Also the reality is that a lot of American workers are simply not employable in the industry they want to be in. It’s not a question of cost - H1B visa workers are paid slightly more on average. The most important American companies - like big tech - pay immigrant workers the same as anyone else.
And to be honest I don’t think training is an issue. For example there are thousands of unemployed engineers who have a degree - but still aren’t fundamentally skilled enough for most companies to want to hire them. Many of those people are blaming immigrants for their unemployment but I don’t think they’re correct.
I do agree that it’s ideal to support the current residents. But I just don’t think it’s realistic to see every single one of them employed in the best jobs. Maybe the best we can do is improve our investments in education?
Layoff announcements top 1.1 million this year, the most since 2020 pandemic, Challenger says - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/04/layoff-announcements-this-ye... - December 4th, 2025
The Fed can't help America's young tech workers who are struggling to find a job - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45705212 - October 2025
Millions of Workers Are Left Out of the 'Low-Hire, Low-Fire' US Job Market - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45414795 - September 2025
Transcript of Chair Powell’s Press Conference - https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon... - September 17th, 2025
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308049 (citations)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
EDIT: @SilverElfin: I remain supportive of the idea of issuing O-1 visas to exceptional talent, if exceptional ability and achievement can be proven in an objective manner. A degree or credential does not make one exceptional (imho).
We're a capitalist society, "the business of America is business" as Reagan said. The first duty of a capitalist government is to the capitalist class and corporate sector. Preferring less expensive foreign labor with fewer rights over domestic is simply practicing good capitalism. Until Americans are willing to work sweatshop hours for sweatshop wages without even the meager labor rights and social safety net they have, they simply aren't worth the investment.
If you want socialism just say you want socialism.
Big fan of socialism, so I'm in good company at the moment. Are we a capitalist society? TBD based on the death rate (~2M of the 55+ population die every year in the US, ~5k/day; 31% of US wealth is held by those 70+), and if these values mentioned above stick as these folks age. I admit its hard to predict outcomes of electorate turnover over time, but we're directionally headed in the right direction imho.
60% of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their income, half a million Americans go bankrupt every year from medical debt, and ~750k are homeless as of this comment; I'm of the opinion capitalism has failed and change is required, but I understand other opinions will differ based on some combination of lack of data, lived experience, mental models, etc.
https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much...
https://www.cato.org/blog/81-say-they-cant-afford-pay-higher...
https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/baby-boomers-now-gobbled-near...
The first line of your 'about me' section says: "Always Systems Thinking". However, I don't believe you are thinking in terms of systems here. You are thinking in a single-loop fashion, by treating immigration as a one-way input (i.e. more workers -> fewer jobs for Americans) and as the gate for a massively multi-input system.
You said we should wait for full employment first. The issue with that logic is that full employment isn't a finish line you reach and then "unlock" other labor sources. Even a hot economy has frictional unemployment, skills mismatch, geographic mismatch, and people moving between jobs. Using full employment as a policy trigger sounds clean but doesn't map to how labor markets actually function. Empirically, the US is not a long way away from full employment: we're at 4.4% unemployment (or were, as of September 2025) and JOLTS showed 7.7 job openings in October. That's a cooled market, but not mass desperation across the board.
Jobs are not a fixed pie either. In a closed, fixed-input model (which is what underlies your thinking), adding foreign workers could mechanically reduce citizens' chances. But real economies are endogenous: Immigrants aren't just labor supply; they are also demand. They pay rent, they buy groceries, they need childcare, cars, you name it. That demand supports additional hiring. In addition, immigration can relieve bottleneck in sectors such as healthcare (which is suffering greatly at the moment, especially in rural areas), construction, logistics, agriculture, elder care, and so on. This is why high-quality syntheses generally find small aggregate impacts on native employment and wages, not the large scale negative effects the "hire Americans first" framing implies.
A major National Academies consensus report [1] concluded that the long-run impact of hiring immigrants on wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, if not non-existent. And any negative impacts are most likely from prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. The report found that immigration as a whole has a positive impact on long-run economic growth. Many meta-analyses [2][3] have found similar results.
The solution is not to restrict foreign workers, but to protect wages and working conditions by strictly enforcing labor standards and preventing exploitative hiring (across both the foreign and native labor forces), and to use targeted immigration that addresses genuine bottlenecks. Using a single unemployment threshold is not logical because labor markets are segmented and dynamic.
