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Comment by sien | Hacker News Reader

From the article

"Jessica is a proud first-generation Ecuadorian-American and a second-year Percy Ellis Sutton Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) student at Baruch College majoring in business management with a minor in law and policy."

Jessia is the American dream. First generation, got to college and writing like that.

Lots of Americans concentrate on what is wrong with America. There is value in that but it's really important to remember that America is still a place where immigrants can come and they or their children will really make it.

Good on them.

(BTW. I am not an American but I did live and work there.)

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The only people complaining are rich privileged people who get into top colleges because of daddy and mommy. Source: know a bunch of such people.

Good thing about wealth generation is ultimately these low level buffoons get weeded out, they will never break past the low millions. They never knew real hardship so they can only go so far.

The only people who complain about America are... millionaires? I can't follow your train of thought at all. Crazy if you actually believe this.

First of all, I'm replying to someone. So, that implies you don't understand context.

Read the parent I replied to, then read what I wrote. Sure, me using "THE ONLY PEOPLE" is a bit strong, but unless you're a machine you would understand the context.

> Jessia is the American dream.

She's the one who made it, unlike thousands of others, who worked equally hard, and didn't.

No family should have both parents working 12 hours a day just to survive, period.

> She's the one who made it, unlike thousands of others, who worked equally hard, and didn't.

Data?

Immigrants continue to do very well in the U.S., often succeeding to a greater extent than people born here.

Is working 12 hours a day so you can afford to live what you’d describe as doing “very well”?

I don’t know why you decided to compare immigrants to natives. I made no such distinction. Nobody, immigrant or not, should have to work 12 hours a day just to survive.

What's your argument/ statement based on? At least link a study after accusing someone else of misrepresenting a topic.

Exactly. And this story will be used to harm. Ppl will say „look they can just get out and collect cans from the side of the road“. I had a high school teacher that vilified ppl on welfare and said this. My parents and my siblings did this and my parents especially my mother and me are scarred by precarity. I hate the these stories they just do harm.

Not only that, but when she graduates, she might not be able to get a well-paying job and subsequently find a home. She may well be living below the level of a factory worker from the 60s.

It took both parents working 12 hours a day. But the story appears to be set in New York City.

Isn't living there a choice, not something they are forced into?

Who gets to define "made it"?

Did the electrician or garbage truck driver who's parents came from just as much not also make it?

Why is it implied in so many comments around here that anyone who didn't go to college and get a white collar job pushing papers/code/spreadsheets didn't make it?

You're the one who, when trying to come up with examples of people who other people would think haven't made it, came up with electricians and garbage truck drivers.

What are you arguing here? That all people are equally comfortable and all jobs are equally good, and that implying that suffering is bad is demeaning to the people who suffer? It's like upside-down wokeness. While some people are arguing to put in wheelchair ramps, this is like instead insisting that implying that wheelchair users can't walk as well as everyone else is prejudiced.

Oh FFS.

My point is that it's unrealistic to expect people to go from refugee to hedge fund manager in one generation. Refugee to stable blue collar is reasonable.

Electricians probably make more than half of the folks commenting on HN.

The "average techie" income curve is generally shifted higher than the "average electrician" bell curve though the shapes are different and there's some close areas and intersections.

The writing in this article is incredible and I have nothing but admiration for the author and her family.

But, to me, this situation is what’s wrong with America. Why are people who are clearly so hard working struggling to get by?

It's not a "problem" per se, it's unskilled, untrained labor and someone with no resources trying to make it.

Not all hard work gets a reward.

Not everyone has a happy ending.

While statistically, you have a better chance of making a "high" salary in the USA, it really also depends on what you do and who you know.

Picking up cans also sounds like they could be undocumented, with no "legal" work papers.

Many times, it would/could be better for someone to stay in their "origin" country and live a regular life, but at the same time, you have to think - "would many people that have a network and a "career" leave everything they have, uproot their close family and go to another country, where even the language is different to pick up cans?

Is that sacrafrice? Is it worth it? Is it even legal? (lols)

As shown with "amiga" in the article - the authors parents also do not know English.

The same happens with many "normal" Americans as well. The ones that are illiterate, have a poor network of friends, uneducated, etc. While we don't hear about it as often, it's pitted away as more depressing/their own fault because "they were born in the USA anyway."

Nothing against the author, but it reads as poverty porn. Great she accepts herself, and isn't ashamed, and while we may all think she should wear it as a badge of honor - in reality, the more socially distanced you appear to your peers, the more you are.

Pariah is pariah.

