6 ms·

Steve Jobs told Obama something similar once. The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities. Basi

Steve Jobs told Obama something similar once. The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities. Basically give those workers a visa along with their diploma. Obama thought the idea was intriguing and mentioned it multiple times to his advisors. It never went anywhere though. Brain draining the rest of the world is one of the main reasons for America’s success. It is due to America being a nation of immigrants that we can do this.

nextos 2y ago
> The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. But that would not make sense for top universities where there is a fierce competition for spots. [1] https://www.dtu.dk/english/newsarchive/2022/11/udenlandske-studerende-bliver-i-danmark-og-tjener-millioner https://www.dtu.dk/english/newsarchive/2022/11/udenlandske-s...
- toast0 2y ago
  > I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on US schools attract international students because most will pay full tuition, subsidizing costs for local students.
  - lmz 2y ago
    i.e. they're mostly not looking for good ones, just paying ones.
  - j7ake 2y ago
    Not true at the PhD level
- lxgr 2y ago
  > I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. Seems like you understand the point after all :) US tertiary education is the perfect export good: Like other intellectual property, it's almost infinitely fungible, and parents from all over the world will part with staggering amounts of money for it. The quality is definitely high, but the markup compared to other countries' universities is something else.
  - sdsd 2y ago
    It's not just money - the ability to educate the rest of the world's elites is a form of soft power.
  - kelipso 2y ago
    For Master's degree it makes sense because the students pay tuition. For most PhDs, the students don't pay tuition and get an additional stipend, so it doesn't make sense. Plenty of (most?) PhD grads stay but we are currently paying international students to do their PhD and then provide very little incentive for them to stay afterwards.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Japan is very good at this. They’re essentially like “You got someone willing to pay you? Cool, come on in.” Then after 5 years you can (if you want) naturalize, and after 10 you can get permanent residency. No random nation based limits like the US somehow has.
  - rsanek 2y ago
    should we be looking to Japan for advice on how to grow an economy?
    - krapp 2y ago
      Growing the economy is no longer an option for the US, we need to worry about managing our inevitable decline and likely collapse.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      I think you should be looking to them for advice on how to not grow an economy without having everyone collapse in despair.
- brazzy 2y ago
  > I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. Another reason would be to generate goodwill and potential future business relations for your country. Can be pretty valuable for your export-oriented businesses.
- ant6n 2y ago
  > I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on Exporting knowledge, culture and contacts
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Colleges want international students because they pay full price and don’t get financial aid.
jazzyjackson 2y ago
Im reading a charming book called Tramps and Ladies, an autobiography of a ship captain of the Cunard line in the transition from sail to steam. The last chapter I read paints a picture of the unrestricted immigration of the 1900s - anyone with 5 pounds could hop on a ship in Hamburg, Liverpool, or Piraeus and start a new life in the States, and people poured into New York in the millions. I wonder if the mass emigration was a factor leading up to the Great War. Anyhow consider me demoralized, i cant picture anything the US could do in the next decade to turn the ship around from the fuck-it-all perestroika we've adopted as federal policy. (Speaking of turning the ship around, I'm looking forward to my 8 day east bound crossing from NYC to Southampton at the end of the month. The ship is capable of doing it in 5 days but the demand isn't there to pay the extra cost to run the turbines at full steam.)
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  What cruise line? I want to do a true transatlantic crossing, not some Caribbean jaunt.
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 is all that’s left of the oceanliners (As Janet from the Good Place might say, “not a cruise ship!” ;) she’s built to handle the North Atlantic weather. If you’re lucky enough to be able to fuck off for 42 days you might also be interested in ocean crossings by sail, here’s the offering ive considered, the Europa: https://www.barkeuropa.com/en/our-voyages https://www.barkeuropa.com/en/our-voyages
    - unethical_ban 2y ago
      That sailing ship looks freaking awesome. I just wonder how I'd leave the Azores after those trips end. Heh. Thanks for the information! And I might have time to fuck off, I'm burnt out of my job and thinking of quitting in summer time.
toast0 2y ago
> Basically give those workers a visa along with their diploma. > Obama thought the idea was intriguing and mentioned it multiple times to his advisors. It never went anywhere though. This sounds like OPT on an F-1 visa. If the OPT employer likes you, then they sponsor your H-1B application, and with your masters+ degree from an American institution, you get two shots in the lottery. (And if there's a recession, the caps might not get hit anyway). Kind of a drag because you'll probably need to get a masters degree, but it'll help your immigration file later if you want to try for permanent residency, or if you give up and pick a new host country.
YZF 2y ago
In Canada it's pretty much like this. If you graduate from a Canadian university you can get a work permit and a path to permanent residence and citizenship. Lots of software engineers around here that took that route.
jcarrano 2y ago
The way they do it in Germany is very sensible. There are clear requirements: have a degree and a salary offer above a certain threshold, and if you fulfill them you are in. No lottery nonsense or employer involvement required beyond signing an offer. The salary threshold is lower for graduates from German universities.
thrwwy001 2y ago
> Brain draining the rest of the world is one of the main reasons for America’s success. Not true. America was successful regardless of immigration. For example, for much of the 20th century, the US banned immigration from most of the world. Look up the history of US immigration bans. It's quite enlightening > It is due to America being a nation of immigrants that we can do this. America is not and never has been a nation of immigrants. At no time in US history has immigrants represented anywhere close to the majority of the US population. America was always a nation of native born americans. Not immigrants.
- lacerrr 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_St... > Due to its history the United States can be described as an immigration country. Being a nation of immigrants does not mean the majority of the population are migrants at any given point in time. You need to consider how many waves of migration have arrived in the USA one after another, not all at once.
rozap 2y ago
It's wild that this isn't a thing. As a US citizen, I graduated from a Canadian school and was immediately given a work visa, no questions asked. I never looked into it but I'm surprised that the US doesn't do this.

