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Philip Greenspun is notorious for being intentionally provocative in his online essays, but here he makes a thoughtful contribution to the literature by picking

Philip Greenspun is notorious for being intentionally provocative in his online essays, but here he makes a thoughtful contribution to the literature by picking apart one of the weakest points in Paul Graham's recent essay. The essay by pg appears to assume that programmers are born and not made and they are born in equal rates by population in all parts of the world. Greenspun correctly challenges that kind of naive genetic determinism and suggests that people around the world, in many occupations, respond to incentives, so that people who are within reach of incentives to become better programmers will tend to become better programmers, while people not offered incentives to become better programmers will choose other career trade-offs. Our fellow participant in this discussion davidw makes the good point that immigration in general is good for countries in general. So my basic policy predisposition is for the United States to have very open borders to immigration, and to impose few requirements on immigration. (All of my ancestors came to North America under rules like that, after all.) My wife was readily able to immigrate to the United States under the "immediate relative" category of immigrants after we had been married for more than a year overseas. My oldest son has sometimes considered moving away from the United States to settle in another country (he has looked specifically at some other countries), and what he has found is that his programming skills help open doors to permanent residence and settling in other countries to immigrate, but especially so for people with college degrees rather than on-the-job training in programming. It is still the case today that the United States is by far the most desired country to settle in for immigrants from all around the world.[1] And a lot of people achieve that desire. I know first-generation immigrants from India, China, Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Ghana, Haiti, Australia, Pakistan, Turkey, the Philippines, Romania, Poland, Somalia, Argentina, Ecuador, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, and a variety of other countries here in Minnesota, where the climate is anything but inviting. My inclination is to welcome even more immigrants than the United States welcomes now (for one thing, that improves the variety of local ethnic restaurants and grocery stores) but the United States already receives more net immigrants from all the rest of the world than any other country on earth, so I can understand why my fellow voters might not think that the United States has a shortage of immigrants. To make a strong policy case for immigration reform takes a more nuanced and tightly reasoned factual argument than Paul Graham made in his recent essay. [1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream-life.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-drea...

davidw 12y ago
> the United States already receives more net immigrants from all the rest of the world than any other country on earth In terms of absolute numbers, yes. In terms of percentages, no: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migrat... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-born_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo... > To make a strong policy case for immigration reform takes a more nuanced and tightly reasoned factual argument than Paul Graham made in his recent essay. I agree with that. To that end, if you have any comments on my own article, please feel free to email them to me. All the muddle-headed thinking I read about immigration the last time around prompted me to write it as a place to collect my own arguments.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  The other countries with higher intake (as a percentage of national population) of migrants or of foreign-born persons, as you can see from the Wikipedia links you have kindly shared, are mostly special cases of countries with a very high percentage of refugees or guest workers. For countries accepting permanent residents with a path to citizenship, the United States still ranks plenty high on a percentage basis, and the absolute numbers are much of what generates population growth in the United States these days. I'll have to take a look at your article and ponder it awhile. We need perspective like yours (American living abroad) a lot more on Hacker News. Thanks for your reply.
  - davidw 12y ago
    > mostly special cases of countries with a very high percentage of refugees or guest workers. Yes, there are certainly plenty of those (and there are some arguments in favor of that, too: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120179/how-reduce-global-income-inequality-open-immigration-policies http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120179/how-reduce-global-... ) But there are also others, like Sweden, Canada, Norway, Australia and Spain (and even Italy) that are broadly similar to the US - and in most cases offer much more in terms of government benefits.

davidw 12y ago

> the United States already receives more net immigrants from all the rest of the world than any other country on earth In terms of absolute numbers, yes. In terms of percentages, no: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migrat... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-born_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo... > To make a strong policy case for immigration reform takes a more nuanced and tightly reasoned factual argument than Paul Graham made in his recent essay. I agree with that. To that end, if you have any comments on my own article, please feel free to email them to me. All the muddle-headed thinking I read about immigration the last time around prompted me to write it as a place to collect my own arguments.

tokenadult 12y ago
The other countries with higher intake (as a percentage of national population) of migrants or of foreign-born persons, as you can see from the Wikipedia links you have kindly shared, are mostly special cases of countries with a very high percentage of refugees or guest workers. For countries accepting permanent residents with a path to citizenship, the United States still ranks plenty high on a percentage basis, and the absolute numbers are much of what generates population growth in the United States these days. I'll have to take a look at your article and ponder it awhile. We need perspective like yours (American living abroad) a lot more on Hacker News. Thanks for your reply.
- davidw 12y ago
  > mostly special cases of countries with a very high percentage of refugees or guest workers. Yes, there are certainly plenty of those (and there are some arguments in favor of that, too: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120179/how-reduce-global-income-inequality-open-immigration-policies http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120179/how-reduce-global-... ) But there are also others, like Sweden, Canada, Norway, Australia and Spain (and even Italy) that are broadly similar to the US - and in most cases offer much more in terms of government benefits.