Comment by csa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csa | Hacker News Reader

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Thank you. I’m very familiar with the guidelines. I’ve think I can play my OG card on this one.

I added substantial commentary that makes it more than a “why the down votes?” type of comment.

‘rayiner gets beat on here a bit due to what appears to be his conservative stances on some issues.

While I don’t agree with many of the things ‘rayiner says, we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water if we’re going to have meaningful discussions here — especially ones that are intellectually stimulating.

IMHO, one of the reasons we (in the US) are where we are politically is precisely because we ignore, or downvote, or denigrate views from the opposing side (whichever side that is). It’s not really prudent to blithely downvote a considered and articulate comment without commentary just because you disagree with it or dislike the implications. In the case of hacker news, this type of behavior is antithetical to the goals of the site — intellectually stimulating content.

So, while I appreciate your citation of the rules (which may itself be a middlebrow dismissal), I stick by my original comment, and I look forward to anyone who could reply to it.

For me it’s because he’s having to go back to the fucking 1970s in reference to Silicon Valley companies instead of what any modern day person thinks of, to refute their point.

As a piece of historical information, or if we were discussing that time period, cool. The discussion wasn’t about that.

Useful feedback. Thank you.

For more useful feedback, this is the sort of commentary that means I’m disregarding the posters views going forward.

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642131

> But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunification.

He snuck in “family reunification” in a discussion about mass emigration and conflated it with illegal immigration in scope.

I went through the family reunification process. It was a benefit extended to me by the government as a citizen, and I’m native born before the jingoists join in.

You have to sign up to take care of said family’s welfare until the point that they have made enough payments into the system that they are no longer a burden. I remember having to calculate it for my spouse during the citizenship application for them a decade after the green card application.

I legitimately detest this person and their views over this, their attempt to lump in all forms of immigration with violating the law, and now you know why they get comments grayed out whenever enough people hear their dog whistles.

I am also here on someone else’s H1B. I wasn’t even a citizen until high school. It doesn’t matter, it has nothing to do with the aggregate effects of immigration on the country. I’m sure you’re a highly intelligent person. You should be able to separate yourself from the analysis. Even more than that—we should be skeptical of conclusions that flatter our own personal narratives.

Family reunification is a broken feature of our immigration system. It’s why a handful of skilled immigrants from my home country have begotten massive enclaves of poorly educated and poorly assimilated immigrants in places like Queens. They're transmission vectors for home-country culture. The New York Times did a great podcast that covers the broken promises of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act and how family reunification was a major loophole in it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...

Nah.

This is down to axioms. I find your views on immigration abhorrent and I think you’re a piece of shit.

There’s no more analysis to be done, it’s a personal set of values and you’ve crossed them.

I was responding to the following assertion:

> A lot of Silicon Valley’s success is attributable to immigrants

Successful industries stick in particular geographic locations. Why is New York the epicenter of the financial industry? It’s not because it’s the best place you’d choose in 2025. It’s because the city was the country’s preeminent port and stock brokers set up a financial exchange under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street in 1792.

Similarly, Silicon Valley’s success traces to its origins in the 1950-1980. Many leading Silicon Valley companies that are still around today were founding back then. So it’s highly relevant that America was able to build Silicon Valley in the first place during and only shortly after a highly restrictive immigration policy.

But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunification. Whatever contribution you think immigration is making to Silicon Valley today can be accomplished with 1/30th of the immigration levels we had over the last few years.

> Many leading Silicon Valley companies that are still around today were founding back then.

Define “leading”, then tell me what companies are still around. I can think of two off the top of my head and one of them has an immigrant CEO.

> But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunifications.

Ah, I’m done responding to you with this conflating illegal immigration with family reunification

> Define “leading”, then tell me what companies are still around. I can think of two off the top of my head and one of them has an immigrant CEO.

Intel, AMD, Apple, Cisco, and Oracle, all have above $200 billion market cap and were founded in the 1960s or 1970s.

Being CEO of an established company obviously is a much easier job than building one in the first instance.

> Ah, I’m done responding to you with this conflating illegal immigration with family reunification

They’re both immigration pathways where people aren’t filtered based on skills and credentials.

I don't think it's wrong to go back that far. I think SV is it what it is because of those companies but also the schools, some local charm and quirks, etc. and the same reasoning applies there. The tech companies begot more tech companies basically. Before Meta and Alphabet it was Microsoft and Yahoo and before MS it was Sun and Netscape and before that Oracle maybe and the list keeps going back and add in hacker culture in the Bay Area I guess which existed for a long time. It's a fair thing to point out.

Immigration to SV is probably a result of SV success not the other way around. Likewise, why would immigrants even come here if there was nothing for them before they arrived? I think the adulation of immigration is historical revisionism. Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.

> Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.

"If you bulid it, they will come".

In the power curve growth of SV fortunes "home grown" second, third, fourth generation, and longer immigrants certainly built the groundwork, drawing upon education from schools founded upon Oxbridge and other offshore inspirations, absolutely as you say, all the same more recent first generation immigrants played a big part in inflating it sky high.

With no additional immigrants drawn to SV it's not hard to imagine SV stalling out at 1980s Microsoft levels, impressive but far short of where it is today.

>I don't think it's wrong to go back that far.

I think in a discussion about the effect of immigration on the current state of an area, in this case Silicon Valley, you can totally reference its history if you are making a claim about a chain of events. If instead, you skip over 50 years of history which includes multiple generations of how the industry worked and multiple generations of immigration policy, to start talking about

> The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants

then you are making a narrative that has nothing to do with the point, and I am unwilling to accept your framing.

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