The US legal immigration system is perfectly described by the adjective, Kafkaesque. In terms of the arbitrariness of bureaucracy, it has more in common with what I saw in the socialist days of India and what one reads in books by Solzhenitsyn and Kafka. The iniquities have been discussed repeatedly in popular press, with almost no changes wrought in the process. Many years ago (yes, 2011 was 4 years ago) Newsweek ran a story about how irrational bureaucratic delays derailed a guy's career in a consulting firm: http://www.newsweek.com/story-one-mans-immigration-ordeal-66...
I know at least 6 other people who have had similar experiences: well qualified people in great skill-specific jobs who were caught up in bureaucratic nightmares. Unlike the subject of the Newsweek article, these people had employees who could afford to keep them on the payroll.
Further, green card applications have country quotas, which, in the context of citizenship were deemed unconstitutional during JFK/LBJ's civil rights actions.
In spite of such iniquities, there seem to be no political efforts to fix the system.
Part of the problem with improving the system is that there's simply no incentive. Immigration reform almost entirely centers on managing undocumented/illegal immigrants. Law Makers don't have to listen to petitions from people outside of the country let alone their own jurisdictions.
The other part is that people who've suffered through the process don't turn around and try to fix it, I remember when my wife was going through the process almost 2 decades ago (and it took us something like 2-3 years to get through it), not one of the employees in immigration we dealt with were obvious former immigrants. If people who finally made it in turned around and went into government service and tried to fix the hellscape they went through, it would probably be better. But most people seem to be glad to get through the process and then get as far away from it as possible.
All that being said, people who I know who've gone through the process recently report a vastly simpler and streamlined process from the one we went through. So there is improvement being made.
For better or worse, the difficulties around immigration come purely from limiting the number of immigrants. If immigration entry was virtually unlimited, these stories wouldn't happen. I'll leave it up to you to decide if unlimited immigration is a good or bad thing.
> If people who finally made it in turned around and went into government service and tried to fix the hellscape they went through, it would probably be better.
I suspect that people who are persistent and qualified enough to get through that legal system have opportunities to pursue better job opportunities. And at the other hand, I wouldn't expect them to be wealthy and successful enough to easily sacrifice their careers to work for a public cause full-time.
Even if the objective is to limit immigration, the rules are arbitrary. Like bureaucracy in general, it is also counterproductive to the economy. Skilled immigrants, after all aren't like industrial pollution or worker safety or pharmaceutical drugs to be deliberately doomed to bureaucratic labyrinths.
I would strongly support massive expansion of the lottery system (and the reserve on advanced degrees), and have written my local congresspeople about it in the past.
I do this knowing that it may even result in driving down wages in STEM fields. Because I think it's too important over the long-term.
> Except for the tech corporations who are suppressing wages--which is all of them
This is not true. I'm on an H1B, and I can change jobs freely. Employers can't prevent you from changing jobs. Employers have zero power to suppress wages if you have an H1B -- because you can get a better paying job. (This is unlike the L-1, which locks you to your employer.) The only thing preventing someone from getting a better paying job is how good they are at what they do.
What's funny is that a lot of the engineers that outsourcing companies (like TCS, Infosys) bring over, end up leaving their poorly-paying sponsor soon after getting to the US (usually in 6 months), for a higher-paying job elsewhere. The only people left behind are those who can't find a better job...
Part of the problem is identifying the actual abusers of the visa-system applicable to skilled workers, i.e. what makes someone "skilled" with "specialized knowledge". The public debate in elections may make the biggest noise about undocumented immigrants, but there is behind-the-scenes discussion about the H1-B and L-1 system. This August, the USCIS will announce its decision on expanding the L-1 definition of "specialized knowledge". The L-1 class, the lesser-known brother of the H1-B, is a 3-year non-immigrant visa that is extendable for up to 5 years (7 years for the L-1A) and can be reissued if the employee in question leaves the US and works for the sponsoring company for another year. People are eligible to apply for the L-1 if they have worked for a US company abroad or will be opening and running US-branch office for a foreign company (other cases apply, just not available off the top of my head. The L-1A is for execs and managers, the L1-B for specialized knowledge workers). No degree or education requirement is necessary for the L-1B by the way. No quota either, like with the H-1B. About a third of applications are rejected though, biased towards India. Abusers of the H1-B and L-1 system are the blue-chip, non-tech companies who use out-sourcing IT companies like Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro to cut costs in their tech departments. Talking about immigration reform is not so much about lack of incentive as it is about the emotions arising from the stories of Disney IT workers being fired and having to retrain their H1-B replacements who are getting paid lower wages. Another aspect not discussed is whether expanding the H1-B system perpetuates ageism in the Valley -- why not push out older workers at the expense of getting fresh foreign grads? No large change can happen when fear is present.
I had to get finger-printed 3 times because they INS/BCIS/USCIS kept losing my prints - or perhaps the FBI did. I'll never know, and now no longer care
America hasn't bankrupted itself "raising the children of others". America has accepted others into its family, and grown stronger and wealthier because of it.
Thomas Paine: immigrant
Andrew Carnegie: immigrant
Nikola Tesla: immigrant
Igor Sikorsky: immigrant
Albert Einstein: immigrant
Cary Grant: immigrant
William Shockley (co-inventor of the transistor): immigrant
Wernher Von Braun: immigrant
Eddie Van Halen: immigrant
Elon Musk: immigrant
America is a nation of immigrants. They have helped define our identity, our values, and our laws from the very beginning, and they have built and enriched America to an incalculable degree. And not just inconsequential parts of America, entire industries have been founded on their work (Tesla, Sikorsky, Shockley), and historic, nation-defining projects have relied on their work (Paine, Alexander Hamilton, Von Braun). Immigrants are Americans, period.
What appears to be bizarre racist paranoia aside, allowing skilled workers to stay here helps America both economically and culturally. Lawyers and Software Engineers aren't coming here to mooch off America's welfare system (which sucks anyways), they're coming here to contribute and they usually have more to offer than native-born racists.
If that were truly the rationale behind the current system, presumably we'd have no limits to "North-Western European" immigrants and not let in the others, which is not actually what we're doing.
Actually YOUR racist nation (that genocides the first nations) is bankrupting other countries:
- brain drains is stilling public investment in education from other developed countries
- cheap labor force that have kids is a transfer of the capacity to pay retirements in other countries to pay yours
...
Actual immigrations are a pure theft that benefits only the wealthiests, local and immigrants alike.
Immigration producing macro economically a gross benefit nation that can afford it should compensate.
In our time and place I would propose the destination country compensate in debt erasure.
Our racist nation that has president who the son of an Kenyan, has present and fmr state govs that were born to immigrant parents, the head of one of the largest tech companies is from India.
What other nations have this? very few.
We have some shameful history no doubt but keep it in context to other nations.
With your reasoning it is good the author can't get a visa and may return his brain to New Zealand.
Your president's ideology is American Exceptionalism which he uses to give grounds for the murder, rape and torture of all non-Americans, and daily acts of terrorism and genocide in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. American Exceptionalists are racist regardless of the color of their skin.
Your viewpoint would be quite acceptable in liberal US politics if you would just replace "America" with "Israel" and "North-Western European" with "Jewish".
All the emotionally charged language you used (like "iniquities") belies this claim. Obviously you do not feel this is simply a matter of inefficiency. Now you are moving the goalposts.
This is the real problem, you have a severe case of non-reciprocal love. In that case the answer is obvious: move over, find another love, come to Canada or go to Northern Europe.
U.S. immigration is an American problem,since they are the ones loosing talent and entrepreneurial people. It is not an immigrant's problem, since they don't have the powers to fix it.
Here in Canada we have a much more open immigration policy and, IMHO, better quality of life. I strongly suggest you considering coming to Canada.
Just to clarify in case people still have the impression that Canada is good for immigration: Maybe Canada is better than America for immigration, the experience is getting worse.
After the new immigration minister came up in July 2013, the government has changed policies to make immigration slow and the path to citizenship much harder.
1) A Labour Market Opinion (LMO), which is required before a work visa, itself used to take 6 weeks in 2008. This process now takes about 6 months (my case, which is not too slow) to 1 year (another friend's case, and plenty of people in forums). For the work visa, add another 2-6 months on top of it, and then you have to apply the temporary resident visa.
2) Path to citizenship (having work visa => permanent residence => citizenship) used to take a total of 4 years (roughly), now is changed to 1 + 2 + 4 (7 years), a significantly longer time frame.
I get the feeling that Canada is changing its opinion of welcoming immigrants.
Disclaimer: Used to live in Canada, but have left.
My wife and I befriended a couple from North Korea who, in the face of horrendous hardship that we can barely begin to imagine, managed to escape by way of China to end up in Toronto.
In short order they had setup a thriving massage studio based on traditional Chinese methods, had a child, and were able to afford a nice apartment and car. Apart from the the private Christian group that helped them enter Canada, they were entirely self-reliant.
They showed greater entrepreneurism and work ethnic than the majority of Canadians, by far. Despite their many challenges (including the presumed murder of their families in DPRK), they remained delightful, generous, and happy people that were a pleasure to be around.
I'm getting a little emotional as I write this because I was shocked -- disgusted really -- when I learned that the Canadian government was kicking them out of the country. They were forced to apply for citizenship in South Korea, and told only to return if they were rejected from S. Korea.
Unfortunately, I don't know how the story ended because, somewhat alarmingly, we've lost contact with them although my wife was speaking to the woman almost daily via WeChat before they left. I hope they are able to establish a more permanent home for themselves in S. Korea or wherever they ended up.
So, yes, I would say the government has changed its policies recently, and not for the better. Why these people would be forced to leave is beyond me.
Strangely with Canada, I think it depends on where within the country you immigrate to. As a native Canadian from the prairies who moved to Montreal 10 years ago, I have met and worked with so many immigrants here that I now believe I know more of them in Montreal than I do native Canadians. It makes for an extremely interesting cultural mix.
Apparently Quebec makes it much easier for citizens from a select list of countries to obtain permanent residency, as opposed to what you'll find elsewhere in the country. It still takes a long time dealing with loads of bureaucracy (especially the requirement for basic French language skills which can be handled via courses while here), but I haven't yet met anyone who has had to leave before they manage to obtain their permanent residency.
Random aside: Moldova has proven to be the source of my favourite people. There are so many Moldovans here due to a simplified immigration process for their country. There's just something so refreshing about how they carry themselves: friendly, humble, utterly proud and self-confident, and without ego. It's nice to meet people who are pleasant without plastering a fake-ass smile on their face all day long. When you see them smile or hear a laugh, you know it's genuine!
tldr; I believe Quebec is conditionally easier (based on country of origin) to immigrate to than other Canadian provinces. And, um, Moldovans are genuine people - more of you need to move here so I can eventually find a lifelong mate. :p
Moldovan (from Cahul) here. Many of my friends emigrated in Canada. Good friends, which I miss. While I appreciate your good impression of us, I don't share your wish for more of us going there. Although I'm somewhat content for those finding a better life than it could have been here, I'm not content with loosing our best and brightest among us, and thus not so content about Canada facilitating this brain drain in any way. In the end, although I'm fully aware what the subject of general discussion is (i.e. decrying the immigration hurdles), I have to say that for us who chose not to emigrate the changes in Canada's immigration policies comes as a good thing.
As with all ostensibly democratic states, there are undemocratic elements that act as a check on various things (including the will of the majority).
In Canada we elect representatives to a legislature, and those representatives effectively elect a government.
My representative won his seat with about 48% of the riding's vote, which is actually an extremely decisive victory for a representative, most of whom win on pluralities more in the range of 30-45%.
In total, approximately 39% of the 61% of the electorate that voted (or 23% of all eligible voters), voted in a legislature where the winning party took 53% of the seats and secured themselves virtually absolute power to enact their legislative agenda for up to 5 years.
I won't say we don't live in a democracy, but I do think we live in one that is only barely functional.
But to really specifically answer your question (which is actually two questions): I live in a democracy that elects its representatives. I do not live in a democracy that elects its government.
The U.S. is not a country that loves anybody -- not in the way that countries like Denmark does. The U.S. works by mostly just getting out of the way and ignoring you at least compared to other advanced countries. You have more room to succeed or fail here than most other countries, but the government really won't do much to help you either way. Most interactions with the government here aren't all that wonderful no matter who you are.
Other countries offer better protections but can be more intrusive in ways that prevent both vast success and failures, with the tradeoff of creating more social stability.
The good news is that it seems like both approaches have managed to create great places to live provided you have some baseline understanding of what the place is like. There are a large number of well developed countries I'd be perfectly happy to live in, Canada included, because they offer great (if different) and reasonable living conditions.
As an American, I also strongly suggest you consider going to Canada.
The U.S. immigration system is so far gone that not even American citizens have the power to fix it. It has become a plaything in the hands of professional politicians. Just like many other things in the U.S., you won't get anything remotely like fair treatment unless you have rich or influential sponsors acting on your behalf.
Even if you do ultimately still have your heart set on the U.S., being a Canadian PR will also make that easier, due to Byzantine and Kafkaesque reasons that I don't fully understand myself. And if you don't ever make it, hey, Canada's not too bad a deal either, eh?
This is totally true. The difference between how US immigration treats me (Canadian) vs. my partner (Australian) is truly breathtaking. One of us gets the red carpet and the other gets a cavity search (almost).
If you're Canadian you have an advantage over any other non-American, no question.
That's exactly what I did. I spent a lot of time and money on immigration lawyers trying to find a way to immigrate to the U.S. only because I don't have a degree.
After years of trying without any success I started looking into other options, only to find that it's significantly easier to immigrate into other countries (like Canada). Two months ago I got an offer from a Dutch company (even with them knowing about my degree issue), and I'm moving to Amsterdam next week.
Last month I spent two weeks in California, and, with this new reality, saw the whole place with new eyes. After the glamour wears off, you realize that the other options might be even better, specially after you see that some countries are much more welcoming to immigrants.
That's mainly a problem for people that can't look further than Amsterdam. Which is not by far the nicest place to live (or visit) in the Netherlands, anyway. It's not the worst place (that's Emmeloord), but randomly picking another spot won't hurt.
Any recommendations? Based on the little I've seen of the country I'd say Rotterdam is my favorite place to visit, but if I was moving there I'd probably settle on Utrecht
Utrecht is indeed great and really pretty. It's where I usually take people visiting NL, cause I always feel like a tourist myself when in Amsterdam, plus it's only 15-20 minutes by train.
Rotterdam is so huge that it really depends where you look :) I've heard an equal amount of love and hate stories :)
And other recommendations ... as I try to think of some, I realize it's pretty much a list of the rest of medium-large cities in the Netherlands. Unless you don't like cities, in which case maybe check out a tourist or bicycle guide. Try the province of Friesland for some real pretty non-city places? But there's so many others, just pick a spot, any spot, then Google it. The Netherlands isn't that big ;-)
I suspect the easiest way for you would be to get a job in Portugal. Once that's done live/work there for 6 years for the naturalization. At that point you can just use your Portuguese ID card to live and work anywhere within the EEA; visas, immigration laws and work permits will never be a concern again.
I have a portuguese grandpa (as in, actually from Portugal), my family even owned stuff in portugal, but somehow all the documents proving it disappeared. My sister and some cousins will try to figure it out, if that fails option B is travelling to portugal in person to ask for a copy of the documents there, if that fail, then getting a job in Portugal and hope they will give a citizenship...
But seriously, most of my family that are portuguese descent are retretting that their ancestors left Portugal and want to return to Europe, even with all the crisis there, it is still better than Brazil (or most other south-american countries).
Hit me up for a coffee, beer, or other beverage once you're settled, if you feel so inclined. I like meeting new people, and I've lived here for much of my post-high school life.
The H1-B=>GC route to immigration does require a degree - 4 yr one is preferred but in some cases 3yr + ton of experience gets you buy. It's not guaranteed though.
Depends on the evaluation of your degree - if the degree is job relevant and evaluates to a 4yr equivalent then you might get through.
Where I come from most candidates have 4 year degrees and the ones with 3 years generally have trouble if it is not directly job related and if they don't have sufficient job experience to make up.
You know, I am a Canadian PR too and while nowhere near as bad as the US temporary worker situation, the transition from PR to citizen is not easy if you have the audacity to travel. And, thanks to this wonderful new bill, you can be stripped of your citizenship basically any time the government wants to without judicial oversight.
I'm a Canadian citizen (but I live in the US), so I think I know what' hes' referring to.
With Bill C-24, whether you were born in Canada or were naturalised, if you qualify for another citizenship or hold citizenship from another country, the government can take away your Canadian citizenship if it considers you to be a terrorist or threat to the country.
The new provisions allow officials to take away a person’s citizenship based on criminal convictions that occur outside of Canada, regardless whether the regime or judicial system under which the person was convicted is undemocratic or lacks the rule of law.
Why is this shocking? Most countries will do this. Look at all the former Nazi's who had their citizenship revoked in Canada and the US.
That's why they ask (at least in the US citizenship application) "Have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?". If you answer "no" and turn out to be one, they say you lied on your application and your citizenship is revoked.
The issue is it broadened it to a political instead of a judicial decision. Your citizenship can be revoked on the basis of a foreign country's conviction (say... Saudi Arabia perhaps?), which didn't used to be the case, and the decision happens from the office of PM.
Prior to C-24 there was a mechanism for stripping citizenship for treason and terrorism, but the bar was higher and at least potentially less political.
> Claiming the "love" is unrequited rests on the assumption that policy is at least strongly correlated with the people's will.
It is, the average American doesn't like open immigration and they don't want immigrants taking their jobs especially after years of recession. Our immigration policy sucks because our people suck.
Very true... same thing happened to me in Thailand -- 16 years there and finally got tired of the government's xenophobia and relentless efforts to push foreigners out of the country.
I am an American citizen, and the more I think of it, that is one reason I left America too....
Best to embrace a personal identity as an expat. It's a tribe or sorts, but it's more a state of mind. You lived in America as an immigrant. Live there as an expat, the attitude will free you, safe in the knowledge that if things really get bad, you can always find another place that /will/ love you... until they don't :)
> Here in Canada we have a much more open immigration policy
"Much more open" is a relative term, I suppose. I am a Canadian citizen, born in Canada with all my family (save my wife) living in Canada. I live in Japan with my wife who is Japanese. A few years ago my wife wanted to move to an English speaking country so that she could improve her English and live abroad.
I'll just be plain. It was easier for me to get a visa for myself and my wife to work in the UK than it was to get a visa for my wife in Canada. Had we decided to go to Canada, she would have had to come on a tourist visa. She would have no health care coverage, nor ability to work. After 6 months she would have to apply for an extension to her tourist visa on humanitarian grounds. Her application would be reviewed by a single border guard and could be denied for any or no reason. There is no right of appeal. If her application is denied, she would be barred from entering Canada again thereafter. If she is granted the extension, then she gets another 6 months. After the 6 months are up, she gets to apply for another extension on humanitarian grounds with the same restrictions. After a total of 18 months (and after paying $1500 for the application plus submitting all of our emails together for the last 3 years plus pictures of us together for the last 3 years), she might be granted permanent residence status.
That's for my wife!
In constrast Japan gave me a 3 year working visa after seeing the paperwork showing that we were married. The application was free and took 1 week to process. I can renew after 3 years. The last time I renewed my visa in Japan (before I was married) they just wanted to know if I was still working and after that gave me a renewal (the entire process took 1 hour and cost the equivalent of $60). After 5 years in the country I can apply for permanent residence status (which is similarly rubber-stampy). In the meantime I get national health care insurance and even a pension. (Note: citizenship is generally difficult to get in Japan, though. You must live in Japan for at least 10 years and you must show that you have integrated with the community).
Having said all that, being an immigrant myself I feel that immigration is a privilage not a right. If a country doesn't want immigrants, then that's their business. If you come on a student visa, or on a work visa that is intended to fill gaps in the local economy, then you are expected to return to your home country some day. That's just the way it is.
I feel for the guy because I would be devastated if Japan decided not to renew my visa for some reason. I love living here. I hope they invite me to stay permanently, but I still think that it's Japan's right to decide what they want to do.
I'm a Canadian citizen who just finished the process of sponsoring my Australian wife for permanent residency in Canada.
What you've written isn't true unless there's some extenuating circumstances you're not disclosing. My wife was automatically eligible for PR, and in fact it was much easier than the reciprocal process (me applying for PR in Australia). It took about $2000 all up, and took about 8 months in total. Easy!
Seriously??? My friend's wife even had to go back to the US to give birth because she couldn't get health care! I wonder if it has changed. That would be great news!
> After 5 years in the country I can apply for permanent residence
AFAIK, IANAL, you can get a permanent resident after 5 years on a preferential/highly skilled visa. This may be difficult for some people to get. See this Excel table:
To get permanent residence on a normal visa, you have to stay at least 10 years. That is problematic for people who stayed in Japan before the preferential visa system was introduced: previous stay does not count towards the 5 years of preferential visa.
Furthermore, Japanese permanent residency is much weaker than other countries. Children born to permanent residents do not get citizenship (this is okay if you are from a 1st world country, but problematic for those from 3rd world countries who want to improve their situation). In Australia&UK, permanent residents' children can obtain citizenship. In Canada, USA it is unconditional.
And getting citizenship, when not married to a Japanese person, is next to impossible.
Is there a reason why you are not eligible to sponsor your wife for an immigrant visa?
In most Anglo countries, you'd have to wait for its approval (about 6-9 months) before your wife moved to that country. Is that what you're trying to avoid?
> After 5 years in the country I can apply for permanent residence status (which is similarly rubber-stampy).
You can apply after five years, but it only gets 'rubber-stampy' where you are basically sure to get it, after ten. YMMV though - this is only what I've heard and is not from personal experience as I've yet to actually apply for PR despite being here for well over a decade now.
By the way you are definitely missing some steps in moving to Canada with your wife. It is not nearly as hard for her to move there with you as you're making it out to be. Do some more research.
My Australian partner looked at emigrating to Canada and she was granted work rights 7 months after she first got off the plane. Yes, she had no health care and we had to live at my parents for those 7 months but it wasn't forever.
