The US will do anything but have a sane worker visa program, with clear path to citizenship.
The lottery system is built to be gamed and so is the performative local "hiring" attempts.
On the flip side it always surprises me how rabid HN can be about throwing out H1B workers. I am sure some of the people who you may have come across were not deserving of it, but a large amount of them work hard to come here and setup roots. Cancelling visas or deporting them will not get American workers their jobs back. Please spare a moment to consider the pain and anguish it brings to families.
> with clear path to citizenship.
Or no path at all. Tying the citizenship carrot to the visa and letting the employers hold the stick is the worst of all possible outcomes.
The real rationale for the change isn't fraud at all. Does it make sense that the administration is specifically concerned about fraud regarding hiring in tech sector while at the same time pardoning convicted fraudsters where the victims lose out on billions of dollars?
Does it make sense to declare the "America is full" and deporting people who have been granted asylum while welcoming white South Africans with open arms?
> On the flip side it always surprises me how rabid HN can be about throwing out H1B workers
HN had its mask off moment some time around the 2024 election.
HN's shift from a group of plucky Wozniak-like technological enthusiasts to a group of unicorn focused wealth seekers tracked the broader change from engineers being primary staffed with hobbyists to wealth seekers across society.
That change FAR predates the most recent election.
> HN's shift from a group of plucky Wozniak-like technological enthusiasts to a group of unicorn focused wealth seekers tracked the broader change from engineers being primary staffed with hobbyists to wealth seekers across society.
This is just what happens when communities get bigger, they become more reflective of the societies which the people are drawn from.
I do remember HN getting much nastier around 2015-16, and again around Covid, but this is just a reflection of society again and unlikely to be a purely HN thing.
If anything, in the 15 (fuck) years I've been hanging out here, it's amazing how well the community has held up.
This is not caring about their country, this is caring about their paycheck. They want higher salaries, damned' be what it does to competitiveness. It's nearsighted protectionism, that's what it is.
It's local maxima vs global maxima. Or 10% of small pie vs 1% of big pie, etc. More to the parent's point though, HN demographics have changed just like all other social media. It's not the SF Bay area tech scene anymore; it's a global townsquare like x.com. So it's hard to separate the signal from the noise.
...or the Bay Area scene has become - or no longer cares to hide its misanthropy, as examplified by senior leadership at YC, a16z and other places telling us how they really feel. Even Paul Graham went mask-off in the afterglow of Trump's second inauguration - February 2025 has some truly wild, victory-lap takes that almost seemed coordinated.
People should demand lower salaries, god damnit! What happened to the good old-fashioned Mission of the company? In fact that we ask for anything at all to get ahead on our housing and healthcare payments is morally abominable. When did HN get so... germaine. We must serve our corporate missions at any costs, and bring forth the future our Founders promise.
People are too afraid to challenge their billionaire bosses, so they go after immigrants, because immigrants seem like easy targets. It's basic human cowardice underneath.
Going after immigration is challenging their billionaire bosses. Whose bottom line do you think is benefiting from all the cheap labor immigration brings? I don't get how folks got so confused about this in the last 10 years.
> Cancelling visas or deporting them will not get American workers their jobs back
So I think what some in this thread are saying is it quite literally 'will' bring American workers the literal jobs that the H1Bs aren't doing anymore.
> but a large amount of them work hard to come here and setup roots
So two things can definitely be true here. They can be hardworking and well-intentioned, and they can still be used as a wedge between American workers and slightly better jobs
There is no guarantee that any American will be hired to fill any job vacated by a former H-1(b) holder. The firm could contract or fail against foreign competitors.
None of this is how this happens though. The reason why companies spend thousands of dollars to pay lawyers is that local talent to do this work simply does not exist. They would much rather prefer hiring Citizens.
I experienced it at my first role after college. I got a job at a hospital as an analyst. Many of my graduating peers applied. Only a few got in. It was odd because the first day the room was divided into two. Literally one side locals and the other side H1B. It’s a group that has less than 1% ethnicity in my area. It was really weird. It felt like there was a quota to hit 50% locals. There were a few experienced people with the software we were using. Most were not and the people that were had a citizenship. That analyst role didn’t even need a CS degree.
