13 ms·

A case for dynamic scoring of high-skilled immigration

78 points by btilly 3y ago

geebee 3y ago
I like the idea of a points system like Australia has, but I'm wary of the excessive emphasis on STEM, and I'm even less enthusiastic about the idea of empowering universities to "sell" access to US residency and work rights through overpriced MS degrees, many of which are, frankly, bullshit cash cows. Keep in mind, in Australia, plumbers and electricians get the maximum points for professional skills. So would nurses, pilots, and even lawyers (though they must be admitted to the Australian bar). Hell will freeze over before the US lawyers who write the immigration system rules agree that foreign lawyers and patent agents should have access to the US job market the way they think STEM workers should.
e63f67dd-065b 3y ago
I recently read this https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/08/22/what-happened-to-the-bills-on-employment-based-immigration/?sh=21fb10335658 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/08/22/what-... by Forbes, which pointed out that the popular idea of exempting STEM PhDs from green card caps is primarily procedural: > In July 2022, hopes were high the FY 2023 defense authorization bill would include an amendment on green cards for individuals with Ph.D.s in science and engineering. In what has become a familiar story, it was not to be. > “According to a Congressional source, the House Rules Committee did not rule the amendment in order because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the provision would cost $1 billion over 10 years,” as reported in July. “To address the issue and offset the cost, a $7,500 fee was added for the individuals who received permanent residence under the provision. However, the House Ways and Means Committee said the fee could not be included because it amounted to a tax and, therefore, violated Clause 5(a) of Rule 21 of the rules of the House of Representatives.” That's just the first order reason. The second-order cause is that there is just not enough political will to get this over the finish line -- nobody wants to spend enough political capital pushing it through all the little things that can stop a bill, so a random reason pops up every time. All the hurdles here can be overcome -- just nobody in a position to do something cares enough about it compared to all the other legislative priorities they have. As for the reason no congressman wants to spend political capital on this subject? I don't know enough about congressional politics, internal or external, to say. The primary takeaway I have about this whole saga is that it's not enough for a bill to be without much opposition -- it must have people actively pushing it through all the little vetoes that different corners of congress built into the procedure of passing bills. It's not opposition that kills bills -- it's indifference.
sharts 3y ago
"And so we are left with problems like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s recent announcement that it can’t find enough skilled workers to get its new Arizona chip plants ready in time" Wasn't this shown to be false because skilled workers exists. But just not willing to work for peanuts?
- runnerup 3y ago
  Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then let whichever companies will pay the highest salaries get the slots. This guarantees that we get the most valuable immigrants and makes it a lot harder to drive down local wages because low salary bids won’t win visa slot auctions.
  - samvher 3y ago
    Interesting idea. I'd argue that while salary correlates with value, it's not the same though. It seems most likely to me that this mechanism would just reserve the privilege of employing immigrants to a few high income sectors, rather than filter the most skilled immigrants evenly across sectors. To make it more concrete, it would be nice if NGOs could hire foreign talent just as effectively as Google can.
    - reaperman 3y ago
      I'm split on this. In the case where they need someone who has specific local knowledge and connections in the foreign locale they're serving, it makes sense. But I fear this would still be used to hire full-stack devs at non-profits for $65,000/year.
    - ftyers 3y ago
      I don't think NGOs can currently sponsor H1Bs... But maybe I'm wrong...
      - slt2021 3y ago
        not every NGOs, only universities and associated non-profities can sponsor any H-1B without going through the lottery "Universities and related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations are exempt from the cap"
coderintherye 3y ago
Dynamic scoring sounds great on the surface, but I agree with the commenters that it essentially allows for "making shit up" to drive an agenda. To make a better case, the CBO or other entity should be making predictions today and tracking how well their prediction panned out in reality. Ideally, there'd be a built-in mechanism of only allowing dynamic scoring when there is > X years of accurate predictions at > YY% and that if the average accuracy dips below that threshold then dynamic scoring is disallowed until it gets back above.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
maxweylandt 3y ago
Politicians, especially republicans, don't actually care about CBO scores, as evidenced by many many tax cuts and military expenditures. That they haven't done this just means they don't want to, a Mitt Romney here or there notwithstanding
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
coding123 3y ago
[flagged]
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  To clarify for anyone confused, "extremist leftist organizations" appears to be referring to Harvard University, Yale University and Stanford University, although one of the authors also received funding from a noted left-wing terrorist organization called the "United States Department of Defense".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Tee3993 3y ago
