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Dear Congressman Gutierrez, Please Lift Your Hold On Silicon Valley
- jquery 14y agoAs someone who is merely a worker in SV, not a shill for a flood of cheap labor to inflate corporate profits and increase income inequality, god bless Gutierrez. I know it pains the VPs and VCs in SV when they see the high salaries they have to pay me and my wife, so I am sure every single one of them is lobbying hard for this.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoYou deserve that high salary far more than some guy named Raj [1]. Far better for Raj to continue living in poverty worse than the bottom 5% of America (== top 5% of India) than for you to make slightly less money. By the way, you do realize your high salary increases income inequality, right? (In both the US and the world.) [1] Choosing India to personify this example simply because I lived there.
- jlgreco 14y ago> By the way, you do realize your high salary increases income inequality, right? In the same way that being fit makes obese people feel singled out?
- yummyfajitas 14y agoNo, in the same way that adding a value to a set of numbers that is well above average will likely increase the variance.
- jlgreco 14y agoSo yes, exactly the same way. Having more people of a healthy weight makes those who are obese stand out more. The fit person shifts average weight away from the obese. Nobody would dream of criticizing the fit person for making the obese seem fatter in comparison though, because it is plainly clear that when a person gets fitter other people don't become fatter. Despite how the variance of the population changes depending on how fit or fat individuals get, the fit person is not to blame for the obese. Dieting does not make others fatter, and having a high salary does not make others poorer.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoDieting does not make others fatter, and having a high salary does not make others poorer. True, which is why I don't care about inequality. I'm just pointing out that jquery's point is mathematically wrong - his high salary increases inequality. Immigration would reduce it.
- jquery 14y agoThese high salaries are taking from the top, not the bottom. More than any other industry right now, tech workers are making a significant fraction of the compensation of the people at the top of the management food chain. You can bet it rustles management jimmies when they see their workers living the same lifestyle as them! That's just un-American.
- gte910h 14y agoIf Raj was paid the exact same amount as the American, and had the same bargaining power, that would be one thing. But Raj doesn't. Raj is stuck in the job, terrified of being fired, and making far less than the American. This is a not horrible situation for Raj, but it is making a worse job than the one they'd have to give an American. It also makes the jobs of the Americans already working there less stable (as terrified Raj isn't going to leave).
- jquery 14y agoMy wife was a Raj and you described her situation perfectly. Strangely, after getting her green card she got a promotion and a 50% raise.
- philwelch 14y agoSo make it easier for Raj. Don't make it even harder.
- gte910h 14y agoI didn't say "No green cards". I said "No H1B visas". There is a good amount of the former. I'm not sure there is a good amount greater than 0 for the latter.
- spamizbad 14y agoI don't know how many Asian immigrants you've worked with, but the vast majority in my experience were well-heeled in their home country. Granted, their standard of living wasn't always on par with the American Middle class, but it was hardly poverty. Heck, one of my colleagues even had his own private driver back in India. I am a startup visa supporter but I have no delusions that in many cases it will be giving the privileged more privilege. It's goal is to spurn innovation in the US and make us richer - it's NOT a force in global equalization.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoI don't know how many Asian immigrants you've worked with, but the vast majority in my experience were well-heeled in their home country. My last job was in India, so I know a bit about it. The living conditions of the "middle class" in India are generally well below that of the poor in the US. Upper class lawyers and executives in Bandra and Colaba (richer areas of Mumbai) were little better off than people in housing projects in the US. The very richest people were able to afford luxuries like 23/7 (undrinkable) water, electricity, or maybe even a car. In contrast, about 70% of the US poor have a car and nearly all have water+power. But you are right that those who could afford a car could also afford a driver. The bulk of immigrant software engineers might have been rich by Indian standards. But they were very likely poor by US standards. This graph makes the point well: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-the-have-nots/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t... The top 5'th percentile in India is poorer than the bottom 5'th percentile in the US.
- protomyth 14y ago> By the way, you do realize your high salary increases income inequality, right? (In both the US and the world.) Income inequality is not the problem, but it sure sounds nice to the voters. Livability of lower income folks is the problem. Doesn't matter if there is only $100 difference between the lowest and highest wage earners if everyone is starving. I wish we spent less time being envious of the rich and lucky and spent a lot more time looking at ways we can use technology to make lower wages more livable.
