H-1B: Federal judge backs government’s narrower view of ‘specialty occupation’

Software engineers are the the high-skilled jobs being protected by H1B caps, you know, the top 10% income in the country.

> OK, but no one is talking about giving a monopoly to a single person, so the negative effects are going to be vastly smaller.

I've made an argument in kind, this is an argument of degree. I'll answer in degree: its just as much rent as any positive effect on real wages. If it were to suppress wages a lot, its because the monopoly was very strong. Monopoly power does not require having a single actor, it can happen with many. A good example is medicine: no doctor in the world that is board certified can provide medical care in the united states. Only a small subset of doctors in the world can: american doctors certified by american institutions. The result is that doctors outside the US are willing to provide top level care at 10~20U$S an hour, while they do so at 10-20x in the US.

The result is also evident: medical care is extremely expensive in the US.

> Good thing no one is suggesting that. Keeping foreign labor out of the market is not the same thing as a monopoly.

It is to the employer: they are unable to buy from someone else. There is no big difference between making it illegal to import cars, and give a monopoly to american car companies than to make it illegal to bring foreign car workers. The result is that the cost of manufacture rises for everyone. When you import anything from outside, you are also importing the labor: untaxed, unfettered, sometimes illegal labor. IF you were to bring the worker from the other country into the US, the US would enjoy higher tax revenues and have the exact same GDP (ceteris paribus).

Countries were people leave enter a spiral of misery, countries were people enter have the exact opposite effect!

> In the long term, I'd prefer to pay more for my computer and phone and know that people who my children and grandchildren are going to share a country with are going to have each other's interests in mind

I believe you believe this, but I also believe you don't. Ban any foreign product from your consumption today and you will see why: everything would turn insanely expensive and inconvenient. In any case, I reiterate that your model of how an economy can prosper with protectionism is only in the rhetoric of politicians and in the real of climate denialism or flat-earthers. It just not whats observable. The freedom of trade is almost 1-1 correlated to country prosperity around the world, and the most miserable countries are the protectionists ones.

However, it sounds like you came here voluntarily on an H1B and are now disappointed that you still don't have a green card, even though H1B and GC are separate things and no one ever promised you one. Nor does the US govt owes you one.

Yes, of course it is. The degree to which you restrict participation in a market matters.

>its just as much rent as any positive effect on real wages.

What does that matter?

>Monopoly power does not require having a single actor, it can happen with many.

The "mono" part of "monopoly" disagrees with you. But there is no point in squabbling over words here. We both understand that there are degrees to which you can restrict participation in a market, and the more you restrict participation, the more severe are the effects of the restriction.

>It is to the employer: they are unable to buy from someone else.

They have tens of millions of people to buy from.

>The result is that the cost of manufacture rises for everyone.

I'm not sure why you're bothering to mention this. No one is disputing that restricting imports raises the price of goods, or that restricting the importation of labor raises the price of labor.

>the US would enjoy higher tax revenues and have the exact same GDP (ceteris paribus).

There is of course a third alternative, which is to impose duties on imports of goods in addition to restricting the importation of labor, which would substantially raise wages for low and medium skilled workers in this country.

>Countries were people leave enter a spiral of misery, countries were people enter have the exact opposite effect!

That depends on who is coming and going, and why they are doing so.

>Ban any foreign product from your consumption today and you will see why: everything would turn insanely expensive and inconvenient.

Why not mention the lesser alternative to banning, which is to impose duties? Of course outright banning things for which our existing chain of production is insufficient would cause massive problems.

>In any case, I reiterate that your model of how an economy can prosper with protectionism is only in the rhetoric of politicians and in the real of climate denialism or flat-earthers.

You keep talking about the economy prospering, by which I assume you mean GDP going up fast. My goal is for the people to prosper, not the economy. Of course the economy must prosper to a degree for the people to prosper, and it's attractive to try to optimize GDP because it's an easy thing to measure, but it's not the main goal. Sometimes optimizing for GDP is at odds with building healthy communities, and when it is, I would prefer to pick building healthy communities. Or perhaps you think those two things can never be at odds for some reason?