8 ms·

Want jobs? Encourage immigration

144 points by sathishmanohar 15y ago

wavephorm 15y ago
I distinctly remember 2001-2003 during in the post dot-com, post-911 recession when there was loud outcry to cancel all visas to open up jobs for American-born workers. And in subsequent years these ideas took on the form of erecting a wall around Mexico, and eliminating technology-related visa categories, and ending up in today's environment of extreme hostility toward business travellers at American ports of entry.
- jnbiche 15y ago
  Do other business travelers experience this extreme hostility at US ports of entry? I don't do nearly as much international travel as I used to, so I'm really interested in hearing others' experiences.
  - Mikushi 15y ago
    Yes, i am french (from France), been living in Montreal for 5years know, speaks perfect english (no silly french accent), but anytime i have to go to the US i get treated like shit by immigration agent when they see my passport. And it's been consistent across the 20+ times i've had to cross the border. Sometimes they even go into what i believe to be none of their business, last christmas i was coming back from France, going through Washington (just a 6h stop), and despise the fact i had my ticket saying i was going to Montreal, my canadian working visa, the U.S. agent bombarded me with question on what i was gonna do in canada, where i was staying, on a not so friendly tone as if i was lying. This is why i now refuse whenever possible to go through the U.S.. As for the Visa situation, it is really a pain, i had numerous companies contacting me -thinking i was Canadian as i list my town as Montreal- from SF or Seattle, then after successful interviews, getting refused by they H.R. department because i'm French and VISA paperwork is either too much or just not even possible for them.
    - felipemnoa 15y ago
      >> the U.S. agent bombarded me with question on what i was gonna do in canada, where i was staying, on a not so friendly tone as if i was lying<< This seems to be pretty standard. They are trying to catch you on a lie. I don't know about the "not so friendly tone" though. I guess it depends on the agent and what kind of day/issues he is having.
      - Mikushi 15y ago
        Yeah but last time i checked, Canada is not part of the U.S. and with a visa and ticket, that should be enough for him, if somebody wants to grill me it should be a Canadian Immigration agent.
        tokenadult 15y ago
        [AFTER EDIT: I'm withdrawing an earlier statement in the first posting of this comment after doing some fact-checking prompted by the reply below. Thanks. I'll look up some more analysis of the current policy and its historical origins over the next few days. The sentence below was the last sentence in the original version of this comment.] It's regrettable that today skepticism at the border is so general--surely most visitors to the United States, including you, mean no harm to the United States--but there are legal problems with being selective about whom to interrogate, so almost every visitor is questioned.
        worldvoyageur 15y ago
        That some of the 9/11 attackers entered the US through Canada is a thoroughly debunked myth. Plus, all the attackers entered the US legally, with valid visas. The startling persistence of the myth attests to its power to support a particular side of the debate about 'illegals' or 'weak borders'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumors_about_the_September_11_attacks#Claims_that_terrorists_entered_the_United_States_through_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumors_about_the_September_11_a... Misinformation: rumors later shown to be false: [...] Claims that terrorists entered the United States through Canada On September 12, 2001, Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counter-intelligence told the press that five of the terrorists had entered Maine from Canada via a ferry from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and/or a remote border point in Saint-Théophile, Quebec near Jackman, Maine.[1] The myth was revived again in April 2009 when Janet Napolitano, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, informed a Canadian television interviewer that some of the terrorist-hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks entered the United States from Canada. In the same month, senator John McCain also told Fox News that some of the 9/11 hijackers did come through Canada.[2]
  - scarface548 15y ago
    "If what you are saying is wrong we'll find you and kick you out like dogs" - An actual dialogue blurted out by the immigration "officer" at the port of entry.
  - nunb 15y ago
    Smaller ports of entry with smaller queues generally lead to more pleasant experiences. The HNL and RDU airports, for example, are very welcoming to tourist and business travellers.
kiba 15y ago
Jobs. It would seems that we have an obsession with creating jobs. If you hear politicians, and if my perception are right, they talk about jobs. Not whether or not we get more purchasing power than ever before. Not whether or not our lifestyle is more fulfilling than ever before. Jobs. More jobs. Less jobs. More competitive Americans. No manufacturing jobs. Colleges not creating enough people to fill jobs. Robots are destroying our jobs. Robots need to be maintain by something or someone, probably another robot or human being. But jobs are just proxy. A proxy for our self-worth, our independence, or whether or not we have a future. Jobs, for us, are just means to an end. Yes, some of us are musicians, football players, programmers, scientists, etc. We like our jobs. I suspect the vast majority of humans don't really enjoy all that much working their job. Rather than talking about creating jobs and destroying jobs, which is an assumption that exists in a world where there are scarcity and there's boring things to do for humans to maintain their existence, why not talk about the end, what should our goal be in life? We can then rearrange our actions in life based on our conclusion what our life should be and what we want to achieve rather than just simply on what needed to be done at this point in time. After all, if a strong FAI comes, we may not even have jobs. At the same time, we ought to figure out what's our life purpose other than going to a job and work for someone or operating a business just to simply maintain our existence. There's no longer a need to grow your food, goes to the hair saloon to cut someone's hair, pump the gas, etc. How are we going to live for the next 10,000 years and 10,000 years beyond that and so on?
- potatolicious 15y ago
  This is a nice thought, and might be relevant a few decades ago when America was at the top of its game in relation to all the other countries on Earth. Now, I'm not so sure. You're talking about a post-scarcity society when a growing portion of Americans can't even put food on the table or a roof over their head. You're talking the personal fulfillment when more and more Americans are forced to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. It's nice that you have the freedom and the time to ponder such ideological issues. It's nice that you're able to look higher on the hierarchy of needs rather than scrabbling for scraps. I mean that in the non-snarkiest of ways, really. But for the vast majority of the population they need a job right now. They don't have time to worry about your high-minded concepts of personal fulfillment, and whether or not a FAI will usher in a utopia of zero scarcity. They need to make rent and put groceries in the fridge this week. The politicians are focusing on jobs as a core issue because that's what's foremost on people's minds. It's foremost on people's minds because it's exactly what they need. They need more jobs in a stronger economy. Imagine if all the unemployed folk in this country just sat around waiting for the post-scarcity society to hit them upside the head!
potatolicious 15y ago
The US really needs to emulate other countries here. The problem here is that the "immigrant" visa is really the same thing as a work visa, and that leads to a great deal of abuse. For one thing, the eligibility is tied to an employer, who is incentivized to embellish, cheat, and otherwise finagle their way to a visa. The expectation that the visa is temporary also sets a lower bar for entry - even though many of these people will eventually become American PRs/citizens. The recent trend to "stage" the H-1B green card process is a step in the right direction - though it doesn't go as far as it needs to. There is still a major problem of indentured servitude. Once an employee has a green card process in the pipeline their employer has them over a barrel - and many will not hesitate to use this as an opportunity for abuse. Not to mention, with the green card backlog the way it is now, it would be years before "your huddled masses of immigrant entrepreneurs yearning to breathe free" are actually able to start businesses. First they have to go through ~8-10 years as a rank and file employee, before they're granted the legal freedom to pursue their own future. The startup visa would go a long way to alleviating that, though the heavy involvement of VCs in that initiative will mean that bootstrappers and other scrappy startups that don't want to raise hojillions in funding will be still at a severe disadvantage. How do you fix this? IMO the US needs to setup a track for immigrants to immediately receive green cards, where having a job offer is not a prerequisite (though it would certainly help). The focus needs to shift away from fulfilling "temporary shortages" (which we all know is bullshit) to simply permanent, mass importation of worthy talent. Set up the process to filter people based on the assumption that they will permanently stay, as opposed the the current process where we'll let just about anyone in, since they're "temporary" H-1Bs anyways. This will raise the calibre of people you're letting in, and also make sure you're giving top talent maximum freedom once they're here. The whole "immigration policy masquerading as work permit" thing really needs to GTFO.
- flourpower 15y ago
  Not that I have a solution to this problem, but who does the filtering once you remove the job offer as a prerequisite? I can't conceive of a situation where the people that get put in charge of that process are actually qualified.
