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The only self-interest you seem to be pursuing is the self-interest of business owners. Targeted immigration at a specific field is wealth redistribution from p

The only self-interest you seem to be pursuing is the self-interest of business owners. Targeted immigration at a specific field is wealth redistribution from people that compete with immigrants to people that do not (ie, the person that hires you). So when you talk about that I should be selfless for the workers around the world that want my job, I pretty much know what side of the table you stand on. You are either A. A foreign worker B. an employer or C. have some broader social agenda So stop criticizing workers for wanting to protect their self interest because everyone has their own agenda they want to forward edit: changed it to be less rude

tptacek 11y ago
First, do not accuse HN commenters of shilling for their own economic agenda. There are 18 zillion different forms of message board incivility, and accusations of bad faith commenting are one of the minuscule few than the site bans overtly. Second, if you oppose immigration on the grounds that it increases supply, lowers prices, and thus reduces wages for tech workers, do you oppose everything else that does that? Should we educate fewer tech workers? Should we do fewer things to spot underutilized tech talent? Should we have fewer remote-friendly offices, so that we can constrict the market down to only those people who are willing to live in tech hubs? Where do you draw the line?
- moistgorilla 11y ago
  >First, do not accuse HN commenters of shilling for their own economic agenda. There are 18 zillion different forms of message board incivility, and accusations of bad faith commenting are one of the minuscule few than the site bans overtly. Did you read the parent comment? It generalized that every engineer that opposes immigration is doing it because they are selfish and are only interested in money. Also you call it that I am claiming they are shilling when I was in reality pointing out that everyone has bias and you should understand your own before criticizing others. >Second, if you oppose immigration on the grounds that it increases supply, lowers prices, and thus reduces wages for tech workers, do you oppose everything else that does that? Should we educate fewer tech workers? Should we do fewer things to spot underutilized tech talent? Should we have fewer remote-friendly offices, so that we can constrict the market down to only those people who are willing to live in tech hubs? Where do you draw the line? The line will clearly be arbitrary. We as a country need to decide how much certain jobs are worth and design our immigration policy around it. Unchecked immigration of unskilled labor is killing the lower and middle class and driving wages into the ground. If Americans can't find jobs it's time to ease up on immigration. Likewise if companies like Disney are laying off entire divisions to hire cheaper foreign workers then maybe H-1B visas should be reduced. I personally think the USG should always prioritize the welfare of Americans (including recent immigrants) over foreign workers.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    That's fair, but you can't respond to someone's offensive overgeneralization with a direct accusation that they are hypocritically talking their own book. Don't respond to bad comments with even more badness. As for the rest of it: The reality is that the market's pressure to increase supply in response to extreme demand will swamp any protectionist policies we come up with. There may be no job in the world more portable than software development. We can import labor to fill the gap and enjoy the tax revenue, or we can watch more and more of world's development work be performed overseas. I don't love our immigration policy today (this is one of the very few places where I'm a libertarian; I think we should just auction visas off), but I don't think excluding immigrants is going to help us in the long term.
    - moistgorilla 11y ago
      So here is what I don't understand about the supply demand argument in the context of workers. When Disney hired their IT division it was clearly because their was a need and benefit from having them. If paying the wages of that division was prohibitively expensive wouldn't they have gone out of business before they had the opportunity to outsource? So clearly on that front I think we can assume that a company similar to disney would outsource simply for profit. Now another argument in favor of immigration is that it brings down the costs of good for everybody. Chicken will be cheaper of course when you have people working for 5 dollars an hour to produce it. Well the reality is that only 5 to 6% of the cost of producing chicken comes from wages. I'm sure if we looked at the software industry we would have the same finding. Now what is the cost of targeting a specific field for immigration? For native workers the loss in wages is half a trillion dollars. The immigrants create a 50 billion dollar surplus. Almost all of the increase in GDP from immigrants comes from their wages at 2,053.8 billion out of the 2,104.0 billion total increase in GDP from immigrants. So American citizens see a 50 billion dollar net increase in GDP (that is relevant to them) from increased immigration. (page 9 in the link below) So we are taking half a trillion dollars from targeted workers for a 50 billion dollar increase to the overall population. The 50 billion dollar surplus seems like a lot thinking as a normal person but 50 billion is nothing when talking about GDP. So from what I see, the only purpose targeted immigration at a specific field serves is to divert money from workers to employers In the same chart on page 9 it shows that the surplus is received by the native businesses that benefit from the cheaper workers. also consider this, do we want to create an america where we have a clear divide between workers and owners because we constantly artificially inflate the supply of workers using immigration? also I think it's a little hypocritical that we aren't bringing in other white collar workers, we should have A-1B for attorneys and B-1Bs for bankers, I'm sure people in other countries will clamor to learn american law and finance for a chance to come here https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/03-16-16%20Borjas%20Testimony.pdf https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/03-16-16%20Bo...