> Cancelling visas or deporting them will not get American workers their jobs back.
When Microsoft lays off 6.000 American workers and then refills those positions with H1Bs, I would argue that cancelling visas will definitely bring those jobs back.
The implication here is that the laid-off 6000 American workers are citizens. That is untrue. No company I know of bases their layoff decisions on citizenship status. When an H1B worker gets laid off, that person counts as an American worker that’s laid off: the dataset where this comes from (the state-based WARN Act disclosures) does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. That is an unfortunate inaccuracy in how these numbers are reported, and this inaccuracy is something that politicians like Vance loves to exploit.
Basing layoff decisions on citizenship is likely illegal, and that's why no company does that. It does not mean, however, that they can't do it by proxy. If you lay off people above a certain salary and justify it as cost cutting, yoiu are likely targeting mostly nationals. The few H1B caught in the net are just collateral damage. Then, you can hire imported workers that are willing to work for far less just to have a chance to come to America.
Switzerland: 10 million people, around 600'000 with permit B (limited to 5 years), over a million with permit C (persistent living permit, but no citizen, available after 5 years of B).
> Please spare a moment to consider the pain and anguish it brings to families.
How about sparing a moment for the anguish of American citizens and graduates that either lost their jobs, or cant find work, because they were replaced by foreign scab labor willing to work longer hours, for less pay, with no mobility?
Why would there need to be a clear path to citizenship? If I go work in Amazon UAE for 2 year contract, why would I expect citizenship? The whole reason I'm there is for money. When the job is done, I go home.
Clear path or no-path to citizenship I guess. The fact that H1B is a dual-intent visa muddies the water and allows employers to string along people for decades.
> I am sure some of the people who you may have come across were not deserving of it...
The contention is pretty clear to me: the law currently says hiring companies should look for Americans who can do the jobs first (not best), and only sponsor visas if they can't find them - but tech companies behavior ranges from being nationality-blind (i.e. hiring "the best" interviewer), to actively hiding opportunities from American job-seekers.
Sure, immigration is hard, stressful and gruelling fight against an an uncaring system. But the damaging aspects of widespread illegal corporate[1] conduct shouldn't be ignored.
I'm saying this as someone who believes American should increase its immigration and end widespread gray-area tolerance that harms the immigrants - who have the least power of all parties involved, which employers love to exploit. Sadly, partisanship makes otherwise smart voters really dumb, with one party lying to its base and the other going along with it and avoiding hard discussions about why America needs immigration.
> ... but tech companies behavior ranges from being nationality-blind (i.e. hiring "the best" interviewer), to actively hiding opportunities from American job-seekers.
> National origin discrimination can include preferring foreign workers, including workers with a particular visa status, over American workers.
> ...
> National origin-related disparate treatment in hiring related to job advertisement also can include an employer making it more difficult for applicants from one national origin to apply for positions (for example, subjecting U.S. workers to more laborious application methods than H-1B visa holders during the PERM labor certification process).
Part of the challenge here is that the EEOC tends to not be funded well and is limited to acting on tips rather than being able to investigate or audit.
> The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination.
> Congressional negotiators have reached a bipartisan deal to fund the EEOC at $435.4 million for fiscal year 2026. The funding level is the same as that requested by the White House, but nearly $20 million (4.3%) less than last year’s budget.
Why should temporary workers have a path to citizenship? Come to the US, work in a high tech job, send your remittances back to your family, and then retire to your home country at a young age. Win-win.
over 50% of silicon valleys unicorns have an immigrant founder. if you cut off their ability to stay, you wouldn't have those companies, and there wouldn't be nearly as many high paying tech jobs.
>On the flip side it always surprises me how rabid HN can be about throwing out H1B workers. I am sure some of the people who you may have come across were not deserving of it, but a large amount of them work hard to come here and setup roots. Cancelling visas or deporting them will not get American workers their jobs back. Please spare a moment to consider the pain and anguish it brings to families.