> U.S. government as being a net cost to the U.S. economy rather than a net benefit. How about you allow anyone who manages to get a job with decent salary? Let's say $250000 year?! Residential permit obviously includes family. Very fair, very transparent and easy to implement. This "dynamic scoring" is unfair, untransparent, and will just lead to mistreatment of foreign workers by large companies!
- flakiness 3y ago
  Someone getting a high salary doesn't signal the country's overall prospect. That might be just a "take" case where that job was supposed to be served by a US citizen. Any US citizen (or citizens in any country) doesn't want fair competition against immigrants/foreign laborers. They accept immigrants because it (is supposed to) enlarge the pie to share. That's why things like dynamic scoring attempt to capture a bigger picture. I'm personally skeptical about metrics with a lot of guess work, but I appreciate the effort here. The impact of the immigration is just hard to quantify.
  - Tee3993 3y ago
    My case is more about motivating smart people to come into US. Current system is broken. Immigration system is byzantine and unpredictable. Person can even get kicked out with very short notice. And frankly salary in US quite often does not even cover expenses (rent, insurances, taxes...). Semiconductor engineer from Taiwan has options in mainland China, Singapore, UAE... If you count expenses (living, travel and legal), cultural values, taxes... This engineer may actually make more money outside of US!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- returningfory2 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "dynamic scoring" here - maybe you mean a points based immigration system? The article is not about this. It's about how Congress scores legislation based on its economic impact, and is advocating for using a system called "dynamic scoring" for scoring immigration law. It has nothing to do with how workers are treated by companies.
balls187 3y ago
> the idea that we should make green cards more easily available to foreign-born STEM graduates. Why, just so companies can have cheaper wages? What benefit does America get by having more foreign born and trained tech workers? Why not make it easier for police, doctors, nurses, social workers, and teachers instead?
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  It enables the US to weaken other countries by draining away their intellectual capacity. Think of it as 'Cognitive Imperialism' and then it fits in well with the historical patterns of how the US treats the world.
  - rattlesnakedave 3y ago
    > It enables the US to weaken other countries by draining away their intellectual capacity Are you implying that if they don't emigrate they'll be properly utilized in a way that is a threat to the US's current hegemony? If so, why aren't these countries doing that now?
    - dahwolf 3y ago
      Well, perhaps because they can't afford it?
      - konschubert 3y ago
        So, why should ppl stay in these countries where they cannot use their skills?
        dahwolf 3y ago
        Well, that's the entire problem now, isn't it?
  - wslh 3y ago
    That is how the world works and is working until now. I don't find any surprising effect. Do you?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jmpman 3y ago
I want a bidding system for the H1B slots, paid not just once, but yearly by the companies which hire the H1Bs. That money should then go for scholarships to educate American citizens for these jobs. It first allows American citizens to compete, as they would be cheaper than the H1B salary (market rate) + fee, and it would provide funding for scholarships in areas which apparently aren’t being supplied by US graduates. In addition, there should be a multiplier on that fee for any company which lays off US citizens with that skill in the past N years.
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  The H1B and EB green cards are already pretty expensive. I’m pretty sure the USCIS is using that money to subsidize its other activities. American university education is really expensive. I don’t think any amount of money from this is going to help subsidize that. I’m not sure why it is so expensive but charging more for h1b and green cards isn’t going to help that cause. Edit: I support the idea that the US workforce should be self sufficient and not rely on immigration. That has to come through reducing cost of higher education. I just don’t trust the uscis to give up their $$ in support of that cause.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nextaccountic 3y ago
  This can only possibly work if education in US is made cheaper. Otherwise it's just free money to US universities, that are already swimming in money
- ChadNauseam 3y ago
  This is very similar to an idea proposed by the late economist William Vickrey. He suggested having an auction for visas, and distributing the revenue generated by the auction evenly between every citizen. This would somewhat align the incentives between citizens and immigrants without introducing feel-good steps like scholarship subsidies. Realistically, there's not very many Americans who could get become an engineer if only they had a little more scholarship money. Those Americans can mostly get loans to pay for college, then pay off their loans using all the extra money they make now that they're an engineer. If you have any empirical data that contradicts this I'd be interested in seeing it.
tremorscript 3y ago
I would like the H1B to be eliminated too. The new immigrant is denied some basic rights like being able to find a new job without employer permission and the america suffers because it might not get quality. Because unless the situation in your home country is really desperate or you are in your early 20s, any decent experienced professional would balk at the terms in the H1B visa. As for the standard, "immigrant keeping wages down thing". Maybe the US can look at the "Shareholder Value", "Stock Buybacks" and "Monopolies are efficient" philosophies pervading the economic establishment for "keeping the wages down".
- Akronymus 3y ago
  Tbf, many people dislike both, what they perceive as rampant immigration, and also monopolies and other such anticompetitive practices.
- ta988 3y ago
