Half the people complain about H-1B and the other half complain about outsourcing. Neither of them makes sense to me, but the outsourcing angle even less so. It's just labor cost arbitrage for knowledge work. And soon that arbitrage opportunity will perhaps shift from humans to llms. What is the issue with that?
The “competition is scary, let’s build walls” approach usually looks good in the short term for a segment of workers, but over the long term it tends to weaken the economy. A country that shuts out global talent not only loses people who would have filled skill gaps, it also loses many who would have built the next companies, industries, or research breakthroughs.
Not to mention, if companies can’t hire the talent they need in the US, they won’t just “make do” with whoever’s available... they’ll move operations elsewhere, which means fewer opportunities for the very people immigration restrictions are supposed to help.
''Time and again through our history, we have discovered that attempting merely to preserve the comfortable features of the present, rather than reaching for new levels of prosperity, is a sure path to stagnation'' - Alan Greenspan (https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/20040...)
Anyone who doesnt believe that, look at Canadas big industries like banking or telecom. They’re coddled by the government against competition and totally fail to compete or innovate at all. There’s 50 other examples of protectionism failing too.
