The Cruel Waste of America’s Tech Talent
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I am married to an immigrant. Immigrants have been huge contributors to the country. We should keep 'em coming. I'm pretty sure virtually all "anti-immigrants" agree.
But what many call "anti-immigrant" is propaganda, due to deliberate and willful devaluation of the term "immigrant". It has come to supplant the more accurate terms "illegal alien" or the more modern "illegal immigrant".
We spent years navigating the hideous INS bureaucracy to obtain her citizenship. Amnesty bills are a slap in the face to those of us who played by the rules. The fact that existing immigration laws go largely unenforced have resulted in depressed wages and large swathes of the Texas and Arizona borders becoming killing grounds and defacto "no go zones". Farmers' lands on the border are becoming unusable and dangerous. Illegal immigrants place enormous burdens on hospitals in border states.
Like many on the right, I am strongly for legal immigration on pretty generous terms. I am strongly anti-illegal immigrant, and not the least bit "anti-immigrant". I do want to see existing laws enforced.
Having grown up in the US, they are often culturally American and often speak English with an American accent. (In fact, we've deported so many people who grew up in the US, that there's now a call center industry in Mexico that specializes in hiring people with American accents).
It strikes me as incredibly wasteful for the United States to educate a person through the age of 18, only to then deport them or prevent them from continuing their education or working.
This article even mentions those that have broken American laws getting subsidized college education costs such as in-state tuition and other monies. In other words, you have people who are not American citizens getting in-state tuition rates that are not available to American citizens who grew up in other states.
H1B visas displace American workers who are looking for a job as well as lower wage rates. One NYTimes pick commenter suggests that he wanted an H1B visa to because he couldn't find anyone to work a Chicago job where someone knew both SAS and SQL. People want to use Open Source software such as R and Python instead of using SAS. In the NYC area there are many Meetups for stats, big data, machine learning, and so on and almost all of them are in R and Python and none to my knowledge in SAS. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7328677
The problem for many firms is that they want software people to work on buggies (SAS) when they want to work on cars (open source). Many of these firms also want software people to come to undesirable locations instead of the ones where people want to live. For example, Google owns one of the largest office building in NYC, taking an entire city block. So, if firms use modern open source software and they locate in areas where people want to live then they will get the employees they need without having to resort to H1B visas.
This is something of a myth. With the exception of immigrants from China, who were barred by the United States starting in 1880, there really was no such thing as an illegal immigrant until the 1920s. To suggest that one's own ancestors played by the rules, so why can't the current generation of immigrants, is to ignore the fact that the rules at that time were completely different. Given that many of our ancestors came from pretty desperate circumstances, it's entirely likely that many of them would have immigrated illegally, had the laws of that era been analogous to our laws today.
>those that have broken American laws getting subsidized college education costs such as in-state tuition and other monies. In other words, you have people who are not American citizens getting in-state tuition rates that are not available to American citizens who grew up in other states.
This seems to hold children responsible for actions that were taken by their parents, when they were minors. Would you really accuse a 2 year-old of breaking the law if they were brought into the country illegally?
Further, in-state tuition is a benefit to taxpayers of a given state, and it provides opportunities for residents of that state to develop skills without having to go elsewhere. I don't see why someone who has never lived in state X has a claim to in-state tuition at X-State University, based only on their American citizenship. I do see a case for providing in-state tuition for someone who grew up in that state, went to high school there, and was the child of taxpayers, regardless of their educational status.
I'm sorry but I believe that people who are not in the US legally should not be going to our universities, let alone receive financial subsidies. They should apply as citizens of the country that they are citizens of just as anyone else who is not a US citizen and be subject to the same set of rules. Universities, esp. state ones with lower in-state tuition costs have limited number of spots that should go to residents of the state. For every person who is not in the US legally that you admit into the state university at in-state prices, you are depriving someone who is a citizen and a member of the state. Completely unfair!