Your comment is a sobering economic reality of what it's like for immigrants, documented and undocumented, and even putting aside the huge cultural adjustments.

We're biased in tech because we see H1-B visa holders living a comfortable life, even with lower wages. However, this is an outlier in current, and certainly prior, immigrant stories. Immigrating to a new country is downright hard. Many times it's unskilled, but also, at least in the Western countries, it's an issue of unrecognized skills that makes things difficult. My father had an EE degree and certifications from his home country, but the US, where we immigrated, didn't recognize them. He had to work in lower skilled jobs in electronics for years because of this.

I remember going can scavenging with him to supplement household income. It was a decent way to put food on the table back in the early 80's.

I think the one bit you've not covered here is the children. While the parents likely will live a life of difficulty and work, their children become part of the American education pipeline that makes it quite likely they will be, if nothing else, integrated into society in a manner that will make their taking the next upward class step much easier. The parents are taking the hit to their livelihoods and careers to enable the next generation to be more successful. It's not a guarantee, but probably more upward mobility here.

You may find some books on the economic history of the US interesting.

I suspect Jessica's parents immigrated and have very little formal education. Possible causes: trade liberalization means low skill workers in the US are competing with similar workers across the entire world. Simultaneously: 10th, 25th, and even median wages have barely moved in well over 20 years. Many of the jobs previously open to unskilled people willing to work very hard are no longer done in the US. A large shift of economic growth to capital over labor (which is, btw, the result of deliberate policy choices).

I think it’s important to consider how we got here, but I think it’s more important to consider what we can do about it. Many social policies could make life easier for people like Jessica and her family.

I don't think you can think about what to do in any serious way without understanding how we got here. Including American attitudes towards the social policies you're likely thinking of.

Likely bec they arrived through “unconventional” means and aren’t eligible to work.

There aren't any poor people working hard just to get by in your country?

wait till you realize what's happening in the rest of the world. where people work much harder and still don't get by.

Or, if you take another section of the rest of the world wait till you realize what's happening in the rest of the world where people work less hard and don't have it that bad.

That is a much smaller slice of the world than the opposite.

Even the poor in the U.S. are still better off than most people in the rest of the world. The U.S. can certainly do better addressing income inequality, but there still needs to be some perspective as to the relative opportunity available to people in the U.S. compared to most other places.

Then hopefully immigrants are also going there and enjoying that system, if it supports them, wherever it may be.

FYI a great many immigrants were rich when they immigrated. A lot of rich people come to America because America offers so much opportunity to people who are already wealthy. Immigrants from overseas are especially likely to be wealthy. Indian-Americans are the wealthiest ethnic demographic in America simply because migrating from India pretty much requires being very wealthy to begin with.

Nothing I said indicated the immigrants were rich or poor, the majority are poor though.

My point was if there's a nicer system than the US, immigrants will be flocking there too.

Luckily we have numbers on the rates of which people immigrate to which countries, and the average wages of citizens of those countries.

> Indian-Americans are the richest ethnic minority in America because migrating from India pretty much requires being wealthy.

Plenty of lower class Indian immigrants pool their money for taxi medallions, convenient stores, hotels, trucks, etc. to get a business going.

They integrate well and know how to climb the system. They send their children in as doctors later in generations. They don't always start rich, they work for it.

> A lot of rich people come to America because America treats rich people so well, at the cost of treating poor people like dirt. See: tax rates.

You'll find tax rates are better in the US than most other countries for lower income families. For businesses the US has only recently been competitive.

> Plenty of lower class Indian immigrants pool their money for taxi medallions, convenient stores, hotels, trucks, etc. to get a business going.

Are there many "lower class Indian immigrants" who arrived in the past 30 years? The immigration system since the 90s has raised the barrier for Indians so high that the idea of 'lower class Indian immigrants' seems difficult to parse. I disagree with the assertion that Indians have to be very wealthy to immigrate - highly educated/qualified, yes. The era when an Indian taxi driver could immigrate ended many decades ago.

Yes. There are many lower class immigrants period and there's many jobs in which they work.

Uber driving, trucking, convenient stores, and many more.

I'm genuinely curious how this is the case. Every desi person I see working in the jobs you mentioned has usually turned out to be Bangladeshi or Pakistani - For every Indian Uber driver, I've gotten 5 Pakistani ones. I'm in NYC, which has a large South Asian population. The city is quite tolerant of undocumented immigrants, so I'd expect undocumented Indians to occupy some significant fraction of those jobs as well. Yet even Indian restaurants here are mostly staffed by Bangladeshis.

As I understand, lower class/cast Indians have to win a lottery to get a decent education.

