6 ms·

It’s the same culture that sends tidal waves of students to American universities to earn Ph.Ds, and because of our piss-poor immigration system, most of them h

It’s the same culture that sends tidal waves of students to American universities to earn Ph.Ds, and because of our piss-poor immigration system, most of them have to go back home with all of that valuable education and use it in China or India or wherever instead of the USA.

forapurpose 8y ago
The U.S. helps to educate and provide opportunity to people, regardless of national origin - regardless of the arbitrary, invisible lines on a map, drawn by the powerful, in which they were born. Partly as a result, the greatest economic miracle in history has occurred since WWII (and especially since the end of the Cold War), with hundreds of millions of people pulled from millennia of hopeless, abject poverty. Another great result is that U.S. businesses now have enormous markets in China and India in which to sell, vendors from which to buy, and more talented employees which to hire. China and India are the top two markets in the world for many products, including cell phones IIRC. Imagine the impact on the bottom line of SV companies if they went away. A smart businessperson wants other businesses to do well; they want rich, successful neighbors; otherwise, who do they sell to? Who do they hire? Who provides goods and services to them? Yet another result is that those people are familiar with the United States and its values, and can bring them home. Wars start because political leaders can propagandize about how evil the <other people> are, which is hard to do with populations that have direct experience with each other. And the values of democracy and universal human rights (i.e., regardless of political borders) have revolutionized humanity. And finally, due to immigrants the U.S. has become the academic center of the world. You may notice that much of the great scientific work before WWII was done in Europe, but then nationalism and ideology in Europe chased out their great scientists, who emigrated to the U.S. English become the language of science. The halls of U.S. academia have been filled with immigrants since then. If the center of knowledge and research moved someplace else, the U.S. will have lost what has really become an enormous, and really an unfair benefit. How much does SV benefit from all that research, talent, and knowledge at Stanford and Berkley? So I want more immigration, more opportunity for more people. How absurd that people with the talent and drive to get PhDs would never have had the opportunity. If the U.S. has to build more universities, that's great.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- neuromantik8086 8y ago
  Academic immigrants these days are also potentially undercutting/warping expectations about labor in academic labs. 36k (for grad students) or 50k (for postdocs) are hardly acceptable salaries from an American perspective, but to folks from India and China those salaries are fortunes relatively speaking. To Indians/Chinese a 70 hour work week for that money might be worth it. Contrast this to past academic immigration in the 40s that you refer to, where immigrants were from countries with similar sensibilities and levels of development (primarily German Jews). I don't think that this necessarily invalidates your points, but it's worth pointing out that there are economic consequences when larger slices of the PhD candidates out there are from developing nations instead of other developed nations.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > immigrants were from countries with similar sensibilities People in the U.S. have been complaining about the 'values' and 'sensibilities' of the new immigrants since Benjamin Franklin would go off about Germans. Then of course it was Irish, the Italians, etc. etc. Older generations of Central European Jewish people even complained about the Eastern European Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Of course, for most Americans, those people with the 'wrong values' and 'foreign sensibilities' are your ancestors. Human beings have their own sensibilities as individuals, not those of some country or ethnicity - people in my own family don't even share those things. I'm sure the parent would not want to be told what they will think and what they will do based on where they were born; that they can't determine their own character; it's absurd. And the truth is that when you give them liberty and opportunity, they thrive and share those same universal values. The track record is undeniable. So please let's not make the same mistake again. The sensibilities of 1930s Germany? Italy? Egads. Though I guess they also discriminated based on nationalism and ethnicity. It's a happy, wonderful thing: Let's believe in people, give them freedom and opportunity, and everyone thrives.
    - 8y ago
mahart 8y ago
Just my personal anecdote but a vast majority of the Chinese students I've known do not want to stay after their degree. A couple have rattled off the statistics on the huge advantage they have in the job market back home with a degree from the US. Not that I'm arguing against immigration reform, though. Just playing devil's advocate.
pkaye 8y ago
What is wrong with that? Some of them might not want to stay in the US. Also do you want the US to deprive all other countries of their smart people that might improve their own society also? Its not always us vs them.
- rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
  See forapurpose’s excellent comment and my reply for the answers to most of your questions. No, I don’t want to “deprive” other countries of the education their people get here. I work in higher education. I believe in the transformative power of education for everybody. But the American immigration system leaves talent on the table when people who really do want to stay in America are not given the option of a US green card stapled to their US diploma.

