[HN Gopher] Congress urged to ease immigration for foreign scien...
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Congress urged to ease immigration for foreign science talent
Author : JSeymourATL
Score : 58 points
Date : 2022-05-15 21:14 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| pm90 wrote:
| Important to note that the proposal is to lift green card caps on
| PHD holders. Certainly not opening any "floodgates".
| immigrantheart wrote:
| I thought US immigration system is not geared toward helping US
| competitiveness, but diversity and family reunification.
|
| Besides, PhDs in other countries like say, Indonesia for example,
| won't be as good as PhDs in other first world countries.
|
| The second/third order effects would be that these opens up for
| immigration/education fraud from countries which populations
| really want to go to the US. I can already imagine.
|
| Can the US job market absorb for these PhDs?
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| I wonder if this is the thing YC/Seibel was working on
| tejtm wrote:
| we are on the verge of having to pay our own,
|
| (sorry for the snark, and I do welcome any efforts that decrease
| antiscience attitudes)
| curiousllama wrote:
| Are STEM PhDs in the private sector struggling?
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Around 2000, in Chemical & Engineering News, the organ of the
| American Chemical Society, there were 12 - 15 pages of job
| ads, a good chunk industrial. Now there are maybe 3 - 4
| pages, most academic. Friend, you have no clue how much
| better it used to be!
| qaq wrote:
| Can it be that between 2000 and 2022 there was a shift to
| Linkedin and other resources as a primary place for the
| commercial job ads?
| jleyank wrote:
| PhD chemist hiring is about the best it's been since the
| 60's. It's just that paper media aren't in the workflow
| anymore.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| It's picking up again but isn't anywhere near mid-1990's
| level.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The government thinks our salaries are too high
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| If you listen to what the Fed says, it actually does. It thinks
| unemployment is too low.
| wyldfire wrote:
| The companies that hire these engineers either pay them to work
| there or pay them to work here. So you are competing with them
| regardless. But the US can benefit from both migrant farm
| workers and skilled laborer immigrants. And unless you're one
| of the few natives in the US, your ancestors got the same
| benefit. Let's just let them immigrate here and then we get the
| benefit of their expertise and their culture.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| This is patently false. Beyond a certain headcount you run
| into regulatory issues in India and China. And the timezone
| issue alone makes a lot of work untenable.
| [deleted]
| Sakos wrote:
| How about Congress ensuring better pay for their existing
| population?
| qaq wrote:
| You do realize that leading world in R&D is a prerequisite to
| having high paying jobs?
| curiousllama wrote:
| You mean by pouring money into the sectors where these
| immigrants would theoretically work?
|
| > China competition bills passed in the last year by the House
| and Senate seek to pour money into the National Science
| Foundation and other federal research agencies. They also seek
| to incentivize high-tech companies, especially those that
| manufacture semiconductors, to build facilities in the U.S.
|
| Looks like they're on it.
| [deleted]
| mpyne wrote:
| If immigrants are coming into fill high-paying jobs, then by
| definition there is already an ability for the existing
| population to get better pay: fill those high-paying jobs!
|
| That is already accounted for in programs like H1B. If the job
| remains high-paying even with H1Bs then we clearly have room
| for more people to join the labor market, including immigrants.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| H1b workers depress wages by increasing the supply of
| workers.
|
| Most h1bs I work with have no more experience, and some less,
| than a graduating CS major with no prior job experience.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Also by being restricted to one employer so the H1B worker
| cannot sell their labor to the highest bidder.
| qaq wrote:
| You do realize that most decent size US companies have
| presence in EU, Canada, India etc. and can easily shift
| open racks to those offices (and they actively do). As an
| example Apple has doubled it's head count in Cork Ireland a
| few times.
| the_only_law wrote:
| What makes me suspicious is that everyone in many of "the
| sciences" is very sure to note that there very little room in
| the labor market.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| H1B is broken. Most H1B's that come in are sweat shop /
| "consulting" workers that get paid low, worked to the bone,
| and don't really have a differentiated skillset to current US
| residents. People who actually have differentiated skills get
| fucked by the lottery or get forced to get a Master's/PhD to
| have a better chance.
