the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.
not only are they making it hard & unbearable for families of US citizens & PR holders to be together.
while at the same time - discouraging talent to come to the US at a crucial time when talent is at a premium due to A.I development.
last the backwards energy policy of banning renewable energy.
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
> Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
However, there are those who believe that corporate profits are not the highest good. Some of us also care about the earnings of American workers.
Also, "best candidates" alone does not "best company" make. You need people who can work well together—which requires some degree of culture fit. Immigration restrictions help preserve the cultural homogeneity that makes collaboration and social trust possible.
If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
Google (and friends) famously have teams composed of a single national origin (or caste...). What does that say about their hiring bar?
Google (and friends) are already expanding the Shanghai and Zurich offices.
> Google (and friends) famously have teams composed of a single national origin (or caste...). What does that say about their hiring bar?
That racism isn't only something white people are capable of.
> I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Respectfully, this sounds terribly naive.
Why? All big and even medium tech companies have dev offices in EU and India. As example since it's much easier to deal with visas say in Ireland a lot of hiring was shifted to Irish offices.
Having worked at a few large companies, this was the case at all of them. I do think there is a messy middle of companies built on vibes.
There are 2 issues:
1/ Employment provides training and experience. If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
2/ h1b increases labor supply, not the demand. More supply, means lower wages for everyone.
1/ Training is only effective if you can fill the function of the job and learn from it. Many software engineering jobs people claim are stolen by H1B hires are filled by human beings more likely to meet the bar. Many American candidates just don’t. Filling a software role is hard.
2/ Demand for software is not static. Good software drives demand for more engineers in many cases, intra or extra-company. There is probably a non zero rate of wage suppression per marginal h1b currently. But an American economy with no h1b employees could feasibly have a much lower average sde salary. It is not an Econ 101 problem.
1/ Training goes all the way down the pipeline to colleges. If x% of students are foreign, then Americans didn't have the opportunity to get the education.
Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.
2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.
People are not as capable as you think they are and software engineering (well) is actually difficult. You cannot just push more people in. People are not fungible.
There is truth to your statement, but high salaries and demand encourage locally capable people to enter the industry.
Consider growth of CS graduates in the past 5 years or the number of people that transitioned into tech (like myself).
In 2026, this signal is not as clear: with the uncertainty of tech, increased output with less labor due to AI, and growing competition amongst workers (citizen or otherwise). We may see a shift in studies to other fields.
> I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
For some visa classes, the law says you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job - not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
> If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar
Does it really matter? To a point, obviously, but a lot of people are good enough for the role without being the world's best. The bar for getting into Google has dropped since its early days, and Google keeps breaking profit records quarter after quarter.
This entire "hire the best or nothing" mindset has led to a dysfunctional hiring process that's a pain to both employers and employees, and is prima facie unachievable.
> not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates. I have my set of questions, some candidates solve them, others don't. You can argue that it's the bar to do your job properly. Should politicians tell big tech companies what's the bar for being a successful SWE?
> When it comes to national interest, the argument for "meritocracy" falls apart quickly.
A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
> As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates
Someone in your org does - an individual or committee: that's the entire purpose of the hiring pipeline. I've interviewed candidates at multiple companies small and (extremely) big, and interviews always have to give recommendations for ranking purposes (out of 10/100, or (strong-/)yes / maybe / (strong-/)no)
I am not attacking you personally, but the fact remains: in some circumstances hiring "the best" - when they happen to be a non-citizen - can be in contravention with the law depending on the visa class and whether you failed to find an American capable of doing the job.
Don't just take my word for it, big tech companies have lost or settled multiple AG suits because they tried to hide job postings from Americans, e.g. by posting SWE/PM jobs in some podunk, print-only Farmers-Weekly-type magazines.
> A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers.
I fully agree. Unfortunately being skilled doesn't grant them the right to vote, and as young people keep finding out, those who write (and sign) laws care a lot about what actual voters think and feel. You have to get into office first before you can do the hard labor-policy stuff.
I was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.
Being paid the same as the other guy doesn't necessarily mean the wages themselves stayed the same. Adding H1B candidates to the talent pool exerts downward pressure on salary due to the law of supply and demand. I can't say for sure whether the allure of a green card or threat of deportation play a material factor in lowering the average salary that H1B immigrants are willing to accept. But in an environment where talent is treated as fungible (even if it isn't always so), any such downward pressure affects everyone.
The prevailing wage for H1B software engineers is a very good salary for most software engineers in the world.
