America’s Secret Innovation Weapon: Immigration
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
A NY Times article [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/googles-immigration...] published not too long ago outlined how much Google was spending on H-1B visas and their demand for the cap to be raised. If you read the comments or the backlash which followed, it made you very aware how the American public is still convinced immigrants are 'stealing their jobs'.
My current company was closing down. So I started looking for a new job, and I was really worried as an H-1B that I am, companies are really reluctant to hire in this environment, b/c of the huge amount of paper work, and cost required for them to eventually sponsor me.
Within two weeks I got 3 job offers, and getting one more next week (they are doing background checks), with a lot of money. I mean a lot more than I thought I could make. What it shows me, that there is a real demand for highly skilled engineers, even in a downturn, and a lot of "i am an American, I can't find a job lets send the h-1bs home", are probably voices from people that have no talent, or desire to work.
This is truly work Americans can't do, as I am not cheap at all, actually very expensive, money and paperwork wise.
The secret in the Silicon Valley is that 80% of the code is produced only by 20% of the engineers. If I have my own company, (or you had your own), I'd want to hire from that 20% pool, no matter what their race, ethnicity, or immigration status they are. Unfortunately, you have people on the 80% pool, that scream (or wishfully thinking) that if immigrants weren't here, there would be able to command higher salaries, and find job easily.
It is often much easier to blame others, instead of just looking in the mirror.
Plus, yes the complaining will always come from the lower 80%; the top 20% usually have a way to solve their problems - that's the benefit of being on top.
Under the H1-B program, once you enter a certain stage of Department of Labor processing, you cannot get a promotion. Promotiotions = raises. Either the H1-B worker takes upon much more responsibility than they are being paid for, and therefore floors down the price the employers are willing to pay for an equiv. worker, OR they get stuck in a dead-end job and are first to get axed.
Ideally, this processing would take only a year or two. Thus, the demand of not changing the employee's title wouldn't be /so/ ridiculous (only a little ridiculous). However, in these post 9/11 delayed processing days, it ends up taking 3-4 years (especially if you're Chinese or Indian--the H1B Program has 'country of origin'-quotas (NOT citizenship, ORIGIN.))
I do think immigration laws need to be reformed and the US should lead in the redefinition of labor as a commodity and work towards open borders, which I believe will eventually do more to improve global productivity and security than any number of tariffs and background checks. However, I hope the people in charge do not share your dismissive attitude towards those who are so foolish as to get born in the wrong place.
For me to start working in a new company I need: 1. A H-1B visa transfer. Cost about 2,5k - 3k on fees and lawyer work. 2. Eventual green card sponsorship, as my current max allowed time will eventually expire in a couple of years. That's about 10k of lawyer/paperwork costs.
For an employer, to pay you really well, and put up the costs, you can't be only 10%-20% better than the average american programmer, you have to be a magnitude better.
Fortunately, in engineering there is a huge variance in skills (up to 10 times), and good employers recognize this.
In the end, I was apologized to almost everywhere as they couldn't offer me a position because of my immigration status and there were existing federal restrictions limiting their hiring of foreign workers. Nonetheless, almost all those companies still e-mail me today asking whether I would take a position at their operations in my home country because there just aren't that many good people who do this kind of shit in the US.
Why, I ask? Later, I got multiple offers from companies back home who were willing to pay 5 times as much and were either in direct competition to the folks in the U.S. or were selling them patented technologies that cost billions in licenses every year.
Also, I once worked for a body shop which cared little for talent and just wanted people to fill the spots as cheaply as possible. And unlike at that paperwork this would stop them for using H1B's.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/20719/chinese_rocket_scie...
The thing that I do not like about H1-B's regardless is that they are a temporary invitation (at least on Wall Street). I would much rather the system be set up as a funnel towards getting smart people into this country so that they could become citizens.
Finally, a pet peeve: When I was in High School and College, the importance of clarity in written communication was drilled into my skull like a maddened dentist attacking the mother of all cavities. If you're out there, and you're reading this, and English isn't your first language (or if it is and you just suck at it): Please, please, please spend more time when creating written communications of a technical nature. An absent punctuation mark, a poorly chosen phrasing, a confusing grammar structure can all pervert the original meaning of what you've written and slow work down, or at worst, cause something to be done incorrectly.