- rayiner 14y agoFrom the perspective of the American government, yes, he does. The only duty of the American government is to Americans. Indians have a country and a government to protect their interests. God knows nobody in India wakes up in the morning and asks: "what would be good for Americans?" I'm not opposed to H1-B immigration as a principle (my father was an H1-B), but the only consideration should be how that immigration serves American interests.
- gte910h 14y agoThey need to develop these people domestically from people far along the same pipeline. We don't need more visas with these level of unemployment.
- davidw 14y agoBecause there are a fixed number of jobs to go around, right? Wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy This article is pretty political though. I think I would have flagged it.
- gte910h 14y agoI didn't say anything like that?
- anigbrowl 14y agoIt's implicit in your argument. The idea that immigration should be turned off to alleviate unemployment is a common economic fallacy, which ignores the fact that immigrants also consume and therefore create more demand and more industrial activity and more jobs. This works out nicely economically because the receiving country hasn't paid for them to be educated or nursed through childhood, so the immigrants are effectively little engines of consumption without any social debt, significantly increasing the economic benefit of their spending. I admit that this won't make much sense if you haven't taken some economics classes, it's counter-intuitive.
- gte910h 14y ago>are effectively little engines of consumption Or people who come for a few years and send it all home. Or live here for years, sending vast percentages of it home. >paid for them to be educated or nursed through childhood We have already paid anything there we had to, so they're sunk costs for non-immigrants. The cost of aid programs, retraining and the like are pain points for non-immigrants and the government. Economics in one of those subject matters where vast swaths of it are only taken as real by some people in the field. Without knowing exactly what you're talking about (this labor lump policy doesn't seem to be settled economics from the cites), the fact there was a class on it doesn't necessarily mean it's something we should be making decisions on.
- Androsynth 14y agoThats a very feudal attitude. I was born on the inside of the city walls so I am richer than the serfs. God bless the Baron who keeps us rich and them poor
- Spooky23 14y agoHow enlightened of you. Why don't you go ask skilled textile workers or industrial workers like machinists or welders what they think about the issue? You can find them at McDonalds.
- Androsynth 14y agoKinda late and maybe no one will ever read it, but I can answer this one of two ways: What gives you the right to live the good life just because you were born within some semi-arbitrary boundary? Why do they have to live the life of poverty when they have nearly the same skill set as you? It is inevitable. The only reason that the overseas programmers havent taken all our jobs already is that there is still too big a communication gap (language, culture, remote enviroments, etc). Once that barrier is reduced, web/mobile programming will go overseas.
- Spooky23 14y agoI understand your point of view, but I'm not sure why I should share it. The circumstances of my birth meant that my parents, my children and I live a wonderful, comfortable life. Why shouldn't I want to protect that? I want my son's children to have better opportunity than I have. And, why should I want to enable some corporation to make a fortune by chipping my neighbor's prosperity away? At the end of the day, the savings associated with labor arbitrage mostly beef up the party line. Shoes cost just as much as they did before production was shipped off to China. So does software. Call me a decadent, unethical and plain awful person, but I align myself with my family's best interests.
- bhangi 14y agoYes, but it strikes me that most of the arguments for increasing or even eliminating quotas for skilled immigrants can also be viewed as a variant of the feudal attitude. After all the arguments boil down to: "let the skilled immigrants in or the jobs will move overseas." So in the end it is about preserving one's high wages or geographic locality of jobs. BTW I am completely pro-immigration, so don't take this as a slam against immigration. My ideal world would be where geography is irrelevant as far as jobs go, which should naturally normalize wages across the world -- no more need to migrate for economic reasons. Since that is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, the question is do we choose jobs or wages. Regardless of which side of the fence one falls on, three things need to be fixed: 1. Do not tie the H-1B to the employer 2. Allow spouses of H-1B holders to seek employment 3. The H-1B has no country quota, so remove the country quota for employment based green cards
- smoyer 14y agoI think grid-lock like that described in the article is the best thing we can expect out of Washington. Otherwise, we seem to get one of the two extremes, with no rational thought, much less the hope of a consensus. So the less that happens in D.C. ... the less pain for the citizens of the U.S.
