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House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

washingtonpost.com

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Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#31

Post by po »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #16
po wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling something fair or not is applying your morals to the situation. This change means that each person gets treated fairly (in the mathematical sense) but each group does not. It is sort of like how in the US House is representation by population but in the Senate is equal senators per state. Wether that is good or bad is up to us as a society. It will certainly reduce the diversity of the types of people getting…

>This change means that each person gets treated fairly (in the mathematical sense) but each group does not. So, without this change, each group was getting treated fairly? Care to explain how multidecade wait times for the two biggest groups while the rest get visas in a matter of years is fairness? How is first-in first-out not more fair compared to discriminating on national origin? > It will certainly reduce the…

>So, without this change, each group was getting treated fairly? Care to explain how multidecade wait times for the two biggest groups while the rest get visas in a matter of years is fairness?

Yes, from the perspective of the individual countries, the old policy is more fair. If you gave all of the countries of the world one vote each and had them vote, that's what you would get. However, if you gave all of the people of the world one vote, that is not what you would get as the people in the more populous countries would want their country to send more people.

As I explained, it is fair to the group not to the individual. All countries were capped at 7% of the total so large groups (and here we group by countries) would not crowd out small groups. You obviously don't like that policy.

As for the diversity argument, I am not stating wether it is better or worse. I explicitly said that it is up to society to decide that and our legislators have chosen to go with the less diversity option, so there you go. I think the fact that it will cause a reduction of diversity - diversity in the sense of what country immigrants come from, not cultural diversity - in applicants is indisputable. It is important to understand the consequences of our choices and this is one of them.

Also, I didn't lump all of India's diverse cultures into one group, India (and I guess the British and French) did. The grouping is done by country because that's how immigration laws and treaties work. I am fully aware of the cultural diversity in India.

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#32

Post by bfrs »

A GC grants economic freedom to indentured servants (H1B visa holders is the politically correct term). The longer freedom is denied the more profitable it is for the corporate masters. One of the tricks of this modern day slave trade is to lobby Congress to set a quota (about 30% of the demand) on the number of people who are set free each year. For the groups with the largest numbers of indentured servants, additional quotas are lobbied for. As long as the dollar was strong and life was shit in the third world hells these people came from, this system worked. The corporate masters recognize that the game is now up.

The usual argument given for the lack of freedom for H1B visa holders is that the bureaucrats need to ensure that a H1B doesn't cause a job loss for a citizen. A pencil pusher doesn't even know what it takes to make the pencil [1] he is pushing, and yet somehow he can ensure that a citizen doesn't lose a job! The H1B visa is indentured servitude by the back door, plain and simple.

Anyone who has given some thought to the idea of protecting jobs knows it is an exercise in futility (For a start, Congress must pass an Amish decree [2]: ban all technology invented since 1830, and declare Thomas Edison as the worst job destroyer [3] the world has ever seen. Also it will have to order the arrest and lock up of all entrepreneurs aka wannabe job killers, which is most HN readers). Therefore, I suggest to do away with all the current H1B bullshit, and adopt a point based immigration system where every qualified applicant is given full economic freedom from day one!

[1] I, pencil. http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

Milton Friedman on "I, pencil" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8

I recall Milton Friedman calling the H1B program as just another subsidy for big corporations, but can't locate a reliable source with the full context.

[2] Family Guy 10/7 "Amish Guy" (one of those increasingly rare insightful jokes): http://www.hulu.com/watch/303946/family-guy-amish-guy#s-p1-s...

[3] Bastiat's famous "Candlestick makers' petition": http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Also worth reading in this context is Bastiat "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen": http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html or (for another translation): http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#33

Post by ovi256 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #17
jbarham wrote: post #6

I'm Canadian and a year ago I left the U.S. for Australia (my wife is Australian) primarily because I did not consider it worth it to stay in a lousy job for at least another two years for the possibility of getting a green card. This vote changes nothing about the logic of my decision (in fact it would likely have made my wait longer because I'm not Indian or Chinese). The primary problem with the U.S. green card sy…

If I read it correctly, only 140,000 "green cards" are handed out each year. That's less than Australia takes and we have ~15x less population.

