Ask HN: Why are US tech workers so pro open borders?

uberman

Tech workers from what context? The majority of H-1B visas go to tech workers. There are large tech employers with teams in the USA that speak an East Asian language exclusively while in office in the USA. Teams that will not employ English only speakers. Pichai came to the USA as a student and worked initially on an H-1B visa as did Musk. Musk once claimed he would "go to war" supporting this program though he may feel differently today. Given that much of "big tech" is staffed and run by immigrants why would we not expect big tech to be pro open boarders at least as it relates to tech employment?

jfyi

I am opposed to borders on a fundamental, ideological level. They are an expression of state violence prohibiting natural freedom of movement and trade. I don't believe that is actually a commonly held capital "L" Libertarian belief though, and certainly would not associate myself with that party.

victorbjorklund

You might as well ask why US tech workers are in favour of computer science education when it clearly does not benefit them that new people learn to code etc.

guywithahat

I'm not sure they always are. Certainly employers/managers are pro-US tech workers because it gives them access to lower-cost talent, and many H1B's/immigrants are supportive of it because they want more people like them. This is a common complaint of Indian H1B's and something I've experienced myself, where, especially before the H1B fee, they would only seriously consider other Indians/people of their nationality. If you go into the midwest though there's more animosity about being replaced by lower-wage foreign talent. In my experience when US-born engineers support immigration strongly it seems to be a holdout from their college years, and not something they picked up since starting their career.

AnimalMuppet

Optimistically: Empathy. Care for all humans, not just for the ones in this country. It is not wrong to look at life in America, life in the third world, and think "wouldn't it be nice if everybody could have this instead of that?" (But cynically, I suspect that most of them aren't thinking through the second-order consequences of that.) Cynically: Greed and cynicism. Greed first. The tech workers who wanted to come here have always been able to come, so open borders are not going to increase the supply of tech workers much. But it is going to increase the supply of low-level workers, which results in lower prices in a number of areas. That makes tech workers better off, because at least some of the stuff they buy is cheaper. The cynicism part is cynicism about America. They see it as nothing special, as having no special character worth preserving, as either neutral or negative overall. So if mass immigration happens, and it changes the character of either politics or culture, who cares?

rewdy

A few comments. I'm a software engineer and I am very _pro-immigration_. This view point seems to be held pretty consistently among my colleagues (although certainly not universally). I am not pro "open borders"; that's different. I'm not sure all the exact data behind the assumptions in the question, but I can comment on why I am in favor of immigration: My experience working with a lot of international people (H-1B, etc) is just that in general the people I have worked with have been highly-motivated, hard working, and fantastic people to work with in general. Bringing more people like this into the country I think is just good for society and good for the culture. Any statistical disadvantage it may create for me (salary-related, job competition, etc) I am just not concerned about. I think these concerns tend to be overstated.

astro1234

Immigration having downward pressure on salaries is a common and demonstrably false misconception. Immigration adds more members to the labor pool while also increasing demand . The two, in most major studies, cancel each other out. "Immigrant ethnic cronyism" -- would you care to explain a bit more?

ferguess_k

I guess getting H-1Bs with relatively equal compensation (but maybe worse work habits) is still a lot better than getting jobs offshored to somewhere that has 1/3 of the costs.

cruano

Because it is the reason the US is a tech hub in the first place ? No immigration means no concentration of talent, which means companies would just move to a country that allows that (e.g. Ireland) and they'll take their high-paying jobs with them.

brodouevencode

Until recently (~20 years) IT was generally libertarian on all fronts.