  - 15y ago
ry0ohki 15y ago
While I agree we need to encourage immigration, the "facts" stated in this article seem like a causation does not imply correlation argument that drive me nuts.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
jammur 15y ago
I'm shocked at the amount of xenophobia in the comments on the CNN site. Being Canadian, I have no idea whether it is representative of the population at large, but it appears that many Americans have been brainwashed into the thinking that the only immigrants are the ones driving cabs or working at fast food. The problem is that everybody has been talking themselves to death about illegal immigration, and haven't focused on the benefits of legal immigration. Does the Startup Visa have a chance in hell with the current political climate surrounding immigration in the US?
- nobody314159265 15y ago
  The problem is that most Americans are the descendents of the people that arrived, displaced the native population, took their land and exploited it's natural resources. So naturally they are wary of people coming along and doing the same to them. This doesn't really apply to Canada.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jnbiche 15y ago
    I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I have to ask: do you really think there were no indigenous peoples in Canada when the French and English came to settle there? Just pristine wilderness?
    - marshallp 15y ago
      different scale though, most of canada is still empty and natives can roam free if they want
muzz 15y ago
If you read TechCrunch (Wadhwa's pieces especially) or the ABC article referenced, this piece contains absolutely nothing new, just a rehash of the same things. Sparse, suspect data, plenty of correlation/causation fallacies, and topped off with a populist appeal to "create jobs"
- HistoryInAction 15y ago
  One issue in terms of data that I struggle with on researching this issue is that we're discussing a big empty space and wondering why it is empty. Immigrants in the US aren't allowed to build companies and create jobs unless they are very lucky/connected or they wait a long period of time to get their green card, since no visa currently exists for founders. We can't do A/B testing to see if our suspicions that we'd have more startups and more jobs for US citizens if we allowed more founders—not more blanket immigration, mind you—into the country. The people who do find a way in tend to be the best and the brightest of the pool, so our anecdata looks favorable. There seem to be indications that immigrants and first-generation citizens tend to be 'hungrier' than more established populations, though that doesn't say anything about success/failure rates. From a physics perspective, it's like hunting dark matter. We suspect that job growth would result from passing Startup Visa or STEM Green Cards, but economics theories are nowhere close to the rigor of physics theories. VCs still only invest in solid, market-driven ideas. I'd rather trust to them and to the market as a whole as to who sees success than have the government throw up artificial barriers to block non-Americans from American networks of capital and talent, especially when it means the failure to launch of startups that might make my life better. Kauffman does indicate that young companies produce the most net job growth in America: http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/kauffman-foundation-analysis-emphasizes-importance-of-young-businesses-to-job-creation-in-the-united-states.aspx http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/kauffman-foundation-analysi... , though as Steve Blank says, 'startups' are lumped together when there's a large differentiation that needs to be taken into account: http://steveblank.com/2011/09/01/why-governments-don%E2%80%99t-get-startups/ http://steveblank.com/2011/09/01/why-governments-don%E2%80%9... The best bit of public policy analysis I've seen on Startup Visa and implications for job growth is from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), but they studied the 2010 Startup Visa, which is much more limited than even the 2011 Startup Visa. The 2011 version of the bill doesn't address STEM Green Cards and is strictly limited in an attempt to pass a conservative House of Representatives, whose majority has a strong anti-immigration faction. So we're left with all of the arguments that you state. However, note that a thoughtful person like yourself isn't the target audience of something on CNN. The NFAP analysis is probably more 'chewy' for someone who wants to dive into the issue. EDIT: Forgot the NFAP link: http://www.nfap.com/pdf/092910NFAPPolicyBriefImmigrantEntrepreneurVisa.pdf http://www.nfap.com/pdf/092910NFAPPolicyBriefImmigrantEntrep...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- nobody314159265 15y ago
  'our' jobs? Suppose you are in california and Caltech hires a new Yorker as a postdoc instead of you - is that any better/worse than them hiring a Canadian/Brit or German? Suppose they hired an American who had done their graduate work at oxford - is that better than hiring a Brit who had done their phd at Caltech?
  - aspensmonster 15y ago
    Not to put words in greenName's mouth, but I believe the assumption is that a New Yorker and a Californian both would expect appropriate compensation for their work. Regardless of whether a citizen of the United States studied here or abroad, he would still expect a salary commiserate with his qualifications. Someone who is effectively an indentured servant on an H1-B visa will take whatever is offered to him because he knows that to do otherwise is to lose his shot at permanent residency or citizenship.
    - nobody314159265 15y ago
      Unless you gave the immigrants with STEM PhDs greencards. It just seems odd that a Yankee going to Texas is welcome but a foreigner taking the same job, paying the same US tax - but who was raised and educated at some other nations expense is somehow a threat.
      - muzz 15y ago
        > raised and educated at some other nations expense These are paid for by the other nations, not by the individuals themselves and/or their families? I.e. other nations don't have students paying their own way through college or taking out student loans, or some combo of the two?
        BrainInAJar 15y ago
kmfrk 15y ago
One thing is work visas; another is college visas. I remember being told (as a European) in the equivalent of high school(?) that if I wanted to go to an American college, I would have to start preparations a year and a half in advance - mainly due to the time spent on processing visas. I would have loved nothing better than to go to an American college, but, at least at the time, that made it neigh-impossible to apply for an American college, when studying at a national university or, hell, another university in Europe or Britain seemed so much easier. I don't know what other people's experiences are, and it may be a cultural thing; maybe the process is otherwise facilitated in, say, India and China. EDIT: FWIW, this was after 9/11. Just to account for whatever that may have changed.
- HistoryInAction 15y ago
  The NYT had an interesting article about increasing numbers of international students on American campuses, possibly for financial reasons, since most universities are not need-blind for international students. I'm guessing it's easier now, and there are certainly professionals who facilitate the process in China, according to the article. http://chronicle.com/article/Chinese-Students-Prove-a/129628/ http://chronicle.com/article/Chinese-Students-Prove-a/129628...
microarchitect 15y ago
Why doesn't the US move to a points-based system like the UK and Canada? This seems like a simple and sensible solution to a complex problem that ensures that the people who immigrate are in some sense "useful" to the country. I also don't understand why the green card backlog isn't being handled efficiently. Surely, if somebody is paying, say more than 20k in income taxes every year for, say 5 years in a row, there is reason to believe their contribution to the country is a net positive. Why not just give them citizenship and be done with it? As an outsider, I feel like the US is the opposite of an "agile" government. It seems like there is a lot bickering and fear-mongering at every level and important decisions are being made based on populism and emotional appeals rather than rational decision making. I'm not sure if this is really the case because my news sources are the likes of Reddit and the so-called "liberal media", but unfortunately this is perception I get.
- HistoryInAction 15y ago
  "As an outsider, I feel like the US is the opposite of an "agile" government." For about every aspect of the US federal government, you're right: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/us-government-blows-200000-on-useless-smartphone-app/16533 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/us-government-blows-20000... It's /really/ hard to manage the world's largest GDP effectively. Governmental gridlock tends towards the status quo and institutional inertia is huge. This is Vernon Vinge's 'to scale, you need complexity, but complexity inevitably leads to collapse' theories in action.
  - microarchitect 15y ago
    It's /really/ hard to manage the world's largest GDP effectively. If any country can do it, it's the US. The universities attract the smartest students from all over the world, and have the best faculty in the world by a large margin. The government simply needs to figure out how to harness all the brainpower to solve real-world problems.
    - untog 15y ago
      But you're assuming that all the smartest students in the world go to work for the government. They never do- salaries would have to go up a ton before that happens. And tax payers would never allow that.
greenName 15y ago
Increase supply of labor, decrease wages. Econ 101, folks. The Wall Street types benefit from immigration. There might be "more jobs" but there will be lower pay checks. Working Americans are the targets in this upper class scam. Polls show that most Americans are for moderating immigration. Strangely, rich Democrats are the ones most for open borders and "free" trade. The party of labor? No way.
