Donald Trump Calls Out Mark Zuckerberg on Immigration

Donald Trump Calls Out Mark Zuckerberg on Immigration
money.cnn.com

Yes, the H1-B visa system need to be policed so it's not used entirely to drive down wages of local specialized employees. I'm under no allusions that foreign H1-B workers have any right to work in the US, but neither do unemployed US citizens -- which is what Trump is advocating. This is blatant pandering to those working class voters who have been forced out of the US economy for macroeconomic reasons. Trump's message is for the working class, despite the fact that he is specifically talking about the H1-B program in this instance.

In any case, Trump has no evidence that he will be capable of lobbying Congress better than corporations do. He even complains in his immigration policy document[1] that "Completion of a visa tracking system – required by law but blocked by lobbyists" has allowed foreign citizens to overstay their visas.

A vote for Trump is a vote to show frustration with the current political system, not a vote to fix the current political system.

For anyone who wants a radically different idea from a presidential candidate, look towards Lawrence Lessig[2].

[1] https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/politics/who-is-lawrence-lessig-and-wh...

*edit to clarify the "working class" reference, despite the article not touching on working class.

By promoting the message that we can't create businesses, innovate and grow the economy without importing talent (through H1B's and other programs) we are, at the same time, telling our own population "you are useless in the new economy and nothing whatsoever will come from you". Which, of course, couldn't be farther from the truth.

If we don't have enough tech talent from within it can only be because we have failed to develop it. And this, in turn, is due to many factors, some straightforward some not so much, some common sense, structural, cultural, financial and political.

Yes, there's a lot of fix. And no, professional politicians are not going to be able to do it.

Why? Because the fitness function of a politician is wrong for a long term approach to solving difficult problems. Problems that might require pissing off loads of people in the interest of emerging in a better position at the end of the process. Sometimes in chess you have to sacrifice your queen to win the game many moves later. The naive player isn't comfortable with such a sacrifice. It takes a good teacher (and experience) to learn why that might be a good move.

The right thing to do is to launch a massive effort to make our population the most entrepreneurial and technical people on the planet. And that's not easy. And that will take a lot of effort and time.

Politicians, due to the nature of their fitness function, cannot and will not do this. The moves they'd have to make are career-ending in the context of having to survive elections every two, four or six years. Adapting to natural selection, for their kind, takes the form of pandering for votes during campaigns and laying low until the next election.

Few pay the price for not accomplishing anything of note. In fact, while in tech we are lauded for trying, failing, pivoting, again and again and again until we succeed, in professional politics a single failure can end a career. And so doing nothing at all is better than trying.

One could very well argue that the politician fitness function isn't really optimized for the benefit of anyone but the politician and the ecosystem or tribe they belong to. This is THE huge problem with the idea of having a professional political class. They are rarely good for anything other than getting themselves from election to election. Some do nothing in between, some create problems and a lucky few are in office through economic booms they had nothing to do with yet are quick to take credit for when elections come-up. The politician is a parasitic organism with few benefits.

I've always thought this country needed to make a shift from being ruled (yes, ruled) by a professional political class to being governed by term-limited representatives with "skin in the game" and consequences attached to performance at various levels. And, yes, I really think that in the age of technology and global commerce and at a time when we are about to step into 20 trillion dollars in foreign debt we need tough-as-nails business people at the helm. The guy (or gal) who only cares about surviving elections WILL NOT FIX OUR PROBLEMS. EVER.

I firmly believe we are living a moment in time when if we do not get our education, finances, economy and our industrial base in order nothing else will matter over time. We can't think ourselves invincible. We can't think we are going to last forever. We have to work to maintain position in the world and we have to make the right decisions. We have to EARN IT, others, China, will not give us or grant us our position. We earn it or we suffer a fundamental negative change in our standing in the world with the concomitant changes this would entail.

By the time the next president takes office we would have utterly wasted eight to fifty years (you pick the term, it doesn't matter) doing nothing, accomplishing nothing and actually going backwards in many respects. Fixing this will be a tall order. It will be far worst than it was eight to ten years go. And it will most definitely be a business problem.

I am not suggesting Trump is the right person for the job. He may very well be. I don't know. What I am saying is that other than him and Fiorina I don't see anyone else on either party who is truly qualified to deal with the kinds of problems we will have to content with. If you close your eyes and listen to what all the candidates say all the professional politicians sound exactly the same and say pretty much the same things. Their alignment is with themselves and their careers, not the difficult road ahead, one that will require very tough decisions across the board.

So, yes, I think H1B's can be seen as a problem. Yet, we have many more to deal with. Each a piece of the overall puzzle. If we can't graduate good technicians, engineers and scientists at greater rates from within we might as well hand over the keys and call it done.

Yes, we learned that moderation is keeps things in balance, and we are going to choose not to work in that kind of environment.