  There are different kinds of H1B. The academic ones are less problematic.
- tlb 3y ago
  Much of the pain of H1B is due to slow processing. You can change employers, but then you’re in a weird limbo until the paperwork makes it to the top of someone’s inbox. If everything was next-day processing, it’d be more humane. Perhaps LLMs can solve this.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  H1B is a non-immigrant visa. They're not supposed to be here long.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    The H1B terminates in a green card, after six years, quota willing. In fact, you don’t get an option in the matter. Compared with a true temporary work visa, like China’s Z visa, which can be renewed on every year indefinitely and doesn’t have any oath to permanent residency.
mvncleaninst 3y ago
In my graduating class for undergrad, there were like 3x as many journalism majors as there were CS majors. And it wasn't a particularly good journalism school either. Same for other majors like sports medicine, political science, etc I don't really get it tbh. Why even bother paying for college if you're just going to major in BS?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- petesergeant 3y ago
  Getting any degree opens up employment and immigration opportunities that aren’t there without one. Plus college is fun and you build social capital there.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    There is clearly a difference between a 200k degree in journalism and a 10k boot camp diploma or degree in CS It seems you could learn more, have a lot more fun, and make many more friends, if you pocketed the 190k and used the money for 4 years of debauchery around the world.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  My sister quickly dropped out of getting an English degree. She just had no realistic idea or plans for what to do after HS, and college was pushed as the thing to do. When I was in HS, councilors looked at me like I was an idiot when I said I didn’t want to go to college after HS (admittedly I regret it, but didn’t affect my “success”)
- klooney 3y ago
  What year? My sense is that the Humanities have seem steep enrollment declines as the new reality sets in.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bettercallsalad 3y ago
US Congress will never fix the immigration system. Not my lifetime at least. The reason is rooted into how PACs and in turn mega money and corporations work behind the scene to fund and elect politicians. It’s advantageous for companies such as Google or Amazon to have a pool of labor that cannot leave their job without jeopardizing the immigration status of them and their family. It keeps competition down and less turnover. The status quo also serves easily talking point for politicians to flame their base. Immigration is no longer a policy issue as it should be. It’s now a way for politicians to score easy points. One side thinks it’s an attempt on electoral demographics change while other side wants broad reforms under the umbrella of “comprehensive immigration reform” - for them even skilled worker immigration I should be tied to the whole dreamers act. At the end it’s not going anywhere with the current status quo. Backlogs are ever growing and some of the case dates are as long as 50years.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
nologic01 3y ago
The macroeconomic models underlying such economist proposals [1] are complex unwieldy frameworks that can be coaxed to prove whatever you want to prove. Biases are injected at all steps of the process: the data collection, the construction of the model and its application. Furthermore they have a good track record of never predicting anything that actually happens. Yet it is clear that important policy questions cannot be settled by shouting. For the longest time the challenge for (macro)economists was to break-down their tools and make them understandable to wider audiences. Separate ideology from empirical fact. You can't operate in a democracy by arguing that some black box said so (incidentally a lesson also for the various AI acolytes). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_scoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_scoring
lgleason 3y ago
All of these immigration programs are labor arbitrage designed to reduce wages for US citizens...supply and demand. If you are a US citizen software developer and ever wondered why you are not able to earn more money you can thank the special interests that flung the doors open with the H1B program to reduce worker costs. The part of that which is genius is that the wealthy who benefit economically from this have figured out that it is easy to manipulate the masses into thinking that it is morally wrong to block these immigrants to come to the US. The wealthy continue to get wealthier and the rest see their standard of living continue to go down. Also, while in theory, these programs are supposed to attract the best and the brightest, the reality is different. In software, some that come in are good, but a large number have substandard skills.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- aiisahik 3y ago
  > If you are a US citizen software developer and ever wondered why you are not able to earn more money you can thank the special interests that flung the doors open with the H1B program to reduce worker costs. You would be right if most startups were not already hiring mostly remote engineers from LATAM. If you can't compete against H1Bs (mostly Indian outsourcing companies) as a US based software engineer, you definitely can't compete against LATAM remote engineers with 10 yrs of experience and costs $100k all in (no payroll taxes, no benefits). The real difference between someone who resides physically in the US vs a remote worker is that the person physically in the US: - pays taxes - raises families - starts companies
  - lgleason 3y ago
    If remote LATAM is that much of a game changer then we should see US software salaries continue to go down and a salary equalization that ends up being much lower than the current US market rates.
    - aiisahik 3y ago