- gjm11 15y ago
  Decreased wages for those who have jobs, plus more people having jobs, might be an excellent tradeoff even if it wouldn't appeal to a 100% selfish person who has a job and doesn't fear losing it. And you need to be awfully careful about what "polls show that most Americans are for". For example, polls show that most Americans would like to see US foreign aid reduced from about 25% of GDP to about 10% of the federal budget. The trouble is that the actual level of US foreign aid is about 1% of the federal budget. So, do "polls show" that most Americans would like foreign aid cut by 2.5x, or that most Americans would like foreign aid increased by 10x? -- In the absence of more information about what "most Americans" actually think the level of immigration is, and what they think its impact is, polls purporting to show that most Americans would like more or less immigration are pretty uninformative about what would actually benefit most Americans, or what they would choose if they had better information. It would be better to keep party politics out of this. (Though from what you've written I wonder whether party politics are your only reason for being interested in the matter at all.)
mgh2 15y ago
Americans need to support the Startup Visa: http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2010/03/support-startup-visa.html http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2010/03/support-startup-vi... I think Obama is starting to hear too: http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2011/04/startup-america-tell-white-house-how-to.html http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2011/04/startup-america-te...
unfare 15y ago
The editor are modding all dissent in this page down. Can't handle another side of the story ? Shame.
- philwelch 15y ago
  "Editor"? That's not how HN works.
- 10100101001 15y ago
  That's the readers of this site who are modding the dissent down.
resnamen 15y ago
It's not a zero-sum game when you bring in bright people. Smart people create opportunity around them. On the other hand, I'm not so enthusiastic about lowering immigration barriers so we can get cheap workers to robotically throw together CRUD forms. (I guess that work is outsourced, anyway?)
georgemcbay 15y ago
I'm pro-immigration, but the article still feels like a bit of a sham to me by highlightling Brin, Omidyar and Yang without addressing the fact that Sergey Brin immigrated to America when he was 6, Pierre Omidyar was also 6 and Jerry Yang was 10. How do you know then that they'll be massive job creators? Certainly each of them had ambitious parents and that's something, but then so does just about everyone who actively works to immigrate to a new place for a better life... assuming we can't figure out who the next Brin will be when they are 6 or 10 (and we can't), is the author arguing we should just open up the floodgates to everyone with educated parents? Because that's a heckofalot of people.
- HistoryInAction 15y ago
  But since we don't have a visa that allows for entrepreneurial founders to immigrate here, how can we have examples to highlight their potential contributions? The closest thing we can do is point to similar people. Personally, I think that Vinod Khosla and Manu Kumar are better examples. I'm of the understanding that Khosla didn't have a valid visa when Sun was founded, but an exemption was made because of the sheer success of the company from nearly day 1. The other thing I want to look at is people like Robin Li of Baidu, American educated, employed by American companies, but when it came time to create a company, he went home. Possibly, even likely, that was because a company serving Chinese should be based in China, but it's certain that since he didn't have a green card, he wouldn't be able to get a visa as a founder to stay here. America loses when people who could stay here to found companies return to their country to create jobs and foreign competition there.
  - georgemcbay 15y ago
    I don't disagree with you at all on the immigration issues and I fully support fast track immigration & citizenship for high-value immigrants, I just think it is intellectually dishonest to use 3 founders who all immigrated before they were teenagers as examples for a point the author was trying to make when they don't really fit the narrative. That the author didn't even mention the age that these men immigrated makes it feel like she was trying to pull a fast one on the reader who has heard the names but isn't really familiar with their stories (which will be most readers). As far as Baidu goes, I don't think it could exist as a non-Chinese company, and more because of China's government policies than the USA's.
barumrho 15y ago
In Canada, international students are given work permit up to 3 years after graduation and after 1 year of full-time employment they can apply for permanent residency. I think the US could benefit from a similar policy.
incosta 15y ago
I agree that US needs an entrepreneur visas. But I disagree with author's suggestion that all US-educated graduates must be given green cards. A lot of them came to US to study because they could afford it (often via wealthy parents). I don't think it's fair to give green cards only because they graduated from a US university thanks to their rich parents. Foreign students have one year after graduation to find an employer, convert to H-1B and then ask the employer to sponsor the green card. Nothing wrong with this. However, of course H1-B to green card to citizenship must be done in a more timely manner. In many cases it takes too long. The time spent on waiting for the green card (sometimes as long as 4-5 years or even more, due to slow bureaucracy) must be in some way counted towards the citizenship requirement of 5-year residency. I think as baby-boomer generation starts to retire en-mass, U.S. will have no choice but to liberalize and simplify its immigration policy. It is competing against many other developed countries for younger workers and talent, and the earnings disparity is becoming less of a factor in many developing countries. There's just no way out but to make immigration process faster and more attractive if the U.S. wants to win.
- HistoryInAction 15y ago
  There's a 17 month extension, to 29 months, if you graduated in a technical/STEM field under Optional Practical Training (OPT) which I think you're referencing: http://www.nafsa.org/regulatory_information.sec/regulatory_document_library.dlib/sevis/opt_29_month_rule/ http://www.nafsa.org/regulatory_information.sec/regulatory_d... "But I disagree with author's suggestion that all US-educated graduates must be given green cards. A lot of them came to US to study because they could afford it (often via wealthy parents). I don't think it's fair to give green cards only because they graduated from a US university thanks to their rich parents." Very insightful! However, the green card wait times are more due to scarcity, with many more people entering the green card pipeline than by law can exit each year, rather than slow bureaucracy. I agree re: the future of immigration policy, but I think the talent war is even more important than you think. Right now, and since the 60s, US immigration policy has been aligned on a family-unification platform, and with strict numerical limits, a huge percentage of American immigration is taken up by family-based immigration. As liberal and pleasing as it is, it's going to have to go, as America will have to fully enter the competition for top talent.
redbrick 15y ago
For examples we should also be looking at all the immigrants that are working hard growing the companies - startups, small medium and large businesses they are employed for.
mbesto 15y ago
The bottom line is this: How do you assess one's talent? If this were possible then a system could work, otherwise it will never be perfect.
cletus 15y ago
I believe humanity is approaching an important turning point that will either herald in a new era and a new way of thinking or there are going to be some dark times ahead. The entire of human history has thus far been fueled by population growth. When there were 10 million of us, this wasn't a problem. When there were 100 million of us, this wasn't a problem. When there were 1 billion of us, it was mostly not a problem. Now as we zero in on 10 billion... it's becoming a problem. The way our society and our economy works should in so many ways tell you this is true. Look at the urban decay that occurred in many American cities in the 20th century. Urban decay post-WW2 was fuelled by the interstate system, the cheapening cost of owning a car and that it was cheaper to build new communities than it was to maintain existing infrastructure. Some cities experienced negative population growth with devastating consequences (eg Detroit, Baltimore). Certainly in Detroit's case, there are large swathes of the city that really need to be returned to wilderness. But who's going to pay for the demolition, relocation and clean up? The Western world is essentially dying with net migration being pretty much the only reason any Western country is growing at all. The social experiments of the early 20th century (ie state-funded retirement) are, at present rates, ultimately unsustainable when we get down to 3 or even 2 employed people pre retired person (initially it was in excess of 50 to 1 at least for Social Security). An aging population is a natural consequence of slowing population growth, just like urban decay is. So far we've largely shown ourselves at being ill-equipped at dealing with either, except for politicking around migration, which basically just kicks that can further down the street. It is my opinion that there need to be an awful lot less of us and there will be one day, one way or the other. As much as people point to space as a solution to these problems we have an economy built in basically digging not-that-deep holes for our metals. While there are metal-rich asteroids out there, the cost of moving, processing and using those materials is so many orders of magnitude more expensive (both realistically and conceivably) that I have to wonder if it will ever be comparable (although it might one day be viable just because every other way has become so expensive, which will be an earth-shattering adjustment for us all). So migration is, I believe, a short term fix. But it doesn't address what I believe to be a key driver in unemployment: we're slowly automating our way out of the most unskilled jobs (and increasingly skilled jobs too). That too will be a challenge.