I think you missed the arguments. It's not they're not 'deserving' - although you should probably say qualified as it sounds less moral in the context of job competition. No, it's that as indentured servants, they effectively allow corporations to hire cheaper, more pliant workers. H1 workers from India might be very qualified, but they keep their heads down and work long hours to avoid risking getting sent back.
We don't like that. Would you want co-workers who say yes to everything and accept long hours, all due to immigration? It's a form of labor power dilution and it hurts us all.
I agree that the cruelty is disgusting and unnecessary, but you're going to have a very, very hard time convincing people that removing foreigners will not free up jobs for Americans.
pretty easy. over 50% of silicon valleys unicorns have an immigrant founder. if you cut off their ability to stay, you wouldn't have those companies, and there wouldn't be nearly as many high paying tech jobs.
Oh, I was aiming at the people in this comment section that need convincing. On a site populated by people paid by SV companies you’d think it wouldn’t need explaining. And yet
I didn't make that argument, and neither did the parent. I stated a salient, practical obstacle. You are projecting a fallacy onto your perceived rhetorical enemy - maybe there is a Latin name for that fallacy.
In reality, what reasonable people actually do is use all the information available to them to make decisions (which may be flawed). Which is what is happening.
I think the problem is that people aren't cloud capacity you spin up / down. There was very definitely a shortage of qualified SWEs pre-AI, during the boom times from 2010-2022 or so. Sure some American SWEs exist but big companies were desperate for talent and there definitely weren't enough SWEs that were
(a) competent enough to pass the hiring bar
(b) willing to move to places like Seattle / SF / NYC where these companies were hiring.
You only need to scroll back to a couple of years ago where people were turning their noses up at all forms of recruiter outreach and complaining about how aggressive the recruiters were. What privileged times we lived in.
Since 2022 / post COVID interest rate hikes / AI, the hiring dropped and college kids can't get jobs. The first bump in the economic road you hit, you want to scale down H1B capacity, cancel green cards, banish people. What happens if hiring picks up again? Do you just re-instate the H1b program? Or be resigned to getting high tax paying / high spending jobs shipped off shore? Will people really come to the US on a H1B if they know they can get scaled down like a cloud server at the first sign of economic trouble or the first sign that some politician wants some brownie points?
IMO this is all very short term thinking / political theater to score brownie points with the republican base for the elections.
Nothing here is good policy. Sure there's fraud, fix the fraud. You don't like the ad process, make it better.
But even the narrative that hey microsoft fired 1k citizens and hired 1k H1bs that are lower paying is false. These companies are huge organizations. If you laid off 2k people during your annual cycle in Xbox and start hiring 2k people in cloud 2 months from now (some of whom maybe H1Bs who are also impacted by layoffs), it's not the equivalent of firing an American and hiring a lower paid H1B.
As far as I know there isn't any wage discrimination at these big companies like Adobe or Microsoft. Everyone gets paid basically in-line with what levels.fyi says as a band for their level.
> But even the narrative that hey microsoft fired 1k citizens and hired 1k H1bs that are lower paying is false. These companies are huge organizations. If you laid off 2k people during your annual cycle in Xbox and start hiring 2k people in cloud 2 months from now (some of whom maybe H1Bs who are also impacted by layoffs), it's not the equivalent of firing an American and hiring a lower paid H1B.
I don't think this really holds up. They could offer the American engineers the opportunity to move divisions, but they don't because what they really want to do is what they did do: Fire Americans and hire foreigners.
> Will people really come to the US on a H1B if they know they can get scaled down like a cloud server at the first sign of economic trouble or the first sign that some politician wants some brownie points?
Then make H1B what it is supposed to be for: elite specialists, not infinite low cost non-American laborers. Then you won't even need to have this discussion.
> What happens if hiring picks up again? Do you just re-instate the H1b program?
Yes, why not? Or more practically: keep the program but adjust the quotas annually or even quarterly based on needs. When you see tech companies laying off workers by the thousands, as happened over the past few years, that's the sign that there is plenty of local talent to be hired.
> Will people really come to the US on a H1B if they know they can get scaled down like a cloud server at the first sign of economic trouble or the first sign that some politician wants some brownie points?
