8 ms·

You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. Freedom of labor movement is a nice–to–have, but not som

You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. Freedom of labor movement is a nice–to–have, but not some ideological priority that must be placed above all other considerations. The size of the pool of human capital is irrelevant if there simply aren't enough jobs on offer. The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution. And if the government can help the situation by putting reasonable restrictions on the number of foreign workers competing for those jobs, then they absolutely should do that. I really do not understand how so many people came to view these kind of theoretical, free-market niceties as more important than the practical wellbeing of their fellow citizens, but it's an incredibly dangerous attitude. If you support free-markets and globalisation, then you should want them implemented in a way that doesn't cause major social damage that ends up creating hostility to them. Otherwise, you end up with the kinds of populist movements we're seeing now, which feed upon the resentments of people who've watched successive governments refuse to place their own citizen's welfare above that of an ideology that harms them.

danenania 10y ago
Why are people born inside the imaginary lines of my country more important to help than those born outside of it? Someone from Bangladesh or Mexico is not a fellow citizen of my country, but they are a fellow citizen of my world. Why should the smaller and more arbitrary geographical division come first? You can talk about culture, but I'm sure I have more in common culturally with a phd student or entrepreneur in Dhaka than a Christian fundamentalist in Kansas. I understand that there is a lot of complexity in these issues, but it's hard for me to see nationalism as anything more than a form of widely accepted bigotry.
- YooLi 10y ago
  Because being born inside those imaginary lines means people pay ($ + other) and therefore expect the group they contribute to to put them ahead of an outsider.
  - danenania 10y ago
    Which only leads to the question of why, as a world, we are pooling our resources in such an artificially constrained and divisive way.
  - lazaroclapp 10y ago
    So, since California has a significant state tax, it would be a reasonable expectation for Californians to put other Californians first at all times? Also note that people living inside the country contribute to it, not just those born there or those who finished their 15+ years long naturalization process...
    - YooLi 10y ago
      No it wouldn't be reasonable for the same reason saying no one should have locks on their doors and anyone should be free to go inside any house and use/live isn't reasonable.
  - kelnos 10y ago
    That doesn't follow. My friends who are not US citizens and are here on H-1B visas (and have similar jobs as I do) pay significantly more in taxes than I do. And many of the programs those taxes pay into (like Social Security) are closed to them because they're non-citizens. Given that many US citizens don't start paying much if anything in the way of taxes until post-education (18-22), a non-citizen coming to the US right after college will be paying roughly the same. But ok, let's say that's not persuasive. I was born in New Jersey, and grew up in Maryland. I moved to California when I was 23 to start working. My family had of course never paid CA state taxes. Should CA have placed artificial "preferences" on workers who were born in CA, preferences that would have put me at the bottom of the hiring pile? Should I have been excluded from a job because other Californians were unemployed at the time? If that sounds ridiculous, then applying the same reasoning to a non-citizen sounds just about as ridiculous.
    - YooLi 10y ago
      Re: H1-B friends They pay taxes because now they are here within the imaginary lines and even if they don't get Social security, etc they are still benefitting from being here where they have all the other niceties of being here. Re: citizens don't start paying until 18. Their parents paid for them. Re: California Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute. You're stuck thinking in terms of just $. And no one is saying no one should be able to come here. You simply asked why do people think negatively about H1-B and I explained it to you. What company wouldn't hire workers that cost them significantly less and can't easily leave over someone local, and hence the position against. It's not difficult.
- sheepmullet 10y ago
  I find it interesting that the "American first" crowd tends to donate more to the overseas needy than the "citizens of the world" crowd. excluding a few billionaires who really do believe in helping others.
  - literallycancer 10y ago
    Care to provide a source?
- alextheparrot 10y ago
  Why should people born outside the imaginary lines of my country be allowed to come inside it? The power structure resides inside the described imaginary lines, thus the outsiders need to make this argument to the insiders, not the opposite way, realistically. If the outsiders can't convince the insiders, they simply won't be let in. With that framing, it is easy to see how it isn't (necessarily) bigotry, but just that the outsiders appear to offer little or negative value to many people. By saying "They are taking our jobs", people are expressing that they believe the outsiders being let has a negative effect on them, thus it is quite rational that they want to strengthen those imaginary lines.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
  I'll accept that argument when every country adopts American values and expectations. Until then, nope.
lazaroclapp 10y ago
They are not theoretical, free-market niceties when you have lived abroad for 6 years. Or when your parents are both from different countries. Or when your grandparent immigrated out of the U.S. to live 2/3rds of his life in the country you were born in and never encountered this level of pushback. There is a lot to be said for making welfare systems work together with immigration. But putting "fellow citizens" above everyone else is not an easy question for everyone (and yes, I advocate for immigration and non-discrimination for hiring in my country of origin too). Also, acting like the STEM jobs in the U.S. exist independent of globalization is disingenuous. They exist because S.V. software is used across global markets, so if protectionism for labor is ok as long as it helps your citizens, then I assume the same is true for trade protectionism or Internet 'great firewalls'? The problem is, that way, we all end up significantly worse for it.
- TheBobinator 10y ago
