

Dear Congressman Gutierrez, Please Lift Your Hold On Silicon Valley - enra
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/10/dear-congressman-gutierrez-please-lift-your-hold-on-silicon-valley/

======
nhashem
Unfortunately this is not going to be resolved without our federal government
going through the painful gyrations of partisan politics.

The OP mentions the Democratic Party (and the Obama White House) and its
opposition to HR 6429, which basically "trades" 55,000 'diversity' visas for
the same number of STEM visas. This was actually discussed on HN a few months
ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845982>).

The OP says: "I would have voted for visas for 50,000 smart foreign students
graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities over bringing in 55,000
randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad." In short, he says he
would have made the trade.

Unfortunately, Republicans would love nothing more than to do this on
immigration and call it day. To independent/swing voters, they can brag that
they're not intolerant of immigrants, and in fact authored legislation that
opens the doors to 55,000 immigrants exceptional in STEM. To their base, they
can say there is no net increase in immigration, and they've resisted on any
leniency to the immigrants currently here in the US, including the poisonous
word "amnesty."

The OP claims to support elements of comprehensive immigration reform, but
then basically says, "well our technology industry is suffering, and there
seems to some common ground there, so can't you just agree to more STEM visas
and fix the H1-B system and then go back to arguing about amnesty?"

This just isn't going to happen, because there will no longer be an argument
-- Republicans will just resist any further attempts at reform. So I am glad
this is the stance of people like Congressman Gutierrez. The OP said: "I hate
to say this, but women in Saudi Arabia have more rights than the spouses/wives
of H-1B workers; it’s inhuman the way we treat them and destroy careers and
families." Well, that is a problem with our current immigration problem, but
we have other problems too, such as the 22 million illegal (or undocumented,
if you prefer that term) immigrants in the US. They are not exactly sitting
flush with their rights, careers, and families.

We need comprehensive reform because we have a comprehensive problem. So
ultimately the OP just comes across to me as, "fix what I want, even though
politically, it will basically ensure that other people interested in other
parts of immigration reform will get fucked." At best it's naive. At worse
it's selfish.

And if you want federal government representatives that don't have to go
through such stupid partisan gyrations, then you should do everything you can
to elect different representatives.

~~~
jlgreco
I don't understand the Republican position on / opposition to amnesty. Don't
they remember Reagan signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
into law? Isn't Reagan supposed to be the Platonic prototype of Republicans
for them?

~~~
anigbrowl
They remember it, but in the conservative narrative it was supposed to be a
single and final act that would magically bring illegal immigration to an end.
Instead evil Democrats tricked Reagan.

In reality, as far as I can make out, the choice was made to prioritize speed
over accuracy in the amnesty process with the result that there was quite a
lot of fraud, and little was done to strengthen border security; of course
there's a limit to how much you can realistically secure a ~2000 mile long
border, notwithstanding the fantasies of some about installing an electrified
double wall with a minefield in the middle (actual proposal I heard last year
some some primary candidate). 'Business Republicans' like immigration because
it fits with a free trade ethic and also provides the treasury with a hedge
against demographic trends that are skewing the ratio of taxpayers to retirees
downwards, while also serving as a secondary and fiscally 'free' source of
foreign aid in the region. 'Social Conservative Republicans,' however, tend to
be far more ideological and dogmatically insist that no compromise is
possible. I personally feel there's a correlation between the absolutism of
such political positions and the sincerity of their belief that bad people are
going to spend eternity in a lake of fire, presumably for the entertainment of
those sitting up in heaven.

------
kiba
Silicon Valley isn't bleeding talents. They don't want to hire perfectly
competent old people.

Also, if you still hunger for talent, consider the fact that the cost of
living is high due to low housing density.

Build more apartments and start hiring old people.

~~~
npsimons
Second this. All due respect to intelligent, hard-working immigrants, the only
reason for the screaming for more visas is to pay engineers below market value
wages. Want good engineers? Pay for them, dammit! Supply and demand.

