Comment by dzonga
11 hours ago
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.
1 reply →
> 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.
5 replies →
> 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.
2 replies →
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.
5 replies →
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.
1 reply →
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.
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.
3 replies →
The news is about immigrant visas and H1B is temporary non-immigrant visa...
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!
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.
1 reply →
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...
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
2 replies →
"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?
> 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.
[flagged]
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
2 replies →
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.
1 reply →
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.
[flagged]
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.
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?
> 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.
12 replies →
"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).
16 replies →
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.
4 replies →
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.