Now, we ended up settling in Australia instead (it was easier in the end for me to emigrate here instead) but Canadian immigration wasn't impossible. If anything it was just slow.
Are you sure about that? You still need an employer sponsored work permit, and you can't change jobs without getting a new permit. Then it takes five years before you are eligible for Long Term Residency. You can go from an H1B to a green card in less time if you are not from India or China.
I agree, I wanted to go to US from India but realized that its not going to happen so I went to Australia. Aus immigration is fairly simple process if you have tech background.
went to Australia. PR took more than 4 years. I gave up hope and started applying for a tech job in US. Now I want to move back to Aus with wife but the partner visa is so broken. I have to move to Australia, my wife has to move back to her home country. She applies, the govt decides whether we will reunite again or not after 6-12 months. They charge $4500 application fee that is non-refundable.
I personally consider that opening borders is a moral imperative, but I understand why it is controversial. I understand that the arguments against "letting everyone in" have some merit, though I ultimately disagree with them.
What is a real head scratcher to me is the US policy on highly-skilled immigrants. There are certainly some political constituencies in favor of those, but I can't think of anyone against, at least not one with a modicum of political pull.
One could imagine a regulatory capture scenario where large companies benefit from the regime, because they have an easier time obtaining visas than their smaller competitors, but in practice even those lobby for more, not less immigration.
If you've ever come across any posts on HN regarding immigrant workers in technology (who are on the same visa, the H1B†, that the author of the Vox article was on), you will see a shockingly offensive amount contempt and hatred for highly-skilled immigrants.
To answer your question more directly, despite high support for skilled immigration reform, there are currently 2 senators who are hell-bent on making life hard for highly-skilled immigrants. One of them is Chuck Grassley, chair of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and the other is Jeff Sessions, chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration. Both senators (esp. Sessions) thoroughly hate immigrants of all kinds, and have avowed to do everything in their power to block immigration reform from passing, and the committee and subcommittee they chair are key to immigration reform passing in the Senate.
Jeff Sessions has even go so far as to write a document full of half-truths and lies, with the goal of convincing other Republicans that even the tiny trickle of high-skilled immigration now permitted is detestable, and must be put to an end. The Cato Institute has an excellent fact-based rebuttal of it: http://www.cato.org/blog/rebuttal-sen-sessions-anti-legal-im...
Opposition to immigration itself is pretty hard to believe in country like the U.S., but the opposition to economically beneficial high-skilled worker immigration, is even more shocking.
† Note: there are really no other alternatives than getting a work visa, if someone wants to immigrate as high-skilled worker. I've read ill-informed people on HN say ridiculous things like, they do not have a problem with people "coming to the US normally", but they hate to their guts anyone on a work visa. Ridiculous.
> If you've ever come across any posts on HN regarding immigrant workers in technology (who are on the same visa, the H1B†, that the author of the Vox article was on), you will see a shockingly offensive amount contempt and hatred for highly-skilled immigrants.
Well, that's probably largely because the system is being abused to bring in questionable workers and drive down wages.
No, it's mostly because those commentors on HN can't code worth their salt, and can't find a job, in an industry with thousands of unfilled positions, and need a scapegoat to pile hatred on.
Most of the points stated on those hateful comments are either factually wrong, or overstate something as being the norm, when it probably happens less than 10% of the time.
For one, if you are even decently good at software development, and live in any major city in the US, you really have no excuse for not being able to find a job. (Apart from being really bad at interviews.) Demand far outstrips supply.
Secondly, although work visas are used by outsourcing companies a lot, they are also used heavily by companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, a lot of tech startups, etc, and other companies that are looking talented engineers.
Finally, the work visa requires the employee to be paid at least the prevailing wage for the position, and most of them get paid well above the prevailing wage, so the "driving down wages" point isn't valid either.
Most of these commentors also fail to realize that there is really no other way to immigrate, besides a work visa, unless you want to go the family-based or refugeee route (not an option for most). They also show a total ignorance of the lump of labor fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
When someone heaps abuse and hatred on highly-skilled immigrants (like those on HN), and call for an end to skilled immigration, they are really calling for an end to all immigration. It's noxious xenophobia and perhaps racially-motivated hatred, plain and simple.
Yes because if you have some criticism of policies that allow Disney to have workers train their foreign replacement you must be some kind of xenophobic racist.
Immigration is a complex issue. Name calling doesn't solve anything.
I'd be open to hearing your criticism of policies that allow Disney to have [American] workers train their foreign replacements that don't invoke any sort of xenophobia or racism.
The whole idea that it would be wrong or humiliating to have to train someone who had the gall to be born in a different (and generally poorer) country is based on the notion that Americans should be treated with more regard than people born elsewhere. If Disney had fired 200 Americans and replaced them with 200 other Americans, would there have been an uproar? Almost certainly not. Since they only difference is the new workers' nation of origin, how is this not a xenophobic or racist reaction?
Lots of issues are complex but complexity is not an excuse for xenophobia.
> I'd be open to hearing your criticism of policies that allow Disney to have [American] workers train their foreign replacements that don't invoke any sort of xenophobia or racism.
If their replacements were white guys from Texas it would still be equally humiliating and offensive for people to be asked to train their lower-wage, less-skilled replacements as a condition for receiving severance. Come on. And unlike citizens, people on work visas have no real leverage to negotiate for higher wages (since their work visas are tied up with the company they work for or at least their ability to find a new sponsor), so the idea that they couldn't possibly suppress wages seems silly.
Is Disney going to pay the new 200 employees the same wages, and work them the same? Are the new employees going to ask for the same pay, and ask for the same treatment? Do they even have an empowered position to ask for that?
Maybe not, but even if not, why are you so sure that would be bad?
Let's say the foreign workers would have made the equivalent of $20k in their own country but will now make $60k for Disney in the U.S. vs. the American workers who made, say, $80k but will now end up settling for new jobs that only pay $60k (in addition to their unemployment, social security and subsidized health insurance and other social safety net features that the foreigners wouldn't have access to in their home countries). Are you really sure this is a bad thing for the world?
(By the way, the stylized figures above are very generous to your anti-immigration case, since while there is plenty of evidence that immigrants 2-3x their incomes by working in the U.S., there is no reason to believe that American's actually suffer 25% income losses to do competition from immigrants. Most studies show no change or a positive impact to native workers' wages and the few that show a negative impact show at most a ~5% decrease.)
> (By the way, the stylized figures above are very generous to your anti-immigration case, since while there is plenty of evidence that immigrants 2-3x their incomes by working in the U.S., there is no reason to believe that American's actually suffer 25% income losses to do competition from immigrants. Most studies show no change or a positive impact to native workers' wages and the few that show a negative impact show at most a ~5% decrease.)
Why do you think Disney would replace a ton of workers with inexperienced ones unless they're saving on wages?
yES dISNEY IS SAVING ON WAGES FOR SURE..Although I personally do not agree with using H1B to displace workers I also think American IT workers need to think about what kind of wages they expect for outdated and rapidly changing IT knowledge.. I have an excellent example in my own company.. A 48yr old American IT worker who makes close to 120-130K per annum... Let me tell you he does a good job but his work merely includes assembling PC's for employees, fixing bugs (rebooting Virus scan) and writing minor scripts once in a year to ensure email and server security. Majority of the time he just makes sure that all the employees machines are running smoothly. In terms of education he has an Associate degree in STEM and has been working for the company for 15 years.His position title says Systems Engineer. However a Systems Engineer in Google might actually be working on the Driver less car. Now the reality is that today the work that he has been doing can be taken care of by anyone even without a technical background.. so why pay him 120K? His knowledge was unique and fresh when he joined in 1998 but now in 2015 he is still in the same position , has the same qualifications and doing the same work everyday.. I am not blaming him..for this .. He is getting 120K for a skill set which is obsolete.. why would he think of trying something more or advancing his career..Since our company has a very small IT staff they might not take a step like Disney but otherwise this guy would have been long replaced. If I were him I would look towards more active roles within the company or else If I am so attracted to IT then I would go back to school update myself with the IT of Today and apply to a company that might need my new skills..
Overall my point is that the technical world is such that today nobody wants to buy an iphone 3GS today. Even if there are some buyers then they definitely do not want to pay $600 to buy it
No, it's mostly because those commentors on HN can't code worth their salt, and can't find a job, in an industry with thousands of unfilled positions, and need a scapegoat to pile hatred on.
I don't think that's true, but I don't expect we'll be giving programming tests to each commentor to get hard data
Most of the points stated on those hateful comments are either factually wrong, or overstate something as being the norm, when it probably happens less than 10% of the time.
If you are accusing others of not using facts and citing sources, then you should do the same with your 10%
Secondly, although work visas are used by outsourcing companies a lot, they are also used heavily by companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, a lot of tech startups, etc, and other companies that are looking talented engineers.
Looking at the top 10 list the vast majority is body shop consultants. Depending which area in IBM the H1Bs are going to, it could be the entire top 10 is outsourcing companies.
Finally, the work visa requires the employee to be paid at least the prevailing wage for the position, and most of them get paid well above the prevailing wage, so the "driving down wages" point isn't valid either.
That certainly wasn't my experience in the 90's and I suspect given the numbers given on the previous website, it isn't true now. I don't really have the time to check the state-by-state to see.
Most of these commentors also fail to realize that there is really no other way to immigrate, besides a work visa, unless you want to go the family-based or refugeee route (not an option for most).
I certainly realize that, but that doesn't mean we have to like the H1B's version of immigration, and it doesn't mean hating H1B means we are anti-immigration. It does mean if painted in those strokes, most people will respond poorly.
When someone heaps abuse and hatred on highly-skilled immigrants (like those on HN), and call for an end to skilled immigration, they are really calling for an end to all immigration. It's noxious xenophobia and perhaps racially-motivated hatred, plain and simple.
That is the crud political argument that I dearly hate. Paint all of your opponents as the devil with things they don't believe. It serves no one but talk show hosts and is a major reason why immigration reform is impossible in the US. Hating the H1B program or any other program run by the US is not the same as hating immigration or immigrants. Disney is not the only company to abuse immigration and it seems to be a common experience is some areas of the country.
Hell, asking for the borders to be protected has very little to do with immigration but it is heaped in there with being "hateful" when it is a basic security problem.
I cannot imagine why we don't have a system for taking students who come to this country to be educated in college and give them a work visa not tied to a company. I wonder why we don't allow a pool of skilled workers into the country under circumstances where they have a job waiting but are not tied to that employer. Neither of these beliefs will make me not say the H1B program should be abolished as a failed experiment that was gamed and needs replacing.
> I cannot imagine why we don't have a system for taking students who come to this country to be educated in college and give them a work visa not tied to a company.
This exists already. It's called "F-1 OPT". It allows students to work in the field of their major for 12 months normally, but if they had a STEM major, for 29 months.
> I wonder why we don't allow a pool of skilled workers into the country under circumstances where they have a job waiting but are not tied to that employer.
That's what the H1B is. You need to "have a job waiting" but you "are not tied to that employer"†.
The only thing preventing an H1B holder from getting a better job is how good they are at what they do, and whether the company they want to switch is willing to handle an "H1B transfer".
Most companies in tech are willing to do perform an H1B transfer, and there's great job mobility in tech, especially for the most talented H1B holders, who are widely sought after.
†Note: Before the year 2000, you couldn't change jobs on the H1B, and you were tied to your initial visa sponsor. This changed after Congress passed a law (called "AC21") that enabled H1B visa holders to change jobs.
So this idea that H1B visa holders can't change jobs is a myth. Also your pining for work visas to be "abolished" without offering a meaningful alternative is equivalent to pining for no skilled immigration. Without work visas, the only people coming here would be refugees and family members. What you should've said is "we need better work visas" or "we need to lift the quota on them".
A lot of international students who study here, and graduate from U.S. schools end up effectively getting deported because of the quota on H1B visas. Here's one HNer who's getting kicked out thanks to the H1B cap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9767627
By all accounts, it doesn't work worth a crud in its current form.
> That's what the H1B is.
My friends on H1B's couldn't switch jobs freely. H1B transfers are just trading indentured servants and not a good thing for freedom of the person.
> Also your pining for work visas to be "abolished" without offering a meaningful alternative is equivalent to pining for no skilled immigration.
I have never heard of anyone advocating abolishment of the H1B without a transition for those in the system and having a replacement. Don't try to phrase it like I am against immigration. The current systems don't work for people coming here or US workers.
> A lot of international students who study here, and graduate from U.S. schools end up effectively getting deported because of the quota on H1B visas.
> By all accounts, it doesn't work worth a crud in its current form.
You insist that F-1 OPT "doesn't work", but you the fail to give the slightest explanation as to why.
OPT allows students to work a certain amount of time after they graduate, and most students cherish being allowed to do so. After OPT expires, they have to go through the H1B lottery. You can start a startup (i.e. be self-employed) on OPT, so it's actually less restrictive than the H1B.
I'm not saying that any of the work visas / work authorizations in the U.S. are perfect and without flaw. Far from it. Ideally, it would be good if students were allowed to transition to permanent residency after their graduation. But OPT helps a lot of international students, and it isn't fair of you criticize it without explanation. It is arrogant and asshole-like of you to do so.
> My friends on H1B's couldn't switch jobs freely.
Ask them why.
Nothing prevents a person on H1B holder from moving to another employer that sponsors H1Bs. Practically every company in tech is willing to do a transfer, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to switch. A transfer costs a company at most $4000 in total (application fees, attorney fees) which is not much if you're paying the individual $100k+/year.
So what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals. So if we don't want walls around towns or cities or counties or states, why do we suddenly want them at the country level? What the hell is so special about your country? Does no one commit crimes there? No, of course they commit crimes.
And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
I don't think you're being fair here. Law enforcement has trouble crossing national borders, for one thing (especially in the case of Mexico where organized criminals have outright bought off lots of politicians). I don't think people who look at big drug-related massacres in Mexico on the news and feel worried about cartels entering the US are necessarily bigots.
> And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
You're making this sound easier than it is. Lots of people die trying to do this now.
Nope. The border needs to be secure. There are people who hate the US and have committed violence against its people. This is a basic security problem and open borders would be a disaster. Your city argument is bunk, we are a country under a common Constitution, not a collection of city-states.
> And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks
Yep, and the government needs to do everything in its power to shut that down. Illegal immigration hurts the chances of any legal immigration package.
Except law enforcement in towns and cities cooperate while if a person does something in the US and leaves the victim may have very little recourse.
Your comparison of open borders and and having free movement within a country is weak.
Although I personally do not agree with using H1B to displace workers I also think American IT workers need to think about what kind of wages they expect for outdated and rapidly changing IT knowledge.. I have an excellent example in my own company.. A 48yr old American IT worker who makes close to 120-130K per annum... Let me tell you he does a good job but his work merely includes assembling PC's for employees, fixing bugs (rebooting Virus scan) and writing minor scripts once in a year to ensure email and server security. Majority of the time he just makes sure that all the employees machines are running smoothly. In terms of education he has an Associate degree in STEM and has been working for the company for 15 years.His position title says Systems Engineer. However a Systems Engineer in Google might actually be working on the Driver less car. Now the reality is that today the work that he has been doing can be taken care of by anyone even without a technical background.. so why pay him 120K? His knowledge was unique and fresh when he joined in 1998 but now in 2015 he is still in the same position , has the same qualifications and doing the same work everyday.. I am not blaming him..for this .. He is getting 120K for a skill set which is obsolete.. why would he think of trying something more or advancing his career..Since our company has a very small IT staff they might not take a step like Disney but otherwise this guy would have been long replaced. If I were him I would look towards more active roles within the company or else If I am so attracted to IT then I would go back to school update myself with the IT of Today and apply to a company that might need my new skills..
Overall my point is that the technical world is such that today nobody wants to buy an iphone 3GS today. Even if there are some buyers then they definitely do not want to pay $600 to buy it
Eat me. Change H-1B's to follow a worker from job to job and there is no problem with the program. The fact that anyone who wants to hire a H-1B worker away from their company also has to have acquired a H-1B means that it is abused by companies looking for cheap labor.
Transferring an H1-B is a couple of orders of magnitude easier than getting a new H1-B. If a person is here on an H1-B already there's more friction in finding a new apartment to rent than there is in transferring the visa.
From my experience, those "transfer" applications are routinely approved because they are not subject to the H-1B cap. Sure, it will take a few weeks for USCIS to process it and will cost the employer some money, but getting a denial is pretty rare.
Secondly coming to the issue of American IT workers being replaced. Although I personally do not agree with using H1B to displace workers I also think American IT workers need to think about what kind of wages they expect for outdated and rapidly changing IT knowledge.. I have an excellent example in my own company.. A 48yr old American IT worker who makes close to 120-130K per annum... Let me tell you he does a good job but his work merely includes assembling PC's for employees, fixing bugs (rebooting Virus scan) and writing minor scripts once in a year to ensure email and server security. Majority of the time he just makes sure that all the employees machines are running smoothly. In terms of education he has an Associate degree in STEM and has been working for the company for 15 years.His position title says Systems Engineer. However a Systems Engineer in Google might actually be working on the Driver less car. Now the reality is that today the work that he has been doing can be taken care of by anyone even without a technical background.. so why pay him 120K? His knowledge was unique and fresh when he joined in 1998 but now in 2015 he is still in the same position , has the same qualifications and doing the same work everyday.. I am not blaming him..for this .. He is getting 120K for a skill set which is obsolete.. why would he think of trying something more or advancing his career..Since our company has a very small IT staff they might not take a step like Disney but otherwise this guy would have been long replaced. If I were him I would look towards more active roles within the company or else If I am so attracted to IT then I would go back to school update myself with the IT of Today and apply to a company that might need my new skills..
Overall my point is that the technical world is such that today nobody wants to buy an iphone 3GS today. Even if there are some buyers then they definitely do not want to pay $600 to buy it
I wouldn't say Sen grassley is anti-immigrant. He is infact open to h1b visa provided the tech sector accepts his bill as well to protect abuse. In short what Grassley is providing is a poison pill for Body shops but not for really talented advanced degree graduates. Sessions on the other hand is out right anti immigrant and a racist Pig.
All Americans fail to understand that 30-40% of H1B's are Masters/Phd's for American schools.. Not all are body shop products like the ones used in Disney.
There's no strong lobby against more high-skilled immigration. But as sometimes happens in US politics, the uncontroversial reform is held hostage to the controversial one.
In particular, lobbying groups for and against having an official status for the millions of currently undocumented Mexicans in the US have opposed any immigration bill that doesn't include what they want.
Any chance you'd be willing to write a bit more about your support for open borders? In particular, I'm interested in knowing whether you think this is a situation where it would be both moral and beneficial, or if you feel that it is simply wrong to limit where people can live and work based on where they were born (or even where their grandparents were born) even if the overall effect on current citizens of some regions would be negative.
Interesting that the author of this piece comes from New Zealand, because NZ is the country that often springs to mind when I think of a nation that might could change dramatically with open borders.
I haven't been there, but I understand New Zealand is a country about the geographical size of California and Oregon put together (a bit larger), with spectacular natural landscapes, and a very small population (much smaller than the island would be capable of supporting). What would happen to New Zealand if they unilaterally opened up their borders? To keep it simple, let's not worry about malicious people, I just mean honest, hard working immigrants who seek a better life. Should New Zealand open up borders to unlimited migration? Is there a moral imperative for them to do so?
The debate the politicians in my state (Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany) had about this was really interesting, sadly it’s in German.
Essentially, it boils down to two issues:
Morally, we all are descendants of immigrants, or at least most.
Economically, most immigrants are willing to work hard. Combined with the fact that our society has a birth rate below replacement rate (1.3 vs. 2.1) we need immigrants just to keep our standard of living. And if we can give them a better life at the same time, it’s definitely great.
Another frequently-cited benefit of opened borders is that -- for the most part -- current citizens own everything in this country, and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc.
I can only follow that argument if we're talking about citizens that already have assets. Increased competition for houses, used cars, and rentals will drive up prices, which is good news only if you own houses, cars, and rental property respectively.
Productivity is the root of all prosperity. Read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.
And that’s exactly why the politicians in my state were the first in europe to allow all refugees and asylum seekers to live and work like any citizen. Because that productivity increase also boosts the local economy.
> Another frequently-cited benefit of opened borders is that -- for the most part -- current citizens own everything in this country
This is not true. Very many things in this country are owned by entities that are not citizens -- foreign corporations and/or foreign individuals.
> and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc.
Sure, some people (some of whom are citizens) own things for which local demand and prices would increase with an influx of new people. Lots of citizens don't own much, and would be competing to purchase those things, and would suffer rather than benefit from the higher prices.
The benefit here is pretty much directly in proportion to current ownership of capital (just like the benefit from greater supply, and therefore lower prices, from labor.)
Productivity is the root of all prosperity. First read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.
You make the all too common mistake of confusing aggregate output growth with everyone getting richer. That's not a valid equivalence, as the 2001-2009 economic expansion in the US showed fairly dramatically, with the bottom three quintiles doing worse over the period of expansion, the fourth quintile mostly flat, and most of the gains in the to quintile (and, within that quintile, mostly in the top few percentiles.)
Aggregate growth doesn't mean everyone gets more; we have a system in which the major holders of capital are very good at capturing output growth.
Policies favoring aggregate growth aren't good for most people without policy reform that alters the way gains from such growth end up being distributed.
Median net worth in the US, last I saw, was on the order of $45K -- since that value is > $0, its not the case that 50% of Americans have zero or a negative net worth.
You do need immigrants, but you need them to be low level workers. Which explains the amount of unskilled people working in both Germany and the US legally, while high skilled immigrants can't get their foot through the door.
Japan is doing quite well without the insane immigration policies most of Western Europe has. It boggles my mind, how people came up with the idea of slowly replacing the native population with low-skilled immigrants for economic reasons and how that is still considered a good idea (despite all the obvious problems multiculturalism has shown to bring along in Europe).
All this current immigration system leads to is more Islam and more 3rd world in Europe.
Isn't it? By definition wouldn't an increase in supply of talent for a given job decrease market wage for that talent unless it was already in a shortage (which we never really know until it's over)?
