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0 pointsremarkEon1y ago0 comments

>It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and that money stays within our economy. Versus employing workers elsewhere, where American's can't easily be hired, and those resources leave the US.

I want to pick on this point, because it's the general refrain about this topic. If there is some thing that American workers can't do in an in-demand field, and the government sets up a system to allow non-citizens to do those jobs, most people will say that this "helps" America. But does it? If the education pipeline is inadequately preparing Americans for being competitive in this in-demand field then perhaps that is the problem that should be addressed. Right now it feels like we have a (highly suspect) "labor shortage" that is addressed via immigration, which doesn't send a signal back to the educational/training infrastructure that they're doing something wrong.

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hash8721y ago

The US is only 4% of the world's population, so there's an enormous number of extremely smart people who live outside its present borders. I don't think anyone believes that even the world's greatest educational system can bring all of its students up to an extremely high level of general intelligence. We should be letting very smart people born outside the US emigrate here, which is a win-win for everyone involved

remarkEonOP1y ago

Sure. But the government of the United States is, allegedly, there for the benefit of its citizens. I'm not really following where this "should" comes from. "Should" in what volume? "Should" over what time frame?

ThrowawayR21y ago

If you don't think that having Linus Torvalds as a US citizen tremendously benefits the US public as a whole, enough to offset any imagined downsides of a great many merely average immigrating tech workers, there's nothing more to be said. And that's just him alone but he is merely one example of many other famous examples.

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hash8721y ago

Letting in a lot of smart people benefits the citizens of the United States, that's why I said it's a win-win. Do you think we'd be better off if we excluded Musk to hire a native-born American instead in our aerospace industry?

Just going back in time, do you think the US would be better off if we'd excluded Irish immigrants? Italians? Germans? If blocking immigration somehow benefits native-born citizens, you'd logically have to think our population should have stayed the same as it was when we broke away from Britain. We'd be about the size of say Colombia, maybe with a bit higher GPD

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gorbachev1y ago

Allegedly...by and large the US Government operates, however, for the benefit of corporations and rich folk (with some exceptions). If they want to hire foreign labor, the US Government is going to make it happen.

throwaway484761y ago

A national government functions as a labor union on a national scale.

christina971y ago

I mean the US thinks of its place in the world as much more than the domestic insular affairs of its citizens. If you look at it from that angle it’s obvious that vacuuming up smart people and becoming “more powerful” intellectually is what the US clearly wants.

sebastianz1y ago

> which is a win-win for everyone involved

Well... not for everyone involved. It's definitely a "lose" for the countries they are leaving from, that educated them.

titanomachy1y ago

The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering, just like they're not smart enough to be a doctor or college professor. All cognitively demanding jobs compete for the same (probably single-digit) percent of the workforce. Better education could certainly prepare more people to do these jobs, but it's not a given that there are enough smart people in the domestic workforce to do all the cognitively-demanding jobs.

If thousands of the smartest people from the rest of the world want to move to the US and fill these gaps, doesn't that make America better off overall?

kbolino1y ago

This is just brain-draining the rest of the world for the short-term boosting of some myopic statistics. This isn't going to improve the employability of median-intelligence people, and in the long run, it's going to exacerbate the same problem, but now globally.

Cumpiler691y ago

>The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering

How many jobs require complex SW engineering rather than basic SW engineering?

remarkEonOP1y ago

>The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering,

This point, assuming for a moment that it's actually true, would matter if "complex software engineering" was all that this was being used for. Complex for whom?

upbeat_general1y ago

I think a lot of these comments don’t properly capture the benefit. The more skilled workers, the more startups/companies, not to mention smarter people.

But the effect is bigger than that, by allowing skilled immigration, it makes US universities and tech companies the best in the world, at the very least seen as such, which has tremendous larger effects.

It’s not a coincidence that we have the largest tech industry, and it’s not because we magically have smarter people.

tiznow1y ago

Try repeating this to a developer out of work right now.

chabons1y ago

I don't have statistics, but given the student visa -> H-1B pipeline changes, it would seem there are a number of H-1B holders who are educated in US colleges (either at the undergrad or graduate level). This indicates that the problem is not entirely a training gap.

hedora1y ago

Honestly, the US needs to (and used to) do both. We should have a world-class public education system, and we should aggressively get the best and the brightest people to move here.

It seems unlikely we’ll do either of those things moving forward. At least China’s investing in green tech, I guess.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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hash8721y ago

remarkEonOP1y ago

ThrowawayR21y ago

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hash8721y ago

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gorbachev1y ago

throwaway484761y ago

A national government functions as a labor union on a national scale.

christina971y ago

sebastianz1y ago

> which is a win-win for everyone involved

Well... not for everyone involved. It's definitely a "lose" for the countries they are leaving from, that educated them.

titanomachy1y ago

If thousands of the smartest people from the rest of the world want to move to the US and fill these gaps, doesn't that make America better off overall?

kbolino1y ago

Cumpiler691y ago

>The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering

How many jobs require complex SW engineering rather than basic SW engineering?

remarkEonOP1y ago

>The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering,

This point, assuming for a moment that it's actually true, would matter if "complex software engineering" was all that this was being used for. Complex for whom?

upbeat_general1y ago

I think a lot of these comments don’t properly capture the benefit. The more skilled workers, the more startups/companies, not to mention smarter people.

It’s not a coincidence that we have the largest tech industry, and it’s not because we magically have smarter people.

tiznow1y ago

Try repeating this to a developer out of work right now.

chabons1y ago

hedora1y ago

Honestly, the US needs to (and used to) do both. We should have a world-class public education system, and we should aggressively get the best and the brightest people to move here.

It seems unlikely we’ll do either of those things moving forward. At least China’s investing in green tech, I guess.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse