In a country where even citizen couples can need two jobs, each, just to survive, it is frustrating that immigrants are still expected to just somehow pull it together. Oh, and all the immigrant-heavy jobs seem to be in very expensive areas, at least for tech.

Here’s a good yardstick for citizens: for any given immigrant policy X (or heck, any policy X on any subject), would you want to live that way? If “no”, the policy is Wrong. Period.

These policies also keep trying to restrict immigrants without paying any attention to the benefits that companies receive, and indeed that citizens receive, when there are immigrants. First, the basic one: more people = more customers to buy stuff in your local economy, broader tax base, etc. Second, sometimes the entire presence of a site is based on filling a certain minimum number of jobs. A site with 1000 people that has 300 immigrants is not “300 stolen American jobs”, it’s +700 jobs that wouldn’t have otherwise existed for citizens; or, it’s a site that wouldn’t be able to do as much otherwise, possibly causing the entire company to fail in some way that ends up costing U.S. jobs all over the place, even at other sites.

Policies should never be “death by 1000 cuts”, either. Politicians keep finding ways to make things that they don’t like unnecessarily hard, just because they haven’t found a way to kill them off entirely. Well, frankly, that kind of thing is crap.