forapurpose 8y ago

The U.S. helps to educate and provide opportunity to people, regardless of national origin - regardless of the arbitrary, invisible lines on a map, drawn by the powerful, in which they were born. Partly as a result, the greatest economic miracle in history has occurred since WWII (and especially since the end of the Cold War), with hundreds of millions of people pulled from millennia of hopeless, abject poverty. Another great result is that U.S. businesses now have enormous markets in China and India in which to sell, vendors from which to buy, and more talented employees which to hire. China and India are the top two markets in the world for many products, including cell phones IIRC. Imagine the impact on the bottom line of SV companies if they went away. A smart businessperson wants other businesses to do well; they want rich, successful neighbors; otherwise, who do they sell to? Who do they hire? Who provides goods and services to them? Yet another result is that those people are familiar with the United States and its values, and can bring them home. Wars start because political leaders can propagandize about how evil the <other people> are, which is hard to do with populations that have direct experience with each other. And the values of democracy and universal human rights (i.e., regardless of political borders) have revolutionized humanity. And finally, due to immigrants the U.S. has become the academic center of the world. You may notice that much of the great scientific work before WWII was done in Europe, but then nationalism and ideology in Europe chased out their great scientists, who emigrated to the U.S. English become the language of science. The halls of U.S. academia have been filled with immigrants since then. If the center of knowledge and research moved someplace else, the U.S. will have lost what has really become an enormous, and really an unfair benefit. How much does SV benefit from all that research, talent, and knowledge at Stanford and Berkley? So I want more immigration, more opportunity for more people. How absurd that people with the talent and drive to get PhDs would never have had the opportunity. If the U.S. has to build more universities, that's great.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
neuromantik8086 8y ago
Academic immigrants these days are also potentially undercutting/warping expectations about labor in academic labs. 36k (for grad students) or 50k (for postdocs) are hardly acceptable salaries from an American perspective, but to folks from India and China those salaries are fortunes relatively speaking. To Indians/Chinese a 70 hour work week for that money might be worth it. Contrast this to past academic immigration in the 40s that you refer to, where immigrants were from countries with similar sensibilities and levels of development (primarily German Jews). I don't think that this necessarily invalidates your points, but it's worth pointing out that there are economic consequences when larger slices of the PhD candidates out there are from developing nations instead of other developed nations.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > immigrants were from countries with similar sensibilities People in the U.S. have been complaining about the 'values' and 'sensibilities' of the new immigrants since Benjamin Franklin would go off about Germans. Then of course it was Irish, the Italians, etc. etc. Older generations of Central European Jewish people even complained about the Eastern European Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Of course, for most Americans, those people with the 'wrong values' and 'foreign sensibilities' are your ancestors. Human beings have their own sensibilities as individuals, not those of some country or ethnicity - people in my own family don't even share those things. I'm sure the parent would not want to be told what they will think and what they will do based on where they were born; that they can't determine their own character; it's absurd. And the truth is that when you give them liberty and opportunity, they thrive and share those same universal values. The track record is undeniable. So please let's not make the same mistake again. The sensibilities of 1930s Germany? Italy? Egads. Though I guess they also discriminated based on nationalism and ethnicity. It's a happy, wonderful thing: Let's believe in people, give them freedom and opportunity, and everyone thrives.
  - 8y ago

mahart 8y ago

Just my personal anecdote but a vast majority of the Chinese students I've known do not want to stay after their degree. A couple have rattled off the statistics on the huge advantage they have in the job market back home with a degree from the US. Not that I'm arguing against immigration reform, though. Just playing devil's advocate.

pkaye 8y ago

What is wrong with that? Some of them might not want to stay in the US. Also do you want the US to deprive all other countries of their smart people that might improve their own society also? Its not always us vs them.

rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
See forapurpose’s excellent comment and my reply for the answers to most of your questions. No, I don’t want to “deprive” other countries of the education their people get here. I work in higher education. I believe in the transformative power of education for everybody. But the American immigration system leaves talent on the table when people who really do want to stay in America are not given the option of a US green card stapled to their US diploma.