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America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

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Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#261

Post by dev_dull »

i_phish_cats wrote: post #247
CodeMage wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both of these would ensure that we can get smart and talented individuals from outside the US and would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete while continuing to provide broad-based wage increases. As an immigrant, I'm all for better and easier immigration system. As a parent of an 11 year old, I can tell you that what your country really needs is not more smart and talented immigrants, but better e…

Nice anecdote. Here's another theory: American kids are being priced out of universities with good CS programs because those universities have burdensome pension programs that can only be paid by importing international students with rich parents.

A story of underfunded pensions coming to a local municipality near all of us.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#262

Post by dev_dull »

superhuzza wrote: post #186
Nasrudith wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I would like to see freedom of movement in trade agreements. Goods and capital can already flow freely - letting labor do so as well would be more free and have potential to make the workforce something competed for more as well. Companies can already outsource so letting people flow with less artificial resistance (as opposed to natural like language and cultural barriers) seems both fair and efficient. G…

You just invented the European Union :)

Can we try it again except this time without the power of an organization to push awful copyright laws down the throats of every country[1]? It’s like if you consolidate power it becomes easier to corrupt.

1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/effs-letter-eus-copyri...

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#263

Post by jws »

slothtrop wrote: post #209

Hire graduates and train them, problem solved. Cheap immigrant labor is a case of employers having their cake and eating it too. The vast majority of these jobs aren't that challenging, hence the immigrants. They're mostly looking for monkeys, not 10x devs.

This doesn't work for widely usable skills with a mobile workforce. Consider…

Company A hires a worker and invests in training them, then before they can get their value back out of the education the worker changes to a higher paying job at Company B which doesn't have the training expenses to recoup. Our example worker and Company B are both making their best possible rational decisions.

There are solutions to making this work:

• It could be unlawful for the worker to use their skills, paid for by Company A, with another company until they had 'paid off' their training. Effective non-competes based on skills. Not a PR win for Company A. Also, you never want a judge to cite the Emancipation Proclamation to you in court.

• Company A could train a worker and have the worker incur unavoidable debt so that should they switch companies Company A will still be reimbursed for their training costs. This combines student loans with for profit workplace training. The conflicts of interest are huge and the optics are horrible for Company A. Again, you don't want a judge to say "indentured servant" to you in court.

• The worker could independently train themselves in something they feel might be advantageous in the work place, incurring any costs themselves in the hope of recouping that investment. This is the usual method in the US, there are some problems with workers making bad investments and incurring lifelong financial burdens.

• Both Company A and Company B could shoulder the cost of training/educating workers and have access to the resulting workers. This is known as taxation and state sponsored education. Workers still may make bad decisions in their training selections.

This is the paragraph where I espouse the best way to move forward. I've got nothing. I like the fourth one, but when you add in educational institutions with their own interests and some desire to steer the educational funding to studies which are in demand it gets very complicated.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#264

Post by DSMan195276 »

robotrout wrote: post #243
kasey_junk wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit of an odd argument to make against a state sanctioned limit to labor that it should be driven by pure capitalism/free market principles.

The premise of the article was to use a capitalist supply and demand metric (salary) as a way to fairly allow merit based immigration. I think that strategy makes a lot of sense, and was making the point that our hypothetical midwest company should not be allowed to scuttle the non-gameable merit-based proposal in favor of something more political and squishy. Our hypothetical midwest company can either pay enough wa…

The problem I have with this argument is that salaries don't have to be comparable to be competitive, because cost of living is different across the country. I make a fair amount less working in Ohio then if I moved to California, but I would also pay a lot more to live there.

So, making hiring these employees based on salary only means that places with a higher cost of living will be able to hire these employees for more typical rates, where-as companies in lower cost of living areas will have to pay well above average for the same employee. If actual salary wasn't a requirement, then midwest companies could still be competitive even while offering lower salaries.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#265

Post by HillaryBriss »

ivl wrote: post #39
antisthenes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A side benefit? It's been USA's primary competitive advantage for decades - brain draining the cream of the crop from a 5 billion population. It's incredibly naive to think it was ever unintentional.

The beneficiary of pretty much every brain drain for the last 100 years. No wonder such a strong economy came of it.

California is probably THE focal point of this braininess.

And yet, California has an above average poverty level, below average per-capita education spending and achievement and all-too-frequent state budget problems.

