Comment by pauleastlund | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pauleastlund | Hacker News Reader

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I get where you're coming from, but are you really going to base policy on that? That would be bizarrely condescending: "Sorry, it would be advantageous for our economy and for your personal well-being for you to enter our country, but we've decided you owe it to your homeland to stay." Not to mention that it wouldn't be effectual if other first-world countries didn't play along.

The genius who comes from Nigeria to the States to write some code is going to pick up skills and connections that will prepare them to go back and have a tremendous impact back in their home country. Maybe many won't; maybe many will stay here, optimize some small metric for Facebook, and be fat and happy. And that's a shame compared to the outcome where they go fix up their homeland. But hey: any one of us could go spend our lives living in and trying to improve a third world country, regardless of where we're born. Why should the folks who happen to be born there be forced into it?

> The genius who comes from Nigeria to the States to write some code is going to pick up skills and connections that will prepare them to go back and have a tremendous impact back in their home country.

But that's not going to happen. More than 95% of Indians who come here (and can stay here) will not go back to India. And that makes sense on the individual level, they're not going to find back home the safety and the quality of life they can get here so obviously they'll make the decision to stay here. But I'm not sure if we should base the policy on the liberties and considerations from the scope of the individual, we should ideally base the policy on what widely makes for a stable, safe, healthy world. I understand that a nation's job is to look after its own constituents, and nothing more, but I argue in this day and age we should recognize how interconnected the world is, and what magnificently deleterious ramifications our seemingly-benign actions can have.

> But hey: any one of us could go spend our lives living in and trying to improve a third world country.

That's going from, what is in my view, an active-bad action (siphoning talent from abroad, much to the detriment of the nations that are giving up these individuals), to a passive-okay action (letting Nigeria have its smart Nigerians) to an active-good action (we Americans going to Nigeria to make some good changes), aka philanthropy. As a nation responsible for its own constituents, we are not strictly obliged to do that, but we do -- and it's great that we do, we should continue doing it more.

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