Attracting top global talent has always been a competitive advance for America, and it's not a good sign for our economy if we can't retain people that we are educating here.
There's lots of VC money in China right now and most talented Chinese tech people have offers waiting for them in China that are both very high level positions with very high compensations. So even if you want to stay in the US on the one hand you have people back home offering you insane opportunities and trying very hard to incentivize you to return, and you have the US government essentially trolling you to make a point about how unwanted you are (from their perspective).
The fact that the current US policy is effectively working hard to drive away very talented people who want to be here but have plenty of good offers elsewhere will do plenty of long term harm (for the US).
We are doing real harm to our aging economy by not facilitating these bright young minds to stay here.
The article is such a pathetically transparent piece of anti-labor rights astro-turfing: China is going to out-compete the US unless US workers can be forced to accept equally shitty working conditions, that I cannot believe Hacker News is taking it seriously.
The issue with the pace of development bring quicker doesn't just come down to labor rights. Shenzhen is the world's biggest electronics manufacturing hub, so it can be easier to iterate quickly with manufacturers there. The article does indeed interview someone who complains about Americans supposedly not working long enough hours, but that's actually a pretty widespread view in China about Westerners.
The take away from the networking thing is Trust. You need to be able to demonstrate you can be trusted, that you're not secretly a bunch of kids in a trenchcoat or a fake, Western-sounding name that's a front end for a few Vietnamese kids putting out shit-tier code.
Now, having been there quite a bit, I must say that it really doesn't impress.
The impression I got visiting the US in general (NY, Seattle, San Fran, LA), is that it all seems quite ran down, full of inequality and social problems, and lacking soul, mainly from being so consumerist.
And although I would concievebly earn a lot more working over there, the total cost of living would probably more than make up for that increase. Especially considering having kids.
My friend who is a US citizen with a well-paying engineering job in the LA area, is considering moving back. The work culture is quite hectic, and the amount of trouble they've been through with child care, insurance issues etc are making them reconsider. Not to mention that the area is super-busy and you spend a large portion of your free time in your car.
This obviously doesn't describe the entirety of the United States, but sometimes I wonder if people from the US are aware of living conditions in other western countries. I'm not so sure that the US is coming out on top any longer.
I think in some respects the US has coasted on it's former economic glory - I mean sure Silicon Valley is a mecca for folks like us but then you look at things outside of the those types of Nexuses and its a very different picture.
In Europe the UK is often regarded (sometimes appropriately) as US-lite but we are still an ocean away literally and figuratively from them in so many ways.
Given a lever between moving our politics closer to Nordic countries or the US I know which way I'd push it, I'll take a more equal fairer society with better outcomes for more people over a decrease in the already tiny chance to be super rich - its not really something I've ever really thought about as an end goal anyway - the increase in freedom would be nice but I can't imagine I'd still work insanely hard for that second billion, I'd probably potter about the world learning about history and art and working on open source.
The US is a good place to make a lot of money if you're a single tech worker and can live cheaply and save, but it's not a good place to raise a family at all.
This is not intended as a political statement or a commentary on current politics. But its often said that Americans vote against their own interests and I think this is particularly true in issues surrounding the social safety net, like universal healthcare, parental leave and other things that some other first-world countries have already figured out.
Unfortunately, this puts us at an ever growing disadvantage with the rest of the world as the only people who can attain these benefits in the US are FAANG, some fortune 500 and other megacorp employees. This also exacerbates inequality between the FAANGs and FAANGnots. (horrible pun, I know)
As an American citizen, I completely agree. We can't get local infrastructure built, we can't house or feed the homeless, our roads are mostly all awful, we still have major clean water issues in a lot of places around the country, and culture is definitely being pushed out as larger cities are gentrified and sort of "segregated" by inequality.
I'd move to another country if I was wealthy enough. Taking a real look at American society by moving around, ripping off the mask of indoctrination, USA doesn't look so well and neither does its future economy. Just because we have technological gadgets coming out of every direction doesn't mean we're the ultimate place to be anymore. That consumerist fetishism has put blinders on American society.
Having lived in at least two of the cities listed above I can confirm.
Thinking about this point, some of the most valuable US based companies make gadgets and consumer items for us to play with, or services to entertain or glue us to our screens… Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon (Alexa, etc).
While I can’t seem to live without my iPhone I wonder if our innovation is somewhat misdirected. Where is high-speed rail, broadly adopted forms of alternative energy, new feats of engineering in bridges and infrastructure, ambitious national projects that improve the lives of citizens and bring a higher standard of living not just to coastal cities?