~~~
CCs
What is your target salary? (Serious question)

I find very hard to hire good developers in the Valley. Offering 140k does not
help much, I always have to go the long route (convince them we're growing,
find a personal challenge etc).

Ryan Smith (Qualtrics) said the same thing: some developers needed 2 years of
convincing.

~~~
jquery
$140k just isn't that competitive anymore. I mean its a good salary, but not
remarkable on its own. I know it hurts but your flavor of the month CRUD app
may have been priced out of the market. Just like $800k isn't enough to get a
non-distressed piece of prime SF real estate, even though it was in recent
past. Times have changed. Sure, importing H1-Bs would reduce the cost of
labor, but that's not the discussion supporters of the quota increase are
having. At least in public. Although you know a Romney-47%-type discussion is
happening behind closed doors with SV power brokers.

~~~
CCs
So 140k is just OK - what is good then? What is your base salary and bonus
expectation?

For example if I talk to a Netflix engineer and promise work-life balance (no
weekend, 7 hr/day average vs 12 hr), I still need to go 180k+ with 2k bonus?

<http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Netflix-Salaries-E11891.htm>

How about Google? 145k+ with 60k bonus?

<http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm>

~~~
jquery
Glassdoor salaries are out of date, munging together years of comp and
reporting them all as current. $160 to 180k including bonus/equity, and you're
finally getting into competitive territory for poaching talent. You won't be
best in class but you'll be better than average.

If you hired workers like you shopped for housing, getting rid of unrealistic
expectations based on prices from years past, you'd find them much easier to
recruit.

------
anigbrowl
I find VW's argument incredibly disingenuous. The fact is that comprehensive
immigration reform looks set to finally happen this year, possibly before
anything else on the legislative calendar because the wiser heads in the GOP
have realized they're staring down the barrel of demographic doom unless they
get behind a deal; simply put, they're losing more votes from people of color
(who make up the majority of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants) than they are
gaining from pandering to xenophobic white people.

There's unprecedented momentum for overhauling the dysfunctional immigration
system in one fell swoop. Doing so on a piecemeal basis is the approach that
we've taken for the last 15-20 years, and it doesn't work; it's like trying to
roast a turkey one side at a time, and goes a long way towards explaining the
mess of inconsistencies that is our immigration law.

Finally, Congressman Gutierrez is a Representative, not a Senator. Although he
can lobby against piecemeal legislation, and has done so to maintain awareness
of the larger issue, he's not a senator and has no power to hold or filibuster
a bill, or even block it via committee. Vivek Wadhwa knows this perfectly well
and should eschew the sort of misleading rhetoric in the headline. It's all
very arguing to 'free the H-1Bs,' and I support his agenda completely on that,
but frankly the H-1Bs are on easy street compared to the people who have no
visa at all and have no legal avenue at all to file for one.

For the sake of disclosure, I'm an illegal alien, so I'm not unbiased in this
matter (albeit more by experience than because I'm directly affected by the
upcoming legislation; I'm married to an American).

------
jquery
As someone who is merely a worker in SV, not a shill for a flood of cheap
labor to inflate corporate profits and increase income inequality, god bless
Gutierrez. I know it pains the VPs and VCs in SV when they see the high
salaries they have to pay me and my wife, so I am sure every single one of
them is lobbying hard for this.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You deserve that high salary far more than some guy named Raj [1]. Far better
for Raj to continue living in poverty worse than the bottom 5% of America (==
top 5% of India) than for you to make slightly less money.

By the way, you do realize your high salary _increases_ income inequality,
right? (In both the US and the world.)

[1] Choosing India to personify this example simply because I lived there.

~~~
gte910h
If Raj was paid the exact same amount as the American, and had the same
bargaining power, that would be one thing. But Raj doesn't. Raj is stuck in
the job, terrified of being fired, and making far less than the American. This
is a not horrible situation for Raj, but it is making a worse job than the one
they'd have to give an American.

It also makes the jobs of the Americans already working there less stable (as
terrified Raj isn't going to leave).

~~~
philwelch
So make it easier for Raj. Don't make it even harder.