Oscarus 15y ago
It's hard to take Wilkinson seriously. She contradicts herself within her first two sentences: she says America must welcome innovators, and then says the tired and poor as well. Which is it? Mexico by far has been the biggest contributor of immigrants to the US in recent decades, yet it doesn't even rank within the top 20 nations with the most immigrant entrepreneurs. Mexicans are responsible for a total of 1% of the these immigrant founded companies in California. They number about 10 million in California, far more than any other immigrant group, yet they hardly rank as a source of entrepreneurs. If growing the number of entrepreneurs is your only goal, asking the tired and poor to come here is a recipe for failure. Mexicans, despite their origins in poverty, have not achieved much in the way of tech entrepreneurship, relative to Indians, Taiwanese, Chinese, etc. Some countries are better than others in producing entrepreneurs.
fragsworth 15y ago
This logic has always bothered me, and I know lots of you will disagree, but here it is: Job creation alone is not a noble goal. It should never be used as a reason for making policy changes. There's an economic fallacy at place here. Jobs, in and of themselves, do not benefit us on the whole. You could give some number of people a "job" to walk around in circles all day long and pay them money for it, but the net effect would be that society sees no benefit from this. Productive jobs, however, are good things. There is a conflict, though: the more productive your job is, the fewer employees are necessary - actually resulting in fewer jobs. Hopefully you have witnessed this first-hand over the last few decades. Travel agencies have been replaced by Priceline, Expedia, etc. Tax specialists have been replaced by TurboTax, TaxAct, etc. Even simple legal matters can be handled by LegalZoom and the like, reducing the need for lawyers. All manufactured media products (books, news, movies, music, games) are now transferred digitally, which eliminates the need for factory workers to produce physical products. Online banking eliminates the need for bank tellers. Countless other examples. Essentially, technology kills jobs. We develop software and devices to handle what was traditionally done by people, and sell the services at a much cheaper rate because we don't have to pay for all the overhead that old services once required. This is a good thing, however. Anyway, I'm all for immigration, and I'm all for tech companies. But the fact is they destroy jobs more than they create them, and are therefore partially responsible for the current unemployment rate. The logic behind this article is all backwards because of this.
- muzz 15y ago
  Agreed. The term for what you describe in your third paragraph is "labor replacement". There is huge profit to be made in labor replacement, with the effect of loss of jobs. It is troubling that few readers pick up on the use of examples with gross jobs created and not net jobs created. In this case, Amit Arahoni's 9 jobs created are gross, not net. A more-clear example would be that of Craigslist. How many jobs has Craigslist created? Well, 30 jobs in gross, but likely a large negative number in net as it played a large part in displacing at least one entire industry (newspapers).
- tomjen3 15y ago
  You comment is a very, very important one and I hate that people don't see the difference between jobs for jobs sake and productive jobs. I mean if all we wanted was jobs we could just outlaw gasoline, electricity and non-human powered generators. That would create jobs for untold millions. It would also be utterly destructive for our standard of life/health/happiness/etc.
rzbn 15y ago
Man tell me about it. I'm working on a startup now and I've been rejected a green card. Now I have to go back. Shame really.
droithomme 15y ago
There are a lot of countries that lobby for their citizens to enjoy an open border policy where their people can be able to freely come to the US to live, work and own property. Oddly though, these countries do not have open border policies where Americans can come to live, work and own property in their countries. Let's say you are British. You can move pretty freely throughout much of Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with a minimum of hassle. If you are American, the situation is very different. There are very few countries you can easily emigrate to. Yet most countries want rights for their people to be able to immigrate to the US. I would be in favor of a global open border policy. Eliminate passports, visas, and all restrictions on the flow of people. As opposed to now where through WTO style agreements goods travel much more freely than people. But I don't support one sided policies where people can move easily in one direction but not the other.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
cletus 15y ago
The US immigration and visa situation is really quite horrendous. For example, I'm an Australian. That means I qualify for (and have) an E-3 visa. What's that you might ask? It's a special work visa created specifically for Australian nationals. It applies for two years and can be renewed indefinitely. What's more, unlike an H1B visa, it's not subject to quotas and the employer doesn't first need to "prove" they couldn't find a suitably qualified domestic worker (a system fraught with abuse that simply acts as a wealth transfer system from companies to immigration lawyers). The problem? When I need to renew it, it may take USCIS months. Plus it's more expensive than applying for a fresh visa. Also, once approved they renew your status not your visa. What does that mean? It means if you leave the country for any reason you don't have a valid visa to re-enter the US so you have to get a new visa anyway. Basically, you need to leave the country every two years to apply for a new one (since you can't apply within the US, of course). What's more, each time I will have to fill out the exact same set of questions (DS-160), make an appointment, give them my passport and wait for it to be returned. Why does this visa exist? Essentially to settle a trade dispute between the US and Australia over wheat. Australia does not subsidize wheat. The US does (as does Europe) to a huge degree, yet Australian wheat is still price competitive but the US keeps Australian wheat out of the US on the flimsy grounds of "quarantine" (something Australia complained loudly to the WTO as an artificial restriction of trade for years, which like most things that are not to the US's advantage, it simply ignored). This was eventually settled and the E3 visa was one byproduct of this. But you can see just how screwed up the system is that factors like this cause visas to be created. Others have posted about the whole H1B problem (quotas, etc) and the backlog of green card processing basically allowing employers to treat you like indentured servants. That needs to change. Some argue H1B visas are used to pay substandard wages in lieu of employing domestic workers. The substandard wages bit is true but that's because of the H1B processing problem. The real problem for domestic software engineers at least is that most people who call themselves "engineers" or "programmers" suck. I've been shocked at some of the people I've interviewed, their inability to code very simple problems and their complete lack of theoretical foundations. And those are the ones that make it past resume screening and phone screens". The government needs to accept that tech companies are basically the most mobile in the world. Look at big tech companies and you'll see they need data centers, some of which need to be in the US (which really doesn't employ that many people). Everything else can be done from anywhere*. Barriers to entry, kneejerk legislation (eg Sarbanes-Oxley) and software patents are all contributing to driving the future Googles and Facebooks elsewhere. All of this makes me a little sad actually because the US has forgotten it's route. The US is a country of immigrants (IIRC population 2 million in 1800, 50 million in 1900). One of the reasons I've come to New York to work is because I want to see it. New York is the beating heart of commerce and you can see capitalism and commerce in every form here, some pretty, some not-so-pretty. I want to see it before it doesn't exist anymore. My picture of the US is one of decay, rotting from within, collapsing under a mountain of debt and unsustainable policies that will be its downfall. The Roman Empire was enormous and collapsed. The British Empire was enormous and collapsed. Don't think it can't happen again.
etz 15y ago
how many immigrants would it be necessary to let in the country to have one of these success stories?? If we let in only the best and brightest, then success is assured! But if we do the right thing, and let nature take it's course....Assuming that the person is a 1 percenter, then it would only take one hundred people to create wealth. On the other hand, the united states has 300 million people, if 25 percent of the successful startups are by foreigners, then that would mean about 75 million people would have to enter the country to create 25 percent. All for 15 or 20 THOUSAND jobs. What will the rest do??
known 15y ago
I disagree. Unless USA aligns Immigrant & Non-immigrant Visas and Outsourcing to Caste system in India and Human Rights in China, American middle class will be destroyed. http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/29/un-says-indias-caste-system-a-human-rights-abuse.htm http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/29/un-says-indias-cas... http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-apple-workers-forced-to-sign-no-suicide-pledge/20110504.htm http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ypcx 15y ago
Funny, just today I stumbled upon this video while randomly strolling through the avenues of YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70KhYzBhT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70KhYzBhT4

