I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support, CRM managemetn, Marketing, Project Managers, and all sorts of basic office work. The idea its used for the best and brightest is absurd. When you also count the massive fraud in H1B, people looking for kickbacks, racial preferences, lying on resumes (I once interviewed an H1B with 4 pages on their resume, couldn't answer a single question from what I pulled out of the resume, and got overruled by the manager on the hiring board). There is a massive amount of office work that can be done by a bright high schooler or community college grad, but gets shunted off to a body shop who mass applies H1B. Several years ago Disney fired their IT staff and replaced them with H1B, this was in the news. There was obviously not a talent shortage, and plenty of American citizens can pass the A+ or various microsoft sysadmin certs that "qualify" someone for IT work.
> I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support [...]
Working in non-FAANG corporate America, these types of roles are the only thing thing I've ever seen H1B hires used for. They've run the gamut from incompetent to quite good, but none have ever been the "best and brightest".
It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
You know, they used to. Bernie spoke against relocating refugees (from Serbia or something) back in the day due to the fact he had unemployed local Vermonters. They used to care. They had cared less since the second Reagan admin, but completely abandoned any pretense after GW's first term win.
What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
As with many sociopolitical issues today, the problem here doesn't seem to be the core issue being discussed but what I like to call: Officials Not Doing Their Damn Job
If the H1B visas were awarded as intended this would be non-issue
You will find that many issues we face as a society are simply this same thing happening in different areas of public service
Conversely, I remember seeing a documentary which showed a massive room full of students in china, an absolutely massive hall, all taking some advanced exam. The stat was provided: China produces more Masters students per day, than the US produces humans!
Well, if that's the case, then meritocracy demands population replacement.
> An H-1B hire should not simply be marginally better than an American counterpart. They should provide such a leap forward in capabilities such that the rest of the company is elevated in their own knowledge and expertise.
This is an important thing that was recently addressed by the new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H-1B visa. It is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [1] since the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing do not meet the bar of "leap forward in capabilities". A US company is welcome to sponsor (and pay for) a visa for a truly exceptional worker. But not just anyone because they're cheap and minimally-capable.
Seems more likely to just lead to larger offices in India, reducing high earners here in America (even if only temporary) and reducing the amount of money that is recycled through American cities.
this seems like common retort. hire h1b or else....
we open a role on linkedin for a data engineer for about 6 hrs and we got 500+ applicants and vast majority were indeed qualifed on paper. I am baffled by employers who cant seem to find anyone in the country that doesnt need work authorization. Love to hear what types of roles and where this is happening.
Have you interviewed any of these candidates yet? I doubt that you have 500+ real candidates. My experience in the past 12 months of hiring is that you'll have maybe 10 "qualified on paper" candidates, and 490 AI-generated profiles.
Also, if you go by the Lisep TRU article (whose premise I mildly disagree with) over 20% of Americans are “functionally unemployed” then that says American employers are screwing their compatriots by bringing in lower wage substitutes and moreover they bring them in not because we don’t have people, rather we/they don’t want to pay the going rate.
When I was in high school, I took a physics class. I think I scraped by but one thing the teacher said that has stuck with me ever since was "when you want to test a hypothesis, set the variables to extreme numbers". Very useful framework IMO!
If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. In isolation, this would be great for US companies. In reality, 95% of the local population would riot.
If we pursued "only hire Americans", then our growth as a country would be stunted, and we'd lose our global competitive edge.
Somewhere between is a balanced medium.
Side observation: I've noticed tech leaders/CEOs/PG have been choosing (or succumbing) to what the algorithm wants them to say or how phrase. I stopped following all of them because I can feel my emotions being manipulated whenever I read what they have to say.
[1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
The reality is you couldn't hand over jobs to the most qualified person. In most cases the most qualified person already works for you (or is you!), and just needs an assistant who by definition is less qualified.
Suppose you found someone at your competitor who is doing your exact same job (already unlikely - their have a different structure in some way that is important) who is better than you. Would they be willing to move to where you company is? Would your company be willing to pay enough to make them join? Even if the above are true, all those structures your company has that are different mean there will be some time before they are better than you.
Most jobs don't need the best person. Is my doctor the best in the world - probably not - but she is more than good enough for my needs.
