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Immigration reform in America
- dllthomas 14y agoMassive immigration will help make sure I get my social security...
- klrr 14y agoWell, they want to make it easier for companies to get good working power, not allow people come and "steal" your benefits.
- dllthomas 14y agoI think you read me as saying the opposite of what I was saying. The biggest problem with entitlements in the current environment is that the younger/working population is shrinking relative to the older/retiring population. Opening the borders means more younger workers coming, and probably having more children, who'll be "paying for my social security." Of course, the comment was jokingly flippant - it's not really a good reason to throw the borders open, though there are certainly more serious arguments on both sides of that debate.
- stephengillie 14y agoSocial security is built on a population bubble. Like the housing bubble, we can't expect it to last.
- dllthomas 14y agoYes. Increasing immigration is a way of keeping that bubble inflated longer. Like I said, it was jokingly flippant, in terms of actual reasons.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jadoint 14y agoI think he's alluding to the fact that the more people that come and work in the U.S., the more people there will be to fund his social security.
- ams6110 14y agoAssuming that they actually work.
- enraged_camel 14y agoWhat the hell does that mean?
- Kudzu_Bob 14y agoHe means the hell that immigrant households use welfare and related wealth-transfer programs at higher rates than do non-immigrant households. But of course his comment got the hell voted down by the hive-mind because he was rude enough to notice.
- blinkingled 14y ago> immigrant households use welfare and related wealth transfer programs at higher rates The data includes both legal and illegal immigrants along with the minority high skilled immigrants. http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011 http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011 implies that most of that welfare use is from low skilled immigrants and not high skilled ones that are the topic of interest of most HNers. He presumably got downvoted because it is irrelevant at best and misdirection at worst (by combining illegal and legal data and claiming immigrants claim more welfare which makes it look like highly skilled immigrants claim more welfare).
- Kudzu_Bob 14y agoA quote from the link that you provide: "But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants (no U.S.-born children) still had a welfare use rate of 56 percent in 2009." Not a very impressive difference, that. As for the notion that most HNers are interested only in high-skilled immigrants rather than low-skilled ones, that may well be the case. But low-skilled immigrants certainly are interested in HNers, or rather the money that HNers possess.
- RegRegReg 14y ago"...to get good working power..." You forgot "for much less money".
- geebee 14y agoZuckerberg said: "We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants". The economist says "insane" would be a better term. I actually agree that we should be more welcoming to highly skilled immigrants in general, but the "nation of immigrants" rhetoric is getting irritating. The US currently takes 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year. This will be true regardless of whether we award large numbers of work visas to the sort of people Zuckerberg would like to hire. Our immigration system is more based on family reunification than the hiring priorities of the high tech industry. I would agree that there are better ways to decide who will get to come to the US. But this isn't really about immigration per se, the specific legislation under consideration is about awarding visas or green cards directly to people with graduate STEM degrees. A good idea sure, but why does nobody at the economist point out that US takes huge numbers of immigrants every year and will continue to do so regardless of what happens with this legislation?
- k-mcgrady 14y agoNobody is saying the US doesn't take in a large number of immigrants. The problem is that they make it incredibly difficult for people to get in and also difficult to stay. The "nation of immigrants" comments refer to the fact that the US got to where it is thanks in large part due to immigrants (e.g. by 1860 1/4 of the people living in New York had been born in Ireland and another 1/4 were from Germany).[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City#Early_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City#Early_history
- potatolicious 14y agoNot to mention, as GP mentioned, the bulk of immigration in the US is family reunification. While other developed nations are using immigration policy as an economic driver, importing the best and brightest from elsewhere, the US's immigration policy does not support its own economic goals. The argument being made by tech lobbyist groups, among other immigration reform groups, is that the US needs to start wielding its immigration policy as a strategic economic tool rather than the somewhat directionless policy which exists today where small allowances are made for the importation of talent but which does not appear to be part of any cohesive overarching policy.