Sound logic, but it is not an automatically enforced one.
Take waste collectors, for example:
Very few people want to do it, very few people actually do it. And it is necessary. By our sound logic, their salaries should be soaring, but they're not.
On the other hand, take lawyers in the U.S. A huge number of people want to do it. A huge number of people ends up doing it (I think the number of lawyers tripled in 30 years, for a 40% increase in population), and compared to waste collection, it is not that necessary a profession. But the salaries don't follow. They have probably dropped compared to what a lawyer used to make in the 60's (I'm not sure), but those who end up doing it still make good money.
So it doesn't seem to be a law of nature that is enforced automatically.
Interestingly waste collectors (garbos in Aussie slang) are well paid and it is quite a desirable job. They are also the hardest working government employees you see as they are given a route and when they have finished they can go home. Amazing how government can work when the structure is right.
Yes! There are certain countries that deal with these matters in a way that's alien to the rest of us. It appears that Japan has an interesting way, too.
As a side note, speaking of governement.. as a teenager, one of the books that were laying around was "The American Challenge" (Le Défi Américain) by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. It was a parallel between European countries and the U.S.A. It also addressed the Japanese and Swedish models, the technology gap (he warned that if Europe let the U.S. get ahead, there will be a time where the gap is simply too big to cross).
and they are quite efficient - I compare garbage collection here in Seattle to Adelaide and in Australia it's only one person per truck doing most of the work without leaving a cabin.
Yes this is what happens when you have well paid labor - you focus of labor efficiency.
I wish we could figure out a way of "garboing" council road crews. With them you see 5 people standing around watching the one poor apprentice do the work.
It would also decrease prices and thus raise living standards. Customers would then turn their attention to better goods and services, increasing the demand for labor. You're committing the lump of labor fallacy.
Think about it this way, if two countries were to merge, would everyone be worse off because of the increased competition on the job market? No, people would be better off due to the increased amount of trade.
Not really. Muslim immigrants are usually just socially conservative. It's their children that are radicalized in European society. It's a testament to the failure of current integration policies.
The unpleasant fact is that proper integration costs money - they need to be taught the biggest official language and English, they need to be taught a profitable trade and they need to get up to speed on the domestic culture, which requires history classes etc. The alternative is to create an underclass visibly different to the majority - that doesn't end well.
It feels unfair to pay for outsiders' education, but in the case of Germany (and other low-reproducing countries) it's the only way to make sure there's someone left to pay for tomorrow's pensions
>The unpleasant fact is that proper integration costs money //
For those selecting to immigrate why not put the onus on them to integrate too? Why should the onus be on the established population to adapt? [That's obviously not appropriate for some classes of migrant like refugees, but I'm sure that's clear.]
>The alternative is to create an underclass visibly different to the majority - that doesn't end well. //
Muslims in the UK often choose to be visibly different to set themselves apart from kafirs; they're not an underclass though. You don't have to wear a shalwar kameez and a big beard or wear a hijab to follow the Koran. [Non-abrogated verses do demand violent oppression of others though]. It's basically cultural AFAICT, predominantly British Islam appears to be about importing Middle-Eastern culture and traditions, like forced marriage, that had previously been forced out of the local culture at great length. Muslims in my city in the UK go "back home" to Pakistan or support the Indian cricket team or whatever, they're not interested in adopting the established UK culture but instead creating a different culture here. Islam is not just a religion it proscribes a legal system which by tradition Muslims are obliged to instigate where ever they are.
Cultures that demand other cultures to be subservient can't integrate in to a multicultural society, it doesn't work. In order to integrate they must change; for Islam that means it must become not-Islam, it needs to deny some of its central tenets to make it compatible with other cultures.
Thankfully most Muslims I meet seem to be not at all like the Mohammed [depicted in the Koran and Hadith] they suppose to try and emulate.
>the only way to make sure there's someone left to pay for tomorrow's pensions //
Pensions are basically a massive pyramid scheme; it's going to fail eventually. The only way it can continue is if there is no limit on availability of natural resources for the manufacture of new stuff on which Western Capitalism appears to depend.
> Pensions are basically a massive pyramid scheme; it's going to fail eventually. The only way it can continue is if there is no limit on availability of natural resources for the manufacture of new stuff on which Western Capitalism appears to depend.
Pensions don't require that. Unlimited aggregate output growth requires that (and, therefore, unlimited per capita consumption growth without proportional decreases in population requires that.)
> For those selecting to immigrate why not put the onus on them to integrate too? Why should the onus be on the established population to adapt?
What's the point of assigning blame? The established population can either close the borders completely, or help immigrants immigrate at their own expense - becuase THEY are the ones who stand to lose or gain the most. Purely as a matter of pragmatism, it's the established residents who will have to pay, as they're the only ones who can. They can also choose to close the borders completely, but I don't think there is any other alternative. To assign blame may make one feel self righteous but it is hardly a solution.
>Pensions are basically a massive pyramid scheme; it's going to fail eventually. The only way it can continue is if there is no limit on availability of natural resources for the manufacture of new stuff on which Western Capitalism appears to depend.
This is a common misconception. You should do some research on what is known as "productivity growth" and then come back for a rational discussion.
You should give at least some semblance of a reason why "productivity growth" prevents pensions from being pyramid schemes instead of implicitly dismissing the parent commenter's remark as irrational discussion.
There are a lot of lazy scare tactics that pension opponents use. The parent commenter's use of "pyramid scheme" means that he or she is trotting out some variation of the argument that current benefits for retirees are paid by current employees, that in 1940 there were 30 workers for every one retiree but it'll someday be 2:1, etc. etc.
"Productivity growth" is my admittedly lazy shorthand for "You cannot ignore the effects that improved productivity has on pensions, especially when by necessity we're talking decade-or-century long timeframes. Even historically modest productivity growth means that if a worker is supporting 1 retiree this year, then next year he can support 1.015 retirees and in 60 years the average worker can support 2.4 retirees. Without mentioning why you (the parent commenter) think that productivity won't continue to grow at at least a very low level over the next several decades, then we can't really have a good discussion about pensions being pyramid schemes."
And that's before we even touch on other topics like the retiree population shrinking as baby boomers start dying over the next 30 years, the double-standard of treating purchases of U.S. Treasury bills by current workers (for U.S. Social Security) as different than, say, a hedge fund buying them, etc.
Bottom line is that pensions are complicated and can't be treated simply as if they were just a regular investment fund or savings account, and it's a waste of time to argue with somebody who just wants to handwave away the differences.
OK, so productivity increases and in 100 years 1 worker's production can support 100 retirees. How? They create stuff using natural resources. That stuff gets sold, who is buying it now that 99/100 people are out of work? How are those 99/100 going to pay in to a pension?
Oh right of course, new areas of industry develop so now all 100 people are still employed and they're producing enough stuff for 10,000 people. But that means they have to also be consuming 100 times what they did. Where is the energy coming from, where are the resources coming from to make this stuff?
Isn't it really the case that improved productivity gets to benefit the wealthy disproportionately - suppose in 60 years a worker can produce 2.4 times more output and thus support 2.4 times more retirees. That's not how it works financially, the worker gets paid maybe enough to support 1.5 times more [through taxation] and the other output increase goes to benefit the wealthy capitalist. Regardless population has tripled in the last 60 years [Wikipedia figures].
In practice state pensions in my country [UK] are reduced year on year and recently pension ages have been increased.
It sounds like you're banking on a sudden reversal of global population growth (the best case scenario of UN statistics shows continued growth for at least a couple more decades; their "best guess" is continued growth until at least 2100).
There are fringe, exceptional cases where this is a legitimate fear, but in the general broad-brush case, it's largely a self-fulfilling fear, brought about by the way people are treated when they come to a society that believes this. If they are given no opportunities when they arrive, and are segregated off into culturally de-facto ghettos, resentment brews over generations. In the cases where more open immigration is abused, such as the 9/11 terrorists who came to the United States, it's throwing out the baby with the bathwater to question immigration as a whole, rather than focusing hard on how to mitigate the exceptional cases of abuse.
One would think, countries like USA, Australia or NZ might be afraid of immigration because they know what they did to native inhabitants...
Generally, think about the situation where all (most) countries abolish borders, not just NZ or other small country. Moving is the basic human right, and the sooner we realize the better for mankind, assuming the culture of the host country is respected. Of course the culture needs adjustments to respect human rights as well.
Why would one be afraid of immigrants because of past treatment of original natives when chances are the immigrants are descended from people who did similar things to the original natives of their homeland? As an easy example, I'm fairly certain the original natives of the southern portions of the North American continent weren't speaking Spanish when the conquistadors showed up.
I would disagree that is is for the better of mankind. In some cases, it could be, sure. In most cases, it eventually is not. How is it good for anyone to move from one stagnant area into a prosperous one to the point of dragging it down to be stagnant as well? Never mind the affect this has the people who are currently inhabiting the area.
Plus, it would seem to be that once a level of immigration has happened in an area the newcomers no longer feel the need to respect or to assimilate into the local culture, so they maintain their own. Hopefully they are carrying over their bad habits that led to their homeland sucking enough to force them to move, because they'll eventually want to move again. In the long term, that eventually makes things worse for those that lived there before, much like you pointed out in your first statement.
We have a long road to travel before mankind as a whole can, in masses, move about freely throughout the world without there being local consequences.
"Move from one stagnant area into a prosperous one to the point of dragging it down to be stagnant as well?"
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong... 100 times wrong.
Productivity is the root of all prosperity. First read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.
I'm sorry, I simply cannot fully agree with your statement. I also see you are ignoring a great deal of my statement. It is true up to a certain point that what you say is true, as I also said. But if you open the border wide to let anybody in for any reason the near utopia you are describing is just not possible. When someone crosses the border and finds a job to be the productive citizen you describe, all's well. What about when multiples start crossing and there are no jobs for them to have? Let's say your wonderful catering company has too many workers now and not enough new tech companies to sustain hiring yet more people streaming across your open border. Social services will start to fail as the demand increases but the tax revenue doesn't increase with the demand to support it. There are many municipalities out there that are struggling to come up with the money to support the influx of immigrants that were placed, not moved on their own, by means outside their control. I'm not even talking about obvious things like welfare. I'm talking having to suddenly build schools and hire teachers that weren't in the budget to support all these new kids that are suddenly showing up.
Question, would slicing coconuts on the side of the road in Haiti provide the equivalent in pay as taking a low paying catering job in the US considering and comparing elements such as cost-of-living and whatnot? There are many people living in ways we would consider abject poverty but seem to be much happier with their situation than many of the supposed better off immigrants. It's sometimes about perspective too.
I would also say the current economic status of many countries around the world suggest that "everyone way fucking richer in one fell swoop" is not happening regardless of their immigration policies. Everyone is definitely not getting richer in the US despite the years of people pouring across, what is essentially, our open border.
Making cheap clothes and electronics in factories are good jobs relative to the kind of work that the extreme poor do - scrounging for food in a garbage dump in Manila or farming shitty land. And they make clothing and electronics in Mexico (which is a relatively rich country by global standards) and in America and other first world places. It's not like the economy would just stop making clothes or electronics. It would adjust to satisfy the forces of supply and demand at some optimal equilibrium. Just keep your eye on production, keep your eye on production, keep your eye on production.
Guilt. Making a change towards better treatment of people from different places brings up the poor past treatment, which people don't like to take responsibility for.
It's an interesting issue. The right to move around freely seems more appealing than expecting people to be essentially imprisoned in their countries of citizenship. On the other hand, there are obviously billions of people living in poor and otherwise dis-functional countries, and if even a fraction decided to move to a country like New Zealand, you can imaging it becoming ridiculously overpopulated.
Alternatively, should we accept that population groups that have a higher birth rate should naturally dominate future generations, or is it acceptable to fence off certain parts of the world with lower birth rates and a better natural environment?
Culture can not be respected in fact. Even if people wish to do so.
The problem is that the thing is a moving target. When a lot of still alive people where born 'culture' was: 'a black woman was not supossed to sit in the best places of a bus', 'the children roam free with their friends and dogs and can go everywhere' and 'Is acceptable if I slap my wife in the face sometimes because I feel frustrated for the work'. Yes, this was a small part of the tradition not so long time ago.
Each generation have been educated in a different point of view about what was acceptable or not. What 'culture' should be honored for newcomers?. West coast 1966? Sometimes 'culture' is just plain wrong and should not be respected.
That's cherry picking. I'm talking about cultural basics like learning the country's history, learning the laws and the Constitution, free market capitalism, etc.
Just having an immigration system that is followed legally would be a lesson in culture that we've currently abandoned for political purposes.
Lets say there are lot of would-be-immigrants willing to respect the culture of prospective host country, become "American person", "NZ person" etc... (this doesn't necessary mean assimilation), but they are denied to do so. We need to fix this.
I agree with you, but unfortunately, the real problem with immigration is that it's a war between traditional views that value the indigenous culture vs multicultural forces that consider the host culture to be irrelevant.
Poor souls like the author of this article are caught in the middle. They don't have representatives in the traditional views camp and the multicultural views camp considers them to be secondary since they're not as likely a voting block once they come in.
> Interesting that the author of this piece comes from New Zealand, because NZ is the country that often springs to mind when I think of a nation that might could change dramatically with open borders.
You might want to do some research about New Zealand's current housing crisis and other socio-economic issues (such as Māori being significantly over-represented in poverty statistics) before unilaterally advocating a country that you admit you have never been to and know nothing about (other than its size and population) open its borders because you won't have to deal with the consequences.
Open borders would enrich everyone, not just the immigrants or the poor. Please see my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632. I live in SF where there's a "housing crisis". All it means is that a lot of people want to live here and so it's expensive. And NIMBY pieces of trash vote against high rise development so supply isn't allowed to naturally keep up with demand. It's not really a 'crisis', it's less than peanuts compared to the crisis of extreme poverty. Rich first worlders like you and me, we can deal, we'll be fine.
We haver good immigration numbers at the moment, and society is ever-changing for the better as we balance a healthy mix of cultures. The trick is to constrain the rate of immigration so that the infrastructre and society can adapt. As it is out biggest city, Auckland, is experiencing insanely high house prices that folks in the Bay area would grimace at. Aside from that it's a wonderful wonderful place to live, and the start-up ecosystem is thriving.
> As it is out biggest city, Auckland, is experiencing insanely high house prices that folks in the Bay area would grimace at.
I was a little surprised by this comment and wondered how true it actually was. According to Numbeo, rental prices in Auckland are 67% lower than SF. Likewise property purchase prices are between 66% and 71% lower on a price per square metre basis. Something worth noting these figures are for SF on average, not just the Bay Area.
It's a very tough question to answer because it's very hard to predict. I have some model of the general effects of allowing greater immigration, but the predictive value of the model breaks down the more radical the change.
- I see letting in anyone with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree (or say anyone that anyone is willing to hire for more $40k a year) as basically having no downsides at all. Empirical data on immigration reveals that it has no impact on wages except at the very low end, among unskilled high-school dropouts.
- As you allow lower incomes, welfare tends to become an issue. Currently, people do not immigrate in the US for the welfare (illegal immigrants tend to be net taxpayers, even when including healthcare) but people do immigrate to Europe for the welfare, so it's something that happens. However, if you take a country like France (where I grew up in), welfare payments aren't the biggest drag on the economy. Taxation is high, but other places with similar levels of taxation fare much better. Regulatory drag, in particular in the job market is a much bigger concern. In turns, this creates unemployment which aggravates any welfare problem. Evidence shows that as societies become more culturally and ethnically mixed, they tend to be less and less in favor of welfare. So higher immigration of welfare seeking immigrants may undermine popular support for welfare. It's a whole other discussion, but I'd consider disappearance of state funded welfare as a good thing. In addition, it's also possible to selectively deny welfare to immigrants, or to require a twenty year residency period before becoming eligible.
- Political externalities are often mentioned. Won't immigrants vote for the same policies that made their home country a living hell? I find this doubtful for two reasons:
a) The evidence points that in most democracies, the policies that end up being enacted are the ones favored by a wealthy elite, not the ones that have popular support. If you compare the actual policies of the US compared to the views of the median voter, they are strikingly better than you'd expect. How this comes to be is unclear, but the effect is important.
b) The favorite political view of most people is the status quo, or some very minor version around it
Now getting to New Zealand. Assuming only honest hard working immigrant seeking a better life? You've cut out the work for me! I think you'd see a lot of high rises build up in New Zealand. Consider that the current population of New Zealand could fit in a circle 7 km in radius in a city with the density of New York. If Stewart Island was all built up, it could hold the entire population of Canada.
In practice, as more people would emigrate, real estate prices would appreciate, to the point where it wouldn't be economical for immigrants to come in, even if the borders were open.
And what if we don't consider having policies created and selected by a wealthy elite to be a good thing, and actually want the will of the masses to make policy? Or, in other words, what if we actually prefer democracy over plutocracy?
I'm not the OP, but I mostly support the idea of open borders and I'm from Canada. Canada has many of the same issues that New Zealand has. We are the second largest country (by landmass) in the world, yet our population is slightly smaller than California. Much of our land is quite rugged, or very cold but our country is still capable of supporting more than the 35 million we currently have.
The best argument that I have ever heard against opening up our border is that we are big, but size does not equal the ability to support a decent quality of life. Some argue that if we open up our borders, dreams of higher incomes will compel lesser skilled people to move to Canada. These people often will not understand basic labour laws like minimum wage, or the need for benefits and so they will drive down the cost of labour. Others argue that adding even five million people sounds like a good idea, but that it would require massive investments in health care, housing, and basic infrastructure.
Like I said, I mostly support open borders but have never been too impressed by the moral arguments. Canada is a great country and I love it dearly, but I have spent a little too much in some bad neighbourhoods and become friends with too many unhappy immigrants. Rather, I would argue that we are an amazing country, but that many immigrants who bought into the hype, came here and live in poverty far worse than that which they escaped. I say 'far worse' because, while our social safety net is fairly good, it involves navigating an intense bureaucracy that is difficult for native English speakers and near impossible for immigrants, especially those with more limited English language skills. And, unfortunately, parts of our population are very anti-immigration and argue that they should 'stay home' instead of clogging up our social services.
Morally, I think that I could just as easily argue that we should stop all immigration entirely until we can do a better job of caring for the immigrants that we already have.
My all-time favourite argument in favour of opening up our immigration system is that it is one of the best chances that we have of saving our manufacturing industry. Since the 2008 financial crisis, much of the manufacturing industry has been in a horrible shambles and years later, factory jobs simply have not returned to eastern Canada. Factory jobs have mostly been a victim of cost and so the theory goes that opening up borders to lesser skilled people will drive down the cost of lower skilled labour. If you drive the cost of lower skilled labour down closer to minimum wage and get rid of the often union negotiated benefits, suddenly the cost disparity between producing in Canada versus China or Mexico looks a little better.
Another argument I love is that the last time our borders were mostly open, we allowed an influx of mostly eastern European people to come into our country. (My last name is Hluska and my great grandfather was one of them). There were some growing pains and for many people (my great grandfather included), the move to Canada was really difficult. However, after a few generations, these immigrants' children and grandchildren have become important entrepreneurs, business and political leaders.
So, the argument goes that in our history, mostly open borders lead to a difficult decade or two, but that the kind of person who will immigrate tends to be resourceful enough to bring enhanced opportunity for many generations after.
people failed to realize while still in time that the outsourcing of manufacturing would have destroyed the production chain of all related goods.
even if one were to reduce labor costs to china level, china has the infrastructure (technological and industrial) to build things and the countries that were abandoned 20 years ago do not, not anymore and not at the level they have.
it is not about, say, producing mobile phones or cars, it's about the steel and plastic they need. and at least all around my area all refineries and mills are long gone. even if we drive down labor prices, china is now technically more advanced than us and at a scale we would never reach.
Context for this argument: The US is still the largest manufacturer of goods in the world. But the number of people in the US involved in manufacturing has declined.
Of course it won't..and in no way did I imply that it would.
However, latest labour force survey indicated that ~ 1.7 million people still work in manufacturing. While this is the lowest number of manufacturing jobs in Canada since 1976, it still employees a relatively large percentage of our work force. The issue that worries economists is that a large percentage of our remaining manufacturers operate below capacity. When our dollar declined relative to the U.S. dollar, some economists thought it would slow the slide, but the issue remains that manufacturing still costs too many Canadian dollars. Since NAFTA prevents our government from directly subsidizing manufacturing (in most sectors), lowering labour cost is the best tonic left.
I've spent about 8 years in Japan. I love parts of the culture (the good parts, not the bad parts). Things like the service ethic, politeness, safety, and the basic idea of "do whatever you want in your private life but don't put out anyone else while doing it."
My guess is that a massive influx of foreigners would likely destroy that culture.
Is there any way to open borders and still preserve a place's culture, at least the good parts, or is that just doomed?
It wouldn't be doomed. Foreigners could have their cultural enclaves and Japanese theirs. Anyway, this is an extremely minor concern relative to the astronomic benefits of open borders. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Your comment is very thought provoking but I don't agree the culture wouldn't be ruined nor do I agree it's a minor concern. It's already visibly being ruined by the massive influx of rude Chinese tourists.
Cultural enclaves don't say anything about crime like the fact that 19 times out of 20 if you lose your wallet in Japan you'll get it back with all the money in it. It's hard to imagine that would stay true with a much larger percent of non Japanese culture people.
The children of immigrants who grow up in the new culture learn it quickly and it becomes their own. American Chinese who grow up here behave just like white Americans. And BTW the Japanese thing you mentioned is likely almost entirely due to more efficient & convenient lost and found process: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culture-conscious/20140...
There are plenty of domestic groups opposed to open borders for high-skilled immigrants. Doctors, nurses, and others within the medical profession spring first to mind, and they are incredibly powerful politically. Ditto lawyers or really any other trade that controls its own barrier to entry via the certification process.
And let's not forget software engineers - just see what happens whenever H1-B comes up.
I have never encountered any opposition to high-skill immigration among lawyers. There would be no point--entry into the profession is already gated by the JD/LLM/bar exam requirements. The problem is that getting a greencard requires your employer to prove that they can't find a qualified domestic candidate, which is difficult when large law firms take only 10-15% of the domestic JD graduating class each year and a third to half are unemployed.
