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>It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and

>It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and that money stays within our economy. Versus employing workers elsewhere, where American's can't easily be hired, and those resources leave the US. I want to pick on this point, because it's the general refrain about this topic. If there is some thing that American workers can't do in an in-demand field, and the government sets up a system to allow non-citizens to do those jobs, most people will say that this "helps" America. But does it? If the education pipeline is inadequately preparing Americans for being competitive in this in-demand field then perhaps that is the problem that should be addressed. Right now it feels like we have a (highly suspect) "labor shortage" that is addressed via immigration, which doesn't send a signal back to the educational/training infrastructure that they're doing something wrong.

chabons 2y ago
I don't have statistics, but given the student visa -> H-1B pipeline changes, it would seem there are a number of H-1B holders who are educated in US colleges (either at the undergrad or graduate level). This indicates that the problem is not entirely a training gap.
hash872 2y ago
The US is only 4% of the world's population, so there's an enormous number of extremely smart people who live outside its present borders. I don't think anyone believes that even the world's greatest educational system can bring all of its students up to an extremely high level of general intelligence. We should be letting very smart people born outside the US emigrate here, which is a win-win for everyone involved
- remarkEon 2y ago
  Sure. But the government of the United States is, allegedly, there for the benefit of its citizens. I'm not really following where this "should" comes from. "Should" in what volume? "Should" over what time frame?
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    If you don't think that having Linus Torvalds as a US citizen tremendously benefits the US public as a whole, enough to offset any imagined downsides of a great many merely average immigrating tech workers, there's nothing more to be said. And that's just him alone but he is merely one example of many other famous examples.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      Linus works from home, he could do that from anywhere.
      - defrost 2y ago
        Indeed. The benefit to the US if he is a citizen is that then his taxes flow to the US and if he's resident his local spending flows to the US economy and that of any geo immediate coworkers there for the face time.
        throwaway48476 2y ago
        There is only one linus, and his personal economic impact is trivial compared to that of the linux project.
    - tester756 2y ago
      What would it give US if they had Linus as an citizen?
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      If you're gonna name famous people, there's already an O-1 visa program for that. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/o-1-visa-individuals-with-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
      - plynium 2y ago
- sebastianz 2y ago
  > which is a win-win for everyone involved Well... not for everyone involved. It's definitely a "lose" for the countries they are leaving from, that educated them.
titanomachy 2y ago
The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering, just like they're not smart enough to be a doctor or college professor. All cognitively demanding jobs compete for the same (probably single-digit) percent of the workforce. Better education could certainly prepare more people to do these jobs, but it's not a given that there are enough smart people in the domestic workforce to do all the cognitively-demanding jobs. If thousands of the smartest people from the rest of the world want to move to the US and fill these gaps, doesn't that make America better off overall?
- remarkEon 2y ago
  >The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering, This point, assuming for a moment that it's actually true, would matter if "complex software engineering" was all that this was being used for. Complex for whom?
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering How many jobs require complex SW engineering rather than basic SW engineering?
- kbolino 2y ago
  This is just brain-draining the rest of the world for the short-term boosting of some myopic statistics. This isn't going to improve the employability of median-intelligence people, and in the long run, it's going to exacerbate the same problem, but now globally.
upbeat_general 2y ago
I think a lot of these comments don’t properly capture the benefit. The more skilled workers, the more startups/companies, not to mention smarter people. But the effect is bigger than that, by allowing skilled immigration, it makes US universities and tech companies the best in the world, at the very least seen as such, which has tremendous larger effects. It’s not a coincidence that we have the largest tech industry, and it’s not because we magically have smarter people.
- tiznow 2y ago
  Try repeating this to a developer out of work right now.
hedora 2y ago
Honestly, the US needs to (and used to) do both. We should have a world-class public education system, and we should aggressively get the best and the brightest people to move here. It seems unlikely we’ll do either of those things moving forward. At least China’s investing in green tech, I guess.

chabons 2y ago

I don't have statistics, but given the student visa -> H-1B pipeline changes, it would seem there are a number of H-1B holders who are educated in US colleges (either at the undergrad or graduate level). This indicates that the problem is not entirely a training gap.

hash872 2y ago

The US is only 4% of the world's population, so there's an enormous number of extremely smart people who live outside its present borders. I don't think anyone believes that even the world's greatest educational system can bring all of its students up to an extremely high level of general intelligence. We should be letting very smart people born outside the US emigrate here, which is a win-win for everyone involved

remarkEon 2y ago
Sure. But the government of the United States is, allegedly, there for the benefit of its citizens. I'm not really following where this "should" comes from. "Should" in what volume? "Should" over what time frame?
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  If you don't think that having Linus Torvalds as a US citizen tremendously benefits the US public as a whole, enough to offset any imagined downsides of a great many merely average immigrating tech workers, there's nothing more to be said. And that's just him alone but he is merely one example of many other famous examples.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Linus works from home, he could do that from anywhere.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Indeed. The benefit to the US if he is a citizen is that then his taxes flow to the US and if he's resident his local spending flows to the US economy and that of any geo immediate coworkers there for the face time.
      - throwaway48476 2y ago
        There is only one linus, and his personal economic impact is trivial compared to that of the linux project.
  - tester756 2y ago
    What would it give US if they had Linus as an citizen?
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    If you're gonna name famous people, there's already an O-1 visa program for that. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/o-1-visa-individuals-with-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
    - plynium 2y ago
sebastianz 2y ago
> which is a win-win for everyone involved Well... not for everyone involved. It's definitely a "lose" for the countries they are leaving from, that educated them.

titanomachy 2y ago

The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering, just like they're not smart enough to be a doctor or college professor. All cognitively demanding jobs compete for the same (probably single-digit) percent of the workforce. Better education could certainly prepare more people to do these jobs, but it's not a given that there are enough smart people in the domestic workforce to do all the cognitively-demanding jobs. If thousands of the smartest people from the rest of the world want to move to the US and fill these gaps, doesn't that make America better off overall?

remarkEon 2y ago
>The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering, This point, assuming for a moment that it's actually true, would matter if "complex software engineering" was all that this was being used for. Complex for whom?
Cumpiler69 2y ago
>The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering How many jobs require complex SW engineering rather than basic SW engineering?
kbolino 2y ago
This is just brain-draining the rest of the world for the short-term boosting of some myopic statistics. This isn't going to improve the employability of median-intelligence people, and in the long run, it's going to exacerbate the same problem, but now globally.

upbeat_general 2y ago

I think a lot of these comments don’t properly capture the benefit. The more skilled workers, the more startups/companies, not to mention smarter people. But the effect is bigger than that, by allowing skilled immigration, it makes US universities and tech companies the best in the world, at the very least seen as such, which has tremendous larger effects. It’s not a coincidence that we have the largest tech industry, and it’s not because we magically have smarter people.

tiznow 2y ago
Try repeating this to a developer out of work right now.

hedora 2y ago

Honestly, the US needs to (and used to) do both. We should have a world-class public education system, and we should aggressively get the best and the brightest people to move here. It seems unlikely we’ll do either of those things moving forward. At least China’s investing in green tech, I guess.