| aspaceman wrote:
| American workers are paid plenty. They're just useless and
| incompetent. That's why we get people with actual skills from
| countries with real education systems.
| xwdv wrote:
| wreath wrote:
| Can you elaborate on why is that?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Because they are American-educated and a demographic can't
| beat themselves.
| rebelos wrote:
| I've got a news flash for you about the scientists that America
| is educating...
| sharkster711 wrote:
| Most American educated scientists aren't American, unless
| that's what you meant.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > Current U.S. immigration law limits the number of green cards
| issued per country, and people from populous countries like India
| and China are disproportionately affected.
|
| It still shocks me how many of my friends from $top_US_university
| got kicked out of the country (or almost did, saved only by
| marriage). Like, do we really want to kick out a half-Iranian
| nuclear engineer, who now wants to work as a SWE, because they
| were born in India?
|
| I get that we can't open the flood gates. But it _does_ make a
| bit of sense to retain the top % of immigrants based on education
| in scarce fields, no?
| runarberg wrote:
| > I get that we can't open the flood gates
|
| Serious question, has this ever been shown to be a concern. If
| we would open for free migration, is there seriously any reason
| to think that migration would be so intense that the country
| wouldn't be able to handle it?
|
| I ask because I seriously doubt it. Historically migration has
| been pretty liberal, and there are place which offer free
| movements of people (e.g. the EU) where opening up the borders
| (or the flood gates if you will) has turned out to be a great
| success.
| historia_novae wrote:
| Fell free to ask any Native American to get an insightful
| answer to this question.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > If we would open for free migration, is there seriously any
| reason to think that migration would be so intense that the
| country wouldn't be able to handle it?
|
| Depends on what you think "be able to handle it" means. There
| are many tradeoffs.
|
| > there are place which offer free movements of people (e.g.
| the EU) where opening up the borders (or the flood gates if
| you will) has turned out to be a great success
|
| The EU has a very strict immigration policy for people
| outside of the EU and it also has natural language barriers
| that bar foreigners from almost all jobs.
| daenz wrote:
| I googled our immigration backlog, and according to multiple
| sources[0], the current number of pending immigration
| applications is 10M. These are people who are willing to fill
| out the applications and wait. It's not unreasonable to
| assume that this is the tip of the iceberg, and that there
| there are many more people who don't bother to apply because
| of the processing times and likelihood of getting in. Suppose
| there are 5x more people who would instantly migrate if
| immigration was completely open. That's about 17% of the
| current US population.
|
| That seems like a lot of people for local communities to
| absorb, especially if these are people that require a lot of
| financial assistance.
|
| 0. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/us-immigration-
| backl...
| lambda wrote:
| Why are you assuming that folks will require a lot of
| financial assistance?
| daenz wrote:
| I would be assuming if I said "especially because", not
| "especially if"
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| "Great success" is relative...
|
| In my small EU country, this has created a caste of low-
| paying jobs that only immigrants do, and the hiring process
| usually goes along "put out an ad, offer minimum pay" -
| "noone local wants to do that job for minimum wage" -
| "complain you can't get workers" - "get work visas for
| foreigners".
|
| This would/could be mitigated by raising the minimum wage for
| foreign workers (eg., you need a cleaning lady, the pay for a
| foreign worker must be atleast 1.5x the average pay currently
| working cleaning ladies get, so they'll try to get a local
| for atleast 1.499x the average pay first and then if really
| desparate hire a foreigner).
| lambda wrote:
| We have plenty of the low-paying jobs that only immigrants
| do in the US as well.
|
| Some are via temporary work visas, some are via
| undocumented immigrants. The fact that they are
| undocumented immigrants means that they have very few legal
| protections, which makes it a lot easier for employers to
| exploit them.
