

People, Places, and Jobs - SeoxyS
http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/

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graeme
As a Canadian, I have to say that the logic in Paul Graham's essay seemed a
lot clearer to me. We get a lot of good people you guys don't get in.

I'm one, actually. I run a bootstrapped business, and would be contributing a
bunch of revenue to the US treasury if there was a clearcut visa class for me.
As it is I'm happily in Canada, exporting products to Americans and spending
the proceeds in Canada.

There are a LOT of issues with the specific's of Graham's essay, but many
replies treated it as if letting in more people was per se a bad thing, no
matter how it is implemented.

~~~
davidw
> the logic in Paul Graham's essay seemed a lot clearer to me

How so? I wrote this to refute a lot of the mistakes I see on these
immigration discussions, so if you can list specifics, I'd be appreciative.

~~~
graeme
Oops, my own writing wasn't clear. I left off the end of the sentence. I meant
to say: PG's essay was clearer to me, as a Canadian, than it seems to have
been to other people here on Hacker News (who generally oppose it)

Your essay was clear!

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pcurve
Most people on HN are level minded enough to realize that it is hypocritical
to try to block people from immigration to protect their own jobs.

If you work in SV surrounded by top H1B talent, then you have a myopic view of
how H1B is being used in bottom 80% of the IT talent pool.

The rest of us working in corporate IT know that vast majority of H1B is used
as a vehicle for labor arbitrage.

They are paid prevailing wage? Please. I once had a guy who was getting paid
$29/hour because two consulting companies were double dipping into $78/hour
rate.

~~~
davidw
> Most people on HN are level minded enough to realize that it is hypocritical
> to try to block people from immigration to protect their own jobs.

It's not just hypocritical, it's plain wrong, as I explain in the linked
article.

> They are paid prevailing wage? Please. I once had a guy who was getting paid
> $29/hour because two consulting companies were double dipping into $78/hour
> rate.

So let those people switch jobs easily and they'll start demanding market
rates in short order, if they're worth it. If they're not worth it, so what?
They're not going to "depress wages" any more than having more farm workers is
going to depress programmer wages.

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mempko
H1-B visa is a source of abuse. They should open the borders, no strings
attached.

Of course it should work the other way too. People need to be free to leave.

However the talk about labor marker is bad. We need to have an economy where,
cooperation, not competition, is rewarded.

I can't wait for the day wages become as antiquated as the idea of kings and
serfs and the idea of a labor market is as strange as the market for slaves.

