Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The permanent residence program for skilled labor in Canada is infinitely less cumbersome and convoluted than the green card track in the U.S. More importantly, it only takes about a year or so, regardless of your nationality (hi Indians).
As for taxes, I was paying taxes in California, so the difference in total taxes is really not that much. Plus you get free healthcare. The healthcare benefits I get from my employer on top of government healthcare really goes above and beyond what I've seen in the U.S.
So, yeah folks, please do as I did, vote with your feet. No one deserves to have their hard work viewed as parasitic.
What about other restrictions? Do you need to be 'tied' to a employer, like in US? Can you start companies? (not possible on H1-B)
You don't have to be in Canada, or work for a Canadian company, to apply. There are multiple criteria for determining who is eligible, if you have an employer sponsor it makes it easier to qualify. But if you have decent amount of personal savings, a Bachelors degree, a couple years of experience you can qualify without one.
The temporary work permit, the Canadian equivalent of the H1-B, is more restrictive. You are tied to your employer, probably can't start your own company. But this is completely orthogonal to your permanent residence application. You can do your thing, work outside Canada until your permanent residence is granted, then fly over and start up.
But being someone who recently went through this process, let me clarify some things to the best of my ability (in other words IANAL). This list of occupations only matters if you are applying for residency without securing employment in Canada beforehand. Not altogether unusual, but remember this is a prerequisite to H1-B too.
You can work for anyone or no-one, start your own business or continue working for a foreign company.
You are subject to intensive interogation by Canadian immigration every time you enter the country. You will be grilled for several seconds on topics such as 'how are you?' and 'did you have a good flight?' - other than that it's the same as entering America.
As an immigrant / entrepreneur trying every thing I can to legally work for my startup full time in the US, I'll seriously consider Canada if I fail.
I still don't get why the word "socialist" has such a negative connotation in the USA.
For instance, white collar criminals who engage in predatory activities always use the words "free market" as a shield. If you keep attacking them of wrongdoing, you are automatically labeled "anti-American", "socialist", "communist", "liberal" or whatever. What is more interesting is to see people who are exploited and raped on a daily basis by the so-called "free market" to defend it so passionately as though they benefitted from it. Reminds me of a homeless bum I once saw in NYC... some girls wearing Obama stickers walked by and the dude started shouting "he's a fucking commie!!!!" I didn't know whether to laugh or weep. BTW, the dude was black and a Vietnam veteran.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for free market, but we don't have one in the U.S. and we never had one. The country is run by the cartels, for the cartels. Whoever points a finger is bashed, sometimes even invited to move to France. It's quite hilarious, really... and also sad.
The United States still suffers from the legacy of the witch hunts of the 1940s and 50s.
Did you just create an account to leave a stupid comment like that?
I guess USA's loss is Canada's gain. Something needs to be done here in US, at the minimum they should at least streamline the process. And get rid of this 'chaining' people to their employers. Once they are in the country, they should be allowed to work for anyone.
It is easy in the UK too, their HSMP program is fast, and you can work for anyone.
If we want more and better skilled immigrants, we need more xenophobes, not less. Limit unskilled immigration, and Americans will be happy about skilled immigration.
Part of the reason I dislike seeing political articles here is that they invariably draw out some seriously uninformed, inane, hand-waving types of comments that would be completely unacceptable when attached to technical articles.
Do you have any evidence that there has been a "political decision to turn America half hispanic"? Not 60%? Not 40%? Who took it - the Obama Death Panels?
> If we want more and better skilled immigrants, we need more xenophobes, not less.
"More xenophobes" would not like the "brown people" from India, "slanty eyed" eastern Asians, or most Europeans either for that matter (they're probably communists), even if they're qualified. After all, they are xenophobes, right?
And I dislike seeing these articles because they brings out the kooks who believe that it's more important to think happy thoughts than look at the numbers.
The U.S. Census estimates are always the first place to go: http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/index.html
You'll find the 1990 projections for 2100 there, which suggest a 1/3rd Hispanic population. The 2004 revisions only published projections for 2050, but I saw information at the time that suggested similar revisions to the 2100 projections would lead to a U.S. that is about 1/2 Hispanic by 2100.
Who took the decision to do this to America? Well, the most important piece of legislation in this regard was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. So I blame Ted Kennedy :).
I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph.
And I'd appreciate an apology for the suggestion that I was the one uniformed about population projections here.
What is "unhappy" about Hispanics? Nothing, in my book. The US managed to absorb plenty of poor immigrants from places like Ireland and Italy and you know what? We've done just fine.
If you look that piece of legislation up, it was about liberalizing immigration quotas, not a "political decision to turn American half Hispanic". That's conspiracy talk.
