VCs are suing the US for delay of immigration program | Hacker News Reader

VCs are suing the US for delay of immigration program

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182 pointstlb208 comments

Silicon Valley needs to stop harping on the Visa program and simply pay people what they want to receive. It is amazing that an idea can bring in $50 million in investment and they're still splitting hairs on individual salaries. There is plenty of talent stateside - stop bitching about the costs and just fucking pay it.

These cost minimization assholes need to be swept away. Companies are sitting on larger stockpiles of cash than ever before, owing to years of White House uncertainty; they have the money and simply need to spend it. On one hand you hear about how SV is just sooooooo flush with cash and then in the other hand entrepreneurs complain that talent is too expensive. Every single one of those clowns is a fraud.

> There is plenty of talent stateside

This is not always true. In any case, the realistic tradeoff is (a) people who would have started businesses in the United States that hired Americans will start them overseas [1] and (b) investment that would have funded American businesses, hiring Americans, will seek out the best founders overseas.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/07/china-m...

I think you have it backwards. This is to help bring in people who will start companies in the US and hire people in the US.

The major VCs mentioned in the article (such as Accel) already have VC arms overseas, funding companies which employ foreigners in their home countries.

If you want more of the latter (using US capital to build companies, jobs, products etc) then go ahead, recind this visa.

<< funding companies which employ foreigners in their home countries.

Those foreign companies should benefit their foreign founders and local economies. Not every economic benefit needs to accrue to the US.

Please excuse this more radical point, but part of me is ok with rescinding the visas to force some investment back into the domestic population. (Out of necessity.)

We have a large enough population that there's no reason we should be hurting for talent, and part of me wonders how much of that disinvestment has been enabled by importing instead of breeding our needs. We're exploiting poor conditions in other countries in order to attract their best, as well as creating poor conditions here for natural born citizens to suppress their demands from resource owners.

> rescinding the visas to force some investment back into the domestic population. (Out of necessity.)

But it won't, the US investment dollars will simply be spent in the entrepreneur's home country, which won't create any US jobs and in fact will help dilute the power and influence of Silicon Valley.

> We're exploiting poor conditions in other countries in order to attract their best, as well as creating poor conditions here for natural born citizens to suppress their demands from resource owners.

Well you could see it that way; in my case it is a quality of life sacrifice to work in the US in exchange for significantly more interesting work environment; on the other hand my wife couldn't deal with the lower quality of life here (worse and more expensive medical system, worse food, schools, etc).

I suppose if you have a zero-sum model and don't believe Adam Smith and David Ricardo on the benefits of free trade your position would make sense.

> But it won't, the US investment dollars will simply be spent in the entrepreneur's home country, which won't create any US jobs and in fact will help dilute the power and influence of Silicon Valley.

This is a benefit. It would spread wealth and enable more people to be tech/entrepreneurial.

> in my case it is a quality of life sacrifice to work in the US in exchange for significantly more interesting work environment

... which should not be exclusive to silicon valley.

As somebody who comes from a country(India) that routinely loses smart people to the US, your suggestion is welcome.

But, think of this from your perspective. You can try almost as hard as your want but there is no way you can build a system from which you can harvest disproportionate amount of smart people from a population mass continuously. The only way to get them is through immigration.

Take your net population, Subtract the elderly, children and other dependents(people with medical conditions etc). Given poverty, lack of opportunity, overall direction in life, nature of human capital and personal enterprise. Only a very small fraction of people in any country eventually go on to do things of huge value for everybody else.

The only way to get such people in bulk quantities is from outside your country.

Forgive me for saying it. This immigration debate will go on forever, and people will keep talking of citizens vs outsiders debate, every time they miss out on a opportunity. But everyone deep down knows if the US has to keep its economic and military might, the only real way is to get those smart people, have them do something amazing of huge value and use that to keep your way of life going.

I think you're thinking of the H-1B visa which does get used to bring in lower salary employees. The article is about a different scheme to let foreigners start startups and presumably increase US employment.

He didnt read the article. Dont feed the trolls.

Reading these comments it seems like where you land depends on whether you believe there are lots of Americans who have the drive/willingness to found their own company. If so then constraining the visa makes sense because VCs already have a large supply of business. Similar to the H1B debate where we recognize that companies don't really care about immigration, they just want better employees for cheaper, this debate's core is that VCs just want to be able to fund better companies for cheaper. I'd say I'm fine with Trump tossing this Visa in the trash. Silicon Valley is an American creation so I don't mind if its benefits go to Americans.

Really? That's for one a weak argument. But even if we consider that at face value, there are plenty of immigrants who "created" silicon valley. It was not entirely an American creation - if by American, you make it to mean some version of how many generations someone has been here.

>Really? That's for one a weak argument.

Then lay it out.

>But even if we consider that at face value, there are plenty of immigrants who "created" silicon valley.

After we hash this out we can debate how many grains of sand compose a pile too. It's plainly American.

>It was not entirely an American creation - if by American, you make it to mean some version of how many generations someone has been here.

How about we define American like this: someone who has no other country but America. I have absolutely no problem saying that VCs which have survived and thrived in large part because they exist in America should consider Americans first and should help American kids, not purely use our country as a homebase to go out and snipe the cheapest equity opportunities possible from around the world. Pay it back guys.

> How about we define American like this: someone who has no other country but America.

As someone with a dual citizen parent (well, next year anyway), you just excluded my parents from the definition of "American", despite my family being here since the early 1800s. I'm certain that's not what you meant.

Silicon valley might have been an American creation, but it has thrived due to immigrant founders. Please don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

permanent resident immigrants are Americans.

Isn't a permanent resident immigrant somebody who has a green card? Surely to be considered American you need to be a citizen, which is separate from a green card.

I'm not american so very open to being wrong on this.

The title at the top of every "green card" is "Resident Alien".

This hasn’t been true for a very long time (1997). I-551 Permanent Resident Cards issued since 2010 are labelled as “United States of America / Permanent Resident”, the word “alien” is not present on the document at all.

Sorry. I haven't seen one in years. It had been the case for decades.

> permanent resident immigrants are Americans

They're also immigrants. We're debating curbs on immigration. If those curbs continue to be implemented, people like those immigrants will not be future Americans.

Legally, they are not; naturalized citizens are Americans, permanent resident aliens remain aliens.

There's certainly an argument to be made that they concept of a “permanent resident alien” is a an elaborate circumlocution for “disenfranchized citizen”, and that permanent residence and citizenship ought to be intrinsically linked (not saying I necessarily agree, but I've certainly seen a reasonable argument made), but there is a difference between ought to be and is.

That's just a green card.

It's far from citizenship.

In the American immigration system, permantent resident status is the final step before citizenship and permanent residents enjoy almost entirely the same rights as citizens, with a few notable exceptions. They’re absolutely not the same thing but permanent residence is not far from citizenship at all, permanent residents are effectively candidates for citizenship.

About 50% of the biggest Silicon Valley companies were created by immigrants, so I’d be careful before claiming that Silicon Valley is an “American” invention and that the value should accrue to “Americans,” unless your definition of “American” includes immigrants.

If an immigrant comes here and starts a company or helps make a company successful even the native-born Americans are better off. IMO that’s the most American thing that can possibly happen, and if we should be terrified at the thought of it happening somewhere else instead.

