Ruchi Sanghvi, Dropbox VP, testifies on immigration reform [video]
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Vote with your feet, as the Americans say.
For example, if you want to go start-up there's lots of opportunities to do so in London, and Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and the like maintain engineering teams in the UK if that's more your thing. And the UK's a highly respected base for computing gaming, visual effects, even hardware design (ARM, for instance). I don't see the UK software engineering market being any less diverse than the US, but perhaps if you're working in a particularly niche area this could be true?
From my personal experience, the biggest difference between the UK and US job markets isn't the diversity, but the work culture in general. The UK has 5.6 weeks paid vacation as a legal minimum, whereas this is very much not the case in the US (you may view this as a pro or a con).
Just ban these companies from applying for H1B. For outsources, create a separate and temp visa category for them and tax them at higher rate or have increased fees whatever.
Increase penalty for these body shopping firms. Right now the risk associated with running a body shopping firm is so less that it makes business sense to flout all H1B regulations. USCIS is definitely getting better at cracking down but still lots need to be done.
US will continue to be 'the' destination for engineers of all kind for many years to come. Right now, a sheer number of open engineering positions and superior pay alone are attracting qualified engineers around the world. But other countries around the world are closing the gap slowly. In order to continue the domination in attracting engineers, it would be in US's best interest to simplify immigration process for qualified engineers.
The only reason I can see to restrict immigration is to help local areas plan their services (education, housing, etc) properly.
I mean, yeah, I probably could cut lawns around town for $1 / hour, but I'd like to keep programming for $100 / hour.
(btw, I'm all for immigration and people getting decent wages. But, there's also a lot of unemployment in the US - which we should try to address.)
How about the actual Americans be ready to do the jobs at the wages the sly immigrants are doing them? Oh wait, first you'd need actually qualified Americans to do them. Unfortunately, nature does not discriminate on the distribution of aptitude or intelligence across the globe, but humans have created insurmountable barriers to opportunity that disadvantage those born in less fortunate parts of this planet.
And no, the Internet is not a panacea to redistributing the skewed distribution of opportunities. Case point, modern cutting-edge biopharmaceutical research. Can't just do that in the 'developing' world with intermittent power supply, web access and most importantly a pittance for funding. I would love to meet the equivent of HN's beloved patio11 but for the biotech field. Haven't come across anyone yet.
Clearly this is a rant, so take it easy.
Ten years ago, there was a 195,000 cap for H-1B visas - this year, thanks to legislation expiring, it was 65,000. Politicians aren't really prepared to handle legislation around increasing the number of visas available or comprehensive immigration reform because their support could be used against them when campaigning ("my opponent supported non-Americans taking your jobs!").
Like Native Americans? But seriously, if you are a true libertarian and believe all humans are equal, why does it matter if someone is an actual American?
There is no argument here, there is nothing to argue about. It is not like some scientific enquiry where scientists sit around and argue a matter all honest and searching for the truth. This is a struggle over how the pie is divided up. The heirs who provide the majority of money to VC funds and the public markets are the ones who created and wrote this legislation. It is for their benefit and against your benefit. If one makes "arguments" against this in this struggle over money, in this carving up of the pie, it all basically boils down to the statement "I am, or on the benefiting side of, the billionaires looking to profit off your labor". Those opposed are those doing the work like myself. There's no real arguments, just declarations of which side of the fight you're on.
As for maudlin, mawkish comments about the dreams of immigrants and the like - fine, we will keep the H1-B cap where it is, and make a lottery of all people who seek to immigrate, of any skill level, and let more people in that way. I'm sure immigration will mean more to some poor Guatemalan then some Indian IIT graduate who can live a decent life in India with his CS diploma. These mawkish comments about how the H1-B visa is for foreigners never mentions that these people making maudlin comments are blocking the poor people who could really benefit the most from immigration from immigrating. Some "humanitarian" move.
Because immigrants just "take jobs" and add no value to the world, right? You can't think of any Americans who have become wealthy thanks to companies founded by immigrants?
> This is a struggle over how the pie is divided up.
