Is it not cruel to Americans to replace them with said slave labor through legislation? The people who built this prosperous modern nation that so many people wish to flock to for a better life are just kicked to the curb -- talk about cruel.
* America was built by pioneers and colonists who tamed the wild continent and helped create the modern civilization we enjoy. They brought their experience and culture from the Western civilization from which they were launched.
* There are Americans currently alive who are direct descendants of the pioneers and colonists who created this great nation who deserve to prosper from their ancestors' sacrifice(s)
* Resources (housing) and opportunities (jobs) are finite -- if Heritage Americans have to compete with the entire developing world for their birthright, there is a non-zero chance they will be "kicked to the curb" so to speak.
Yea, he sensed the heat that H1-B scab labor is getting now that the economy is in a downturn and AI is poised to take out a lot of high-tech white collar jobs. He wants to nominally end H1-B but really just wants to shift attention away from what these non-immigrant visas are doing to the people they are designed to replace.
> These visas played a very important role in making America the world leader in technology and innovation.
Citation needed -- it's as if we didn't have major technological advancements and a burgeoning tech industry in the valley before 1990 when the H1-B was signed into law and companies rushed to force Americans to train their (unbeknownst to them) replacements.
> But the system became badly corrupted. Unethical body shops learned to game it.
Who corrupted it? Certainly Vivek and his compatriots have some culpability here. I'm sure there are other examples but Cognizant was the most egregious where they were found liable in discriminating against non-Indians when deciding who to put on the bench and who to ultimately terminate.
As usual, it started with Americans screwing over other Americans while getting you to blame the brown dude. Gosh, darn!
Labor is no different than goods/services. Why should the world allow coca-cola, netflix, mcdonalds and hollywood access to their markets while their local equivalents suffer? Competition? Fuck that. Nobody wants their 401k to appreciate as US companies grow their customer base in overseas markets. Stupid, silly capitalism. FUck that, lets go all in, super mega great depression style.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. The reason the US is so prosperous is due to immigration, mostly during the 20th century. The US cannot run off of just the existing citizens. Well, it can, for a while, but not indefinitely.
I am aware of the concept of children, thank you. Not sure why we have to argue like we have a stick up our asses, but here we are.
As you're well aware, the US is just barely meeting replacement birth rate. Most developed countries are under it. And the big picture: the US is all about growth. Economic growth, cultural growth. If you want more of that, you need immigrants. Sorry, that's how the US has always worked. If you don't agree with it, then I'm not sure the US is the country for you.
There are plenty of developed, homogeneous countries. Diversity is what makes the US the US. Please, feel free to seek a country that better aligns with your beliefs.
The founders were, themselves, immigrants. From multiple different countries.
Of course racism existed when the founding father's were alive, we had slavery. But, from the beginning, the US has been a country founded on immigration and racial diversity. Yes, we did not, at the time, consider black Americans Americans. But we certainly do now, and have for a very long time.
I'm also not convinced immigration lowers wages. People throw this around, while providing no evidence. And, even if it did, I think it's obvious that wages is not the cause behind birth rate decline.
All the developed countries, with the high wages and standard of living, have poor birthrate. All the developing countries, with low wages and low standard of living, have high birthrates. Hmm.
If we look at the demographic progression of nations the "culprit" behind birthrate is development. Particularly, social development, the liberation of women. Turns out lots of women don't actually want to have children, and when we stop pressuring them socially, they don't. They work instead.
Obviously this is a hard problem to solve. If you want to solve birthrate, you need to de-develop your nation. Not good. Or, some other solution, which nobody has found yet. Or, you just have immigration, which we do and have had.
> the US has been a country founded on immigration and racial diversity
This is a misreading of pre-1965 history with respect to immigration. The Naturalization Act of 1790 explicitly states:
"any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof... making proof to the satisfaction of such Court, that he is a person of good character."
So the "diversity is our strength" slogan is a modern invention and an attempt to retcon our history.
The US was diverse from the beginning, with a large black, indigenous, and white population.
Again, at the time we did not consider black Americans to be Americans. But we certainly do now, and have for a long time.
Yes racism existed in the 18th century. Congratulations, you are a connoisseur of history. Maybe next you can clarify if the Pope lives in the Vatican.
But, that doesn’t mean the US wasn’t diverse. It was, from the beginning. Both in terms of different European nationalities, and in terms of race.
Also, harkening back to 17 fucking 90 as a defense of anti-immigration policy is a poor argument.
People already largely think that anti-immigration sentiment is pure racism. And people think that exactly because of arguments like yours. I’m not saying you’re racist. But, just about everyone was in 1790. That’s not a good defense. That actually serves as a demonstration of what NOT to do, and highlights the social progression of the US. It’s good we’re no longer there, in that mindset.
George Washington was the 4th generation of his family in america. He and his community has deep roots in america and did not consider themselves immigrants. The American nation existed before the revolution and was a precondition for such.
Only supply a demand economic denialists cannot understand than an increase in the supply of something leads to falling prices.
We certainly do not have an oversupply of labor. In fact, we're quite short on it. The demand for many jobs is very high. In fields where immigrants often work, that is, blue collar labor, the demand is VERY high. We simply do not produce enough tradesmen, but we still require infrastructure.
