How Indian Immigrants Have Changed the face of Silicon Valley
sanfranmag.com
sanfranmag.com
Uh, no. Those orchards were gone long before South Asians came to Silicon Valley in significant numbers. The demographic makeup of SV engineers was overwhelmingly white American until around a dozen years ago.
With the importation of so many engineers into the US, wages were suppressed and many American students who had the potential to become engineers made the rational decision to pursue other career paths.
A dozen years ago was 1997. Do you seriously think this is true?
"With the importation of so many engineers into the US, wages were suppressed..."
You seem to think that white Americans work hard to "create" jobs, which are then "stolen" by hordes of immigrants. In other words, white Americans "give" and immigrants "take". That's just not how it works.
Immigrants in SV are on average smarter and work harder than Americans - not because there's something wrong with Americans, but because these immigrants are a highly biased sample of the world's huge population.
Of course. That's why I wrote it. This is based on my living and working in SV at the time.
"You seem to think that white Americans work hard to "create" jobs, which are then "stolen" by hordes of immigrants. In other words, white Americans "give" and immigrants "take". That's just not how it works."
Who are you quoting when you put quotes around the words "create", "stolen", "give", and "take"? Are you trying to give the impression that you are quoting me?
The wage issue is basic economics: if you increase the quantity supplied of something (such as wheat, or trained engineers), the price will drop.
Rather, both Americans and immigrants worked hard to build a tech industry that then created jobs. Without the immigrants, the Americans would not have been able to create an industry more significant than, say, the Japanese or Italian tech industry. Thus many jobs would not exist, and the wages would not be higher.
You did not say words like "create", "stolen", "give", and "take", but they are implicit in making your supply/demand argument work.
The words you have put in quotes are the moral judgements you believe are attached to those events. dbc gave no indication of such a position. He is just talking abut the dynamics of the market. An engineering shortage would have encouraged more engineering training. The number of white engineers is not static.
*The other things that would happen if immigrant left is that it would become more rational to hire engineers outside of SF ultimately damaging the prosperity of the city. SF engineers should not want to lose the immigrants.
You're assuming that it's a zero sum game, and that there's only a limited number of engineering jobs available.
What about all the companies that immigrants and immigrant children started? Ebay, Yahoo, Google, etc... All those jobs created by those companies would not exist hat it not been for immigration.
Could someone please summarize the factual content of the article? The title makes me interested, but I don't have the patience to wade through the novelist-wannabee writing.
But I'm glad somebody else noticed the pretentious, creative writing 101 nature of the writing. This author is someone who has yet to learn the value of simple, effective language.
Now where's that copy of Strunk and White....
The problems aren't new. It's unclear what's changed recently that would allow them to be fixed.
In fact, I suspect that they're actually going to get worse, as protectionism is the first response to economic woes.
Also the folks who say that they care about making it easier for "the best and the brightest" to come to the US insist on joining forces with the "let everyone in" folks. The two issues are separable and latter has considerably more opposition. If the former is your real goal....
For a business, they know that if someone has been willing to put up with eight years of crap as a student, they're likely to put up with many more years of it as an employee. Maybe there needs to be a visa program for Asian students without advanced degrees who are starting businesses.
Or smart people, period. I'm Canadian and have an undergrad degree in Psych and Computer Science. I've written code at big media companies that you've heard of and started an online education company from scratch with an American co-founder that's growing nicely.
All told I've helped generate millions for the economy and created hundreds of jobs for Americans, and it's still a pain in the ass for me to start a company in the US (technically, I can start a company without problems. But working for a company I start is nearly impossible w/o an American co-founder).
The link to PG's essay about exactly that: http://www.paulgraham.com/foundervisa.html
The multi-nationals like IBM, Cisco, et al have already moved many of their engineering jobs overseas. They also have the big bucks to pay American citizens to do those jobs. The result is that smaller firms must rely on them for contractors and consultants which increases the price for these engineers even more.
The result is that engineers get paid more money to do local work through multinational corporations who farm them out to the smaller firms without the resources to find them or the deep pockets to give them permanent salaried jobs.
It also increases the prices for technology for local firms who can't afford custom systems or assistance developing their wares.
Either way, I'm not sure "American" companies are harmed, there is a division among the companies in America who are harmed and those who benefit. The large ones with offices overseas may very well benefit, relative to the harm done to smaller firms.
Also, American citizens will benefit through the availability of cheaper products produced in foreign lands, including software and hardware products. Holding America up as a torch doesn't make much sense here because all of america won't experience the same effect.
Furthermore, there is a lot of criticism of the program because many economists, including Milton Friedman have called it a "corporate subsidy" and others argue that there in fact are enough americans to fill the technology positions.
Really, there is a lot of irrationality on both sides of the debate. Arguments are made on "right now" rather than the future of America. It is only the corporations who are saying that this issue has a deliterious effect on our future. They say we need to change the policy for our future, because they are feeling the pain right now. I'm not really sure who is right.
Heh.