Here are the folks who contributed to the "Attention is all you need" paper [1] which changed the world as we know it, and the countries they came from. I rest my case.
I'm dumbfounded that some people think high-skilled immigration is negative sum. It is so glaringly positive sum.
Another country invested 20 years to train a 130 IQ person from birth to tertiary educated.
And then the US gets to skim the top 0.1% off that expensive process without paying a dime.
These immigrants then generate consumption, scientific discoveries and found companies in their prime working years, which boosts the local country's power, economy, job opportunities and prosperity. They take 1 job but create 2, but the 2 is hidden behind layers of indirection (scientific discoveries, consumption, etc) so dumb people can't see the positive sum reality for what it is.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is a profound misunderstanding of the global value that these immigrants create, even if they locally compete for a specific job.
There's a reason Eastern Europe and East Asia are struggling. There's a reason China and South Korea have probably peaked. There's a reason Hungary will continue to be a shit place to live. It isn't because of too much immigration. It's because of too little.
The US, since its founding, has been a country of immigrants. It's a necessary condition behind its prosperity and strength.
The reality is that the H1B program is being used not to bring in individuals with 130+ IQ, but essentially anyone with a bachelor's degree, which can be easily obtained from diploma mills. In some third-world countries, you can even buy your degree outright.
For the top 0.1%, there are O1 visas, as well as EB1 and EB2-NIW visas — the latter two don't even require an employer and can be self-sponsored. Plus, they grant you a green card, unlike the H1B, which ties you to an employer.
However, to qualify for these visas, you need to demonstrate that you're genuinely valuable to the U.S. They are designed for top-tier entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and artists with a verifiable track record. These visas can also be gamed, but it's much harder than with the H1B program.
I know two people who got the o1 visa, without any top skills. Professionally, their work was very poor and their track record exaggerated, if not fake. During the time they got theirs accepted (which showed up on my Twitter timeline), noticed that plenty of other random people were celebrating getting theirs too. All approved around the same period. I’m pretty sure that it was the o1 visa because I clicked to try to understand what that meant. And was also curious how someone so untalented got it and why so many people were mentioning it on Twitter (I understand the algorithm was curating these for me as I showed interest).
I was responding to the comment regarding "how about the top 0.1%". H-1B isn't designed for bringing the 0.1%, there are other visas that already do exactly that. Also, it is not so high bar, I know people even without a degree who got O1, it isn't even a requirement. But you need to have a public track record of various kinds.
Also, I am not against visas intended to fill labor shortages. But it needs to be done in a way that incentivizes hiring local talent over foreign. Currently the H-1B works the other way around. This has to be dealt with. Like raising the minimum salary, making it significantly more expensive to hire an H-1B worker than a local one, and removing the exploitative leverage employers have over visa holders — people shouldn't have to fear negotiating for better terms due to the threat of deportation. That would likely fix it.
If H1B immigrants generates more tax revenue and contribute more on average than locals, largely because of gems like Sundar Pichai that couldn't make the bureaucratic credentialist hurdle of the O1, then what's the problem? It should be expanded and reformed, not contracted and reformed. If you're concerned about degree mills then reform that aspect while expanding the net intake.
I’d be fine if a third of the total compensation was diverted to a fund that all but takes a minimum of 50k per person per job /gives 100k minimum tax-free per affected citizen in the lowest LCOL, both adjusted upward for locality. To make people whole, that fund would cover citizens in the job market from 2003 onwards that specialized in anything with exposure to the various programs that disincentivized citizens. Then have it apply irrespective of job status.
If you want the best and brightest, pay for the damages created by badly formed policy.
The problem is that a lot of the H1B people being brought in to fill jobs Americans could do aren’t the top 0.1%. Far from it. No one is against bringing the top 0.1% here.
there is a huge difference between being “anti-immigration” and critiquing H1B program which is what we are doing here… a very very huge difference :)
I am an immigrant so 1,000,000% not anti-immigration, everyone around me besides native americans is also an immigrant. I am also former H1B-er. the program is deeply flawed and is used for exploitation more than anything else
There is not such a big difference in the median critique. There are scarce voices -- perhaps yours -- saying we should reform H1B to make it easier for immigrants to change jobs or obtain passports or acquire the visa in the first place, which Vivek has been very clear on from the beginning that this is his intention.
But the large majority of voices on social media are using this as an opportunity to sling broadly anti-immigration and nativist catchphrases, framing the H1B as a zero sum contest between the immigrant and the local. It's factually the opposite of the truth. Even if H1B doesn't get any reforms, it's better than nothing for both the immigrant and the US, but that would not be the impression you would get from the avalanche of people committed to the Lump of Labor fallacy.
I don’t think a rational person can deny the value of skilled immigration, but the context in which immigration exists in the US is not a simple dichotomy between net benefit/loss.
HN obviously tends to skew towards tech and Silicon Valley; an industry and location that has been somewhat insulated from these effects, but its a very real struggle for many people throughout the US across varied fields from finance and accounting, to medicine and engineering.
It is in this environment in which the current H1B debate exists. While there may be a net benefit to the US economy overall from skilled immigration, much of that benefit (similar to higher productivity) tends to increasingly be enjoyed at the top socioeconomic level. The “layers of indirection” are in many cases owned and controlled by corporations through IP law, patents, copyright, non-compete and NDAs, and other legal mechanisms, which can delay their benefit to society at large, and create further perverse incentives if not regulated fairly.
And while globalization as a root cause might be inevitable, it can certainly be managed through regulation in a way that more equitably distributes the benefits. It can also be manipulated by regulatory capture to enable corporations to lower costs and increase profits at the expense of US labor. There are many examples of this occurring before now. Any sound policy change regarding the H1B visa program needs to take all benefits/risks into account, and I personally would like to see a little more nuance from the incoming executive administration in this regard. Folks like Musk and Ramaswamy have a lot of profit to gain from importing cheaper skilled labor, with a higher degree of control over domestic employees vs those located overseas. I also have a hard time believing any corporate executives would have predominately altruistic intentions, and there is an obvious conflict of interest in them being involved in any policy decisions that impact their balance sheets. I realize this doesn’t negate a net positive benefit, but when that benefit is largely realized by a select few through regulatory capture, and is easily abused, it’s not anti-immigrant to criticize policy implementation.
“rest your case” is too funny… this is 8 people, what about 63,992 other yearly recipients of this visa? what an compeling argument you are making (and this is former H1B-er writing here…)
how would you know whether or not american tech supremacy would not be the same without foreigners? of course you wouldn’t so this is silly line of argument :)
the main reason for american tech supremacy is american military budget. and also that is next 876 reasons. H1B program won’t crack top-1000
They are all able to get O-1 visas for having extraordinary merit. (It may be true some get them via lying as with anything.) Elon came in on an F visa, Trump hired maids via H-2. If the conversation is about H-1B, a list of names is not enough for an argument.
There probably should be some level of difficulty between H-1B and O-1 in my view.
"Some foreigners are smarter than you, therefore you don't get to have a country, just an economic zone." - interesting case, let's see how many go along with it.
H1B is not about smarter foreigners it’s about “I can’t find enough locals with the particular skills I need so I need to widen the pool”
Though I think Musk likes it because the current program is tied to the company so workers are effectively indentured to the sponsoring company and not free to leave to go work for another.
Ashish Vaswani: India
Noam Shazeer: USA
Niki Parmar: India
Jakob Uszkoreit: Germany
Llion Jones: USA
Aidan Gomez: British Canadian
Lukasz Kaiser: Poland
Illia Polosukhin: Ukraine
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762