~~~
gte910h
I didn't say "No green cards". I said "No H1B visas". There is a good amount
of the former. I'm not sure there is a good amount greater than 0 for the
latter.

~~~
philwelch
Sure, but my point is an H1B is better than nothing.

~~~
gte910h
I don't think it is, as it hurts the green card holders and citizens and
satisfies the demand for more green cards BETTER in the eyes of the corps than
green cards.

------
mjn
I don't really get the industry-picking idea of the STEM visa. Not every area
of STEM has high demand, and not every area of the rest of the economy lacks
demand. Why not have some kind of points system like Canada's?

For example, it's much easier to find an American mathematician or physicist
than to find good elder-care staff (there's something of a glut of physicists,
and shortage of elder-care workers). Yet this reform would propose singling
out pure mathematicians and physicists for preferential immigration, while not
allowing an elder-care worker to immigrate on the same terms?

~~~
jlgreco
In the specific case of mathematicians and physicists, I suspect there was
some strategic consideration beyond merely market demand. The more
mathematicians and physicists you have, the fewer anybody else has. "Brain
drain" can harm perceived competitors even if you don't necessarily have
anything to do with your extra brains.

In the more general case though, the STEM system is just designed to make it
easier to get the people deemed more important, just like the Canadian system.
The only way that they differ is that perhaps the Canadian system determines
importance more accurately. I am sure the STEM system wasn't intentionally
made worse, that's just the sort of thing that happens sometimes.

------
smoyer
I think grid-lock like that described in the article is the best thing we can
expect out of Washington. Otherwise, we seem to get one of the two extremes,
with no rational thought, much less the hope of a consensus.

So the less that happens in D.C. ... the less pain for the citizens of the
U.S.

~~~
protomyth
People keep forgetting that the founding fathers didn't want an efficient
government. Efficient governments do idiotic and dangerous things quite
quickly.

~~~
anigbrowl
People keep forgetting that they didn't want a totally paralyzed one either.
You're cherry-picking, like most people who invoke the founding fathers to win
an argument.

~~~
protomyth
"You're cherry-picking, like most people who invoke the founding fathers to
win an argument."

I suppose I could retort "People who reject anything based on pointing to the
founding fathers are pretty much trying to ignore actual history and
substitute some glorified version."

but...

No, just stating a bit of fact about the origins of the system. Something that
is good practice in analyzing why a system is as it is. Checks and balances
were much more important than efficiency. In fact the executive branch's quest
for more "efficiency" with national programs started in the 1920's and
continuing through today have done great harm to the checks and balances
enjoyed by the people and the states.

It wasn't exactly a bed of roses with all parties in agreement at the start.
The election of 1800 would be a pretty good example of how divisive this
country has always been. There has never been the civility that modern
politicians believe existed before today.

------
buro9
I have just arrived in London (today) after spending 2 weeks in San Francisco
and Silicon Valley with a group of 24 other British founders.

We came as group ( <http://www.ldn2sfo.com/> ) to learn about what makes
Silicon Valley special, about the pay-it-forward culture, about the optimism
and support, about the venture culture.

The stand-out questions at almost every session and meeting that we had was
this: "How are the immigration issues overcome?"

Most of us will take the things we've learned and just apply them to where we
are, knowing that even if we individually overcome the hurdles we are unlikely
to achieve the same for our teams and people we would love to hire. Only a
very few of us are likely to take on the immigration challenge.

Instead, the immigration issue will lead most of us to re-evaluate our local
advantages such as access to talent (London does not have the scarcity issue
of Silicon Valley for example), cheaper housing, free health... and because of
the immigration spanner in the works, those suddenly seem to be bigger
advantages.

They're not really that big an advantage... but the immigration issue _is_
that big an issue.

~~~
kintamanimatt
The thing that mentally holds me back, rather than the immigration issue, is
the threat of patent trolls. I don't know whether this threat is real or
imagined, but it appears to be a non-issue if you're operating outside of the
US.

~~~
buro9
That's a Maserati problem ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444003> ).

I wouldn't worry too much about that one... when you're a success you'll get
sued for something no matter where you are based.