- protomyth 14y agoPeople keep forgetting that the founding fathers didn't want an efficient government. Efficient governments do idiotic and dangerous things quite quickly.
- anigbrowl 14y agoPeople keep forgetting that they didn't want a totally paralyzed one either. You're cherry-picking, like most people who invoke the founding fathers to win an argument.
- protomyth 14y ago"You're cherry-picking, like most people who invoke the founding fathers to win an argument." I suppose I could retort "People who reject anything based on pointing to the founding fathers are pretty much trying to ignore actual history and substitute some glorified version." but... No, just stating a bit of fact about the origins of the system. Something that is good practice in analyzing why a system is as it is. Checks and balances were much more important than efficiency. In fact the executive branch's quest for more "efficiency" with national programs started in the 1920's and continuing through today have done great harm to the checks and balances enjoyed by the people and the states. It wasn't exactly a bed of roses with all parties in agreement at the start. The election of 1800 would be a pretty good example of how divisive this country has always been. There has never been the civility that modern politicians believe existed before today.
- nhashem 14y agoUnfortunately this is not going to be resolved without our federal government going through the painful gyrations of partisan politics. The OP mentions the Democratic Party (and the Obama White House) and its opposition to HR 6429, which basically "trades" 55,000 'diversity' visas for the same number of STEM visas. This was actually discussed on HN a few months ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845982 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845982). The OP says: "I would have voted for visas for 50,000 smart foreign students graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities over bringing in 55,000 randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad." In short, he says he would have made the trade. Unfortunately, Republicans would love nothing more than to do this on immigration and call it day. To independent/swing voters, they can brag that they're not intolerant of immigrants, and in fact authored legislation that opens the doors to 55,000 immigrants exceptional in STEM. To their base, they can say there is no net increase in immigration, and they've resisted on any leniency to the immigrants currently here in the US, including the poisonous word "amnesty." The OP claims to support elements of comprehensive immigration reform, but then basically says, "well our technology industry is suffering, and there seems to some common ground there, so can't you just agree to more STEM visas and fix the H1-B system and then go back to arguing about amnesty?" This just isn't going to happen, because there will no longer be an argument -- Republicans will just resist any further attempts at reform. So I am glad this is the stance of people like Congressman Gutierrez. The OP said: "I hate to say this, but women in Saudi Arabia have more rights than the spouses/wives of H-1B workers; it’s inhuman the way we treat them and destroy careers and families." Well, that is a problem with our current immigration problem, but we have other problems too, such as the 22 million illegal (or undocumented, if you prefer that term) immigrants in the US. They are not exactly sitting flush with their rights, careers, and families. We need comprehensive reform because we have a comprehensive problem. So ultimately the OP just comes across to me as, "fix what I want, even though politically, it will basically ensure that other people interested in other parts of immigration reform will get fucked." At best it's naive. At worse it's selfish. And if you want federal government representatives that don't have to go through such stupid partisan gyrations, then you should do everything you can to elect different representatives.
- spamizbad 14y agoI'm also really disappointed the OP brushed aside the 55K diversity visas as some sort of joke. Many people in that lottery are those who tried to obtain political asylum but could not. Are you trying to escape poverty, war, and persecution? Well, if you can code me up this idea real quick...
- mjn 14y agoI don't really get the industry-picking idea of the STEM visa. Not every area of STEM has high demand, and not every area of the rest of the economy lacks demand. Why not have some kind of points system like Canada's? For example, it's much easier to find an American mathematician or physicist than to find good elder-care staff (there's something of a glut of physicists, and shortage of elder-care workers). Yet this reform would propose singling out pure mathematicians and physicists for preferential immigration, while not allowing an elder-care worker to immigrate on the same terms?
- jlgreco 14y agoIn the specific case of mathematicians and physicists, I suspect there was some strategic consideration beyond merely market demand. The more mathematicians and physicists you have, the fewer anybody else has. "Brain drain" can harm perceived competitors even if you don't necessarily have anything to do with your extra brains. In the more general case though, the STEM system is just designed to make it easier to get the people deemed more important, just like the Canadian system. The only way that they differ is that perhaps the Canadian system determines importance more accurately. I am sure the STEM system wasn't intentionally made worse, that's just the sort of thing that happens sometimes.
