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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

#321

Post by onemoresoop »

El_Flanagan wrote: post #206
onemoresoop wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially in eastern Europe, for example in Romania you could live like a king on $30k per annum

I wont say that about Spain. You will have a decent life. If you want to save money or invest, that's it. No fancy dinners nor trips during your PTO. You will also have to work until you are at least 65-70 years old to have a regular retirement. I wont call that living like a King. Just like a regular working class person. Decent? Sure. But that's it.

It's a figure of speech, living like a king is overrated anyway, you got no privacy. I'd say that you'd live a comfortable life nonetheless

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

#322

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #67
Kephael wrote: post #7

The supply of technical workers is artificially limited by Leetcode style interviews. There doesn't seem to be an actual supply side limitation, especially not at the entry level.

Decades ago tech companies like IBM would hire entry-level software developers with zero coding experience based on the results of aptitude tests. Then they put the new employees through internal boot camps. There's no reason a similar approach couldn't work today. Employers just generally got lazy about workforce development while the economy was slower and they had an unlimited supply of applicants.

[deleted]

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

#323

Post by ryandrake »

jws wrote: post #263
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 makin…

Company A could simply pay the (now more qualified) worker a higher wage to remove the motivation to move to company B.

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

#324

Post by rjsw »

nostrademons wrote: post #316
i_phish_cats wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as long as we are speaking in hyperbole, everyone needs to realize that K-12 CS education needs CS teachers, who are disproportionately not those international students who either get cushy jobs in SV or go home.

You're getting at the root of the problem: teaching in the U.S. is a low-paid, low-status position. Teaching in other countries is a decently-paid, high-status position. This directly translates into job desirability and ability to attract qualified candidates. I had some good teachers growing up, as well as a number of bad ones. The good ones all fell into one of these categories: 1) they were young and idealistic 2…

A fourth category of good teachers from my childhood was Biology teachers. All of mine had done research but then found that there were not very many jobs for them other than in teaching.

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

#325

Post by thrmsforbfast »

brandonmenc wrote: post #233
thrmsforbfast wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you set a quota and give to the highest bidder, you're going to see private sector executives, lawyers, and financial roles being filled in cities with high costs of living and competitive wages. Yes, that's the point. Skilled labor immigration is for skilled labor . It should not by a subsidy to companies that cannot afford to pay prevailing wages and/or are unwilling to invest in their workforce. > This will d…

> Middle America will be fine; Chicago, KC, Pittsburgh, etc. can and do compete with the coasts for skilled labor! These cities may as well be "coastal" relative to their regions. There are a lot of hurting small PA towns less than 100 miles away from Pittsburgh experiencing a brain drain, for example.

> These cities may as well be "coastal" relative to their regions.

IF KC and Pittsburgh aren't "middle america", then the term ceases to have much of a meaning and we might as well stick with "rural".

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

#326

Post by saas_sam »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #240
tabtab wrote: post #146

The H-1B topic strikes a personal tone with me. After the dot-com crash in the early 2000's, IT jobs in California were hard to come by. I almost got one job, but the company decided to go with an H-1B worker instead. I had a new young family, but had to go out of state to find work, leaving my family behind. I'm NOT summarily against H-1B's but wish to insist they be used ONLY to fill in true skill shortages instead…

> I almost got one job, but the company decided to go with an H-1B worker instead. This scenario is explicitly forbidden by the provisions of the visa program and it is illegal to select a guest worker in preference to a domestic candidate. That is why there is a public notification requirement for all jobs open to guest workers. Obviously all it takes is one minor reason to deem you unqualified. The Disney IT incide…

"Public notification requirement" = job posting you leave up and internal email you circulate to CYA in case you get audited. It's a ruse. This can't be enforced.

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

#327

Post by anonzzzz »

graycat wrote: post #311
noobermin wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do the comparison again controlling on country of origin. E.g., how do US citizen students with families from Japan compare with students still in Japan? Instead of Japan, substitute Canada, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, England, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Baltic countries, the Balkan countries, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Poland, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Singapore, Turkey, Iraq, Ir…

The US is not uniquely diverse, Canada and Australia among other countries have a higher percentage of foreign born population.

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

#328

Post by affinity100 »

It's strange to see contrasting responses(read: not unequivocally welcome) from programmers to increasing H1B visas when most(not all, but a significant fraction) of these same programmers call for practically limitless immigration from south of the border for low skilled jobs.

So virtue signalling even at the cost of your fellow citizens but skepticism to immigration when it comes to your own job.

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

#329

Post by sarchertech »

lenkite wrote: post #53
sarchertech wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No mainstream politician is pushing for completely open borders. That's a complete straw man. The closest quote I can find from a national politician calling for open borders is Donald Trump in 2013. "We will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability."

AFAIK this is not a "complete straw man". Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison (Minnesota) is strongly in favor of open borders, goes around wearing T-shirts saying the same. He has even been quoted saying that "America’s national borders create an injustice by keeping Mexican workers from traveling to the United States to look for higher-paying jobs". Maybe he has a point, however he does not sha…

>"America’s national borders create an injustice by keeping Mexican workers from traveling to the United States to look for higher-paying jobs"

That's an inaccurate summary of what he said that's been going around right wing news sites. Here's what he actually said:

> “And so corporations, certain people who get certain rights, can go back and forth across the border seeking out the lowest wages, but people, regular people, cannot go back and forth across the border seeking out the highest wages. So what it creates is an imbalance. It creates an injustice.”

He isn't calling for open borders. In the context he was pointing out problems created by allowing corporations to move back and forth between borders to seek out the lowest wage employees, but not allowing employees to move back in forth to seek the highest wage employer. In the context of the interview, he was talking mostly about market protectionism to correct the employer side of that imbalance.

With respect to the shirt he was wearing. It was band merch for an rap group. It's an inspirational quote empathizing with people crossing the border to improve their lives, not a literal call to remove border checkpoints. He may even prefer a world with open borders, but he's not saying we can or should actually implement that unilaterally.

Again no one thinks Donald Trump wants open borders because he thinks one day we will have to "leave borders behind".

His his actual immigration platform:

"I believe immigration rules need to be straightforward, fair, and predictable. They currently are not. I am committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform and have co-sponsored such legislation in my two terms in Congress. I believe that our reformed immigration system should include a clear path to citizenship for those who are already in the U.S. working and paying taxes. We need to put families first and have an expedited process for family reunification and believe that the federal government has an obligation to clear up the lengthy backlog of family visa requests. I also believe we need to pass The Dream Act, which is legislation designed to increase access to higher education for the children of immigrants and give them an opportunity to succeed and give back to their communities."

Notice nothing about open borders.

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

#330

Post by anoncoward111 »

NeoBasilisk wrote: post #283
core-questions wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stats are thrown off by a number of factors that it would be imprudent to get into here. Control for demographic samples similar to the other countries and you'll see a very different picture.

So you're saying poor people in the US don't matter because they bring down the average?

They matter, but they don't negate the statistical extremes.

For what it's worth, I didn't go to any elite universities and I make less than 35,000 per year, so I don't have a horse in this race.

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