And for white collar labor, we have a lot of immigrants, too. But again, supply is not the issue. Yes we import a lot of things like doctors. But we certainly don't have nearly enough doctors.
Tradesmen? Americans used to become carpenters but now don't because it used to be paid well enough but now pays peanuts. All because of immigration. If carpenters were paid what they were paid in the 60s, inflation adjusted you'd see American carpenters again. There is no labor shortage, only a wage shortage because too many people like you demand to hire at slave wages and failing that import someone desperate enough to take it.
It pays peanuts because we manufacture furniture in China for pennies on the dollar. All of the factories have moved out of the US, and artisan goods were dead long before that.
Immigrants aren’t stealing those jobs. Those jobs no longer exist in the US, so nobody can steal them even if they tried.
Carpenters are the trade that builds houses from wood. Almost every house in america is built this way. I've yet to see a carpenter job, which requires being on site, outsourced to china. Misdirecting by pretending not to know what a carpenter is, is just downright dishonest and emblematic of the deceiptful open borders argument.
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.
What recourse do those of us who want to live in a clean productive society have while we wait for the world's sociologists to finally figure out a solution to the homelessness problem? I don't think I'm alone in wanting to see panhandlers, drug addled zombies, and schizophrenics out of all public spaces.
Perhaps some sympathy and care towards your fellow man would help?
Your attitude towards them being a nuisance is what needs to change.
For example you could easily go out today and invite a rough sleeper to come back and stay at your place for a few nights. That would get one of them off the streets immediately.
One thing that I continue to wonder about is why is sympathy always directed at the person who is visibly in rough sorts - these people are definitely suffering from mental illness and substance addictions, but there are rarely calls for sympathy directed towards those who have to suffer annoyance, harassment, and sometimes abuse at the hands of these individuals. Not to mention the mental toll it takes on people seeing their communities and favorite haunts slowly degrade over time.
People don't want to live in depressing conditions, so I think some sympathy should be directed at them who have near zero ability to improve their surroundings while academics and NGOs wring their hands about the "homelessness problem" without actually making these communities better in any meaningful sense.
I think the scrutiny was due to him being an avatar for the frustrations around DEI and western society's focus on equality of outcome. He didn't deserve his position at Cambridge, but he didn't deserve this fate either.
There's not a lot of equality of outcome at Cambridge when it comes to black academics. The percentage is lower compared to that of the general population and to that of British academia in general. Appointing Arday to the position was clearly a huge error of judgment, with tragic consequences. However, anyone imagining that Cambridge is appointing black professors willy-nilly has got the wrong picture.
Why is immigration always absent from these discussions on HN? the US has absorbed millions of people through immigration (both legal and illegal) which puts pressure on housing supply which drives up prices since supply is relatively inelastic. Enforcement of immigration policy would increase housing supply without needing to build more capacity in the short term and would lower prices.
The only shortage is in pay. I and many other people left trades becauses wages were crap for jobs that take 20 years of your life away. Despite the memes about trades, the majority of trade workers are not making bank unless they have an unusual specialty and a union. 1 plumber in Manhatten doing making bank doesn't make the plumbers all across the rest of the nation wealthy.
Ok? If you want natives to take these jobs construction prices will go up. So we need immigrants to affordably build things. If all construction workers are native going forward the vast majority of people will never be able to afford a home other than inheriting one.
Labor is a fraction of the cost of trade work. The highest expensive is in most cases the bulk construction materials, next is the cost of management and bureaucracy. The excuses of labor costing more here is just that, an excuse, most often used by large corporations to try and excuse them offshoring everything and hollowed out the organization for short term gains.
There's no such thing as "jobs natives don't want", only "wages natives don't want".
> Maybe, or maybe they just employ less people and less things get built.
The foreign born population residing in the US fell from ~15% to ~5% from 1920-1970. It was one of the most prosperous and productive periods in human history.
US was prosperous post war because the industrial capacity of the rest of the world was destroyed. Comparing that time period to any other doesnt make sense.
We can only employ natives if we want, we just have to accept that prices of things that are currently run on immigrant labor will go up, and a lot less of it will be produced. Personally I am unwilling to make that tradeoff but obviously you dont have to agree. US labor market suffers seriously from baumol's cost disease, only solution to that is immigration with the understanding that immigrants will take unwanted jobs in exchange for a better life for their kids.
We also need immigration because it grows the GDP, makes for a dynamic and resilient economy, increases scientific and technological output and raises the standard of living.
I think immigration from developing nations does raise the standard of living for the immigrant (e.g. India), but not for the host nation -- it's called "regression to the mean". As far as GDP goes, I always think of this:
> Two economists are walking in a forest when they Come across a pile of shit.
> The first economist says to the other "Ill pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit." The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
> They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says "l pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit." The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
> Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing." "That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"
If there is reduced demand for new housing due to increased inventory, there's less of a demand on construction for new housing. The expenses involved in new builds is both labor and building codes/restrictions - construction firms undercut Americans by hiring foreign labor that they can pay under the table.
I would much prefer Americans pay a premium for skilled American labor and choose to live in more modestly-sized homes.
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