Also, projections include births, deaths and migrations, and if you look at the methodology document, Hispanic birth rates are far higher than the other categories (Ted Kennedy connection: he's a Catholic, they're mostly Catholics. Coincidence, or all part of the master plan?). Enough to account for those numbers without immigration? Not sure. Still, I'm not worried about it. People blend in, in the US, if they want to go anywhere. It has happened before, and it will happen with immigrants now.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/methodstate...
> I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph.
You brought up xenophobes, who are pretty much by definition people who dislike foreigners or people who are 'different'. Xenophobia isn't "people who dislike foreigners except for the ones in PhD engineering and science programs".
I mean, if this is a community, then we should respectfully debunk racist ideas rather than just shutting them. Otherwise, the same discussion happens in more screwy venue.
(Agreed, there should be limit to how much of this discussion happens here BUT the limit should not be zero).
Yes, that's my solution. There are way too many issues that even reasonable people will simply agree to disagree on. And these discussions often tend to attract plenty of people who aren't reasonable.
The problem, of course, is that not every idea can be debunked, because some of them are true. And when you start with the conviction that you're bound to "debunk" everything, and can't, it gets ugly. Here's a racist comment:
Africans are, on average, less intelligent than Japanese.
But defending your original quote, you would have to prove me that african kids raised in the same conditions as japanese kids are less intelligent than the japanese kids... And I don't believe there is any studies proving this...
In our world there is no equality of circumstances and we are pretty much a product of our environment so how could the produce of wildly varying environment be equal? So I don't think you can single out a 'race' as being more or less intelligent, you have to consider the political environment, the culture, the natural environment... and so on
http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/06...
Pinker is a liberal but he's also a scientist, and so it's a good intro into reality.
Yes, I would not want to get into that argument.
No, that doesn't prove you should never address ideas with racist overtones...
Thank you...
I'm sure you formulated that opinion of an independent mind, and you're certainly entitled to it, but...can you imagine that it is not your place (or anybody's place) to advocate the ethnic cleansing of any group, even your own?
Of course, that projection is for 90+ years from now, so if it happens at all, it won't be happening to most of us.
Umm, except the part that involved replacing one ethnicity with another, viz, ethnic cleansing.
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but the census bureau projects the total population to be 405m in 2040 http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio...
And the nhw population to be half that at the time,
http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio...
...so, I'd say 30 years, but it's probably less than that because illegals generally avoid census workers, and a lot of people are counted as "white" when they and no one else typically do in practice.
Anyway, the actual replacement of one group with another is not an overnight thing. Rather, neighborhoods, then cities, then regions, then states, one by one by one are overrun. Only then, when reversal is impossible is the actual country gone.
http://www.answers.com/ethnic%20cleansing
I have a feeling that he was just using an inflammatory term in order to preclude rational discussion and win the argument.
What the hell are you talking about? Did I just step into some kind of apartheid racist agenda? "Only then, when reversal is impossible is the actual country gone." Who says the country is gone? First, I generally don't like to use terms like "overrun" when I speak about humans from different ethnicities moving into various geographical regions because I don't think of it as an "invasion." Secondly, the United States is not defined by its whiteness. Being white is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to being an American. As I said in my parent post, I see no problem with the growing number of Hispanics in the population. I feel that it doesn't matter which ethnic group has a plurality or majority in the United States and it certainly doesn't make the country any less the United States.
Just to be clear, Canadian Health Care is not "free". It is publicly-funded and privately-delivered through a single-payer insurance system. For example, my MSP payments are $250 or so for each quarter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Health_Act
I think we should be extra clear about how the Canadian system actually works especially given the debate currently in the US.
In the Canadian system there is no chance that the insurance company will weasel out of a payment using a litany of the common excuses that are used in the USA. If you are covered, you are covered, and that's peace of mind you can't even buy with money in America.
For what it's worth, given my tax bracket and that I'm in my twenties, financially speaking, I am most likely a net win for the system.
I'd be interested to know if this trend only applies to new grads, or if Canadians simply earn consistently and significantly less than Americans when it comes to engineering.
Meanwhile I'm working for a little over $100K just a few hours south in Seattle.
I'm working for the same company that I was working for in the U.S. So that might explain why my income is pretty consistent.
However, there are still lots of problems with the system in Canada - mostly that we only take in university educated people, but we really need tradespeople as well.
The second biggest is the iPhone app store approval process. And the two have a lot in common: absolute judgements made by people who don't really understand what they're judging, and who are not subject to any kind of external forces themselves.
But I think PG was mainly referring to non-US YC applicants that want to continue staying in the valley after the 3 months. In general a YC round is about 10-20% foreign
Also, why can you not employ these people remotely?
