
How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance - dgolub93
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-immigration-uncertainty-threatens-americas-tech-dominance-1486031582
======
hungrygs
The general direction of the Trump plan regarding H-1b is the way to go. The
lottery needs to be replaced with a demand system where the highest salaries
get slots. A floor of $100,000/yr should exist and adjust for inflation. Next,
generously expand the green card fast track, as this category of employee, as
an immigrant, is a free agent to move among companies or to start their own
business.

To date, as we all know, the H-1b system has primarily been used to arbitrage
for lower wage by Indian companies and mostly non-tech big corporates, where
they bring in $60k/yr "systems analysts" who are in fact doing $100,000+/yr
software engineering roles.

~~~
whatever_dude
The H1B as it is has many problems, but a big salary floor is not the way to
go in my opinion. Remember H1B is not just for tech workers. If you want to
hire, say, an interpreter of a specific foreign language to work on a
community in rural Alabama temporarily, a $100,000 minimum wage would be
absurd.

They instead need to go after the companies that learned to game the system.
I'm not sure what the solution is here. A point/demand-based system like other
countries have is probably wise, but given the share of mind the US still has
in potential emigrants worldwide, and the breadth of different positions
available, it'd be a pretty complex (and likely unfair) one.

~~~
sidlls
Why would that be absurd? A highly specialized skill in an area that we can
infer is generally less desirable to live _should_ command a higher than
average wage. Much higher if the situation is so desperate that a foreign
worker has to be sought.

Also: the majority (by far) of H1-B visas are for technology work. It may not
technically be "tech only" but in practice it may as well be.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I think one of the Dem senators had proposed a plan that had the floor
relative to the location and the job, so in this case you'd have to offer
150-200% of what an Ethiopian translator in Alabama would recieve, before
you'd be allowed to hire someone via a Visa. That general principal seems
reasonable to me, and less Silicon Valley centric than just a flat floor at
whatever they think is reasonable for a software dev.

Though obviously a single number is less work.

~~~
coredog64
No doubt that would open the door to all manner of skullduggery. Infosys then
opens a new operation in West Armpit, Alabama and their employees now make
150% of the going rate for Java developers there in West Armpit. It is just a
weird quirk that said employees wind up doing lots of travel...

~~~
rtkwe
There's a few fixes to that too. Make the pay scaling regional or put in
provisions that increase the floor based on percentage travel or where the
visa job would work.

~~~
Paul-ish
This is how laws get really complicated. Wouldn't a more complex solution end
up costing more (to the companies you are trying to help) than a simple
solution?

~~~
rtkwe
It depends on what you're trying to do. Outwardly H1-Bs are supposed to be
about bringing in talent that can't be filled with a US worker which should
fetch a premium. To that end having just a blanket floor doesn't really make
sense because a premium wage in Small Town, USA is a rounding error to large
corporations in Big Tech Hub, USA. But you can't make the sliding scale too
location sensitive because then you just open a new way to game the system
with having big contractor sweat boxes all operating out of the middle of
North Dakota or somewhere with market so tiny prices. I don't think a simple
law could ever really run H1-B if the goal is 'bring in premium talent' for
hard to fill positions especially in tech positions where location is becoming
less and less critical.

------
anton_tarasenko
The tone of tech companies does not resonate with the electorate. The Bay Area
basically says to America: We have foreigners here who founded some companies
and got rich, so we don't want your visa restrictions.

How do tech executives motivate the average American to support this stance?
Taxes? IT companies and their owners enjoy a very friendly tax treatment.
Jobs? The largest IT companies employ only 20-60k people each (for comparison,
Walmart employs 2mn). Product? Software is a tradeable good, so Americans can
buy it from anywhere. Pumping GDP numbers? The industry is flat for the last
10+ years.

Tech companies must put something on the table to get better immigration laws.

~~~
jacquesm
It may not be the desired tone but essentially that's how America got
populated in the first place, a place where foreigners with some disadvantage
in their country of origin could get rich. And many did.

Kicking the door behind you closed once you've got yours or because you're
afraid new immigrants will take your job is hypocrisy of a terrible kind for a
nation that was founded on immigration.

~~~
devmunchies
> _that 's how America got populated in the first place_

This isn't 1910. We are the top 5 in the world in population. We don't need as
much immigration as we used to.

