Hacker News Reader

Comment by zinssmeister | Hacker News Reader

"...fears that immigrants are going to eat away local jobs. This is SO wrong." I am not sure you successfully explained why you think they are wrong. I'm an immigrant from Europe and in my opinion it is easy math. There is 1 job and if you fill it it's gone. So you can either fill it with Americans or an immigrant (like me). It's kinda foolish to think all you have to do is open the gates and expect all these foreigners to come in and build companies that hire more Americans. But maybe I'm missing something?!

View on HN

> It's kinda foolish to think all you have to do is open the gates and expect all these foreigners to come in and build companies that hire more Americans.

According to a paper titled "Silicon Valley's New Immigrant Enterpreneurs)"[1], Indian and Chinese enterpreneurs were responsible for 24% of the technology businesses started between 1980 and 1988. So the idea is definitely backed by statistical evidence.

Besides, if there are qualified Americans who can fill these jobs already, why exactly do we have a talent shortage in tech?

[1]http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_699ASR.pdf

Your 24% number is grossly misleading. Quoting your source:

[...] Estimate of ethnic entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley was obtained by identifying all businesses with CEOs having Chinese and Indian surnames in a Dun & Bradstreet database of technology firms started since 1980. According to this count, close to one-quarter (24 percent) of Silicon Valley’s technology firms in 1998 had Chinese or Indian executives.

Technology company executives are salaried employees - even at C-level, they do not create tech jobs any more than the HR department. Moreover, it's a well-known fact that C-level executives rarely come from founders (example: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/29/why-startup-fou...). Not to mention that an ethnically Indian/Chinese person is not the same as an immigrant from India/China.

If there are qualified Americans who can fill these jobs already, why exactly do we have a talent shortage in tech?

Because "we" don't pay enough? Because "we" won't look at anyone over 35? Because "we" demand a statistically improbable combination of skills plus open-source experience plus hobby projects? Because "we" equate talent with blogging? The list goes on and on.

(FWIW, I am an immigrant).

Jobs aren't a scarce resource, and people aren't cogs. Jobs are an opportunity to create value within a web of relationships. You want the most productive people in jobs that best fit them to maximize the amount of wealth being created; and the increased production of wealth creates further opportunities for more people.

That's not to say that a free-for-all immigration policy is best for any country. Too many people moving around too quickly can be destabilizing. But it's not like there's a fixed pile of jobs and a larger pile of people, and it's like a game of musical chairs or something.

Well, for a start, there's one more person in the country. That person will consume goods and services. That means more demand. Which means more jobs are created.

Economies are driven by demand (consumption drives production), and economic policy is really about creating circumstances in which that demand can flourish and result in economic activity.

Very little about the economy is zero sum. A good employee can help grow a company to the point where more people need to be hired.

The point is network effects and total wealth. Imagine we could import every programmer in the world and put them all in Silicon valley. Hard to imagine that being a bad position for the US.

A good analogy would be the financial systems of London and New York. Just because all the financial people congregate there doesn't mean they are taking jobs from the local talent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com