Its worrying, but I wonder if we are here now, where will the US be in 20 years? No doubt the US will be still generating significant shareholder value but have a widening social inequality, crumbled infrastructure and disappearing coastal geography.
Possibly we're the first instance of an 'Overlay Empire', with its magnificent gleaming Imperial City hidden somewhere in the clouds ..
It's in other countries. Western Europe and Japan and China have high-speed rail, with the most extensive network in Japan. Germany has an incredible amount of solar energy capacity installed, despite being pretty far north. Japan has the world's longest suspension bridge. etc. etc.
No more nonsensical visa stuff to worry about; I live my current life and plan my future in peace.
Actions speak louder than words here.
A quick Google search on "Chinese grad student restrictions" yielded an article [1] from December 2018 with the headline "US Considers New Restrictions on Chinese Students". The source is the US government's own news outlet, Voice of America.
[1] https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/trump-administration-c...
the simple fact is that there are more students from China to US over the years because more students can afford the tuitions, while the H1B visa quota remain the same; also there are more and more students from global as well to compete on the H1B quota. so most of the students have to go back simply because there is not enough visa for them to stay.
https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-reaches-fy-20... 2018 H1b visa total quota is 85K in total for all students from all countries.
while usually <20% of H1B visa goes to people from China. https://www.vox.com/2017/4/13/15281170/china-india-tech-h1b-... so, each year, it's probably around 10K to 15K students from China can get H1B visa, compared to a total of 300K students in China, that basically means about 90% students will have to go back.
it's more about fast growing number of students from China, also working in US requires H1B visa.
In the US, Trump says mean things about certain types of immigrants.
In China, you can be jailed with no due process for speaking out about human rights abuses. Also, better hope you're not in a religious minority. Don't say anything bad about the government, because they're watching you!
It includes visa restrictions and harassment (e.g., computer seizures, pressuring your job to fire you) from agencies like the FBI and NIH. It also impacts people who have no connection to China, like the Taiwanese Wen Ho Lee.
I knew a Chinese exchange student who would debate all sorts of things, but when you brought up the Chinese government she would come to a hard stop and say "I don't talk about that."
It's probably smart if you're from an authoritarian country.
If she's considering immigrating to the United States at any point in the future, she would be wise to not debate anything that has to do with the United States, in any electronically recorded medium.
All visa/status adjustment applicants now have to turn over their social media identities. It would be prudent for her to not express a viewpoint[1] that might have an adverse impact on her immigration.
[1] What are those viewpoints? We don't know - CBP won't tell anyone. And whatever they will tell, may very well change in the future.
The Chinese government is not overly concerned with individual citizens sharing anti-government sentiment. It's not a problem for most people that aren't activists. Most people are concerned with much more basic aspects of life... supporting their families, getting good jobs, time for leisure...
It doesn't mean it's acceptable, but assuming that every Chinese citizen lives in fear of the government cracking down on their political complaints is totally unfounded. The exchange student you know could just as well have been sick of westerners thinking they know more about the CCP than someone raised in China.
The Chinese government has been actively monitoring [0] all popular online messaging platforms, and shutting down any opinion that is considered by the government anti-government.
There is also some new network security law [1] that enforces companies, from ISP to website operators, to self-censor, and to pinpoint every action from every user, such that officials could collect the data as they wish [2].
The whole process is already well organized and somewhat automated. Now that the social credit score system is being deployed to more major cities, the threat of free speech is climbing to the next level.
You may say they don't fear. But I argue that many Chinese citizens don't even realize why they feel very uncomfortable and insecure to talk about politics. They think people who voice out are stupid. The reason deep down, is fear.
[0]: https://twitter.com/0xDUDE/status/1101909112131080192
[1]: http://www.hk-lawyer.org/content/china-passes-network-securi...
[2]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinas-cybersecurity-law-updat...
If you think the extent of America's hostility against certain types of immigrants is limited to Dump Truck saying mean things on Twitter, I'm not sure what to tell you. [1]
DT doesn't exist in a vaccum. There's a powerful, xenophobic political movement that has made him president, and there's a mainstream political party that wins more elections than it loses, that panders to that constituency.
[1] I also find it incredibly ironic that you are dimissing anti-immigrant sentiment as 'it's just words' - as in - words aren't a big deal, while in the same breath, pointing out that words are in fact a big deal, because there are many that you can't say in China. [2]
[2] Are 'just words' a big deal or not? You can't have it both ways.
