It’s not always about pay. In some special disciplines there are only a handful of people with sufficient training or talent. We don’t hire more Americans by cutting the candidate pool. We hire more by growing the economy with innovation, startup formation, academic research for basic concepts that aren’t commercially viable, government investment in core infrastructure and long horizon moon shots that aren’t commercially feasible.

There is only one Einstein and he wasn’t motivated by money. He was attracted to what America stood for. We are losing that

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ericd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To follow up on this, US PhD programs are not generally packed with US citizens, they're frequently the cream skimmed from the rest of the world. For many subspecialties, there's just not going to be enough US citizens to do all the cutting edge work that could/should be done.

We should clip a green card to every PhD we grant.

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ForHackernews 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ok, but those people aren't H1B's. They were on O-1 visas.

These body shop firms are not hiring world-leading geniuses, they are getting mostly-okay Java devs who will do boring scutwork for the chance at life in America.

	▲	budman1 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		O-1 is a strictly regulated visa. Limited to Nobel Prize winners, Influencers, and Underwear models. H1B is for cheap java devs.

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theodric 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We could also try something that has not yet been attempted: investing heavily in developing people who show signs of talent at an early age and streaming ALL children's education according to their capabilities and interests at a young age, in order to eventually bolster the available pool of highly talented people without having to rely on poaching talent from elsewhere in the world (depriving those countries of an opportunity to benefit from the highly talented people that they sweated and paid to train).

	▲	triceratops 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Is there something preventing this right now?

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linuxftw 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But it is always the pay. Corporations could easily hire American interns and train them, for money. There's millions of people that would love to leave their retain jobs for an internship at a tech company, but there's no economic incentive for the mega corps to train these people.

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triceratops an hour ago | parent [-]

Tech megacorps already hire interns and pay them very generously. Like annualized 6-figure pay.

There's been plenty of incentive for people to learn to code or study other skills to get a job in tech. Why do they need extra handholding on top of that? If they could do it, they would.

That's not to say more can't be done to strengthen early childhood education or reduce the cost of college. But it's unrelated to whether big tech companies hire foreigners or not.

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linuxftw an hour ago | parent [-]

They train a fraction of the actual labor force. Why should the social cost of job training be put onto taxpayers and individuals, and why should employers be allowed to import labor? Employers should foot the bill for any and all education and work training expenses, and should be allowed to import 0 labor for any reason. Employers would have to compete for the best employees, driving wages up. It's not rocket science.

	▲	triceratops an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Employers should foot the bill for any and all education Why? That means any education not directly useful to employers won't be funded at all. Not how you build a society. Education should be funded by taxpayers and society because it benefits society. "Taxpayers" includes companies too, not only individuals. > and work training expenses They already do. Every company trains employees on their own processes and systems. New employees aren't productive for several months. > should be allowed to import 0 labor for any reason Then the work goes abroad. Or these companies don't grow. (Referring solely to tech companies, not outsourcing body shops). > Employers would have to compete for the best employees, driving wages up. I understand if you say outsourcing body shops are a problem here. Tech megacorps pay a king's ransom in wages. They've already driven wages up. Any citizen not already working there either doesn't want to for any amount of money or is not good enough.