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Immigration is about talent, not costs

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Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#371

Post by dllthomas »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #357
dllthomas wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably the incarcerated, and more tenuously then unemployed, are not "average human brains". I'm not sure I'd actually argue that but it seems worth addressing.

Incarceration is much more highly correlated to your parents income level than their genetics. Unemployment is primarily a skillset mismatch problem. Becoming a newspaper pressman looked like a solid career choice in 1995, not so much twenty years later when those 18 year olds are 38 and unemployed. Not foreseeing the rise of the internet is hardly strong evidence that their brains are defective.

"Incarceration is much more highly correlated to your parents income level than their genetics."

Nothing requires any stipulation that these minds be genetically inferior.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#372

Post by AnthonyMouse »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #30
tmorton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone.

Sure it does. At least when that scarce resource is artificially constrained. Now that doesn't mean it shouldn't have restraints. But it does mean there are winners and losers and it is perfectly fair and reasonable to call them out. (Edit: Who the hell is downvoting the artificial scarcity comments? That's absurd. Care to have an actual discussion?)

It's not artificial scarcity. The US doesn't have an unlimited capacity for immigration. We can argue around the edges of what the correct number is, but whatever number we pick, there are still going to be more people than that who want to be US citizens and we still need to choose between them somehow.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#373

Post by bduerst »

x0x0 wrote: post #370
bduerst wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont be crass. If there is evidence of violation, it means the immigration enforcement needs a bigger budget to go after employers. It does not mean we need to cut back on immigration because some citizens have a problem following the law.

I dunno where you're getting these claims, and by the way it's the companies not citizens, but let's read the previous comments. > LordHumungous : h1bs often get paid less > bduerst: no they don't, because that would be against the law > me: mocks foolishness it's like you're deliberately unaware of companies' very successful efforts to modify the law in self-dealing ways, and even when that fails, to route around th…

The article linked to was an opinion piece against immigrants, hence the context. I also eluded to there needing to be evidence, which the op piece didn't really provide.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#374

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dllthomas wrote: post #371
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incarceration is much more highly correlated to your parents income level than their genetics. Unemployment is primarily a skillset mismatch problem. Becoming a newspaper pressman looked like a solid career choice in 1995, not so much twenty years later when those 18 year olds are 38 and unemployed. Not foreseeing the rise of the internet is hardly strong evidence that their brains are defective.

"Incarceration is much more highly correlated to your parents income level than their genetics." Nothing requires any stipulation that these minds be genetically inferior.

If the problem is nurture rather than nature then shouldn't we be sending them to school rather than prison?

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#375

Post by dashboardfront »

mbreese wrote: post #346
dashboardfront wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you're "making 90k" in the valley you have the quality of life worth 30k in a midwestern city. Not true at all, yet this is constantly repeated like it's fact. Look up indifference curves and consumption bundles. You're ignoring microeconomics. For anyone that doesn't assign excessively high utility towards housing size, 90k in the valley is a much better quality of life than 30k in a midwestern city. This is…

> Not true at all, yet this is constantly repeated like it's fact. That's because it is true... I moved from the Midwest to the peninsula 3 years ago (for my wife's work). I made roughly those numbers there and here and the standard of living was roughly the same, maybe even dropped a little. Living in Silicon Valley is easily 2-3X more expensive than living in a place like Indianapolis or Columbus, OH. You honestly…

Housing might very well be 2-3x (or more) expensive, but not all goods have gone up 2-3x more. This allows for an adjustment of your consumption bundle; your housing is not going to be as large, but you might have access to a greater amount of other goods. Of course, you can choose to easily make it 2-3x more expensive if you desire. Family makes this difficult because your personal indifference curve places higher utility towards space, but the parent was discussing intern salaries, who generally don't have to support families.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#376

Post by kd0amg »

gnufied wrote: post #61
lmg643 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It's strange to read these kinds of articles. The author doesn't seem to realize that he is describing his own personal preferences, and not anything about society at large. All you need to do is look at the top recipients of visas and you will understand what the game is.

