
Obama opposes House passage of H.R. 6429 - prostoalex
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57556074-38/obama-opposes-silicon-valley-firms-on-immigration-reform/
======
nhashem
From the administration's response:

"As a part of immigration reform, the Administration strongly supports
legislation to attract and retain foreign students who graduate with advanced
STEM degrees, to establish a start-up visa for foreign-born entrepreneurs to
start businesses and create jobs, and to reform the employment-based
immigration system to better meet the needs of the U.S. economy. However, the
Administration does not support narrowly tailored proposals that do not meet
the President's long-term objectives with respect to comprehensive immigration
reform."

Essentially this bill "converts" the 55,000 "diversity visas" currently
available into "STEM visas."

It looks like this bill originated from the Republican party, so I'm wondering
why they didn't just write a bill that allocated additional STEM visas without
"cannibalizing" the diversity visas.

~~~
mynameishere
_without "cannibalizing" the diversity visas._

Well, the diversity visas were the most brutal possible attack on sanity ever
passed by a legislature. "Oh, you came from XYZ wretched backwater, here's
your VISA...on the basis of your wretchedness." Sad, sad, sad, to live in such
dismal times.

~~~
scarmig
It is, of course, totally insane to let people voluntarily choose to work here
and make voluntary economic transactions with other adults who voluntarily
want to pay them money to provide goods and services for Americans to
voluntarily purchase.

~~~
celer
Well, yes, when you are making the decision based on someone being from a poor
country. There are better measures on which visas could be distributed. I
strongly support increasing the number of total visas, but that is separate.

~~~
stfp
> Well, yes, when you are making the decision based on someone being from a
> poor country.

But that's not the case.

------
seldo
As a recent immigrant myself -- I got my green card last week, after a 5-year
application process, and I'm one of the lucky ones -- I'm a huge fan of
immigration reform. However, this is not the bill to do it. The 55,000
diversity visas are an essential part of how immigration should work: there
should be more of them, not less. While we need more STEM educated immigrants,
it should not be at the expense of other visa types.

~~~
GuiA
I'm unfamiliar with diversity visas- who are they for, and what "good" are
they supposed to provide?

~~~
seldo
They are Visas available to anybody, for any reason, from any country. They
are good because immigration is good.

But let me explain a bit further.

Most American visas are related to a specific job, or a family connection, or
education. You can't just turn up and stay -- you have to have a reason, and a
ton of documentation. But that's not how immigration has, historically,
worked: the original American colonists and those that followed them through
the 1700s and 1800s didn't arrive knowing where they'd live and what job
they'd have. They arrived hoping to make a better life for their children,
with no clear plan of how. That's what these visas are for.

The situation is complicated slightly further because these are restricted to
low-immigration-rate countries. Basically, there are a billion Indians and
more than a billion Chinese: even a very small percentage of them applying for
a visa lottery would mean that 99% of visas went to people from those
countries. Therefore, to get immigrants from a broader range of countries,
visas for people from countries that send a lot of applications every year are
handled separately, under their own quotas. The remaining countries are all
lumped together and given a group quota: these are the "diversity" visas.

If you would like a more fundamental answer to why immigration is good, I'm
happy to oblige, just ask :-)

~~~
sthatipamala
Could you tell me why you claim immigration is fundamentally good? Interested
in hearing more.

~~~
seldo
Fundamentally, immigration is a market response. Demand for labor inside of a
country exceeds supply -- or, more accurately, the demand for labor in the
receiving country exceeds the demand in the sending country.

This trade in labor is good for all the same reasons that any other trade is
good: the commodity (labor) goes for the best price to the supplier to those
who will most benefit from it, as indicated by their being willing to pay the
most. Both parties benefit, it's a clear win-win, no problem. Right?