  The problem there is the propensity for foreigners, well-educated in the back-assward ways of their country of origin, to come to America, ostensibly to partake in our, in some way measurably superior economy and culture, then expect to introduce their back-asswards ways here and expect those ways to be successful, then when they find out we think their entire country is as back-asswards as they are and refuse to put up with it, perhaps through inducing some event they might find traumatic like a firing, arrest, restraining order, and so forth, they want laws made to make everyone here back-asswards, because it's easier for them. When your immigration laws have a high standard of entry and you tell people, even en masse, "we lowered on this item this one time", then our expectations are stated and that creates the viewpoint that they need to assume their ways might be back-asswards. When immigration laws are as lax as ours, who can blame foreigners for being obstinate about coming here an us not adopting to their expectations? After all, when you give them welfare, you're paying them to do as such. You need to have a system in place to appropriately assess and adopt new cultural norms. Frankly, racism and bigotry has proven to do this nicely, although if you have suggestions on how we might do it better I'm all ears. Removing racism and bigotry, on the other hand, well that has had some seriously detrimental effects on our society. Right now, you've got 5% to 15% of the population in the US living here without seeking citizenship, and this is causing a demographic shift. The indigenous population, through feminism and marxist ideology, is being set up for a fall; look at marriage rates and the resulting reproduction rates of whites and blacks. They know it, and they've quite clearly voiced their intent to take the moral high ground and resolve those issues in a peaceful manner through civil means like deportations. If America really went Nazi Germany, we'd carpet nuke China and India, then tell the rest of the world "we solved the carbon emissions problem!". Then we'd invade Mexico, flatten the country, and promptly announce "THE WAR ON DRUGS IS WON!" and nuke Mecca pronouncing "ISLAMIC TERRORISM SOLVED" and other such nonsense. Really, what we're doing is very civilized. The foreigners even know there's plenty of time to propose a mutually beneficial solution, or simply leave on their own accord, before they're forced to leave. Obviously, the foreigners that are here are not happy with the situation they and their back-asswards ways have placed them into. Frankly, a lot of people here feel as though foreigners are coming here instead of fixing problems in their own countries. Mexicans voted for Trump because they can clearly see, now 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, how messed up Mexico is. Now you continue to fan the flames of cultural warfare, and say things like "we're going to out-breed whitey" or simply repeat the same high-and-mighty drivel the American media monopoly has pushed out for the last several decades. That pushes things towards not being civilized and creates incentives for biblical extermination events. Nobody views that as reasonable right now, but if people act like cock roaches, then there's only one way to reasonably handle that situation. I'd really like to think we're beyond that one as a world, but in 2017, there's still mass graves and still stupidity going on. We need a fresh take on the entire discussion, one that provides dignity for all parties. And you can talk about "borders are imaginary lines" all you want; everyone in IT has this mightier-than-thou notion, still high off of the 80's "I HAS A MODEM AND CAN TALK TO JAPAN, I'M SO CLASSY, ENTIRE WORLD IS HUMAN, KUMBIYAH" stupidity, they fail to see the point of borders. Fact is, there are irreconcilable differences in culture, language, religion, beliefs and economies and it's an extraordinarily good thing that these borders exist. We get a bunch of little social experiments that sometimes take decades to play out fully. Some experiments are extremely successful like America. Others countries, well, not so much. And there are reasons for that; technology can gloss over a lot of societal problems, e.g. the availability of hard liquor in the late 1800's. Globalism has largely been used to institute wage arbitrage, not the uplift the world as a whole, and you need to live in a bubble with a head full of cognitive pollution not to see that clearly.
wdcgu 10y ago
Not all STEM professionals are equal, which seems to be the assumptions of these arguments.
hocuspocus 10y ago
> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. STEM is a broad category. Saying there's a surplus of STEM graduates is a useless metric. Most of these graduates aren't interchangeable, let alone willing to work as cheap IT workers. The H-1/L-1 visas are abused to screw American IT workers, I get that. Do you know how most developed countries prevent that despite lenient immigration requirements (compared to the US)? Better labor laws, unions, collective bargaining, ...
kelnos 10y ago
> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. That may be true, but we're hardly a homogeneous group. There certainly isn't a surplus of skilled and qualified professionals from my subgroup of STEM. And I suspect that's the one where most H-1B visa holders end up in. Not saying the system isn't abused: oh sweet jesus, it most certainly is. But throwing it out or reducing the caps isn't the answer. Removing all the perverse incentives and the ability of employers to use their employees' visa status as a pair of handcuffs... now that'll help. > The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution. Why are they unable to find a job? Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job. I care about our country's competitiveness in the science and technology landscape. If we can entice people smarter than us to come here and help make us smarter, that's the right move. Are foreign workers willing to work for less? Well then perhaps these citizens should suck it up and be willing to work for less as well. Or maybe they shouldn't get into a field with questionable job prospects in the first place. Four years isn't a very long time; the landscape doesn't change that much, and even if it does, changing majors/fields/etc. midway through isn't that hard (and even if it is, we're talking about your job prospects for the rest of your life; that sort of thing is good motivation to take on something hard). I want the best people here. Period. I don't care where they are from. Protectionism will just make us less competitive globally, and will move cutting-edge research and development to countries with more permissive immigration policies. We're already losing our status as the global superpower, and kicking out qualified immigrants will only hasten that decline.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- unprepare 10y ago
  > Why are they unable to find a job? >Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job Are you under the impression that organizations when hiring are looking to maximize skill and disregard all other factors? once you reach 'good enough' skill level, its a cost minimization game. If the American costs twice as much, but the foreign worker is good enough - who should get the job?
nikdaheratik 10y ago
I don't know what labor market you're talking about, but this STEM "surplus" is not very believable. Even if the exact match isn't always there, the people graduating with a degree in Biology or Civil Engineering are still more marketable from the skills it takes to get those degrees than many other graduates. The issue with "unemployable" college graduates has more to do with humanities majors who probably should have gone to technical or junior college and got a certificate in something practical than too many "STEM" graduates. And a much better question: is the problem that we're letting too many immigrants in, or that capital has had control of the laws and culture so much that labor can't fight to get their fair share? Immigrants don't write the laws, they don't make the business decisions, all they do is sign up for a space in the H1B lottery. If your field isn't getting its share, maybe it's not the immigrants who should be getting the blame for this.