What percentage were created by H1Bs? I think you're conflating "immigrant" with "H1B visa holder". The two are not the same. Many of us who are critical of H1B and similar visa programs are very much in support of immigration in general.

I don't love the way H1Bs are structured either, but the notion that "Americans created it we should keep it" is silly.

Of course, H1Bs can't start companies, so that's not a very good way to look at things - if you don't legally allow category x to do y how many xs are going to do y? A better question is how many could.

But let's just talk about employees. I know I've worked at companies in the past in which the backbone of the work (not all of it, but an important part) was done by H1Bs, and we wouldn't have been able to complete that work and be solvent without the (brilliant) folks that had come over on H1Bs doing it. Those, say, 25 H1B jobs created jobs for hundreds of other folks.

So I'm just wary of thinking that everything is a zero sum game or that immigration is "taking jobs" of "Americans."

And you wonder why companies can't be assed to re-train the workforce.

Because training is expensive and hard and not what companies have traditionally done.

I run a school, and we have had employers pay for training of dozens of employees. It happens quite frequently.

US companies used to always train their employees. It was the cost of doing business.

The reason they do not do so now is because employees, for obvious reasons, have no loyalty to companies, and tend to jump ship after being trained. But again, this is because US companies changed from a lifetime model of employment to layoffs and offshoring for quarterly stock bumps.

Force companies to use domestic labor, create a culture where employees aren't constantly worried they'll be canned the next time sales are low, and I bet you'll get good employees who would be willing to learn and stay for the long-term.

Worth it? I doubt it.

It's a supply chain issue. Software engineer demand might spike unexpectedly, and for startups, that might mean growing from a handful of employees to a hundred in a short period of time.

Can that startup afford to relocate or remotely train a couple hundred out of work Americans for say, a year, pick the top half of those, and offer them packages?

Maybe? Would a year's training be enough? I don't know, but I doubt it's cost effective for spiky demand in labor.

This sort of supply issue should best be solved by the government, which has a vested interest in the employment of its taxpayers, or an NGO or some other organization. Not the companies in question.

Elon Musk was on a H1B when he started his first company.

> What percentage were created by H1Bs?

Well H-1Bs are generally prohibited from doing any paid work outside their current employer. So it would be a miracle if that number was non-zero. But it's still not. Zenefits co-founder Laks Srini had to be hired as a database administrator on an H-1B so that he could leave his previous employer [1].

It seems unfair to say people on visa programs don't become entrepreneurs when, in most cases, they legally aren't allowed to.

1. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2852250/it-outsourcing...

People complaining about H1B visa aren't (generally) complaining about the people on the visas themselves, they are complaining about the system of H1B visas itself.

There might be a reason for many of those not being H1B holders. If you are H1B holder your ability to stay in country is tightly bond to your employer. You are completely dependent on your employment to stay legally in US and hardly have any wiggle room where you can quit your job and try entrepreneurship for a while if nothing works out go back to applying for another job. The visa policies should be in place for both of the cases where deserving people from other countries get funding and deserving americans get jobs at fair compensations.

You can start a company on H1B as a minority shareholder, it's technically feasible.

I don't think it's straightforward to create a company with a H1B, because of a chicken and egg problem.

Typically you create it with an E2, which let you issue E2 visas for 3-4 other people. Then either you die, sell, or start issuing J1, later converted in H1B. H1B is generally too risky, being bound to a lottery, and that's the last thing you want at an early stage startup.

>>What percentage were created by H1Bs?

Start ups are largely built on sweat equity. The kind of monthly salary most H1Bs generally work on. That comes with a risk. Most immigrants take it anyway because they start from 0 and you can only grow from there. If enough people do this enough number of times, eventually the system will always product a Google or Microsoft.

So ultimately its about who is ready to work for cheap.

I think this really depends on the kind of businesses that VCs are pursuing. Many of the current wave of startups are directed at turning the poor into an app-directed servant class, or otherwise making their lives more difficult by intensifying problems like housing instability (e.g. AirBNB).

It becomes a zero sum game when the object is maximize the exploitation and vulnerability of the labor force. You’re right to say that it’s not an issue of immigrants vs natives. But rich vs. the poor in the US is becoming very “us against them.”

creating jobs is not exploitation, it's opportunity.

And that kind of thinking about work is dogma, not reasoned consideration.

It depends on the job, and it depends on the pay.

And how many are immigrants because of a program like this? When we call that 51% number we're including people like Musk and Thiel.

I really, really want to stress this: this program and VCs support of it has nothing to do with helping immigrants. There are tons of people already here who are immigrants and who want to start companies. This program exists purely to allow VCs to buy more equity with less. It's about driving American investment down because american equity is expensive relative to the rest of the world.

I don't understand your point about Elon Musk and why he shouldn't be included in the the 51%?

he can be considered second generation immigrant - thiel was very young when he moved. For musk, it's different, he seem to have come to states at a later age.

Because he didn't need a program like this to come here and found a company. My problem is that we're conflating the immigrants who will be brought here by the rule in the article with all immigrants who found companies. We've got 51% immigrant founding of Billion-Dollar+ companies already, VCs invest in immigrant founded companies already, America is already a great place for immigrant founders. The goal of this rule is not to help immigrants, it's to create them and its goal in creating them is to make it so VCs can buy equity cheaper. That is going to make it harder for everybody, immigrants included, who is already here and wants to acquire funding for their company.

Musk literally came here (and stayed in school) in hopes of getting an H1-B. He was on that path because it was the only way.

And yet he never got one, right? Regardless he certainly didn't need this International Entrepreneuer Rule. It sounds like Musk was perfectly able to found American companies and gain American citizenship without these special rules.

He did, reportedly. H1B -> EB2-Green Card -> U.S Citizen

He noted that he used several "grey areas" in order to get citizenship, effectively bending laws in ways they weren't meant to be used.

I know this is going to be incredibly unpopular but I'm against "grey areas" if that's an illusion to illegal immigration behavior. If that means Musk wouldn't have started his companies here, that's fine with me (tbh I don't think he could have founded them anywhere else.) There are plenty of americans who may have had a PayPal or Tesla level idea but just never got funding. I'd rather that VCs go hunt for those guys.

You really think that Tesla and SpaceX would have been started by someone else if Elon Musk weren't around?

I don't think that's true at all. The notion that if Elon Musk weren't around VCs would have given the cash to the next person in line who would have started those companies seems to just be patently false.

How about instead of forcing Musk to not start his company because our immigration laws are a little bit backwards we open them up and invite in all the other would-be Elon Musks?

Sure, but let's cut back all our other immigration first.

>You really think that Tesla and SpaceX would have been started by someone else if Elon Musk weren't around?

I think similar companies would have been founded yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_private_s...

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/40887273/ns/business-autos/t/new-c...

>I don't think that's true at all. The notion that if Elon Musk weren't around VCs would have given the cash to the next person in line who would have started those companies seems to just be patently false.

I don't see how you can declare that patently false. VCs like electric cars and space companies and there are others in the space so I'm sure they would be funded. Besides it's not just VC money Musk is sucking up, it's also billions in government subsidies. If Musk wasn't sucking up all this cheap money others would be.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...

>How about instead of forcing Musk to not start his company because our immigration laws are a little bit backwards we open them up and invite in all the other would-be Elon Musks?