It gets a little more complicated in the case of immigration, for a bunch of
reasons. Firstly: are the suppliers and sellers in this transaction nations,
or individuals? You can look at it both ways:

If the parties in the trade are nations, then the benefit is rather lopsided
to the receiving country: they get a new, productive worker, and any money
they give that worker is mostly spent inside the receiving country, boosting
that economy further. The sending country gets nothing -- even though it spent
money educating that worker, providing them with healthcare, etc.. In
practice, however, many immigrants send money back to family in their home
country, a substantial flow of money known as remittances.

If the parties in the trade are individuals, the win-win nature is also
obvious: the company gets a worker that they would otherwise have been unable
to afford, the worker gets a better-paying job than they would have got in
their home country.

But there's a third way of looking at it, and this is where things get tricky.

I could also have phrased the above as "for cheaper than a local worker". In
practice, that's not usually how it works. Hiring an immigrant is generally
more expensive and inconvenient than a native -- if a company could find a
native worker to do the same work for the same price, they would rationally do
so. However, the ability to hire immigrant workers at that price _does_
prevent the company from raising the price it's willing to pay.

More simply: while the company wins, and the immigrant wins, a third party
worker in the receiving country has, in one sense, lost: they could have got
the job if they were willing to work for the same price as the immigrant, but
not if they wanted more.

Immigration holds down labor prices, and this is where the trouble starts,
because the connection between lower labor prices and greater prosperity for
all is indirect and poorly understood.

When labor is cheaper, the goods those workers make can be sold for less (and,
in a competitive market, will be). This means anybody buying those products is
directly better off -- immigration has saved them money. They will then take
that money and spend it on other things, and those sellers will spend it again
on yet more things, until eventually somebody gets around to buying the goods
being made by the third-party worker. He sells more of those goods, and so
makes more money than before.

So any individual third-party worker is worse off because of immigration --
instead, everybody in the country shares a little bit of the benefit, and the
total value created is greater than if the immigrant had never arrived,
because there are two workers instead of one.

Resistance to immigration is, fundamentally, an acknowledgement of the selfish
impulse to be personally better off, rather than making the whole nation
richer. That makes it a big good economically, and a tough sell politically.

~~~
Evbn
If immigrants benefit from social insurance, the whole equation falls apart.
But you can't allow immigration and then refuse social services, so.....

~~~
seldo
Immigrants are in no way entitled to social services. If an immigrant on a
work visa loses their job, they are required to leave the country within 10
days. However, immigrants on visas still pay full taxes. So actually,
immigrants make social services cheaper to provide.

Any other general goods -- roads, fire services, etc. -- are paid for by
taxes, and immigrants pay all the same taxes as citizens.

~~~
pandaman
There are no immigrants on work visas. Illegal immigrants, by definition,
don't have any visas and legal immigrants, the topic of the discussion, have
an immigration visa which grants a lawful permanent resident status upon
entering the country.

Diversity visa immigrants are definitely entitled to all the support and
benefits. They are also not required to work to keep their status. I have not
seen the DV statistics so I would be very happy if somebody corrected me here,
but I imagine the unemployment among a bunch of random people who moved to a
different country should be pretty high: it should be pretty hard to find a
job in a different country without special skills. Often without even basic
language skills.

~~~
kalleboo
> I imagine the unemployment among a bunch of random people who moved to a
> different country should be pretty high

They're not random people though. It's a selection of people who have the
drive and willingness to uproot and move to another country. I'd expect
unemployment to be lower.

