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Comment by 141205 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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.

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.)

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.

> Unaccredited universities are allowed to exist.

And so are anti-vaccine YouTube channels

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.

> 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.

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