[1] https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-CNSTAT-13-... [2] https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/2044/the-impact-of-immig... [3] https://www.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/wp/2025/wp2025-07.pdf
> The solution is not to restrict foreign workers, but to protect wages and working conditions by strictly enforcing labor standards and preventing exploitative hiring (across both the foreign and native labor forces), and to use targeted immigration that addresses genuine bottlenecks. Using a single unemployment threshold is not logical because labor markets are segmented and dynamic.
I strongly agree. But that is not on offer at the moment, only restricting immigration. It is a suboptimal mechanism, but still a mechanism available. If what you propose becomes possible, certainly, I would have a different policy opinion based on system inputs and probable outcomes. Systems thinking. I am an aggressive supporter of worker rights and labor protections, having seen first hand what corporations will do to workers (with workers having zero recourse), and I am willing to support substantial economic impairment to the US economy or individual corporations if that is required.
We do not need an underclass or immigrant labor to do the work you enumerate (healthcare, construction, agriculture, childcare); we need living wages and strong worker protections for domestic workers first. There is no shortage of labor, only companies and a nation unwilling to pay living wages and provide reasonable working conditions, and that should be forced to change by any means necessary. If, in the short term, a component of that is constraining the immigration pipeline (to reduce labor supply), I support that if it is the only mechanism available.
Can I be pro worker and pro immigrant? I can be, under the assumption of prioritizing domestic workers first (as a nation state should, that is its job, to protect its citizens), then immigrant workers with the same wage and working condition protections, up to the jobs available in the economy (+- to account for dynamics). Economic growth gains go primarily to the top 10% of the US by wealth, who hold 93% of US equities, so I do not value economic growth as a KPI to optimize for.
Okay, but people who hold these types of sentiments are usually financially secure and/or have relatively strong job prospects. You do realize, I hope, that the type of economic downturn that would result from a complete cessation of immigrant labor would greatly hurt the very people whose interests you want to protect and improve.
If your argument is that when immigration is restricted, capitalists will run out of options and will have to raise wages and improve conditions, I'd say that is simply wrong, for which there are several reasons.
First, they can off-shore, like they have been doing for decades. Second, if labor becomes tight, companies accelerate automation and workflow restructuring - which destroys jobs rather than improving conditions for remaining workers. Third, when labor is scarce, large firms typically consolidate, which lowers the competitive pressure to raise wages, since monopsonies and oligopolies neutralize the bargaining power gains of a tight labor market. And lastly, capital does not need to keep growing headcount: if labor is too expensive, firms simply grow more slowly, invest less and try to extract more from existing workers - which is the opposite of working condition improvements we all want.
Fundamentally, the reality is that capitalists will never run out of options, unless capitalism itself is abolished and wealth and property are confiscated. The reason for this is simple: under capitalism, capital is structurally mobile, whereas labor is structurally immobile. This creates a massive power asymmetry. Capital can always reconfigure itself to avoid rising labor costs. Restricting immigration does not force capital to yield. Only changing the rules of capital-labor power does. And you cannot do that by relying only on one lever (immigration). Not only is that the weakest lever, but also, you need a complete restructuring of society, including the way the economy is organized and how the government works across all levels.
I'm generally supportive of the populist sentiment, but the desired outcomes will only be possible with prolonged effort that will likely span decades. Gimmicks like $100k fees for H1-B visas will be massively counterproductive, as they ultimately harm, not help, the people whose interests need to be protected.
Instead these companies will just layoff Americans and relocate their tech offices in the one country (India) that takes up more than 75% of the H1B pool. (I wonder why?)
Is the 75% of that pool really the most elite "best and brightest" such that it warrants not hiring a US citizen? Or is the true reason that the purchasing power of a US employee is far higher than a H1B from India as long as they're cheap and can be overworked since rebelling means deportation which you can't do to a US citizen?
Those preaching "best and brightest" were also the same ones offshoring their critical technologies and secrets overseas to the low quality engineers just to cuts costs. What it actually does it causes billion dollar problems.
And then there's the scut work nobody seems to want to do - somebody has to pick in the fields, shred those chickens, ... And Connor and Maddie never seem to be interested in jobs at this level.
Will the governments step in to prevent companies from offshoring? Will people pay more at Walmart?
SilverElfin•2h ago
brazukadev•1h ago