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YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#391

Post by stusmall »

degenerate wrote: post #286
komali2 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Texan it boggled my mind to hear people complain about immigration. Walk into UT, A&M, UH engineering departments, half the students are Chinese or Russian or Indian. In the grad programs it's even more. That means their best talent is here , paying US taxes, contributing to US companies, making the US more powerful, all the while contributing almost nothing to their home countries. How is that a bad thing! I do…

You might want to take a step outside the academic setting every once in a while. Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.

I'd called my county sheriff's office with a similar question a while back. They wouldn't agree with you. These sanctuary policies don't come from nowhere. Often they originate from law enforcement, as was the cause with my county. If you want to talk about sucking dry, it's expensive for local law enforce to enforce federal law on otherwise contributing members of society. This isn't touching on how it erodes trust in immigrant communities.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#392

Post by sqeaky »

cderwin wrote: post #296
sqeaky wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I would like to say I want to agree the USA is ethically superior, but let me show how I can see the other side. Stepping into the murky quagmire of ethics, I could argue that the 2 to 4 million Vietnamese who died defending Vietnam from American invaders is much worse than censoring the Internet. That Internet is largely made by those same murderers and they have the largest spy agency in the world, the CIA,…

Sure it is. If you (or anybody else) wants to count casualties, approximately 8 million Chinese dies in the Chinese Civil Wars. Surely the life of a Vietnamese person is not more valuable to America than a life of a Chinese person is to China. And we also ought to include the lives of the between 15 and 45 million who starved to death in Mao's "Great Leap Forward." It is also worth noting that China was largest forei…

You are assuming a perspective again. There are many perspectives.

For example different people will pick different ways to count. Some will distinguish between domestic and foreign, claiming that there some ethical difference. These people might claim that a government should kill its citizens that cause problems in the name of social order, and that the US is unjust and horrible because they don't kill enough dissenters.

Some will claim that lives lost in mistakes are different than lives lost in oppression and war. These people might claim that the great leap forward was good in intention, but lacked nuance in execution that could have saved many lives.

Some will claim that government and corporations should not be separated so will point the all the slave owning corporations and humans rights abusing industrialists in the USA and lump them in with the government.

All I am saying is that there are gray areas here, and that I cannot see a way to see different perspectives as objectively wrong or right. In some things there is objective right and wrong. Does Man-made CO2 change the climate, yes unambiguously no amount of perspective wiggling changes this. Is it ethical to make social that mildly harms one group to prevent a perceived larger harm to another, this seems fuzzier and innately requires something to be 'perceived' correctly.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#393

Post by emiliobumachar »

pera wrote: post #346
homakov wrote: post #121

Weird choice of country for this purpose. I wonder who needs visa to the US and doesn't need one to Canada, and I'm pretty sure the number is small.

Poles, for instance. But even when Canada, as the US, requires visas for most nationalities, it is extremely simple to apply for one (just scan your passport, fill out the online form and pay $7 CAD). On the other hand, applying for a visa to visit the US is a stressful and relatively expensive (~$180 USD) long process with a high chance of getting rejected. This is not new though.

I'll add that, at least here in Brazil, applying for a US visa necessarily involves at least one in-person visit to any US consulate or embassy, in a business day, and they naturally don't exist in all cities. Lines are long, and the visit can take the whole day. So there's this much extra stress and expense.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#394

Post by imgabe »

degenerate wrote: post #286
komali2 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Texan it boggled my mind to hear people complain about immigration. Walk into UT, A&M, UH engineering departments, half the students are Chinese or Russian or Indian. In the grad programs it's even more. That means their best talent is here , paying US taxes, contributing to US companies, making the US more powerful, all the while contributing almost nothing to their home countries. How is that a bad thing! I do…

You might want to take a step outside the academic setting every once in a while. Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.

It seems like we could solve the immigration problem very quickly if we started imposing harsh penalties on the people who employ illegal immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants, by definition, are going to be hard to track down. Businesses on the other hand have to have an office, be reachable, file taxes, etc. They're also probably breaking a host of other employment laws as well (easy to do when your employees can't go to the authorities). If the availability of jobs dried up, people would have no incentive to come here illegally.

