Just ask the tens of million of immigrants in this country who have done exactly that.
In a sense, it's unfair that native-born Americans are forced to compete with people from all over the world who are highly motivated and have an extremely high tolerance for risk. But it's also what has actually made this country great.
Almost every great city in existence has had at least one awful moment at some point in its history. If everyone took the "times are tough, I'm going to migrate to X place which is doing better" approach, then our urban geography would look so much different.
Ultimately, what gets a city out of tough times is its ability to retain the motivated people you mention. By losing those people, it seems that it's just reinforcing a winner-take-all approach to talent demographics.
http://www.historylink.org/File/1287 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft
Unless you're an immigrant yourself, it's hard to imagine how big of a deal it is to just uproot your family and go to a different country and start over, often from scratch with no real networks to build from.
Of course, you might not be able to get that far. A greyhound ticket is expensive when you don't have work and are trying to feed children. Or your parents live in the same area. Or they are dead. Or maybe greyhound doesn't serve your area well enough for you to get transportation to the bus stop. and these are just shallow things. Anyone who doesn't have a parent or friend to stay with in an area with jobs is just out of luck.
That's why when a company pays for relocation, they typically pay in the ballpark of $500 to account for the expenses associated with an interstate move for one person.
...which would be a nice narrative if it wasn't an order of magnitude off.
Someone relocating has to pay for:
-transportation of themselves (that's your Greyhound)
-transportation of their goods OR re-purchases of all the basic necessities (something to sleep on, something to cook with, etc) - $1000 conservatively
-transportation or purchase of a vehicle (because you really can't live and work without a car in most of the US), so in fact, let's forget about Greyhound. Throw in vehicle registration fees, increase in insurance (going from Podunk, MN to SF Bay Area will cost you $1000 just there, not accounting for gas/mileage).
Of course, you can save by moving to an area with extensive public transportation networks, but that means you'll pay way more in...
-security deposit AND first month's rent (which, spoiler! is usually going to be much higher in the city that people are relocating to). Again, for the Bay Rea, assuming you are a 20-something single who can live with room-mates (and not someone with a family who needs an apartment), that's around $1000 + $1000 if you are lucky. Add more for NYC where 2x rent is standard for a deposit (remember how you were going to save by going car-less? Put all that money here)
-perhaps you don't have a job offer waiting for you, so a month's worth of expenses while you're looking for a job. Let's say you are frugal, so that's $500, assuming you don't want health insurance and your jalopy made it across the country without needing repairs.
So somewhere around $5K for a single person for interstate relocation, assuming one finds a job within a month.
(I moved with a job offer; typical tech relocation packages are around $5-10K)
To all those looking at Greyhound costs, I need to ask: have you ever actually moved somewhere, tallying your expenses?
For an immigrant the contrast is very clear. For some one born and used to privilege not so much.
There is reason why so many new millionaires are made, but existing heirs of all those millionaires don't become billionaires. Without any real pressure, a persons efforts will juts wax and wane over time.
Why is it unfair? Are Americans incapable and need protection? I thought America was built on opportunity, and free, fair competition.
You're not really disproving his/her point as you're ignoring the many millions more who fail to move in the first place.
Changing town/country is never easy and it has its own risks, but no pain, no gain
How much risk is an immigrant really taking on, when there is a safety net in terms of social services available to them, that pays multiples of their yearly earnings back in "the old country"?
Meanwhile, the native-born Americans have too much assets (even if in a crappy location, it still disqualifies them) to qualify for that same assistance...
I can't believe the parent means that literally.
> people whose forefathers built the country
You don't get credit for what some ancestor did; you get credit for what you do. I'd say that trying to lean on your ancestors is 'un-American'; earn your own way.
Also, the U.S. has been 'built' continuously and it continues today. The work and progress didn't stop in 1776 or 1930 or whatever date the parent is assuming. The question is, what are you going to leave for the next generation?
> How much risk is an immigrant really taking on, when there is a safety net in terms of social services available to them, that pays multiples of their yearly earnings back in "the old country"?
This comment ignores the great burden of most immigrants: Leaving your home, moving to a foreign culture where you don't speak the language, where you have no contacts or network, and bringing few resources. I'd like to see most Americans pick up and move to a non-English speaking, completely foreign culture, with no money and no contacts.
It also assumes a decent quality of life in the U.S. 'social safety net', which is pretty awful, especially compared to other first world nations. No health care and terrible education, for one thing. Even people with jobs have a tough time, and need several of them just to get by.