On the other end, there are thousands of companies that use H1B as an excuse to get cheap labor. These companies advertise for jobs as required by law and dump the resumes they get so they can claim there is no available talent within U.S. These are not conspiracy theories but rather well established practices.
Imagine what allowing, say, 10k foreigners in to start companies would do to the long-term health of the country?
The next best thing for them is to team up with Americans.
This was my remark on the matter:
As a foreigner in the US about to finish a MS degree in IT and travel back home, I find Friedman's words apropos. The limitation on H-1B visas does more harm than good. I've met many young, intelligent knowledge workers about to get their advanced degrees who, unfortunately, find themselves unable to stay in this country because of visa restrictions. Sending those brains back home is a mistake. A new approach is required if the US veritably wants to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.
It's good to see more and more people are joining us and voicing their opinions loudly. Evidently, the H-1B program needs some major tweaking. The more people know and understand the implications of what's at stake here, the better.
This is a terrible assumption. 71% of the planet's surface is practically devoid of talent.
Of course host governments have to do a background check etc and sign off on the bidders/buyers. Everybody wins, right? And I bet you can IPO 'eBay for citizenship' overnight.
Auction price will reflect the current supply and demand, affected by economic conditions and a million other factors. Remember that I proposing that people, not countries, sell their citizenship and move out to a country where they have bought new citizenships.
Imagine the news roll: "Canadian citizenship was 5 points up today on soaring energy prices and the new healthcare proposal". Hilarious, but also kind of makes sense.
No! Google ostensibly hires all of the "best talent" in the industry, yet what do you see of it?
If the government takes on some policy of allowing the world's "best and brightest" to immigrate, you're not necessarily getting the people who would have produced the most value. Instead you'll get people who have tons of qualifications and degrees.
Let's say France had this same immigration idea back in 1980. Would Bill Gates have been considered one of the brightest and greatest and allowed in? No. Would Larry Ellison? No. Would Steve Jobs? No. It's next to impossible to pick out the true people who provide value before the deed is done.
I suppose the attractiveness of migration to the USA remains high in ex-communist states, the middle east, Africa, etc, so it's certainly possible they could make up the numbers, but the days of automatically assuming Chinese and Indians dream of building their companies in the USA are over, IMO.
The freedom to criticize the government openly and vote in contested elections for the national leadership? That works for a lot of the Chinese immigrants I know in the United States. (Net immigration flows from China to the United States are still strongly positive in the direction of smart people leaving China and settling in the United States.) India actually presents the more interesting example, as people in India enjoy press freedom and free elections, but still find reason to move to the United States.
This correctly characterizes many of the Chinese people I met in the United States in 1989 as part of the democracy movement at that time. Many of them were physical scientists or biological scientists or students about to enter those occupations when I met them, but they were deeply interested in politics and organized a "salon" with some very interesting discussions of politics, including guest speakers from newly post-communist Poland and public speeches by democracy movement activists who were able to escape from China after the post-Tian An Men Square Massacre crackdown.
A typical American might be quite surprised to learn that his/her country's democratic process is not viewed with universal envy or even respect. Out of the Chinese people I know I have never heard even once that they would like to move to the USA because they seek political "freedom". In fact, quite the opposite; if anything they'd move to the USA despite the government. And it is hard to disagree; I personally have difficulty viewing democracy in the USA as a system worth copying. Don't think I'm singling out the USA either; many 1st world countries are single party states in all but name, IMO, Japan the undisputed leader in that ignominious race.
Anyway, this is a huge topic and not well dealt with in this format. If you're interested, here is an interesting translation I read recently of a Chinese perspective on democracy. I found it well written, accurate and fairly representative.
i'm not trying to be a dick, i really am curious. i'm not so closed-minded as to disregard what was written in your post, rather, it was that my "copypasta" alarms went off when i read it (and the linked article.)