78 points by btilly 3y ago

I like the idea of a points system like Australia has, but I'm wary of the excessive emphasis on STEM, and I'm even less enthusiastic about the idea of empowering universities to "sell" access to US residency and work rights through overpriced MS degrees, many of which are, frankly, bullshit cash cows. Keep in mind, in Australia, plumbers and electricians get the maximum points for professional skills. So would nurses, pilots, and even lawyers (though they must be admitted to the Australian bar). Hell will freeze over before the US lawyers who write the immigration system rules agree that foreign lawyers and patent agents should have access to the US job market the way they think STEM workers should.

e63f67dd-065b 3y ago

I recently read this https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/08/22/what-happened-to-the-bills-on-employment-based-immigration/?sh=21fb10335658 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/08/22/what-... by Forbes, which pointed out that the popular idea of exempting STEM PhDs from green card caps is primarily procedural: > In July 2022, hopes were high the FY 2023 defense authorization bill would include an amendment on green cards for individuals with Ph.D.s in science and engineering. In what has become a familiar story, it was not to be. > “According to a Congressional source, the House Rules Committee did not rule the amendment in order because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the provision would cost $1 billion over 10 years,” as reported in July. “To address the issue and offset the cost, a $7,500 fee was added for the individuals who received permanent residence under the provision. However, the House Ways and Means Committee said the fee could not be included because it amounted to a tax and, therefore, violated Clause 5(a) of Rule 21 of the rules of the House of Representatives.” That's just the first order reason. The second-order cause is that there is just not enough political will to get this over the finish line -- nobody wants to spend enough political capital pushing it through all the little things that can stop a bill, so a random reason pops up every time. All the hurdles here can be overcome -- just nobody in a position to do something cares enough about it compared to all the other legislative priorities they have. As for the reason no congressman wants to spend political capital on this subject? I don't know enough about congressional politics, internal or external, to say. The primary takeaway I have about this whole saga is that it's not enough for a bill to be without much opposition -- it must have people actively pushing it through all the little vetoes that different corners of congress built into the procedure of passing bills. It's not opposition that kills bills -- it's indifference.