I'm a writer and I see a lot of similarities in myself to start-up's and the general population here on HN. Our essential constraint for developing is access to a computer, and you can do that anywhere, but as immigrants we move for quality of life. I'm going to write wherever I am, it's a simple fact and I'm sure everyone on her will develop wherever they are, which is the same for any immigrant.
I'm lucky that I benefited from my move. Any sale I make to Europe (I'm from the UK) now cover the loss for selling to a foreign market (roughly 1/3 loss due to paying translators and a foreign editor) by the exchange rate potentially doubling my income, so I still make 32% more per sale for cost of living than I would in the UK for equivalent sale without being punished for sales to the US (essentially a 1/3 cut and then a 1/2 cut on top of that for the exchange rate, meaning having to sell 5 copies in the US for 1 in the UK).
Again I'm lucky that my cost of living decreased while my quality of life increased, and this isn't the case for immigrants from poorer countries. Immigrant developers are moving to the US for an increased quality of life for a decreased cost of living when compared to their job. They'll spend much more money in the US than they would in India or wherever they come from, so the whole reason they want to move is assimilation, which the xenophobes are incapable of grasping due to either wilful or unwilful ignorance.
So I think Maciej's point stands: if you were funding companies that weren't in the US, you would be less likely to think immigration issues seemed to be the single biggest external source of pain for startups right now.
I'm having a hard time figuring out how you could have interpreted Maciej's comment so as to think that your response might make sense. Can you elucidate?
A coalition of influential and prominent Silicon Valley companies could really have an effect on things (hopefully).
Edit: Seems like some of this is already happening, nevermind.
"It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare."
ok, lets start the article by sprinkling some politics on it.
"We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries."
ok, maybe this is happening. Any numbers on that? Any success figures on people who were in the U.S. and went back to their home country to successfully found a startup and create jobs?
"But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place."
Really? Sure, the visa programs are tight. The sentence starts with "But now" as if something happened. Maybe something did happen. The economy is certain way down. China is way up. India is doing pretty well too. But did I miss something? Have visa policies been changed in the last 18 months?
That's just the first 3 sentences. This article has a lot of spirit but not much substance.
I don't have numbers, but there is enough anecdotal evidence out there. It's not necessarily a bad thing for the home country, but not having options is frustrating.
This is a serious question? Any answers on this? Maybe a better question is what are reasons that people do not want to become a permanent resident?
I'm trying to get to the heart of some of these problems as I hear too much high level rhetoric around things like "just increase the number of H1-Bs". I'm suspicious that these arguments hold well for employers but not so well for the immigrant.
Under this system, a company can't pay an immigrant less than their worth, since the person is free to work at any business that is willing to pay more. It also fixes a whole bunch of other subtle problems that come up with an employment-based immigration system.
For example, right now once a H1B holder applies for a GC, they can neither changes companies nor change their job title (e.x. be promoted) without abandoning their GC application. Since this process can take years and thousands of dollars, immigrants are not only shackled to their sponsoring company, but to a particular job (and often pay-level) within that business.
I should point out here that I'm Canadian that may one day be working in the US... so perhaps I have a bit of a pro-immigrant bias here.
[1] Personally, I'd get rid of most of these too, but that is the subject of a different rant.
This is no way to treat skilled labour trying to enter your country.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. A lot of people say killing the H1B program would instantly create 50,000 new jobs for Americans. Ask the next person that tells you this to solve a deeply technical problem for you, just to see if he can actually perform the immigrant's work. There should be a notion of the difference between skilled and unskilled labor.
I started school in 1998 and watched people switch away from Comp Sci due to concerns about outsourcing and immigration, and when the dotcoms imploded, the bottom fell out. I hear the argument that immigrants provide jobs, and that might be true (I can see both side of the argument and am willing to admit ignorance on which is correct), but perception often trumps reality.
IT seems to be at the forefront of outsourcing and foreign labor pressures. I'm sure proponents would say that's also why it's such a dynamic industry, but undoubtedly anxiety about this issue hurts enrollment and interest by native born peoples. If we want to support high skill immigration (I favor this over outsourcing greatly), we need to sell it more effectively as an engine for job growth. I don't think the case has been effectively made. Perhaps some of these immigrant founded companies should pool resources and put an ad campaign up to put a face on the positive effects.
Of course, I choose to believe that you are intelligent, therefore cannot possibly mean what you appeared to say, and hence must have been being sarcastic. If I'm wrong, then perhaps you could clarify.
This is not a new phenomenon: graduate programs saw a similar decline immediately following Sept. 11, and it only turned around a few years later when certain internationally hostile components of the Patriot Act and other national security legislation were reversed.
Second: there is nothing about this blow that is "particular" to Silicon Valley. When graduate students are being denied visas, all programs and professions suffer. Our culture and economy are as adversely affected by a scarcity of engineering candidates as it is by a dearth of humanities scholars.