Of course, that would involve arresting rich white people instead of poor brown people, so it will never happen.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#395

Post by soundwave106 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #257
EternalData wrote: post #237

It's oddly ominous reading about America's rise on the back of textile patents taken from England and Europe, then poaching of German physics talent and scientific talent from across the world. Germany was, by far, the pre-eminent power in theoretical physics at the turn of the 20th century, with Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck & Born about to be at the peak of their powers. Then the country decided to turn on intellect…

Germany waged two world wars over 20 years and tens of millions of people died because of that. Germany, even at its scientific height was racist and nationalist. Hitler didn't come to power in the 30s without generations of Germans being the foundation. The US is very far from that. I don't understand the massive overreaction. The United States in the 60s was a place where there were sundown towns that blacks dared…

I don't think it's a bad thing to bring up the negatives of what happens when nationalism is at its worst. I agree that we can't lose sight of our accomplishments -- not all is dire, and the United States is quite far from a Germany scenario as of now.

But a bit of nationalism has crept up in the politics of the United States and several other European countries. Bringing up what happened when nationalism ran wild is relevant.

After all, even with the current policies Trump enacted, it is not impossible that our nation will lose out on being the home of the next Einstein, just because they were born in the wrong place.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#396

Post by pizzetta »

neptunespear wrote: post #329
nostrademons wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did, however, dramatically help the U.S. We got the atom bomb, moon landings, computer, and many other inventions out of European immigrants who fled the Nazis. The U.S. had a strong science program before the war, but its superpower status afterwards was just as much because we got all the brightest minds in Europe as because we bombed everyone else into rubble. I could see Australia, New Zealand, or Canada simil…

One big problem is economies of scale. The U.S. has more than five times the combined population of these three countries. A similar problem affects the Nordic wundercountries. They are some of the richest and happiest countries in the world and have some of the best education systems in the world, but their small population sizes hinder their sheer economic potential. Finland's population is only 5.4 million and Swe…

One possible issue with the Nordics usurping the US's lead is their Janteloven which can work against entrepreneurship. However, other European countries may be able to take advantage, the UK, DE, FR (to a lesser extent due to regulations).

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#397

Post by psychometry »

degenerate wrote: post #286
komali2 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Texan it boggled my mind to hear people complain about immigration. Walk into UT, A&M, UH engineering departments, half the students are Chinese or Russian or Indian. In the grad programs it's even more. That means their best talent is here , paying US taxes, contributing to US companies, making the US more powerful, all the while contributing almost nothing to their home countries. How is that a bad thing! I do…

You might want to take a step outside the academic setting every once in a while. Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.

Illegal immigrants are sucking the system dry Are you sure it's not the opiate-addled, unemployed, uneducated masses of white rural America?

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#398

Post by antoniuschan99 »

aanm1988 wrote: post #368
antoniuschan99 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of Human rights, it would be better to be in the US. But things change. US is becoming more fascist which is potentially leading to an exodus of intelligent minds - who are perhaps going to be migrating to one of their main competitors, China. The one good thing about China is that they are open to changes in their policies (but can't change the party). It will be interesting to see how this plays out with a…

Why China instead of say, the EU?

Op mentioned China

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#399

Post by neuronexmachina »

throw_away_777 wrote: post #350
trcollinson wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make an interesting appeal. I am not sure what you are trying to prove by saying that the poster will "get" it if they just talk to cops, ambulance drivers, and immigration officers. I would assume that you are trying to say they will find that immigrants commit crime (the original poster is speaking to a cop), they get hurt more often (the original poster is speaking to an ambulance driver), and they, now I am r…

US citizens pay taxes, contribute to US companies and make the US more powerful. US citizens also contribute a higher percentage of their income to local communities than immigrants do. It is a myth that their is an infinite supply of jobs, and that supply/demand somehow doesn't apply to immigration. You aren't really making an argument either.

Economics isn't a zero-sum game.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#400

Post by imgabe »

EternalData wrote: post #237

It's oddly ominous reading about America's rise on the back of textile patents taken from England and Europe, then poaching of German physics talent and scientific talent from across the world. Germany was, by far, the pre-eminent power in theoretical physics at the turn of the 20th century, with Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck & Born about to be at the peak of their powers. Then the country decided to turn on intellect…

"Poaching" is an odd word for it when those people were fleeing for their lives.
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