Of course it is about talent and not pay - in order to get to a discussion about pay candidates need to be tall enough to ride this bus. Unfortunately, in the native "candidates" tend to flunk that.
Immigration is about talent, not costs
441–450 of 644 posts
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha, funny guy. The US immigration system is shit. Explain to me how someone can become a permanent resident or a US citizen who is current a citizen & resident of Canada, India or the Philippines. H1-B visas are the most straightforward way for someone with an education to get a job and permanent residency in the US. O and L visas are not universally applicable. Family sponsorship isn't always possible. Not everyone…
The US does take about 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year. We mainly do this on family reunification, with a few other limited paths. I do agree that it is a terrible system. I'd love to see a points system like Australia. That said, I don't think the evidence supports the notion of a shortage of programmers, so I don't think the goal of an immigration system should be to provide silicon valley with m…
The problem with the point system is that someone can qualify to immigrate but not be able to find a job. That happened in Canada a while back. A ton of foreign trained doctors were working manual labor jobs because they couldn't work as a doctor.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only" ; "it's simple reality" ; "Without a doubt" ; "It happens all-the-fucking-time" ; "There's absolutely no talent shortage in the Bay Area" Presenting something as a fact doesn't make it one. You're basically saying that American tech companies should only hire Americans. That the facebook, Google, Mozilla, ... shouldn't hire smart people from other countries. As…
Come to Toronto. Amazon is here, and growing. Lots of other start ups and mid-sized companies. Canada is way less insane about visa hoops to jump through. We're pretty friendly, and the crime rate is low (our new Mayor doesn't do crack or hang out with gangsters). Most importantly, we're a country and city that likes immigration of smart people who want to earn high salaries, and pay our slightly-higher-than-America…
In Canada currently. The salaries just suck compared to states. Yes the visa hoops are less but living expenses in cities like Vancouver will suck everything out of your pocket.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many tech companies apply for H1-B visas for developers who are unable to speak any English at all? Your post has such an overwhelming air of nationalistic, racist sentiment. "These foreigners come over here, they don't even speak english, and they take all our jobs". The reality is that most of the foreign developers I've met speak english and communicate at least as well as other developers we've hired here, an…
Good lord, I'm not generalizing anything. I was explaining further the specific phenomenon (which does occur sometimes) that manticore_alpha was talking about. I didn't apply this phenomenon to anyone, nor make any statements about policy nor how it ought to impact policy... Or does the simple description of a phenomenon which sometimes happens, now mean I'm a jingoistic, nationalistic, racist dirtbag? I am in comple…
Saying "You" when not addressing anyone in particular is a classic dog whistle technique. Everyone in the audience knows exactly who you're talking about, and plausible deniability is preserved for future accusations of racism/bigotry.
Of course, silverstorm did not actually explain anything at all. All he did was repeat a few standard dog whistle arguments used by racists with a couple of geek culture references thrown in to pander to the audience.
Let's take a look.
1. Appeal to imaginary "social contract" -- an attempt to establish a criteria for who should be accepted into society based on some vague, unspecific standard. Used in various forms by dominant demographic to argue against immigration.
2. "Learn to speak English" -- Good to see this is still being used. Incredibly high reliability as an indicator of racism, almost to the point where I expect it to soon fall out of favor among racists. [0]
3. Warnings of radical change to society ("attempt to create Little Elbonia", "completely reshape government") -- A common, highly effective technique based on natural human fear of the unknown and preference to status quo.
And of course, silverstorm's response to being challenged was equally standard -- repeated reference to "phenomenon" to avoid potential challenges to assertions, it's only a few bad apples ("a phenomenon which sometimes happens", "many immigrants are well-educated"), preemptive dismissal of direct accusation as self-evidently absurd ("I'm a jingoistic, nationalistic, racist dirtbag?").
[0] See, e.g., Lee Atwater 1981 interview for more on evolution of racist rhetoric and its adaption in response to public awareness of true meanings. http://www.thenation.com/article/170841/exclusive-lee-atwate...
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US does take about 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year. We mainly do this on family reunification, with a few other limited paths. I do agree that it is a terrible system. I'd love to see a points system like Australia. That said, I don't think the evidence supports the notion of a shortage of programmers, so I don't think the goal of an immigration system should be to provide silicon valley with m…
The problem with the point system is that someone can qualify to immigrate but not be able to find a job. That happened in Canada a while back. A ton of foreign trained doctors were working manual labor jobs because they couldn't work as a doctor.
Yes, that's certainly a factor.
If US citizens who go to med school are heavily protected by licensing laws from competition, whereas US citizens who go to grad school in engineering experience the opposite, you should expect more US Citizens to go into medicine, and more international students hoping to gain entry to the US to train as engineers.