sharts 3y ago

"And so we are left with problems like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s recent announcement that it can’t find enough skilled workers to get its new Arizona chip plants ready in time" Wasn't this shown to be false because skilled workers exists. But just not willing to work for peanuts?

runnerup 3y ago
Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then let whichever companies will pay the highest salaries get the slots. This guarantees that we get the most valuable immigrants and makes it a lot harder to drive down local wages because low salary bids won’t win visa slot auctions.
- samvher 3y ago
  Interesting idea. I'd argue that while salary correlates with value, it's not the same though. It seems most likely to me that this mechanism would just reserve the privilege of employing immigrants to a few high income sectors, rather than filter the most skilled immigrants evenly across sectors. To make it more concrete, it would be nice if NGOs could hire foreign talent just as effectively as Google can.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    I'm split on this. In the case where they need someone who has specific local knowledge and connections in the foreign locale they're serving, it makes sense. But I fear this would still be used to hire full-stack devs at non-profits for $65,000/year.
  - ftyers 3y ago
    I don't think NGOs can currently sponsor H1Bs... But maybe I'm wrong...
    - slt2021 3y ago
      not every NGOs, only universities and associated non-profities can sponsor any H-1B without going through the lottery "Universities and related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations are exempt from the cap"

coderintherye 3y ago

Dynamic scoring sounds great on the surface, but I agree with the commenters that it essentially allows for "making shit up" to drive an agenda. To make a better case, the CBO or other entity should be making predictions today and tracking how well their prediction panned out in reality. Ideally, there'd be a built-in mechanism of only allowing dynamic scoring when there is > X years of accurate predictions at > YY% and that if the average accuracy dips below that threshold then dynamic scoring is disallowed until it gets back above.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

maxweylandt 3y ago

Politicians, especially republicans, don't actually care about CBO scores, as evidenced by many many tax cuts and military expenditures. That they haven't done this just means they don't want to, a Mitt Romney here or there notwithstanding

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

coding123 3y ago

[flagged]

InitialLastName 3y ago
To clarify for anyone confused, "extremist leftist organizations" appears to be referring to Harvard University, Yale University and Stanford University, although one of the authors also received funding from a noted left-wing terrorist organization called the "United States Department of Defense".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Tee3993 3y ago

> U.S. government as being a net cost to the U.S. economy rather than a net benefit. How about you allow anyone who manages to get a job with decent salary? Let's say $250000 year?! Residential permit obviously includes family. Very fair, very transparent and easy to implement. This "dynamic scoring" is unfair, untransparent, and will just lead to mistreatment of foreign workers by large companies!

flakiness 3y ago
Someone getting a high salary doesn't signal the country's overall prospect. That might be just a "take" case where that job was supposed to be served by a US citizen. Any US citizen (or citizens in any country) doesn't want fair competition against immigrants/foreign laborers. They accept immigrants because it (is supposed to) enlarge the pie to share. That's why things like dynamic scoring attempt to capture a bigger picture. I'm personally skeptical about metrics with a lot of guess work, but I appreciate the effort here. The impact of the immigration is just hard to quantify.
- Tee3993 3y ago
  My case is more about motivating smart people to come into US. Current system is broken. Immigration system is byzantine and unpredictable. Person can even get kicked out with very short notice. And frankly salary in US quite often does not even cover expenses (rent, insurances, taxes...). Semiconductor engineer from Taiwan has options in mainland China, Singapore, UAE... If you count expenses (living, travel and legal), cultural values, taxes... This engineer may actually make more money outside of US!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
returningfory2 3y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "dynamic scoring" here - maybe you mean a points based immigration system? The article is not about this. It's about how Congress scores legislation based on its economic impact, and is advocating for using a system called "dynamic scoring" for scoring immigration law. It has nothing to do with how workers are treated by companies.

balls187 3y ago

> the idea that we should make green cards more easily available to foreign-born STEM graduates. Why, just so companies can have cheaper wages? What benefit does America get by having more foreign born and trained tech workers? Why not make it easier for police, doctors, nurses, social workers, and teachers instead?

