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Winning the visa lottery

112 points · 134 comments · neehao

  1. JoshTriplett · · focus · HN ↗
    > Equally striking is what did not happen. Employment of low-skill American workers at losing firms did not increase. Across all firms the effect of foreign hiring on US employment was zero or positive, and in a prespecified subsample of rural firms it was significantly positive, with an elasticity of 0.61, meaning that for every one percent increase in H-2B workers there was just over half a percent increase in US workers.

    > "If you don't allow firms to hire immigrant workers, they just become smaller firms," Lewis said. "They are not replaced with US workers. Instead, the output of the firm shrinks, and there are fewer total workers."

    This is incredibly important. Everyone who fears immigration is going to take their job should read this and realize that fear is not only false but inverted.

    1. ozgrakkurt · · focus · HN ↗
      It is also meaningless, there is no time frame specified.

      I don’t think limiting immigration like this is a good thing. But this also doesn’t mean that it isn’t hurting local people.

      Big tech would have been super heavily invested in education if they weren’t getting an endless stream of high-performing well-educated immigrants

      1. miroljub · · focus · HN ↗
        > they weren’t getting an endless stream of high-performing well-educated immigrants

        That's not how you write "cheap".

        But remember, cotton was once also cheap because of the endless stream of immigrants, consequences are paid every day since.

        1. dansquizsoft · · focus · HN ↗
          And there were some wild economic arguments made and accepted in support of this at the time...
          1. miroljub · · focus · HN ↗
            Do you refer to cotton pickers or modern H1B "experts"?
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