144 points by sathishmanohar 15y ago

I distinctly remember 2001-2003 during in the post dot-com, post-911 recession when there was loud outcry to cancel all visas to open up jobs for American-born workers. And in subsequent years these ideas took on the form of erecting a wall around Mexico, and eliminating technology-related visa categories, and ending up in today's environment of extreme hostility toward business travellers at American ports of entry.

jnbiche 15y ago
Do other business travelers experience this extreme hostility at US ports of entry? I don't do nearly as much international travel as I used to, so I'm really interested in hearing others' experiences.
- Mikushi 15y ago
  Yes, i am french (from France), been living in Montreal for 5years know, speaks perfect english (no silly french accent), but anytime i have to go to the US i get treated like shit by immigration agent when they see my passport. And it's been consistent across the 20+ times i've had to cross the border. Sometimes they even go into what i believe to be none of their business, last christmas i was coming back from France, going through Washington (just a 6h stop), and despise the fact i had my ticket saying i was going to Montreal, my canadian working visa, the U.S. agent bombarded me with question on what i was gonna do in canada, where i was staying, on a not so friendly tone as if i was lying. This is why i now refuse whenever possible to go through the U.S.. As for the Visa situation, it is really a pain, i had numerous companies contacting me -thinking i was Canadian as i list my town as Montreal- from SF or Seattle, then after successful interviews, getting refused by they H.R. department because i'm French and VISA paperwork is either too much or just not even possible for them.
  - felipemnoa 15y ago
    >> the U.S. agent bombarded me with question on what i was gonna do in canada, where i was staying, on a not so friendly tone as if i was lying<< This seems to be pretty standard. They are trying to catch you on a lie. I don't know about the "not so friendly tone" though. I guess it depends on the agent and what kind of day/issues he is having.
    - Mikushi 15y ago
      Yeah but last time i checked, Canada is not part of the U.S. and with a visa and ticket, that should be enough for him, if somebody wants to grill me it should be a Canadian Immigration agent.
      - tokenadult 15y ago
        [AFTER EDIT: I'm withdrawing an earlier statement in the first posting of this comment after doing some fact-checking prompted by the reply below. Thanks. I'll look up some more analysis of the current policy and its historical origins over the next few days. The sentence below was the last sentence in the original version of this comment.] It's regrettable that today skepticism at the border is so general--surely most visitors to the United States, including you, mean no harm to the United States--but there are legal problems with being selective about whom to interrogate, so almost every visitor is questioned.
        worldvoyageur 15y ago
        That some of the 9/11 attackers entered the US through Canada is a thoroughly debunked myth. Plus, all the attackers entered the US legally, with valid visas. The startling persistence of the myth attests to its power to support a particular side of the debate about 'illegals' or 'weak borders'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumors_about_the_September_11_attacks#Claims_that_terrorists_entered_the_United_States_through_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumors_about_the_September_11_a... Misinformation: rumors later shown to be false: [...] Claims that terrorists entered the United States through Canada On September 12, 2001, Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counter-intelligence told the press that five of the terrorists had entered Maine from Canada via a ferry from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and/or a remote border point in Saint-Théophile, Quebec near Jackman, Maine.[1] The myth was revived again in April 2009 when Janet Napolitano, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, informed a Canadian television interviewer that some of the terrorist-hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks entered the United States from Canada. In the same month, senator John McCain also told Fox News that some of the 9/11 hijackers did come through Canada.[2]
- scarface548 15y ago
  "If what you are saying is wrong we'll find you and kick you out like dogs" - An actual dialogue blurted out by the immigration "officer" at the port of entry.
- nunb 15y ago
  Smaller ports of entry with smaller queues generally lead to more pleasant experiences. The HNL and RDU airports, for example, are very welcoming to tourist and business travellers.

kiba 15y ago

Jobs. It would seems that we have an obsession with creating jobs. If you hear politicians, and if my perception are right, they talk about jobs. Not whether or not we get more purchasing power than ever before. Not whether or not our lifestyle is more fulfilling than ever before. Jobs. More jobs. Less jobs. More competitive Americans. No manufacturing jobs. Colleges not creating enough people to fill jobs. Robots are destroying our jobs. Robots need to be maintain by something or someone, probably another robot or human being. But jobs are just proxy. A proxy for our self-worth, our independence, or whether or not we have a future. Jobs, for us, are just means to an end. Yes, some of us are musicians, football players, programmers, scientists, etc. We like our jobs. I suspect the vast majority of humans don't really enjoy all that much working their job. Rather than talking about creating jobs and destroying jobs, which is an assumption that exists in a world where there are scarcity and there's boring things to do for humans to maintain their existence, why not talk about the end, what should our goal be in life? We can then rearrange our actions in life based on our conclusion what our life should be and what we want to achieve rather than just simply on what needed to be done at this point in time. After all, if a strong FAI comes, we may not even have jobs. At the same time, we ought to figure out what's our life purpose other than going to a job and work for someone or operating a business just to simply maintain our existence. There's no longer a need to grow your food, goes to the hair saloon to cut someone's hair, pump the gas, etc. How are we going to live for the next 10,000 years and 10,000 years beyond that and so on?

potatolicious 15y ago
This is a nice thought, and might be relevant a few decades ago when America was at the top of its game in relation to all the other countries on Earth. Now, I'm not so sure. You're talking about a post-scarcity society when a growing portion of Americans can't even put food on the table or a roof over their head. You're talking the personal fulfillment when more and more Americans are forced to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. It's nice that you have the freedom and the time to ponder such ideological issues. It's nice that you're able to look higher on the hierarchy of needs rather than scrabbling for scraps. I mean that in the non-snarkiest of ways, really. But for the vast majority of the population they need a job right now. They don't have time to worry about your high-minded concepts of personal fulfillment, and whether or not a FAI will usher in a utopia of zero scarcity. They need to make rent and put groceries in the fridge this week. The politicians are focusing on jobs as a core issue because that's what's foremost on people's minds. It's foremost on people's minds because it's exactly what they need. They need more jobs in a stronger economy. Imagine if all the unemployed folk in this country just sat around waiting for the post-scarcity society to hit them upside the head!

potatolicious 15y ago

The US really needs to emulate other countries here. The problem here is that the "immigrant" visa is really the same thing as a work visa, and that leads to a great deal of abuse. For one thing, the eligibility is tied to an employer, who is incentivized to embellish, cheat, and otherwise finagle their way to a visa. The expectation that the visa is temporary also sets a lower bar for entry - even though many of these people will eventually become American PRs/citizens. The recent trend to "stage" the H-1B green card process is a step in the right direction - though it doesn't go as far as it needs to. There is still a major problem of indentured servitude. Once an employee has a green card process in the pipeline their employer has them over a barrel - and many will not hesitate to use this as an opportunity for abuse. Not to mention, with the green card backlog the way it is now, it would be years before "your huddled masses of immigrant entrepreneurs yearning to breathe free" are actually able to start businesses. First they have to go through ~8-10 years as a rank and file employee, before they're granted the legal freedom to pursue their own future. The startup visa would go a long way to alleviating that, though the heavy involvement of VCs in that initiative will mean that bootstrappers and other scrappy startups that don't want to raise hojillions in funding will be still at a severe disadvantage. How do you fix this? IMO the US needs to setup a track for immigrants to immediately receive green cards, where having a job offer is not a prerequisite (though it would certainly help). The focus needs to shift away from fulfilling "temporary shortages" (which we all know is bullshit) to simply permanent, mass importation of worthy talent. Set up the process to filter people based on the assumption that they will permanently stay, as opposed the the current process where we'll let just about anyone in, since they're "temporary" H-1Bs anyways. This will raise the calibre of people you're letting in, and also make sure you're giving top talent maximum freedom once they're here. The whole "immigration policy masquerading as work permit" thing really needs to GTFO.