How about instead of inviting in a bunch of cheap Elon Musks from other countries we put a little bit of work into finding the Elon Musks that already exist here? Also, our immigration laws aren't backwards.

If there's another Elon Musk out there, I promise you VCs are throwing money at him.

This is our real difference, I have no such optimism. I believe there are probably hundreds of completely unknown Elon Musks in america right now, we've just done a horrible job at cultivating and finding human capital in our own country.

And I believe that for every Elon Musk in the United States there are 10 that are ready to come to the United States.

I also don't believe that capital is the sole limiting factor in finding these folks.

I guess I don't care that much what the limiting factor is. Finding the ones that exist in our own country is more important than importing cheap ones. I'll admit to having nationalistic tendencies though, we oughtta take care of our own Elons before we start worrying about the ones in other countries.

a permanent resident immigrant is definitely an American. it's important to distinguish between temporary guest workers and Americans who were born somewhere else.

It's worth calling out that a lot of "temporary guest workers" in SV are Indian and Chinese nationals who are "in line" to get permanent residence. It just happens that the line for India and China is really long: on the order of 9 years for Indian or Chinese masters degree holders (degrees from American unis), compared to less than 2 years for someone from another country.

A permanent resident is a green card holder not an American. It is difficult to obtain that status without a visa to begin with.

A third theory is that zero sum thinking is wrong.

Like it is possible that issuing H-1Bs can be better for Americans in general than issuing no H-1Bs. It depends on the total costs and benefits, not just the costs to the Americans that end up competing with H-1B holders for jobs.

This assumes the greater wealth generated by that superior & cheaper H1B visa holder reaches the majority of Americans, which doesn't seem to be occurring.

Not if they stubbornly refuse to move from their rural communities.

If people continue to ignore the wellbeing of rural midwest states, those states will continue to vote for antiglobalist candidates. If globalization is as important as most here makes it sound, we need to implement it in a manner that doesn't hurt nearly half of the population.

On a social justice level, I agree with you, but I want to point out that for the folks who are actually globalists, the "population" is 7 billion humans, and the 150 million rural & small town Americans are a rounding error (just over 2%, or roughly half the population of Internet Explorer users). That's why it's important to secure the rights of minorities in any system of government.

The issue here is that we don't live in a global government, but a national one. The government is elected by American citizens, and if a huge chunk of American citizens are experiencing a declining quality of life, they will vote for a change candidate.

I don't see why Silicon Valley has any obligation to subsidize rural America. Those farm subsidies are only going to go so far but beyond that there has to be some self-sufficiency.

Sure. I'm just saying that the current situation - where ~5% of the world's population has gotten used to a standard of living far in excess of their productive capacity because they were the only developed country left standing after WW2 - is a very unstable equilibrium. Either we're eclipsed as a nation by China (pop 1.379B) or India (pop 1.324B), each 20% of the world; or the whole concept of nationhood falls apart, and we get city-states in a global trade confederation; or we end up lobbing nukes at every major population center and suddenly the world population is 100M instead of 7B. All of these I'd consider to be bad outcomes, but if I had to choose between them, I'd prefer the second.

The idea that America's going to continue to be on top of the world for the next 20-30 years is unrealistic, though, barring some major technological development that makes each American 5 times as effective as the corresponding foreigner. That's part of the point of this visa program, I guess, to ensure that that technological breakthrough happens here rather than elsewhere.

> where ~5% of the world's population has gotten used to a standard of living far in excess of their productive capacity

I'm not quite sure what you mean.

We have an incredible excess of production capability.

Housing is cheaper and faster to build than ever. So is most infrastructure.

American factories are so labor efficient these days that if there was demand they could easily double or triple output over the next 5-10 years.

The real loss would be long term as there would be fewer great minds and innovators.

I dunno, technology goods continue to drop in price and awful lot of America benefits when the S&P 500 ticks up. A decent treatment of the effects would have to address those points (among many others).

But I don't assume anything in my above comment, I point out a possibility. Note the "it is possible" and "It depends".

> I dunno, technology goods continue to drop in price

Well that's just not true for most large enterprise offerings which is where the majority of h1bs wind up.

In context I was talking about the impact of the H-1B program on typical Americans.

Do you think the everyman is getting hammered by enterprise software shops?

I think the average American could do just as good of a job as the H1b developers working for large enterprise shops (I.e. most h1b visa holders).

As such it is directly taking jobs from Americans without benefiting them.

It is even worse because most of these jobs are entry level and could help drastically increase the number of highly skilled American tech workers.

And because of the way the h1b visa is abused a lot of niche companies who actually face a talent shortage can't get the talent they need.

It's not just the H1Bs that are the problem. The bigger issue is the insane wait for Green cards for Indians and Chinese.

How can they compete effectively in the labour market with that damocles sword hanging over their heads?

I have no hope regarding a real reform in that direction. Too many moneyed interests want to keep the mess going.

I think it's pretty dirty. Recent contributions that impress me the most typically come from western europeans / canadians who got solid educations on the taxpayer's dime back home. SV wants their know-how without having to foot the tax bill for it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the US is littered with marginal state and private institutions that leave local kids with big debts for small skills.

This is a typical SV f*-everybody move though. Europeans get screwed by paying for an education that benefits the US. Americans get screwed for paying megabucks all these years for the military-industrial complex that SV grew out of, but the jobs are reserved for the anointed of the earth, and the profits are stockpiled in Ireland/Netherlands/Bermuda.

For what it's worth, the program doesn't provide a substantial advantage over existing visas, due to the requirement of $250k+ in funding.

Immigration lawyers I've discussed this with have noted that if someone has $250k+ in funding, they are generally able to get an O-1 visa, anyway.

So while this process would likely be easier, it won't help many people who couldn't get a visa via another path.

If the requirement was changed to benefit people pre-funding and give them 2-4 years to show promise, then this would be an extremely beneficial rule.

In general the visa program is designed for employees and executives. It's so much easier to move to the US as one of the two instead of a founder. An "international manager" for example qualifies for the fastest Green Card process. A founder, whereby no one can fire but yourself, can't get into any of the existing visa criterion. To clarify, for both H1B and O1 you need to have a manager (I presume a co-founder would somehow qualify) to be able to fire you. It's a core criteria.

Having the board as your "manager" is sufficient.

Your O1 information is incorrect. You can self apply for O1 or apply with a manager. It's often used for creative careers, eg actors (and amusingly porn stars according to my attorney), where the concept of a manager doesn't make sense.

As the person below you noted, your O-1 information is incorrect.

Founders can, and many do, apply for and successfully receive O-1 visas.

But yes, the visa system is generally much easier for employees and executives instead of founders.

>Immigration lawyers I've discussed this with have noted that if someone has $250k+ in funding, they are generally able to get an O-1 visa, anyway.

Do you mean funding, or 250K+ of their own money?

Regardless of politics, this is one Visa category that's unequivocally beneficial the US. These entrepreneurs are creating jobs & pumping money into the economy

Exactly. You really want to allow, nay, encourage, skilled immigration. Even better if they come with full pockets, and capital to start businesses.

If they're creating jobs and then bemoaning the lack of developers and the need to import more foreign talent to fill those roles,then no,they aren't creating jobs.

Even if this were true, the jobs they create are now subject to US taxes.

I would like to see proof that these jobs could not be created by US citizens who don't need to be imported from other countries.

Because you say you can't obtain the labor and skills locally doesn't not make its so.