So very powerful, winning so many elections, yet they barely made a dent in even just legal immigration - it is still above 1 million per year, and the white population went from 85% in 1960, to 63% in 2010 [1] - a period during which the party that panders to xenophobia won more than half the elections, as you say.
Meanwhile the non-xenophobic China has 1 million immigrants total, and is 91% Han-Chinese [2] - homogeneity and demographic isolation beyond anything depicted in works criticizing fascism like Man in the High Castle.
That the country taking in the most immigrants, and so rapidly changing its demographics, gets labeled as the racist xenophobic one, while the closed ethno-state gets no criticism of its immigration policy, is a sick joke.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...
If you read the entirety of my post, you may notice that I did not label the United States as a xenophobic country.
I labeled a particular, but currently politically powerful subset of the population as a xenophobic one. If you doubt that it exists, you can find a good representation of it at your nearest MAGA rally.
If you have any immigrant friends, I recommend bringing them with you... And ask them what they think of what they'll see. They may find their eyes more persuasive than your assurances that everything is fine.
There may be a lot of xenophobic rhetoric, but actions speak louder than words, and what precious little action there was (bans for Muslim countries that account for a negligible number of immigrants, and detention of children at the border) was both very ineffective and very politically damaging - the exact opposite of what one would do if one wanted to limit immigration.
All that was accomplished in the three years that this rhetoric has gone mainstream - and not at 'great expense of public opinion'. I don't think a single American has had their mind changed on this subject, since the last election.
What do you expect 2020 will bring, in the event of another Trump victory?
There's a very clear message to immigrants, here. A lot of people think they are the cause of the country's ills, that they want them gone, and they have just gotten started on this project.
So to answer your question, in the event of another Trump victory, I expect immigration to the US to continue at near-record rates, while they continue to be called xenophobic.
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017/tab...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/number-of-people-...
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/key-finding...
Allow me to provide the context:
If you're a Chinese internantional student living in the USA where the #1 guy in the country uses Identity Politics as its arsenal to win and lead the country, you, as an outsider, will feel insecure w.r.t of races.
If you're a Chinese international student coming back home to your country of origin, you're used to the situations there: that's what you were born with and that's your culture that you're used to for 18 years of your life. I mean, you're still free to roam the streets, eat any food, continue with your life as-is. It's not like you live in a jail.
If you're a typical Americans who doesn't like the government to limit virtually anything (yes, I'm dead serious, Americans want everything and they don't like rules), you probably look at other countries as some sort of un-democratic, nazi-like state. I've seen a few people here criticized Singapore! If you go to Singapore, there's only a limited number of citizens who dislike the leaders.
Context is very important when comparing two countries/cultures.
For example, I live in a no-gun country so I scratched my head hard whenever I see mass-shooting in the US every week killing your children just because folks love their guns. That's just... crazy.
Step inside a land/house by accident and gets killed by the homeowner's M14 is just... nuts (yes I know I'm exaggerating a bit).
In the present day, if you're a black American you may also have a different perspective on life in the US than if you're white.
Just like Americans can’t stop Middle Eastern civilians from being drone striked, Chinese can’t stop their government either.
What about those drones the Americans sent to kill random people?
What about police brutality?
Per-individual base, human also tend to use phrases like "human rights" to cover up their problems. I find it interesting that in the US, the people argue a lot about Abortion vs Right-to-Live meanwhile in California, they glamorized Sex for all ages. American Pies and a bunch of other chick-flick/high-school football movies that often highlights sex-on-prom-day. Social pressure of having sex between unmarried couple. I wonder if those contributes to the need for abortion just because they're not ready.
"human rights"
Best not be so serious: You're mistaken.
Is a whipping a proper punishment for chewing gum left on a Singapore sidewalk?
> Step inside a land/house by accident and gets killed by the homeowner's M14 is just... nuts (yes I know I'm exaggerating a bit).
Does the dead seriousness lead you to believe Americans approve of this nutso reaction?
The last time I stepped in chewing gum I felt the answer was an unequivocal yes.
70% of gun deaths are suicides. The majority of the rest are inner city unlawful gang-on-gang violence.
Most people never even see a gun in the US in their lifetime. Stop spreading misinformation and fear-mongering propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
You count the number of people who got killed. You should also included the number of people who "almost" got killed (paralyzed), traumatized, etc.