This, rather than deficiencies in the US educational system or problems with making programming "cool", goes a long way toward explaining why US citizens tend to avoid certain fields. It would also explain why the "shortage" of US citizens going into certain fields is actually a highly rational response to a market distortion created by government policy.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#446I'd argue that both the pro and con positions on this issue are correct. Because there are, roughly speaking, two sub-markets within the larger unified whole. Let's call them the upper market and the lower market.
The upper market is about the supply-vs-demand of the best engineers/programmers/techies. The lower market is composed and driven by the supply-vs-demand for the cheapest people who can ostensibly fill those roles, however poorly, as long as they are (or appear to be, in near term) adequate for the need at hand.
Therefore speaking in broad strokes: yes, if you're a US citizen/resident whose skills/talents/accomplishment are effectively in that lower market, then globalization is likely to hurt you in terms of employment prospects in a tech field. However, if you're in the upper market supply-side, globalization is more likely to help, esp if you market yourself very publically and globally, and independently from any specific employer -- for example, get yourself some kind of top ranking on some forum or in search results on a given topic, or write a book on it, create/lead or contribute to a popular FOSS project, etc. You may not have full control of your destiny, we each have different mixes of strengths or handicaps, but to some extent you do have a choice as to whether to put yourself into that upper market's supply pool, or the lower. And there are lots of people world-wide desperate for money or to get their foot in the door, thus they flood that lower market, even if later some percentage of those same folks may transition into the upper one. And a new "sucker" is born every second, world-wide.
The OP's author is clearly writing from the POV of that upper market's demand side. He's correct for his segment. A different conclusion about the impact of H1B visas (and off-shoring) can also be correct, if about that lower market's supply-side.
All good. No conflict.
disclaimer/caveat: obviously speaking in broad strokes, and thinking at strategic level. (And I wish I never had to point that out on HN.)
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come to Toronto. Amazon is here, and growing. Lots of other start ups and mid-sized companies. Canada is way less insane about visa hoops to jump through. We're pretty friendly, and the crime rate is low (our new Mayor doesn't do crack or hang out with gangsters). Most importantly, we're a country and city that likes immigration of smart people who want to earn high salaries, and pay our slightly-higher-than-America…
Well, I have actually been considering a move, not just because of Immigration, but because of all of Canada's natural beauty. I also kinda like snow and cold weather and maple syrup. Here is one important question though: is it a city that you would recommend for young people (in their twenties)? Or is it nicer once you have a family and are looking to settle down etc.? And besides Amazon, is there any demand for te…
Toronto is the biggest city in Canada and the industrial center, lots of different sectors and jobs, thriving start-up scene, and all the things other major cities would offer.
Biggest problem you'll face is that we mix-use metric and imperial units, i.e. pounds for weight, feet for height, celsius for temperature, meter for distance.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
The core problem is bribery is both a way of life for more than 1/2 the worlds population and a huge economic drain. If you mix say 200 million people from China and 200 million from India you would quickly end up with yet another society where bribery is the norm. Granted the cap on immigration is probably well below the cultural assimilation rate, but just because we could accept say 2 million people a year does no…
People said the same thing about Italian and Irish immigrants 100 years ago. And yet, things didn't fall apart.
Feel free to look up the crime rates 100 years ago and say that again. Immigration is extremely valuable, but scaling things up tends to create significant issues.
The Italian's might have been more famous, but there where wars fought in US city's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Mob
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unstated premise behind your comment, and indeed this entire debate, is that there is only so much "room" for immigration in the US. This leads us to arguments about how large the quota should be, how it should be divided, etc. This is a flawed assumption. The US has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration, and on average every single immigrant we accept would increase the size of our economy. Immigrants are…
The U.S. has a fixed capacity to absorb immigrants while integrating them into our culture. In many places in the country, immigration is already too much, resulting in insular immigrant communities and tensions between immigrants and everyone else. Those are bad things. The unstated assumption underlying the assertion that "the U.S. has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration" is that culture, and institutions a…
I think this is a very short-sighted view. The US has a long history of immigration, and of having insular cultures slowly integrate into some vague "mainstream" culture. Philadelphia had widely circulated German language newspapers well into the 20th century.
Arguably, what has kept the US culture so vibrant is the very aggressive assimilation and acceptance of foreign cultures.
I think the very notion of some sort of "American culture" that needs to be "protected" to be a fantasy; at best just a rose-tinted glasses view of the past, and at worst shorthand for "I want immigrants who agree with my views so that the candidates I support win more elections".
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#450I'd argue that both the pro and con positions on this issue are correct. Because there are, roughly speaking, two sub-markets within the larger unified whole. Let's call them the upper market and the lower market. The upper market is about the supply-vs-demand of the best engineers/programmers/techies. The lower market is composed and driven by the supply-vs-demand for the cheapest people who can ostensibly fill thos…
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