EDIT: @maxerickson (cause of those darn HN throttling limits)

Because I want to see US citizens employed before importing labor for jobs that supposedly have no candidates in country, if we're building policy.

I'd love to know how can you provide such proof or what you would expect as proof. We've advertised for a senior programmer position for months and had very little local(national) uptake. Almost nothing. Then we hired someone from abroad, but 99% because they were one of few people who actually applied.

Does that mean that we could never ever fill this position with a local person? How do you prove that?

What makes it more complicated is that it's extremely easy for someone to say "just offer 2x the salary and someone will come" - and that's probably true, but it's extremely ignorant of other market factors in the area.

> We've advertised for a senior programmer position for months and had very little local(national) uptake. Almost nothing. Then we hired someone from abroad, but 99% because they were one of few people who actually applied.

What pay are you offering for the role?

> What makes it more complicated is that it's extremely easy for someone to say "just offer 2x the salary and someone will come" - and that's probably true, but it's extremely ignorant of other market factors in the area.

It is easy to say that when labor law isn't favorable to importing labor from other countries, which as a US citizen I am in favor of. If your business can't support a wage that attracts talent without importing someone from another country, perhaps that's a problem with the business fundamentals.

As a citizen of my country, my fellow citizens are my primary concern, not someone's business. We all have our ideals that have been shaped by our life experiences.

This might be a surprise, but there are your "fellow citizens" who run a business too, it's not an "us vs them" issue.

>>What pay are you offering for the role?

Any answer to that would just trigger a reply of "just pay more" which I don't believe is the answer to the problem. Mostly because in a finite labor pool there's always going to be a shortage and a bidding war will lead to anyone knowing what a keyboard looks like being worth 6-digit salaries.

> This might be a surprise, but there are your "fellow citizens" who run a business too, it's not an "us vs them" issue.

This is not a surprise, but also, it doesn't provide a pass to want labor at below market clearing prices. You have listed a role, and it has gone unfilled for quite some time; you are not paying enough, but do not like the market conditions that allow for the scenario to play out. If you truly believe the salary you're offering is competitive for the role, I encourage you to continue to list the role until you fill it.

Employers have become accustom to cheap labor over the last decade; now that the labor market has tightened, it will take them some time to adapt to the conditions. [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-06/it-s-boom...

Tongue in cheek; Masters required, Ph.D. preferred, 10 years experience in Rust, must be willing to relocate, 7 years experience with Windows 10 required, generous salary starting at $60,000/year.

Not too long ago, I was helping a friend find a job and was a bit startled by some of the requirements. One that really stuck out was needing a few years of experience in a Java version that was still in the beta phase. (I think it was 8.)

I don't know if it's an HR issue, a communications issue, or what... I'd speculate that it is intentional, so that they can claim they can't find local talent and justify hiring from abroad. Call it a hunch...

I'm not sure why companies are so against training, but I suppose that's a topic for another thread.

The aversion of modern tech companies, and companies in many industries besides, to training new hires is mind-boggling. I suppose in the startup world the lack of resources to do so is in part justifiable. So resources end up being poured bidding for the few qualified senior engineers instead. Or lobbying to continue to be able to hire from abroad.

Same thing at my company. We've been trying to fill out our team roster for the better part of a year and ended up hiring from overseas to find the talent and relocate them to the region.

To be fair, we didn't have zero local interest, but the applicants we did get were a fairly interesting parade of awful.

Why ask that question first?

Why not ask first whether this program will prevent any US citizens from creating jobs?

What if both can happen simultaneously? Imagine the horror of even more jobs.

Maybe because American have been told this 'rising tides lift all boats', immigrants create more jobs, wealth, etc. bullshit for 30 years now, and we're' actually no longer willing to buy it since it apparently hasn't been the least bit true for most of us.

At this point, I'm willing to risk potential some lost jobs and GDP, which never seems to benefit anyone I know, and in exchange, shut down the H1b and other immigration scams.

Very few individuals pay taxes equal to, or greater than, their costs.

It would be better if the jobs the created were performed by the many qualified American citizens. The 'lack of qualified Americans' is a total lie.

This is, and has always been, about labor arbitrage, plain and simple.

People who have spent much of their careers hiring people all seem to agree that people who can do the job effectively are hard to find at any price. You may have a different definition of 'qualified'.

My comment should have been clearer. By 'train' I mean train applicants who are somewhat qualified, but not fully qualified.

There are 2+ decades of anecdotes about poorly qualified programmers from India and China arriving here as H1Bs. The poorly trained Americans should be getting these jobs instead.

Even if a large quantity of the workers are foreign, they do spend truckloads of their fat paychecks in the US. Or what you are saying is that trickle-down economy doesn't apply to foreigners, then?

Trickle-down economy does not apply to anybody in any case.

That's my point. However, this is not what anti-immigration folks usually believe.

Don't be too sure about that. The right-wing populism that's been spreading internationally isn't exactly neoliberal in its outlook. Those agitating against H-1Bs aren't hand in hand with those calling for supply-side economics. There are different varieties of right-wing just as there are different types of left-wing.

I don't ever send money to friends and family in another country. They all do. Which worker benefits this nation more?

Foreign remittances are estimated at around $50B yearly[1]. Trump's proposed estate tax repeal (death-tax) would cost $200B, while his corporate tax reform would cost $3.7T (that's trillion with a T)[2]. It's important to remember that remittances are NOT tax money. Who's whacking the economy again?

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/us/politics/immigrants-fin...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/26/us/politics/w...

Once again, we see high-powered liberals trying to circumvent the democratic process by Suing to enact political change. Everyone should be held to the same rulebook. The courts are not there to subvert the political process.

The courts have a defined role within the political process - the interpretation of the law - which they are following here. Both conservative and liberal activists have a long history of suing to enact political change. It is important that these issues are worked out in court precisely so that the rulebook is applied with more fairness.

NVCA contends that the Trump administration’s decision violated the Administrative Procedures Act

Is the complaint not that the administration broke the rules?

Why don't they open offices in a more immigration friendly country?

Because US markets are worth doing business in.

I understand, but if the US doesn't want immigrants then why not open up in Canada or some other place that have freer immigration law. Or is America the only place you can be successful?

That's a fair question, and a real trend. In the short term it doesn't seem detrimental to the US economy. I believe that the US will gain pole position in the future by encouraging immigration of high skilled, entrepreneurial individuals. And data suggests a similar benefit.

America is the best place for VC money. For now atleast, in 20 years, who knows? Singapore or Canada or Berlin may become the next hotspot.

Or in their own country.

The US is the most immigrant friendly country.

It's amazing VCs have standing. Very unfortunate that we need executive action to allow entrepreneurs to make America their base of operations - not to get too CATO-y here, but it'd be excellent if the right to earn a living was identified as a Constitutional right.

Beyond the program proposed, I think anyone in America should be allowed to start a company and should be allowed to stay in America contingent upon their company growing - automatic citizenship for anyone who started and owns >50% of a company that has at least a million /yr in payroll for Americans.

> automatic citizenship for anyone who started and owns >50% of a company that has at least a million /yr in payroll for Americans.

Don't we allow people who make a 500k investment a special visa which can turn into a green card which can turn into citizenship?

I think the rules on this are changing, look at how Kusher's use of the program was demonized.