Somehow your statement also made the whole thing looks "insignificant". I'm not sure why that is because in other countries, there will be a huge uproar leading to change in laws and regulations to the point of banning.
So if hundreds died due to repeated mass-shootings and only 30% of the incidents that makes gun to be a non-issue in the States? because the other 70% gun-deaths are suicides? So just because the largest piece of the Pie-chart is for "non-violent" gun-death then there is no gun-issue?
What about domestic conflicts that leads to shooting? (glad they missed ... )
Damn...
I saw Dana Loesch went on CNN one time and I saw her speaking in some sort of Townhall. She's really good at her job and the NRA should pay her TONS of money. That lady can sell you anything including MySpace.com today.
You should talk to the victims of mass-shootings and learn the truth.
The type of Chinese immigrants who are likely to get Ph.Ds and work in high tech are generally not religious minorities (if they were, they likely wouldn't have gotten that far in the educational system). They're also not particularly interested in getting involved in politics or speaking out about human rights abuses. Usually if they get to that level of education and have the choice between staying in the U.S. to work for a tech company or research lab or going back to China, it's because they've devoted their life to mastering a specific scientific or technical subject. For someone in that position, likelihood of facing employment discrimination or being deported is generally a much bigger threat than lack of political freedoms.
Selection bias is the most powerful force in nature. The U.S. benefitted very significantly from dictatorships in the 1930-80s that actively repressed academics and educated people, because it forced all of them to move to the U.S, where we welcomed them with open arms. Most of these governments wised up (or rather, facing selection bias, they were overthrown by the consequences of raping their own nations), and now most of the rest of the world is quite welcoming of people with scientific and technical knowledge. The U.S. risks going down the same path if it adopts the same attitudes that didn't work for our competitors.
Many authoritarian governments of the past made the mistake of trying to tinker too hard with economics, with horrible results. China is run by technocrats who know how not to sabotage the money supply.
In the US, Trump says mean things about certain types of citizens.
As an American I'd think very carefully about working in China right now for the same reason. No matter where you are in the world, you're always breaking some law, and they can pick you up and throw the book at you to make a PR point whenever they please. Same as for a Chinese person in the US.
Feel bad, because the guys travelling to work or study really do just want to meet each other and have interesting idea exchanges, maybe make some friends, etc.
But then the political type people get involved, and it just gets a bit too complicated and you start weighing the potential risks differently.
That's not exactly true. While China doesn't detain US citizens (yet!) it detains several Canadian citizens presumable because the Huawei's CFO has been arrested in Canada by a US request. See https://time.com/5626289/china-canada-arrest-yantai/
Which makes things even worse - you may become a hostage due to US/China conflicts even if you happened to be a citizen of a US ally.
> We interred Japanese after Japan commuted one of the largest terror attacks in US history, that’s it.
1.) "We" did not inter Japanese. Those who made the rules and followed them during that time did. If by "We" you mean "Americans" then that leads to the next point...
2.) Many of the "Japanese" you say were interred were Americans. They were put into camps not because of any actual reason than how they look and where their ancestry hailed from.
3.) Imprisoning people who have done nothing wrong and have lived their lives in this country should make painfully clear the quote, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
If I was Chinese man who came to America for school and was single, I'd move back to China too. Study after study shows that the dating game odds are not good for that particular demographic in the US.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2017/11/23/a-distor...
Also, don't be surprised by prices going up ten fold over a decade. Inflation in developed countries can be 2 digits per year, everything is going up crazy quick.
The so called "brain drain" is just a ploy to make you think there's a talent shortage. Companies always want cheaper labor. In actuality, US citizens will benefit from more foreigners returning to their home countries because there's more jobs available for US locals.
So the overall number does not reflect "brain drain", because not all international students can be counted in "global talent". A more meaningful number should only count those graduated from good universities, or having scholarship etc.