It's common for the prevailing wage to be double what that person could earn in their country of origin.
That's the parent's argument. Prevailing wage in country A is X. Prevailing wage in country B is Y, and according to your numbers X > 2Y. Person from country B emigrates to country A and accepts wage 1.9Y, putting downward pressure on the jobs in country A at wage X.
Yeah, I'm agreeing.
You don't need the carrot of a green card or the stick of deportation to make a software engineer on an H1B accept a depressed wage, because it's not depressed relative to their alternatives.
And still exert downward pressure on wages. Just by virtue of having more people in the pool.
This would only make sense if there are a finite number of possible jobs and that more jobs are never added as an economy grows.
This would be interesting data to collect - given some field F, for each immigrant that enters the workforce, what is the delta between:
* The expected marginal increase in supply, from immigrants looking for jobs in F
* The expected marginal increase in demand, from immigrants (or non-immigrants identifying an opportunity) starting companies that need experts in F
And how strongly does that delta correlate with average salary in F?
When they're on visa managers know you can work them harder, especially during the PERM process
I was an H1B and this is a fucking lie.
The idea is that the "same wage" you are talking about is too low to hire enough employees in the time needed that the company needed so they had to look abroad for people willing to work for that amount.
Actually they get normal wages now. H1B’s get hired because H1B’s are now in hiring, recruiting, HR, etc.. they stack the candidate pool with their own shamelessly. I’ve seen it first hand.
OP and you are obviously on different end of the spectrum. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
Isn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa
H-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.
H-1B is dual intent, isn't it?
That only means you won't be denied if you express immigration intent during interview. Besides that it's nothing special. There is no special path to GC/naturalization for H1Bs.
If you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy.
They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.
Recently[1] Microsoft laid off several thousand domestic employees while simultaneously hiring a couple thousand employer-sponsored-Visa workers.
[1]https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-vis...
The news is about immigrant visas and H1B is temporary non-immigrant visa...
As a hiring manager no one tells you who is an immigrant and who isn’t when you interview them.
As an interviewee I've read "we're not sponsoring visas at this time" a million times.
At the HR/JD level, not at the actual interview.
And yet, they never applied the simple option of ranking the visa applications by salary, and approving in order of demand for the talent.
That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages.
But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.
They are doing that now too, however the problem is that h1b is used for roles outside of tech, believe it or not, and if you measure everything by Bay Area tech salaries a bunch of necessary but lower paying jobs will go unfilled
If it's truly necessary, the fact that it's unfilled would be directly related to it being low paid.
And if the employer isn't willing to pay the cost of labor to fill the position, it directly raises the question of whether its "necessary".
They can pay more, or hire American.
How does companies hiring h1b-holders (a non-immigrant visa) relate to a pause on immigrant visa applications?
Oh cool, good thing labor isn't fungible and nobody ever outsources.
What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!
"Superpower Suicide" in the words of historian Timothy Snyder.
Also encompasses the self-destruction of military power, alliances, and beneficial trade.
It looks more like homicide to me. Almost exactly like being pushed out the window of a skyscraper. But who would do such a thing?
These visa policies have already encouraged large tech companies etc to expand their Indian offices. It erodes the US tax base and means talent stay in their home country, which means more innovation happens outside the US. More start-ups are been founded in these countries because more talent is now there.
Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there. This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
They will and after a cyberleek incident they'll rethink that plan.
Who cares where this so called innovation happens? Won't it be cheaper for all of us if the salaries are in much lower cost of living places? Why would a US citizen give a shit?
I've never worked at a company that gave offshore teams the same responsibilities as onshore employees. When shit gets real, and someone's head needs to be on the chopping block, it's always a same-shore employee. But reduced responsibility also means reduced impact. Let's see if that changes, and I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.
They are insurgents. These people are Confederates.
Do you think China should open their borders for everyone no questions asked? Kick out no one, even overstayed visas?
If not, are you willing to equate the current Chinese regime’s quality to that of your perceived quality of the US?
I see you trying to kick a field goal all the way from the school parking lot, good luck with that.
It's not popular to mention but the US is the most immigrated to country on the planet, almost 4x the next country.
But really, immigrating to any country is quite complex. It's far from "just fill out a form" for pretty much every western country.
Welcome to how immigration works in other countries. Canada just changed a bunch of rules and is actively sending immigration officers to immigrant protests to run status checks and deport anyone in the country illegally.
There is no right for non-citizens to come to the US.
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Even if this was true how would it be in Israel's interest to weaken the US of all countries?