I can't quite articulate it, but I have a serious problem with the attitude that seems to say "well yes, your family for 5 generations struggled to clear the land, make it productive, worked in factories, sent sons off to die in wars, but, if you aren't being 100% economically productive RIGHT THIS MINUTE, just get out of the way already and let immigrants take your place..."
That's just absurd. People who were born in the U.S. face many risks.
> get out of the way already and let immigrants take your place
Nobody is taking anybody's place. Economics is not zero sum; the better your neighbor does, the better you do. Your successful neighbors are your employers, customers, taxpayers, etc.
> if you aren't being 100% economically productive RIGHT THIS MINUTE, just get out of the way already ...
That's not a problem with immigration; it's a problem with U.S. government policy that doesn't educate, provide health care for, feed, or house its citizens, and concentrates economic opportunity in the hands of a very few. Those things are clearly doable, because almost every other wealthy country does them much better. And the political leaders who oppose such things, and continually try to 'shrink' government, try to distract attention from their responsibility (and the responsibility of their wealthy constituents who try to avoid paying taxes) by blaming immigrants.
"In order to get Medicaid and CHIP coverage, many qualified non-citizens (such as many LPRs or green card holders) have a 5-year waiting period. This means they must wait 5 years after receiving "qualified" immigration status before they can get Medicaid and CHIP coverage. There are exceptions. For example, refugees, asylees, or LPRs who used to be refugees or asylees don’t have to wait 5 years."
https://www.healthcare.gov/immigrants/lawfully-present-immig...
Unemployment benefits? You have to pay into it to get money out of it. Same as everyone else.
Emergency treatment at a hospital? I don't see a difference between citizens and immigrants.
I would really like to know where that free money is I hear so much about.
(Would this be abused for nice vacations? Almost certainly. But maybe there’s a better version of this which couldn’t.)
If unemployment/basic income adjusts for cost of living, you wind up with a positive feedback loop that ignores these messages.
NewUI = OldUI * (CostOfLiving[NewJobMarketLocation] / CostOfLiving[PrevEmploymentLocation])
But that assumes that there are factory workers in SF. There aren't—running a factory in SF is an unprofitable proposition. Whether or not you could come to the area and job-hunt, supply of your job (or any job at your pay-grade) might just not be there to meet your demand.
And that's not even accounting for the second-order effects: decreasing friction of movement between jobs markets would cause everyone else who ever wanted to live in SF to also come there to job-hunt. So, even if there were some factory-worker openings right at the beginning of this policy, they'd quickly be filled, and the markets in cities like SF would come to resemble Hollywood: a place where you have to put up with unreasonable amounts of shit to get anywhere, because there's so much more talent who has come from all over to vye for attention, than there are productions needing talent, that the productions take absolutely no care in how they treat their talent.
In other words, at equilibrium, you'd just be back to where you started as far as "number of people employed" goes, at most levels†; and you'd also not see any change in the population density, demand for gentrification, or any other such thing in these cities, because Unemployment only lasts a fixed amount of time—you can't afford to stay if you don't succeed in finding a job. The one thing that would change is that companies the nation over would be seeing far more "talent liquidity", and thus thinking of employees as even more fungible/replaceable than they do now. (But, the flip-side of that statement: an individual new hire at an SF company would now have much more even probability of having originated anywhere in the country.)
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† Maybe you'd get more startups, from several people coming to SF (or other expensive cities) and deciding to spend their UI as initial runway to form a company together. But that'd be the exception, not the rule, I think. (Might still have nice knock-on effects for employment if those companies need to grow by hiring later on, though.)
H-1B is a non-immigrant work visa.
The only relation it had to immigrant visas is that, as a dual intent non-immigrant visa, it's not illegal for you to enter on an H-1B with the intent of applying for an immigrant visa without departing in between.
> are conditional on not becoming "a burden to the state"
That's not exactly true. The condition that actually exists in law relates mostly to the future likelihood at time of admission of becoming a “public charge”.
> so you would be deported if you tried to claim unemployment etc.
No, but your I-864 sponsors (whose income and assets are considered in making the public charge decision at admission) will have to pay back any payments you get from certain federally-funded public benefit programs. You can be deported for you not paying back your debts for certain other benefit programs in a specified time period, but very few benefit programs create the kind of debts that relate to that.
Unemployment, as an earned benefit, isn't actually an issue at all.
Seemed like more of a thing when America was actually a land of opportunity.