I came to the US in mid 2000 to study at a fairly well-known liberal arts college (with full scholarships). I worked at a start-up in SF after graduating in late 2000--earning a decent wage of 72K/yr at that time. The CEO didn't want to go through the trouble of applying for H1B for me, so I--at the end of 18 months' OPT STEM extension; after ~2.5 years of working at that start-up---had to apply for a PhD program and started it in 2010's to keep myself in legal status. I finished my PhD in less than 5 years, and joined my current company with OPT (an extension of F1 student visa for practical training in one's major that s/he graduated from) earning low six-figure salary. When my company applied my H1B visa in 2016, it received request for evidence (the USCIS asked me to prove more that my work--data engineering--is related to computer science, which is what I studied my PhD on. I wrote up 3 pages of explanation and finally got it approved in late 2016. Because I worked pretty hard, I was able to convince my company to apply green card for me. But because of the more stringent regulations applied by Trump administration (and partly because my company acquired standard--not premium--service from the law firm that is working on my case), even after 2 years of the process, I am still at the very first step of the application process where the company is waiting for the department of labor (DoL) to provide prevailing wage determination (pretty much stating how much average worker with my salary is earning in the region where I work). I cannot move jobs when this process is pending because my H1B is tied to my employer and employers that are willing to sponsor employees green card aren't that plenty.
If I want to go back and visit my old and widowed mom in my home country, I would have to go through the interview process at the US embassy of my home country to get a new H1B stamp on my passport (the stamp expires within a year of issued date; some countries, such as India, have better deal with the US and their citizens usually get stamps valid for like 5 years or so if I remember correctly). It carries the risk that I might be denied either by the embassy or the port of entry immigration officer (none of the three that I have met so far treated me nicely--in fact, two of them were quite rude--despite me being courteous and nice to them) when I re-enter the US with H1B visa, not to mention that the cost of renewing the visa costs about $400. So, the ability to go back to home to revisit my mom as frequently as I like (without much hassle) AND the freedom to move to another job are why I really want to get permanent residency.
This is a common path for someone who goes through legal (hardcore) means to become a permanent resident in the US. I only put up with such extremely long journey to become a green card holder because my home country is not China. If it were China, I would be back there by now (I said the same to my departing coworkers). There are easier (in terms of effort/time required) ways like marrying a citizen; seeking asylum (but most of the asylum seekers are doing so for economic reason, meaning they are mostly fake although the success rate of getting approved in democrats administrations are quite high); winning Diversity Visa lottery; and having an immediate blood-relative who submitted application for your green card a decade ago. But none of them are eligible for me or I'm not interested in playing pretend-asylum seeker or paying a US citizen to marry me temporarily.
Throughout the years I've been in the US, I worked hard; paid all my taxes; never even have a minor violation such as traffic citation; donated and volunteered at various charities; donated blood more than a dozen times; etc. I thought I did pretty well as a good, law-abiding, immigrant-wannabe. During the ~16 years, I have experienced quite a few (at least a handful of times that I can recall--including being mocked with 'ching chong ling long' by a panhandler, who was trying to sell me a rap CD in metro area) obvious discriminatory abuse from random strangers (I live in a big metro area).
I am writing this in detail so that I hope HN readers would realize that it is not an easy route for many of the legal immigrants like myself. Sure some of the shady companies abuse H1B, but majority of H1B workers had to go through a pretty rough route to get their H1Bs. If you ask me, I would totally streamline the H1B system so that the companies are required to pay above the average salaries for H1B hires; H1B hires aren't tied to the employers; getting an H1B approved does not require law firms (quite expensive) and a lot of red tape (like in some countries, the wannabe H1B worker can apply for it her/himself); and more importantly, H1B holders (regardless of their country of origin) can enter and leave the US for either business or personal trips unlimited times without much restriction. Then I really do not have a need for green card because my goal is to eventually go back to my home country and retire there in my late 50s. Life in the US, in my opinion, is a lot more stressful than it should be for a developed nation (worrying about healthcare affordability tops the list for me).
Per the state departments August 2019 bulletin, the actual backlog to file for an EB-3 green card is currently 3 years for China, and 9 for India....
If you go back through the last few years of bulletins, this 9 year wait has been relatively stable. Unless you believe there's been a massive spike in applicants in the past few years, there's no reason to believe the current wait for new applicants is 50 or 70 years.
[1]https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
[2]https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
But I think that is going to be the norm going forward (unless we come up with a better alternative to capitalism); none of us are promised abundant freedom and opportunity unless we strive and work hard to take it. In other words, prosperity does not come easy in this competitive age...
> even after 2 years of the process, I am still at the very first step of the application process where the company is waiting for the department of labor (DoL) to provide prevailing wage determination
According to the DOL website[1], the processing time for PWD (Prevailing Wage Determination) is currently (as of June 2019) is 122 days. How is it possible that they don't have the PWD done even after 2 years?
[1] https://icert.doleta.gov/index.cfm?event=ehGeneral.dspProces...