flourpower 15y ago
Not that I have a solution to this problem, but who does the filtering once you remove the job offer as a prerequisite? I can't conceive of a situation where the people that get put in charge of that process are actually qualified.
- 15y ago

ry0ohki 15y ago

While I agree we need to encourage immigration, the "facts" stated in this article seem like a causation does not imply correlation argument that drive me nuts.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

jammur 15y ago

I'm shocked at the amount of xenophobia in the comments on the CNN site. Being Canadian, I have no idea whether it is representative of the population at large, but it appears that many Americans have been brainwashed into the thinking that the only immigrants are the ones driving cabs or working at fast food. The problem is that everybody has been talking themselves to death about illegal immigration, and haven't focused on the benefits of legal immigration. Does the Startup Visa have a chance in hell with the current political climate surrounding immigration in the US?

nobody314159265 15y ago
The problem is that most Americans are the descendents of the people that arrived, displaced the native population, took their land and exploited it's natural resources. So naturally they are wary of people coming along and doing the same to them. This doesn't really apply to Canada.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jnbiche 15y ago
  I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I have to ask: do you really think there were no indigenous peoples in Canada when the French and English came to settle there? Just pristine wilderness?
  - marshallp 15y ago
    different scale though, most of canada is still empty and natives can roam free if they want

muzz 15y ago

If you read TechCrunch (Wadhwa's pieces especially) or the ABC article referenced, this piece contains absolutely nothing new, just a rehash of the same things. Sparse, suspect data, plenty of correlation/causation fallacies, and topped off with a populist appeal to "create jobs"

HistoryInAction 15y ago
One issue in terms of data that I struggle with on researching this issue is that we're discussing a big empty space and wondering why it is empty. Immigrants in the US aren't allowed to build companies and create jobs unless they are very lucky/connected or they wait a long period of time to get their green card, since no visa currently exists for founders. We can't do A/B testing to see if our suspicions that we'd have more startups and more jobs for US citizens if we allowed more founders—not more blanket immigration, mind you—into the country. The people who do find a way in tend to be the best and the brightest of the pool, so our anecdata looks favorable. There seem to be indications that immigrants and first-generation citizens tend to be 'hungrier' than more established populations, though that doesn't say anything about success/failure rates. From a physics perspective, it's like hunting dark matter. We suspect that job growth would result from passing Startup Visa or STEM Green Cards, but economics theories are nowhere close to the rigor of physics theories. VCs still only invest in solid, market-driven ideas. I'd rather trust to them and to the market as a whole as to who sees success than have the government throw up artificial barriers to block non-Americans from American networks of capital and talent, especially when it means the failure to launch of startups that might make my life better. Kauffman does indicate that young companies produce the most net job growth in America: http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/kauffman-foundation-analysis-emphasizes-importance-of-young-businesses-to-job-creation-in-the-united-states.aspx http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/kauffman-foundation-analysi... , though as Steve Blank says, 'startups' are lumped together when there's a large differentiation that needs to be taken into account: http://steveblank.com/2011/09/01/why-governments-don%E2%80%99t-get-startups/ http://steveblank.com/2011/09/01/why-governments-don%E2%80%9... The best bit of public policy analysis I've seen on Startup Visa and implications for job growth is from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), but they studied the 2010 Startup Visa, which is much more limited than even the 2011 Startup Visa. The 2011 version of the bill doesn't address STEM Green Cards and is strictly limited in an attempt to pass a conservative House of Representatives, whose majority has a strong anti-immigration faction. So we're left with all of the arguments that you state. However, note that a thoughtful person like yourself isn't the target audience of something on CNN. The NFAP analysis is probably more 'chewy' for someone who wants to dive into the issue. EDIT: Forgot the NFAP link: http://www.nfap.com/pdf/092910NFAPPolicyBriefImmigrantEntrepreneurVisa.pdf http://www.nfap.com/pdf/092910NFAPPolicyBriefImmigrantEntrep...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

nobody314159265 15y ago
'our' jobs? Suppose you are in california and Caltech hires a new Yorker as a postdoc instead of you - is that any better/worse than them hiring a Canadian/Brit or German? Suppose they hired an American who had done their graduate work at oxford - is that better than hiring a Brit who had done their phd at Caltech?
- aspensmonster 15y ago
  Not to put words in greenName's mouth, but I believe the assumption is that a New Yorker and a Californian both would expect appropriate compensation for their work. Regardless of whether a citizen of the United States studied here or abroad, he would still expect a salary commiserate with his qualifications. Someone who is effectively an indentured servant on an H1-B visa will take whatever is offered to him because he knows that to do otherwise is to lose his shot at permanent residency or citizenship.
  - nobody314159265 15y ago
    Unless you gave the immigrants with STEM PhDs greencards. It just seems odd that a Yankee going to Texas is welcome but a foreigner taking the same job, paying the same US tax - but who was raised and educated at some other nations expense is somehow a threat.
    - muzz 15y ago
      > raised and educated at some other nations expense These are paid for by the other nations, not by the individuals themselves and/or their families? I.e. other nations don't have students paying their own way through college or taking out student loans, or some combo of the two?
      - BrainInAJar 15y ago

kmfrk 15y ago

One thing is work visas; another is college visas. I remember being told (as a European) in the equivalent of high school(?) that if I wanted to go to an American college, I would have to start preparations a year and a half in advance - mainly due to the time spent on processing visas. I would have loved nothing better than to go to an American college, but, at least at the time, that made it neigh-impossible to apply for an American college, when studying at a national university or, hell, another university in Europe or Britain seemed so much easier. I don't know what other people's experiences are, and it may be a cultural thing; maybe the process is otherwise facilitated in, say, India and China. EDIT: FWIW, this was after 9/11. Just to account for whatever that may have changed.

HistoryInAction 15y ago
The NYT had an interesting article about increasing numbers of international students on American campuses, possibly for financial reasons, since most universities are not need-blind for international students. I'm guessing it's easier now, and there are certainly professionals who facilitate the process in China, according to the article. http://chronicle.com/article/Chinese-Students-Prove-a/129628/ http://chronicle.com/article/Chinese-Students-Prove-a/129628...

microarchitect 15y ago

Why doesn't the US move to a points-based system like the UK and Canada? This seems like a simple and sensible solution to a complex problem that ensures that the people who immigrate are in some sense "useful" to the country. I also don't understand why the green card backlog isn't being handled efficiently. Surely, if somebody is paying, say more than 20k in income taxes every year for, say 5 years in a row, there is reason to believe their contribution to the country is a net positive. Why not just give them citizenship and be done with it? As an outsider, I feel like the US is the opposite of an "agile" government. It seems like there is a lot bickering and fear-mongering at every level and important decisions are being made based on populism and emotional appeals rather than rational decision making. I'm not sure if this is really the case because my news sources are the likes of Reddit and the so-called "liberal media", but unfortunately this is perception I get.