I can't speak for the article I linked to - it might have been copied from somewhere, though I hadn't seen it before if so, and I believe that blog to be pretty reliable. But my comment was composed on the spot. I am not sure if being mistaken for professionally written propaganda is a compliment or not - I guess so? I was just trying to add an alternative perspective, and not even a very controversial one.
Just out of interest, what exactly did I say to make you ask such a thing?
you could have used that post body as a reply to many things, it's very generic.
you can get mad mad at me if you want; i wasn't trying to piss you off, i wanted to see what would happen if i asked up front.
There are various reasons. I'm sure others will mention the obvious political and government things. I'll risk the ensuing flame war and suggest that the lifestyle in America is better. My roommate's girlfriend is from a small town in mainland China, and by small town she means 1 million people. Her parents live in a 2 room apartment in one of those gigantic concrete high-rise complexes. In order to escape that sort of lifestyle you actually do have to be the cream of the crop entrepreneurial engineer with the blessing of the government. Even then, when you succeed you're just living in the same type of city, but maybe in a nicer apartment.
In contrast my parents are from a small town in the USA and they have a big house and 3 cars and play golf every thursday morning and have 4 kids and a bunch of nice stuff and can afford to travel to hawaii, or arizona, or montana, or wherever. And they are just normal, average people who didn't even start their own multi million dollar business with the blessing of the government.
There are definitely people who prefer the bustle of the city and for whom work and achievement trumps all else, including creature comforts. But for people who are into the 2nd type of lifestyle I've described, there's only a few places in the world where it's relatively easy to achieve: the USA, Canada and Australia. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I know about China, I don't believe that sort of lifestyle is possible for anyone.
I have no wish for a flamewar either, but the attractions of a quiet suburban lifestyle, however opulent, are not universal. A big city is dynamic, convenient, connected and sophisticated in a way suburban life can never be - personally I find suburbia isolating and depressing. But honestly I don't know, I'm going to ask some of my friends what they think about that now :D
Hm, suburban life would be possible for some but you're right, you'd have to be rich. There is certainly not the low density, expansive McMansion suburbs you see en masse in the US. Houses do exist, especially further out of the cities, but they are smaller and very expensive relative to local pay, which varies wildly through the country, as your friend will no doubt attest. In rural areas it would be possible to live in a house more cheaply but at the cost of local amenity and lack of non-farming jobs, which are not famous for their high pay. So basically, no, not as we know it.
Anyway, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say China is some kind of utopia or even generally pleasant. Just that there are good points and bad points to both countries. Your parents would never want to move to a high rise in Shanghai; my Chinese friends would never want to move to a small town in the US, seriously.
--alexander solzenitzen
> more diversity due to the mixing
You are confusing diversity within a place with diversity between places. Whereas London was once an English city with a distinctive English character, it is now a "multi-cultural" stew that is much like any of five other large global multi-ethnic cities. The loss of an English London is a loss of diversity.
As for your distress over the multi-cultural stew that is modern London, don't you think that just might have something to do with UK's past history of traveling the world, meeting exotic people, and conquering them? Just as you can go to London's Brick Lane and wonder whether you unknowingly took a trip to South Asia, you can go to Mumbai and wonder why so many people express themselves in Victorian-themed English.
(Read Peter Ackroyd's "London: The Biography" for a good overview)
And it turns out that having separate countries protects cultural diversity too. What's the law in a country shared between people who have polygamous traditions and people who have a tradition where only monogamy is allowed?
- meMost human beings don't come close to maximizing the realization of their potential. And many of the countries that are the biggest sources of immigrants to the United States have very much of a "growth mindset"
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/feat...
in general in their cultures, and particularly in the subcultures that supply most of the immigrants to the United States, such that those immigrants, whatever their IQ scores, do more to realize their potential than people with "fixed mindset." Indeed, there is a whole book on this subject, James R. Flynn's Asian Americans: Achievement Beyond IQ.
http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Americans-Achievement-Beyond-Iq/...
The IQ threshold for eminent achievement and even "genius" (as carefully defined by psychologists) is not particularly high, but is only about 120 on a currently normed IQ test. That, by definition of IQ standard scoring, is less than two standard deviations above the population mean.
