Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants • Hacker News Board

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#21

Post by nickserv » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:50 AM UTC

grosjona wrote: post #9

Current policies will give more opportunities for Americans. Trump understands something that technology elites don't; the wealth pie is limited and you have to be deliberate in how you slice it and who you give those slices to.

Shutting out skilled, educated immigrants doesn't magically make natives more skilled nor better educated.

Take a look at the UK and Brexit, they're having problems hiring enough health care professionals precisely because of their desired post-EU immigration policies. This before they even apply any new rules!

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#22

Post by iamshs » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:51 AM UTC

vmlinuz wrote: post #13

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[A] special clause in the bill could actually take away points if the applicant tries to bring his or her spouse...Drafters of the proposal said that it was modeled on similar systems used by Canada and Australia. But this is actually not how other countries treat family members under their points systems. In the five countries we examined that currently use similar points systems–Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, South…

I have direct personal experience of Hong Kong's points-based scheme, the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme - which, it should be noted, is a very niche scheme, largely unknown even amongst expats. The vast majority of skilled immigration comes on a simple sponsored work visa... QMAS gives you a few extra points (5) if you are applying alongside a degree-level-educated spouse, and a few more if you're bringing childre…

The article is absolutely wrong. It states Canadian immigration scores you out of 67 points, that system has been phased out in 2017, before this article was written.

Also, Canada absolutely gives weightage to your spouse's age, English/French skills, education etc. up to 40 points.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#23

Post by Daishiman » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:52 AM UTC

grosjona wrote: post #9

Current policies will give more opportunities for Americans. Trump understands something that technology elites don't; the wealth pie is limited and you have to be deliberate in how you slice it and who you give those slices to.

A poor kid in the US Midwest isn't being held back by a Chinese PhD candidate in the coastal city when the latter can help local companies grow and acquire capital thus facilitating the hiring of locals not just for the company but for the surrounding economy.

The argument is clearly stated in the article. And your assertion about opportunities does not really align with our understanding of immigration policies.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#24

Post by nickserv » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:54 AM UTC

marcell wrote: post #17

sparkling wrote: post #16

> "Cities’ productivity would increase, as would the wages of native-born high-skilled Americans, if more H-1B workers and skilled permanent residents were allowed to come." Please stop with this non-sense. You can be for or against the H-1B program, i don't care, but there is zero doubt that US citizens would be collecting way higher paychecks if the H-1B program did not exist. Thats simply supply and demand on the…

Disagree. There may be a short term bump, but long term it would be damaging. Tech workers are value creators. Having a hub of talent like SV increases value and salaries for everyone here because it attracts companies here, increasing demand along with supply. If there’s no talent in SV, there’s also no companies here. They’ll just move overseas to where the talent lives.

Exactly. If you really care about being competitive, invest in education and social services. Then the locals can compete effectively for high value jobs.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#25

Post by garyfirestorm » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

marcell wrote: post #17

sparkling wrote: post #16

> "Cities’ productivity would increase, as would the wages of native-born high-skilled Americans, if more H-1B workers and skilled permanent residents were allowed to come." Please stop with this non-sense. You can be for or against the H-1B program, i don't care, but there is zero doubt that US citizens would be collecting way higher paychecks if the H-1B program did not exist. Thats simply supply and demand on the…

Disagree. There may be a short term bump, but long term it would be damaging. Tech workers are value creators. Having a hub of talent like SV increases value and salaries for everyone here because it attracts companies here, increasing demand along with supply. If there’s no talent in SV, there’s also no companies here. They’ll just move overseas to where the talent lives.

Again, I have mentioned this in different threads. H1B isn't just for SV. There's way more companies in US like automotive industry that needs multidisciplinary engineers (mechanical, controls, signal processing, programming, active system knowledge). It's just impossible to find people. My team has about 3 empty vacancies with job postings everywhere, we just can't find people with skills (I am on H1B, there aren't enough people in many fields) stop applying H1B = cheap tech jobs logic.

Also, the Masters degree I pursued (in mechanical engineering - Dynamics/Vibrations/Acoustics) had barely a couple of American kids vs ~8 foreign kids.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#26

Post by Daishiman » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

sparkling wrote: post #16

> "Cities’ productivity would increase, as would the wages of native-born high-skilled Americans, if more H-1B workers and skilled permanent residents were allowed to come." Please stop with this non-sense. You can be for or against the H-1B program, i don't care, but there is zero doubt that US citizens would be collecting way higher paychecks if the H-1B program did not exist. Thats simply supply and demand on the…

If the entire value a tech worker creates is properly captured by their salary, sure.

But if that were the case then no one would bother with spending the insane amounts of money it costs to get qualified foreign labor.

Talent is global and the difference a skilled individual adds to a company has a multiplicative effect.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#27

Post by cylinder » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:56 AM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #20

jarym wrote: post #8

The H1B study sounds suspicious and the defence of the H1B program weakened an otherwise strong article. H1B abuses have been long documented so while there are legitimate benefits to it, they are outweighed by the problems.

Your assertion that the problems of H1B visas outweigh the benefits is pure conjecture and, for the most part, not supported by facts.

It's all much ado about nothing anyways. 85,000 new H1 visas a year for a population of 330 million? Give me a break. Even if these all went to Wipro it wouldn't even be worth thinking twice about. And the refugee intake is only 49,000 a year. An absolute disgrace.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#28

Post by mav3rick » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:56 AM UTC

jarym wrote: post #8

The H1B study sounds suspicious and the defence of the H1B program weakened an otherwise strong article. H1B abuses have been long documented so while there are legitimate benefits to it, they are outweighed by the problems.

You just made a claim too without any results let alone sources for those results.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#29

Post by sparkling » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #26

sparkling wrote: post #16

> "Cities’ productivity would increase, as would the wages of native-born high-skilled Americans, if more H-1B workers and skilled permanent residents were allowed to come." Please stop with this non-sense. You can be for or against the H-1B program, i don't care, but there is zero doubt that US citizens would be collecting way higher paychecks if the H-1B program did not exist. Thats simply supply and demand on the…

If the entire value a tech worker creates is properly captured by their salary, sure. But if that were the case then no one would bother with spending the insane amounts of money it costs to get qualified foreign labor. Talent is global and the difference a skilled individual adds to a company has a multiplicative effect.

You seem to assume that foreign labour can only be used if imported to the US. That is not the case, consider remote talent.

Re: Watch What Happens When You Push Away Skilled Immigrants

#30

Post by tormeh » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

extralego wrote: post #19

I am confused about something that seems very basic, and hoping somebody can help me out with this. I have always supported left politics, and I think I understand the basics of supply-and-demand economics. If immigrants come to the US looking for work instead of bringing work, there should be a higher supply of labor, driving the low-end pay-rate down. Given that the low-end rate has gone down significantly througho…

Low-end wages are affected by automation, globalization and immigration. In that order, I believe. To his credit, Trump is trying to tackle the last two.

If you provide unskilled services (e.g cleaning) then unskilled immigration is very bad for your income. I don't think any reasonable economist would object to that.

The "job pool" does expand over time to match the labor pool, but if immigrants don't have the same skill profile as "the natives", then some of the natives are gonna lose.