91–100 of 701 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Visa is different from Immigration, technically speaking.
Green card holders? Refugees? Migrants' family members? Don't try to paper over or make excuses for the blatant racism espoused by the Republican party.
By some members of it, anyway. The Republican party is no more a united front than the Democrat party at the moment.
One of the basic premises of anti-immigrant policies is that you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones, as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all.
>Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. I think this is already subtly done with investor visas. They don't outright deny you obviously, but there are different lines to stand in depending on your usefulness to the country you're going to.
This is true but it needs perspective, and I am by no means anti-immigrant. I'm actually a pretty open border person, and am 100% against Trump's proposals (though perhaps there are some instances of H1B being abuse [see Disney].) However, this study should have a big caveat, for starters there are significantly more tax benefits for starting a business if you are an immigrant. Secondly, immigrants don't have entrenc…
What, specifically, are you referring to here?
I think a pretty easy explanation for the difference is that, almost by definition, if you are an immigrant you are someone who is uncomfortable with the status quo, and you are going to take a considerable risk to change it. It's not surprising those people would also be more inclined to be an entrepreneur than your average person.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. Universities do it.
The distinction often is more akin to "promising" and "not promising". Universities, employers, creditors, those looking for a spouse, etc. Everyone does it to some degree. Why can't a country?
You think a person from Mexico is more useless than a person from Canada?
Who exactly is not an immigrant in the states? If one traverse lineage of any of these so called "non-immigrants", within 3-4 generations one will see they were an immigrant too.
One of the basic premises of anti-immigrant policies is that you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones, as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all.
I'm in favor of a solid border control regime (i.e. "build the wall"), combined with a transparent and straightforward points-based system for mainly immigrant visas. I'd eliminate the inherent racism in the current system (penalizing India and China vs. Equatorial Guinea and Monaco). As a first pass, just copy the Canadian or New Zealand systems.
Where we set the threshold for entry is a worthwhile debate. Should it be anyone who isn't likely to be strongly negative? Anyone where net benefit exceeds cost? Where net benefit is >3x the annual median income?
A baseline of "not a felon, terrorist, etc." for visitors, a solid system of constraining visitors to defined periods of time (thus making it easier to grant visit visas), and a straightforward path to immigration and citizenship for high-value immigrants is a better starting point than the current immigration system.
Whenever I see "Immigration" in the title, i think anti-Trump and get sad. No one is trying to stop legal immigration. Tech companies are mad because they are cracking down on H1-B Visa abuse. This is not a bad thing.
American companies aren't completely off the hook though, for example in WA, AT&T and T-Mobile don't hire many international students from universities, instead they prefer to bring in employees from HCL to work on H1-B visas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to make that cuts the other way. What is the cost of integrating and potentially supporting a million immigrants compared to the return from one billion dollar startup? (Especially when we're talking a billion dollars of Monopoly money valuation versus day a billion in revenue.)
It doesn't "cost" anyone much. Immigrants pay for goods and services and provide labor, so they economy just ends up expanding. It's not like taking "too many" immigrants will make you poor because it cost too much. More likely the cost would be social and political rather than economic.