This is economically illiterate. The economy is not "a pie", because it's not a zero sum game. The pie can grow, leaving more for everyone.
But in the short term (multiple years) the biggest swings will likely be in terms of allocation of wealth rather than increase in total wealth. The majority of immigrants aren't going to be the likes of Elon Musks or Sergey Brin. They're going to be the rank and file IT workers that absolutely will cause stagnant wages and increased unemployment.
If you look at numbers, they will tell you that more immigrants than "natives" start businesses.
Well, here they are, from an admittedly biased site, but from everything I can tell, they're accurate:
* Immigrants started 28% of all new U.S. businesses in 2011, despite accounting for just 12.9% of the U.S. population
* Over the last 15 years, immigrants have increased the rate by which they start businesses by more than 50 percent, while the native-born have seen their business generation rate decline by 10 percent
* Immigrants are now more than twice as likely to start a business as the native-born
* Immigrants start more than 25% of all businesses in seven of the eight sectors of the economy that the U.S. government expects to grow the fastest over the next decade. These include health care and social assistance (28.7%), construction (31.8%), retail trade (29.1%) and leisure and hospitality (23.9%), among others
http://www.renewoureconomy.org/index.php?q=open-for-business
For when the facts are absent and even if they were there fail to adequately address the point that was made. I did not feel like a tedious debate. But since you insist and were helpful enough to provide some data:
> Immigrants are now more than twice as likely to start a business as the native-born
The point was: most immigrants do not start companies. Based on your quoted fact: if native-born people have a x% chance to start a business, immigrants have a 2x% chance to start a business. That means 100%-2x% of immigrants are not likely to start businesses. If x is 5, that means 90% of immigrants will probably not start a business.
To say it in plain English: your facts support the point that most immigrants to not start companies.
Neither do must "natives". That wasn't my point. The point was that immigrants tend to be a bit more entrepreneurial, and start more companies. Many of those companies are not 'startups' like we discuss here, but still, some of them grown and provide employment.
The interesting question is: what causes the pie to grow?
There is really only one thing that can fundamentally increase the size of the pie and that is natural resource income. The other thing that increases the virtual size of the pie is improving the efficiency of converting natural resources to things people want (standard of living).
It's also important to remember that after natural resource income (mainly energy) the next economic fundamental is food, housing, and basic utilities (heat/water/sanitation/electricity).
Workers are required to convert natural resources to improved standard of living. But workers also have wants and needs.
It's not an either/or question. The natural resources are still the foundation of the economy, even if you don't gather them directly yourself. And in the Netherlands I suspect a very important natural resource for the local economy is land. I don't have time for research at the moment but I would guess that simply to live in the Netherlands is very expensive.
Most of these companies are public, and therefore pay money to shareholders, and also pay taxes. The distribution of wealth is a separate issue, that could be dealt with by changes to the tax system.
Both sides on the H-1B debate come up with bad arguments for their cause, but the economics is very simple: labor is like any other commodity, and free trade is optimal, ignoring externalities. In this case the main externality is having a bunch of foreigners living in the US, and possibly staying: it's up to Americans how costly (or beneficial) they think this is.
That the median blue collar worker in the US can buy a token stock of a company means nothing. The last survey by the Federal Reserve of wealth distribution that I'm aware of, the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances, shows that the wealthiest 1% of Americans own 42.2% of the stock market, the wealthiest 90%-99% own the exact same same amount - 42.2%, and the other 90% of the country owns only 15.6% of the stock market, and most of that at the top. Almost all studies indicate this disparity has increased, even credible conservative/liberatarian studies don't dispute the disparity. The stock market is a rich man's game, your talk about being public and shareholders is part of that.
You have basically dodged my argument about taxes an economic efficiency. By your logic, a policy that destroys $1 worth of real goods in a randomly selected company, and provides 10c of wealth to a "worker", would be justified. This in spite of the fact that the taxation system could accomplish a much more efficient redistribution of wealth.
Why are you arguing about H-1B visas when you really should be arguing for higher taxes (for the top 10% of income earners).