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
It enables the US to weaken other countries by draining away their intellectual capacity. Think of it as 'Cognitive Imperialism' and then it fits in well with the historical patterns of how the US treats the world.
- rattlesnakedave 3y ago
  > It enables the US to weaken other countries by draining away their intellectual capacity Are you implying that if they don't emigrate they'll be properly utilized in a way that is a threat to the US's current hegemony? If so, why aren't these countries doing that now?
  - dahwolf 3y ago
    Well, perhaps because they can't afford it?
    - konschubert 3y ago
      So, why should ppl stay in these countries where they cannot use their skills?
      - dahwolf 3y ago
        Well, that's the entire problem now, isn't it?
- wslh 3y ago
  That is how the world works and is working until now. I don't find any surprising effect. Do you?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jmpman 3y ago

I want a bidding system for the H1B slots, paid not just once, but yearly by the companies which hire the H1Bs. That money should then go for scholarships to educate American citizens for these jobs. It first allows American citizens to compete, as they would be cheaper than the H1B salary (market rate) + fee, and it would provide funding for scholarships in areas which apparently aren’t being supplied by US graduates. In addition, there should be a multiplier on that fee for any company which lays off US citizens with that skill in the past N years.

orochimaaru 3y ago
The H1B and EB green cards are already pretty expensive. I’m pretty sure the USCIS is using that money to subsidize its other activities. American university education is really expensive. I don’t think any amount of money from this is going to help subsidize that. I’m not sure why it is so expensive but charging more for h1b and green cards isn’t going to help that cause. Edit: I support the idea that the US workforce should be self sufficient and not rely on immigration. That has to come through reducing cost of higher education. I just don’t trust the uscis to give up their $$ in support of that cause.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nextaccountic 3y ago
This can only possibly work if education in US is made cheaper. Otherwise it's just free money to US universities, that are already swimming in money
ChadNauseam 3y ago
This is very similar to an idea proposed by the late economist William Vickrey. He suggested having an auction for visas, and distributing the revenue generated by the auction evenly between every citizen. This would somewhat align the incentives between citizens and immigrants without introducing feel-good steps like scholarship subsidies. Realistically, there's not very many Americans who could get become an engineer if only they had a little more scholarship money. Those Americans can mostly get loans to pay for college, then pay off their loans using all the extra money they make now that they're an engineer. If you have any empirical data that contradicts this I'd be interested in seeing it.

tremorscript 3y ago

I would like the H1B to be eliminated too. The new immigrant is denied some basic rights like being able to find a new job without employer permission and the america suffers because it might not get quality. Because unless the situation in your home country is really desperate or you are in your early 20s, any decent experienced professional would balk at the terms in the H1B visa. As for the standard, "immigrant keeping wages down thing". Maybe the US can look at the "Shareholder Value", "Stock Buybacks" and "Monopolies are efficient" philosophies pervading the economic establishment for "keeping the wages down".

Akronymus 3y ago
Tbf, many people dislike both, what they perceive as rampant immigration, and also monopolies and other such anticompetitive practices.
ta988 3y ago
There are different kinds of H1B. The academic ones are less problematic.
tlb 3y ago
Much of the pain of H1B is due to slow processing. You can change employers, but then you’re in a weird limbo until the paperwork makes it to the top of someone’s inbox. If everything was next-day processing, it’d be more humane. Perhaps LLMs can solve this.
linuxftw 3y ago
H1B is a non-immigrant visa. They're not supposed to be here long.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  The H1B terminates in a green card, after six years, quota willing. In fact, you don’t get an option in the matter. Compared with a true temporary work visa, like China’s Z visa, which can be renewed on every year indefinitely and doesn’t have any oath to permanent residency.