But still, it's different. This gives an opportunity to people who create the value, not those who have captured 500k in value and have it ready for conversion into a green card.

50% equity in a million payroll company? Sure, who will not sign up for it. But what we are talking is people getting checks in 250K range and them being able to be in USA to raise capital. We already know tech sector does not employ that many people at least not until Series A. This is not about creating lots of jobs either, the most successful one would be lucky to have a thousand direct hires.

Selling tech entrepreneur-ship as jobs program is a joke. This is giving more power to VCs just like their corporate brothers to import talent. Good or bad, I am not sure, but the winners are certainly the 1% not the 99%.

50% equity in a million payroll company?

And started it - i.e had their name on the articles of incorporation.

There's a scoping problem. Constitutional rights only extend to citizens and residents (with many edge cases). Thus, people that are directly injured by immigration bans don't usually have standing for a constitutional challenge.

The EB-5 visa (https://www.uscis.gov/eb-5) is similar to what you're asking for, except you have to bring your own money ($1M, maybe less if you can make a case for it).

and in this case we'd extend the right to living to both. It doesn't do much for people who'd like to come here and start a company unless they pull a tourist visa and come in and exercise their right to earn a living.

How is that not just letting the rich buy citizenship?

It's letting the soon-to-be rich buy citizenship.

A quick summary of the article: https://summarybrew.com/p/top-venture-capitalists-are-suing-...

The really ironic part of this is that while VCs will claim "America First" is exclusionary(it is), their practice of "Silicon Valley First" is accepted as a normal fact of life.

Opportunity in America is not equal. Many smart, working class kids would love to be an entrepreneur, and it's not lack of ambition or talent holding them back. It's simple economics and lack of mentorship or investment available.

I'm all for bringing more entrepeneurs into the US. But I wish VCs were half as interested in growing talent here, at public universities across the nation and in cities not as hip as SFO.

The kind of entrepreneurs most likely to succeed (and therefore gain the attention of VCs) figure out how to relocate to startup hubs where they can get the attention of the VC community and network their way into the ecosystem. It’s way easier to move from Florida to San Francisco that it is from Paris, Sydney or Cape Town, and the extra hoops foreign entrepreneurs have to jump through makes them stand out all the more (relatively speaking). Very few American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley grew up there either. It becomes a self-selecting sample.

And for those people who have legitimate reasons to not relocate to the most expensive area in the U.S.? You know, reasons like familial obligations and limited safety net income? They should just accept that they weren't likely to succeed in the first place, because otherwise they would have relocated?

That's nonsense. Plenty of very successful companies run succesfully somewhere other than SV. If you run a tech shop, that knows what you're doing, has the talent and resources on-hand, you don't need to be in SV other than for networking (which you only need to do to get those talent and resources in the first place).

I would love to see numbers on long-term success vs funding numbers by city. I'd argue that for long-term success and a customer base that is consumer oriented (as opposed to B2B which does benefit from SFO or NYC), a location with lower expenses and less employee turnover due to less competition seems beneficial. Worked for starting Amazon and Microsoft, some of the THE most successful companies right now (even if Seattle is becoming more like SF every day now).

The article above is specifically about VC-funded companies by definition. Nobody is arguing that you can’t be a successful entrepreneur outside of a startup hub. But if you’re going to play the “bubble metrics” game, raise VC, grow rapidly and exit for “bubble metrics” valuations, your odds are way higher if you move. Silicon Valley is generally full of young founders. They move before they have families. They couch-surf, eat ramen noodles and don’t let concern for a safety net impede possible success (however unlikely that is).

Parents are family. Siblings are family. If you have the ability move across the country without worrying if your family will be able to get by without you helping them either in person or financially, you already have a safety net that many working class Americans don't.

Everyone ate ramen in college to get by, but most folks had the option to go back home and stay with their parents if college didn't work out. That's what you're describing here. Please don't conflate choosing to live frugally in exchange for additional opportunity with Americans who actually have grown up watching parents work two jobs only to choose between going to the doctor or paying their car payment (which they need to earn income). That's what working class means, that's what not having a safety net means. The consequences are different.

Could you explain what you mean by the "economics" holding them back? Someone living here starts off in a much better position than any foreign entrepreneur. If they can't figure out how to get the attention of an investor then they probably wouldn't be a great entrepreneur.

> Someone living here starts off in a much better position than any foreign entrepreneur.

This is an incredibly untrue statement.

To expand upon this statement, social mobility has been on the decline[1] at a time when income inequality in the US is reaching unparalleled levels[2]. Childhood poverty is on the rise[3], and regional inequality is incredible[4]. All this is occurring at a time when the best and brightest young people are ending up with tens of thousands of dollars of debt just to be able to enter the workforce.

All this is why small business creation is on the decline here.[5] It takes money to make money, and the lower and middle classes just don't have money to spare.

edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain? I don't understand the flaw(s) in my statement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#C...

[4] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2012/08/07/regiona...

[5] http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-nea...

This is absolutely correct.

If the 'foreign entrepreneur' is rich then he or she does not need VC help to immigrate into the United States. I know a few - it just requires being able to get in via O visa, which is easy for a rich person[1]. So this means that the foreign entrepreneur in question is not rich.

A non-rich foreign entrepreneur is unlikely to have the kind of salary that allows one to throw money at the problem to make inconveniences of switching countries go away:

1. Establishing personal credit, bank accounts, dealing with financial institutions, insurance etc

2. Getting state issued drivers license and dealing with Government

3. Getting an apartment

4. Developing a quick understanding of good v. bad areas, social norms (poor person with terrible habits is an asshole. Rich person with the same habits is eccentric ), etc

[1] Edit: In a response to the comment below - lets define "rich" as someone with a few million in assets with a million of that being liquid.

For those not in the know, here is the definition of an O Visa is:

"An O visa is a classification of non-immigrant temporary worker visa granted by the United States to an alien "who possesses extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics, or who has a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture or television industry and has been recognized nationally or internationally for those achievements," "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa

I don't think this is quite as easy to obtain as the parent implies as you need to have a reputation & have money to pull it off. Not just any rich person will be able to do this without spending a bunch of time cultivating the former.

The people I know who have gotten this visa had quite a long history of published (news papers, journals, etc) achievements.

It was also very stressful for them as at any stage in the process the government could decide that their achievements were not significant enough and pull the plug on their application.

" Someone living here starts off in a much better position than any foreign entrepreneur. "

I don't think you can make a blanket statement like that. I come from Ireland where I received a 4 year degree in CS for free. Most of the Americans I worked with over the years are saddled with huge amounts of college debt. This is a massive advantage in my favor.

Having to spend 4-6 years waiting for a green card so I can start my own company is a massive disadvantage. Having to deal with the annoying vagaries of the US immigration system just to get a job is also a massive disadvantage.

Coming from a country that has good free high school education is a massive advantage compared to most places in the USA.

Having parents who are financially well off and can support you while you are in school is a massive advantage. Having parents who went to university and can tell you the difference between schools or guide you through the byzantine application processes are massive advantages.

Many students here receive financial aid - 69% of Stanford undergraduates [1].

[1] http://news.stanford.edu/2016/02/25/tuition-financial-aid-02...

Sure, Stanford, Harvard & many top tier universities provide financial aid. I think that's awesome and to be encouraged. Getting into those institutions or being even aware of them is another matter. The disadvantages that many American's face start way downstream in high school, etc.

