Why I have issues with Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us

All of which is to say that there is a well developed political lobby on both sides of that issue. While I'm sure the DREAM Act supporters wouldn't mind getting big checks from SV millionaires and billionaires thier voices would add little to the debate. Similarly, the major private sector unions and national buisness association, after much back and forth forged a compromise on blue collar temporary work visas sensitive to the needs of both.

It makes sense for the tech industry -- both the owners and workers -- to speak out on topics that are salient to them. That's where they are most knowledgable and where thier opinions will be most respected. There is no need to feel guilty or try and shame anyone for concentrating on the those issues.

Even if the community college kid did get the interview (and their resume isn't immediately filtered out) good luck on that without advanced education. It wouldn't be impossible but definitely hard. Way hard.

In fact, a friend of mine quit college after his Freshman year to go work at FB. He has no degree.

Plenty of immigrants come to America with little more than a strong work ethic and a dream. They may have been too poor or disadvantaged to have afforded college, let alone an engineering degree, in their native countries. Hell, some of their native countries may not even have such opportunities. If we're restricting our search to highly skilled, highly educated workers, we're discriminating against everyone else who wants to participate in the American Dream.

Lest we assume these people are necessarily undesirable, we should be reminded of the fact that many of our most successful and quintessentially "American" companies were founded by originally unskilled immigrant laborers. Andrew Carnegie is perhaps the most famous example. His family emigrated to the US from Scotland, dirt poor and uneducated. His first job was as a messenger boy. He grew, of course, to become one of America's wealthiest and most productive captains of industry. He didn't have the status "captain of industry" before applying to enter the US. He gained that status in the US, via the opportunities afforded by the US to someone of his work ethic and intelligence. (And even the less-than-Carnegian immigrants of the world fill crucial roles in our economy).

Now, I disagree with the author in that he thinks a focus on engineers is necessarily a zero-sum game: that placing an emphasis on skilled workers precludes unskilled workers. It doesn't have to. I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater on Zuckerberg's argument, just because it's limited in scope. There's probably a lot more help than harm done by the sorts of reforms the group is seeking.

Furthermore, why should the US be encouraging technologists to immigrate here, when fundamentally those immigrants are in the business of putting other people (Americans and immigrants both) out of work? Yes, this is great for Silicon Valley, and probably is good for NYC, but what about for Iowa and Nebraska?

The reality is immigration reform needs to be felt throughout the economy, not simply towards engineers and knowledge workers. It's important for business leaders to stand up for immigration reform, but it would be better if they recognized the issue in a more holistic way. The economy is much larger than what is perceived within the Valley.

Om Malik is one of the few journalists I trust within the bubble of Silicon Valley. Part of the reason this article has a lot of resonances is because he's a dissenting immigrant who understands the values of technology and startups.

I'm curious to know how you arrived at this conclusion? How many h1-b workers or students on f-1 visas have you actually spoken with that do not want immigration reform, because I can tell you that I've lived that life and know close to a hundred of those people and even though its a small sample size I don't know any of them that think the current state of immigration with respect to skilled workers is okay.

Speaking for myself, I've been able to achieve ~20% raises every single year since I left college by leveraging the explosion in tech salaries. I do not believe I am grossly exceptional by any means. I am out-earning most finance-industry coders (though obviously not bankers).

I just don't see it. When it comes to writing code, the startup scene here in NYC (and in SF, and in SV) are competitive with finance. Short of being a quant your comp packages don't get better than this - at least not if your job description is software engineering.

In fact, I've witnessed the opposite of what you describe. In the engineers I've met there is no shortage of GS/JP Morgan refugees - people sick and tired of the ridiculous hours and being treated like cattle, and jumped ship into our side of tech. I've yet to meet anyone who's bailed from Google/Facebook/et al into GS, but I've met plenty going the other way.

I've met many engineers imported from outside of the US, especially by the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon, et al. I've never met one that was cheap - every single one earned comfortably into the mid-$100Ks and were worth every penny. In fact, the majority of H-1B holders I've met don't come from third-world countries - they came from developed nations, and they didn't come cheap.

But don't let me get in the way of a convenient narrative, where the only purpose of immigration is the exploitation and oppression of hard-working Americans by evil corporations.

I think he is wrong about this premise, since this 1 million people could help create jobs, and feed even more people (service industry, etc). Like others said: It's important for these people to focus on the game they know, and that's mostly information and technology.