Now if you were talking about refugees (an actual random sample of people who
don't have a reason for moving), I'd agree.

~~~
pandaman
Well, we can disagree with each other all we want. Without the actual
statistics this means nothing. I could not find the statistics for the US,
there is one for Canada though
[http://www.clbc.ca/files/reports/fitting_in/transition_penal...](http://www.clbc.ca/files/reports/fitting_in/transition_penalty_e-
clbc.pdf) which seems to support my point of view. But as I said, I'd be happy
if somebody corrected me with numbers.

------
sharkweek
The White House response is worth a quick read (PDF ---
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislativ...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saphr6429r_20121128.pdf)).

I spent the majority of my undergrad studying immigration policy, and I can
sympathize with the WH's point that chipping away at immigration reform will
only complicate broader reforms that eventually need to happen. The bill as
written sounds a little unfair as it removes thousands of diversity visas and
allows the educated a quick jump to the front of the line.

I understand economically why this would be desirable, but it isn't true
reform.

------
ajays
On the other hand: does the glut of tech workers drive down wages? If you
strictly look at it from a supply/demand angle, one could argue that if these
companies wanted more techies, they could just pay more. Being able to
increase supply at will (i.e. import techies) will naturally drive down prices
(i.e. wages).

The same argument is made about illegal immigration: these immigrants fill
low-end jobs that don't pay well; but their availability ensures that these
jobs will never pay well.

Please don't get me wrong: I'm not opposed to immigration or this bill.I'm
just asking about the impact; I'm not taking sides, so no flames please.

~~~
wtvanhest
I can't imagine why US engineers would support a bill like this from a benefit
analysis perspective. It should be obvious that if you add engineers, prices
will go down. I can completely understand supporting it for moral reasons
however.

~~~
prostoalex
1) It's not a whole lot different than H1-B and those haven't led to wage
collapse.

2) Engineers who come into the US tend to start an insignificant number of new
businesses, which, in turn, employ other engineers.

3) Countries that severely limit work visas have not turned into meccas of
software development.

4) Companies will only increase pay up to a certain ceiling. At some point
either the product economics don't make sense, or finding a dedicated
development team in Romania/Poland/Ukraine is worth it even with communication
overhead.

------
psychotik
As a legal immigrant who has been in the country for 12 years and still
waiting for a green card, I'm willing to accept that the administration will
reject this bill if and only if it makes good on its promise for comprehensive
reform. I also oppose the idea of cannibalizing the diversity visas - that
seems to go against the spirit of the foundation of America's origins.

------
001sky
_One reason it's controversial among Democrats is that the bill would
eliminate the 55,000 diversity visas available to citizens of countries with
low immigration rates to the United States._

\-- Sticking point.

------
temphn
What is the argument for 55000 random visas at a time when the US economy is
doing very poorly? Is this a game? US citizenship clearly has market value.
Billions of dollars could be raised by turning these into entrepreneur visas
or charging per visa (it's not like the US doesn't already do this, but the
price is way too low).

If we're taxing current citizens, and we have 50% exit taxes, why not entry
taxes? When demand exceeds supply increase the price.

~~~
onetwothreefour
Thanks for weighing in with your uninformed opinion on something while also
invoking the age old "when the US economy is doing very poorly" straw man
which has nothing to do with the DV lottery.

Those DV lottery winners pay US taxes while having no citizenship rights, so
you have literally no idea what you're talking about.

~~~
andrewpi
I believe DV winners have citizenship rights after residing in the US for 5
years.

------
deepGem
I don't understand what's really wrong in diverting 55,000 visas from a
random, unplanned allocation scheme (diversity) to a more metrics driven
allocation scheme (education). How is this not 'true reform'?

~~~
pyre
Is there a reason that we need to reallocate current visas? Why not just
create 55K new STEM visas?

~~~
wmil
The only requirement for a diversity visa is a high school equivalent.
Considering how poor the job market is for HS only graduates, limiting visas
to people with marketable skills makes a lot of sense.

~~~
eaurouge
Marketability should not be the only metric for valuing skills. How do you
select the immigrant whose child will be the next Michael Phelps, or the next
Einstein, or the next Pele?

~~~
Evbn
You select marketable immigrants with the resources to invest in education and
training, like the people you named's parents.

~~~
rhizome
Pele grew up poor, Einstein's dad was a salesman, and Michael Phelps' parents
are a retired cop and a principal, none of which would be eligible under the
kinds of criteria being discussed here.

