How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

They most certainly do not...please read the actual post. The post says their college graduate friends...not graduates in CS. Anecdotally, I haven't seen any American with a CS degree be out of job for a very long time unless they were doing something really wrong (i.e. not applying/following up with interviews).

> Would you be as happy to conclude that teaching isn't something everyone can do?

Hah, good point. I am willing to concede I might be a terrible teacher. But if we go along this path, where do you stop? You are trying to find fault in the system, in the teachers etc...essentially looking for a reason other than the most obvious conclusion: not everyone can or wants to be a programmer. Like I said, I do agree with this reasoning though: perhaps if we change the system to have better teachers, a better education system that makes CS more appealing, perhaps there would be more CS graduates.

> If there is some general failing with the entire educational system, "immigration" won't fix that; but this is a tractable/solvable (if difficult) problem if foreign countries are able to produce good students.

Immigration is not meant to fix your education system. They are not mutually exclusive: you can do both. The real reason foreign countries are able to produce good students is an interesting one; personally I get the impression that one of the major reasons is their sheer size ~3 billion people in Indian and China alone. However, one of my friends has correctly pointed out that the 3rd largest foreign student community in US universities after Indian and Chinese is: Korean.

"time consuming, mind-numbingly long" doesn't matter much if it's in your business model to do this at scale. In fact, it would be an explicit competitive advantage.

By what measure?

> just look at how oversubscribed the H1B visa is

What is your interpretation of this? Who would turn down the chance of cheap labor even without a shortage?

> I can't believe how common this idea that "free market will fix everything!" is on HN

This is an exaggerated characterisation; but to some degree it is necessary to rely on market principles, given how complex the economy is.

> even in a nation of 300M+ people, they aren't graduating in large enough numbers.

Demand is high. Why is the population count relevant? People are choosing other career paths, which means there isn't enough incentive to choose IT.

> One could argue why a country with 16000M+ people, India, won not a single gold medal at the last olympics

You could, and why not? Are you implying India is incapable of producing gold-medal winning athletes?

> Simply changing lowest salary to $130k wont magically fix it

Not overnight, might it might in the long run. Why wouldn't it?

> But the solutions offered so far DO NOT, WILL NOT solve those problems

You mean the bodyshop abuse? Won't a minimum wage requirement fix it?

Ah, I concede this. Maybe this isn't an issue in US as it is in the UK..

> They are not mutually exclusive: you can do both

What stops industry becoming dependent on it though? There are big advantages to H1B visa workers, there is a risk that it saps market demand. Immigration might be the path of least resistance to solving labor shortage, rather than any long-term native plans.

If technology comes to be seen as a reliable high-paid job, via being sustainably high-paid, then it's reputation will bring in more people. Immigration is a threat to this. You can argue industrial benefit to this, but how sustainable is it? What if the US lost it's attractivity, what would happen to the H1B workers then? The US needs to figure out how to produce workers - being able to skim the cream from other demographics is a benefit, but a dangerous temptation as well.

I think that's right, but without using the insult "stupid", it says the same thing. But an insult has no content, where as this does i.e "you are misunderstanding on purpose"

A constructive criticism can be 'insulting', but this isn't the same as a pure insult.

> "You're intentionally avoiding my question" - objective statement, not an insult and can be discussed further.

Is this not the same as "you're being intentionally obtuse"?

> "You're intentionally being a dumbass" - subjective statement, an insult and a non-sequitur

Because it uses the word "dumbass", which is an insulting label rather than a description of behaviour. But " intentionally obtuse" is a description of behaviour also, and is also as objective as "avoiding my question" in context.

It's only a non-sequitur if you misunderstand what it means in context. I think "you're being intentionally obtuse" would be fairly clear in context?