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My love for my country means I want it to be the greatest in the world. Waterloo grads make America better. Period.
You're just hand-waiving away reality, which is a very non-programmer thing to do.
From an American author
(Illustrated, to reach those who talk about "stealing American jobs from Americans!!!" a lot).
From Amazon Canada, because I like fun too :-)
"Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration"
Open borders might be net-positive but would very predictably devastate the lives of poor people in America. Not that most people who advocate it know anything about being poor.
I thought based on original post we were upset immigrants are taking high paying specialist jobs from the rich techies in San Francisco?
Or are they just just taking all the jobs while miraculously not spending any money and not creating any demand and not participating in economy at all?
I just want to understand this evil scourge appropriately.
P.s. (And oh, boy, will I compete in the "knowing about being poor" with anybody on HN :)
Poor Americans are also the most vulnerable to unskilled immigration making them even poorer than they already are.
It's not that complicated.
I agree that poor Americans are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, but suggesting that highly skilled tech jobs are a solution is just not realistic.
The number of opportunities is significantly reduced when companies have the easier and cheaper alternative of hiring non-Americans.
And those poor people that don't have the capability to become skilled workers can at least not be kicked while they're down.
I went from homeless to six figures thanks to tech.
I think you are missing that tech is one of the few well paying industries that doesn't have socioeconomic gatekeeping with degrees.
"Oh but I know of this study that.."...I know..I know.
Seems like I'm making the sound economic argument and you're just casting aspersions.
1. If, say, an immigrant earns 70k, they will also spend 70k. It's an equilibrium - they "create" as much jobness as they "take".
2. The easiest intuitive explanation I have is - imagine a million immigrants move in. They're basically a self sufficient city - with police and doctors and teachers and mechanics and salespeople and whatever. Doesn't bother me.
In fact, America is by definition (unless one is native American) the land of immigrants. It is clearly factually historically obvious that immigration was not zero sum and it continually expanded overall prosperity and might of the American empire. It's only when we zoom into the very here and now that some people, for some reason, freak out and feel "omg immigrants!!".
2. Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?
Of course America is a land of immigrants. And of course immigration can be positive-sum.
That doesn't prove that it's always positive-sum.
It's easy to see many situations that are not positive sum. Huge amounts of unskilled immigration is, at least in the short-term, going to be extremely zero-sum because they will consume far more public resources than they pay for, depriving the existing users. This has played out many times.
In other words:
Too much skilled immigration takes good middle class jobs away from citizens that need them.
Too much unskilled immigration takes public resources and jobs away from citizens that need them.
Given those facts, the argument should be about how much is too much of any particular kind of immigration for any particular time and place.
I think you have the mindset where there are X jobs, static, unchanging, God given or government ordained or whatever, and if an immigrant takes a job that job is gone. Array, counter, n=n-1, done.
That's... Not my mindset, and I don't think that's how it works.
Those million people don't take a million jobs from some enumerated, inflexible list, and then shutdown. They live. They consume! They earn and then they turn around and they spend, they need homes and food and clothes and education, all of which is jobs.
I think you imagined a swarm of people who displaced others, but imagine literally a million people coming and creating a new city. So of the million, some are techies and some are janitors and some are farmers and some are doctors and they have a nice little self sufficient city and don't bug or impact anybody outside of that city.
If/when/once you visualize the concept of that self sufficiency, now we can discuss the more complex case of them joining an existing city - because yes of course it's more complex than people coming in and living independently, but it's also more complex than them stealing jobs off some imaginary closed list.
Answer this question: what evidence would you accept to show that major American tech companies are using skilled immigration to drive down their labor costs as the expense of American citizens?
Now your claim is that massive American tech companies are profit-focused, narrow-vision entities with no social qualms or human values, and I could not agree more :-). But that’s orthogonal to the wider immigration discussion.
2. That is not my claim at all, since you're dropping half of the claim.
I think we're done here.
Oh but remittances are high! Think of the short term effects.
I will mention my Indian coworkers parents use the remittances to buy Netflix subscriptions, Coca-Cola and American Corn but it won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough.
Constant-pie thinking is an all consuming identity not a rational viewpoint that can be reasoned with.
What are you claiming? That immigrants do not actually remit significant percentage of their income? That all or most remitted money comes back to America? That short-term effects do not matter even if they're highly destructive?
You're claiming that I believe in a fixed pie which could not possibly be further from the truth. But I do believe that some pies are fixed, some of the time, in some places. Are you claiming the opposite? That pies are never fixed?
You're the one who isn't arguing in a rational way.
I'm sorry to be this dismissive, but I've had this conversation too many times and you will simply see what you want to see. There is no convincing coal workers of global warming.
Not even wrong
It's hard to say, but who knows what could have been if the top Canadians had have to start or join Canadian companies and didn't have the option to take a higher pay in the US.
What's the relevance here of this? Canada should make better opportunities for their citizens.
/s, but not really.
OK...I'll bite. Every Canadian government, of either party, has agreed with you for the last sixty years. Your country has excellent universities, the infrastructure is decent, the politics are non-violent...and yet people bail. I could say the same about the UK as well, but it's harder for their brains to drain to the US.
So: why is Canada failing to hold on to their homegrown talent? Is it a "push out" of Canada (driving talent away) or a "pull in" to the US (America having something irresistible)?
As others have pointed out it's not a zero sum game since human capital begets growth.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that H1Bs are most represented in the industry that has generated nearly all the growth that has been generated in America over the past 2-3 decades.
Is the argument you're making, which is ridiculous.
The success of an industry says nothing about how exploitative or unethical its practices are.
Their favorite trick (which you've adopted here) is to accuse people of being "racist" and "right wing" for objecting.
For the record, you would have to search long and hard to find someone more opposed to Trump and his minions than myself. Bernie Sanders has the same basic viewpoint I've expressed.
I have absolutely no hatred for anyone based on their origin or race.
I am completely in favor of allowing as many people into this country as we can sustainably absorb, and even a little more. At the same time, I strongly object to prioritizing the desire of major corporations to exploit cheaper labor at the expense of American citizens.
if there were ample americans to do these jobs, they should be able to get them.
nationalism is a silly idea, anyway. and we should have free trade and movement with our biggest two allies. american exceptionalism is a joke
And neither will most people from any other country agree about their own country's success.
Indians or Canadians are not forcing US to hire them bud, https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...
There are more than 60 million college educated Americans. That's 50% more than the entire population of Canada.
It's a very big and well educated country, bud.
Boomers promulgated lies about "shortages" for years to lobby for relaxed visa schemes. Ironic you mention nationalism being silly, since Indians are some of the most openly caustic nationalists I encounter on a daily basis.