The solution to that is to separate visa renewals from new hires: allow companies to keep existing workers, while forcing them to hire new ones locally. This actually makes America _more_ attractive for immigrants because they know they cannot be replaced with a new generation of cheap workers from their home country when economic conditions worsen.
> But even the narrative that hey microsoft fired 1k citizens and hired 1k H1bs that are lower paying is false.
In what sense is it false? Microsoft claims that of its 6,800 H1b filings 80% were “related to employees already working at Microsoft” (note no mention _which country_ those employees were working in) which translates to 20% to or 1720 new employees they hired.
And for pay, they only state that “international workers that Microsoft does hire through the H1b visa program are paid the same level of compensation that a worker from the US would receive”, but of course the point is that the average level of compensation for new hires today is significantly lower than it was 10 years ago, when there was a tech worker shortage.
So it can be simultaneously true that the current-year H1b hires are hired at the same rate Americans are, but that those rates are substantially lower than the negotiated compensation of the people Microsoft laid off. The fact that Microsoft declines to comment on this,
So the following are almost certainly all true:
- Microsoft fired (or laid off) over 1000 American citizens last year
- Microsoft applied for H1b visa for at least 1000 _new_ employees
- Those new employees will almost certainly receive lower compensation than the citizens that were laid off
Please, if you think this narrative is false, which of these facts are you specifically disputing?
> I think the problem is that people aren't cloud capacity you spin up / down
Visa issuance the world over are designed to work exactly this way: to scale (foreign) labor up and down as needed. You may scale just the intake (if it is for permanent residency, like the much praised point-system used by Canada), you can also spin up or spin down the entire temporary visa labor force by changing the renewal and first issuance numbers.
Guest worker visas were intended to work exactly like that. E.g, in Canada they were inviting Thai or Vietnamese workers to pick up fruits and vegetables during summer, and the workers would come work for 5-6 months then go back. In the beginning, the programme worked as intended and it allowed a path to immigration because very few wanted it in the first place, but soon it started being used by people who planned to immigrate from the very beginning. H1B was the same.
Perhaps you could attempt to steel-man why point-based immigration allocate and de-allocate points for certain professions over time? Or why temporary visas exist in the first place.
> If it does, then it won't be appealing to the class of person you're seeking to attract.
Such is the nature, complexity and self-contradicting character of any large-scale public policy; and it's "classes" (plural) because immigration cuts across social strata, not just your software and service industry "rockstar" geeks.
I use user filters, rather than topic filters so I don’t actually need to duck around them. This is how this subthread looks to me (the user I’m replying to isn’t blocked and is at the top level so I see him post): https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/images/d/d3/Screenshot-_Over...
The top level has something like 1133 comments, 745 blocked. And I can usually take a few seconds and move users into the block lists. I see it as just the curation of my space. It would be silly to claim threads like these are useful honeypots and then to not actually use them as honeypots.
The rest of the time the site just is a lot more useful to me.
I have a Chrome extension there but I also have an iOS app that I use for myself alone (it’s really not production grade). The Chrome extension is pretty rudimentary so if you want to replicate it you can just tell your agent to do so and if it helps the source is on GitHub. The iOS app is vibe-coded entirely so perhaps you’re better off starting from scratch there.
It’s a pretty basic requirement to interact with social media these days, I think because the information feed is full of noise.
I use a combination of Hacker Smacker (seems roughly the same idea), and TrustSpark for HN, which I also vibed (pre-Opus, probably could be improved at this point).
Hacker Smacker in particular would be awesome if more users picked it up (since it's a web of trust, albeit 1 hop only).
Terrific. When I have a free moment I’ll go see if I can push into your network or whatever. Mine is just a pretty dumb list of loginless ban/highlight.
On the flip side it always surprises me how rabid HN can be about throwing out H1B workers. I am sure some of the people who you may have come across were not deserving of it, but a large amount of them work hard to come here and setup roots. Cancelling visas or deporting them will not get American workers their jobs back. Please spare a moment to consider the pain and anguish it brings to families.
> with clear path to citizenship.
Or no path at all. Tying the citizenship carrot to the visa and letting the employers hold the stick is the worst of all possible outcomes.