| ▲ | zaptheimpaler 2 hours ago |
| This is probably for the best in the long term. They've added enough friction, insanity and disdain for foreigners that no sane person will immigrate and we can start to build stronger industries and trade relationships outside the US. |
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| ▲ | hermannj314 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| From what I could understand from the 6-page memorandum, (my paraphrase) "the law allows us to be nice and convenient, but doesn't require us to be nice and convenient, so we decided to make things hard and cruel going forward" The current administration is sending a pretty clear message to immigrants. |
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| ▲ | epistasis 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How is this good in any way? How could this ever help to build stronger industries or trade relationships? If somebody hands you a shit sandwich you don't need to pretend it tastes good. |
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| ▲ | zaptheimpaler 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It will help would-be immigrants understand that the US does not want them and that it would be a mistake to invest time and energy trying to build a future in a country that hates them and can nuke their lives at the drop of a hat. It will help other countries that are not the US retain their talent and build up their own industries. A greater diversity in distribution of talent and industry across the world is a more resilient system. | | |
| ▲ | digitaltrees 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s not a more resilient system. It creates geographic isolation and friction. It dilutes the talent pool instead of concentrating it which limits cross pollination. It also reduces specialization that drives efficiency and lets each country focus on what it does best and then trade with others. | |
| ▲ | goodluckchuck 16 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think that’s a bit dramatic saying the US hates them, but yes to your other point. The US is taking the position that it has more to gain from having strong and prosperous trading partners than it does from exploiting those nations and draining them of talent. |
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| ▲ | drivingmenuts 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It could be good for anyone country that's not the US (despite our hubris, we're not actually the center of the universe). But for the US, a country built on immigrants ands immigration, probably not so much. We fucked around, we found out. Well, we're continuing to find out. We haven't exactly scraped rocked bottom yet. | |
| ▲ | hiddencost 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think the parent is saying it's good because immigrants will go elsewhere and the US will continue to decline. Which will be good for humanity. | |
| ▲ | BrokenCogs an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think it's sarcasm |
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| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? These countries absolutely suffer from the brain drain. |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | There's a non-zero chance that one of these days someone is going to draw the same conclusion about you and ship you and your family back to Bangladesh, regardless of how neat of a row your ducks are in now. | |
| ▲ | zaptheimpaler 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes exactly. One country sucking up all the best talent is not good for the world, its a single point of failure. | | |
| ▲ | airstrike an hour ago | parent [-] | | That's not really how it works. Immigrants also benefit from coming to the US. Skilled labor immigration is great for everyone involved, and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain. But it's not zero-sum. The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner an hour ago | parent [-] | | > and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain. That's a pretty big qualifier! > The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people. | | |
| ▲ | airstrike an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Except you can't create Google in India. Google isn't minted by divine inspiration hitting a couple of smart guys in a garage. It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India. It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum. No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I doubt its better for India to have Indians making Google richer than to have them staying in India to make something even a fraction of the size of Google in India. How is India going to create that ecosystem if all the smart people leave? | | |
| ▲ | airstrike 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's better to not frame this in terms of a specific country, lest it come across as if we're picking on India specifically. Developing countries have structural reasons for why they are underdeveloped. This is a very complicated topic, and one for which there is no shortage of academic interest. I suggest starting from William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest for Growth". I quote here from the book review MIT Press: > What is necessary for growth is that government incentives induce investment in collective goods like education, health, and the rule of law |
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| ▲ | digitaltrees 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is the correct answer. Concentration of talent creates cross pollination and collaborative learning. The innovation is then exported. |
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| ▲ | digitaltrees 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The innovations immigrants created in the UK during the Industrial Revolution made everyone wealthier. The innovations made by
Immigrants in in Silicon Valley have made the world more wealthy. And it was in part due to the concentrated talent pool that made it possible. |
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| ▲ | gyomu an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In many cases a talented/smart person will bring little to zero value to a country with ossified institutions, but huge value to one with the right systems in place to build value. | |
| ▲ | cheinic6493 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? An Indian’s greatest accomplishment in life is leaving India. | |
| ▲ | hibikir an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The way it works is that the origin country is worse off when people leave, but in general immigrants are much better off for moving, and it's not even close. A big argument for letting people emigrate is that they owe no real debt to the county where they are born, or the city, or anything like that. They aren't selfs owned by a nobleman. If moving increases their personal lot, why should we stop them? | | |
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