No, you're right. Lawyers are protected by their licensing requirements. However the medical profession does protect itself and is opposed to bringing in many foreign born nurses, medical staff, etc.
Lawyers have that nice shield that is the bar exam, but that is also de facto immigration since only ABA accredited schools qualify. So in one sense you're right, the legal profession does not need to lobby against high skilled immigration. However, the reason they don't need to isn't for any moral reason but rather because they can just lock out immigrants through non-legislative means.
While open borders is an ultimate goal, it would be a bit perilous to allow 'everyone who wanted to' to enter a given country, as things stand.
First, I think we should seek bilateral treaties such that we can enter their country as much as they can enter ours and that both parties have reciprocal rights. This should allow all parties entering an agreement to slowly stabilize, or reach some kind of equilibrium.
One of the downsides is that this adds to globalization and homogeneity of culture, language, etc. Although personally, I don't think that's a big problem --it's mostly an emotional issue rather than actual, but it's still an issue given how people cry 'globalization', 'imperialism', 'monoculture', 'mainstream', etc.
From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France and polish workers, or Germany and Serbs or Turks, or Spaniards.
Maybe grant larger quotas based on population would be fairer and then harden the borders, else the closer neighbor has an unfair advantage. So say Italy booms, quotas would make living in Croatia no better than new Zealand or south Africa in terms of odds of getting into Italy (or Canada the US or Nigeria.) But politics would never allow a fair quota system to work.
> From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France and polish workers, or Germany and Serbs or Turks, or Spaniards.
It's not really foreign populations per se. The resentment is really mostly socioeconomic. Nobody resents Persians in the Netherlands because the Persians who migrated here are mostly upper-class with a long tradition of higher education. Whereas the Turks you mentioned were considered guest laborers, Dutch companies literally drove busses to the poorest little villages in Turkey in the 60s and found the people with the least education, who couldn't read or write and had perhaps 2-3 years of primary education, then offered them a job working unskilled labour in a factory hoping they'd go back home after 10 years, basically the 1960s equivalent of off-shoring production to China at a pre-globalisation time when the factories were still back home.
Knowing what we know of lower-socioeconomic classes (higher rates of crime, lower rates of education, higher pregnancy rates, more conflict with authority etc etc), it's no real surprise it turned out this way. The sad thing is that in Europe the debate about these problems acts as if it's a cultural issue (e.g. Turkish culture or Islamic culture), when it's really a socioeconomic problem (taking the least educated people from an already poor country, putting them in factory housing and not teaching them the local language, and expecting them to go back home or thrive), not a cultural one. And this debate has essentially created tons of animosity because it invites all this 'class of civilisations' bs rhetoric and turns it into what in the US is referred to as a 'racial' problem.
In Europe it is a cultural issue also. There is a reason even Canada has Canadian content laws to protect from the onslaught of American music. It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture.
>It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture.
It has sentimental and historical value, but I don't think it's particularly important. We can argue cultural identity, but that's only important so long as there are various cultures. In a monoculture world, the idea of cultural identity would be a lost concept.
Cultural anthropology, which while highly interesting and informative of human relations, isn't very highly valued by most people. The jobs are in such low demand (and with such low salary) that I decided not to try and get a job as a cultural and linguistic anthropologist. Which, while I'd have loved the work and have found it interesting, I can't exactly say it has much "meaningful" merit.
As for CanCon laws, I've yet to speak to a Canadian that was supportive of them. I'm sure they exist - or the laws wouldn't. A large number of Canadian Netflix users mask their IP to be from America to get "better content" [0]. It seems that Canadian nationalism is mostly a 60's/70's generation thing.
The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture. The people share a wide agreement for rule of law, want to resolve issues through the political process, can usually be shamed into supporting freedom of speech, and don't want to kill their neighbors for having the wrong religion.
It's not something magical about the soil that makes people want to move to the US. It's the culture. The more people that can use it, the better, but add too many new people too fast and it suddenly stops working.
> The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture.
No dude, it's the money.
I have at least a dozen friends who are on H1Bs working in SV for different large software companies. They're either going there because that's where the best-paying jobs are or they're staying for just a couple of years to save some money.
If you were to beam all the Americans into space and them beam all the Mexicans into their place, they wouldn't magically achieve US levels of income just because of their physical location.
The culture doesn't enable the money. Historical reasons going far beyond that explain it very well, among them: the size of the internal American market, the amount and ease of investing capital within the US, leverage of the US government's global projection of power by its industries, ease of immigration (prior to this past decade's immense increase in difficulty for migrating legally for skilled migrants), etc etc.
It's true that just swapping people places right now would not substitute anything. But you can bet that the immense natural resources, available land and influx of immigrants through the 20th century have impacts as much, if not more, important than whatever contemporary cultural trends exist.
Natural resources don't guarantee success; conversely, lack of natural resources does not guarantee doom. Russia and Brazil on the one hand, and Japan and Britain on the other hand, tiny island nations, relatively speaking.
Culture has a lot to do with it. Brazil had the immigrants (and still does have LatAm immigrants). On the other hand Japan has been very averse to immigration.
Why do you think North Africans move to Europe and South Americans move to the US? Because it's the closest country with the best economic opportunities.
Economic immigration is huge. Cultural immigration is tiny.
In fact American culture is the joke of the world (its media can be consumed from wherever and is quite popular, but its values and policies on things like health care, sexual education, religion, crime etc are mocked by more than a few modern economies) and its institutions (e.g. ensuring freedom of speech, freedom of the press, gender equality, life expectancy, racism, gay rights) usually don't find themselves ranked among the top 20, let alone top 10 of countries.
In fact, it's one of the main reasons I wouldn't want to move to the US. I'm in the Netherlands, my partner is American, we could move anytime. But I much prefer the politics, institutions and culture here. (and it's far from perfect here).
I mean you write 'share a wide agreement for rule of law, want to resolve issues through the political process, can usually be shamed into supporting freedom of speech, and don't want to kill their neighbors for having the wrong religion' as if the US is unique in this regard. You write it as if the poorest people on the planet simply want to move to a country that 'doesn't kill its neighbours for having the right religion', as if this is the nr 1 thing on their mind, if only they could move to such a country! That's ridiculous, as opposed to wanting to move to the US for economic opportunities to get a decent standard of life for them and their family.
It's absolutely not the culture and legal/political process. And occasionally Americans do seem to kill their neighbours for having the wrong religion or skin colour.
It's almost entirely money/opportunity. That drives everything.
Culture is not totally benign. The export of America's culture has had a huge impact on the world, for better or worse. I think people who want to preserve their own culture have reasons aside from simple nostalgia.
Up and till approx the 40s we imported our culture from Europe -as did much of the rest of the economies of the world. American culture exports didn't become popular till the US became an economic power to contend with.
In Asia, however, the cultural exporters, at the moment, are Japan and Korea, not so much China, despite its economic size. Fortunately and unfortunately, Asia is more pragmatic about cultural imports. There isn't the OMG our indigenous culture is being subverted and devoured!!
The pragmatism is in the form of foreign ideas with Asian values which seems to make the ideas less problematic.
Never the less, I think in many places, it's uncertainty or inferiority and superiority complexes which give rise to ideas of wanting to preserve culture. A fear of change. In the US people lament the change in our culture for 'the worse', as some believe. In other places, similar local changes are interpreted as 'westernization'. But really, do they want to go to how their culture existed in 1900, for example?
Culture exports carry with them morals, ethics, and value systems. Different countries have different m/e/v, and they may not want America's. There's nothing to say America has the right set of m/e/v; hell, people bitch about America's puritanical nature on this very website all the time. In which case it's easy to see why a country might be concerned about importing America's culture, given the m/e/v that come with it.
Those are politically motivated posturing. The masses, the consumers, they don't care the way people in some countries decry 'debased american/western culture which undermines our local spirit'.
Only slightly related, but for as much as Americans consider ourselves inextricably linked with Europe, we're much more similar both economically and culturally to South America. The average American's life looks a lot more like that of an office worker in Colombia or Brazil than it does someone in Berlin or London. This is likely because South American countries developed using the USA as a model, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Culturally the US is protestant leaning. Latam is culturally catholic. Latams see Spain as a cultural beacon, whereas the the U.S. now a beacon in its own right, used to have Britain and France as their cultural beacons --yes France was nominally catholic, but they culturally leaned protestant in many ways. They are more northern European than Mediterranean.
Also, while in the U.S. the so called 'old boys net' helps to get things done, in Latam there's something akin to Chinese guanxi (關係) in getting things done. Relationships are paramount and make corruption endemic and inextricable. It's quite diff from U.S. and euro culture.)))
Historically you are right, but as far as things like food, music, business attitudes, etc. there's a lot more common ground. Spain has also lost a lot of its cultural cache in recent years; many South American countries are better places to live at this point (well, unless you have enough money that you don't need a job, in which case Spain is one of the best places on earth).
If I had to pick one thing though, it's the outspoken gregariousness. Europeans are generally pretty reserved; you would never approach someone you didn't know and try to strike up a conversation. A European might tiptoe around a sensitive subject, while people from the USA or South America would be very opinionated and launch into an argument -- even if they don't know you very well.
Also, it doesn't hurt that everyone in South America basically shops at Wal-Mart (seriously, they are freaking everywhere; even more so than in the US).
And not so long ago, corruption was inextricable from business in the US and Europe as well. Trust-busting in the US in the early 1900s broke down the networks here, and WW2 smashed them across Europe, but similar rule-of-law revolutions haven't happened yet in other parts of the world. But they are starting to as the education level rises and the middle-class expands and demands a clean-up.
> Relationships are paramount and make corruption endemic and inextricable.
Well, in honor of the harsh reality USA have also is own quota of this cake, supporting some very shady people in South America in the last decades, like Pinochito for example...
In the US, relationships don't matter as much. They still matter for your career, but someone will do business with you as a way to start a relationship. In many places, the relationship is a prerequisite to doing business. If you don't have the relationship, you can usually just pay a bribe.
I wouldn't try to link the US' foreign policy to our cultural norms. Foreign policy exists in the realm of realpolitik, and every rational actor would likely behave the same way if they were in the US' place. When it comes to setting the global balance of power, anything and everything is fair game. This is why presidents customarily don't criticize those who come after them.
Well, i'm glad you see open borders as an ultimate goal, kudos there, but why do you think its important for "bilateral treaties". Workers are engines of production. They're valuable. We want more of them. Even if they're poor, they can still produce value. Production is the root of all prosperity. So there's no harm in letting people come here at whatever rate is best for them - if it's a sensible move for them, that implies that their productivity (reflected by their income) is increasing. More productivity = more stuff = more stuff for everyone in the economy to enjoy. Again, there's no harm in letting people come. Only increased production. So we should definitely let in anyone who wants to come. And so should every other country. But if the other countries remain economically stupid / bigoted and want to keep valuable workers at bay, fine, doesn't mean we should make the same mistake. It's still hugely beneficial to us (and everyone) to let them come here unilaterally.
Please see all my comments elsewhere in this thread for context on this issue from someone who has read a lot about it. I've responded to the points you've brought up, but in different comments. Feel free to respond to me here.
About a decade ago I attended an internal presentation at Microsoft, made by a person who was lobbying immigration changes on behalf of that company. He explained this phenomenon - in some parts of the country the voting public does not have the attention span to listen long enough to make the distinction between "immigrants" and "high-skill immigrants". For that reason many politicians who are privately supportive of high-skill immigration still prefer not to try the patience of the voters, and come out against all immigration in public. Especially when there is an opponent who is ready to yell "he's soft on immigrants!".
Reality check: (1) Immigrants are actually NET CONTRIBUTORS to the welfare system. (2) Immigrants (at least the poor ones you're apparently worried about) are hard-working and yearn for financial stability; leisure is an utterly alien concept to them. (3) As societies become more heterogenous, welfare systems decline, because of inherent racism/xenophobia. The various elements of the population don't want to contribute to welfare cause they don't feel in communion with those "others". (4) If the welfare system becomes overburdened, I say Great! It just forces us to fix our broken system sooner than we otherwise would have. (Although again mainly because of my points 1 and 2 this would never happen.) (5) We can charge immigrants an entry fee, or a tax premium, or we can exclude them from benefits altogether. Any of those options would be vastly more humane than the status quo where we keep these foreigners trapped in their unproductive backwaters making ~$1 a day, starving.
It's more sustainable if you have US style welfare where benefits are things like wage subsidies, for a limited duration after employment, or in kind in some way like Medicaid or food stamps.
EDIT: I think I should point out that the tradeoff is that this way of doing welfare is less efficient but requires less trust.
Sure you can... you just have to not extend those benefits in full to new migrants. Europe seems slowly moving in that direction in response to this exact problem, though it's not straightforward as the current jurisprudence seems to regard this as an infringement on EU citizens' freedom of movement.
By that logic, you cannot have a welfare state without mandatory sterilization of the poor. Most will recoil in horror at this, and yet, the harm done by closed border is far greater (people are literally dying while eating dirt because they were born in the wrong country).
But that's beside the point since I was specifically addressing highly skilled immigration.
It's a major problem for Scandinavian countries right now, if you read the local news, its a big problem that many immigrants have a higher and satisfactory conditions of living on welfare compared to where they were from. They have little incentive to work when they are provided what they consider a high standard of living with no effort. It's caused quite a bit of backlash and "racism" in their otherwise progressive countries.
So no, sterilization isn't really an issue because what is considered high standards for living by the second generation go up, but for those based on the old standard, they end up leeching off the system where there is an unspoken social contract for natives that you contribute or always try to do better than the bare minimum and improve one's self. You can't assume that cultural value is instilled in immigrants from other countries, especially when the society has an honor system more or less based on that principal.
basic income, basic income, basic income. In the US there are a lot of cliffs in the support system. make over 10k? ok, you get nothing for support. This creates a terrible effect where people are unwilling to even try.
I think the key is picking a bare minimum standard, and any work beyond that is better. People need the incentive. Maybe it's just to buy booze, who cares? Working 5 hours a week must be better than actively avoiding work.
(perhaps not basic income, but that captures the idea of incentive to work while providing a worst-case floor for people. Perhaps the Scandinavian floor is unsustainably high.)
The non-workers still contribute to the economy with rent, food, bills, they're just horribly inefficient. Furthermore, 1 J.K. Rowling offsets a whole lot of people who actively avoid contributing. The possibility to live in poverty and create art has some pretty profound cultural effects.
I'll support my taxes being raised to pay for more wage subsidy for the working poor.
I won't support my taxes going up in order to let people stay home and not work. I wouldn't even pay for that for my own kids, I'm surely not going to do it for some stranger's kids.
There will always be lazy fucks who try to game the system. It's important to structure the system to ensure they're worse off than anyone else. Really, i think those people are very rare. If mom lets you live in the basement so you can masterbate and play video games all day, ok. but that's on mom, not us.
There are three cases that are far far more common, i'd guess 2-3 orders of magnitude. First, the person having a bad time. We've all worked with the guy who got cancer, or is going through a bad divorce, who just becomes worthless at work. Not everyone gets that bad, but some people can't keep it together. Those folks just need some time. In a year or two they'll get back on their feet and be amazing productive members of society.
Two, the crazy homeless guy. Part of that is not really being capable of asking for the help they need. I'm not sure what fraction are (i hate to say it this way, but there it is) fixable. I do know that getting drunk, passing out when it's 10 below, and going to the hospital consumes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Third, it's not true of everyone, but there are certainly people that just can't work. Hellen Keller, perhaps some disabled veterans. Maybe someday, but there's no hope today.
A zero tolerance policy might be best. I'd say, we're better off as a civilization recovering as many people as we can, and just suck up the fraud caused by the handful of losers. I don't know how to avoid that, but i agree with you, fuck that guy.
If a welfare system only works because people are culturally indoctrinated/shamed away from using it, then it's broken by design. Sure, it would be nice to have a culture in which people are disinclined to be supported by charity unless they absolutely need it (though that kind of shaming can also push people to avoid it even when they do need it). But at the same time, if that cultural disinclination is the only control on the welfare system, it's broken. The goal of any welfare system should be to prevent people from suffering or dying because something went horribly wrong; it's an insurance mechanism. Nobody should die just because they fell on a string of bad luck or circumstances; on the other hand, why should welfare support someone with piles of opportunities available but no inclination to pursue them?
That's how a functioning society works, you're shamed away from unnecessarily doing lots of things that create a burden on others. Littering for example. It creates a burden on society to clean up after others.
There isn't shame in using welfare as a safety net, its there to catch you from following in to absolute destitution from which there is no climbing out of in many cases. There is shame or stigma with staying on it and not finding work, or not retraining to find work. Their is shame in unnecessary long term dependency of an able bodied person being on it. There is shame if everyone just up and decided everything I want is already being paid for, why should I bother. That's abuse, by doing so, you take away from others who truly need welfare to survive and aren't capable of finding work or disabled, you take money from other areas that need it like healthcare, parental leave, education, etc. That's finding a candy jar of free candy and just dumping all the candy in your pocket.
There is no welfare system in existence, theoretical or otherwise that could sustain a disproportionally large number of people dependent on it by active choice, where there is more being taken out then being paid into it. There isn't a socialist democracy that can function that way.
Other than the fact that littering is typically a legal offense (albeit an extremely minor one, as it should be), I think you're saying exactly the same thing.
A safety net is exactly what a welfare or other charity system should be. I'm simply suggesting that ensuring it's no more than a safety net should be backed up by more than just shame.
To be clear, the reason to not do something wrong shouldn't just be "because I'll get in legal trouble if I do"; laws should reflect morality. But that needs to be around as a backup for the sadly large number of people who will only pay attention to that and nothing less. Some people avoid littering because it's wrong and disrepectful to others; others avoid littering because it's illegal and will cost them a fine. Some people avoid drinking and driving because it could hurt or kill people; others only avoid it because it's illegal. Some people turn down charity because they actively want to be self-sufficient and contribute something; others will only do so if it is limited to need.
> There is no welfare system in existence, theoretical or otherwise that could sustain a disproportionally large number of people dependent on it by active choice, where there is more being taken out then being paid into it. There isn't a socialist democracy that can function that way.
Agreed completely. There isn't any governmental or societal system that can function that way.
you take money from other areas that need it like healthcare, parental leave, education, etc.
That's a truism. Investing money in one sector necessarily means it doesn't go to another. All that money spent on education is one that isn't going to space research, but most people would find that sort of statement abhorrent.
The children of people on welfare are still more likely to end up on welfare. So why is not OK to let an immigrant in on the ground that he is likely to end up on welfare?
The federal budget comes primarily from personal and corporate income tax. Sure, there's a little bit from other sources like excise taxes, but those are a drop in the bucket.
Open borders means the US should make it trivial to get a tax id and work. Fundamentally, that's what people want to do anyway, work. Some people may get small handouts for food, or perhaps more expensive handouts for healthcare. The dominating factor by far is the infrastructure. good roads, reliable power, access to good food and clean water, contract enforcement. That stuff costs way way more than a $50 food stamp.
You'd be hard pressed to find an economist that thinks adding more people to the market makes the market worse. I understand the concerns about open borders, but making things so fabulously difficult is just blindingly stupid. If people want to come and work, it's literally better for everyone.
You seem to have a pretty good head for economics. Let me point you to my other comment in this thread for some more info on this important topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
I suspect you'll find that scrotal swelling, albumin in your urine, and being coerced in to medical procedures tends to decrease people's acceptance of tax-funded public assistance.
"Poor" isn't an intrinsic human attribute, it's a bad thing that happens to people. Forcing someone who's paid taxes for 20 years to undergo a forced medical procedure in order to benefit from the programs they helped directly fund is insane.
When going through the US immigration system, as part of the green card application you need to specify a sponsor who will be responsible for you financially if you hit hardship. As an immigrant, you do not get welfare in the US.
That's not an answer to the point above. Having people who live in our society but are ineligible for our social benefits is harmful and destabilizing to us.
Also note that people who are in the US on nonimmigrant visas still have to pay SSDI taxes, even though they are ineligible for the benefits. (Though they get to count them towards the time needed for sponsorship if they become immigrants.)
Depending on the state non-immigrants may be eligible if they've paid into the system as generally the state benefits are for state residents, a status that even as a non-immigrant you qualify for.
However most visa categories require you to leave the US within ten days if you no longer meet the visa requirements. So it's difficult to claim said benefits without messing up your future immigration chances.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/obligations-affidavit-su... - This details at least one court case of USCIS enforcing an Affidavit of Support, and was literally the first Google result on which I clicked. They do mention that it's rare, but it happens.
No, that's an immigrant enforcing the affidavit of support as a third party beneficiary against the sponsor, I've heard of cases like that, though they are relatively rare.
What I was talking about was where a government agency sues to recoup funds when a beneficiary uses in a means tested program. That I've never seen and google doesn't seem to come up with any examples.
Moral imperatives do not always correlate with survival imperatives. I'm not going to say whether or not I believe in immigration, but there are two things I will say:
1. Arguments against immigration stem not from moral imperatives, but from survival instinct.
2. If we open up immigration, America as we know it will change dramatically, in either a good or bad way. I think what we have now is already pretty good, so why change the status quo?
Firstly, America as we know it has been changing dramatically and continuously since its inception. I don't see anyone mourning the loss of the Bourbon Democrats or tariff acts, but suffice to say they aren't here anymore.
Secondly, what are you referring to by "what we have now"? Immigration law in particular, or U.S. policy on a macro level?
>Firstly, America as we know it has been changing dramatically and continuously since its inception. I don't see anyone mourning the loss of the Bourbon Democrats or tariff acts, but suffice to say they aren't here anymore.
It's been changing, sure, but the change you address is different from the change of say dropping a nuclear bomb on all our major cities or discovering sources of unlimited, zero-emission energy. The change I'm talking about, which is eliminating immigration law completely by making ANYONE able to come here is entirely different from the "continuos change since inception" that you're addressing.