What? That's not the case at all. Like anywhere in the world, education in India is definitely more accessible to the privileged. However, the Indian educational system has a mandatory quota for the traditionally marginalized groups, and higher education is essentially free. Yes, there are issues around accessibility to education for the most disadvantaged groups, but to suggest that a "lower caste" Indian needs to win a lottery (whatever that means) to get a decent education is just not true. The current system reserves about 50% of educational seats at the very best institutions for various marginalized groups (including the differently abled). A kid from a marginalized group that has at least average grades is almost guaranteed a college education, for free. A bright kid from one of these groups is very likely to get into the very best engineering/medical/research institutions. Of course, it not all smooth sailing after that, and discrimination is a real problem. I would still disagree that the chances for a decent education are anywhere comparable to winning a lottery.

> They integrate well and know how to climb the system. They send their children in as doctors later in generations. They don't always start rich, they work for it.

And from this article, we can see Ecuadorians follow a similar path. The integrate well, and climb the system by sending their sons and daughters to college where they can build a better life for themselves than their parents had.

> Indian-Americans are the wealthiest ethnic demographic in America simply because migrating from India pretty much requires being very wealthy to begin with.

Most Indian immigrants come from middle class, not poor or rich backgrounds. They are privileged enough to have access to educational opportunities that give them the skills to emigrate, but privileged enough to not have a reason to emigrate.

"It's worse somewhere else" isn't relevant to whether it's acceptable in the US.

The US has the resources to reward hard workers with financial stability. It also benefits from brain-draining other countries with this promise.

If the US continues to slide away from the "American Dream," the brains and prosperity will end up somewhere else.

So how much do you want to pay for bottle collecting? When you say "the US has the resources to reward hard workers", in this case you mean everybody who buys a bottle should pay more. Or how would you envision it to play out?

We could easily turn bottle-collecting into a job with guaranteed hours and pay.

Bottle-collecting is a poor example for the broader issue I was discussing. Those programs are intended for the (mostly homeless) poor to pick up trash they see instead of leaving it behind. It does what it's supposed to do.

Many places use a deposit system, where if you return the packaging for recycling, you get your money back. This cuts down on litter, at no cost to those who recycle.

But presumably, the higher the price for returning bottles, the less likely people will be to just dump them on the street, for the collectors to collect?

Or it will become attractive for more collectors. In any case, it may not be so simple to raise their "wage" for collecting bottles.

Many people will dump on the street (or in cans the collectors tend to) even if the deposit tripled.

> The US has the resources to reward hard workers with financial stability.

Most hard workers in the U.S. are rewarded with financial stability. Not everyone, but enough that people still flock here from other countries where that's less true.

> It also benefits from brain-draining other countries with this promise.

Well gee, I guess the U.S. should stop being such a great place for immigrants, so talented people stop coming here and stay wherever they live now.

> Most hard workers in the U.S. are rewarded with financial stability. Not everyone, but enough that people still flock here from other countries where that's less true.

You think restaurant workers are lazy? Factory workers? Amazon fulfillment workers?

Why do people need two or three exhausting jobs to make a living?

> Well gee, I guess the U.S. should stop being such a great place for immigrants, so talented people stop coming here and stay wherever they live now.

I don't know what this means. Have the courage to say what you mean instead of using sarcasm.

Whatever you mean, the US needs young workers to resolve our massive labor shortage and we need educated workers to be our next generation of scientists, doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

> Why do people need two or three exhausting jobs to make a living?

Most. Not all. The U.S. can still do better, but there needs to be some perspective on how the U.S. stacks up against the rest of the world. Better than most countries, not as good as some.

> Whatever you mean, the US needs young workers to resolve our massive labor shortage and we need educated workers to be our next generation of scientists, doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

Brain drain sounded to me like the U.S. attracting those people is a bad thing, because those people should stay in their own countries. That's not what you meant to imply?

We do need educated workers to fill the jobs you describe, but at the same time we probably send too many young people to college, many of whom would do better with solid technical skills training leading directly to jobs with far less debt.

From a US perspective, braining other countries' brains is good. I understand the term is negative, but I didn't mean it that way.

We don't need to ask how the US stacks up against the rest of the world -- only our economic peers. Compared to many Western European countries and Canada, we are not investing our excess resources as well into social safety.

I'm not a socialist and don't support UBS, but the floor of poverty in the US needs to be much higher (for all our sakes).

> where people work much harder and still don't get by.

This happens to a lot of people in the US, as well.

That's classic whataboutism. That doesn't explain away why it's that bad in the US nor does it justify accepting the status quo.

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