Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

I have a modest proposal to help with the need for skilled labor. Reject all skilled applicants for visa's. Only accept the unskilled and uneducated. If you have an advanced degree and specialty skills you are not allowed in and have to remain in your country of origin. If you get a visa to study in the US you have to return to be employed in your home country. I think this will have two primary effects.

1. It will create a huge shortage of skilled professionals in America and will significantly drive up their costs and salary. This will result in more people choosing to enter those fields.

2. It will increase the global support of skilled persons as those who remain in their country of origin will be able to train and support more professionals.

My basis for this is looking at number of engineers per capita, the developed world produces an order of magnitude more engineers and doctors and scientists then the developing world, but then we take the few they do produce which inhibits future growth.

This is fine for the purpose you are outlining, but it completely neglects the fact that the primary reason people are emigrating from their home countries is seeking a better quality of life for themselves and/or their families. Closing the door to them shuts them out from this path.

Moreover, a lot of immigrants that arrive to the US end up having a greater impact on the world as a whole than they would or could have had in their home countries. This is the ideal scenarios of the sometimes true concept, "Land of Opportunity". I don't presume you are ignorant of this, but conditions in many other countries are worse for a lot of reasons.

My own anecdotal evidence: One of the main factors the lead to my own father's emigration from his home country was because the "old guard" at his university effectively blocked him from progressing any further lest it be a threat to their own established position. Arriving at in the US, he had no problem rising up to the top in the more merit-based system here and effecting major, positive change in his field.

So, as is the case with so many other issues, this one is not as cut-and-dry as your comment makes it out to be, and prevents a lot of other good from flourishing as well. There are not equal opportunities for world-benefiting success everywhere.

Also nobody here mentions that immigrants to the US pay taxes and spend most of their money inside the US propping up the economy.

It will also lead to a lot more hiring in other countries, which means less money into the US economy. Countries like Canada are already making it easier for immigrants from other countries to work. With similar timezones and standard of living, this will just ensure that many more jobs will just move overseas leading to a reduction in payroll taxes, income taxes, social security, local economy and spending.

I don't see any country adopting these policies, considering they want more and less expensive skilled workers, and depriving another country of their skilled workers isn't a deterrent (and may even be viewed as a positive, depending on if they view the global economy as a zero-sum game).

> This will result in more people choosing to enter those fields.

I think for skilled labor in the US there are way better ways to accomplish this. Lower the cost of education, and work to improve education on the whole.

But your idea is punitive of people in poor countries who have skills, yet are limited in how much they can improve their lot in life due to lack of demand for them.

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