If you don't have parents who have gone to college before or go to a school with good teachers, you probably won't even know to apply to a top tier school.

A common theme that I have seen amongst my friends who have gone to Stanford/Berkeley/etc is that their parents had them doing extracurricular activities from a very young age to pad their entrance letters. Poorer families, have less resources and hence less time to engage in activities like this.

Just getting into Stanford or a top US college requires an incredible amount of work above and beyond good grades.

I have a very good friend who charge's $200 an hour to put together college application letters for top schools.

Income inequality in the USA is a huge disadvantage that many Americans face.

I'm not saying that income inequality is not an issue many immigrants don't face. I'm just particularly aware of it coming from a country (Ireland) that has good social benefits, like free healthcare, educations, etc. I think these things put me at an advantage compared to what many of my American peers had to go through.

1. Be American in SF.

2. Rent out your apartment.

3. Go to Europe, live from the rent money.

4. Get a degree.

5. Profit?

If you don't own a property:

0. Save for a year, then do the same thing.

I'm not sure about the details of this exact program but if someone who wants to come live in America, that means there is an added "value" to this program that the VC's don't have to pay for. I'm using the H1B program in mind here. Those people will possibly be more negotiable and possibly willing to take deals that others wouldn't for the same or less amount of money - simply because there is an added factor to the arrangement.

As far as I can tell, most big VCs are essentially children who care about little more than power, recognition, and maybe being the first trillionaire. If you filter out the incessant talk and focus only on actions, it becomes clear.

VCs aren't in the business of developing talent, they want to set up and mentor startups and make money. They believe (correctly or not) that the best place to do this is in Silicon Valley, so they want entrepreneurs from the US and beyond to relocate there. What is "ironic" about this?

I imagine a legal victory for the VCs will be spun by the administration as example of "liberal elites" and "activist judges" subverting the democratically elected government.

A legal victory won't change many minds, but it could at least prevent some unnecessary economic self-harm.

Why not move to Canada?

Money and opportunity to work on interesting stuff.

I've been thinking about moving back.

"the Trump administration violated federal rulemaking laws"

"The court challenge concerns the International Entrepreneur Rule, a program instituted under former President Barack Obama"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_entrepreneur_rul...

"this rule does not need to be approved by Congress."

It seems like VCs were unable to get a law passed, so they tried to use their influence over the president to slip one past the democratic process. That seems dishonest. I'm glad to see president Trump standing up to that sort of intimidation. If they want a law, they need to participate in the democratic process like everyone else.

Doesn’t “federal rulemaking laws” specifically mean the laws that govern this kind of executive regulation that is not actual law? I don’t see the contradiction.

Also, what intimidation?

No actually, a lot of immigration is administrative (as opposed to legislative). The congress has delegated wide authority in this to the executive branch. However, for the executive to exercise this authority there is a whole body of procedure that all administrative agencies have to follow so that it isn't capricious rules that change with the executive's mood. Not following the administrative procedures is what's a subversion of the democratic process (i.e. the executive is exceeding the authority granted to it by our representatives.)

>rules that change with the executive's mood

That seems like a mis-characterization of the situation. Trump's mood hasn't changed. Making major changes to immigration policy and trade deals was the foundation of Trump's presidential campaign.

The law, that Trump and every other president is sworn to uphold, says the administrative regulations are supposed to be created only following the legislatively mandated rule making process. While Trump's appointees are free to initiate a new rule making process--as for example his FCC commissioner is doing to the chagrin of most HN commenters on net neutrality--he's not free to just decide to change administrative regulations absent the appropriate procedures and evidence even if he campaigned on that rule change. If the case is as the NVCA claims--where the administrative procedures act wasn't followed, I hope they win.

>the administrative regulations are supposed to be created only following the legislatively mandated rule making process.

The administration hasn't created new rules. They've delayed rules that have not yet taken effect.

>While Trump's appointees are free to initiate a new rule making process--as for example his FCC commissioner is doing to the chagrin of most HN commenters on net neutrality

Which the FCC did by blocking rules before they were to take effect. Sounds like the same strategy to me.

If you're big on America First, why wouldn't you want the best foreign entrepreneurs to come and found great companies that generate American jobs, American taxes, and American products?

Assuming your question is rhetorical but to be sure:

Imho because it's implicit signaling of `Americans First` (and here implicit only a subset of them)

Because Trump is not big on America first. He is only big on creating illusions of success for his base. And nothing makes his base happier than to keep immigrants out. Or basically anything that will incense the more urban, liberal Americans.

The best reason why to exclude foreigners from American domestic labor market unless they are highly skilled is that jobs and careers have an economic and social impact beyond mere monetary returns. China knows this all too well in their economic policy.

'America first' has everything to do with weeding out, and keeping out, people who are not the same ethnicity as those in power, and nothing to do with actually benefiting the country.

You do realize "America first' also prevents masses of white guys from across the pond from coming here and doing the same thing? I can't down vote but please don't make everything about race on HN, reddit and twitter are bad enough about jumping to crazy racist notions when trying to have a intellectual conversation.

Racism doesn't always have to do with skin color. A general hatred towards anyone that doesn't look, act, or speak like an American is still racism.

American is not a race.

Semantics.

It's calling a spade a spade.

Because many of Trump's base are low-educated rural people who see the American jobs being generated by the best foreign entrepreneurs as requiring higher education and skills than they possess.

This is so untrue. There are many many American founders who are dying for mentorship and support and anything from VC, and many many more people who want to develop their careers in innovative ways who have degrees in STEM. Domestic innovation even if it's copy cat is socially better than importing non natives.

I'm a high-income, highly educated immigrant. I grew up among similar people, and witnessed the extreme derision directed at "low-educated rural people." Given that, it's a bit difficult for me to blame Trump's base for not wanting more of us here.

Eh, I don't blame them, but I also don't blame the high-income highly-educated immigrants for feeling derisive toward people whose only asset is that they're American. I think Tom Lehrer's 1967 observations are still remarkably on-point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY

I think it's pretty hypocritical. India and China certainly don't subscribe to the "credo nation" concept that American elites have embraced. In Bangladesh, when we speak about other Bangladeshis we identify precisely where in the country their families are from. (It'd be like making it a point to note that someone was from Texas or Virginia.) But when we speak of people from outside the country, we call everyone "bideshi" ("foreigner"), regardless of nationality. An American could move to Bangladesh as a young child and live there her whole life, but she'd always be "bideshi."

Do people from West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, who speak Bengali count as bideshi?

This is a bit of a myth. Trump's core are older suburban conservatives who typically make the median household income or greater. Nate Silver at 538 has done a good job of breaking this down.

And while it's true that the white rural poor vote Republican, as a political force they aren't that potent. It's unfortunately, because their interests often get steamrolled by more corporate-oriented Republicans. Democrats throw their arms up and say "Stop voting against your interests!" but neither party has any coherent vision for rural America. Republicans see them purely as culture voters, and Democrats are focused on giving them the same complicated means-tested benefits as everyone else.

Because they are often fair weather friends with no particular loyalty or allegiance to the USA or our values, and will flee for their home country as soon as convenience dictates.

Just like with other aspects of the labor market (agriculture, hospitality) where illegal immigration undercuts Americans, VCs are doing labor market arbitrage and are importing cheaper "founders" who essentially become visa hostages. It doesn't benefit anyone except the silicon valley elite, who also run this site, incidentally.

