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by cherryteastain 656 days ago
> Recent immigrants tend to earn less than U.S.-born workers...because they are working without permission

This is the real problem. The Indian PhD grad on a H1B won't create the kinds of problems in the article. Media loves to put H1B/L1/EB1/EB2 holders with random people walking in via Mexico and doing odd jobs for cash in hand in the same category when their economic impact could not be more different.

1 comments

Their economic impact is to deprive opportunities from Americans just like the people walking in from Mexico.

There is a strong equivalency there.

More people graduated in computer science in the United States in the last few years than ever before and they can't find jobs.

Doesn't it beg the question...if they're so good for the economy in America why aren't they good for the economy in their own country?

> deprive opportunities

Jury is out on this one. Japan has hardly any immigration yet their wages stagnated. Canada has a ton of immigration and their wages are also stagnant. Europe is somewhere between Japan and Canada, with also stagnant wages. Nobody disputes wages are stagnant, but the degree to which skilled immigration suppresses wages is an area where economists are unsure or even tilting towards a 'no' answer.

> if they're so good for the economy in America why aren't they good for the economy in their own country

There are so many jobs that are available only in industrialized countries. You won't find semiconductor fabs or airplane factories in undeveloped countries.

> wages stagnated

I don't really think wages are a proxy for opportunity as central banks can make currency worthless. There's computer science graduates in America who would take a job in their field for pittances just to be working in their field.

> There are so many jobs that are available only in industrialized countries

Well start! Half the startups in the 90s Americans built out of their garage.

A person in the US founding a startup has access and exposure to the deepest capital markets in the world, the largest domestic market in the world, a stable legal and political environment, and a phenomenal talent pool. A person doing the same in e.g. Vietnam has access to almost 0 VC funding, tiny domestic market, his efforts are hindered by a capricious and restrictive legal and political environment and a very low skilled talent pool. Someone with the same competency as say Bill Gates has an infinitely lower chance of making it big.

People do not risk their lives and leave their families behind because they really love going to Cheesecake Factory everday in the US, it's because opportunities often flat out do not exist in their country for what they want to do.

Even among successful businesses founded in (currently or formerly) less industrialized countries, you will see that a huge proportion are actually state owned or backed (e.g. TSMC, Samsung)

Opportunities didn't exist in America until Americans made them exist.

Apple was founded in a garage.

Time for people in other countries to do the same for their own country.

A good product or a good idea will surface.

Your excuses fall on deaf ears.

America had been a pristine land of opportunity long before the first American was born. Americans didn't make America, America made Americans.

Apple was founded after WWII (it would not exist today without a WWII victory).

Time for people in other countries to do the same what? War? More natives killing?

A good product or a good idea will surface tomorrow eventually.

But men being men will go where the money/food is today, no excuses needed. In fact no killing of natives needed either, so what's holding you back really?

...and yet America was built by immigrants who couldn't make opportunities at home.
Before the pandemic, tech companies were not as async.

The pandemic proved that operations can continue in a semi-async manner.

Now in the post-2023 market, companies have begun to make that shift to global hiring now that async is normalized.

Outside North America, the salary for the top 15-20% of SWEs is roughly comparable to each other in every country so it makes it easier to scale out teams and speed up product and feature delivery, especially now that American trained engineers on visas were the first to be let go during the 2023-24 layoffs, and for the past decade, CS majors from the top universities in China (Project 985 programs) and India (INIs) have largely stopped moving abroad except for graduate programs.

I warned this would happened in the start of the pandemic, and have kept saying it since.