HistoryInAction 15y ago
"As an outsider, I feel like the US is the opposite of an "agile" government." For about every aspect of the US federal government, you're right: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/us-government-blows-200000-on-useless-smartphone-app/16533 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/us-government-blows-20000... It's /really/ hard to manage the world's largest GDP effectively. Governmental gridlock tends towards the status quo and institutional inertia is huge. This is Vernon Vinge's 'to scale, you need complexity, but complexity inevitably leads to collapse' theories in action.
- microarchitect 15y ago
  It's /really/ hard to manage the world's largest GDP effectively. If any country can do it, it's the US. The universities attract the smartest students from all over the world, and have the best faculty in the world by a large margin. The government simply needs to figure out how to harness all the brainpower to solve real-world problems.
  - untog 15y ago
    But you're assuming that all the smartest students in the world go to work for the government. They never do- salaries would have to go up a ton before that happens. And tax payers would never allow that.

greenName 15y ago

Increase supply of labor, decrease wages. Econ 101, folks. The Wall Street types benefit from immigration. There might be "more jobs" but there will be lower pay checks. Working Americans are the targets in this upper class scam. Polls show that most Americans are for moderating immigration. Strangely, rich Democrats are the ones most for open borders and "free" trade. The party of labor? No way.

gjm11 15y ago
Decreased wages for those who have jobs, plus more people having jobs, might be an excellent tradeoff even if it wouldn't appeal to a 100% selfish person who has a job and doesn't fear losing it. And you need to be awfully careful about what "polls show that most Americans are for". For example, polls show that most Americans would like to see US foreign aid reduced from about 25% of GDP to about 10% of the federal budget. The trouble is that the actual level of US foreign aid is about 1% of the federal budget. So, do "polls show" that most Americans would like foreign aid cut by 2.5x, or that most Americans would like foreign aid increased by 10x? -- In the absence of more information about what "most Americans" actually think the level of immigration is, and what they think its impact is, polls purporting to show that most Americans would like more or less immigration are pretty uninformative about what would actually benefit most Americans, or what they would choose if they had better information. It would be better to keep party politics out of this. (Though from what you've written I wonder whether party politics are your only reason for being interested in the matter at all.)

mgh2 15y ago

Americans need to support the Startup Visa: http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2010/03/support-startup-visa.html http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2010/03/support-startup-vi... I think Obama is starting to hear too: http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2011/04/startup-america-tell-white-house-how-to.html http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2011/04/startup-america-te...

unfare 15y ago

The editor are modding all dissent in this page down. Can't handle another side of the story ? Shame.

philwelch 15y ago
"Editor"? That's not how HN works.
10100101001 15y ago
That's the readers of this site who are modding the dissent down.

resnamen 15y ago

It's not a zero-sum game when you bring in bright people. Smart people create opportunity around them. On the other hand, I'm not so enthusiastic about lowering immigration barriers so we can get cheap workers to robotically throw together CRUD forms. (I guess that work is outsourced, anyway?)

georgemcbay 15y ago

I'm pro-immigration, but the article still feels like a bit of a sham to me by highlightling Brin, Omidyar and Yang without addressing the fact that Sergey Brin immigrated to America when he was 6, Pierre Omidyar was also 6 and Jerry Yang was 10. How do you know then that they'll be massive job creators? Certainly each of them had ambitious parents and that's something, but then so does just about everyone who actively works to immigrate to a new place for a better life... assuming we can't figure out who the next Brin will be when they are 6 or 10 (and we can't), is the author arguing we should just open up the floodgates to everyone with educated parents? Because that's a heckofalot of people.

HistoryInAction 15y ago
But since we don't have a visa that allows for entrepreneurial founders to immigrate here, how can we have examples to highlight their potential contributions? The closest thing we can do is point to similar people. Personally, I think that Vinod Khosla and Manu Kumar are better examples. I'm of the understanding that Khosla didn't have a valid visa when Sun was founded, but an exemption was made because of the sheer success of the company from nearly day 1. The other thing I want to look at is people like Robin Li of Baidu, American educated, employed by American companies, but when it came time to create a company, he went home. Possibly, even likely, that was because a company serving Chinese should be based in China, but it's certain that since he didn't have a green card, he wouldn't be able to get a visa as a founder to stay here. America loses when people who could stay here to found companies return to their country to create jobs and foreign competition there.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  I don't disagree with you at all on the immigration issues and I fully support fast track immigration & citizenship for high-value immigrants, I just think it is intellectually dishonest to use 3 founders who all immigrated before they were teenagers as examples for a point the author was trying to make when they don't really fit the narrative. That the author didn't even mention the age that these men immigrated makes it feel like she was trying to pull a fast one on the reader who has heard the names but isn't really familiar with their stories (which will be most readers). As far as Baidu goes, I don't think it could exist as a non-Chinese company, and more because of China's government policies than the USA's.

barumrho 15y ago

In Canada, international students are given work permit up to 3 years after graduation and after 1 year of full-time employment they can apply for permanent residency. I think the US could benefit from a similar policy.

incosta 15y ago

I agree that US needs an entrepreneur visas. But I disagree with author's suggestion that all US-educated graduates must be given green cards. A lot of them came to US to study because they could afford it (often via wealthy parents). I don't think it's fair to give green cards only because they graduated from a US university thanks to their rich parents. Foreign students have one year after graduation to find an employer, convert to H-1B and then ask the employer to sponsor the green card. Nothing wrong with this. However, of course H1-B to green card to citizenship must be done in a more timely manner. In many cases it takes too long. The time spent on waiting for the green card (sometimes as long as 4-5 years or even more, due to slow bureaucracy) must be in some way counted towards the citizenship requirement of 5-year residency. I think as baby-boomer generation starts to retire en-mass, U.S. will have no choice but to liberalize and simplify its immigration policy. It is competing against many other developed countries for younger workers and talent, and the earnings disparity is becoming less of a factor in many developing countries. There's just no way out but to make immigration process faster and more attractive if the U.S. wants to win.

HistoryInAction 15y ago
There's a 17 month extension, to 29 months, if you graduated in a technical/STEM field under Optional Practical Training (OPT) which I think you're referencing: http://www.nafsa.org/regulatory_information.sec/regulatory_document_library.dlib/sevis/opt_29_month_rule/ http://www.nafsa.org/regulatory_information.sec/regulatory_d... "But I disagree with author's suggestion that all US-educated graduates must be given green cards. A lot of them came to US to study because they could afford it (often via wealthy parents). I don't think it's fair to give green cards only because they graduated from a US university thanks to their rich parents." Very insightful! However, the green card wait times are more due to scarcity, with many more people entering the green card pipeline than by law can exit each year, rather than slow bureaucracy. I agree re: the future of immigration policy, but I think the talent war is even more important than you think. Right now, and since the 60s, US immigration policy has been aligned on a family-unification platform, and with strict numerical limits, a huge percentage of American immigration is taken up by family-based immigration. As liberal and pleasing as it is, it's going to have to go, as America will have to fully enter the competition for top talent.

redbrick 15y ago

For examples we should also be looking at all the immigrants that are working hard growing the companies - startups, small medium and large businesses they are employed for.

mbesto 15y ago

The bottom line is this: How do you assess one's talent? If this were possible then a system could work, otherwise it will never be perfect.

cletus 15y ago

I believe humanity is approaching an important turning point that will either herald in a new era and a new way of thinking or there are going to be some dark times ahead. The entire of human history has thus far been fueled by population growth. When there were 10 million of us, this wasn't a problem. When there were 100 million of us, this wasn't a problem. When there were 1 billion of us, it was mostly not a problem. Now as we zero in on 10 billion... it's becoming a problem. The way our society and our economy works should in so many ways tell you this is true. Look at the urban decay that occurred in many American cities in the 20th century. Urban decay post-WW2 was fuelled by the interstate system, the cheapening cost of owning a car and that it was cheaper to build new communities than it was to maintain existing infrastructure. Some cities experienced negative population growth with devastating consequences (eg Detroit, Baltimore). Certainly in Detroit's case, there are large swathes of the city that really need to be returned to wilderness. But who's going to pay for the demolition, relocation and clean up? The Western world is essentially dying with net migration being pretty much the only reason any Western country is growing at all. The social experiments of the early 20th century (ie state-funded retirement) are, at present rates, ultimately unsustainable when we get down to 3 or even 2 employed people pre retired person (initially it was in excess of 50 to 1 at least for Social Security). An aging population is a natural consequence of slowing population growth, just like urban decay is. So far we've largely shown ourselves at being ill-equipped at dealing with either, except for politicking around migration, which basically just kicks that can further down the street. It is my opinion that there need to be an awful lot less of us and there will be one day, one way or the other. As much as people point to space as a solution to these problems we have an economy built in basically digging not-that-deep holes for our metals. While there are metal-rich asteroids out there, the cost of moving, processing and using those materials is so many orders of magnitude more expensive (both realistically and conceivably) that I have to wonder if it will ever be comparable (although it might one day be viable just because every other way has become so expensive, which will be an earth-shattering adjustment for us all). So migration is, I believe, a short term fix. But it doesn't address what I believe to be a key driver in unemployment: we're slowly automating our way out of the most unskilled jobs (and increasingly skilled jobs too). That too will be a challenge.