mvncleaninst 3y ago

In my graduating class for undergrad, there were like 3x as many journalism majors as there were CS majors. And it wasn't a particularly good journalism school either. Same for other majors like sports medicine, political science, etc I don't really get it tbh. Why even bother paying for college if you're just going to major in BS?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
petesergeant 3y ago
Getting any degree opens up employment and immigration opportunities that aren’t there without one. Plus college is fun and you build social capital there.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  There is clearly a difference between a 200k degree in journalism and a 10k boot camp diploma or degree in CS It seems you could learn more, have a lot more fun, and make many more friends, if you pocketed the 190k and used the money for 4 years of debauchery around the world.
the_only_law 3y ago
My sister quickly dropped out of getting an English degree. She just had no realistic idea or plans for what to do after HS, and college was pushed as the thing to do. When I was in HS, councilors looked at me like I was an idiot when I said I didn’t want to go to college after HS (admittedly I regret it, but didn’t affect my “success”)
klooney 3y ago
What year? My sense is that the Humanities have seem steep enrollment declines as the new reality sets in.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

bettercallsalad 3y ago

US Congress will never fix the immigration system. Not my lifetime at least. The reason is rooted into how PACs and in turn mega money and corporations work behind the scene to fund and elect politicians. It’s advantageous for companies such as Google or Amazon to have a pool of labor that cannot leave their job without jeopardizing the immigration status of them and their family. It keeps competition down and less turnover. The status quo also serves easily talking point for politicians to flame their base. Immigration is no longer a policy issue as it should be. It’s now a way for politicians to score easy points. One side thinks it’s an attempt on electoral demographics change while other side wants broad reforms under the umbrella of “comprehensive immigration reform” - for them even skilled worker immigration I should be tied to the whole dreamers act. At the end it’s not going anywhere with the current status quo. Backlogs are ever growing and some of the case dates are as long as 50years.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

nologic01 3y ago

The macroeconomic models underlying such economist proposals [1] are complex unwieldy frameworks that can be coaxed to prove whatever you want to prove. Biases are injected at all steps of the process: the data collection, the construction of the model and its application. Furthermore they have a good track record of never predicting anything that actually happens. Yet it is clear that important policy questions cannot be settled by shouting. For the longest time the challenge for (macro)economists was to break-down their tools and make them understandable to wider audiences. Separate ideology from empirical fact. You can't operate in a democracy by arguing that some black box said so (incidentally a lesson also for the various AI acolytes). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_scoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_scoring

lgleason 3y ago

All of these immigration programs are labor arbitrage designed to reduce wages for US citizens...supply and demand. If you are a US citizen software developer and ever wondered why you are not able to earn more money you can thank the special interests that flung the doors open with the H1B program to reduce worker costs. The part of that which is genius is that the wealthy who benefit economically from this have figured out that it is easy to manipulate the masses into thinking that it is morally wrong to block these immigrants to come to the US. The wealthy continue to get wealthier and the rest see their standard of living continue to go down. Also, while in theory, these programs are supposed to attract the best and the brightest, the reality is different. In software, some that come in are good, but a large number have substandard skills.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aiisahik 3y ago
> If you are a US citizen software developer and ever wondered why you are not able to earn more money you can thank the special interests that flung the doors open with the H1B program to reduce worker costs. You would be right if most startups were not already hiring mostly remote engineers from LATAM. If you can't compete against H1Bs (mostly Indian outsourcing companies) as a US based software engineer, you definitely can't compete against LATAM remote engineers with 10 yrs of experience and costs $100k all in (no payroll taxes, no benefits). The real difference between someone who resides physically in the US vs a remote worker is that the person physically in the US: - pays taxes - raises families - starts companies
- lgleason 3y ago
  If remote LATAM is that much of a game changer then we should see US software salaries continue to go down and a salary equalization that ends up being much lower than the current US market rates.
  - aiisahik 3y ago