| aaomidi wrote:
| If you also pay immigrants well, they actually integrate
| well.
|
| A huge barrier to integration is lack of social mobility.
| Europe hasn't really closed the class gap between Europeans
| and immigrants (either economic immigrants, or escaping a
| shit country immigrant)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But if you pay well, you also get the locals to do the
| job.
|
| I know higly educated people in demand (scientists,
| engineers,...) are well paid anywhere, but "free
| immigration" would bring in a lot of people, bringing a
| lot of jobs down to minimum wage or even lower.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I get that we can't open the flood gates
|
| There is no flood of immigrants waiting for the gates to open.
| American net migration is trending down. Soon there will be
| more people leaving than coming.
|
| Besides, leaving your country is hard and a large majority of
| people aren't actually that interested. Especially not for a
| place like USA when other, nicer, places have strong economies
| too.
|
| https://econofact.org/the-decline-in-u-s-net-migration
|
| Personally I moved here for the tech industry. But there's
| really not much else the US has going for it.
| usrn wrote:
| People leaving would ease asset price inflation relative to
| wages, especially housing which has been a crisis here for a
| while.
| sbelskie wrote:
| The decrease in net migration has everything to do with COVID
| + and embarrassing inability to process green card and other
| immigration related backlogs and almost nothing to do with
| there not being enough people willing to migrate here. At
| worst there are tens of millions of people who would migrate
| here; upper estimates are around 750 million, though that is
| only based on stated intention AFAIK and the real number
| would likely be lower.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I get that we can't open the flood gates.
|
| Actually: why _not_? This is how the US has operated for
| centuries after all, not to mention that treating immigrants as
| a natural disaster ( "flood") is a talking point established by
| the anti-immigrant far-right.
|
| It's disturbing to see how the far right has managed to pervert
| the core of the identity of the US and the core values on which
| the EU was founded. Both the US and the EU are now, first and
| foremost, militarized borders to ward off the poor (that are
| mostly migrating due to the consequences of decades of our very
| own politics).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Never accuse American immigration policy of either intelligence
| or foresight.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Oh, it's plenty intelligent enough.
|
| Farming, construction, landscaping, etc all _need_
| undocumented labor over 'legal' labor, all around the
| country, but especially in farm country. Do you really
| believe that they honestly do not want migrant labor coming
| over the borders?
|
| No payroll taxes/benefits, and undocumented workers are much
| easier to exploit. They are highly unlikely to go to the cops
| about anything criminal that happens on the job, or to OSHA
| about any workplace safety violations, or to the district
| attorney about wage theft, and so on. They fear getting
| deported or tossed in jail. They're also socially isolated by
| various barriers - language, racial prejudice, and so on...so
| word of shady stuff going on is a lot less likely to make its
| way out. Don't want anyone to find out about your toxic waste
| dumping? Have your migrant workers do it.
|
| Also, migrant workers will do a lot of shit jobs that a lot
| of Americans just don't want to do, or at least not at fair
| market value labor rates that the business would be
| "sustainable" at.
|
| Meanwhile, politicians shout about how that migrant worker is
| stealing your job and so on. So they get the $$$ from the
| people who want exploitable labor, and the votes from the
| Pickup Truck Petes who think those "illegals" are "stealin'
| our jobs" and so on.
|
| It's not far off from why education is so poorly funded and
| constantly under various attacks in the US. There's a lot of
| wealthy people who want easily manipulated, uneducated,
| trapped-in-poverty workers to exploit. This is also why
| abortion is under constant attack; access to family planning
| is a huge factor to people escaping poverty.
| ed wrote:
| > Farming, construction, landscaping, etc all need
| undocumented labor over 'legal' labor, all around the
| country, but especially in farm country. Do you really
| believe that they honestly do not want migrant labor coming
| over the borders?
|
| The US issued 200k+ seasonal visas last year for exactly
| this, it's very legal.
|
| https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-
| states/temporary...
| jacobriis wrote:
| Farming doesn't actually depend on illegal migrants. The
| H2A visa program provided for 213,394 temporary workers for
| agriculture in 2020 (93% from Mexico).