- kiba 14y agoSilicon Valley isn't bleeding talents. They don't want to hire perfectly competent old people. Also, if you still hunger for talent, consider the fact that the cost of living is high due to low housing density. Build more apartments and start hiring old people.
- npsimons 14y agoSecond this. All due respect to intelligent, hard-working immigrants, the only reason for the screaming for more visas is to pay engineers below market value wages. Want good engineers? Pay for them, dammit! Supply and demand.
- CCs 14y agoWhat is your target salary? (Serious question) I find very hard to hire good developers in the Valley. Offering 140k does not help much, I always have to go the long route (convince them we're growing, find a personal challenge etc). Ryan Smith (Qualtrics) said the same thing: some developers needed 2 years of convincing.
- jquery 14y ago$140k just isn't that competitive anymore. I mean its a good salary, but not remarkable on its own. I know it hurts but your flavor of the month CRUD app may have been priced out of the market. Just like $800k isn't enough to get a non-distressed piece of prime SF real estate, even though it was in recent past. Times have changed. Sure, importing H1-Bs would reduce the cost of labor, but that's not the discussion supporters of the quota increase are having. At least in public. Although you know a Romney-47%-type discussion is happening behind closed doors with SV power brokers.
- CCs 14y agoSo 140k is just OK - what is good then? What is your base salary and bonus expectation? For example if I talk to a Netflix engineer and promise work-life balance (no weekend, 7 hr/day average vs 12 hr), I still need to go 180k+ with 2k bonus? http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Netflix-Salaries-E11891.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Netflix-Salaries-E11891.htm How about Google? 145k+ with 60k bonus? http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm
- buro9 14y agoI have just arrived in London (today) after spending 2 weeks in San Francisco and Silicon Valley with a group of 24 other British founders. We came as group ( http://www.ldn2sfo.com/ http://www.ldn2sfo.com/ ) to learn about what makes Silicon Valley special, about the pay-it-forward culture, about the optimism and support, about the venture culture. The stand-out questions at almost every session and meeting that we had was this: "How are the immigration issues overcome?" Most of us will take the things we've learned and just apply them to where we are, knowing that even if we individually overcome the hurdles we are unlikely to achieve the same for our teams and people we would love to hire. Only a very few of us are likely to take on the immigration challenge. Instead, the immigration issue will lead most of us to re-evaluate our local advantages such as access to talent (London does not have the scarcity issue of Silicon Valley for example), cheaper housing, free health... and because of the immigration spanner in the works, those suddenly seem to be bigger advantages. They're not really that big an advantage... but the immigration issue is that big an issue.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoThe thing that mentally holds me back, rather than the immigration issue, is the threat of patent trolls. I don't know whether this threat is real or imagined, but it appears to be a non-issue if you're operating outside of the US.
- buro9 14y agoThat's a Maserati problem ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444003 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444003 ). I wouldn't worry too much about that one... when you're a success you'll get sued for something no matter where you are based.
- anigbrowl 14y agoI find VW's argument incredibly disingenuous. The fact is that comprehensive immigration reform looks set to finally happen this year, possibly before anything else on the legislative calendar because the wiser heads in the GOP have realized they're staring down the barrel of demographic doom unless they get behind a deal; simply put, they're losing more votes from people of color (who make up the majority of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants) than they are gaining from pandering to xenophobic white people. There's unprecedented momentum for overhauling the dysfunctional immigration system in one fell swoop. Doing so on a piecemeal basis is the approach that we've taken for the last 15-20 years, and it doesn't work; it's like trying to roast a turkey one side at a time, and goes a long way towards explaining the mess of inconsistencies that is our immigration law. Finally, Congressman Gutierrez is a Representative, not a Senator. Although he can lobby against piecemeal legislation, and has done so to maintain awareness of the larger issue, he's not a senator and has no power to hold or filibuster a bill, or even block it via committee. Vivek Wadhwa knows this perfectly well and should eschew the sort of misleading rhetoric in the headline. It's all very arguing to 'free the H-1Bs,' and I support his agenda completely on that, but frankly the H-1Bs are on easy street compared to the people who have no visa at all and have no legal avenue at all to file for one. For the sake of disclosure, I'm an illegal alien, so I'm not unbiased in this matter (albeit more by experience than because I'm directly affected by the upcoming legislation; I'm married to an American).