Weakened so it can be controlled as a golem of sorts to carry out agendas like paving over the Middle East for them, not necessarily destroyed.
You'd have to ask them:
“Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.”
—Benjamin "Netanyahu" Mileikowsky
That's the only source that I've heard for this quote:
> U.S. intelligence sources report that the one Israeli who is considered an extreme threat to U.S. national security is former prime minister and current prime minister hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu. Not only has Netanyahu visited convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in his North Carolina prison cell and advocated strenuously for his release, but he was once overheard by an ex-CIA agent as saying to a group of his supporters, "Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away." Considering the damage the neocons and their Israeli facilitators are causing for U.S. national security, Netanyahu may soon have his wish.
(https://web.archive.org/web/20101121090204/http://onlinejour...)
I don't like Bibi and he should definitely go, but if that's your source... Enjoy.
incredible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Madsen_(journalist)#Opin...
Israel is trying to stoke anti-immigrant policies, specifically they want to exacerbate Islamophobia. They're also well aware that the US is about to become staunchly anti-Israel once the baby boomers are gone.
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There are many possibilities. The conspiracy theorists like to talk about how the people pushing the "pro Israel" actions in the U.S. are more loyal to Israel than they are to the US and so their end goal is to make Israel a regional superpower in the Middle East and to them in the end, it doesn't matter what happens to the US. I mean if you are loyal to Israel and not the US I could see this. Each country acts in their own interests and these people have been able to exploit the weakness of money in politics for their benefit. I personally don't fully buy that, but that's one theory.
Another theory is that the leadership in Israel is not really thinking long term. They are suffering from the same issues that other poor leaders like Trump are suffering from. They're just looking at themselves and what benefits them in the short term, so the moves that they're making are beneficial in the short term but very detrimental in the long term.
It's possible that they think that the US decline is inevitable due to uncontrolled spending, the decline in development in its people and other issues etc. and so they are grabbing as much as they can before it collapses and then afterwards they align with the next superpower there have been some moves in that direction to open up to China although small. Its a risky move because China may not treat them anywhere near as well so Israel has to work harder to earn its seat at the table but if the US decline is out of their full control then the next best move is to grab as much as you can before it comes crashing down and then move on.
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I used to think things like this as an American. But let's simplify. What if they're just fucking idiots and they realized they could rally a bunch of other fucking idiots to the polls?
So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
Like if your racist grampa got put in charge of US Treasuries, tell me how things would be worse.
How is Scott Bessent like a racist grandpa?
He knows nothing about how anything in the world actually works.
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents
The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?
And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965. So really the question goes back to you.
Either way, your whataboutism isn’t even relevant since those were congressional changes.
This is the executive trying to undermine the law.
There is a whole site with various trends that diverged or changed since 1971.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
It's not exactly an unbiased selection but it is interesting.
>And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965.
Better for whom? People are struggling to afford groceries largely because the dollar is worth 1/165th of its 1913 value and the minimum wage hasn't been raised in 17 years.
I found a job that pays in BTC and I'm super hopeful about that one because my effective salary won't go down by 3-8% every year but instead will appreciate relative to what things are priced in.
> Better for whom?
Minorities and women, for a start.
We were able to make progress on those fronts in the 1960s because we had a culturally homogenized population after decades of immigration restriction.
In the area of women’s rights, for example, the driving force was mainline protestants who wanted prohibition, in opposition to recent immigrants: https://www.wpbstv.org/prohibition-and-the-suffrage-movement.... If America had remained an Anglo-Protestant society, it likely would have developed on a similar trajectory as Canada, the UK, and Australia on issues like abortion. Remember, Roe v. Wade had five Nixon and Eisenhower Republicans in the majority. The party shifted positions on the issue with Reagan because it was a way to flip a large number of catholics, who had overwhelmingly voted democrat until then. Evangelical protestants plus religious Catholics was a big enough coalition to offset mainline protestants on the issue.
White people are a global minority at ~7%. "Minorities™" have their own countries where they are majorities. If they don't want to be Minorities™, they can stay home.
Seriously? You don’t like non-white people?
Personally, I'm fine with non-white people. But the idea of moving to a country where people like me are in a minority, then complaining: "Woe is me, I'm a minority, I demand special treatment", is objectionable. This isn't the type of immigrant I want.
No more than they like white people. The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least. Except white people. Who've been conditioned to get rid of their in-group bias. If HN supported images, I could show you the charts.
I looked at that data and decided deliberately, out of rational self interest to be just like them and put my own race first exactly like they do. Equality!