By "what we have now" I mean the state of everything as it is today. The economy, the people, our values, our resources. When you increase the population and let ANYONE in, all of these things will change.
If a nation faces some future peril due to some degree of overpopulation, while the world as a whole faces greater future peril due to a markedly larger degree of overpopulation, then the people of that nation are likely better off not opening their borders. I have yet to decide whether the present situation of the USA fits this description, but it is at least not far fetched.
You seem to be talking exclusively about the comfort of well-educated people who would prefer to live in the US and have the resources to emigrate, rather than the survival of humankind.
Let me make it utterly clear: I am absolutely talking only about the survival of the American economy.
I'm a descendent of immigrants born to poor circumstances. I'm lucky to be here as a result of getting past strict immigration policies. But I gotta be real, If America tried to "save" every one on the face of the earth by letting everyone in need into this country, we'd probably triple our population, and change the state of everything.
> I personally consider that opening borders is a moral imperative
Or close them. The moral imperative is to have a consistent and fair rules. You can't really be the US and let people live for decades in a grey state with all the obligations of a citizen but little of the rights. You take them in or not but that should a quick and permanent decision (i.e. no 3 year limit nonsense)
That's by the way not a US-only problem. That is the same in the UK and most of Europe, even worse, I believe, in Japan.
Using a lottery system for skilled workers tends to select from the world's wealthiest people, too. So if you think inequality is a problem now... On the other hand opening borders would create a stampede. Pretty sure that would cause a completely different set of social problems.
"open borders" doesn't have to mean you open them overnight. You can attenuate the flow to a rate that's manageable to keep up with, to give the various infrastructure a chance to grow/adapt to meet the influx. You've attacked a straw man.
Opening borders works for multicultural countries built on immigration. For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.
He's referring to america... and I have to disagree.
What's so important about an ethnicity that it has to be kept at all costs? Culture is probably worth preserving, but often culture is simply "the way it's always been" -- I'd argue the opposite, bringing different cultures together, if done right, will promote creating new culture that make more sense for today's reality, and not some 19th century status quo. Creation of culture is more important, imo, than maintaining culture -- as the latter can be done with history books while the former is a real policy that might enrich the lives of citizens.
While I agree with this in theory, I'm going to point you to this fascinating piece on some of the ongoing problems that the French tradition of republican laicity is facing from Muslim immigrants, as a general illustration of the conflicts involved:
In summary: the very culture of tolerance and openness towards others itself is sometimes threatened by those it wishes to welcome, and that's a hard problem to solve.
So there is no value in a uniquely Norwegian culture? Or Korean? Or Japanese?
One of the side effects of totally open borders is that human culture might homogenize, with strong bias toward the developing world where birthrates are exceptionally high. I think Indian and Bangladeshi culture are both wonderful, however I do not think they are necessary worth more than Norwegian, Japanese, etc.
There is something about the US that makes it desirable for people to move to the US. When proposing changes to the US, you need to wonder about that that thing is, so you can figure out if/how it will be changed by your new policy.
> What's so important about an ethnicity that it has to be kept at all costs?
If you're from a country that has a great history and traditions, and you are ethnically related to that, then your DNA constitutes a cultural artifact, just like some carving in a museum in your capital city or a traditional folk song. Through ancestry, you are related to the people who made those things.
It would be stupidly inconsistent to preserve those other artifacts, yet to deny that your living DNA has value in connection with them.
> For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.
Let's take those one at a time.
Language: Sure, granted, there's a tendency to gravitate towards more common languages. Arguably that's a net benefit for people who would otherwise have grown up only speaking a less common language; learning a more common language grants access to a much larger set of speakers, information, and opportunities. That said, language doesn't tend to be lost, just not kept as an exclusive cultural barrier. Witness the massive efforts to internationalize information, to improve accessibility. And it's still common in many countries to look down upon anyone not speaking the native language, if that can be considered a feature.
Ethnicity: What do you have in mind other than language and culture, here? Because I hope you're not suggesting "racial purity" as a property worth preserving.
Finally, culture: Only if that culture is unable to propagate itself on its own merits, or in other words, if that culture has merits worth propagating. Some cultures have incredible history and traditions, and those have typically been preserved and spread further than they ever would have been otherwise. On the other hand, there are cultures built on oppression, indoctrination, suppression of dissent, lack of opportunity, and other undesirable properties; those cultures don't tend to survive exposure to broader information and the outside world (as well as the visibility of those cultures and their traditions to the outside world), which is all the more reason for such exposure. Not all traditions are worth preserving.
You're right that not all traditions are worth preserving, but Darwinism isn't the best way to choose which traditions are worth preserving. The problem is that ability to propagate does not imply merit. If you put a bad guy and a good guy in a room together, sometimes the bad guy just beats up the good guy, and you realize that you shouldn't have put them together. This is the same kind of fallacy as "if a company went out of business, it must've been a bad company", and also "the invisible hand of gravity means it's good that the vase broke".
For example, there's tons of cultures that think murder for personal grievances is okay and praise-worthy. I've seen first hand what happens when such a culture meets a gentle Western culture, when the latter doesn't have an overwhelming force advantage. It's not pretty.
I'm not suggesting darwinism here, just availability of information. Assuming information or communication is not being actively suppressed (e.g. the Great Firewall), then it's up to individuals what culture(s) and traditions they want to uphold.
Social pressure and influence. I could feel myself changing when moving between Norway and Germany. I have the same amount of information, but I involuntarily adjust to my environment. I don't like everything about Norwegian culture (it makes your life a bit boring), but I like a lot of it.
Some people in a small, homogeneous country might feel hat their traditions are worth preserving. Theirs is the voice that matters.
You can't hold a global referendum on that, because their votes would be vastly outnumbered by those who don't care or who want to trample on them and help themselves to their resources or whatever.
You can't hold a global referendum on that, because their votes would be vastly outnumbered by those who don't care or who want to trample on them and help themselves to their resources or whatever.
Eh, that's just cultural conservatism, the rallying cry of racists and skinheads the world over. Are you also afraid they might marry your women and corrupt your children?
It's really quite fascinating... Europe, for generations, colonized the rest of the world, imposing their own cultures on indigenous populations (and I say that as a Canadian... we spent 100 years trying to wipe out our own indigenous population).
Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
Ironic, really.
Now, that's not to say large, unintegrated (and note, I say unintegrated, not unassimilated... those are different things) immigrant populations aren't a challenge. They most definitely are. Any isolated population, particularly if they're disconnected from government, law enforcement, or the social safety net, are a difficult challenge (my own city struggles with pockets of unintegrated north african immigrant populations, for example). But it's a challenge xenophobic europeans created for themselves, by allowing these immigrant populations to remain isolated in the first place... ironically, in part specifically because of that very xenophobia.
> It's really quite fascinating... Europe, for generations, colonized the rest of the world, imposing their own cultures on indigenous populations (and I say that as a Canadian... we spent 100 years trying to wipe out our own indigenous population).
> Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
> Ironic, really.
Why? Do you think the indigenous populations meekly surrendered to the Europeans? They fought and lost (some because of diseases, some because of inferior weaponry). The Europeans are now are superior in weaponry, they have working (in theory) immigration controls. Why is it wrong if they fight?
(note: I am not European. From a former European colony.).
> Some people in a small, homogeneous country might feel hat their traditions are worth preserving. Theirs is the voice that matters.
Some cultures have long and proud traditions of oppression, suppression, subjugation, racism, sexism, murder, genocide, and similar; those cultures don't get a vote in whether to continue those traditions.
But with the exception of that, then of course, any culture gets to choose whether it wants to (collectively, rather than just individually) participate and interact with the rest of the world.
And this has nothing to do with resources; we're talking about culture and traditions here, not about land and strip-mining.
> For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.
Where are these places? Very few countries are based on a unique language, ethnicity, or culture, and those that are have generally only become so as a result of active suppression of minority cultures and languages.
In fact, apart from a few microstates and isolated islands, I can't really think of any monocultural nations.
Foreigners could have their cultural enclaves and Japanese theirs. Anyway, this is an extremely minor concern relative to the astronomic benefits of open borders. Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Uh, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
Also, so what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals.
If you accept that the language, ethnicity, and culture are valuable parts of that country-
Such a country can assimilate some number of immigrants each year while remaining mostly unchanged. The immigrants learn the language, the culture, and marry into native families.
But as you increase the number of immigrants, the country can no longer assimilate them. They don't all learn the language, they don't know the culture, they form social cliques with other immigrants from the same country. They begin to change the face of the host country.
Personally I've never been thrilled by immigrants who say "Elbonia sucks, let's go to another country that is better and make Little Elbonia".
Things change. That's called life. To assume all nations and all cultures remain static over time is absurd. Hell, the nations as they are defined today are a very recent phenomenon. Some have only existed for a few decades!
The host country will become a new, different, more diverse country. That doesn't mean the culture of the host country is completely destroyed. Altered, yes. Destroyed? Almost certainly not.
And the detrimental effects can be mitigated if the host country works to actively integrate (note, integrate, not necessarily assimilate) immigrant populations, rather than isolating them through xenophobic policy and politics. It's the very fear of change that exacerbates the challenges of immigration.
As an aside, your characterization of immigrants as from "Elbonia" coming to make a "little Elbonia" is precisely the kind of xenophobic tendency I'm talking about. I'm sure folks said the same thing when Little Italy or China Town showed up in New York City, and yet today those areas are considered cultural jewels, contributions to society rather than infections that must be dealt with, components that have been integrated into a modern American identity.
Maybe don't assume immigrants are foreign invaders and they'll be more likely to integrate rather than isolate...
So your argument seems to be "that damage is part of life, deal with it". That's fine, I was just trying to answer your question:
damaging in what sense?
I don't assume all immigrants are foreign invaders, thank you very much. On the other hand, I have known some immigrants who expressly wanted to get rid of the people in the town they had just moved to and import their old country's people, culture, and government. That's not my characterization, that's what was said.
China Town et al are great because they are integrated. You don't have to be from China to go there. But not every immigrant wants to integrate. Does that mean we repel all immigrants? No! Does that mean we embrace every immigrant no matter what? Also no. I see no reason to welcome people who want me gone, and say as much to my face.
It is possible to understand both these realities at the same time. We don't need to get all black-and-white, "all immigrants are evil" or "all immigrants are God's gift".
I have known some immigrants who expressly wanted to get rid of the people in the town they had just moved to and import their old country's people, culture, and government
And what percentage of immigrants do you suppose those folks actually represent?
Are they really such a large group of people that they could actively "damage" a culture? Are they really so large a group that they could actually "dilute" the culture of the host country?
Again, I already concede, dealing with unintegrated immigrant groups is unquestionably a challenge (though it's notable those same challenges occur with local minority populations and the poor). You'd be a fool to believe otherwise.
But this narrative, that small, homogeneous countries are in danger of being overrun by an immigrant horde hell bent on reinventing their home country within the borders of the host nation strikes me as nothing more than rhetoric, a caricature, and nothing more.
Ultimately, I agree, immigrants are neither evil nor "God's gift". They're just people. Some of them are good. Some of them not so much. But I'm willing to bet the vast majority don't have cultural occupation on the top of their list of personal ambitions. Like all people they have more important things on their minds... jobs, family, food, a roof over their heads, those basic things that we all have in common.
"There's not enough of those types for them to cause damage" is not an unreasonable line of argument. One could argue it's OK to admit them because they will get nowhere.
The "immigrant horde hell bent on reinventing their home country" is not the narrative I was trying to present. I was mostly talking about the simple fact that a small homogeneous country that admits a very large number of immigrants (of any type, wanting to integrate or not) will be unable to integrate them all without experiencing significant change, which is concerning to some people. (You have already shared you believe it is a real effect but 'too bad'. I am clear there)
Just guessing here: instability, differing expectations, increased costs to everybody thru inefficiencies. It becomes hard to predict what folks will consider fair, adequate government services. Result is a lowering of standard of living for those in the dominant cultural group.
That's harsh. What if I proposed to destroy a culture, say Judaism, by dilution? Would that be ok? Why is it not OK that this guy wants to preserve his?
Judaism is alive and well as a minority group in many many parts of the world. "Dilution" has never threatened the existence of Judaism.
The one thing that did was actual genocide, as a result of racism and xenophobia because of fear that the Jews, the minority group, were destroying German culture. Go figure.
But a few immigrants? I think Judaism, or really any culture, is stronger than that.
Another interesting example is indigenous populations in Canada, Australia, and the US. Those cultures have remained strong with the exception of those where active attempts to extinguish them have occurred. The Canadian residential school system is a disgusting, shameful example of the latter.
Frankly, I'd be very interested to see an example where simple "dilution" has actually led to the destruction of a culture. I can't think of one.
I like that idea, that dilution strengthens rather that weakens. Comes down to what's really important to a culture, and what's incidental. And fear of change. A much healthier attitude than 'resist change at any cost'.
Question: why don't the immigrants just declare themselves Americans wherever in the world they are? Why do they need to cross the border?
If the person you are talking about is such a horrible person, and there are so many horrible people like him in America, why do you want more people to be subjected to them?
I never once claimed folks with these extreme xenophobic views represent any kind of majority in any given nation. They're a vocal, often violent minority. Their voices are getting louder these days, but so it goes with squeaky wheels.
I also never once claimed he was American. In fact, if I had to make a guess, I'd say he's a right wing European. But that's just a guess and isn't terribly relevant.
Before you open the national border, you have to start small!
First, get everyone not to lock their front door. Then, ban all fences and "no trespassing" signs.
If that pilot program is successful, then think about opening the borders.
It occurs to me that any country that opens its borders will be instantly flooded with every murderous scumbag that is fleeing from the law elsewhere. You will also be an instant transfer point for the trade of weapons, narcotics and so on. Not to mention human trafficking.
I guess how you deal with that is that you open your border to foreign law enforcement and give them a carte blanche about to conduct their investigation how they see fit, and make arrests.
Speaking of arrests, open borders means that someone can sneak into your country, kidnap someone, and sneak out.
Fallacy, fallacy, fallacy, fallacy. Oh, I lost count.
Private property != public property. There are things called roads, parks, forests that are public - these spaces are designed for common use. Separately, there is private property. Like your house or your real estate. That's yours. Just for you.
Open borders is about removing borders between our public spaces. Allowing one to drive from e.g. a US road to a Mexican road without a passport. Open borders isn't about letting someone stay in your house. It's about letting someone rent or buy a house in America and inhabit what would then be their private property. It's about letting them take a job in a foreign country or hire a foreigner to work in their business.
The problem with your question is that you assume that all policy is driven by lobbying by big business. Political ideology and voter sentiment are also drivers of policy.
Other explanations are inertia (the system started out restrictive, and has been gradually loosened), or appeal to voters regarding either jobs or general dislike of immigration.
As a New Zealander going through the US immigration process, this whole post rings extremely true to me. People who have not gone through immigration before have no idea what its like for your entire life to be dictated by the whims of an opaque bureaucratic system. The most frustrating thing about it is that you have essentially no opportunities to better your situation via your own initiative. Don't like your job, well you can't go and find a new one unless they are willing to sponsor you for a visa. Want to start a side business - nope, thats a grey area that I've had immigration laywers advise me against. Think you deserve a promotion - nope, your residency application was for a particular job description. The list goes on.
A few months ago, I came very close to being deported due to the business unit I worked in being divested to another company - this isn't a problem for H1B employees, but I had an L1 which is non-transferrable to a new company, and since my job at my existing company was no longer present I would be made redundant if I couldn't get employment at the aquiring company. Luckily for me, my residency application became current 2 weeks before the aquisition closed (I had been waiting on this application for almost 3 years), so I was able to move into another immigration status that allowed me to move over to the acquiring company.
If that hadn't happened I would have been left with no job, A pregnant wife (who would also lose her job - as her work auth is tied to my visa) and facing an expensive move back to NZ (relocating a family internationally is really expensive btw). Fortunately for me I'm now on the home stretch (I hope) and I check my mailbox religiously waiting for the day my greencard turns up, and I can start living life on my own terms.
We had a number of very annoying things happen as well for my parents, me, and my wife. I'm glad things worked-out for you by dumb luck too. People here are always surprised when I tell them our particulars.
Career opportunities mostly. The startup I was working in was acquired by a US tech company and they decided to close the NZ office and give us the option to relocate to San Francisco (or stay in NZ and find another job :). I was pretty happy with this situation though as there isn't much in the way of a tech industry in NZ, so there's much more interesting work available here, especially in the bay area (same goes for my wife who is in biotech). Oh and despite the insane living costs in the bay area, the pay is far higher than you can get in NZ, I make more than three times as much here as in NZ (Plus NZ tech companies are notorious for not giving out equity or stock options to employees - even early startups).
NZ has its good points with regards to being able to have a more relaxed lifestyle, and its great for outdoorsy types - but skiing, hiking etc. doesn't really interest me that much, and I kind of like the bluster and hustle of the bay area.
Things are getting better wrt companies granting options here. The law has improved slightly but still isn't perfect. At least it's simpler than the US.
We (my company and I) are desperately waiting for this to go through so that I can get the clearance to work on a wider range of unmanned air vehicles.
As a foreigner (including myself) the OP should have realized what's required to stay in the US beyond the H1B. In his case, it was applying for the green card lottery and employment based green card. Since he is a citizen of NZ, if he had applied for an employment based green card, he would've obtained it in less than 2 years.
This might sound harsh, but there is no point complaining about the immigration system which we have no control over. It was his responsibility to make sure he accept a job offer with written commitment by the company to apply for his green card (this is commonplace in STEM, I'm not sure about law firms, but hey anything is negotiable). If they said no or stalled at his request, move on to the next employer. I know I'm making it sound as if it's easy to get another job, but wishful thinking or being lackadaisical is not a solution either.
Well he only mentions that the higher ups wouldn't sponsor the employment based green card. The only thing he mentions about H1B is that it is renewable only once for 3 years. Where do you see that his H1B wasn't being sponsored? He would've being working on an H1B anyway.
US immigration process is cumbersome, and painful for people born in some countries (like India and China,) but certainly not prohibitive.
Quote:
Additionally, an H1-B visa (the most common form
of work visa and the only form available to most)
is only valid for three years and renewable only
once. This means that the skilled legal immigrant
must obtain permanent residency or a green card if
he or she wishes to stay for more than a few years.
Again, an employer can sponsor an employee's green
card, but the employer must again bear the costs,
which can run to the tens of thousands of dollars,
and again the employee cannot offer to pay the cost.
I personally was able to find online (!) lawyer who did all the greencard paperwork required for about $1,500 (most of it indeed had to be paid by company, but not all of it.) About the same had to be paid to federal government by company, and few hunder later to actually adjust status and receive greencard (paid by me.)
Unlike OP I had no money to pay for college, so I found Austin company, worked for them as a freelancer and then convinced to sponsor H-1B visa. Unlike OP I had no way to just come over to talk with potential employers while on tourist visa - US embassy twice refused to give one to me because of a high risk me staying illegally in their opinion. So, sorry, but this story is just a story about "how privileged i feel, i got two degrees", not about "impossible to get citizenship". It is weird that after obtaining two degrees OP still could not follow bureaucratic process...
Without discussing the larger issue of immigration, might I suggest that the right outcome was reached in this particular case?
Job opportunities in the legal profession have decreased drastically in the last decade, and for all his rhetoric of "America wanting the best and brightest", it may have been hard to justify letting him stay when there is a glut of lawyers. This probably factored into the decision of his bosses not to pursue a green card for him.
The outcome would have been the same if the author was an engineer as well. The point is that the immigration is tied to your employer and unnecessarily long/complicated and full of uncertainties (such as lottery).
For example, let us say you are from outside US and got an admission to Harvard for MBA. Now what you have to decide is whether it is fine for you to spend ~$200k in 2 yrs in education at Harvard and then potentially returning back to your country since if your name doesn't come in the H1 lottery - that is what you have to do. There is no 2nd chance. These kind of decisions is what is keeping out a number of bright ppl from coming to US and look elsewhere for opportunities.
I'd say sponsoring for a green card is usually not a good move for an employer, as the employee will have more freedom to change jobs once he gets the green card. Also it's a very long and costly process.
They'd have to really want to keep the employee, and to have exhausted all other visa options.
I know that some employers treat green card sponsorship similar to a bonus: if you leave before z years after getting the green card, you owe them $x0,000.
I sincerely doubt it, since the companies I've heard of that do it are large multinationals. As I point out below, it's much the same as a signing bonus or moving expenses.
I work for customers in the US as a software consultant (paid at New York rates) but because of the hassle and difficulties to get a visa there, I do not live there. This means that I get money from the US but I do not reinject it in the economy, I also do not pay taxes in the US. I'm a net loss for this country all because of the visa policies.
same. i work for us companies but i contribute 0 to us economy while contributing a lot to local economy.
scratch that -- i contribute a little by traveling to the us every once in a while (on vacations).
and even that visa, business/vacation was a big pain in the ass to get because for the us gov't i was going to stay in the us forever and ever because i happen to do work for american companies. i had to show the us gov't a ton of documents (from my marriage certificate to my tax returns and bank statements) to prove that not only i lived here but i also would go back.
and you know what the guy that was interviewing me said at the end of the visa interview? "i'm going to trust you". even after showing a ton of documents, it came to that -- a guy trusting me or not.
(btw, my wife also got her visa but it was way easier. she basically showed my passport with my visa and entry stamps and they said "ok!")
(btw 2: i was never more scared in my life than when i went to us for the first time. the border control point inside the airport was just insane, it felt like i was going to get arrested and deported at any time. there, i also had to provide a good reason for coming into the us + show the border control office my plane tickets, hotel reservation, money i had with me, credit card statement... otherwise i would get deported).
I agree with the gist of what you're saying, that the US is losing out on that valuable tax money.
However, I'd argue you're still a net gain for the US, because your work - the value derived from it - is very likely quite a lot more valuable than what you're charging for it. In tech, often worker input is worth several times what they're paid for it. You're making a valuable net contribution to the US economy.
Not as much of a net gain as it would be if you were here also paying taxes.
It's tough to say without knowing all the details, but even though you may be getting New York rates going into your pocket, the companies that are hiring you are not paying taxes into Social Security, unemployment, workers comp, etc.