Though I have to object to your 95% number. Most people in the world do not have the education that the US provides. Most people are not fluent in English which is almost always a critical part of working for a company in the US. Once you add those requirements, the something closer to 50% of the most qualified people for your job live in the US (now if New Zealand was your country 95% of the most qualified don't live there - and most probably wouldn't want to move even though it is apparently a nice country)
Which is to say even if there was unlimited immigration allowed, your best hire in the US will be an American in most cases.
Though it doesn't matter who is most qualified you need to a plan to mentor and train up the younger generation. (who then grow old and train the next generation)
> If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. [1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
This would be true if you're talking about randomly picking people from around the world to live in the US for their formative years and go through the US education system (at which point they barely count as "foreigners"). This isn't reality, though, and if you're talking about hiring a worker today, a large swath of that 95% won't speak English, or won't be literate, or will have never received a formal education, all of which are disqualifying for pretty much every job in the US.
I don't follow that "Most Qualified" would mean 95% of jobs going to foreigners. I get that the U.S. is 4-5% of the world's population, but if I live in San Antonio, Texas, the pool of plumbers for my house must also live in San Antonio, Texas, meaning that 99.9+% of the world is not remotely qualified for the job.
I mean, this debate is about immigration, right? So current location doesn't super matter, assuming you can amortize the cost of relocating a plumber across several years' worth of plumbing work.
In practice, you hire the most qualified within the pool of people that can reasonably work for you: right to work in the right country, compatible hours, is able to connect socially with the rest of your team, etc.
It wouldn't be 95%. The US is like 5% of the world, but it disproportionately contains the most qualified workers in many fields. Also, in many cases, even if a worker was somehow qualified, they would be lacking some basic skill like English proficiency or basic cultural compatibility, that would make them actually unqualified on net. But your overall sentiment is right. There are hundreds of millions of people who want to come to the US and make less than you.
It is also a fact that "most qualified" is fuzzy. It comes down to something more like, performance per dollar, or "culture fit", or some other thing. Unless you are trying to absolutely have the most advanced shit in the world at any price, "qualifications" are not the ultimate factor. Having been in this industry for a while, most foreign workers obviously aren't "the best" like that. They're not even more talented or hard-working than the average American worker. But they usually work for less and appear to do the work, and their mere presence drives down everyone's wages.
You clearly have worked in a bubble. I find more qualified people in the usa than out of it, this is more of a payment issue than a lack of skill issue.
The article doesn't address what I think are the main complaints about H-1B: that it is mostly used to cut costs and hire people who have very little freedom to switch jobs. That and all the trickery with ghost jobs meant to only give the appearance of hiring stateside. The example given is also not great. Von Braun was one remarkable foreign expert in a leadership position. On the other hand, in my experience, many H-1B hires tend to occupy low-level jobs; ironically the very ones that the author says will be filled by motivated Americans. I mean...just try working at any American FAANG. The evidence is totally in your face.
> The article doesn't address what I think are the main complaints
Over the last 20 years, I've noticed this is most of political journalism today.
Post a headline refuting the thing, ignore the primary issue from the thing you're refuting. People who don't already deeply understand the issue don't know any better.
Everything can be factually correct. It's all just framing by what you choose to leave out / ignore.
That is the real reason. Immigrants are cheap and will work hard maybe at the cost of quality. Companies will to hire cheap or will outsource to cheaper countries. I think every generation had cheap foreign labor coming to America which fueled the growth. Right now it is H1b labor.
One of the issues is conflation of IT jobs and High Tech jobs. Those making laws don't understand the difference -- they are all "computer jobs" to them. IT does not require immigrant labor. Companies such as Infosys and Tata don't need to be operating in the US. There are plenty of US workers available to do the job.
But High Tech is different. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US. The US leads the world in tech not because the best ideas were all American but because the best people in the world immigrated to the US. Stopping this will be ruinous to American prosperity.
The seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration undercut Americans? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, and their innovations create jobs.
H1B is not about finding geniuses, this is O-1 Visa program.
The H1B exists to find laborers in areas where we have a shortage of qualified people in US. Given the fact that in many fields we have lots of American graduates that struggle to get jobs, H1B currently has no legitimate purpose in America. It should be abolished entirely.