That's also less than what France takes in. But I'm willing to bet there's illegal immigration to the US as well, and it's a sizeable quantity.

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#34

Post by mebesilly »

jacques_chester wrote: post #17
jbarham wrote: post #6

I'm Canadian and a year ago I left the U.S. for Australia (my wife is Australian) primarily because I did not consider it worth it to stay in a lousy job for at least another two years for the possibility of getting a green card. This vote changes nothing about the logic of my decision (in fact it would likely have made my wait longer because I'm not Indian or Chinese). The primary problem with the U.S. green card sy…

If I read it correctly, only 140,000 "green cards" are handed out each year. That's less than Australia takes and we have ~15x less population.

You are NOT reading it correctly. The number of legal immigrants in 2010 to the USA was 1,042,625

The 140,000 refers to "worker-based immigration visas" This is a small subset of the total number.

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#35

Post by gsk »

bfrs wrote: post #32

A GC grants economic freedom to indentured servants (H1B visa holders is the politically correct term). The longer freedom is denied the more profitable it is for the corporate masters. One of the tricks of this modern day slave trade is to lobby Congress to set a quota (about 30% of the demand) on the number of people who are set free each year. For the groups with the largest numbers of indentured servants, additio…

This is very well said. I was on H1B and was suffocating due to lack of freedom (oh, the irony). Moved to UK 5 years ago on a points based system, a british citizen now, working on my first startup.

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#37

Post by klipt »

Jayasimhan wrote: post #9
gms wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, basically Indians and Chinese gain but everyone else loses.

..their unfair advantage.

Of course immigration is unfair. If you're born in Korea you may wait less than if you're born in China, but if you're born in the US, you don't have to wait at all!

How is being born in the USA any less of an arbitrary distinction than being born in Korea?

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#38

Post by cooldeal »

po wrote: post #31
recoiledsnake wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This change means that each person gets treated fairly (in the mathematical sense) but each group does not. So, without this change, each group was getting treated fairly? Care to explain how multidecade wait times for the two biggest groups while the rest get visas in a matter of years is fairness? How is first-in first-out not more fair compared to discriminating on national origin? > It will certainly reduce the…

>So, without this change, each group was getting treated fairly? Care to explain how multidecade wait times for the two biggest groups while the rest get visas in a matter of years is fairness? Yes, from the perspective of the individual countries, the old policy is more fair. If you gave all of the countries of the world one vote each and had them vote, that's what you would get. However, if you gave all of the peop…

>Yes, from the perspective of the individual countries, the old policy is more fair. If you gave all of the countries of the world one vote each and had them vote, that's what you would get. However, if you gave all of the people of the world one vote, that is not what you would get as the people in the more populous countries would want their country to send more people.

That may make sense for voting(to prevent tyranny of the majority), but makes no sense for employment based visas. Countries don't really send people in any sense. It's people that are hired by companies and what has that got to do with countries really?

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#39

Post by kreek »

While I think this is a plus, it's still very depressing for the US. Are American schools really so bad that a country of 300 million can't churn out enough tech/science employees?

I'm a freshly minted American (from Canada) and in my 20 person office there is one other American developer (who is also a co-founder).

I've lived in Canada and Europe and the US is by far my preferred place to live, I'm not sure how long it will last though there are generations of Americans that lack the proper skills to compete in the modern economy.

Re: House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

#40

Post by cafard »

ovi256 wrote: post #33
jacques_chester wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I read it correctly, only 140,000 "green cards" are handed out each year. That's less than Australia takes and we have ~15x less population.

That's also less than what France takes in. But I'm willing to bet there's illegal immigration to the US as well, and it's a sizeable quantity.

There's plenty of illegal immigration here, but the skilled workers among that population are far outnumbered by the laborers.
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