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Comment by chronny903 | Hacker News Reader

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Yup, so that we can loose our innovation edge and loose the next Apple, Google or Nvidia. Amazing plan.

There's a big difference between cutting off all foreign-born talent—and addressing the serious issue of graduate school turning into an immigration racket; the current issue with graduate degrees is a very close mirror to the issue with H1b worker visas. The abuse of both systems has harmed Americans—and to some extent the long-term health of the tech industry and the academy.

American is built on immigration, and nearly all of us are immigrants or very recent descendants of immigrants. How in the world has immigration harmed Americans?

It's a NIMBY policy, pulling up the ladder. It's rooted in zero-sum thinking, that can't imagine "make the pie bigger" and can only imagine a fixed-size pie where their slice is getting smaller.

Given the impact the economy has on people's lives, it's an understandable fear. There's plenty of evidence for this not being the case (and in fact evidence for the "brain drain" strategy having substantial positive impact), but getting people to let go of a fear typically requires more than just hard evidence that it's unfounded.

(There's a separate branch of that fear, that imagines immigrants to be a drain on public assistance programs, but there's plenty of evidence that that is not the case.)

(Also, as always, policy is complicated and no comment that fits on a page is going to capture all the nuance of it or facets of it.)

Ask the indigenous Americans.

I think if you're going to argue that we shouldn't have contemporary immigration because of the harm to native Americans, then you should show what harm is caused _now_, that native Americans actually oppose immigration, and probably that you support other ways of helping them like giving them land back.

If you go back far enough everyone comes from a line of invaders, so I fail to see how this contributes to anything.

Not a fair comparison.

Immigrants are not killing Americans en masse nor taking the land by force.

Would you be ok if the schools only allowed foreign students from certain countries?

> Would you be ok if the schools only allowed foreign students from certain countries?

Yes

Practically, schools already do.

Who cares if it's an easy path if the person graduates with the degree. It should be easy to immigrate here if you get an advanced degree. If you get a degree not in demand then you should be just as unhireable

A degree from Bullshit University in bullshitting should not grant any extra immigration rights because it doesn't mean anything. Although... the current administration must have high demand for bullshitters.

Bullshit university should not be accredited and BSU should be shut down. An unaccredited school should have no effect on immigration policy

Unaccredited universities are allowed to exist.

What point are you making?

That after BSU loses their accreditation they should still be allowed to operate to keep their professors employed?

We were discussing immigration. An unaccredited university should have the same ability to help immigrants get visas as Best Buy.

> Unaccredited universities are allowed to exist.

And so are anti-vaccine YouTube channels

> The abuse of both systems has harmed Americans—and to some extent the long-term health of the tech industry and the academy

Can you please explain how it has harmed Americans and tech industry and the “academy”

Every country with benefits for old people dreams of being able to import high value workers who can provide those benefits.

They already lost their innovation edge with TikTok but they were able to steal it back with brute force. They must be counting on doing that again.

A simple house in the South Bay is $2 million or more. Is this a win for humanity?

It’s one of the most desirable places to live in the world, why wouldn’t it be one of the most expensive?

The people who can afford to live here spend all their time working, and no time participating in the community, much less enjoying and appreciating the things that make the area special.

Is your complaint that you cannot afford to live in a place where intelligent, well educated people are getting payed insane amount of money?

And are you implying that the solution is to stop those highly desirable people from coming in because that will help you afford a place in South Bay?

In other words since you cannot compete with them, outlaw them?

We all know the actual solution is to build housing, right?

I mean, yes, the benefits (and sometimes harms) of those companies to humanity reach multiple orders of magnitude more people than the microcosm of the Bay Area housing crisis.

What's the relationship between this comment and the topic of discussion?

The point was - Do we really benefit from these companies in our backyard, or are they destroying local communities?

Is a trillion dollar company in your backyard really a good thing?

This is a non-sequitur. Making immigration impossible or stopping science funding or whatever is not going to change the behavior of a market profiting off of housing.

Could be the biggest own goal in human history.

Fairly certain 1930s Germany ranks higher in this regard by quite a margin.

As I understand, 1930s (and 1920s) Germany was not a desirable place due to the losses from WW1.

I meant more of a place where things are mostly going OK (compared to most other places), and resources (human and natural) are available, so any failure modes have to come from within.

Germany flipped over the boardgame while losing, but USA flipped it over while winning.

It already is.

What problem are you hoping to fix by doing this?

I think for any proposal to change policy that has serious impacts on the economics of the country, we should really be very clear on what problem we see, how we plan to solve it, and what specific trade-offs we're making with our solutions.

> What problem are you hoping to fix by doing this?

He/she is saying the quiet part out loud. It was never about illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is just the start.

The underlying theme is xenophobia, racism and bigotry.

Even calling it “illegal immigration” lends fuel to the fire. There’s a very distinct difference between crossing the border illegally and violating the terms of a legally acquired visa or stamp. The latter is a civil matter which is why people weren’t historically rounded up and detained under threat of violence or murder. So yeah this whole thing is strictly about xenophobia being used to whip up the in group about an out group so we don’t look too closely at EG Venezuela or the sales process for presidential pardons.

There is also a third class of people lumped into the category: those who did everything legally and simply had their legal status abruptly revoked.

lets be fair, there is also a heavy whiff of anti-intellectualism in the air

The account was created 2 hours ago. Everything is dead internet theory.

> The account was created 2 hours ago. Everything is dead internet theory.

nah I’m not a bot.

doing my part to change the world, though. One HN comment at a time.

glad to see the entire world become anti-immigrant for the next few decades.

Indeed -- it's just bots talking to bots.

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