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > There's a lot of wealthy people who want easily
| manipulated, uneducated, trapped-in-poverty workers to
| exploit.
|
| I think it's a lot less wealthy people are evil and a lot
| more they just don't want to pay for these things.
|
| Very few people benefit from a poorly educated society.
|
| But the top 1% pay for 38.8% of Federal taxes. It's more
| about not wanting to pay $100k+ in taxes and less about
| being evil and wanting your countrymen to be dumb and poor
| so you can exploit them.
|
| Sure, some wealthy people are literally villains. Most of
| them aren't. Even the ones who vote for said policies. It's
| more greed than evil.
| sharkster711 wrote:
| I moved myself and my job to Canada (L6 engineer at FAANG). It's
| been alright, I wish I could stay but didn't really see a way
| forward in the USA, immigration-wise.
|
| I think folks in the US fail to see that they'll be competing
| with engineers of other nationalities - regardless of if they're
| in the USA or outside, and there's really nothing that Congress
| or anyone else can do to prevent remote jobs (and the trickle-
| down monies) from leaving the country.
| saghm wrote:
| IIRC US citizens are still required to pay income tax to the US
| even when working and living abroad, which definitely stops
| some money from flowing outwards. There's probably a way to
| complete renounce one's US citizenship, but given how it likely
| would be hard to reenter the country to visit family or friends
| once you do that, I think the tradeoff ends up being a lot more
| than people are willing to give up compared to simply moving
| abroad.
| Retric wrote:
| Renouncing US citizenship happens but the the exit tax make
| it makes it less appealing for the wealthy. "The exit tax is
| calculated as a capital gains tax if all assets were sold on
| the day of renunciation."
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I wish states could do this. Instead people can make a
| bunch of gains while living in Oregon (for example), then
| move to Idaho and not owe anything to Oregon. Even if the
| capital gains were accrued while they lived in Oregon and
| benefited from that residency.
| jason0597 wrote:
| If you make less than $112k abroad, you don't have to pay US
| income tax (as long as you declare it to the IRS)
|
| https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/fore...
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| If I recall correctly, US citizens abroad don't have to pay
| US income tax on income earned abroad that has already been
| taxed by the local tax authority, under the Foreign Earned
| Income Exclusion.
| [deleted]
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Immigration in the US is such a joke. I understand and agree that
| the US cannot let everyone in (you would end up with 100 mil
| people per year), but the current system is too screwed up.
|
| If you want to do everything legally, you have to wait/work
| years, and even if you have all the papers in order, too many
| times it's a matter of luck or a government employee disposition
| on that day.
|
| Be an illegal, and you can just walk through the border.
|
| The USA could attract much more talent and better immigrants in
| general, if they just made it all based on qualifications and
| points, like for example Australia.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Why? That used to be the US's exact policy. It's even carved
| into the Statue of Liberty.
| rayiner wrote:
| What makes them "better immigrants?" Until the mid 20th century
| America took the poorest and least educated immigrants and it
| worked out pretty well. It's not clear to me that importing
| other countries' elites is a better tack.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| As a European, who'd love to move to the US, I perfectly agree.
| (Except about the points system, because it's completely
| arbitrary, imho the only qualification should be either an
| advanced degree, or a lined up job offer, subject to annual per
| country cap, because otherwise it could get completely out of
| hand)
|
| Going through the L1B or H1B route is below me (as you're tied
| to an employer with all the issues that entails, not to mention
| the H1B lottery, or the fact that to even qualify for a L1B I'd
| have to already work for the same employer for a year, and then
| hope they are willing to transfer me is absolutely ridiculous).
|
| And basically nobody is going to sponsor me for a EB-2
| outright.
|
| So we're just applying for the DV lottery every year. If we
| win, we'll move to the States. Otherwise we're not going
| through the meat grinder that is the US immigration system.