I think by and large most engineers understand what the game is and where most H1Bs are going. What author seems to be saying is - status-quo is not a solution. Is there a shortage of good engineering talent(I am not talking about bottom 50%), but top 20%? I think answer is emphatically yes - worldwide. Has US benefited from those top 20% who have managed to migrate to US? It would be foolish to say no. Lastly, this…

I think by and large most engineers understand what the game is and where most H1Bs are going.

Do they? Every discussion of this issue I've seen has had loads of engineers who don't work in body shops saying that they've never seen an H1B worker in a body shop and that body shops must therefore not be the ones using the visa program. (Of course, anecdotes are not data, so neither is this)

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#377

Post by guyzero »

briandear wrote: post #277
guyzero wrote: post #150

Earlier 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…

Try immigrating to the EU as an American; not quite so easy there either. If you are a refugee from Africa you have an easier time getting permanent residence in France than a moderately skilled workers would. My Mexican (now American) wife went through the US immigration process (she had a green card already when I met her, so I didn't 'help') You CAN immigrate to the U.S., there is a process. Funny since we're talk…

Chinese, Indian and French kids don't grow up watching this on their TVs every single Saturday morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZQl6XBo64M

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#378

Post by x0x0 »

bduerst wrote: post #373
x0x0 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno where you're getting these claims, and by the way it's the companies not citizens, but let's read the previous comments. > LordHumungous : h1bs often get paid less > bduerst: no they don't, because that would be against the law > me: mocks foolishness it's like you're deliberately unaware of companies' very successful efforts to modify the law in self-dealing ways, and even when that fails, to route around th…

The article linked to was an opinion piece against immigrants, hence the context. I also eluded to there needing to be evidence, which the op piece didn't really provide.

if you don't have evidence that h1bs are widely abused, and used to drive down wages, it's for no other reason than you're too lazy to google.

It's also telling that you tar a neutral reporting piece discussing the impact of h1b visas as anti-immigrant, I guess because how else could you discredit it. I mean, right there in the very article you seem to have read is this:

   ComputerWorld revealed last week that the top 10 users of H-1B visas last 
   year were all offshore outsourcing firms such as Tata and Infosys.
and this

   More than 80 percent of H-1B visa holders are approved to be hired at wages 
   below those paid to American-born workers for comparable positions, 
   according to EPI.
as the saying goes, if you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#379

Post by vvhn »

manticore_alpha wrote: post #86

Look HNers, let's be honest with each other. There's a lot of H1B's on here. You have friends overseas who you want to see succeed in the Bay Area. In my experience at many tech companies in the Bay Area, H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only - to get skilled engineering/STEM labor -- and to exploit connections (primarily Indian/Pakistani) among these workers to continue to get cheap labor. It absolutel…

>There's standard, normalized ways immigrants have come to the US for a long time now

Just out of curiosity, what are the "standard, normalized ways " that people immigrate to the US ? If i were to go to the American Embassy in New Delhi and apply for immigration and i don't have close, immediate family in the United States i don't see a way other than becoming a Fiance of a US citizen

( http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/immigrant_visas.html )

Wikipedia also fails to provide anything other than family based immigration.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laws_concerning_immi... )

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#380

Post by refurb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #330
refurb wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You linked to an article that references a study. Care to share the original data? The Department of Labor has wage floors for H1-Bs (prevailing wage). Company's can't legally pay below that.

Increasing the quantity supplied at the "prevailing wage" by way of H-1B depresses the prevailing wage from rising to what it would be in the absence of the H-1B for the positions for which H-1B has increased the supply (and has knock-on effects for other areas of work, because the Americans that don't get employed in the positions covered by H-1Bs then are competing in fields they otherwise wouldn't be, increasing t…

The point was that companies are underpaying H1-B workers. My argument is that there are floor wages they can't pay below.

You're making another point about the impact of immigration. I don't disagree and it extends beyond immigration. If you open a new medical school you're depressing the wages of doctors. Just take a look at what happened to the legal profession.

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