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1245 points mriguy | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.413s | source
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roughly ◴[] No.45306289[source]
I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.

A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so. You can argue how well that’s worked out for us - having worked with a great many extremely talented H1bs in an industry largely built by immigrants, I’d consider it pretty positive - but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.

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1. mgh2 ◴[] No.45311194[source]
Did anyone see the writing on the wall? This is an obvious ban on foreign high skill labor: what employer will pay 100k upfront cost?

The cost is not even close to cover the wage difference (20-30%): https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...

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2. glenngillen ◴[] No.45311283[source]
Admittedly my frame of reference here is now a decade ago when I was living in California. But we would routinely hire people on H1B, and it most definitely wasn't because we thought it was a cost saving. Between the >=$20K in legal fees, similar budget for relocation expenses to bring someone into the country, and having to pay them as a foreign contractor for anything up to 10 months while we wait for the applications to re-open for the year. And then pay them the same as any local talent we hand on the team.

Hiring local people was preferable in every way. But the market was hot and it was seemingly almost impossible to actually do that.