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

183 points proberts | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 16:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

I'll be here for the few hours and then again at around 1 pm PST for another few hours. As usual, there are countless possible topics and I'll be guided by whatever you're concerned with. Please remember that I can't provide legal advice on specific cases for obvious liability reasons because I won't have access to all the facts. Please stick to a factual discussion in your questions and comments and I'll try to do the same in my answers. Thanks!

Previous threads we've done: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts.

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danielktdoranie ◴[17 Oct 24 22:29 UTC] No.41874458[source]▶
Employers should have to prove they were not able to find a U.S. citizen who can do the job before they're allowed to hire someone that needs a work permit. Employers purposefully seek out non-U.S. citizens as they know they're happy to work for a lot less, especially if gets them into the U.S. This whole system encourages economic migrants, puts U.S. citizens out of work. As far as In am concerned you're actively working against your fellow Americans helping foreigners abuse and exploit our immigration laws.
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1. closeparen ◴[18 Oct 24 00:15 UTC] No.41875151[source]▶
Depends what “can do the job” means, right? Elite tech companies try to hire the highest ability people they can. The US is not a large share of the world’s population, so even if it is massively overrepresented in top performers, the vast majority of top performers are still foreign born. Your position is that US companies should hire less impressive people because they are American. Maybe you can build a functioning search engine that way, so a 100% American-born engineering team can technically do the job, but does it end up being Google? Does it end up being competitive relative to what the immigrants who worked on it would have done in their own countries or a friendlier country?