> Because they are often fair weather friends

No different than any other capitalist investor!

And the neoliberal class are highly mobile, they are rootless people and no one can really ever forget that.

VCs are free to invest in foreign based companies, so that would be the best arbitrage. Its in the interests of the US to maintain the strong network that already exists.

I am not sure how essential is this visa category, since there are other categories most founders would qualify under.

I am surprised you think that uprooting your entire living and moving to a different country is that easy: I mean do you do that for convenience sake even inside the USA?

These are people (including me) who come in here and build a bunch of local connections. Turning it personal, Our kids go to school here. I own a house here. I have a ton of friends here. I pay taxes and donate/volunteer when I can. I ride bicycles everywhere if that matters. (No I am not blue/democrat because I can't vote :).

You are also touching on other issues like visa hostages. Most of those people who feel that they are in a 'hostage' scenario can go back anytime they want but most of them choose to stay. I say most because there are definitely a few who can't but whatever.

In my case, I could've stayed back in India and worked for similar companies (Both my prior companies have a big presence there), but here is where I want to be. Now you can say me being here ONLY benefits my employer or elites, but I definitely don't think of that way: I think of it as an incredible opportunity and like any other big-system process, it has its troubles. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Many people who are "America First" don't just care about the economy, they care about preserving American identity and culture. I immigrated to the U.S. when I was five. I tend to think I fit in pretty well, but my attitudes are definitely different than those of my wife, whose family has been here for hundreds of years. (For example, I have a much higher pain threshold for political and social turmoil given what things are like where I'm from.)

You can, of course, disagree about whether that is a valid or justifiable impulse (and I'd be inclined to agree with you on that). But it's not a mysterious or even unusual one. Heck, we have a founding EU member state on the precipice of fracturing along a linguistic boundary. Certainly, if the shoe were on the other foot and a huge fraction of people running major Indian or Chinese businesses were American immigrants, lots of people would be pretty upset.

I think people are reading too much into this inaction. The Trump administration is floundering, grossly understaffed and unable to keep a consistent approach on anything. In addition to being vile and reprehensible, it is also incompetent. This is an example of mere incompetence.

What's that quote again... "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

The nature of your disagreement is what people mean by "America first".

You probably take it to mean natural American leadership in business / science.

Others - those who probably identify more with the statement - take it to mean that America should put its domestic interests first. Now, denying visas to entrepreneurs probably would be a policy that harms American interests but it's not high up the list and the dissident rightists have an incentive to mess up immigration as much as possible - it'll give them a better position to renegotiate an immigration system.

I think the primary problem with our immigration system is that both sides represent corporate interests in that they want a companies to have access to inexpensive workers and so we get problems like H1-B that make it difficult for H1-B workers to change employers or negotiate a higher salary / better position.

The other problem is that people with left-wing sympathies want an immigration system that works better for people who aren't poised to do skilled work and they know that they can't cut separate deals on skilled immigration and unskilled immigration because unskilled immigration isn't as politically desirable.

Blame uneducated voters, sure. But there's a reason we're not doing the thing that's clearly right here and it's not because of Trump's base.

I don't get how hn can be behind this and question how this goes against America first when y'all always whine about "muh mentorship". Y'all know the value of mentorship and incubation and the cost involved in incubating talent. Talent needs to be developed and cultivated right? So why bring in 'founders' from abroad based on very speculative certia with investment levels below the amount to employ a few Americans to compete at least initially within the American domestic market? Why not throw those resources to create firms in America, even if in the spirit of sino-inspired copyism,to create not just work opportunities but founder opportunities for Americans?

Because most Americans want to be employees, not entrepreneurs, and bringing in entrepreneurs from abroad who already have capital & experience increases the pool of mentors available for people who wish to be employees of small, fast-growing businesses.

a) source?

b) this precludes developing an entrepreneurship culture as a related and desirable goal.

So I'm an entrepreneur, and a native-born American citizen, so I'm obviously not talking my book here. My source is simply what I've observed trying to recruit co-founders. Folks with actual tangible skills and a realistic outlook would generally rather collect a paycheck for their skills.

But I also don't consider lack of venture capital or mentorship to be an important barrier to my success. When I look at what I do daily, as a founder, there is very little that more money would help with. And their advice is generally pretty cookie-cutter; if you follow it blindly, you will look like every other company they fund, which will be the death of your company. The good ones recognize this, and what they look for in a founder is someone with an independent perspective who will do the legwork to verify their hunches with data, on their own, and don't trust anybody else's ideas of reality. The bad ones, you don't want to do business with.

The hardest core competency for any company to develop is innovation [1], which is literally "doing that which everyone considers to be a bad idea, with tiny variations that make it a good idea". Good entrepreneurs look for how you can change systems, because if you can't leverage some external change in the environment that other people haven't noticed yet, you're competing with everybody else who wants to start a company. If anybody else knew about those loopholes in the system that have opened up, then the opportunity would be gone - and that includes the VC. They'd just fund somebody else to take advantage of it.

[1] https://a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/

> But I also don't consider lack of venture capital or mentorship to be an important barrier to my success.

And yet that's the main criteria for qualifying for this visa. You could literally found a company the size of Google and still not qualify unless you've taken venture capital.

And since most Fortune 500 companies don’t take VC, this seems like just a hand out to investors.

But most fortune 500 companies are older than modern VC, which really came into being as a response to post-war tax policies. Most Fortune 500 companies can trace their founding to similarly speculative capital under a different name.

Are you seriously suggesting there is a lack of opportunity for US citizens do become founders :)?

I always ask the same question about huge American tech companies. They have almost unfathomable amounts of cash, but complain about the lack of qualified American talent. If there really is a shortage of qualified American talent, then American tech companies should use some of the cash to train American citizens.

H1B and similar really are about labor arbitrage. It's amazing that anyone thinks the best paid jobs in America should go to hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals. (There are hundreds of thousands of H1B workers in America right now doing jobs that Americans are imminently qualified to perform.)

Not to mention, non-profits are exempt from the annual cap on H1B. This includes virtually all hospitals and universities. If Democrats are serious about the middle class, then they really should do something about this.

You can not "train" someone who has no interest and those companies with unfathomable amounts of cash are hiring basically top 2-3% of software engineers world wide. You have to realize that they have offices in Australia, EU, Switzerland, UK etc. So if they need to hire someone and do not have an easy option to bring that someone to the US they will have that person work out of one of their offices in the countries listed above with all the implications as far as which country is now collecting taxes.

My comment should have been clearer. By 'train' I mean train applicants who are somewhat qualified, but not fully qualified.

There are 2+ decades of anecdotes about poorly qualified programmers from India and China arriving here as H1Bs. The poorly trained Americans should be getting these jobs instead.

H1B visas are all kinds of broken, but I don't believe there are an excess of qualified American citizens for most software jobs. In fact, it's so hard to get an H1B now that I don't think they're having much effect on "jobs available to Americans" at all.

I've never run a huge tech company, but even when trying to hire 10-50 engineers it's been a real slog trying to find good ones. We built one of the least biased hiring processes imaginable, promoted jobs to largely American audiences, and the pool of applicants was still hugely unqualified. We found ~2 qualified people per ~1000 applications.

