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Comment by tinco | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a U.S. citizen, and obviously one day I hope to be one of those U.S. Billion-Dollar startup founders and I would appreciate a VISA if it would help me achieve that, but there's something shaky with the premise here.

Why does the U.S. need to depend on the ~80.000 odd first order immigrants per year to generate that amount of wealth. Couldn't the U.S. somehow draw those ambitious out of its current population?

What if people could 'emigrate' from Detroit to California? They'd basically be refugees from a low-opportunity environment as well.

Or is it not the fact that they came from a low-opportunity environment, but rather that they came like Bill Gates from the tender love and care of rich/succesful parents, and being born abroad was just a small hurdle?

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When an Elon Musk or a Max Levchin shows up in your country itching to get to work, the best course of action is not to say, "couldn't we some how draw your kind of ambition out of a local?"

Far better is to give them visas let them build in your country rather than elsewhere.

The better option is to make sure that everyone in your country that has the POTENTIAL to be an Elon Musk gets the education and skills they need to become him. Elon went to many prestigious private schools and had early childhood access to expensive computers, which is a common thread in MANY founders and current executives and VCs in the startup world.

Meanwhile I know a lot of smart people who don't go to college in the US because they don't want to be saddled with $100k in debt. And a lot more who don't persue higher degrees because their parents aren't poor enough to receive assistance but not rich enough to pay for college. We do a terrible job of helping people in America live up to their potential - its the best country to be born rich in, but the worst first-world country to be born poor in.

These are not mutually exclusive possibilities. You can accept highly skilled immigrants AND improve your education system. If anything, doing the former might make it easier to do the latter, since those highly skilled immigrants will provide more tax revenue to spend on public education.

True enough, but companies only argue for more immigration (quicker fix) than an educated populace (not their problem/criticism of govt is bad for business)

Levchin moved to the US when he was 16. His family was granted political asylum. His move to the US therefore not based on any "itch" to get to work.

It's the latter. These immigrants aren't poor uneducated people like you would encounter in an impoverished part of the US.

> What if people could 'emigrate' from Detroit to California?

They can, there's no restriction of movement within the US.

Ya, and it happens a lot, and yet it's not controversial at all. But allowing someone to move from Vancouver to Seattle is for some reason.

> yet it's not controversial at all.

Sadly, it is: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-29/about-100-...

The workers from other states "took errr jaaaawbs"

H1B is a giant sorting algorithm, at least so far as immigration through a company is concerned. You have these companies footing the bill because they value these people. This means that some of the best hires and potential entrepreneurs are being naturally selected.

> Why does the U.S. need to depend on the ~80.000 odd first order immigrants per year to generate that amount of wealth.

The U.S. doesn't need them - Silicon Valley was created by Americans.

However, companies have tasted what mass immigration does to engineering salaries (stagnant since 2000) and labor mobility (almost none for H1B's) and are as addicted as heroin addicts.

>companies have tasted what mass immigration does to engineering salaries (stagnant since 2000)

Do you happen to know if there were studies done to link these two?

This is basic supply and demand. Not everything needs a peer reviewed study to make a valid assumption.

So stagnant salaries have nothing to do with global and national economic factors like recessions ect.

It just purely H1B's. A little simplistic don't you think?

It's not (exclusively) about being poor or about drawing ambition from the current population. It's about having a vastly different perspective and background and understanding of how the world works. It's about being more ambitious than the opportunities presented to them in their home country, and having the tenacity to search for better ones on the other side of the world. This by definition makes them better entrepreneurs than nearly any American. You can't draw this out of the current population unless you place them so far away from opportunity, further than Detroit and further than Alaska. Which, it turns out, would make them a non-US citizen.

America is a bubble, and most people growing in it don't understand that different places and people and cultures work differently. People from outside the bubble have a higher likelihood to think differently from the local populace to solve everyday problems, which is the kind of innovation that makes a unicorn happen.

"vastly different perspective"

I know it's popular to think that, but just how vastly different is a Canadian immigrant founder from a US one? One of the people highlighted in the report is "Garrett Camp, an immigrant from Canada", who co-founded Uber. What perspective do you think the 8 Canadians on the list of 61 bring to an organization? Might a rural minority US citizen be more likely to contribute more diversity than an urban majority Canadian immigrant?

Certainly Canada is not "on the other side of the world". Most of the Canadian population lives closer to the lower 48 than the Alaskan population, so I don't understand what "by definition makes them better entrepreneurs than nearly any American" as you commented.

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