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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

#181

Post by rconti »

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…

We have a solid border control regime, so we need to move straight to a rational immigration/visa system.

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

#183

Post by protomyth »

freehunter wrote: post #161
protomyth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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."

Las Vegas and Atlantic City might disagree. I think it implied what it said. Its a cheap shot.

[edit]that "Alright settle down there." is probably one of the most rude ways to start any comment

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

#184

Post by rdl »

xapata wrote: post #179
rdl wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to have baseline federal standards and then let states handle some immigration decisions, actually. In Canada the provinces can do that (so e.g. Quebec can fast-track you for citizenship for speaking French). In Switzerland it is basically all at the Cantonal level.

That'd require some better surveillance to ensure an immigrant permitted in one state does not work in another. I'm not sure that's constitutional, though it is quite practical.

You could just make it for employment visa based on the employer. (or edu visas based on schools there). In most of those cases you already trust the employer to some extent, and can rely on audit and heavy penalties to deal with fraud after the fact. You would be doing the important anti-criminal/anti-terrorist screening to a consistent national standard.

It wouldn't be the full immigration system -- it would just be nice for states to have some role. There already are incentives to recruit doctors to work in underserved areas.

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

#187

Post by nilkn »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #142
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.

> you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. I'm sure it's possible to do it, if you take a narrow enough view of 'usefulness', e.g. 'usefulness' = measurable economic productivity. You can screen out people with expensive preexisting medical conditions, people who cannot work, etc., and that will obviously raise the average productivity of immigrants. But it's immoral. Rich host coun…

> Rich host countries are poaching productive individuals while selecting against people who are most in need of help

I'm not sure that "poaching" is the right word. The US isn't seeking out potential immigrants and trying to entice them to come here, but that's what "poaching" suggests to me. Rather, it's just trying to filter those who have already established on their own a desire to come here.

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

#188

Post by rdl »

rconti wrote: post #181
rdl wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We have a solid border control regime, so we need to move straight to a rational immigration/visa system.

We don't do effective overstay tracking.

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

#189

Post by dmix »

plingamp wrote: post #39
nilkn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that needs a citation with a clear quote.

I think he maybe referring to this: Bannon responded: “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ” he didn’t finish his sentence. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.” http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/16/13653490/steve-bannon-tru...

From the Verge article:

> While Bannon didn’t explicitly say anything against immigrants, he seemed to hint at the idea of a white nationalist identity with the phrase “civic society.”

That seems like a pretty big jump from him citing a common stat to Verge accusing him of calling for a white nationalist state. He didn't say anything close to that.

He may hold nationalist ideas where he wants more American's founding good companies domestically. But I'm not really seeing where he is calling for a white society or for an end of Asians starting companies? It could easily just as much imply that he just wants to see more Americans being successful founders in the US tech industry in addition to Asians?

From someone outside of the industry it may be a rational concern question to ask why there aren't more Americans starting those top companies? You can ask that and be concerned about that while not being characterizing the problem as Asians taking some fixed amount of jobs.

The insistence of people to fill in all the blanks of everything Steve Bannon doesn't say with some generic white supremacist viewpoint is really strange to me. Like there's an attempt to discredit any of his ideas by associating them with white nationalism. Usually by cherry picking statements and inventing a bunch of implied underlying meaning - that may or may not actually exist - to fill in the gaps until a narrative is complete. It's actually quite brilliant from a partisan character assassination perspective.

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

#190

Post by Mikeb85 »

Good study and all, but I think it misses the point of the current sentiment in the US. Regardless, yes, immigrants are more likely to found businesses than natives. Whether or not their businesses become billion dollar startups because of their efforts or venture capitalists is another question, but yes, they help the economy (As much as those who are a drag on it? Who knows).

I wrote a lengthy post about the effects of immigration recently, so here's I'll just focus on the issue of human capital.

Immigration creates a situation for rich countries to be able to draw from a much larger pool of talent than they otherwise would since they take talent from other countries. This is a great situation for the host country, and devastates developing economies. It's basically colonialism all over, except instead of stealing physical commodities you're stealing human capital.

Relevant article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight

And of course, there are negative effects in the host country, namely that there's more competition for jobs, which can drive wages down, eliminate some jobs for natives altogether, etc... The hope is that this effect is offset by the job creation effect, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. The US rust belt certainly doesn't seem to be gaining much, but other areas are.

Anyhow, the whole point of this is that there's well known pros and cons to immigration. It's not all pro, nor all con. You need to ask exactly what you want the end-game to be - not just for the US, but for the world. Human capital flight is the single biggest obstacle to development for the third world. At the same time, it allows the west to gather all the brightest minds in the world to maintain its hegemony. What's more important - maintaining a dominant place in the world, or more equal development that doesn't leave anyone behind? (I mean, I know the answer - we're willing to destroy countries who go against western hegemony and simply absorb the migrants)

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