So you're actually still cheaper for those employers than having an employee in the United States; ergo, you're undercutting American workers.
Well, not really in my case, I charge as much ($150/hour) as a contractor in New York that would be paying Social Security tax and so on by himself (mostly because I also have to pay all of those things and it's not cheap in France: 42% of my income about)... But yes it's true that this also happens in some situation
Could I ask what exactly is it that you do and how do you get on this path? I'm trying to explore options where I can work for US companies from somewhere else.
I'm also from New Zealand, also went to Yale (albeit as a graduate not undergrad), and also had my mother tell me I was "very American". And I also ran out of options for US visas after 5 years (10 years away from NZ in total), despite a Yale MBA and McKinsey on my resume.
More to the point I stopped trying, seeing that the system was structured against me, and that my ambition of starting my own company(s) was not going to be doable in the USA. (I'd previously started a company in Canada, and already knew that stable immigration status is a prerequisite for a stable/growing business.)
I've been in New Zealand since 2003. It's increasingly wonderful here.
It's so easy to start businesses (I've co-founded several), to invest in businesses (over 20 so far) and to get things done. The early stage eco-system is taking off, led by companies like Xero, Trade Me, Orion Health and Vend, and with others like Timely (@timely), Raygun.io and a growing ecosystem around Xero following. We have seen successful start of crowdfunding, but raising money is still not as easy as it could be (I'm trying to help change that).
Meanwhile the politicians are accessible and not corrupt or extreme, the country is staggeringly beautiful, the food delicious and nutritional, and the economy floated through the GFC as our bankers were sensible and bolstered by solid laws. Auckland is increasingly multicultural and we have free trade agreements with China and many other countries - over 2 billion people worth. And we consistently get near the top of the World Bank's Doing Business rankings and Transparency International's (lack of) Corruption Index - justifiably. I hope the author comes home - NZ is a different place 15 years on.
Investor in some of these, directly or through Punakaikifund.co.nz.
I graduated in Auckland 2 years ago and had assumed I would have to leave the country to find interesting work. Stumbled into the startup community and now I'm completely addicted, yet don't see myself needing to leave the country any time soon. And I'm not even working out of a main center.
It seems to me that labor is at a significant disadvantage when capital can move from country to country and is welcomed with open arms wherever it goes, but workers are locked into whatever situation they were born into.
Schengen is for citizens only. If you are third-country national who is a permanent resident of a Schengen country, with an unlimited right to work, you have exactly ZERO right to live or work in any other Schengen country. Sure, you can travel by land without having your passport checked, but that's as far as it goes.
The European Union is a Union until you need it to behave like one, and then it isn't.
You are correct. The main pillar of the European Union is the common market including the free movement of goods, capital and people.
Schengen was originally a treaty outside of the framework of the EU but has since been taken over by it. There are EU countries outside of Schengen (GB, Ireland) and there are non-EU countries part of Schengen (e.g. Norway, Vatican, Switzerland). However all countries that join the EU now eventually have to join the Schengen area.
Besides Visa free travel for residents of these countries Schengen also includes a common Visa for foreigners traveling to these countries (so you only need one Visa to to travel to France and Germany) and allows the police to cross the border when perusing suspects and detain them on the other side.
A friend of mine works in shipping at a reputable and profitable firm. His roommate, a Greek national also engaged with the firm, was "deported". Twice. He wasn't literally thrown out of the country but it amounted to as much, having similar visa issues.
His employer, unlike the author, sponsored him. However, two separate lawyers were unable to secure him a place in the country. One made a costly mistake and was fired, however the damage was done. My friends roommate made it back to the company for a month or so, before having to permanently relocate to one of the other offices, again, this time permanently.
These stories are not unique. People who are well educated and top performers in their sector are being turned away. Look at many successful entrepreneurs, Levchin, Musk, Collison, etc. and it is obvious the US benefits extremely well from allowing well qualified individuals immigrate.
Has it actually been shown that if we were to throw open the borders to STEM employees that it would result in a net economic gain? Because as far as I can tell, movements to get droves of women and immigrants into software is entirely driven by companies' desire for cheaper labor.
We're not really talking about opening the borders to STEM employees. We're talking about keeping highly educated people, educated at US universities, in the country.
There is some exploitation that happens, but by and large people are going to pay market rate +-15%, minus administrative costs. Administrative costs for hiring immigrants are extremely high, so it makes sense that their wages might be a bit less. (The best way to raise their wages is to reduce the administrative costs.)
The system as it is structured right now is basically designed as a foreign aid program. It encourages foreigners to come to the US, get a degree, work for a few years while saving a lot of money, then go home and invest it in building a new business not in this country.
How is it foreign aid for students to come here pay higher tuition to some schools who would be much worse without them, spend money in the US and then go home? Most students don't come here and save a bunch of money.
They are taking money from their home country and spending it in the US. It is like anti-foreign aid.
From the perspective of the students, yes, there is a financial transfer to the U.S. However, from national perspective, there is an economic transfer to the other nation. The U.S. university system represents the product of decades (centuries in some cases) of public and private investment. Foreign students and the societies they return to get the benefit of that investment - a better educated than could be trained locally - without having made it themselves. Hence, an economic transfer from the US to the other nation.
You think all those going to school in the US are brilliant students? There are a ton of students who just have money and go to school in the US. They go to US universities who are in part propped up by the money spent by these students.
Having these type of students go back is not a lose. In fact they bring with them a demand for American goods, and culture.
I said it was foreign aid, in that it benefits their home countries more than the US. But economics is not zero-sum, so just because it amounts to foreign aid doesn't mean it's a loss per se, just that the US could be getting more out of the deal than it currently is.
I think it would probably be better for everyone if we streamlined the process of transitioning from an H1B to permanent residency, and it would definitely be better for the US economy.
I don't know of a comprehensive study that has been done (although there probably is) that links qualified individuals immigrating with net economic growth. However, if you look at it like VC investing, it would be worth letting 1000 people in to get an entrepreneur capable of making a Stripe, Tesla, etc. According to this forbes article[0] 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants. Obviously, many were started a long time ago, however I think the sentiment is the same. We want to benefit from brain drains in other countries, and we want smart people who are emigrating to see America as a top choice.
Except would they have been able to create that company NOT in the US? The US dominates the world with pop singers. Do you think the majority of talented singers are only born in the US? No. They are just in the best environment for turning talent in to a star.
That link is to a welcome page. Forbes uses a system where when you go to a page, it redirects to that welcome page, with an ad, then after a pause lets you go to the original page. Looks like you copy&pasted in the middle of that.
I think it sounds good on paper but in practice… the question is more along the lines of: is it worth depressing the wages of 1M employees in order to try to capture the next Zuckerberg, who creates a company that only employs a few thousand people?
Why does your cost-benefit calculation not include the benefits to those foreign workers who are allowed to compete for jobs in the U.S.?
The academic literature* shows much, much larger productivity and income gains to those who migrate to richer countries than any negative effect to native workers. Even if an influx of immigrants depressed some existing Americans' wages by a small amount, that delta would only pale in comparison to how much better of the immigrants would be.
Do you oppose efforts to educate more American's as computer scientists? This too would "depress" the wages of existing computer scientists but you would (hopefully) find it abhorrent if someone used your "wage depression" logic to stop teaching CS in inner-city schools.
Unless you think that the lives of non-American's are not worth considering, these hugely positive impacts of immigration should be part of your calculation.
Would you willingly train/mentor somebody if you knew the outcome would be that she would compete for your job personally, or that your wage would go down 20%?
Frequently calls for equality are made by those who imagine their own situation could not possibly worsen; it's always some anonymous others who will pay.
I agree it sucks for anyone to lose their job, but using that as an excuse for xenophobic policy is a non-sequitur.
Do you honestly think there would have been a national uproar against Disney if they'd asked their employees to train other Americans?
Try replacing "foreign H1B worker" with "person of another skin color" and see if your arguments don't sound abhorrent. If you think the later sounds racist, the former is xenophobic.
>> it's always some anonymous others who will pay
Couldn't agree more. In the case of immigration and labor policy, the anonymous others who pay are those that didn't have the good fortune to be born in this country.
It's more like replace "H1B worker" with "anybody". The idea is that tech workers are being asked to expand the labor pool and basically contribute to eroding their own value without realizing it. It doesn't matter the race gender or citizenship; by reducing the scope to individuals instead of anonymous groupings it becomes clear what is happening.
It is probably noble to say that you would personally hand your own job over to somebody else. But of course it is never framed that way even though that is what is actually happening.
Well presumably, facebook and the surrounding ecosystem would offset those costs. Without hard data there is no way to run the proper analysis. Facebook as a company, and as a platform, have created a ton of value in America. Tesla has helped out import/export ratio, Stripe has allowed us to transact globally, and SpaceX has raised our competition in the space industry.
By similar logic, it is obvious that the US benefits extremely well from allowing political asylum.
Levchin's family got political asylum in the US. Levchin was about 16 yers old at the time. Unless you include political/religious oppression as one of the qualifying attributes, his immigration to the US wasn't due to 'allowing well qualified individuals [to] immigrate'.
Sergey Brin's family also decided to move to the US because of political/religious oppression. His father had a PhD in math and a job at GOSPLAN, then a temporary research position at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques. Did that make him well qualified?
"Numerous American friends, when the subject of my immigration status came up, have said to me things to the effect of, "Why don't you just become a citizen?""
I totally recognize my own friends in this. Americans have no clue how difficult it is to obtain a green card or a citizenship.
One of my friends was dating a girl from Asia, she was in the US under a work or student visa. She decided to attend a school in Europe for 2 years, their plan was to do the long distance thing for 2 years and then she would come back. I told him many times "Dude, if she leaves and gives up her visa she won't be able to come back". They ignored me, naively thinking that she would just get a new visa. 2 years later, she couldn't make it back to the US and stayed in Europe (or moved back to Asia, not sure).
fiance visa, can take a long time and she has to stay outside of the US during that time, but that was the proper though very annoy approach for that situation.
As an American who immigrated to The Netherlands I would like to know of this mythical country in the world with a working immigration system. AFAICT they're all rather broken.
US immigration might be broken in different ways than some other countries, but from the many stories I've heard of friends moving all over the world, they all pretty much suck.
Australia. I got my PR (green card equivalent) after working 3 years and applying for citizenship now (5 years since I arrived here). Spent less than AUD 10k total for immigration, including my partner visas. Processing times are reasonable and very transparent.
It's not a perfect system but way better than most countries.
Singapore used to be ridiculously awesome (work visa approvals usually processed in under 24 hours), but they've really tightened the screws in the last few years, particularly on granting permanent residence, due to political reasons.
Canada is pretty good. The points system sets a reasonably high bar but at least it's fairly objective. Once you're in the path from temporary foreign worker to permanent resident to citizen is well defined and works fairly well despite the slow processing times.
This strikes too close to home. I am packing my bags and heading out soon too.
I have spent 5 years here and have a masters in computer science from a top ranked school. The H1B visa is essentially a lottery which locks out talent from American companies. I failed to get a visa through the lottery process and I have to head back home too.
The H1B is now primarily used by outsourcing companies to move jobs overseas. Previously 15 years ago it was largely used to bring talent to the US not to take the jobs outside.
Changing the H1B so it a) it cannot be used to transfer jobs outside of the US and b) provides a path that after the first 3 years the employee can apply for a green card without sponsorship.
Both those things would largely solve a lot of the current H1B issues.
"some of the most active users of visas for visiting workers are Indian outsourcing firms, which appear to be training workers in the U.S. and then sending them home"
Correct. Outsourcing company sends workers to the job site to document the job responsibilities so that the position can be transferred overseas. Usually it takes about six months to a year.
It saddens me to hear this. I wish you had been able to stay. I know how painful it is to leave a place that you made your home for 5 years. Your situation reminded me of a similar story I read of a while ago: http://app.fwd.us/stories/429
The immigration system here is really broken. I wish people would recognize that more, and fight for change.
If he came illegally from Mexico, there would be plenty of people fighting for him to stay.
Drawing on this story and [others](http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/02/usa-trying-to-deport-chr...), it seems immigrants are only protected if they are willing to break U.S. law. It is a very dangerous incentive to deport those not breaking the law and welcome those who do. People might get the wrong idea.
As somebody who has lived 18 years in this country and just _barely_ managed to get a green card 2 years ago, I completely understand what you are going through. I am sorry it has come to this - it sucks big time and most people will not understand how little you can do about this. IMHO, the best course of action would be to find an employer and apply for a visa next April. If you are lucky, you'll be able to get back here by September. I hope it all works out.
I am in a similar situation, except I am an entrepreneur. I came to the US in 2007 on an L-1 visa to start up a new business here. The business needed to reach ten full-time employees to allow me to transfer to a Green Card, but after six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars investment of my own money, the business failed, and with it my visa and any chance of the Green Card disappeared. So now, after all that investment, and years of employing U.S citizens, I have to start the entire process again from zero. I have to leave the U.S. and re-apply. That said, it's worth it because the U.S. market is where the action is. I hope that the entrepreneur visa will come along soon and make it a little easier for job creators like me to be able to stay here.
Reading this types of cases and I really don't understand the american immigration system, I am from Honduras and there have been hundred of thousands hondurans migrating illegally to the US since the 90s, and a lot of them became legal due to threaties like the TPS, and most of them don't even have university degrees
It's a feudal, authoritarian immigration system. I suggest a return to pre-1914 policies: any peaceful, healthy, productive individual is welcome. (Footnote: this means abolishing the Welfare State. Ready?)
Yes the immigration system is broken; it's difficult to obtain sponsorship from an employer. But I feel like the author gave up after asking the few places where he worked. Sometimes you need to try harder.
With 2 renewals of 3-year H1B work visa, you do not have much time to shop around for employers sponsoring permanent residency. It is a long process in itself , and usually companies want the employee to work for them until they file the paperwork. That means, you are not putting yourself out there for bigger and better options, even if you have any - since you're tied to the employer until they file. Also the author said it correct - it is extremely difficult for one to startup on their own - since it is not favorable as well on work visas. It just does not make sense that an immigrant having got their higher education in US, are asked to leave and usually the ones that leave may be ambitious, having hopped multiple jobs without tying themselves to one employer and gathered enough expertise in their fields, both academic and industry. Immigration reform in this aspect, is therefore, warranted.
I agree. I'm an Italian national and I studied at a U.S. university. Reform is badly needed. I just don't think people should be entitled to stay in a country just because they have pursued a degree there.
What about countries which subsidize higher education? Pretty much all of EU subsidizes every student,so if the taxpayer paid for someone's education, why would they not want them to stay and work and pay taxes in that country?
"Sometimes you need to try harder."
You mean search for an employer whom would sponsor citizenship? The article explained it is quite expensive - do employer sponsored citizenships happen?
Nobody sponsors citizenship. They can sponsor you for a green card (permanent residency). It costs thousands of dollars (I have been told in the range of $12,000, without considering attorney's fees). But it locks you in with the employer for several years, and when you consider the amount of money that you can generate for a company, combined with the fact that you will probably get an average or below average salary to compensate for the green card costs, this is not an absolutely terrible deal for the employer. You have to have some valuable skills that justify the employer knowing right away that he/she wants to keep you for several years!
I worked for my employer for about 6 months when we started green-card proceedings. I was a junior engineer on an H1-B then, having been hired straight out of college from the Netherlands. The job-req I applied for had been sitting there for well over a year, no American worker could be found to fill that position (many interviews were done, no suitable candidate found). I got my green card (EB3) in January of this year, 5 years later and am now the lead security architect on a large project. In those 5 years I've never been paid below average. I'd say it panned out quite nicely for both me and the employer.
That's a good question. I had a hard time getting letters from my previous employers, so that part took the better part of a year. If you ignore that, I'd say 3 years? I was EB3 'other'. EB2 or EB1 category applicants from 'other' probably end up taking about a year. If you're unlucky enough to be in the India or China region, you're going to be waiting much, much longer than that though. EB3 India is probably more along the lines of 7-12 years.
Edit:
I think it's sort of important to note that I came to the US in 2010, which was a weird year for H1-Bs. The economy was bad, and I was able to file for an H1-B in August after I graduated. This lack of H1-Bs in 2010 probably resulted in fewer GC applications down the line as well, so your mileage may vary.
EB2 'other' anecdote: I came to the US in 2009 on a H1B (job offer in October, granted in December) and filed for my green card almost immediately. I had my card within 18 months, most of which was PERM.
I realise I was very fortunate in three things: timing, nationality (British) and education (two Master's degrees, so EB2). During this time I was paid market rates, though I did go through a period of minor panic when I realised I basically couldn't leave Google while my green card application was pending and I had no idea how long it would actually take. But articles like this make me extremely sad that others can't be so fortunate, and I wonder what it is we (non-voting residents) can actually do about it...
These days generally labor certification in STEM jobs takes about a year. PERM sped things up dramatically and now that immigration lawyers are comfortable with how it works it generally takes less time than the old system.
Adjustment of status is where a lot of people get stuck. Really this should take about a year, but if you come from a country with a lot of migration (Mexico, India, and China) you could be in for a lot wait, especially in EB3.
At best you are looking at 2 years, at worst I've heard upwards of 10 years. A good immigration lawyer should be able to give you a good estimate based on their experience and current USCIS workloads.
It's difficult for the reasons stated by the author. You have to convince an employer to sponsor your H1 befor you even start working for them. Also, they need to apply for your visa and hope it comes through before you start work.
I agree with the author that the process is absurd, as many of my colleagues have gone through it. But, as far as I understand it, employer sponsorship is not the only path to a green card. One colleague and friend works at a startup, and he is pursuing his green card himself, through an immigration lawyer he hired. It is not cheap - with lawyer fees and all, I believe it's in the $20,000 range - and it requires making the case that you're a top performer in your field.
At the least, if you find yourself in the author's position, consult an immigration lawyer.
I know someone who went down this route; an honors ivy league graduate who chose a smaller, more exciting firm rather than a large stagnant one.
The lawyer didn't raise any concerns based on historical precedence, but immigration had decided to apply their rules with increased strictness: her firm was not large enough and she would have to leave within 3 months, and could not re-apply for 6.
Its a slow evening and I was curious about how many times people mentioned different places (countries) in the comments to this post. So I ran the Stanford (Named Entity) Analyzer on the copy of the comments so far.
US 108
Canada 42
America 42
U.S. 25
Zealand 20
Europe 18
NZ 17
Japan 16
China 13
France 12
India 11
UK 10
USA 10n
Australia 10
EU 9
Germany 9
United 8
Switzerland 7
States 6
us 6
Netherlands 5
Korea 5
South 5
Asia 5
area 4
York 4
Auckland 4
Mexico 4
California 3
Italy 3
Spain 3
china 3
U.S 3
Bay 3
Brazil 2
bay 2
London 2
Ireland 2
Norway 2
Denmark 2
kameez 1
Usano 1
america 1
Francisco 1
Arabia 1
North 1
Vatican 1
Colombia 1
devouredSouth 1
Berlin 1
Africa 1
Britain 1
U.S.Another 1
City 1
Hollywood 1
Turkey 1
Saudi 1
Tesla 1
Honduras 1
U.S.A. 1
S. 1
Amazon 1
Oregon 1
San 1
south 1
shalwar 1
Pakistan 1
Amsterdan 1
PERM 1
Amsterdam 1
Numbeo 1
Nigeria 1
Croatia 1
Philippines 1
StatesFolks 1
Samoa 1
States7 1
GOSPLAN 1
earth 1
Israel 1
Schleswig-Holstein 1
Here is an update on this US 132
Canada 49
America 46
U.S. 32
New 23
Europe 23
Japan 20
Zealand 20
NZ 18
Australia 17
China 16
USA 15
India 13
France 13
UK 12
EU 10
Germany 9
Switzerland 9
Netherlands 9
United 7
Haiti 7
Mexico 7
us 6
States 5
South 5
Brazil 5
Auckland 5
Korea 5
Asia 5
Britain 4
Amsterdam 4
Spain 4
area 4
Italy 4
York 4
china 4
California 3
Pakistan 3
Ireland 3
Norway 3
Denmark 3
U.S 3
Bay 3
bay 2
Turkey 2
London 2
Nigeria 2
Croatia 2
Samoa 2
Israel 2
Montreal 2
Schleswig-Holstein 2
Colombia 2
Honduras 2
Portugal 1
america 1
Western 1
Francisco 1
Vatican 1
devouredSouth 1
Seattle 1
17 1
18 1
Africa 1
Hollywood 1
Saudi 1
Tesla 1
U.S.A. 1
S. 1
Amazon 1
Yemen 1
south 1
Adelaide 1
Thailand 1
Amsterdan 1
btw 1
the 1
States7 1
GOSPLAN 1
kameez 1
Usano 1
Arabia 1
North 1
new 1
Berlin 1
Moldova 1
U.S.Another 1
City 1
Texas 1
Oregon 1
San 1
Afghanistan 1
shalwar 1
Manila 1
Russia 1
Rotterdam 1
PERM 1
Numbeo 1
US.I 1
Philippines 1
Quebec 1
StatesFolks 1
earth 1
Articles like this describe one of my biggest problems with proposed immigration reforms. How many countless people have left the U.S. due to losing their legal status - or been outright denied a visa to begin with? It seems to me that giving status to people that have already broken the law is downright unjust to those that have followed it...
For people from some countries like India and China, the wait after finding an employer willing to sponsor green card is still a big killer. Typically people have to wait for 6-7 years now to get green card after first filing it. While I agree with the author, I feel he did not try to find someone willing to sponsor his green card with other employers. If your employer does not respond favorably to your requests about sponsoring your green card, find another employer willing to sponsor it while you still have time left on your current visa. And since the author is from NZ, it would not have taken him more than a year to get his green card had he found someone willing to sponsor him.
It looks like the author was working in the legal profession, with a large number of lawyers also looking for work. I suspect that in this case, it becomes harder for the company to file a green card application.
Last I checked, there are a lot of unemployed lawyers, including grads from Ivy League Law schools. So why should someone from another country be employed law job (as opposed to some esoteric field of science where there simply is nobody to do the job) when there are Americans that are searching for jobs?