nextos 2y ago

> The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. But that would not make sense for top universities where there is a fierce competition for spots. [1] https://www.dtu.dk/english/newsarchive/2022/11/udenlandske-studerende-bliver-i-danmark-og-tjener-millioner https://www.dtu.dk/english/newsarchive/2022/11/udenlandske-s...

toast0 2y ago
> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on US schools attract international students because most will pay full tuition, subsidizing costs for local students.
- lmz 2y ago
  i.e. they're mostly not looking for good ones, just paying ones.
- j7ake 2y ago
  Not true at the PhD level
lxgr 2y ago
> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. Seems like you understand the point after all :) US tertiary education is the perfect export good: Like other intellectual property, it's almost infinitely fungible, and parents from all over the world will part with staggering amounts of money for it. The quality is definitely high, but the markup compared to other countries' universities is something else.
- sdsd 2y ago
  It's not just money - the ability to educate the rest of the world's elites is a form of soft power.
- kelipso 2y ago
  For Master's degree it makes sense because the students pay tuition. For most PhDs, the students don't pay tuition and get an additional stipend, so it doesn't make sense. Plenty of (most?) PhD grads stay but we are currently paying international students to do their PhD and then provide very little incentive for them to stay afterwards.
Aeolun 2y ago
Japan is very good at this. They’re essentially like “You got someone willing to pay you? Cool, come on in.” Then after 5 years you can (if you want) naturalize, and after 10 you can get permanent residency. No random nation based limits like the US somehow has.
- rsanek 2y ago
  should we be looking to Japan for advice on how to grow an economy?
  - krapp 2y ago
    Growing the economy is no longer an option for the US, we need to worry about managing our inevitable decline and likely collapse.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    I think you should be looking to them for advice on how to not grow an economy without having everyone collapse in despair.
brazzy 2y ago
> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. Another reason would be to generate goodwill and potential future business relations for your country. Can be pretty valuable for your export-oriented businesses.
ant6n 2y ago
> I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on Exporting knowledge, culture and contacts
scarface_74 2y ago
Colleges want international students because they pay full price and don’t get financial aid.

jazzyjackson 2y ago

Im reading a charming book called Tramps and Ladies, an autobiography of a ship captain of the Cunard line in the transition from sail to steam. The last chapter I read paints a picture of the unrestricted immigration of the 1900s - anyone with 5 pounds could hop on a ship in Hamburg, Liverpool, or Piraeus and start a new life in the States, and people poured into New York in the millions. I wonder if the mass emigration was a factor leading up to the Great War. Anyhow consider me demoralized, i cant picture anything the US could do in the next decade to turn the ship around from the fuck-it-all perestroika we've adopted as federal policy. (Speaking of turning the ship around, I'm looking forward to my 8 day east bound crossing from NYC to Southampton at the end of the month. The ship is capable of doing it in 5 days but the demand isn't there to pay the extra cost to run the turbines at full steam.)

unethical_ban 2y ago
What cruise line? I want to do a true transatlantic crossing, not some Caribbean jaunt.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 is all that’s left of the oceanliners (As Janet from the Good Place might say, “not a cruise ship!” ;) she’s built to handle the North Atlantic weather. If you’re lucky enough to be able to fuck off for 42 days you might also be interested in ocean crossings by sail, here’s the offering ive considered, the Europa: https://www.barkeuropa.com/en/our-voyages https://www.barkeuropa.com/en/our-voyages
  - unethical_ban 2y ago
    That sailing ship looks freaking awesome. I just wonder how I'd leave the Azores after those trips end. Heh. Thanks for the information! And I might have time to fuck off, I'm burnt out of my job and thinking of quitting in summer time.

toast0 2y ago

> Basically give those workers a visa along with their diploma. > Obama thought the idea was intriguing and mentioned it multiple times to his advisors. It never went anywhere though. This sounds like OPT on an F-1 visa. If the OPT employer likes you, then they sponsor your H-1B application, and with your masters+ degree from an American institution, you get two shots in the lottery. (And if there's a recession, the caps might not get hit anyway). Kind of a drag because you'll probably need to get a masters degree, but it'll help your immigration file later if you want to try for permanent residency, or if you give up and pick a new host country.

YZF 2y ago

In Canada it's pretty much like this. If you graduate from a Canadian university you can get a work permit and a path to permanent residence and citizenship. Lots of software engineers around here that took that route.

jcarrano 2y ago

The way they do it in Germany is very sensible. There are clear requirements: have a degree and a salary offer above a certain threshold, and if you fulfill them you are in. No lottery nonsense or employer involvement required beyond signing an offer. The salary threshold is lower for graduates from German universities.

thrwwy001 2y ago

> Brain draining the rest of the world is one of the main reasons for America’s success. Not true. America was successful regardless of immigration. For example, for much of the 20th century, the US banned immigration from most of the world. Look up the history of US immigration bans. It's quite enlightening > It is due to America being a nation of immigrants that we can do this. America is not and never has been a nation of immigrants. At no time in US history has immigrants represented anywhere close to the majority of the US population. America was always a nation of native born americans. Not immigrants.

lacerrr 2y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_St... > Due to its history the United States can be described as an immigration country. Being a nation of immigrants does not mean the majority of the population are migrants at any given point in time. You need to consider how many waves of migration have arrived in the USA one after another, not all at once.

rozap 2y ago

It's wild that this isn't a thing. As a US citizen, I graduated from a Canadian school and was immediately given a work visa, no questions asked. I never looked into it but I'm surprised that the US doesn't do this.