jdw64

Beyond the saying that US is a nation of immigrants, as an Asian, it's clear that the more open the US IT industry becomes, the more advantageous it is for the US. I live in Korea, so my perspective differs a bit from people here. I've worked with clients in Korea, China, and Japan, and I've also collaborated with Americans. To be precise, this is a classic core-periphery model problem in macroeconomics. People often say that open source is open to everyone, but if you're not a native English speaker, participation is difficult. That's the first barrier. It's hard for products of lower quality than open source to become commercialized, right? And that's where the problem begins. US big tech companies use open source and global platforms to extract free labor and data from peripheral developers around the world, building exclusive profit models. It's open in form, but in practice, participation is stratified. They control the infrastructure and standards of the 'open source ecosystem,' and developers in third-world countries, including Korea, end up working as subcontractors that conform to those standards. They become digital tenant farmers. Of course, the tenant farmers also benefit. It's just that the structure of the benefits is asymmetric compared to the landlords The tenant farmers (developers from countries other than the US) work hard on the land provided by the landlord (US open source frameworks and platforms), but the landlord reaps all the final harvest. To learn how to use US infrastructure, people in other countries introduce certifications and other gatekeeping mechanisms. In other words, the entire industry is dependent on US technology. Ecosystem capture is the US strategy. Google released Android and Kubernetes, and Meta released React, precisely to control the ecosystem standards. It's the most efficient strategy. So it requires more cognitive overhead. And because of that openness, sovereign programming or machine-native programming never emerged, leading to a complete cultural dependency—which also makes it easier to manage. In fact, there are quite a few ways of thinking that feel natural to the Western programming industry that feel foreign to me The more open it becomes, the more participants join, and the harder it becomes for non-native English speakers to keep up. China seems to be catching up with its 1.4 billion population, but looking at Gitee, they're still heavily dependent on the US. It's free, but it's not free at all. But is open borders really all that bad? My answer is no. Domination is inevitable anyway. It's just that domination through open borders is easier to gain consent from the dominated than through closed borders. Participation in an open empire is better than submission to a closed one. It's just asymmetric. As Gramsci said, domination comes from the consent of the dominated. In that sense, a refined form of domination like open borders, even if asymmetric, is acceptable enough

bbwbsb

Surely what benefits someone is downstream of their preferences (including moral preferences) and not of some objective measure of what other people might like?

bjourne

You need to present some evidence of your claims that US tech workers does not benefit from immigration. If you can't there is no point wasting time with you since you're then a "true believer".

fullstick

I support open borders (yes open borders) because I support human rights. Migration is natural and human. Limiting migration limits people's ability to improve their circumstance. Closed borders also limit society's ability to benefit from migranta because they are stuck in an unproductive situation.

toast0

a) I'm the descendant of immigrants (half of my grandparents were born overseas and naturalized... my grandmother technically naturalized twice), and I can't justify it was fine for them to be here, but it's not fine for others to immigrate. b) A lot of my circle of contacts are immigrants or descendants of recent immigrants. I can't justify it's fine for them to be here, but it's not fine for others to immigrate. c) A large portion of the leaders of companies I've worked at are immigrants or descendants of recent immigrants. I can't justify it's fine for them to be here, but it's not fine for others to immigrate. Following onto c, those people who immigrate here, and start companies that hire me have clearly benefited me. I don't know how I really feel about open borders. I'm fine with reasonable policies limiting immigration. I think you'll find consensus that the current US policies on immigration are not reasonable, although there's definitely not consensus on in which direction the rules should change. I think the immigration categories are roughly ok, although there's clearly some gaming in E1; but I think the way numeric limitations work and how some categories have to wait 20 years for their priority date to come up could use some help. Numeric limitations by country of origin doesn't feel equitable when countries have vastly different populations and land areas, it doesn't feel fair that Liechtenstein's whole population could immigrate through the numerically limited categories in 2 years, assuming sufficient slack in worldwide numbers, but most countries would take hundreds of years for their whole population to make it through the numerically limited categories.

mrdependable

People support things that sound like a good idea to them, or that have been sold as a good idea to them, especially if they think it won't negatively affect them. It's easy to be pro open borders when you can't see how it would negatively impact you. You say it clearly does not benefit them, but the problem is that nothing is really clear or obvious about it. There are a lot of different puzzle pieces, history, and order of effects that need to be considered which most people don't.

archagon

Uh, what are you talking about? I know almost no one who supports “open borders.”

beAbU

Most of them are from the other side of the border alredy.