But then they gave up a tax paying job and thus the net effect is zero.
Looking holistically the person leaving the US (or lets say 100 people to make it easier to see the point) means 1 to 30 less startups and so maybe an entire company or more not being started. That is less revenue for US.
What most people from the "they steal our jobs" mentality (not saying that is you, but this a seperate point) don't get is productive people create jobs by being a customer of many businesses.
>The facts show that just like the amount of labor is not fixed, neither is the size of the economy (fixed pie fallacy) and as more work is done, the economy grows
Your reply is a glib thought-terminating cliche strawman that doesn't address their point at all. Interesting!
Those theories are based mainly on the effect of Cuban immigration in Miami, however they lack a control so you can't really conclude anything.
Besides, yeah, if you hire people who will work for any salary, the amount of jobs will increase, but salaries will decrease, for locals as well. After some time, locals will flee sectors where the migrant workers are brought in, creating further self-inflicted "labor shortages"...requiring more migrants!
The main winners are capital owners, who, thanks to the migrant workers, can now acquire a larger part of the added value generated by workers.
But a jobs worth of GDP was lost due to the lost consumption. Harder to measure for 1 person but imagine 100k people suddenly left a city. That would be felt somewhere. Dry cleaners, cafe, supermarkets etc.
This might be less true if there is resource starvation but we have transport and imports and exports. You can accomodate more people and feed them.
There are not enough qualified people in any particular country for all the possible new technologies that could be deployed. You're not likely to hire your plumber to program a webapp.
That doesn't mean your plumber isn't qualified—just that people looking for webapps want to hire workers who know how to make them.
So many computer science grads can't find work many have left the field. I don't think we will run out of workers.
There is the other side plenty of workers successful at programming language could be trained to fill any gap. That's what happened in the 50s and 60s..
Companies struggle to hire at a rate they want to pay. They don't struggle to hire at a market rate pay or more. Funny how that works.
PS The number of roles that there aren't qualified Americans for could be counted on one hand. This has always been about reducing salaries, not shortages.
it's a companies not wanting to spend any amount of time and money training an employee and wanting 100% utilization the second the employment starts issue.
Those seem like bold assumptions about % of startups created by green card holders?
I feel like the better argument is that the greencard holder was the best candidate and thus will be more productive in the role. It is just efficient resource allocation. That, even without new companies, will drive profit/expansion/more jobs
At a certain point, there aren't enough Americans for these jobs. So the choice is to let other nations absorb these skilled laborers, or simply hire the best people.
It's funny how we forget about meritocracy as soon as the median American is threatened.
> At a certain point, there aren't enough Americans for these jobs
Is that really true? I’m sure in some fields where you need rare experts I believe it. For the average engineer who is just another cog in the wheel of big corp, I highly doubt it.
> Is that really true? I’m sure in some fields where you need rare experts I believe it. For the average engineer who is just another cog in the wheel of big corp, I highly doubt it.
Have you ever hired someone before? Did you decide to take the best person you found or did you pick an American?
> Have you ever hired someone before? Did you decide to take the best person you found or did you pick an American?
Many times. Sometimes we don’t offer sponsorships so we hired who didn’t need one. Other times not. During the interview process where they’re from isn’t the matter at hand. Either way, there’s no shortage of good candidates - solely American / GC or not.
Though let’s be honest - there is a question behind the question, isn’t there? Why don’t you just ask that instead?
That doesn’t directly prove that there aren’t enough Americans who can do the job. Sometimes yeah, the non American is better like in photolithography.
Generally though, the foreign candidate is not so much better that hiring an American would have lowered the bar.
Sometimes it also comes down to leveling - I’ve had to down level people due to budget concerns. Americans can hold out for that better job, but the other cannot so companies take advantage of that.
My point is that it’s not a skill issue, it’s a wage + location issue. Foreigners will find that their wage is better than what they can earn at home, so they can undercut that citizens who’s held out for a better opportunity.
With AI taking a percentage of jobs there will be enough people to fill those positions and more. Why bring in workers when productivity is taking away positions.
> With AI taking a percentage of jobs there will be enough people to fill those positions and more. Why bring in workers when productivity is taking away positions.
>It's funny how we forget about meritocracy as soon as the median American is threatened.
What meritocracy? This is a myth pushed to justify a kind of "just world" interpretation of our social ills. Nepotism is increasing, social mobility decreasing. To believe in meritocracy in the face of this is to deny reality.
I can already on the ground see the effect of the Trump policies. So many tech jobs that would have been in the US are being lost. And companies are learning how to be effective with overseas teams.
"Immigrants doing a very large portion of tech work can't be just because they get paid less"
It is solely about that. Remember, immigrants didn't really play a role in the US tech industry for half of its existence and didn't play a major role until a decade ago. This is despite the fact that US colleges openly and actively discriminate against US citizens for grad school spots for 2 or 3 decades now.
> This is despite the fact that US colleges openly and actively discriminate against US citizens for grad school spots for 2 or 3 decades now.
Can you provide a citation for this specific claim? I used to do admissions to a grad program in the US, and we ended up admitting mostly foreign students soley because very few US citizens actually applied (probably only 10% of apps). Whether that's because they were not qualified or couldn't afford it I do not know. But it's not because they were openly and actively discriminated against.
Not just that, universities (especially smaller research universities) love having grad students whose research is paid for. China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil (less so now than in the past), Qatar, and others have all had programs for years where they paid the tuition and research costs of students at universities. Why would the university not pick that over a local kid who the university has to pay for out of their own coffers?
> Not just that, universities (especially smaller research universities) love having grad students whose research is paid for.
> Why would the university not pick that over a local kid who the university has to pay for out of their own coffers?
Universities don't pay for research - and departments usually don't pay for research either.
At the margin, a professor will prefer someone who has her own funding, but that person also needs to be competent, so I doubt the national schemes you are citing have made an impact on who gets into graduate school.
I've been involved in .. applied CS for 40 years, and the industry has been filled with people of a wide variety of backgrounds for that entire time. Even during the time I worked for the US DOD many of the people I worked were international.
Looking holistically the person leaving the US (or lets say 100 people to make it easier to see the point) means 1 to 30 less startups and so maybe an entire company or more not being started. That is less revenue for US.
What most people from the "they steal our jobs" mentality (not saying that is you, but this a seperate point) don't get is productive people create jobs by being a customer of many businesses.