Comment by beerlord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beerlord | Hacker News Reader

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Any replacement visa needs to be like the diversity lottery (or the Olympics) by rewarding applicants from smaller countries. The migrant intake shouldn't be dominated completely by India and China - their sheer size gives them an advantage, as naturalized Indian and Chinese employers will then just go on to hire their own countrymen. For example, 76% of H1B visas went to Indians.

Having multiple, smaller groups of people inside the USA also assists integration - instead of being able to fall back on a parallel society, migrants will be forced to integrate and learn English.

Plus, just like the Olympics, diversity makes things interesting. Having (qualified) people from Belgium, Poland, Kenya, Thailand, Japan, Colombia, Mongolia (for example) is more interesting than just India, India, India, China, China, China.... A broader pool of migrants also helps US businesses expand worldwide.

Finally, the schemes should also include a minimum 55% quota of women, from each country. This ensures that any visa scheme does not become completely dominated by men, and addresses past imbalances.

There is definitely commercial/political/etc. benefit to the US if it has businesspeople from multiple countries, but there's as much diversity of business relationships and value between, say, a Beijing entrepreneur and a Shenzhen entrepreneur as between a Czech and a Slovak. A point based system could factor in a lot of things.

There's also value in having the world's 20 top OCaml developers (15 of them are likely French) as well as the world's top 20 server-side ARM multicore guys (who are also likely French) vs. 40 top OCaml people (where there may be more French people.)

The easiest way to address all of this is for financial value to be the main factor. You can bring in people if they pay something like 200% of the US average wage as a surtax above their regular income tax and other costs. There could be explicit charities to subsidize things other than direct wage income value -- maybe an arts charity covers the $100k/yr to bring in a brilliant artist who is paid an additional $50k/yr in income and pays 5k/yr tax on that.

> Any replacement visa needs to be like the diversity lottery (or the Olympics) by rewarding applicants from smaller countries

Why? So you are okay with a guy who does not speak English, doesn't have moderate-high skills, will probably drive Uber or work in some restaurant over a moderately-skilled Indian/Chinese who understands and speaks relatively decent English, just because that guys is an Indian or Chinese? This is the definition of racism.

> Having multiple, smaller groups of people inside the USA also assists integration

No. Knowing the local language, understanding the local culture, knowing some people from a similar culture living in the country (a.k.a having a fallback - so as to not depend on government aid) helps in integration.

> Plus, just like the Olympics, diversity makes things interesting.

Absolutely. But that should depend on the skills and not on the nationality. Skilled people from Belgium-Mongolia would still get in regardless of "diversity lottery visa". What US needs is a point based system which rewards quality over just diversity.

This is the definition of racism.

I don't understand why you would say this. Doesn't it make more sense to reserve "racism" for discrimination based on the perception of inferiority of a particular genetic race? And instead use "culturist" or "nationalist" to talk about discrimination by culture or national origin? I realize you aren't the only person to use the term this way, but calling it the "definition of racism" to discriminate on something other than race seems likely to water down the term.

> Why? So you are okay with a guy who does not speak English, doesn't have moderate-high skills, will probably drive Uber or work in some restaurant over a moderately-skilled Indian/Chinese who understands and speaks relatively decent English, just because that guys is an Indian or Chinese? This is the definition of racism.

My landlord and the owner of the company I work for both came to the US from Iran in exactly this way and now they both own successful businesses built up from busting their asses driving cabs.

That has been The American Dream™ for generations and not the virtual indentured servitude I always hear about in these discussions.

> My landlord and the owner of the company I work for both came to the US from Iran

For one example of success there are 100s if not 1000s of examples where they failed and relied on government handouts.

Also, how did "diversity visa" help in this case? Those guys succeeded because they were smart and hardworking. Clearly their country of origin did not make them successful.

> Any replacement visa needs to be like the diversity lottery (or the Olympics) by rewarding applicants from smaller countries

I'm not sure I understand the rationale behind this? Why does it matter what country applicants are from as long as they have the skills the economy needs?

> Any replacement visa needs to be like the diversity lottery (or the Olympics) by rewarding applicants from smaller countries

The Olympics are a performance competition- the guy from “Eastern Rhodesia” might make it but he won’t get any extra help when running against Usain Bolt.

Now you are saying that companies that want to make money will be saddled with less competent talent because of diversity?

Despite you being downvoted, I really liked your points. As someone whose parents came from a tiny country with which there was little to no network once arriving - I can attest to our experience of quickly integrating. I believe it was a good experience for us and a good model for the US going forward.

I'm glad you are not in charge of immigration policy.

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