O-1 is about as far as you can get these days. Just search O-1 on x.com and see the type of people that have it - often designers, 'product' folks, etc. working for no-name YC startups.
"The H-1B program was started with the vision of finding von Brauns across other industries and bringing them into the US"
Is this true? I thought the the "O" visa accomplished this. H-1B is for specific worker shortages. Of course, a "shortage" from a company's perspective is "no Americans are applying for my position", which isn't necessarily because there are no qualified Americans to hire...
Yes, it’s true. The H-1B program was redesigned that way in the Immigration Act of 1990 that introduced the O visa category; before that, the H-1B criteria formally required that recipients have “distinguished merit and ability” and perform services “of an exceptional nature requiring such merit and ability”.
It's not a matter of economics, corporate policy or belief in people -- it's a strategic matter. A country needs a secure and stable pipeline for personnel as much as for any other strategic asset.
A country also needs to keep up and learn from other countries. That means working with and integrating technologies, ideas and, yes, personnel from other countries.
It's a balance thing and Anduril has a hard job in trying to strike the balance, but they have to do it. The defense industry is not simply a number-goes-up operation.
False dichotomy. An H1B hire who has graduated from a US university and will receive a green card in a few years and become a US citizen after another 5 contributes to "the next generation of US talent" in the same way as John from Chicago.
EB-2/EB-3 green cards which an H-1B holder usually pursues are quota-capped per country of birthplace. An Indian born applicant may have to wait for over 100 years.
The open secret of the H1B program is that the credentials are fake. The system whitewashes candidates to provide the illusion of these credentials, but they are in fact no more qualified than an American candidate.
I don't like the implied assumption that you can only do one or the other. To use the author's own story, the US had both von Braun and Johnson. Also, there are just many scenarios where you can't afford to train someone from scratch or tolerate a potentially poor hire and that's just reality. Sometimes you really do need the best person you can find.
"There is plenty of international talent that can and should be leveraged in the appropriate places and the proper ways. There are many instances where you’re going to want to hire a leading expert in a technical field. But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..]
We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring."
> But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..]
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring.
It's tough to square this noble thought with what's actually happening in corporate America. The culture of investing in training and mentoring to foster employee growth has been eroding for the past 40 years (if not more), to where it only seems to exist in limited capacity in legacy institutions and is completely absent in new (tech) firms. How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
> How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
There are precisely 1.0 ways to do that: make all of the alternatives more expensive.
That's it. Nothing else will move the needle.
I don't believe it is possible: every policy one can imagine, short of establishing a GULAG system to compel compliance, has powerful opposing interests, including workers themselves. It would require the sort of comprehensive and sustained focus that a nation that values nearly suicidal liberalism can not deliver.
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring."
Ergo, laws will be required to "encourage" the corporate paperclip maximizer apparatus. When did asking nicely ever work? "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising the lawnmower."
Of course, but there’s a wide gulf between slamming into a wall at 80mph and gently rolling to a stop. The latter requires foresight and action, however.
I don't think the famously young-skewed tech industry is at any risk of slamming into a wall. If Google finds in 2035 it's running out of good seniors in their 30s because they haven't been mentoring college grads well enough, there'll be plenty of experts in their 50s and 60s to pull back in from management or FIRE or age discrimination.
Few facts to add color to different point of views:
- PG wants cheap labor so that we can get cheap/hard working employees for startups with a fear of deportation
- Palmer cannot hire people on visas because they cannot easily clear security clearance that is required to work in Defense sector. Its better to align with current Government to get contracts.
Let me put it this way: the US school system sucks. It produces great drama artists, athletes, and marketing specialists but not STEM professionals.
You can see it here: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 - just 6% of US school graduates go to study engineering (there are almost no foreign-born students doing bachelors in the US).
I have multiple friends who studied CS and graduated in the last few years and couldn't find a job. These are people who grew up in the states, paid taxes here, came from (sometimes generations of) families who paid taxes here. I myself have pay $XXX,XXX in taxes a year.
It's absolutely bullshit that H1B and O1 visas can come here and take routine CS jobs that US citizens are more-than-qualified for. The narrative of the need for these visas is pure corporate-shill speak.
I don't like that immigration is framed as a left-center vs right issue. Around 1900 the socialists were against immigration because it displaced local workers and capitalists used it to drive down wages.