Follow-up comments to this by request.
It sounds to me like the author stating an obvious, and often repeated, point. Perseverance/hard work is a much better predictor of success than raw intelligence. Immigrants, for a couple of generations at least, have the work ethic. Based on other posts to this discussion, this fizzles our by the fourth generation, so you're stuck on a tread mill of bringing in new hard workers to fuel the engine. Is that really the only way to handle this? It doesn't seem to address the root cause.
As far as the requirement to post a job to prove no American worker could fill the role, I think it's common knowledge that this aspect of the system is heavily (and easily) gamed.
The H1-B program does need to be reworked. It seems like the H1-B visa should provide more freedom to the individual to innovate--start their own company and not be so beholden to their sponsor. I am making an assumption that the hard working, hungry H1-B holder is more likely to start their own company. This is where innovation creation thrives and, therefore, where there is great potential value in H1-B visa reform.
"Throughout this book, our statistical models have shown that the low education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and white Americans."
As is well known, American-born Mexicans average more years of education than do their Mexican-born immigrant ancestors. Unfortunately, as Telles and Ortiz report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites:
"In education, which best determines life chances in the United States, assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates thereafter."
The fourth generation (whose grandparents were born in America) was particularly unaccomplished:
"Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era]."
The fourth generation Baby Boomers averaged 0.7 years less schooling than the second and third generation Mexican Americans born in the same era.
Telles and Ortiz found:
"...the educational progress of Mexican Americans does not improve over the generations. At best, given the statistical margin of error, our data show no improvement in education over the generations-since-immigration and in some cases even suggest a decline."
Sailer writes: Their book is a monument to disinterested, objective social science. but seems uninterested in reporting the context in which these trends take place, preferring an interpretation of racial degeneracy.
The publisher's description and one other review present a considerably more nuanced picture than the one you chose to quote (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871548488/ref=cm_rdp_produ...) I do not think a selective book review from a tinfoil-hat-wearing race baiter makes the cut.
a) preserve your system, without dilution of it's core principles
b) allow new entrants into the system who are hungry and desperate to succeed and start a new life
What the article correctly identifies is that someone who is desperate to succeed will go much further than others. This kind of inner motivation is extremely valuable and is what fuels the engine of America's growth.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_nob_pri_lau_percap-nob...
So, so tired of the BS. The reason you think immigration is so wonderful is because you have been brainwashed since childhood. Period.
But really, look at this:
Smart immigration policies will do more for American innovation and productivity than better math and science education, more spending on basic research and additional venture capital combined.
Boil this off...what is he saying:
"You should not improve the people...you should replace the people."
The US soccer team is mostly out of first-gen recent immigrants, or people that were given a passport just to play here. I think a fair-er comparison is of Noble prize laureates by ethnicity or country where they were born. You probably will see a lot more even distribution. Americans are not any smarter then, lets say Europeans. It is just they have more means.
You will probably see a great correlation to economic output and noble price laureates because:
1. Richer countries attract smart people. You are smart, you probably are smart enough to be given great jobs/research positions and the best places to live in this earth, which happen countries that are rich already.
2. To do nobel price research, you probably need a lot of financial/instutinational backing, which you are most likely to find in rich countries..
Ha. You seriously believe that, don't you? I'm impressed almost. In the U.S., 13% of the population is black. 2% is Jewish. Guess who get Nobel prizes and who don't.
Evolution is a nasty, nasty theory that happens to be true. The magical equality fairy theory is beautiful, full of peace and love, and is wrong and stupid.
We're not looking to "replace" people. We're looking to add them. We have the envious position of being able to use our already considerable wealth to attract more of the worlds very best and brightest. This will allow us to build even more wealth and attract even more of the best... etc.
We've got the benefit of a virtuous cycle that would, if unchecked, allow the US to virtually monopolize all talent in the world. Severely limiting the use of this advantage may be the best thing the Americans can do to help the poorer emerging counties reach for prosperity of their own. How's that for unintended consequences?