How can this brain-driven economy coexist with this poverty and inequality? It's not the result I would expect. How do we explain this? More important - how do we reduce the poverty and spread the benefits of this brain-driven economy more evenly?

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#266

Post by DataWorker »

CodeMage wrote: post #226
firedrakerage wrote: post #11

I do not typically post, but these suggestions seem like genuine improvements to the existing system: "Kerr suggests allocating H-1Bs not by lottery as they are now, but by salary — the more that a company is willing to pay for a foreign worker, the quicker they can get a visa." "A second change would be to allow H-1B workers to apply for permanent residency green cards on their own, without having to be sponsored by…

> Both of these would ensure that we can get smart and talented individuals from outside the US and would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete while continuing to provide broad-based wage increases. As an immigrant, I'm all for better and easier immigration system. As a parent of an 11 year old, I can tell you that what your country really needs is not more smart and talented immigrants, but better e…

Your opinion is obviously contradicted by the facts. The American education system is a major reason people immigrate here in the first place. Many of the best universities and research centers in the world happen to be in America. You may have some gripe about your kid’s teacher or whatever, but if you feel that a single data point from a parent’s biased perspective is more informative than the facts and statistics, then there’s not much point trying to have a reasonable conversation with you on this topic. You are choosing innumeracy and anecdote over easily accessible data.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#267

Post by Daishiman »

i_phish_cats wrote: post #247
CodeMage wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both of these would ensure that we can get smart and talented individuals from outside the US and would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete while continuing to provide broad-based wage increases. As an immigrant, I'm all for better and easier immigration system. As a parent of an 11 year old, I can tell you that what your country really needs is not more smart and talented immigrants, but better e…

Nice anecdote. Here's another theory: American kids are being priced out of universities with good CS programs because those universities have burdensome pension programs that can only be paid by importing international students with rich parents.

Which countries with decent state-funded universities generally don't have because you've decided that the free market "works" in providing what is basically an essential service for the growth of society.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#268

Post by noobermin »

DataWorker wrote: post #266
CodeMage wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both of these would ensure that we can get smart and talented individuals from outside the US and would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete while continuing to provide broad-based wage increases. As an immigrant, I'm all for better and easier immigration system. As a parent of an 11 year old, I can tell you that what your country really needs is not more smart and talented immigrants, but better e…

Your opinion is obviously contradicted by the facts. The American education system is a major reason people immigrate here in the first place. Many of the best universities and research centers in the world happen to be in America. You may have some gripe about your kid’s teacher or whatever, but if you feel that a single data point from a parent’s biased perspective is more informative than the facts and statistics,…

Private, elite prep schools and colleges in the US are the best. The average college or high school is dismal compared to the rest of the world. We consistently score below the average of OECD countries.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#269

Post by noobermin »

jorblumesea wrote: post #246
CodeMage wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both of these would ensure that we can get smart and talented individuals from outside the US and would drastically improve the ability for the US to compete while continuing to provide broad-based wage increases. As an immigrant, I'm all for better and easier immigration system. As a parent of an 11 year old, I can tell you that what your country really needs is not more smart and talented immigrants, but better e…

It really depends on the region and city, the US educational system has zero consistency across the nation. It also varies considerably by income, where rich school districts have educational standards above European levels, and where poor districts have standards on par with Latin America or even Africa. It's not that we don't produce educated people, it's we don't consistently produce educated people across the boa…

Education in this country echos everything, it's a shadow of the extreme wealth inequality.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#270

Post by JanSt »

geff82 wrote: post #196
outworlder wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: how big would the language barrier be? Not only at the workplace, but on mundane, day to day activities, for a family? When I was considering moving to Europe, I thought of Germany, but quickly dismissed, and then came to the conclusion that the Netherlands would be a better fit. But I'm not sure how accurate that assessment was.

It totally depends. If you are working and living in one of the big centers like Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin or Hamburg, chances are good that you find work in a company that accepts English-only speakers and usually you can live day-to-day life in English, too. But of course I have to say that you should try to learn the language if you want to stay in Germany longer than just a year or two, as this will open up even…

I'm not yet buying tight talent supply. Does your company offer 90-100% remote work (from Germany/EU/similar timezone)? If it doesn't the market isn't really tight. Software can easily be done from anywhere you want with few meetings necesarry (well, maybe for teambuilding ;-))
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