Instead of choosing a profession like law where there is a surplus of lawyers, he should have chosen a job like nursing where there is a shortage and then he could have been a US citizen.
Simply baffling to me that this guy chooses a career like law where there is a surplus of Americans looking for jobs instead of a career like nursing where there is a shortage and then he complains!
Right, but it's part of the Schengen area, which also covers most of the EU countries, so once you got a visa to e.g. France, you're free to work and live in Switzerland as well.
Nope. There are many different types of Schengen visa [1] and it generally does not allow you to work. For this you need a national visa from a specific member state [2]. So, no, if you get a work permit in France, you are not free to live and work in Switzerland. In fact, EU citizens generally need a residency and work permit if they wish to live and work there.
From the page: "For employment lasting longer than three months, a residence permit is required."
I named their permit incorrectly: should be "residence permit" instead of "residency and work permit". The point remains that EU citizens generally need an official permit to work in Switzerland.
Switzerland is not part of the EU nor Schengen. Eu citizens can travel visa-free to Switzerland, but they can't work there. Same goes for US and many other nationals...
Wrong. You can enter Switzerland with a Schengen visa as a tourist. Finding work in Switzerland is difficult (employer has to prove it can't hire Swiss citizen for this position).
It depends where you are from. But it's not that hard for US and Canadian citizens if you have a job or want to study. You won't be thrown out as quickly as in the US.
You don't need to do anything inside the Schengen area in order to be allowed to "reside permanently". For the citizenship, it's a different issue I guess.
You still need a job offer to first enter the country, but changing jobs will involve less bureaucracy than in the USA, and after having been employed in the country for 5-10 years, and speaking a local language, you can apply for permanent residency or citizenship yourself, so the hassle of needing you employer to do it for you, does not exist.
In the US, most H1B hires I personally know have had their green card sponsorship started within an year of hire. Then it takes about 2-3 years to get it finalized. I knew of one who even got the process started in 2 months.
So there are some differences from other countries but no 5-10 years wait.
Wrong. The green card on EB2 takes 6-8 years for Indian and Chinese born immigrants. On EB3, it can take over 10 years. The green card process involves a per-country quota. Folks from countries other than India, China, and a couple of others get it "finalized" in 2-3 years.
I mean, having been in the country 5-10 years, depending on the country, is a requirement of getting the citizenship, not just to to get the process started.
The article comes across as whiny because he's a New Zealander. So cut the guy some slack, he can't help it :)
As an Australian working for a large tech company, I totally feel this guy's position. It never leaves me, the sense of being an imposter in this country on limited time. I've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes in this country, hired dozens of Americans as a manager, and mentored many of them to greater heights. I am lucky to work for a company with deep pockets that wants to invest in my green card process, but if I step outside this bubble I step immediately into the world this author describes.
It is madness for the United States to put road blocks in front of skilled immigration. As a hiring manager, I can tell you that I always prefer to hire a local American where possible, simply because it's easier. That in itself is not great - to serve this large American company's interests on American soil, I should hire the best possible talent, not the most convenient talent, no matter their origin.
But in my case there is little American talent to hire. It is not because I'm a picky arsehole (although some would say I am), but just a function of the kind of positions I hire for and the place I do it. Once you cut it down to:
1) people who want to relocate to the Bay Area
2) people who want to work in the South Bay
3) people who want to work for this company
4) people who want the job
5) people who can actually do the job
There is just a tiny trickle of people left, and frequently I'm in competition with other tech companies to acquire them. And for foreign candidates, you can tack two small items on to that list:
6) people who want to move to the United States
7) people who qualify to get a work visa for the United States
Folks carry around this assumption that foreign workers are cheap Indians on H-1Bs who can blow in and out of the country on a whim, and that a large % of unemployed Americans are waiting in the wings to swoop in and take those positions if tech companies only paid the prevailing wage to attract them. The reality is way more complex than that. Not every immigrant is an Indian and not every unemployed American is a reprogrammable robot, able to do any open position I have on my books.
What I want to bring to this country - not that the United States government factors this in to my immigration status - is growth. That is what gave me the opportunities that got me here, and that is what I want to give back. Right now, I can go talk to my boss and create a job. I can create a job out of thin air! That pays >$100k a year! Me, a foreigner, I can do this. There is always more work to do.
And if I can hire the best and brightest then I can be more successful, and create more jobs. I stand a decent chance to create economic circumstances that bring opportunities across a spectrum of skills inside and outside my company. With more jobs, I can take risks on hiring under-qualified Americans to train them, just like people took a risk on me, a university drop out. And with more success I can attract more of the best and brightest Americans too.
My tangible contribution to this conversation is that work visa holders should have a full year to find another position, and should be allowed to start companies during that year. That would enable valuable economic risk taking for the people already here. For those trying to get in to the US, that's a diatribe for another day.
@hagmonk
You have made some very good points. However "Not every immigrant is an Indian and not every unemployed American is a reprogrammable robot, able to do any open position I have on my books." is true but incomplete. Not every Indian is a cheap immigrant who's willing to work for less than their American counterparts. H1b was meant to "supplement" American workforce and not to "replace" them. Also in majority cases, H1b is filed by companies and the not individuals, so the way it is used is largely dependent on the business model of that company and how it best suites them. It's sad to see that an educated person like you boxes all Indian Immigrants as cheap laborers.
I agree that comment was probably unnecessary, but to be fair he said "... this assumption that foreign workers are cheap Indians on H-1Bs". He did not say all Indians are cheap or on H-1B's.
Yes, @dreamcatcher is misinterpreting my sentiment, or I was not clear in communicating it. I absolutely do not support any racial stereotypes of Indians or anyone else - my point is that others do this because they wish to oversimplify the immigration argument.
I have an Indian guy on my team going through the visa process just like me, so slandering of Indian workers hits especially close to home. He's the only other person in my entire office who knows for sure that cricket is the superior sport … without him I'd be alone and defenseless amongst baseball nerds!!
So no one seems to mentioning the one obvious fact (to me)... it seems like it's working as designed and there is a good reason why:
Part of US diplomacy is to educate foreigners and let them go back to their own countries so that those who are improving/leading said countries are more friendly to the US. It also is part of diplomacy to spread education so that the rest of the world can buy into our model of functional capitalist countries so we can have trade and not war or famine.
This article hit so close to home, and it brought a tear to my eye for the author. Just minutes before I saw this show up on my feed, I got an email from USCIS saying that my O1 petition has been approved after having attempted to get a visa for about 4 years (I know, it's kind of magically short in the grand scheme of things) down a variety of paths. It's still kind of surreal and hasn't fully registered, I can't wait to go back to the only place I've ever called home, the Bay Area.
My heart goes out to anyone else who is going through or will have to go through what I had to for the last 2-3 years, trying to work on my startup remotely as a digital nomad. It sounds like a romantic lifestyle, but it's wrought with difficulties leaving one on the edge of depression the whole time.
I'm happy to lend an understanding ear to anyone going through this right now. Having a government whimsically decide what direction your life takes professionally, socially, and culturally with no say of your own really makes you feel powerless.
Wow, as an american I find this situation intolerably embarrassing. People like this built this country, and the fact that some useless bureaucratic entity designed by xenophobes and racists is kicking people out is incredibly depressing. I'd rather deport the inventors of these idiotic rules, we'd all be better off for that.
I am fortunate enough to work for an employer who does sponsor employment-based residency. I'm also fortunate to be in the home stretch (should get my PR later this year). I'm also fortunate to be born in a country that doesn't have a massive backlog that add years to the process (those countries being India and China primarily).
Even so, by the end it will have taken almost 4 years. This isn't bad by the standards of what others have gone through but it's terrible we're in a situation where 4 years for PR is defined as "not terrible".
So I sympathize. I want to stay here too. But there are three things I want to say here.
1. As another poster said: maybe this is how it should end up. There is, after all, a glut of lawyers. This makes it difficult for an employer to justify the expense of going through the process;
2. Job losses and an abundance of qualified applicants make getting an LC far from certain. This isn't really a problem for tech companies. I imagine it's a huge problem for a law firm;
3. I see no mention of the DV lottery. I don't know the exact probabilities but applying 10-15 times from New Zealand must have a decent chance of your number coming up. Did he ever apply? If not, why not?
Contrary to what at least one poster said, it absolutely has zero impact on your nonimmigrant visa applications to have entered the DV lottery. over the years I applied probably 6 times? My number never came up. Not unexpected. I've met several people whose number did come up.
How long is the typical career in corporate law? How long does a job typically last with a law firm? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. Is it 5-10 years? If not, will the employee still be around at the end? It seems reasonably likely they won't be.
So, my sympathies. It's a shame you're not Australian, because we have it easiest of probably anyone barring arguably Canadians.
Also a New Zealander. I did a 3 month internship in the Valley, and then did a 1 year internship after graduating - the idea was for me to get a H1B and stay on after that, but due to the cap being reached and losing out on the lottery my application was returned unprocessed. So I returned back to NZ and started a company here instead, we recently made our first two hires.
I still love the US and would much prefer to be building my company in the valley, but apparently I'm not wanted even after paying over a hundred thousand in taxes within a year of being there. The stress caused from not being able to stay in the country where I was building my life due to purely random chance, with nothing I could do about it, was massive.
I do hope to return to the US permanently at some point and that the system will be improved, but it seems that will take a while.
How different is American immigration policy than other similar countries, like Canada, the UK, Australia, and the author's New Zealand? I'm sympathetic to everyone trying to immigrate to the US, but I'm guessing he would have similar issues in any country. Probably less frustrating, though.
At the moment the UK is somewhat hostile to immigration from outside the EU. The UK government has pledged to reduce the number of immigrants coming into the UK but can't do anything about people coming from within the EU so is targeting immigration from outside the EU.
It is also difficult to get visas for non-EU spouses. Unless you can demonstrate sufficient funds to support them. You either need a good chunk of cash in the bank or a job paying at least 25k GBP per year (more if bringing children). This has made it difficult for a lot ExPats to return home with their families and has caused a lot of anger in that community.
There is also talk of further restrictions on non-EU immigrants such as requiring non-EU immigrants who aren't earning sufficient amounts to leave after 6 years. At the moment its just talk but given the current government it could easily become law.
By "get to" do you mean "live in Australia more or less permanently" or become a citizen? Just clarifying, since the article was discussing the latter.
I'm a New Zealand citizen. It's true. We do dream like that. But I visited America and I don't think I'll ever go back. I didn't see any culture. But I live in Asia now. There's heaps of culture here.
Honest question: If the author "had come to America to attend Yale." didn't they also research the requirements for citizenship or an extended stay? Did they decide the benefits outweigh the cons or did they just "hope" things would work out? Maybe they made the decision after attending Yale - was this decision not well informed?
I think criticism of the immigration system is warranted and valid, just that potential immigrants need to understand the flaws in the system before they invest in a new life within America's borders.
It is very unusual for 18-year-olds to accurately plan for what they will when they are 33.
Most people don't plan their lives out like you are suggesting. They take opportunities as they come, and build their life as it comes along. He attended Yale, liked America, stayed, worked and built a life for 15 years. I find this reasonable, and consider it unrealistic to expect him to, at any point during that time, to just abandon his current life because he might not be able to stay.
Right, but what happened between 18 and 33. At some point the author must have realized "the system is fucked" but decided (for multiple reasons) to risk continuing to work and live with the US.
It's one thing to attend university for 4 years, get a job and then head home. Quite another thing to base/commit your entire life/career in the US without a clear path to citizenship.
I'm not saying the author should "suck it up" but rather it seems many take this risk, knowing the dangers and therefore shouldn't be surprised or shocked to eventually have to leave (given a gap in employment)
I should add, sad because it is very hard to build and plan a life where you do not know where you will be in 3 or 6 years. For example, why would you try to buy a house if you don't know what will happen? Because of all this I am probably considering to not even bother with H1B.
The GC application should follow the H1B immediately. Don't accept an offer from an employer that cannot promise you that they will do that. Either they don't know what they are doing or they can't imagine you still working there several years later.
Basically, the rule is that your first job after college should be with an employer that will sponsor your green card application. I knew that when I graduated and it was my number one criterion when looking for a job. Most of my foreign-born friends knew it too and they did the same. Most, but not all. The ones who didn't due to naivete, carelessness, or limited job opportunities ran into problems later. You have only 6 years on an H1B and time flies quickly. US society is in general very welcoming to immigrants, especially highly-skilled ones, so it's easy to forget that you are just a guest here subject to the vagaries of the system. Getting the green card should be the absolute priority when selecting an employer, no compromise.
The problem is that you generally don't realize "the system is fucked" until you've spent several years in the system and you suddenly drop into a kafka-esque black hole because someone put one wrong date on a 50 pages filing.
Also due to the duration of time involved changes in the law can both screw you up or make it possible. Can you predict what the legal system will be like 6 years down the road ?
Read the article. The author mentions that he repeatedly requested his employer to sponsor his GC. They made him wait and eventually declined. He tried to change employers at that stage because he knew he needed a path to GC, but was unlucky and got screwed at that stage.
I have friends from Europe who went to graduate school in the USA. They had to go back to Europe after a decade in school here because they didn't get jobs. They had another friend who was in a similar situation. They knew is was hard for international students to manage to get hired in my field but, like all of us, thought they would beat the odds. They didn't and now have had to rebuild their lives back in their home country.
Even when we know the odds are against us we want to think we will be special and make it even if we know it isn't realistic.
Yup. There's quite a bit of white privilege dripping from this article. I'm supposed to feel sorry for a Ivy League lawyer? What if this was written by a 33-year old Haitian who went to Cal State Fullerton? Would it get the same reaction on HN? Or would it even be published by vox?
For me most awful thing in immigration that i can't marry green card holder at all. Because we need to wait 5 years abroad and she can't leave country for more than half year for conversion Green Card to citizenship and i can't came to US because i am married in permanent resident. Why, hell, i can't may woman that i love and with whom i want to make family? I am extremely skilled worker and done two businesses in my country and i wanted to make more in US.
Are there any countries where the immigration system is not "broken" in this way?
I have seen some in the past with "entrepreneur" or "retirement" visas: you are allowed to stay in the country if you promise to spend a lot of money, but that doesn't seem optimal for this kind of case. I've also heard of places desperately seeking workers, but that also doesn't seem to fit the current American situation.
Canada (and I believe some other countries, like Australia) has a points based system. You can fill in a PR (equivalent to US Green Card) application from the comfort of your home country. When you are filling up the application, you can tally the points and know for sure whether you meet the cut-off to have your application be granted - i.e. you don't need to submit if you aren't going to make it. Points are given for your age (younger is better), education (masters is better than just bachelors) and your language proficiency (in English and French), among others.
Then, you wait a while and once the application is granted, you directly get PR. You have a period of time - say 1 yr - to move to Canada, and another period within which you should find a job.
i.e. - when you apply for a job, you are already a permanent resident.
Now that's what I would call a humane immigration system that also manages to attract 'desirable' immigrants. If Canada had America's weather, I would have never moved to the US.
The Canadian immigration system is one of the most generous around.
It's easy to be "generous" when you have fewer people trying to immigrate to your country. I can remember maybe a decade ago Canada had an immigration target of 1% of population (~250K) and that many people didn't even apply.
Compare that to the US where there are 20 year waiting lists for some visa categories. The US has lower, but not that lower, immigration targets compared to Canada.
Some are not as lucky. One time CIC was so overwhelmed with a backlog of PR applications, they literally simply said, "screw it" and cancelled 300K (?) applications that have been sitting on their shelves waiting to be processed for years already.
http://canadianimmigrant.ca/slider/300000-skilled-worker-app...
For you. I know people that have been in Canada decades that still don't have their permanent residency. If it was fair across the board it would be 'first in first out'.
> Are there any countries where the immigration system is not "broken" in this way?
It's interesting because you'll often see people complaining about how immigrating to Japan is hard. It usually gets brought up when news about their declining population hits the front page. "Well maybe if they made it easier to immigrate they wouldn't have a problem!" is a common comment to see.
Only, that's wrong. Their immigration is pretty standard. It has nearly identical requirements as the U.S and Canada. In fact, it's actually easier to become a Japanese citizen than it is to become a U.S citizen. Japan allows immigration from more countries than the U.S.
Another thing is that if you're married or have a job in Japan, they'll let you stay with a green card indefinitely. No need to become a naturalized citizen. It's incredibly rare for them to "change their minds" and revoke a green card. It's practically unheard of unless you commit a crime of some sort. Even then, there's still a good chance they won't unless your crime is severe.
My point is that most countries have similar requirements for immigration. If you've only tried immigrating to a single country, you have nothing to compare too. Immigration isn't supposed to be easy and you should expect tedious and head banging bureaucracy.
Forget the immigration laws.... It's impossible to live legally in US as skilled worker or anything like this. I know a lot of people who went there, lived as illegals without graduation or any kind of specialization for a long time and now they have green card or citizenship. But I also know two guys who had H1B or academic visas, the only one who is still there got married, to other one had to come back.
This hits home in so many ways than one. I came to this country at 17 to attend college, 2 degrees and 8 years later I was recently let go. Thankfully I'm an Engineer in SF so it shouldn't be too bad to find another employer and get back, but still I'm looking at a good 6-7 weeks out of the country in order to get a new visa for a new employer before I can transfer my status.
Considering U-6 unemployment is about 12% right now, perhaps this is a feature and not a bug. I still don't understand why Disney and others are allowed to do the things they do with abusing H1B's. Or why firms think they need someone with some fraudulent/substandard foreign degree instead of investing in domestic workers.
There's a discussion about labor to be had here and it should be focused on domestic labor abuses. Unfortunately, these things are rarely discussed and H1B and other abusive programs only rarely flare up in the news, everyone sees them for what they are, but there's no political will to fight them.
Immigration's external costs are ignored as well. The source country is constantly having a brain drain, for example. Its amusing to me to see HN'ers with this pretentious global perspective who have no problem taking the top 20% of the people from countries that need them and thinking themselves humanitarians because they got them a coding job in the valley.
If we started being serious about cutting immigration, there would be more political pressure for these foreign countries to get their shit straight. More local entrepreneurs, more devs focusing on local problems, etc. The status quo right now of fleeing to Western ecomomies just guarantees poor outcomes in poorer nations. We shouldn't be proud of that. Jogesh shouldn't be writing disposable freemium games for some rich guy's son who thinks himself "the next Steve Jobs," he should be helping Indians and the Indian economy with his skills.
Why should hiring managers be required to give you preferential treatment vs. someone born in a much poorer country who happens to be willing to do the same (or, likely, better) work for a lower cost?
Its a cute fact that you and the hiring manager were both lucky enough to have parents who lived in the U.S. when you were born, but that doesn't make you a better or more worthy person than someone born in a poorer country. (You already have access to a stronger social safety in the form of unemployment, social security, subsidized healthy insurance, etc if you find yourself unable to compete with foreign talent.)
The idea that some people should be considered more worthy than others by our society just because of where they were born or who there parents are is the definition of xenophobia and racism.
You should read up on the literature on brain drain. In addition to your comment being morally abhorrent ("people born in poor countries should be forced to stay there and fix shit so people born in rich countries don't have to deal with it") its also not well supported by the facts. Giving people the chance to get high returns from their education incentivizes a much larger group of people to invest in their education than end up leaving the country.
Given that the same worker ends up making 2-3x in a developed country what they would with their exact same skills in a poorer country and ends up sending much of that extra money back in the form of remittances, immigration is generally a positive force for those "left behind" (not to mention those who immigrate).
"If we started being serious about cutting immigration, there would be more political pressure for these foreign countries to get their shit straight."
Spoken like someone who never had the idea of moving to another country.
Here is the problem - those 12% unemployed will still walk around pretending that USA is the bestest country in the world where people have 'gotten their shit together', than to move to a different country and get a job - something that is unbelievably insanely easy if you are an American citizen.
Consider this: Maybe one of the biggest challenges today for the USA to unleash its true potential, is the sense of entitlement that has been allowed to grow on top of the foundation that the US society builders laid down through hard work. Many of which were immigrants, ironically.
>The job will just remain unfilled when the author leaves the US...
If they pay H1B-esque wages and conditions, yes. Pay competitive salaries and benefits and you'll have qualified people. The idea that we can't fill that position with US talent is completely asinine.
See, all that money that employers are hoarding and that native-born employees have a birth right to get, is coming from foreign. By design. Forcefully imposed by USA in the first place. Most countries were very happy with closed markets until USA decided to force-feed them globalization in the name of democracy and free-market. It killed all the local businesses by cheaper larger American companies. So it was fun when USA had the full control of production line. At that time most Americans, your parents and their generation, didn't do anything for long term benefits and said - "oh well, it's next generation's problem". (It is the same issue you will see with people saying global climate change is not an immediate concern, btw.)
So now labor is also globalized. And hence you have a cheaper larger pool of resources which is killing the local entitlements. If you want to fix it you really need to become more socialist, create unions, and start lobbying your government.
But here is the thing - most Americans aren'y actually in the same shitty situation as the people in other countries who had just gotten out of colonial rule and ended up with globalization before being prosperous. Most Americans are still driving gas guzzlers while being 'unemployed'. Pray that they grow a brain before the tide swings too far to the other side, like it has in most other countries where USA is trying to destroy local markets.
I sympathize with the author, the path to a green card is ridiculous. [1] But that's where my sympathies stop.
It's not a hidden process either. If staying here matters to you better work tirelessly to put yourself on a path to permanent residency and you better be the one to push it daily or it won't happen.
Here we have a highly educated, Ivy Leaguer with a LAW DEGREE, who didn't.
But about 500,000 people a year do and I can guarantee that very few of those people have the kind of education chops this guy has.
> From college to law school to professional life, from student visa to work visa, I have scrupulously followed every immigration regulation, paid all my taxes, filed all the papers I had to file, and have not so much as received a parking ticket.
Fantastic, thanks for being a conscientious visitor. None of these things are part of getting permanent residency.