So, ironically, Paul Graham supports the right wing position and Luckey the left-center if you frame it that way!
The most qualified for physical jobs are the healthiest. By allowing unlimited immigration, you literally let in the healthiest and most persistent to the detriment of less healthy locals. Eugenics? You can frame it that way, too.
Being born in a desirable country has disadvantages now. People from all over the world buy property and drive up prices, people from all over the world compete for local jobs, take university places (almost free in the EU). That is locust capitalism and the distinction between the von Brauns and the regular H1Bs that the article makes is sensible.
Why do you think GCCs are a thing and Google India wages [0] are now reaching Poland levels [1] for mid-career Googlers.
These are multinational companies - not American companies.
No one complained when Google and their like moved hiring from the Bay Area and New York to North Carolina despite both having diametrically opposing politics.
Working in non-FAANG corporate America, these types of roles are the only thing thing I've ever seen H1B hires used for. They've run the gamut from incompetent to quite good, but none have ever been the "best and brightest".
It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
If the H1B visas were awarded as intended this would be non-issue
You will find that many issues we face as a society are simply this same thing happening in different areas of public service
Well, if that's the case, then meritocracy demands population replacement.
This is an important thing that was recently addressed by the new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H-1B visa. It is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [1] since the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing do not meet the bar of "leap forward in capabilities". A US company is welcome to sponsor (and pay for) a visa for a truly exceptional worker. But not just anyone because they're cheap and minimally-capable.
[1] https://thefederal.com/category/news/h1b-visa-indian-tech-wo...
we open a role on linkedin for a data engineer for about 6 hrs and we got 500+ applicants and vast majority were indeed qualifed on paper. I am baffled by employers who cant seem to find anyone in the country that doesnt need work authorization. Love to hear what types of roles and where this is happening.
If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. In isolation, this would be great for US companies. In reality, 95% of the local population would riot.
If we pursued "only hire Americans", then our growth as a country would be stunted, and we'd lose our global competitive edge.
Somewhere between is a balanced medium.
Side observation: I've noticed tech leaders/CEOs/PG have been choosing (or succumbing) to what the algorithm wants them to say or how phrase. I stopped following all of them because I can feel my emotions being manipulated whenever I read what they have to say.
[1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.
Suppose you found someone at your competitor who is doing your exact same job (already unlikely - their have a different structure in some way that is important) who is better than you. Would they be willing to move to where you company is? Would your company be willing to pay enough to make them join? Even if the above are true, all those structures your company has that are different mean there will be some time before they are better than you.
Most jobs don't need the best person. Is my doctor the best in the world - probably not - but she is more than good enough for my needs.
Though I have to object to your 95% number. Most people in the world do not have the education that the US provides. Most people are not fluent in English which is almost always a critical part of working for a company in the US. Once you add those requirements, the something closer to 50% of the most qualified people for your job live in the US (now if New Zealand was your country 95% of the most qualified don't live there - and most probably wouldn't want to move even though it is apparently a nice country)
Which is to say even if there was unlimited immigration allowed, your best hire in the US will be an American in most cases.
Though it doesn't matter who is most qualified you need to a plan to mentor and train up the younger generation. (who then grow old and train the next generation)
This would be true if you're talking about randomly picking people from around the world to live in the US for their formative years and go through the US education system (at which point they barely count as "foreigners"). This isn't reality, though, and if you're talking about hiring a worker today, a large swath of that 95% won't speak English, or won't be literate, or will have never received a formal education, all of which are disqualifying for pretty much every job in the US.
It is also a fact that "most qualified" is fuzzy. It comes down to something more like, performance per dollar, or "culture fit", or some other thing. Unless you are trying to absolutely have the most advanced shit in the world at any price, "qualifications" are not the ultimate factor. Having been in this industry for a while, most foreign workers obviously aren't "the best" like that. They're not even more talented or hard-working than the average American worker. But they usually work for less and appear to do the work, and their mere presence drives down everyone's wages.
Over the last 20 years, I've noticed this is most of political journalism today.
Post a headline refuting the thing, ignore the primary issue from the thing you're refuting. People who don't already deeply understand the issue don't know any better.
Everything can be factually correct. It's all just framing by what you choose to leave out / ignore.
