else, we'll continue to have this bureaucratic nonsense that (and I'm almost certain of it) has a negative impact on economic growth. But I don't think that will change in the next 100–200 years, so let's deal with the unfair cards we have and move on with our lives.

finding ways to move on despite the administrative hurdles is the only pragmatic path forward. and Peter Roberts is trying to help with that ??

Doesn't matter. It's still inappropriate behavior on your part.

And, people can help others and promote themselves at the same time. One can appreciate the former while holding their nose at the latter.

Was it really a vicious attack? He wanted to come here and tell me about his law firm and what he does and asks me what I think about it, so I gave him exactly what he asked for.

And I'm not an immigrant, I was born in the US and have lived here my entire life and H-1B has no effect on me personally at all. But I do work for a living and I have enough common sense to understand that one group of workers being exploited is the same as all workers being exploited.

The problem is not nation states or borders - people were being enslaved and exploited and abused by powerful autocrats long before there were ever any nations or borders, it's just human nature. The purpose of "the system" is to protect human society from its own destructive self-serving irrational urges, and this system is not some outside force that we can point the finger at, we are the system and everything we say and do and think and believe determines what kind of system it is.

I could argue that I am attacking the system, by not biting my tongue when confronted by the landed gentry, rather than playing along with my culture's indoctrinated tendency to roll out the red carpet and start kissing ass whenever a successful millionaire enters the room.