------
eaurouge
The diversity lottery is actually good immigration policy. Each year you take
a sample of average or above average (applicants must have a high school
education and no criminal history, and must pass some health tests as well;
they must also show they will not be a burden to society once they get in)
from countries around the world with historically low immigration rates to
your country.

Essentially these are candidates that have self-selected as being willing to
start anew in a new country, working hard to improve their lives in the
process. In return, your culture is enriched and your economy is boosted by a
fresh set of ambitious, hard-working 1st-generation immigrants. Some of these
immigrants may go on to become engineers, teachers, doctors, cab drivers,
entrepreneurs, nurses etc. But they won't drain your social safety net, they
will contribute to it. They're here to work, to make up for lost time, and to
make a better future for their offspring. As immigration policies go, I think
this is one of the better ones.

------
enraged_camel
I think what is more important is that since this administration took over,
rejection rates for skilled visa applications have skyrocketed.

[http://www.indianexpress.com/news/obama-warned-
over-h1b-visa...](http://www.indianexpress.com/news/obama-warned-
over-h1b-visa-denials/913370)

As someone who has had to respond to two RFEs so far - once for my initial H1B
application and once for my green card application, I get the feeling that I
am not wanted in this country. I have seriously contemplated moving back
overseas more than once.

------
tymathews
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Pres. Obama deported more immigrants
his first term than Bush.

------
zem
> White House announcement before congressional vote on STEM Jobs Act puts
> president in opposition to many of the Silicon Valley firms and executives
> who bankrolled his re-election campaign.

it's sad that this was the point cnet chose to highlight as the subheading.
bankrolling a politician's campaign should not create in him a sense of
obligation.

------
dmk23
I hope all the Obama supporters here still feel good about helping re-elect
the man.

Rest assured he is still going to support amnesty for unskilled illegals who
are more likely to vote Democrat for years to come.

EDIT: It is pretty funny how the downvoters fail to acknowledge the basic
facts about the politics of the issue and instead fall for the
Administration's excuses and rush to condemn "conspiracy theories". There are
no theories here, just basic facts.

~~~
hack_edu
Chill out. This has nothing to do with skilled/unskilled, illegal/legal. Its
about reform for all of immigration policy, not just those who can already
make a living for themselves anywhere. Plus, and I hate to say it, but there's
very clearly much greater need (not demand, need) for the sorts of jobs
'unskilled illegals' end up doing than the high-skill (read: class) jobs that
this piece of legislation addresses.

And stop this immigrants-voting-schtick conspiracy theory. The impact their
inclusion would make would doubtly even be within the margin of error. People
have much better things to do.

~~~
ekm2
Right,the american economy is in danger of tanking if the country does not
hire more janitors.Science and Engineering phds can look after themselves
elsewhere,Canada maybe?

~~~
commandar
California's -- in particular -- argicultural economy is highly reliant on
unskilled, migrant workers. Producing food for people to eat is somewhat
important.

~~~
pandaman
Wisconsin produces half as much food as California[1] with 50 times fewer
illegal immigrants[2]. I won't vouch for that site's data but having lived in
both states I don't see any reason to distrust these particular numbers.

[1][http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ind_foo_man_tot_val_of_shi-...](http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ind_foo_man_tot_val_of_shi-
food-manufacturing-total-value-shipments)
[2][http://www.statemaster.com/graph/peo_est_num_of_ill_imm-
peop...](http://www.statemaster.com/graph/peo_est_num_of_ill_imm-people-
estimated-number-illegal-immigrants)

~~~
commandar
This is a complete WAG, but if I were to take a stab in the dark, I suspect
the makeup of Wisconsin's agriculture industry is rather different than
California's.

It looks like Wisconsin's industry is geared largely toward livestock and
dairy, with fruit and vegetable crops largely composed of things like
cranberries, corn, and potatoes:

<http://www.aae.wisc.edu/pubs/status/docs/status2012.pdf>

California, on the other hand, apparently produces "nearly half of US-grown
fruits, nuts and vegetables."

<http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/>

It's my understanding that migrant workers in CA are largely employed picking
fruits, vegetables, etc.

Again, I'm by no means speaking authoritatively here, but there's certainly
more to this than simply comparing the dollar-value of each state's combined
agricultural output.

