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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

It’s not about the ethnicity of the people who have immigrated, but not creating incentives for new people to come here permanently. Not “no Indians” but instead “America is full.”

I don’t believe America really needs high skill labor. When my family came here in 1989, America was already the undisputed #1, and there were less than 1 million desis in the country. Today there are over 6 million—but America is in decline. I’m not saying there is a correlation, but I think it’s self-indulgent to say the country needs skilled immigrants.

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I guess it was the undisputed no. 1 in 1989 because it already had a surge of immigrants by then. Heck, America was made by immigrants if it comes to that.

I'm not saying it needs me, but generally standing strong at the top has its cost - to have a rock solid administration and to keep bringing the cream of the world to work for them. There couldn't have been such a boost possible otherwise.

> I guess it was the undisputed no. 1 in 1989 because it already had a surge of immigrants by then. Heck, America was made by immigrants if it comes to that.

Those immigrants were the poorest and least educated ones Europe and Asia had to offer. I’m just saying it’s presumptuous to say America “needs” the educated elite from other countries.

> America is in decline

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but can you be more specific about which metrics America is objectively declining at?

Our social indicators are bad. Since 1990, marriage rates have been cut in half, out of wedlock births have doubled among white Americans, the fertility rate has dropped well below replacement. Suicide rates have been increasing for 25 years. Life expectancy peaked in 2014 and dropped since then. Drug overdoses were under 10,000 in 1990 and just broke 100,000 last year. The economy continues to grow, but if you hadn’t noticed, that doesn’t seem to be making people happy. Young Americans have this profound pessimism—which is apparent from our increasingly bitter politics—that simply cannot be explained by the GDP numbers.

So the way I see it, there are definitely a lot of societal problems in this country - there is a massive gun problem, the economy is capital-first, there are major corporations that frequently lobby the Congress, and there is increasingly more isolation/depression among families or young adults. But then, compared to other countries like Japan, it's still doing a lot better.

There are so many areas where the American culture really shines. The civil rights and protection are fantastic, and in a country like India, it'd be a breakthrough to even have 5% of it. While no country is perfect, I guess it's not too late yet to put forth some measures to guide the country onto a path of correction.

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