We looked into him moving to the US and it was beyond ridiculous. So I moved to Austria.
Yeah, by "foreign national" I meant Austria. Nothing like coming back home from your trip to Vienna and being questioned for 10 minutes about where you met your boyfriend, and where did he grow up... like I have been. What could I have gotten up to, sneaking in 10 pounds of pure, medical grade schnitzel?
I agree with the article's premise. The xenophobia in the US is astounding, and getting worse.
But as far as I know EU citizens (which most definitely includes Austrians) do not require a visa to visit the US for up to 3 months - is that incorrect?
If they think you have stayed too long, visited too often or they just don't like you - you are denied entry. Once denied entry you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to ever be allowed to visit the US.
Now you have to fill out special paperwork online, and get a "preapproval for travel" (it sounds so draconian, you can't believe), and fill out paperwork on the plane, and scan your iris, and give a fingerprint, and they can still reject you at the border for no reason.
It's fucking nuts.
There was a case not long ago at Dulles International, in VA (but really, the major airport for DC), with an Italian law student arrested and sitting in jail for nearly 2 weeks for no reason at all. He was visiting his American girlfriend and his English was bad, so they tossed him in jail on suspicion of wanting to overstay. They would not let him return to Italy on the next flight, they just tossed him in jail, in a foreign country.
If his girlfriend's family hadn't been well-off and connected to the state senator, who could say what would have happened?
That's the airport I fly through. My husband speaks perfect English, but how scary is that?
Reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14visa.html
(And, on a personal opinion note - Dulles is really the airport for the nation's capitol, but it's more like the nation's asshole. I have been to almost all major city airports in the US and it is by far the worst. It is staffed entirely by horrible, unthinking, semi-literate power-crazed thugs - men and women. They yell instead of putting up guides or signs. They yell louder if you do not understand English. And that's where I got questioned for 15 minutes after returning from Vienna. And this is the face we show to hundreds of thousands of foreigners every year, traveling to witness the greatest country in the world.)
I assumed that as long as you are not coming from some 3rd world country it wouldn't be significantly worse than entering the EU, but now I am rethinking previous plans of visiting the US.
I don't need to go there that badly & risk that sort of madness.
The author also cites the loss of diversity in graduate programs. All I have is personal experience: as an American in a PhD program in Engineering at Berkeley, I became very, very accustomed to being the only person in the room who spoke english as a first language. People who were born in California (or came up through the Californian educational system) are definitely a minority in these graduate programs (This is rare - Indians a not tiny minority in the grad programs at IIT. I doubt that French citizens a tiny minority at the École Polytechnique?). Personally, I think it would be a good trend for the US if 60% of the students in our graduate STEM programs had come up through our own educational system.
I read so much bile in both directions - and by throwing out the "xenophobe" accusation I think that the author of this post just added a bit more bile. I can understand why someone might start to equate criticism of the H1B program with xenophobes after glancing at some of the comments (and let's be fair here, there's often a tremendous amount of anti-americanism in these comments on H1B issues as well), but I insist that a person can reasonably want to see a higher percentage of US citizens in STEM programs in american universities, and should be able to advocate this without being called a xenophobe.
We should be getting immigrants from all over the world not just the larger cheaper labor markets. Tesla was from Serbia (Croatia now). We should not have any precedence or preference to where smart immigrants are from.
But remember this, the larger the group of people, the more there are better skilled workers. But also the larger the group of people the more there are mediocre or substandard skilled workers.
This doesn't mean that every skilled person we let in will be good. Sure there will be more quality candidates from larger populaces than the US, but there will also be that many less skilled workers to the scale of the originating country compared to the US.
I am all for open immigration for skilled people and I think other countries should have the same policies. Largely on the latter point, they are just as xenophobic as the US is on this matter.
A PhD student costs $20-50k/year ($20k stipend, training costs which vary by field, even private universities are heavily subsidized by the govt), so figure costs of $100-250k/student. If 50% of student visas become citizens, that's a cost of $200k-500k per new skilled citizen.
Visas for skilled workers are a much more cost effective way of recruiting high skill talent. Auctioning off citizenship/visas would also be more effective.
Student visas are nothing but a subsidy to the college industry.
All scholarships they get are merit based, (either academic, or sports), otherwise they will have to pay their own schooling.
Even students who pay tuition are not paying the full cost of their education in most cases. College is highly subsidized and 'in-state' tuition breaks comprise only a portion of that subsidy.
It's bad enough that we subsidize college. It's even more wasteful to funnel money to colleges as an alleged way to recruit high skill workers. It's simply not necessary; if we want high skill workers, all we need to do is pick a number and issue that many visas. We can probably even make it revenue positive by issuing visas by auction, rather than by queuing.