131–136 of 136 posts
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Exactly. They have the data, but they’d need to link it to a few other sources for it to be complete. The US, unlike Europe (at least in my experience) doesn’t check passports on the way out. They rely on flight manifests or information from Canadian authorities on who has exited.
> unlike Europe Unlike the Schengen zone, certainly, but some European countries also do not check passports on exit (the UK is a good example).
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Why should it take more than a couple of days?
The longest part of the process is the labor market test to ensure there are no willing, able and qualified American workers. This includes advertising the position in a number of different locations and channels for a set number of days and interviewing any American workers that apply.
Economies are demand driven. Participation is good. Banning foreign workers to protect a subset of American workers is bad.
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Not sure where are you getting 32% from. The table on p. 15 has "Systems Analysis And Programming" at 56% of all petitions. Other computer related occupations are 10.4% https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/reports-studies/Ch...
"Systems Analysis And Programming" (62.2%) and "Computer Occupations, Other" (8.4%) are together 70.6% in 2017. That's the approximately the same population as "254k/365k of H1B petitions in 2017 were for computer occupations" which is about ~70%. So 86% of of "Systems Analysis And Programming" and "Computer Occupations, Other" are "Systems Analysis And Programming". If you want to assume "Computer Occupations, Other…
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Interesting about EB1A, didn't know. I agree that we need reform in this area. For one, a bidding system for H1-B type visas could prevent much of the abuse. Like you, I'm not a Trump supporter, but I like the points-based system. Not sure why that got so much criticism (probably simply because it came from him). It's similar to Canada's system, which most people around the globe seem to admire. I hope people can und…
I guess one question I have re the first study you posted is: just because you get a certified LCA for level 1 or 2, does that mean the employer is going to actually pay what corresponds to a level 1 or level 2 wage? Isn't that the floor? LCA happens before I-129, so the employer is just certifying they need someone, anyone, to take the role. For instance, a promotion or regular pay raise doesn't trigger a new LCA. T…
The one that convinced me previously was the second link, which was a pretty convincing natural experiment leveraging the fact that the visas are awarded by (randomized) lottery.
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I wish borders and citizenship didn't really exist. Just pay taxes to your current locality. It should be as simple to travel, live, or work between any country and the U.S. as it is between any two U.S. states.
Make governments compete in a free market like companies. It's an interesting idea, and compelling on its face. But that leaves open the question of how a government could ever be expected to invest in it's people. The incentive for other countries would be to not invest as much in education of their own, since anyone could up and move to a country with lower taxes immediately once they finished school. Or they would…
I want a company that protects my life and property, at a fixed cost, on a contractual basis. There are many others like me, who see the purpose of government as protecting life and property, not as central planners ruling every aspect of their subjects’ lives.
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Make governments compete in a free market like companies. It's an interesting idea, and compelling on its face. But that leaves open the question of how a government could ever be expected to invest in it's people. The incentive for other countries would be to not invest as much in education of their own, since anyone could up and move to a country with lower taxes immediately once they finished school. Or they would…
I don’t want a government that invests in me, my education, my healthcare, my retirement, tells me what to do, steals my money and gives it to others, and changes the rules every year. I want a company that protects my life and property, at a fixed cost, on a contractual basis. There are many others like me, who see the purpose of government as protecting life and property, not as central planners ruling every aspect…
I don't see how doing away with our current company and hoping that more opaque groups with more concentrated voting power could be expected to produce any better results. It would essentially guarantee extreme concentration of power and wealth. A group that includes everyone that are under it's power, and taxation of those members, are the only ways to avoid the prisoner's dilemma and ensure that everyone is contributing to things that are beneficial to everyone instead of competing in ways that are detrimental to everyone except the owners of the group. If the only situation the central government could ever intervene in was direct threats to life and property (I assume you are including contract enforcement?), then there is no incentive for companies to avoid social traps [1]; anti-competitive behavior, price gouging, indentured servitude (they signed the contract, after all!), pollution... there is no amount of external cost too great as long as there is even a modicum of internally-captured benefit. It makes the game not even zero-sum, but negative-sum. The basic argument is that avoiding these issues in education, healthcare and retirement are all already forms of protecting everyone's life, property, and liberty. For instance, the only reason you're even able to earn "your" money that you claim the government steals is because of roads the government has built. What's to stop a company from buying the sidewalk and road outside of your property and charging you half of your salary as a subscription fee to use it? In fact, allow a company to buy up the road networks across the nation and charge as much as people are willing to pay; they'd make tons and tons of money, but introduce huge friction into the entire economy (and likely destroy GDP).
Government control can cause problems and create inefficiencies, certainly. It can create moral hazards too. And there is an argument to be made that the control that the government currently has is too much, and dialing it back could cause a wellspring of beneficial innovation. I think that's likely the case in some industries (healthcare, especially). However, it would also cause a huge surge in innovation in negative ways too; there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in unsavory areas that companies haven't pursued because it's been illegal to do so. Throwing out nearly all of the oversight, checks and balances that have been devised can only make sense if you completely ignore the outsize effects that everyone benefits from due to the controls that we do have in place. The benefits are often invisible (or nearly invisible), so they can be hard to see and so they are easy to ignore in crafting the ideal world in one's head. When thinking of the government, we are naturally more often going to think of the times it's failed us. I just urge you to reconsider. There are places that are run on principles closer to the libertarian ideal, and they tend to be run by power-hungry madmen and be much worse places to live than democracies unless you're at the very, very, very top.