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> The fact that the concerns of rural communities are summarily dismissed when making policy was one of the big contributing factors to the election victories o

> The fact that the concerns of rural communities are summarily dismissed when making policy was one of the big contributing factors to the election victories of both Brexit and Trump Do you think that an influx of underpaid skilled labor is going to ease the tensions that created Brexit and Trump? Your assertion here appears to be that Trump voters were pissed off that more immigrants weren't making it to their hometowns. I find that assertion... highly implausible. > Policy that lets the economic advantage of urban areas snowball more is something that should be given more thought than "it wouldn't matter anyways, those places suck."... Those places do suck, but we should treat that as a problem to be addressed rather than avoided. Oy. 1. IMO they don't suck. They have many advantages. But they aren't particularly good locations for doing highly skilled labor. 2. There are a lot of policy levers that can be used to help rural areas. Trying to turn them into immigration-fueled discount tech/med hubs is doomed to fail and is therefore definitely not the right lever. 3. It's also worth noting that even rural economic development tends to be geographically concentrated. Just as wealth concentrates in cities with 10M people compared to cities with 100,000 people, wealth also concentrates in cities with 100,000 people compared to cities with 1,000 people. And BTW, those 100,000 person towns where skilled labor would invariably concentrate are in many cases already doing quite well. Even rural development -- and ESPECIALLY rural development based on skilled labor immigration -- isn't going to help the rural places that have been hardest hit in the past two decades, which tend to be in the 1,000 to 10,000 range. The argument isn't that policy should benefit urban America. The argument is that trying to bootstrap tiny local economies with skilled labor immigration is doomed to fail.

bduerst 8y ago
>underpaid skilled labor H1B visas are only granted to people who are paid more than the prevailing wages of citizens working the same SOC code job in the same area. There have been consultancies in the past who have gamed this, but USCIS has cracked down severely on this in the past year or so.

bduerst 8y ago

>underpaid skilled labor H1B visas are only granted to people who are paid more than the prevailing wages of citizens working the same SOC code job in the same area. There have been consultancies in the past who have gamed this, but USCIS has cracked down severely on this in the past year or so.