- davidf18 14y agoIt is a means of lowering wage rates among engineers and software developers. Rich for Zuckerberg, with > $10 billion in wealth created by those engineers and software developers to want to lower their wages even further. Of all the top large technical companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle, Intel, Facebook, ...) only Google has a major presence in Manhattan (in Chelsea) for software developers and engineers (it owns the second largest office building in New York City). If Zuckerberg and friends would read a some of Richard Florida, he'd find that young people don't want to live in boring Silicon Valley (many take a long daily commute from SF) but rather in places like Manhattan. Disclosure: I live in Manhattan Lowering the wage rate is not the best way to get technical talent. The best way to do as Google has done and go to where a lot of smart, enterprising people want to live.
- objclxt 14y ago> It is a means of lowering wage rates among engineers and software developers You might think Mark Zuckerberg is in this to bring in international developers and pay them peanuts, but the reality is that most people Google, Facebook, and the like are bringing in on H-1B visas are extremely well compensated, on a par with their US counterparts. Once you account for relocations packages and visa/legal fees (which alone can top $10k) it's often more expensive. Yes, some companies take advantage of international workers. I don't dispute that. But many people who want to enter the US are losing out - they have great job offers, and end up being slaves to an arbitrary lottery with a fairly meaningless cap in the grand scale of total US immigration.
- davidf18 14y agoEcon 101: importing labor reduces "scarcity" driving down prices, regardless of paying going rate. It simply keeps rates from going up which would bring more Americans into the "silicon valley" tech labor pool. See Tim Harford's "Undercover Economist" for TL;DR style of understanding economics: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007NIDW1Q/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007NIDW1Q/ If Zuckerberg's is trying to satisfy a labor shortage then he should go to where the labor wants to live, as Google has done which is to establish a major technical presence in Manhattan, where the kind of people he wishes to hire want to live.
- nostromo 14y agoI heard an interesting idea recently: auction off immigration slots. (Not all of them, just a large subset.) Employers looking to hire talented individuals from abroad would most commonly foot the bill. There are some cool things about this solution: it raises money for the US Government, it determines who will most likely be a high-value contributor to the economy, and it raises the cost of foreign workers (to balance the interest of American workers).
- objclxt 14y agoIt has been pointed out here before that this would significantly disadvantage both start-ups and small companies who may be working in extremely niche environments and require talent from abroad.
- optiminimalist 14y agoI absolutely agree. Companies like TCS, that get the highest number of H1B visas already, will easily be able to bid high enough at an "immigration auction". Nothing would change at the high end - only at the low end small companies would be crowded out. Taking this further, the big corporations could potentially (and probably will) play strategically and outbid most start-ups.
- WildUtah 14y agoThat's not true at all. Auctioning off worker visas would make it possible for startups to hire talented people and to being co-founders to work together in the USA for a cash price. Today, startups are almost completely prevented from using H1 and L1/2 visas because of the paperwork requirements and because CIS examiners choose to assign those visas only to established companies. The established companies in question usually pay millions and millions to hire the first tech worker because they have to set up a legal department that can deal with the obsolete, contradictory, byzantine, and nonsensical requirements of the law and CIS bureaucracy. Then each tech worker after the first costs only the application fee and salary of the worker. The high initial cost eliminates startups while the low marginal cost for additional workers means InfoSys and WiPro can fill the quota with low wage, low profit per seat CRUD developers. It's the worst of both worlds. Startups could easily outbid the body shops for a single talented programmer or founder if each visa were up for bid. Also, the cost would be much, much lower than today's system where you need to hire lawyers to lie for you (yes, it is required to lie; the law as written contradicts basic economic facts). It's time to put this foolishness to rest: putting tech worker visas up to bid would be good for tech workers, good for startups, good for R&D focused companies, and good for the government budget. It would not be good for cheap body shops that depend on low-wage no-rights workers.
- mbesto 14y agoAlright, someone please explain to me how this can be fixed? For example, I'm American and my team is a Russian and a Belgian. I would love for all of us to pick up our bags and move to the US, but can't because of obvious immigration issues. So even if there was a system set up to support them immigrating to the US, how on earth am I supposed to prove that they would contributing members of society (aka pay high taxes and add jobs)?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- volandovengo 14y agoThe challenge with the US is that all talk of immigration focusses on illegal immigrants, rather than highly skilled and educated immigrants. It's unfortunate that the Obama administration won't separate these two kinds of immigrants since they fear in doing so, they won't be able to get comprehensive immigration reform passed. Other countries recognize the value of highly educated immigrants who want to create companies. Canada, for example, just announced it's startup visa specifically targeting immigrants who want to move to the country to start a company. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/1/4170022/canada-startup-visa-program-challenges-silicon-valley-immigration http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/1/4170022/canada-startup-visa...