American tech companies _do_ train American talent, I'm a product of this. I think you're overestimating how good we are at training software devs, though. It's not a fast process, it's not very scientific, and it doesn't seem to "take" for most people.

What was your training experience like?

Hired as junior dev for super cheap, got a lot of great mentoring at 3 different, then learned enough to keep progressing on my own.

A family member had the first half (mentoring, foundation to learn from) but didn't go anywhere. It's part of why I think it's so hard to train people at what we do. It's not at all clear what set of skills make someone good at software.

>> Hired as junior dev for super cheap, got a lot of great mentoring at 3 different, then learned enough to keep progressing on my own.

Yes, and I'm saying that there should be a similar path for American citizens who want to get into tech. There is more than enough money in tech to hire and train American workers.

We're talking about companies with a combined market value that is more than the GDP of Russia.

I am an American Citizen. As is my brother. We're about as white bread Oklahoma kid as they come. The path is there, it's just really freakin' hard.

It just takes so long before someone realizes software might not be from them.

You can be a great programmer yet a completely terrible developer. But you need the base programming skills and theory first. Then when you get into the real world you realize the slog is crap and you don't enjoy it.

I think there's plenty of room for a code technician type of job which should proliferate in today's environment. Move the good and motivated ones to engineering.

I'm not sure I buy this argument. Each tech job in the Bay Area creates ~4 other jobs[1]. So currently it's a net win for the country to bring someone in to fill a role in that sector. The people who lose out in that case aren't your hypothetical middle-class American, they are tech workers whose salaries go down somewhat because the supply of labour in their sector increased.

Another way of putting that same fact is that tech jobs are paid well above the mean salary, and so they necessarily increase the country's GDP per capita. Bring in more people like this! Give them a green card instead of making it hard for smart people to plant roots in the US! It'll boost our economy and generate more service sector jobs as well.

You could make a case that if you trained up an unemployed coal miner to do the job you'd create another job on top of the 4 that we already created, but it's not clear why you'd go to all that effort to create one job when you could just grant another green card to another tech worker and create 4 jobs; why would a company spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars training someone who might work out, when there are plenty of applicants in the world who are ready to do good work now?

As I see it the only coherent argument against more foreign tech workers is a political/sociological one noting that America is becoming increasingly xenophobic (due to concerns about low-skilled immigrants), and increasing immigration (even if it was solely high-skilled) would cause even more political instability than we've seen in the last year. But I don't see an economic argument against it.

[1]: http://www.bayareacouncil.org/community_engagement/new-study...

> They have almost unfathomable amounts of cash, but complain about the lack of qualified American talent. If there really is a shortage of qualified American talent, then American tech companies should use some of the cash to train American citizens.

You believe that anyone can be trained to be an effective programmer. If that's true, then there's some truth to your argument: why not invest in education and training to meet the high demand for programmers?

But I disagree with that premise. I think "ability to be a great programmer" is generally something you're born with, or at least something that's been determined by the time you're ~18. Therefore it makes perfect sense to import programmers to meet the demand. The US population is just not big enough to meet the demand for programmers and it would be insane/damaging to the economy to refuse to employ non-Americans.

I think the reason for H1B workers is supply and demand. The demand for developers far, far exceeds the supply.

> But I disagree with that premise. I think "ability to be a great programmer" is generally something you're born with, or at least something that's been determined by the time you're ~18.

That's your opinion, but it's far from a majority one. It flies in the face with the continuous education/MOOCs/coder bootcamp industries and the "anyone can be a coder" mantra of the current age. Either you're right, or all of those programs and institutions are hucksters.

Not to mention, "great programmer" is hyperbolic when many many coding jobs these days are really just about fixing broken JavaScript and gluing together APIs. Software has eaten the world, and Sturgeon's law applies to software as much as anything else.

>You believe that anyone can be trained to be an effective programmer. If that's true, then there's some truth to your argument: why not invest in education and training to meet the high demand for programmers?

We have. We've had retraining programs for decades, where people in declining industries get retrained as programmers or SAs (plus a bunch of other things).

The problem is nobody will hire them without experience. Some percentage of these people could be at least serviceable programmers, but they pretty much just languish on benefits because it's more convenient for companies to hire H-1B people with experience.

Megan McArdle had a good piece on this related to her retraining as a Netware admin.

My comment should have been clearer. By 'train' I mean train applicants who are somewhat qualified, but not fully qualified.

There are 2+ decades of anecdotes about poorly qualified programmers from India and China arriving here as H1Bs. The poorly trained Americans should be getting these jobs instead.

> Talent needs to be developed and cultivated right?

Feels like you're overstating the value of "mentorship and incubation". It doesn't "make" companies or founders, it just helps guide the ones who are already on that path. Employees benefit from skills training and career mentorship, but that's different for someone who started a company. The most prolific entrepreneurs are hell bent on success and don't need training or incubation.

We need more companies that hire lots of people. Therefore we need the most prolific founders possible - bring 'em in from anywhere to start more big companies in the US! For example, Google being HQed in the US created thousands of jobs here, not even counting all the companies started by Ex-googlers -- if those founders were sent back to Russia, all those jobs could be overseas. Wouldn't you want them in the US, per your argument?

Source: worked as VC for 5+ years

Not sure what your argument is here, Matt. Are you saying the US should try to keep foreign talent out and that tech companies and investors should direct their time and resources at Americans? If so, do you know how Silicon Valley works and why it has made the US the global center of tech? It did so by combining foreign capital and talent with US capital and talent. It's a global matchmaker for the best talent, which is evenly distributed across many countries. If we give into jingo-ism, we lose the tech race.

> Are you saying the US should try to keep foreign talent out and that tech companies and investors should direct their time and resources at Americans?

Yes, because it is the law. The law is that companies must hire those authorized to work in the United States and only if the companies cannot do it can they bring someone into the country.

Of course in reality this is not what happens. If you have spent any time in management in tech companies you know what kind of wink and nod games are played. Hell, some of them are not even games - managers routinely bring in foreigners under all kinds of pretenses.

That's a very narrow view, and it's not really the point.

America's national interest is tightly linked to whether or not it's able to attract tech talent from around the world. No law forbids US tech companies from doing that.

And in fact, there are a lot of incredibly talented people who are Americans, and we should be grateful if they want to come to the US and work. We should try to convince them to do so. Because we don't, they will found their Googles and their Facebooks somewhere else, and they will help non-US tech companies succeed.

You want resources? Be so good they can't ignore you.

cx: people who are *not Americans

> America's national interest is tightly linked to whether or not it's able to attract tech talent from around the world. No law forbids US tech companies from doing that.

That's not correct. Basis for seeking authorization for a currently non-authorized worker is inability to find a currently authorized worker to do this job. Note, it is not an american worker. It is someone who hold a current work authorization such as:

American citizens

Permanent residents

Holders of work authorization paperwork

It sort of depends on your beliefs on the distribution and development of entrepreneurial talent.

Do you think anyone with the right capital and encouragement can be made into a great entrepreneur? Then what you say makes sense.

On the other hand if you think entrepreneurship is a rare feature that one in a million happen to develop, then you would want to find it wherever you can and bring it to your neighborhood so that when they hire thousands of people, and make them rich, it is your neighbors and friends who get hired and made rich.

Note that even if you believe that there is a lot of luck involved, you are closer to the second model.

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