But High Tech is different. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US. The US leads the world in tech not because the best ideas were all American but because the best people in the world immigrated to the US. Stopping this will be ruinous to American prosperity.
The seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration undercut Americans? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, and their innovations create jobs.
The H1B exists to find laborers in areas where we have a shortage of qualified people in US. Given the fact that in many fields we have lots of American graduates that struggle to get jobs, H1B currently has no legitimate purpose in America. It should be abolished entirely.
So even though O-1 is intended for extra ordinary abilities, it's far from one.
Is this true? I thought the the "O" visa accomplished this. H-1B is for specific worker shortages. Of course, a "shortage" from a company's perspective is "no Americans are applying for my position", which isn't necessarily because there are no qualified Americans to hire...
A country also needs to keep up and learn from other countries. That means working with and integrating technologies, ideas and, yes, personnel from other countries.
It's a balance thing and Anduril has a hard job in trying to strike the balance, but they have to do it. The defense industry is not simply a number-goes-up operation.
"There is plenty of international talent that can and should be leveraged in the appropriate places and the proper ways. There are many instances where you’re going to want to hire a leading expert in a technical field. But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..]
We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring."
Related earlier post by Mark Atwood: https://markatwood.substack.com/p/america-is-an-idea-not-an-...
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring.
It's tough to square this noble thought with what's actually happening in corporate America. The culture of investing in training and mentoring to foster employee growth has been eroding for the past 40 years (if not more), to where it only seems to exist in limited capacity in legacy institutions and is completely absent in new (tech) firms. How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
There are precisely 1.0 ways to do that: make all of the alternatives more expensive.
That's it. Nothing else will move the needle.
I don't believe it is possible: every policy one can imagine, short of establishing a GULAG system to compel compliance, has powerful opposing interests, including workers themselves. It would require the sort of comprehensive and sustained focus that a nation that values nearly suicidal liberalism can not deliver.
Because it is advantageous to be the only one who doesn’t invest in it while reaping the benefits from those who do. So very few do.
YC partner Ankit Gupta: hiring Americans first is DEI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49467325 - August 2026 (2 comments)
H-1B Middlemen Bring Cheap Labor to Citi, Capital One - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44398978 - June 2025 (4 comments)
India's Tata Consultancy Was Gaming the US Visa System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43088906 - February 2025 (59 comments)
How middlemen are gaming the H-1B program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123945 - July 2024 (57 comments) [https://github.com/BloombergGraphics/2024-h1b-immigration-da...]
The Secret Way Silicon Valley Uses the H-1B Program - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-06/silicon-v... | https://archive.today/qffNT - June 2017
Ergo, laws will be required to "encourage" the corporate paperclip maximizer apparatus. When did asking nicely ever work? "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising the lawnmower."
- PG wants cheap labor so that we can get cheap/hard working employees for startups with a fear of deportation - Palmer cannot hire people on visas because they cannot easily clear security clearance that is required to work in Defense sector. Its better to align with current Government to get contracts.
You can see it here: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 - just 6% of US school graduates go to study engineering (there are almost no foreign-born students doing bachelors in the US).
This has been the case since forever. So more than half of the STEM graduates of the _US_ universities are foreigners: https://www.ets.org/grad-school-journey/international-studen...
And if anything, the adult daycare (aka "school") situation has been getting worse for quite a while.
It's absolutely bullshit that H1B and O1 visas can come here and take routine CS jobs that US citizens are more-than-qualified for. The narrative of the need for these visas is pure corporate-shill speak.
So, ironically, Paul Graham supports the right wing position and Luckey the left-center if you frame it that way!
The most qualified for physical jobs are the healthiest. By allowing unlimited immigration, you literally let in the healthiest and most persistent to the detriment of less healthy locals. Eugenics? You can frame it that way, too.
Being born in a desirable country has disadvantages now. People from all over the world buy property and drive up prices, people from all over the world compete for local jobs, take university places (almost free in the EU). That is locust capitalism and the distinction between the von Brauns and the regular H1Bs that the article makes is sensible.
These are multinational companies - not American companies.
No one complained when Google and their like moved hiring from the Bay Area and New York to North Carolina despite both having diametrically opposing politics.
[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...
[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...