| ▲ | guywithahat 4 days ago |
| Not only that, but you'd have to do a study to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the US, and that an increased supply of workers didn't drag down salaries, either short or long-term. Immigration helps the countries top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country. |
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| ▲ | sgc 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| There used to be a much stronger push for education in the US. Perhaps if companies could not "just hire from overseas" or "just outsource" there would be a longer term growth strategy that would focus more on the education of the US population (not just training for this or that job). It did seem in the past that there was much more of an all-hands-on-deck attitude towards education throughout US corporate activities, more broadly focused on the general fields the various companies valued the most. I suspect this fall off is very real, but don't actually know if that is just my impression or if there is a concrete effect from modern economic structures. It's an important enough question it should definitely be studied and taken into account in policy. However I can't agree with your conclusion that "Immigration helps the countries [sic] top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country". That requires meta studies that I have never seen to prove it is so. I could cautiously accept that "some types of immigration rarely help corresponding sections of the local population" much more than such a blanket judgement. Overall, it is just not true that economics is zero sum. It doesn't have to be. An entire people can in fact flourish. |
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| ▲ | typewithrhythm 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's so hard to study; one of the key things you loose in an environment where you bring in bulk migrants is a cultural expectation to interact with juniors that are part of your community. It's not just a supply and demand equation; it's a fundamentally different environment that changes the social payoff for mentoring, networking, and building a reputation. Ultimately despite all the propaganda trying to convince us that diversity is inherently beneficial, we are trading economic benefits for social costs. So we need to carefully restrict migration to make sure the economic benefits are actually there. | | |
| ▲ | infinite8s 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The economic benefits are clear - what social costs are you taking about? | | |
| ▲ | typewithrhythm 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The economic benefits are really not clear; at least not without caveats and clear conditions for the advanced skills that make a migrant beneficial. This is if you believe that lower wages for high skill work is not an issue. However high migration rates lower social trust, this is well studied. If you take a smaller example, hiring internationally vs domestically. If you have to go domestic then you might have to settle for a less ideal qualification, requiring more training. This is repeated everywhere, so companies that train better are more likely to succeed. Leading to conditions that encourage upskilling for locals overall. Importing people short circuits that idea. |
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| ▲ | diffrinse 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Perhaps if companies could not "just hire from overseas" or "just outsource" there would be a longer term growth strategy that would focus more on the education of the US population (not just training for this or that job). Except the Heritage Foundation, er, I mean, Trump Administration controls all 3 branches of government and has all the freedom in the world to power a resuscitation of public education in America, except they're not interested in that at all; quite the opposite, they want to further fragment education baselines and make secondary education less desirable. | | |
| ▲ | sgc 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes of course. I was trying to remain tangential to the current administration and stay on the level of the underlying problem they seem to intuit related to this one, very specific policy decision (hard to tell with them, that's for sure). Most everything they do deserves condemnation, so there would be little to talk about otherwise. |
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| ▲ | Johnny555 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't think you have to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the USA (or rather, it couldn't have been trained into USA workers), but that the talent wasn't trained in the USA so bringing in an outside worker is the only way to hire for the position. You can't really expect a company hiring PhD's in a niche field to show that they couldn't have spent 7 years training an American for the work. |
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| ▲ | bluefirebrand 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > You can't really expect a company hiring PhD's in a niche field to show that they couldn't have spent 7 years training an American for the work I don't believe for even an instant that there is a significant amount of immigration happening to bring in people who are that specialized Some, maybe. But not the vast majority of it | | |
| ▲ | Johnny555 3 days ago | parent [-] | | My former employer exclusively brought in that kind of talent. But it was so hard to get the visas (and so much uncertainty in whether or not they'd be able to secure a visa for any particular worker) that they opened up a European and Canadian offices. |
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| ▲ | dinkumthinkum 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's so funny. You realize there is already an O-1 visa, right? I hate to be a bearer of bad news but the vast, vast majority of H-1Bs are not PhD holders for which no suitable American PhD exists. If you go out into to the working world for awhile, you'll see that. |
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| ▲ | kalkin 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Immigration helps the countries top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country. What study does one "have to do" to support _this_ claim? |
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| ▲ | esalman 3 days ago | parent [-] | | There's plenty to deny this claim. Immigrants make up 14% of the population but make up over 20% of entrepreneurs. 44% of fortune 500 company founders were either born outside US or to immigrant parents in the US. | | |
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| ▲ | rcpt 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the US The admin has been cutting billions in funding to universities which makes this argument easier. Need an expert in arithmetic combinatorics? Well Terry Tao lost his grants so now you've got to look elsewhere. |