Oscarus 15y ago

It's hard to take Wilkinson seriously. She contradicts herself within her first two sentences: she says America must welcome innovators, and then says the tired and poor as well. Which is it? Mexico by far has been the biggest contributor of immigrants to the US in recent decades, yet it doesn't even rank within the top 20 nations with the most immigrant entrepreneurs. Mexicans are responsible for a total of 1% of the these immigrant founded companies in California. They number about 10 million in California, far more than any other immigrant group, yet they hardly rank as a source of entrepreneurs. If growing the number of entrepreneurs is your only goal, asking the tired and poor to come here is a recipe for failure. Mexicans, despite their origins in poverty, have not achieved much in the way of tech entrepreneurship, relative to Indians, Taiwanese, Chinese, etc. Some countries are better than others in producing entrepreneurs.

fragsworth 15y ago

This logic has always bothered me, and I know lots of you will disagree, but here it is: Job creation alone is not a noble goal. It should never be used as a reason for making policy changes. There's an economic fallacy at place here. Jobs, in and of themselves, do not benefit us on the whole. You could give some number of people a "job" to walk around in circles all day long and pay them money for it, but the net effect would be that society sees no benefit from this. Productive jobs, however, are good things. There is a conflict, though: the more productive your job is, the fewer employees are necessary - actually resulting in fewer jobs. Hopefully you have witnessed this first-hand over the last few decades. Travel agencies have been replaced by Priceline, Expedia, etc. Tax specialists have been replaced by TurboTax, TaxAct, etc. Even simple legal matters can be handled by LegalZoom and the like, reducing the need for lawyers. All manufactured media products (books, news, movies, music, games) are now transferred digitally, which eliminates the need for factory workers to produce physical products. Online banking eliminates the need for bank tellers. Countless other examples. Essentially, technology kills jobs. We develop software and devices to handle what was traditionally done by people, and sell the services at a much cheaper rate because we don't have to pay for all the overhead that old services once required. This is a good thing, however. Anyway, I'm all for immigration, and I'm all for tech companies. But the fact is they destroy jobs more than they create them, and are therefore partially responsible for the current unemployment rate. The logic behind this article is all backwards because of this.

muzz 15y ago
Agreed. The term for what you describe in your third paragraph is "labor replacement". There is huge profit to be made in labor replacement, with the effect of loss of jobs. It is troubling that few readers pick up on the use of examples with gross jobs created and not net jobs created. In this case, Amit Arahoni's 9 jobs created are gross, not net. A more-clear example would be that of Craigslist. How many jobs has Craigslist created? Well, 30 jobs in gross, but likely a large negative number in net as it played a large part in displacing at least one entire industry (newspapers).
tomjen3 15y ago
You comment is a very, very important one and I hate that people don't see the difference between jobs for jobs sake and productive jobs. I mean if all we wanted was jobs we could just outlaw gasoline, electricity and non-human powered generators. That would create jobs for untold millions. It would also be utterly destructive for our standard of life/health/happiness/etc.

rzbn 15y ago

Man tell me about it. I'm working on a startup now and I've been rejected a green card. Now I have to go back. Shame really.

droithomme 15y ago

There are a lot of countries that lobby for their citizens to enjoy an open border policy where their people can be able to freely come to the US to live, work and own property. Oddly though, these countries do not have open border policies where Americans can come to live, work and own property in their countries. Let's say you are British. You can move pretty freely throughout much of Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with a minimum of hassle. If you are American, the situation is very different. There are very few countries you can easily emigrate to. Yet most countries want rights for their people to be able to immigrate to the US. I would be in favor of a global open border policy. Eliminate passports, visas, and all restrictions on the flow of people. As opposed to now where through WTO style agreements goods travel much more freely than people. But I don't support one sided policies where people can move easily in one direction but not the other.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

cletus 15y ago

The US immigration and visa situation is really quite horrendous. For example, I'm an Australian. That means I qualify for (and have) an E-3 visa. What's that you might ask? It's a special work visa created specifically for Australian nationals. It applies for two years and can be renewed indefinitely. What's more, unlike an H1B visa, it's not subject to quotas and the employer doesn't first need to "prove" they couldn't find a suitably qualified domestic worker (a system fraught with abuse that simply acts as a wealth transfer system from companies to immigration lawyers). The problem? When I need to renew it, it may take USCIS months. Plus it's more expensive than applying for a fresh visa. Also, once approved they renew your status not your visa. What does that mean? It means if you leave the country for any reason you don't have a valid visa to re-enter the US so you have to get a new visa anyway. Basically, you need to leave the country every two years to apply for a new one (since you can't apply within the US, of course). What's more, each time I will have to fill out the exact same set of questions (DS-160), make an appointment, give them my passport and wait for it to be returned. Why does this visa exist? Essentially to settle a trade dispute between the US and Australia over wheat. Australia does not subsidize wheat. The US does (as does Europe) to a huge degree, yet Australian wheat is still price competitive but the US keeps Australian wheat out of the US on the flimsy grounds of "quarantine" (something Australia complained loudly to the WTO as an artificial restriction of trade for years, which like most things that are not to the US's advantage, it simply ignored). This was eventually settled and the E3 visa was one byproduct of this. But you can see just how screwed up the system is that factors like this cause visas to be created. Others have posted about the whole H1B problem (quotas, etc) and the backlog of green card processing basically allowing employers to treat you like indentured servants. That needs to change. Some argue H1B visas are used to pay substandard wages in lieu of employing domestic workers. The substandard wages bit is true but that's because of the H1B processing problem. The real problem for domestic software engineers at least is that most people who call themselves "engineers" or "programmers" suck. I've been shocked at some of the people I've interviewed, their inability to code very simple problems and their complete lack of theoretical foundations. And those are the ones that make it past resume screening and phone screens". The government needs to accept that tech companies are basically the most mobile in the world. Look at big tech companies and you'll see they need data centers, some of which need to be in the US (which really doesn't employ that many people). Everything else can be done from anywhere*. Barriers to entry, kneejerk legislation (eg Sarbanes-Oxley) and software patents are all contributing to driving the future Googles and Facebooks elsewhere. All of this makes me a little sad actually because the US has forgotten it's route. The US is a country of immigrants (IIRC population 2 million in 1800, 50 million in 1900). One of the reasons I've come to New York to work is because I want to see it. New York is the beating heart of commerce and you can see capitalism and commerce in every form here, some pretty, some not-so-pretty. I want to see it before it doesn't exist anymore. My picture of the US is one of decay, rotting from within, collapsing under a mountain of debt and unsustainable policies that will be its downfall. The Roman Empire was enormous and collapsed. The British Empire was enormous and collapsed. Don't think it can't happen again.

etz 15y ago

how many immigrants would it be necessary to let in the country to have one of these success stories?? If we let in only the best and brightest, then success is assured! But if we do the right thing, and let nature take it's course....Assuming that the person is a 1 percenter, then it would only take one hundred people to create wealth. On the other hand, the united states has 300 million people, if 25 percent of the successful startups are by foreigners, then that would mean about 75 million people would have to enter the country to create 25 percent. All for 15 or 20 THOUSAND jobs. What will the rest do??

known 15y ago

I disagree. Unless USA aligns Immigrant & Non-immigrant Visas and Outsourcing to Caste system in India and Human Rights in China, American middle class will be destroyed. http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/29/un-says-indias-caste-system-a-human-rights-abuse.htm http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/29/un-says-indias-cas... http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-apple-workers-forced-to-sign-no-suicide-pledge/20110504.htm http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ypcx 15y ago

Funny, just today I stumbled upon this video while randomly strolling through the avenues of YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70KhYzBhT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70KhYzBhT4