danenania 10y ago

Why are people born inside the imaginary lines of my country more important to help than those born outside of it? Someone from Bangladesh or Mexico is not a fellow citizen of my country, but they are a fellow citizen of my world. Why should the smaller and more arbitrary geographical division come first? You can talk about culture, but I'm sure I have more in common culturally with a phd student or entrepreneur in Dhaka than a Christian fundamentalist in Kansas. I understand that there is a lot of complexity in these issues, but it's hard for me to see nationalism as anything more than a form of widely accepted bigotry.

YooLi 10y ago
Because being born inside those imaginary lines means people pay ($ + other) and therefore expect the group they contribute to to put them ahead of an outsider.
- danenania 10y ago
  Which only leads to the question of why, as a world, we are pooling our resources in such an artificially constrained and divisive way.
- lazaroclapp 10y ago
  So, since California has a significant state tax, it would be a reasonable expectation for Californians to put other Californians first at all times? Also note that people living inside the country contribute to it, not just those born there or those who finished their 15+ years long naturalization process...
  - YooLi 10y ago
    No it wouldn't be reasonable for the same reason saying no one should have locks on their doors and anyone should be free to go inside any house and use/live isn't reasonable.
- kelnos 10y ago
  That doesn't follow. My friends who are not US citizens and are here on H-1B visas (and have similar jobs as I do) pay significantly more in taxes than I do. And many of the programs those taxes pay into (like Social Security) are closed to them because they're non-citizens. Given that many US citizens don't start paying much if anything in the way of taxes until post-education (18-22), a non-citizen coming to the US right after college will be paying roughly the same. But ok, let's say that's not persuasive. I was born in New Jersey, and grew up in Maryland. I moved to California when I was 23 to start working. My family had of course never paid CA state taxes. Should CA have placed artificial "preferences" on workers who were born in CA, preferences that would have put me at the bottom of the hiring pile? Should I have been excluded from a job because other Californians were unemployed at the time? If that sounds ridiculous, then applying the same reasoning to a non-citizen sounds just about as ridiculous.
  - YooLi 10y ago
    Re: H1-B friends They pay taxes because now they are here within the imaginary lines and even if they don't get Social security, etc they are still benefitting from being here where they have all the other niceties of being here. Re: citizens don't start paying until 18. Their parents paid for them. Re: California Still part of a larger imaginary piece where everyone contribute. You're stuck thinking in terms of just $. And no one is saying no one should be able to come here. You simply asked why do people think negatively about H1-B and I explained it to you. What company wouldn't hire workers that cost them significantly less and can't easily leave over someone local, and hence the position against. It's not difficult.
sheepmullet 10y ago
I find it interesting that the "American first" crowd tends to donate more to the overseas needy than the "citizens of the world" crowd. excluding a few billionaires who really do believe in helping others.
- literallycancer 10y ago
  Care to provide a source?
alextheparrot 10y ago
Why should people born outside the imaginary lines of my country be allowed to come inside it? The power structure resides inside the described imaginary lines, thus the outsiders need to make this argument to the insiders, not the opposite way, realistically. If the outsiders can't convince the insiders, they simply won't be let in. With that framing, it is easy to see how it isn't (necessarily) bigotry, but just that the outsiders appear to offer little or negative value to many people. By saying "They are taking our jobs", people are expressing that they believe the outsiders being let has a negative effect on them, thus it is quite rational that they want to strengthen those imaginary lines.
AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
I'll accept that argument when every country adopts American values and expectations. Until then, nope.