|
| I'm actually not sure what the latest rules are, but what I
| recall that H1B spouses can't even get a work permit until
| there's an approved I-140 (Green card petition), so H1B route
| is a complete showstopper. How desperate do you have to be to
| go through that?
| qaq wrote:
| Well EU is not exactly the worst place in the world...
| sgjohnson wrote:
| My point exactly. The US is completely incapable of
| competing for non-top-level talent from the EU.
|
| Very few Europeans in their right mind would consider going
| through the meat grinder that the US immigration system is,
| not least of which is the bad rep the US gets for not
| having a single payer healthcare system (not that it should
| have one, it's just that Europeans also have to justify
| giving that up)
|
| Personally, I love the United States. But the US basically
| can't compete for me as an employee, because I'm going to
| take the offer that makes the most rational sense, which,
| with as things stand, is extremely unlikely to come from an
| employer in the US.
| Swizec wrote:
| You can sponsor your own EB-2. I did.
|
| Takes some effort, lots of time, and a smol pile of money for
| lawyers.
|
| I wrote a pretty long article about how I managed to pull
| this off, if you're interested. https://swizec.com/blog/how-
| i-used-indie-hacking-to-sponsor-...
| markdown wrote:
| > Be an illegal, and you can just walk through the border.
|
| This comparison makes no sense. The "legal" waiting years to
| get citizenship is still far, far ahead of an illegal who just
| walking across the border, yet you've presented this as if the
| illegal is somehow being treated better than the legal.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Kinda fucked go to only steal away the best and brightest from
| poorer nations though, no? It's bad enough that every genius
| South America produces immigrates to America at the first
| opportunity. Seems less fucked if we take a broader swath of
| immigrants than just the geniuses.
| [deleted]
| screye wrote:
| I am going to address the elephant in the room.
|
| "[1.] Can a country train mediocre domestic performers to the
| productivity of the top 1% of other nations, while staying
| competitive?"
|
| or
|
| "[1a.] Can America's 25th percentile out-compete the 1 percentile
| of other countries"?
|
| or
|
| "Nurture, but to what extent?"
|
| It is pointless to have numerous discussions go around in
| circles, while no one is willing to address the awkward musical
| chair that stays empty. If [1.] is true, then there is a strong
| case towards reducing immigration. If not, then immigration is
| the only way a country can maintain a developmental advantage.
|
| _______
|
| I understand that this kind of question can quickly head towards
| Eugenics if the discussion isn't careful or in immense good
| faith. However, it must be glaringly obvious to every smart
| person that careful inquiry around question [1.] is central to
| actually figuring out a solution that moves past propaganda that
| ideological goals.
|
| While I am digging myself into a hole, I am going to state a few
| more such questions:
|
| [2.] If the pareto principle is true, then is there a hard
| _capability_ threshold past which immigrants should be avoided ?
|
| [3.] If economic immigrants are a net drain, then what level of
| additional tax on immigrants makes them a positive addition to
| the system?
|
| [4.] Can someone please explain these graphs to me ?
| [g1][g2][g3][g4] . Isn't this a contradiction ?
|
| [5.] What percent of a representative human population can 'learn
| to code' at a professional level? _______
|
| To be very clear, I do not equate capability or intelligence to
| IQ or any one-dimensional SAT-like test. I will leave it upto the
| reader to interpret 'general intelligence / capability / economic
| productivity/ human value' as they see fit.
|
| Also, this is a purely economic perspective towards immigration.
| I am keeping morals/need/ideology for another time.
|
| _______
|
| [g1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/ft_20...
|
| [g2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/199958/number-of-
| green-c...
|
| [g3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200061/number-of-
| refugee...
|
| [g4]
| https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/source_c...
| yboris wrote:
| One of the most important ideas out there: _Open Borders_
|
| I think it's the only sensible policy if you are egalitarian and
| cosmopolitan.
|
| https://openborders.info/
| jleyank wrote:
| Today,I would think the us isn't either one of these...
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