It sucks, but here's the options for somebody in this pickle:
1 - Only take a job that's willing to put you on a path to a Greencard. It costs your employer money, so be willing to take a pay-cut to compensate. It might suck, but deal with it because once you get your papers you're home free and can go out and pursue other work on the market at higher pay. It might take years to get it, but you need to keep pressing this issue if it matters to you. It mattered to the author, and he left it up to the whims of other people.
2 - Marry a citizen/permanent resident. Welcome to America, we have literally tens of millions of prospects for you. In this case the author had 15 years to hit the dating scene. (this is how my wife immigrated, and we were stupid college kids without a lawyer or any degree, before there were several major simplifications to the process and we managed it on our first try by using the novel technique of reading instructions, following them, then following up with immigration to make sure things were progressing. It took us about 3 solid years, but we managed it. I understand from other people who've been through the process more recently that it's much simpler and faster than what we went through back in the stone age)
> But if you wish to follow the rules, as I do, then it must be a bona fide marriage. And if you take important personal decisions such as marriage seriously, then you may not wish to have their timing dictated by Homeland Security...And now is not the right time for marriage.
Insert snarky response about not finding somebody after 15 years of hitting the dating scene. It can't be that bad.
3 - Apply for the Lottery. 50,000 Green-cards are issues yearly.
It doesn't appear that in 15 years, the author bothered to do that. [2]
Sorry that's the way it is. But it is what it is. I have a hard time stirring up any more sympathy. This is an essay of excuses.
So given the three available options, two of which the author appears to be aware of (and learning about the 3rd took me all of 35 seconds), he didn't strongly pursue any of them? Part of the American Religion is figuring this stuff out. And the hundreds of thousands of issued green-cards per year, often to people who don't even speak the majority language, is testament that this is not only achievable, but is regularly achievable -- it just takes a little tenacity.
It's a terrible system, possibly the worst in American government, but it's not like it's unknowable or unachievable. In fact here's the website to do it [3]
Thank you for this. I know janitors, housemaids, and carpenters, as well as engineers and college educators who managed getting a green card just fine. People come here not speaking the language and make their way through the system. It's a byzantine, insane system, but that's government for you.
There are people screwed by the immigration system, by Homeland Security, and by pure bad luck. This kid does not sound like one of those people. He left the job tied to his work visa - awesome, that's your choice. Your altruistic job fell through, leaving you high and dry? Where was your back up plan? I find it very hard to believe someone with an Ivy League education can't find a job in this country.
The system absolutely screws people all the time. But in this case I don't feel like it happened here. This appears to be a case of "I'll just be a good person and things will work out in the end" hopeful wishing.
Never leave things that matter to you up to other people.
> It doesn't appear that in 15 years, the author bothered to do that.
The author seems to have a very specific mindset, that possibly only some New Zealanders and North Europeans have, that they feel it's morally wrong to try to game the system.
He tried to play by the rules. Not only in letter, but also in spirit, and he assumed the system would respond in kind.
If you are from a country where gaming the system is the social norm, this mindset may be very difficult to understand.
I think you overestimate the straight-forwardness of this. Option #2 means including economic incentives in your relationship ("I better rush towards marrying someone, lest I get kicked out!"). Option #3 is very restricted -- if you are on a non-immigrant visa (e.g. student visa), then the simple fact of applying for the lottery (and thus signalling immigration intent) will likely make you ineligible for a renewal.
But you see, that's it. Those are the options. Option #4: treat people who want to immigrate with decency, isn't available.
I think it's fair to complain that this option doesn't exist, I'd like it to exist. But it doesn't and options #1-3 are what the author had to work within, yet chose not to pursue any of them.
If he still wants to get in, once he's back in New Zealand, he's free to continue pursuing permanent residency. Going back to New Zealand doesn't prevent him from continuing to pursue these options. But he simply doesn't have the tenacity to do it, not while he was in the U.S. and probably not once he returns home.
Obviously, you can overcome any legal hurdle with "tenacity".
Lottery is out if he intended to stay. I am wondering if you are a troll for even having suggested it. It is meant for people outside the US - with no intent of ever visiting. It signals immigration intent, so even tourist visas can be denied on that alone. It is a lottery, not an application. Very low odds that would actually make it harder for him to stay in the country. He seems to have a couple of brain cells, so he didn't go for that.
Marrying may not be an option, or maybe not yet. He may not want to, he may not have found someone he truly wants to marry (and doing it for the sole purpose of getting a visa is fraud), he may not even like women. I don't know why he didn't, and you don't either.
Getting a job that will want to sponsor a visa only really works if the demand is truly ridiculous to justify it - such as computer science or engineering. Changing what appears to be a successful law carreer for another in, say, computer science is not really an option without leaving the US, which the author did not want to do in the first place.
So, once he's back in New Zealand, what are his options? Other than the lottery, which is a lottery, not a guarantee. There are a few avenues he could try, but I can think of none that don't have the risk of rebuilding his whole life and getting deported a few years later, once again.
Participating in lotter does not signal immigration intent. I participated in lottery for my parents for ten years and they had zero problem renewing their visitor visas every two year. It's pretty well documented that it's ok to do lottery without while on visitor or student visa.
The fact that none of his employers wanted to sponsor him for visa tells you how valuable he was to those employers. Full in cost of employment-based greencard is only 5k-10k including legal fees. All company has to do is to provide financial information and to sign several forms - everything else is done by outside lawyers. I could not imagine any company refusing to do it for any professional employee unless he was extremely replaceable.
> Participating in lotter does not signal immigration intent
Can you back this up? It is open to interpretation as far as I know.
US immigration assumes you intend to immigrate by default. It's up to you to prove that you have no interest in doing so. It gets harder to claim that you have no intention when you are, in fact, participating in the lottery, so you want to immigrate after all.
Perhaps your parents had enough ties to their home country that it didn't matter.
Lottery is fine. I had H1s and then E3 visas for a while until I won the DV lottery. OP, as a NZ citizen, has a relatively high chance of winning (approx 1 in 20 last time I looked).
It seems you're contradicting yourself. You say "I think it's fair to complain that this option doesn't exist, I'd like it to exist." But then you go on to disparage the author for doing just that.
You can't simultaneously say that it's fair to complain and argue that people are "just complaining". Or is it only fair for people not affected by these laws, who have no incentive to complain, to do so?
It's fair to complain that a better option doesn't exist. It's not fair to take no action given the existing options and then complain the system was unfair and against you.
The author had choices available, but chose not to avail himself of any of them, then wants sympathy for not pursuing. Immigration was simply not as important to him as other things, and those are the choices he made. I don't feel any particular sympathy for him having to suffer from the consequence of those choices.
I wish he had better options available to him, but he didn't, so he didn't even bother trying.
I kind of see what your point is, but I disagree. A person's right to point out flaws in a system should not be contingent upon having overcome those flaws. I see that it would be easy to feel more sympathy for the author if he had fought tooth and nail against the system and still come out on the losing end, but that is really a completely separate topic from whether his arguments about the system itself are justified or not. The weight of the arguments should not depend on who is making them, they should stand for themselves.
Your reasoning sounds to me a bit like the (common) argument that a bicyclist that is injured by a car and then complains that the roads aren't accommodating bicycles shouldn't be taken seriously because he didn't wear a helmet, and everyone knows that bicycling is dangerous. Whether or not he should wear a helmet as a precaution doesn't change the fact that bicyclists have a basic right to argue that they should not be subject to this risk.
Applying for the green card lottery does nothing to hurt any current or future visa applications you make. Visas with a nonimmigrant intent will ask questions like:
"Do you have a current I-485 application in process?"
"Have you previously applied for an I-485?"
"Have you been rejected for an I-485?"
For those that don't know, an I-485 is an AoS (adjustment of status) application.
You can truthfully answer "no" to all of these questions because an I-485 is something very specific and entering the DV lottery is not that.
So you have to be really careful about what is said (eg nonimmigrant intent for a visa) and what are the actual rules. If the form simply asks about I-485 applications, you can truthfully answer "no" even if you want to stay here forever.
By the time you get to filing an I-485 you're basically done with a PR application. You're just waiting for it to come through. It may take 6 months or 12 months but it won't randomly take years (like a Labor Certification can).
Now as far as work visas go, the H1B allows an immigrant intent so none of this is an issue.
For visas that don't (eg Canadian TN, Australian E3), even there the rules are murky. USCIS says that, for example, filing an I-485 shows immigrant intent but they've also issued a ruling saying that filing an I-485 can't solely be used to deny a renewal or the issuing of those visas. So what does that mean in practice? Well, nobody really knows.
That too is a problem.
But I digress...
My main point is you are 100% incorrect when you say applying for the DV lottery impacts your ability to apply for a nonimmigrant visa in any way. It does not.
None of the forms I filled in asked about I-485, they asked "Has anyone ever filed an immigration petition on your behalf?", which I had to answer yes to because my aunt at one point started sponsoring my mom for a sibling green card - even though that application was filed before I was born, and was abandoned decades ago.
Option #1 is actually fairly easy. But it often means taking a less exciting job than, say, an early stage startup. I have to agree with you that the author didn't have his priorities straight.
It is very likely that the first time he applied for the lottery he would lose his visa and have to leave the US for an indeterminate period of time. The way it works in practice, people that had another visa before are at a disadvantage in the lottery. It is also not free.
Military service was potentially another route though, but may have been intractable due to circumstances like student loans or military fitness requirements relating to a disability or some such.
No. There is no connection between the lottery and your visa except if you win. You do not win the green card, you win the application. Not sure why you thinking that the lottery is not free, but it has been free forever (except for the scam sites).
Military service only gives you green card and residency if it is war time. During non war time, it allows you to apply for citizenship after you served (instead of waiting 5 years), but you need a greencard before that.
With only two exceptions (Philippines and American Samoa), you need to be a permanent resident (i.e, already have a green card) to enlist in the U.S. military if you aren't a citizen.
I spent 2.5 years living in Europe and just moved back to the US because my wife couldn't find a job there. After two months back in a place with values (buy all the things) and culture (work all your life) I find abhorrent, I'm terrified we won't be able to get back in.
Possibly more important, "becoming an American" (which seems to mean Usano as I am an American because I live in one of and have citizenship in one of the countries of America) means you get to pay US incometaxes on your income anywhere in the world for the rest of your life.
"Again, an employer can sponsor an employee's green card, but the employer must again bear the costs, which can run to the tens of thousands of dollars, and again the employee cannot offer to pay the cost."
Why don't you just reimburse the employer the costs?
It is kind of surprising to learn that those Big Law Firms rolling in huge piles of cash minute by the minute do not want to spend a mere couple of thousands for a member of their team.
Is it because petitioning for a candidate without a STEM degree is that much harder?
For most people to sponsor an employment green card you have to show that you cannot find a qualified citizen or PR to fill the position. This is easier for some professions (STEM most notably) than others.
Also there are restrictions on when a company can file. For example if the company has gone through layoffs then generally it can't sponsor people for several months.
> you cannot find a qualified citizen or PR to fill the position
This is something I can believe. There definitely is a bigger percentage of US citizens and PRs going to Law School, even in the small sample set I have encountered.
The biggest factor in one's chances of success in life depends upon one's country of citizenship. That's a fact. It should be obvious so I am not stating any sources or research data.
Yeah similar story is happening to me. The USCIS denying my VISA transfer requests for no reason. They fail to provide anything other than utter bullshit.
The article mentions we kick out the brightest, but there's actually a way to specifically immigrate using your educational prowess [1]. Basically, you need a masters of higher.
You got 2 degrees, were here for ~15 years.. surely research was done to find out how to immigrate? If you spent the time to get 2 degrees, I'd figure getting a masters would have been the more obvious choice...
Green Card needs to be filed by employer and cannot be independently by the immigrant himself. The author is not disputing the point that there is a way to get in. The challenge is that at all points you have to completely rely on your employer to file and pay for all the visas and green cards. As anyone who has gone through the green card process can attest, it is a very complicated and lengthy process. It requires you to convince your company to spend 10s of thousands on dollars to file for your green card which doesn't potentially benefit the company itself. It requires putting out ads on newspapers, interviewing some candidates and then explaining why they can't be a fit. This is unlike some other countries (such as Australia or UK) where you can file your own immigration application if you check off certain things (such as level of education, no. of years employed etc.)
Also, the visa itself is not a guarantee considering it is a lottery. So even if you have a masters degree, it won't help you a lot in terms of getting you through the H1 lottery.
I was specifically referring to the National Interest Waiver, which, according to the page, says the alien may apply a Green Card themselves.
Also:
> The national interest waiver applicant sponsors him or herself and is not required to have a job.
And my wife has actually gone through the whole naturalization process and is a citizen. It is not a fun process, and is definitely lengthy, but for anyone that is motivated is totally doable.
He says he got a law degree (J.D.) and actually links to the Columbia class of 2009 where he is listed. So that's a "professional doctorate," definitely greater than a masters.
US immigration rules would be much saner if people born here had to jump through the same hoops, wait in the same lines, fill out the same forms, and go through the same process for citizenship, as people not born here.
You're missing the point. Birthright citizens have nothing but "geographic location of birth" to qualify them as citizens of their country. They literally (in the real meaning of 'literally') did nothing to become citizens. Their children will also likely have to do nothing to become citizens, as long as they're born within the same borders. What motivation do people who expended zero effort to become citizens currently have to help or vote to make immigration rules more sane?
"I have two Ivy League degrees. And I am on the verge of deportation."
So you obviously deserve to come here, while the people living on $1 a day in extreme poverty and under oppressive regimes, they should be kept out? No, you didn't say all that, but I'm passionate about the cause of open borders (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e...., http://www.openborders.info), and I can tell you a lot of Americans think exactly that way - they have a poor understanding of economics and they imagine that importing relatively unskilled laborers into our country would somehow 'taint' or bring down our economy toward their levels of poverty. (See here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you.... if you have yet to be disabused of this fallacy.) And your suggestion that you should be allowed in because of your degrees is suggestive of that kind of broken thinking. Productivity is the root of societal prosperity. And labor, whether skilled or unskilled -- in fact, especially unskilled labor -- is able to be much more productive when allowed to move to the first world. That extra productivity benefits everyone. Economists estimate, on average, that a move from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (open borders) would result in a DOUBLING OF GLOBAL GDP. That's an INSANE silver bullet.
And most of those gains would go to the extreme poor: in fact, it would be by far the most effective step we could take to reduce extreme poverty - which a lot of people don't realize is the single worst humanitarian crisis of all time, killing ~10 million people per year, a higher rate than WWII, which was the deadliest war ever. Open border should be foremost on every smart, informed, ethical person's mind, and it's a crying shame that it isn't. Instead you see people whining about the plight of 1st-world Uber drivers and middle class Americans and not being able to stay in the US with their Ivy League degrees. Spoiler alert: all those people are crazy rich relative to the extreme poor. There are ~1 billion people, 1/7th of the world's population, living in extreme poverty, which is defined as making less than $1.25 per day. That's PER DAY, NOT PER HOUR. They are literally starving, malnourished, have no clean water, no education - they have practically nothing. So unless you can show me evidence that you've spent many hours worrying about open borders and the extreme poor, screw your first world problem.
And by the way, I'm a rich american with an Ivy League degree myself, so this is not coming from a place of ivy-envy or anything. I've just spent a lot of time reading and thinking about open borders and the state of the world and I'm disappointed in my fellow educated first worlders that they're so oblivious, apathetic, uncaring, so this gets me angry.
Please see my other comments in this thread for more of my thoughts.
I feel that even something much smaller (esp. in the US), like allowing labor shortages to be filled would make a huge difference. Simplifying the process so that a farmer in need of workers doesn't have to hire a lawyer to do complicated paperwork that takes 6 months would be a first step. Granting these workers green cards on entry (instead of the restrictive H-2 visa) would ensure their freedom. The same goes for skilled workers. Even just allowing all workers in fields where there is a huge variation in skill (e.g. STEM, journalism, culinary arts, etc) to immigrate on the basis of well-paying job offer would make a huge difference.
The efficient, egalitarian solution to poverty is improvement of the home countries, not open borders. This is most obvious for China; that country has so many people that if one attempted to "solve Chinese poverty" via brute force importation of their people, the entire First World would have flipped to a Chinese majority. Instead, Chinese poverty is being solved more than an order of magnitude more efficiently and less disruptively--this is a thing that is actually happening, not spherical-cow theorizing--via trade, technology transfer, and related methods.
Open borders may still have merit (I'd certainly value the additional convenience), but your argument for it is obviously wrong.
It would actually be a great experiment to create a new libertarian nation which could let in everybody who is willing to contribute (work/business experience/bank account statement as proof) and see how that turns out. Something like a new US/Singapore started from a fresh slate.
Honduras tried (is trying?) a libertarian city in special development regions. The article I remember reading is actually from December 2011; I didn't think it was that long ago and I haven't read anything new. Here's the article that might be a good starting point for you though:
To take this suggestion a step further, it would be great if this new nation was run as a Futarchy [1]. The basic idea is we use prediction markets to determine if certain policies would raise GDP, and those that do become law. Projects like Augur [2] are trying to make ubiquitous prediction markets possible by relying on Blockchain-like decentralization.
I don't know, maybe you could build it under the sea. You could give it some neat biblical-sounding name too...Apocalypta? Nah, too doomsday. How about...Rapture?
He's thinking like a desperate poor person and not as the affluent American he aspires to be.
If I were in this position, I'd start a company to employ me and get an investor to foot the bill for keeping me in the US. Someone as smart and well-connected as the author should be able to manage that. It's difficult to get personal goals to align with the government's wishes, but it's not difficult at all to throw money at the problem.
There are scores of ways to get into and stay in the US, the problem is understanding and navigating the bureaucracy. He managed for 15 years. I read stories all the time of creative strategies yielding a green card and eventual citizenship. I don't even ask the many non-Hispanic immigrants I meet whether they have citizenship or not, they all managed to work the system.
Did you read the part in the article where he his legal forbidden from starting up a company or even working at a startup?
He should have just stuck with the job until he found another one that would support his green card efforts. Switching careers part way through he should have known was risky. The lack of information that is presented on him for his reasoning besides "Well they weren't sponsoring me anyways" seems pretty lack luster and not well thought out for someone who is well educated and as intelligent as himself. This article seems like a desperate plea after making a mistake.
I hope he finds a legal way to stay in the country, or come back but the article was pretty whiny about something he already should have known.
There a lot of things "broken" in this country: healthcare system, elementary/middle school education, guns out of control, racial issues, etc. Still probably the best place in the world.
Not enough job supply for all of the law school graduates and this guy is surprised that they dont allow foreign competition to immigrate. Sorry to break it, we dont need more lawyers at the moment. Maybe try again in 10 years?
Difference of philosophy. Every one wants to come here. NPR did a bit about this this morning, and claimed one study found that 500 - 700 million people would like to move to the US if they had the chance. We cant just let anyone live here, have to be selective. The guy argues that talent should be a factor that decides who gets in. But what if you have the wrong talent? What if you are trying to work in a collapsed field like Law?
Should have just snuck across the border in Mexico. People who follow the law are treated like criminals and those who break it are treated like heroes in California.
The slavery-like dynamics of the immigration system is a surprising mismatch, versus the typical American business culture.
For comparison, I've spent time in a few countries where a slavery-like relationship with employers is completely expected and even supported by the employees. (Culture shock!) They imagine that it's the only way that businesses can function.
This isn't the type of business culture you want to live in, no matter the perceived benefits.
H1B is basically how big companies remain 'leen' enough to compete with start-up. This is made very clear in Amazon and PayPal India offices afaik, but sounds reasonable enough to be generalized. It is impossible for a large company with thousands of employees to remain competitive without the crunch-culture of startups. So they get H1Bs.
I fail to see how your complaint is valid beyond just a personal disappointment and/or frustration. The two main bullet points in your post and my comments are :-
1. When the rest of the world sends America its best and brightest, America says, "Go away" : No country/entity sent you here. You came here of your own volition. You said that you have lived here legally. That means you followed the law. The US immigration enforcement agency also has a law to follow and they are precisely doing that. As a result of the law you are not qualified to become a permanent resident or citizen (yet). There is absolutely no law here that says the US is required to absorb all of the world's best and most skilled. It is not in the US constitution.
2. American immigration law leaves the skilled immigrant feeling like an indentured serf : I disagree w.r.t skilled immigration. It cannot be true as a blanket statement. All the labor laws treat US workers equally regardless of their immigration status. Some corporations misuse loopholes or down right violate them. That is not the fault of the immigration system. It is against the law and the law will punish those corporations/businesses to the extent that is practically possible (not an excuse for failure to do so). And where the laborers, skilled or otherwise, are being exploited it becomes the duty of lawmakers and enforcers to take action.
Each country has their own laws with regard to immigration. It is their right as a sovereign nation to craft laws as they see fit. In come countries it is almost impossible to permanently immigrate unless you are born there and in others you could virtually buy citizenship. Even the country you come from has immigration laws and I am certain that many find it burdensome or extremely difficult. But it is still within their right.
You've got some flawed logic in your second point. While labor laws say that you must treat workers the same that has no impact on immigration law. If a skilled worker on a visa loses or leaves their job they need to leave the country unless they start a new job in a short time frame. This is a huge burden that citizens and permanent residents do not have.
(1) This is not law that matters much, but how it enforced.
If you here illegally, chances are you are good to stay. Follow the law by a letter, and you destine to go through kafka-ian bureaucracy, spend years waiting for some permit.
For your (2) bullet, skillful immigrants in vast majority are lawful individuals.
The article explains it very well and in detail. None of his employers wanted to sponsor a green card, because it was too expensive, too much hassle, and too risky.
I know at least 6 other people who have had similar experiences: well qualified people in great skill-specific jobs who were caught up in bureaucratic nightmares. Unlike the subject of the Newsweek article, these people had employees who could afford to keep them on the payroll.
New York Times also ran an article on this issue, of a Google employee who had to move to Canada because of arbitrary bureaucratic rules concerning the work visa. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/12immig.html?page...
Further, green card applications have country quotas, which, in the context of citizenship were deemed unconstitutional during JFK/LBJ's civil rights actions.
In spite of such iniquities, there seem to be no political efforts to fix the system.