lazaroclapp 10y ago

They are not theoretical, free-market niceties when you have lived abroad for 6 years. Or when your parents are both from different countries. Or when your grandparent immigrated out of the U.S. to live 2/3rds of his life in the country you were born in and never encountered this level of pushback. There is a lot to be said for making welfare systems work together with immigration. But putting "fellow citizens" above everyone else is not an easy question for everyone (and yes, I advocate for immigration and non-discrimination for hiring in my country of origin too). Also, acting like the STEM jobs in the U.S. exist independent of globalization is disingenuous. They exist because S.V. software is used across global markets, so if protectionism for labor is ok as long as it helps your citizens, then I assume the same is true for trade protectionism or Internet 'great firewalls'? The problem is, that way, we all end up significantly worse for it.

TheBobinator 10y ago
The problem there is the propensity for foreigners, well-educated in the back-assward ways of their country of origin, to come to America, ostensibly to partake in our, in some way measurably superior economy and culture, then expect to introduce their back-asswards ways here and expect those ways to be successful, then when they find out we think their entire country is as back-asswards as they are and refuse to put up with it, perhaps through inducing some event they might find traumatic like a firing, arrest, restraining order, and so forth, they want laws made to make everyone here back-asswards, because it's easier for them. When your immigration laws have a high standard of entry and you tell people, even en masse, "we lowered on this item this one time", then our expectations are stated and that creates the viewpoint that they need to assume their ways might be back-asswards. When immigration laws are as lax as ours, who can blame foreigners for being obstinate about coming here an us not adopting to their expectations? After all, when you give them welfare, you're paying them to do as such. You need to have a system in place to appropriately assess and adopt new cultural norms. Frankly, racism and bigotry has proven to do this nicely, although if you have suggestions on how we might do it better I'm all ears. Removing racism and bigotry, on the other hand, well that has had some seriously detrimental effects on our society. Right now, you've got 5% to 15% of the population in the US living here without seeking citizenship, and this is causing a demographic shift. The indigenous population, through feminism and marxist ideology, is being set up for a fall; look at marriage rates and the resulting reproduction rates of whites and blacks. They know it, and they've quite clearly voiced their intent to take the moral high ground and resolve those issues in a peaceful manner through civil means like deportations. If America really went Nazi Germany, we'd carpet nuke China and India, then tell the rest of the world "we solved the carbon emissions problem!". Then we'd invade Mexico, flatten the country, and promptly announce "THE WAR ON DRUGS IS WON!" and nuke Mecca pronouncing "ISLAMIC TERRORISM SOLVED" and other such nonsense. Really, what we're doing is very civilized. The foreigners even know there's plenty of time to propose a mutually beneficial solution, or simply leave on their own accord, before they're forced to leave. Obviously, the foreigners that are here are not happy with the situation they and their back-asswards ways have placed them into. Frankly, a lot of people here feel as though foreigners are coming here instead of fixing problems in their own countries. Mexicans voted for Trump because they can clearly see, now 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, how messed up Mexico is. Now you continue to fan the flames of cultural warfare, and say things like "we're going to out-breed whitey" or simply repeat the same high-and-mighty drivel the American media monopoly has pushed out for the last several decades. That pushes things towards not being civilized and creates incentives for biblical extermination events. Nobody views that as reasonable right now, but if people act like cock roaches, then there's only one way to reasonably handle that situation. I'd really like to think we're beyond that one as a world, but in 2017, there's still mass graves and still stupidity going on. We need a fresh take on the entire discussion, one that provides dignity for all parties. And you can talk about "borders are imaginary lines" all you want; everyone in IT has this mightier-than-thou notion, still high off of the 80's "I HAS A MODEM AND CAN TALK TO JAPAN, I'M SO CLASSY, ENTIRE WORLD IS HUMAN, KUMBIYAH" stupidity, they fail to see the point of borders. Fact is, there are irreconcilable differences in culture, language, religion, beliefs and economies and it's an extraordinarily good thing that these borders exist. We get a bunch of little social experiments that sometimes take decades to play out fully. Some experiments are extremely successful like America. Others countries, well, not so much. And there are reasons for that; technology can gloss over a lot of societal problems, e.g. the availability of hard liquor in the late 1800's. Globalism has largely been used to institute wage arbitrage, not the uplift the world as a whole, and you need to live in a bubble with a head full of cognitive pollution not to see that clearly.

