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1245 points mriguy | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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bhouston ◴[] No.45308820[source]
This is actually smart. Many H1B visas are used to undermine fair labor wages for already local talent. We should ensure that H1B visas are for actual unique talent and not just to undercut local wages.

H1B is ripe with abuse - this article by Bloomberg says that half of all H1-B visas are used by Indian staffing firms that pay significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing:

- https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-c...

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softwaredoug ◴[] No.45308895[source]
OTOH many H1Bs come with the intent of moving to the US and permanent residence eventually. Which makes our workforce stronger.
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wonderwonder ◴[] No.45308956[source]
Unless you are an American tech worker looking for a job
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breadwinner ◴[] No.45308994[source]
Why does America have all the tech jobs in the first place? It is because of people like Elon Musk immigrating to the US and building the tech industry.
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ungreased0675 ◴[] No.45309259{3}[source]
Because US companies like Bell Labs invented it.
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1. breadwinner ◴[] No.45309325{4}[source]
Ha! And who worked at Bell Labs, the US company? Immigrants.

Mohamed "John" Atalla, raised in Egypt, and Dawon Kahng from Korea, who together invented the MOSFET transistor, which underpins modern electronics and computing. Both immigrated to the United States for graduate engineering education and made their breakthrough at Bell Labs in 1959.

Yann LeCun, born and raised in France, immigrated to the U.S. in 1988 to work at AT&T Bell Labs, where he became head of image processing research and contributed significantly to artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born inventor of the telephone, was a founder and major figure in the creation of the Bell Telephone Company; AT&T, created by American Bell in 1885, later established Bell Labs.

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2. bitsage ◴[] No.45309732[source]
Immigration has always bolstered the American tech industry, but the bulk of the industry has always been American. Just look at the distinguished members of Bell Labs. Many are immigrants, but most are American. The reason why immigrants come here is that American industry is already very strong. It’s not mutually exclusive to claim that Americans build a strong tech industry and that skilled immigrants have invented many new technologies here in America.
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3. breadwinner ◴[] No.45309819[source]
You are right about Bell Labs, the majority were US-born.

But let's consider one of the biggest innovations of recent times: Artificial Intelligence (transformers/LLMs specifically). Where was it invented? In America. Who invented it? Let's take a look. The seminal research paper that kicked off this 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. So only 25% US-born.

Have you watched OpenAI's demos and how many of their researchers are Asian? Would you prefer for them to remain in Asia and contribute to DeepSeek instead?