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Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

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Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#161

Post by freehunter »

protomyth wrote: post #47
rs1234 wrote: post #12

Immigrants founded 99.99% of all US startups (except for a few casinos)

I would expect better of HN. The casino comment is pathetic. Native Americans have founded many businesses despite the many problems with dealing with banks from a reservation perspective.

Alright settle down there. Racism exists enough that you don't have to go looking for it. It's a fact that in many places, Native Americans are the only people allowed to own casinos, so it's an entirely accurate statement. Likewise, there's no law saying Native Americans can't own other businesses, so the only businesses that are reliably exclusive to Native Americans are casinos.

I don't think that comment implied anywhere that the only businesses Native Americans own are casinos. Merely that only Native Americans are allowed to own casinos in many locations.

Looking for racism where it doesn't exist doesn't help anyone, especially those who are actually victims.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#162

Post by bruceb »

sdenton4 wrote: post #34
Cuuugi wrote: post #10

Whenever I see "Immigration" in the title, i think anti-Trump and get sad. No one is trying to stop legal immigration. Tech companies are mad because they are cracking down on H1-B Visa abuse. This is not a bad thing.

For a while, they were keeping green card holders from re-entering the country, and entirely barred people with legal visas from entry. It's clearly not about legality. It's a capricious approach to policy, which seems the message that after spending years navigating the legal system, and uprooting ones entire life to move to the US, one can be turned away for no particular reason. This has a huge impact on legal imm…

How does this have a huge impact on legal immigration? There is not shortage people wanting to come to the US. (this is not a comment on the merits of the travel ban, only the effect)

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#163

Post by phkahler »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #32

One of the basic premises of anti-immigrant policies is that you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones, as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all.

>> It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones, as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all.

I would say in the case of the US, just getting here requires a certain amount of motivation. Even the folks crossing the border from Mexico have to be rather motivated. Anyone coming from another country usually has to pay for transportation at the very least. When the country was founded, these challenges were much greater so I figure the US had the advantage of getting only immigrants above some level of motivation when it started - in addition to the other advantages it had.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#164

Post by edblarney »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #32

One of the basic premises of anti-immigrant policies is that you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones, as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all.

"Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive."

I'm sorry but this is totally unfair.

Nearly every nation has immigration criteria.

Canada, Australia and UK (non-EU) all have a 'points system' which definitely separates 'the useful' form the 'useless'.

Education, skill-set are key components.

I would argue language ability should be added to the list as it's the #1 predictor of integration. It's impossible to engage with a community that one cannot communicate with - and this will help a lot with those immigrants who are likely to be most marginalized (i.e. not the rich one's we are worried about). Language training should be a primary part of social support for newcomers.

"It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones"

No, this is not true at all. The most talented immigrants are entirely undeterred. The nations noted above are good examples of that.

"as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all."

There is no 'determination' at arrival. The discriminating criteria are usually applied before immigrants arrive.

This doesn't preclude status for refugees and other family-class migrants either - you can have both.

Finally - I think looking at success rates of immigrants overall is a much better exercise than looking at a handful of billionaires, though the later does have value.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#166

Post by muninn_ »

cromwellian wrote: post #157
muninn_ wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the book was actually about was the worry that the France was losing its national identity, the framework upon which it was built was Christianity. They want to preserve that identity. I don't think it's about skin color, but about shared cultural values that they found to be appealing and necessary. As it happens, white people were those people. You could easily reverse those roles with any other skin color. Th…

Yes, tribalism is human nature, and we have done very many ugly things to one another because of it. Much of modern advancement in civil liberties and human rights have come about because of the recognition that human nature is flawed and we need to act to fight our worse instincts. I don't think we should sweep racism and xenophobia under the rug with the argument that "boys will be boys"

What is racist about not wanting things to change? This is a totally separate issue from racism. Calling it "boys will be boys" or "girls will be girls" is a gross oversimplification.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#167

Post by xapata »

stale2002 wrote: post #121
xapata wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of central planning. The market is usually more efficient at deciding what jobs are useful.

We are already centrally planning immigration. Changing the numbers around on our existing centrally planned system doesn't make it any more or less centrally planned.

It appears we are using different definitions of "central planning". To the degree that the bureaucracy dictates who is allowed to immigrate, when, and for what purpose, the bureaucracy is planning the economy.

If your proposal is not affecting who arrives and for what job, then what's the point of it?

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#168

Post by jacquesm »

rdl wrote: post #98
bayesian_horse wrote: post #32

One of the basic premises of anti-immigrant policies is that you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones, as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all.

It wouldn't be hard to have an immigration system which is biased toward useful vs. not useful. The question is: where do you want to have the cutoff? I'm in favor of a solid border control regime (i.e. "build the wall"), combined with a transparent and straightforward points-based system for mainly immigrant visas. I'd eliminate the inherent racism in the current system (penalizing India and China vs. Equatorial Gui…

> I'm in favor of a solid border control regime (i.e. "build the wall")

Walls going up are days of sadness. Walls broken down are days of joy.

The thing to keep in mind here is that such walls built to keep others out can be used just as easily to keep the locals in (on either side).

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#169

Post by venomsnake »

stusmall wrote: post #119
Cuuugi wrote: post #10

Whenever I see "Immigration" in the title, i think anti-Trump and get sad. No one is trying to stop legal immigration. Tech companies are mad because they are cracking down on H1-B Visa abuse. This is not a bad thing.

> No one is trying to stop legal immigration. Serious question, what do you think the ban was?

Stopping immigration from 7 specific countries comprising single digit percent of the human population.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#170

Post by rdl »

muninn_ wrote: post #159
rdl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also there is value in "go to US/SV, work there, return home with knowledge of how better systems work, establish in your home country", although there are probably scale effects so it's best for humanity overall for the best people to be concentrated. (I'm not sure about the merits of immigration, naturalization, and then return to/interface with birth country, vs. a non-immigrant status. There is probably a good ca…

I agree, but how many people come here from, say, India or wherever, work in IT in somewhere like SF and say ok I've had enough training, time to go make my country a better place? None. I don't blame them either.

Actually there are a LOT of Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs I know who moved to the US, worked here, and especially back in India are now building SV-style companies there. Or are putting parts of their global businesses there -- given how expensive labor is in the US and especially SV, it's a huge competitive advantage to be from, say, Ukraine and be able to set up a great engineering organization there.

I agree it makes less sense for an individual worker to move back (unless there are family or other concerns).

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