wdcgu 10y ago

Not all STEM professionals are equal, which seems to be the assumptions of these arguments.

hocuspocus 10y ago

> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. STEM is a broad category. Saying there's a surplus of STEM graduates is a useless metric. Most of these graduates aren't interchangeable, let alone willing to work as cheap IT workers. The H-1/L-1 visas are abused to screw American IT workers, I get that. Do you know how most developed countries prevent that despite lenient immigration requirements (compared to the US)? Better labor laws, unions, collective bargaining, ...

kelnos 10y ago

> You're ignoring the fact the US already produces a surplus of skilled and qualified STEM professionals. That may be true, but we're hardly a homogeneous group. There certainly isn't a surplus of skilled and qualified professionals from my subgroup of STEM. And I suspect that's the one where most H-1B visa holders end up in. Not saying the system isn't abused: oh sweet jesus, it most certainly is. But throwing it out or reducing the caps isn't the answer. Removing all the perverse incentives and the ability of employers to use their employees' visa status as a pair of handcuffs... now that'll help. > The government of a country should be first and foremost advocates for, and protectors of, the welfare of its own citizens. If a large number of those citizens are being encouraged to accumulate massive debts gaining an education that them leaves them unable to find a job, then that is a social problem that needs a solution. Why are they unable to find a job? Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job. I care about our country's competitiveness in the science and technology landscape. If we can entice people smarter than us to come here and help make us smarter, that's the right move. Are foreign workers willing to work for less? Well then perhaps these citizens should suck it up and be willing to work for less as well. Or maybe they shouldn't get into a field with questionable job prospects in the first place. Four years isn't a very long time; the landscape doesn't change that much, and even if it does, changing majors/fields/etc. midway through isn't that hard (and even if it is, we're talking about your job prospects for the rest of your life; that sort of thing is good motivation to take on something hard). I want the best people here. Period. I don't care where they are from. Protectionism will just make us less competitive globally, and will move cutting-edge research and development to countries with more permissive immigration policies. We're already losing our status as the global superpower, and kicking out qualified immigrants will only hasten that decline.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
unprepare 10y ago
> Why are they unable to find a job? >Are they less skilled and capable than a foreign worker? If so, then the foreign worker should get the job Are you under the impression that organizations when hiring are looking to maximize skill and disregard all other factors? once you reach 'good enough' skill level, its a cost minimization game. If the American costs twice as much, but the foreign worker is good enough - who should get the job?

nikdaheratik 10y ago

I don't know what labor market you're talking about, but this STEM "surplus" is not very believable. Even if the exact match isn't always there, the people graduating with a degree in Biology or Civil Engineering are still more marketable from the skills it takes to get those degrees than many other graduates. The issue with "unemployable" college graduates has more to do with humanities majors who probably should have gone to technical or junior college and got a certificate in something practical than too many "STEM" graduates. And a much better question: is the problem that we're letting too many immigrants in, or that capital has had control of the laws and culture so much that labor can't fight to get their fair share? Immigrants don't write the laws, they don't make the business decisions, all they do is sign up for a space in the H1B lottery. If your field isn't getting its share, maybe it's not the immigrants who should be getting the blame for this.