- krschultz 14y agoNegotiating 101 is to always try and do the whole thing at once rather than piecemeal. If you do the parts that everyone agrees to, there's nothing in common to build around for the hard stuff later. Also in general, just doing the popular stuff leads to big problems later (that's how we ended up with low taxes and high spending, nobody wants to do either of the hard parts of balancing a budget).
- Kudzu_Bob 14y agoThe whole point, of course, is to open the country to massive immigration under the guise of letting in a comparative handful of skilled immigrants. That way the Republican business interests get lower wages in their meat-packing plants and so on while the Democrats swell their ranks with impoverished voters. It's a win-win!
- nahname 14y agoCurious to hear others experiences. How many white, north american born people are on your current team? I'm the only one on my current team and have often been the minority in the groups I work with.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- aspensmonster 14y agoWhat's stopping all these companies from growing the talent themselves? The rhetoric always makes it sound like the sky is falling and if they don't get their super smart foreign staff NOW, the business will crash. The problem is that this sort of story plays out year after year with one tech group or another having a "critical shortage." You'd think if this were an immediate problem then these companies that were unable to source and retain talent would have died off by now. Surprisingly they're still here. And the types of talent that the likes of Google or Facebook would be interested in -- genuine genius and extra-ordinary ability-- already have visa programs: O-1 and EB-1. It's just that H-1B visas are relatively easier to get. So what makes getting immigrants a better proposition than growing the talent yourself? Everyone wants the talent, but nobody wants to cultivate it.
- krschultz 14y agoForget that angle for a second. When I sitting in my graduate engineer classes, 50%+ of the students were foreign. Most of them were working with professors on projects supported by the federal government via various grants programs (NIS, DOD, etc). Most of them wanted to stay in the US after graduation. Few of them were allowed to. Doesn't that seem like a massive waste of our educational system? Why are we spending so much time and energy educating people and then refusing to allow them to stay in the US?
- Kudzu_Bob 14y agoNo, what seems like a massive waste of our educational system is the notion that Federal tax dollars are going toward the higher education of non-citizens at the same time that millions of Americans either can't afford to go to school or are groaning under the weight of student debts. Odd that you should have missed that.
- cema 14y agoI think in the case of STEM grad schools the Federal money finally goes where the best return on investment is. Professors, not government, decide whom to hire, roughly speaking.
- larrybolt 14y agoAs a european developer and HN reader I've recently been wondering how feasible it is to move to the states after I finished university. It seems the general trend would be something in the like of getting a visa, start looking for a job and be lucky your employer can get you a green card. After this 5 years of living in the states before you can become an American citizen. Please do correct me if I'm wrong!
- ropiku 14y agoH-1B is an employer sponsored visa, valid only for working on a specific job (though it's possible to transfer to a different employer) so it's getting a job first then getting a visa. Then your employer can sponsor your green card application. Depending on the level you apply/qualify for you wait 1-6 years for a green card.
- larrybolt 14y agoWhat exactly does that mean, the level you apply/qualify for? Does it depend on your education or merely on how much your employer put into it? Because 6 years waiting for a green card, after which another 5 years before you can apply for citizenship and keeping in mind the economy changes trough the years.
- potatolicious 14y agoShort answer: all of the above. The most important factor here is your preference category when applying for a green card. There are 3 buckets, EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3, in decreasing order of desirability. Which bucket you fall into is a combination of your degree(s) and your relevant work experience. Each bucket has a longer wait than the previous. The second factor is your country of origin - the system is quota'ed based on it, so the more applicants coming from your country of origin the longer the line is. For the most part this is a minor factor except if you're from China or India, in which case you're pretty fucked. I believe (though I'm not sure) there are also other ways to expedite processing for $$$, but this mostly surrounds various form filings that can otherwise take months to process. The actual line itself cannot be shortened.
- yekko 14y agoAbolish the indenture servitude H-1B program, have self applied green card program instead.