~~~
pandaman
There is no doubt the makeup of Wisconsin's agriculture industry is different.
The climate alone is very different between these two states, not counting
other things like availability of irrigated land, energy, transportation etc.

Edit: I was just trying to make a point that being in the country illegally
does not seem like a necessary condition of food production and WI is a fine
example of it. I also have no doubt that if WI had more illegal immigrants
available they could be employed in the agriculture just as much as they are
in CA. It just happens the closest border to WI is with Canada and Canadians
don't seem to be very enthusiastic about working illegally in the America's
Dairyland.

~~~
commandar
Well, part of what I was getting at is that it appears, from my layman's point
of view, that WI's agriculture business is geared more toward crops that are
easily industrialized and would require fewer workers in general.

e.g., a single worker operating a piece of machinery can harvest hundreds of
acres of corn. A tomato, on the other hand, has to be hand-picked so that the
fruit isn't damaged in the process. That requires substantially more workers.

------
marknutter
I'm not sure it was a good idea to oppose this. It's essentially the
republicans saying "We don't want to let any more people in the country, but
of the people we are letting in, we prefer the highly educated". In a time
when countries like China are graduating 50k engineers a year, you'd think
being choosy about who you let into the country would make sense. And I don't
see how signing this hurts the Democrats' long term plan for immigration
reform. I assume that involves bringing more people into the country, so ok,
bring more in later when the economy recovers. Not compromising on this bill
setting a bad precedence for any compromise that may happen in the future.

~~~
commandar
It takes away the Republicans' opportunity to claim they already addressed
immigration reform and that any further action is the President "going too
far."

The Republicans are between a rock and a hard place politically on
immigration. Latinos are the fastest-growing demographic in the country, and
Republican hostility toward immigration reform is starting to cost them in
elections. e.g., Obama pummeled Romney among Latino voters in Florida by an
over 2-to-1 margin. [1]

The Republicans have essentially painted themselves into a corner on the issue
and are in a no-win situation. If they continue to aggressively oppose
immigration reform, it's going to hurt them with an increasingly-important
demographic. If they concede and compromise, Obama and the Democrats get to
claim themselves as the champions of immigration reform, which still hurts the
Republicans, though to a lesser degree.

Obama knows he has major leverage over the Republicans on this issue; it
doesn't make political sense to make concessions they can paint as wins if
it's not the reform he's actually after.

[1] [http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/11/07/latino-voters-in-
the-2...](http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/11/07/latino-voters-in-
the-2012-election/)

~~~
marknutter
Thanks for the insight, I suppose it does sound like he made the right choice
for his party. Interesting.

~~~
commandar
It really makes sense from a negotiation standpoint. It's generally expected
that immigration reform will be a banner issue for Obama this term, and this
bill was likely an attempt by the Republicans to get out ahead of the issue
before more sweeping legislation is introduced.

By refusing to cooperate on this bill, it signals that the White House and the
Senate are unwilling to let the Republicans pick and choose on reform, meaning
that the issue is going to be addressed in the more comprehensive manner that
the Democrats feel is necessary.

------
drpgq
IEEE-USA is for this bill? I always thought they were in the camp that this
drives down tech wages and promotes ageism.

------
antidoh
If they're not going to let foreigners educated in US universities stay, then
they shouldn't let foreigners take up space in universities. It makes no sense
to make the seat available with no possibility of intellectual payback.

------
ck2
Remember the house likes to do the opposite of what he wants.

Too bad he didn't want single payer.

------
gsibble
Sweet, delicious irony....