tptacek 11y ago

First, do not accuse HN commenters of shilling for their own economic agenda. There are 18 zillion different forms of message board incivility, and accusations of bad faith commenting are one of the minuscule few than the site bans overtly. Second, if you oppose immigration on the grounds that it increases supply, lowers prices, and thus reduces wages for tech workers, do you oppose everything else that does that? Should we educate fewer tech workers? Should we do fewer things to spot underutilized tech talent? Should we have fewer remote-friendly offices, so that we can constrict the market down to only those people who are willing to live in tech hubs? Where do you draw the line?

moistgorilla 11y ago
>First, do not accuse HN commenters of shilling for their own economic agenda. There are 18 zillion different forms of message board incivility, and accusations of bad faith commenting are one of the minuscule few than the site bans overtly. Did you read the parent comment? It generalized that every engineer that opposes immigration is doing it because they are selfish and are only interested in money. Also you call it that I am claiming they are shilling when I was in reality pointing out that everyone has bias and you should understand your own before criticizing others. >Second, if you oppose immigration on the grounds that it increases supply, lowers prices, and thus reduces wages for tech workers, do you oppose everything else that does that? Should we educate fewer tech workers? Should we do fewer things to spot underutilized tech talent? Should we have fewer remote-friendly offices, so that we can constrict the market down to only those people who are willing to live in tech hubs? Where do you draw the line? The line will clearly be arbitrary. We as a country need to decide how much certain jobs are worth and design our immigration policy around it. Unchecked immigration of unskilled labor is killing the lower and middle class and driving wages into the ground. If Americans can't find jobs it's time to ease up on immigration. Likewise if companies like Disney are laying off entire divisions to hire cheaper foreign workers then maybe H-1B visas should be reduced. I personally think the USG should always prioritize the welfare of Americans (including recent immigrants) over foreign workers.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's fair, but you can't respond to someone's offensive overgeneralization with a direct accusation that they are hypocritically talking their own book. Don't respond to bad comments with even more badness. As for the rest of it: The reality is that the market's pressure to increase supply in response to extreme demand will swamp any protectionist policies we come up with. There may be no job in the world more portable than software development. We can import labor to fill the gap and enjoy the tax revenue, or we can watch more and more of world's development work be performed overseas. I don't love our immigration policy today (this is one of the very few places where I'm a libertarian; I think we should just auction visas off), but I don't think excluding immigrants is going to help us in the long term.
  - moistgorilla 11y ago
    So here is what I don't understand about the supply demand argument in the context of workers. When Disney hired their IT division it was clearly because their was a need and benefit from having them. If paying the wages of that division was prohibitively expensive wouldn't they have gone out of business before they had the opportunity to outsource? So clearly on that front I think we can assume that a company similar to disney would outsource simply for profit. Now another argument in favor of immigration is that it brings down the costs of good for everybody. Chicken will be cheaper of course when you have people working for 5 dollars an hour to produce it. Well the reality is that only 5 to 6% of the cost of producing chicken comes from wages. I'm sure if we looked at the software industry we would have the same finding. Now what is the cost of targeting a specific field for immigration? For native workers the loss in wages is half a trillion dollars. The immigrants create a 50 billion dollar surplus. Almost all of the increase in GDP from immigrants comes from their wages at 2,053.8 billion out of the 2,104.0 billion total increase in GDP from immigrants. So American citizens see a 50 billion dollar net increase in GDP (that is relevant to them) from increased immigration. (page 9 in the link below) So we are taking half a trillion dollars from targeted workers for a 50 billion dollar increase to the overall population. The 50 billion dollar surplus seems like a lot thinking as a normal person but 50 billion is nothing when talking about GDP. So from what I see, the only purpose targeted immigration at a specific field serves is to divert money from workers to employers In the same chart on page 9 it shows that the surplus is received by the native businesses that benefit from the cheaper workers. also consider this, do we want to create an america where we have a clear divide between workers and owners because we constantly artificially inflate the supply of workers using immigration? also I think it's a little hypocritical that we aren't bringing in other white collar workers, we should have A-1B for attorneys and B-1Bs for bankers, I'm sure people in other countries will clamor to learn american law and finance for a chance to come here https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/03-16-16%20Borjas%20Testimony.pdf https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/03-16-16%20Bo...