> The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least.
Hard to parse .. ESL ?
That aside, what made up assertive nonsense is this? There are many stories and studies about various non Caucasian groups WhiteMaxxing to make themselves look more Caucasian because <reasons>.
eg: (2013) - Asian women are turning to plastic surgery to look more Caucasian https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/asian-women-are-tur...
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Do you pay your taxes in btc too?
Who cares when I can sell BTC to USD in seconds?
So, it really doesn’t matter that your job is paid in BTC, given that you could just convert your USD income to BTC whenever you want
That doesn't follow. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the effect of nominal wage stickiness: you're not constantly renegotiating your rate, so when there's fluctuations in relative value, it matters what unit the original number is denominated in. Compare with the case of a US expat being paid a steady salary in USD and converting to the local currency to make purchases, if you want an example with a similar mechanic but very different intuitive feel and practicalities.
(I'm not sure they're right about the overall effect though.)
You basically nailed it. USD crashed in the 1970s after the Nixon shock, and is basically a shambling corpse losing 3-8% of its value every single year while BTC is 600x the value of a 1913 dollar... and trending up: https://i.imgur.com/PJT01T8.png
Even if they don't give me a raise, I'll still have more purchasing power at the end of a year rather than less as the case with USD.
"Worked fine" is a pretty vague description for the year we had a Great Depression, world war, Jim Crow, Japanese internment to name a few.
The U.S. was at the apex of its power during those years. Those years are also why we remember earlier immigration waves as “working.” The foreign born population dropped from 15% to under 5% during that period. The Italian and Irish enclaves disappeared and so did the separate ethnic identity of those groups (to a large degree).
“I’m okay with racial prison camps if it makes us powerful” is the exact sort of moral bankruptcy to be expected from the people who defend this administration.
False equivalence. The claim was:
"the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453997
We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
We also had strong unions and income tax rates as high as 95% on the highest income brackets.
Yeah we should also have very high income tax rates.
The rest of the world was bombed to pieces while the USA had an untouched industrial output.
That’s a common misconception. The U.S. actually became the world’s largest industrial power before World War I. Germany had 60% of the US’s GDP per capita in 1910. It dipped during the war itself, but by 1960 it was closer to 70%. https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap....
Whether or not what you say is correct, it does not at all contradict GP’s two claims.
It contradicts the conclusion he’s drawing from those two facts, which is that U.S. economic dominance results from European economies having been destroyed after WWII. The U.S. became a world power during its isolationist phase prior to WWI.
I think the last 20 years of that 45 year period were substantially due to exactly what they described.
If you give any debit for the decade-long Great Depression, or wartime malaise due to loss of life, emotional toll, and rationing, it’s fair to conclude that half of the period of good times was during exactly that post-war rebuilding (largely powered by US industrial capacity) and concomitant baby boom.
There was not any particular discontinuity in GDP per capita growth during the post WWII period compared to previous periods: https://conversableeconomist.com/2023/09/14/the-remarkable-s....
Bombed to pieces by the USA, ironically enough.
Would you have preferred that the US military stay at home during WW2 to avoid bombing anyone? You know that Japan was killing something like a Hiroshima and Nagasaki worth of civilians every month?
I would have preferred the banks be told not to expect a bailout in 1914. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It's been a problem for a long time and the body count stretches into the millions.
I believe that human flourishing is a better goal than state power relative to its rivals.
Mmmmhmmm. Ah yes 1921, the year both the Klu Klux Klan (and European Fascism) metastasized in society. All immigration controls come from a rather interesting, dark place; shifting of the Overton Window, and all that.
Oh god I hope this lie is part of an attempt to get right-wingers on board with a “let’s roll immigration policy back to what we had in 1950!” push.
I hope this because it’d be hilarious if they got what they wanted and realized that meant actual open borders with most or all of the Americas.
Before Hart-Cellar we had national origin quotas, it wasn't a free-for-all.
For those outside the Americas, yes. Western hemisphere immigration had no meaningful restrictions until 1965.
We had little meaningful immigration pressure from the america at the time. The foreign born population dropped from 15% in 1921 to under 5% by 1970.
We’re backing away from:
> The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965.
to “well ok not really but it didn’t matter”?
It did matter. It was restrictive in actual effect, in that it blocked immigration from the places it was mainly coming from, and dropped the foreign born population under 5% by 1970.
How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
> How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”
It’s strong evidence that immigration restriction isn’t economically destructive. If you think economic circumstances have changed and the result would be different this time, then I think you have the burden to prove it.