Americans should benefit from the American system before foreigners, like, you
know, how every other country works.

~~~
mc32
In addition with looming automation, we simply cannot employ all the people
who want to come here for a job, either skilled or unskilled.

We have large swaths of underemployed Americans but it costs companies too
much to recondition them, so they prefer new bodies over training the domestic
workforce.

This should be an opportunity for the likes of YC to double down on extending
their know how to American women, American minorities and other
underprivileged Americans, but instead they bemoan how a few foreigners are
affected all the while ignoring how those same countries might treat not only
foreigners, but their own minorities.

~~~
nemtaro
The YCs and large companies can easily move their investments and offices to
Canada and hire the world's best and brightest there.

I'll give you the often conservative advice:

Tough luck? pull yourself up by your own boot straps! Go to school. Go back to
school. Work hard, and interview with Google/Amazon/Microsoft again.

And stop perpetuating the idea that you are at a disadvantage because of
immigrants and refugees. If you end up with a job at Apple or eBay or Expedia
btw, remember that your livelihood was made possible because of the hard work
of immigrants and refugees.

~~~
mc32
In tech you don't have to be the first to market, you only have to have a
market that's ready for you.

Xiaomi, tencent, alibaba. Not fist to market. All doing well. All done with a
very predominant domestic labor force.

My point, is it's not do much the foreigner, or even the local, but the
opportunities made available by your domestic economy.

------
losvedir
Hm, maybe. It's always been uncertain, though. I know plenty of international
students when I was at MIT who weren't sure how the visa situation would play
out and if they'd have to go back home or what.

I'm a little hopeful that the discussed H1-B reforms may actually _help_
countries obtain particularly niche talents more than the outsource-lottery
played now.

But I think the real threat to our tech dominance is privacy concerns. The
U.S. _owns_ the cloud with AWS, GCP, and Azure, but if other countries can't
use their services due to US government overreach, then I'm sure strong
competitors will pop up elsewhere.

~~~
dekhn
If you think US owns the cloud, you're not paying attention to China. China
owns China's cloud. The US has little to no visibility into these fleets, but
they're huge (multiple million-server farms) and they have tons of national
customers.

This development is politically interesting. National clouds are now a
strategic interest. The EU is basically far, far behind in their internal
development of national clouds.

~~~
EduardoBautista
I would never risk hosting something in China's cloud fearing that they will
shut down my servers to make room for a Chinese competitor.

~~~
dekhn
You're not the target market, anyway...

------
gizmodo59
Things that a student coming to US faces from a developing or under-developed
country:

1\. Undergo TOEFL and GRE and apply to various universities

2\. Save up enough money or even mortgage parents property to pay for tuition
and even buy flight tickets

3\. Adapt to a new culture, study hard while working part time

4\. Finding a job (While its definitely easy for a CS graduate its not the
same for other majors) but yet, cannot be eligible to many companies that
don't want to sponsor visa in long term, not eligible for small startups with
no e-verify.

5\. Make sure you do all the paper work with OPT, be updated on travel
requirements and other stuff

6\. Cannot switch jobs easily and should find an employer that has offices
outside USA in case of no luck in lottery

7\. Apply for H1B twice or even thrice just to find out that you did not get
it!

So much of hard work and planning just to find out that it all comes down to
luck in the literal sense.

~~~
macd
> study hard while working part time

F-1 visa students are not allowed to work at all, except in a part-time
position at their current school.

~~~
vthallam
Yes,that's what the parent have been referring to. I worked in the school as a
TA and that's still plenty to manage which doing course work.

------
henson
The current system is in dire need of reform. I was fortunate enough to get a
visa to live/work there for a year, but now I remote work from London, and I
strongly prefer it to living in the Bay Area. The immigration process was
consistently unreliable and unpleasant. Would rather not have a lottery
dictate my future plans, and as the article says, remote working is on the up
- a lot of people I know who were in my position agree and are doing the same.
American bureaucratic faff aside, the tech sector always finds a way!

~~~
it_learnses
hey, I myself have also been work remotely for 10 months now. Do you mind me
asking what tech-stack you are using?

------
tomp
Immigration has been uncertain for a long time. YCombinator founders have been
working on their startups on 3-month visitor visas. Top graduate students can
stay in the US for a year, then they need to enter a lottery to be allowed to
stay for another few years. Trump changes barely anything.

Unpaywalled: [http://archive.is/BHfyN](http://archive.is/BHfyN)

~~~
jacquesm
Trump changes plenty, in the past it was assumed that the USA would honor visa
once they were issued, now it turns out not to be the case.

Essentially this is breach of contract.

~~~
chrischen
Yea but who will stop him?

~~~
rsfern
Congress, hopefully. Call your senators and representatives! There's a Senate
bill that needs support.

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-
bill/248](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/248)

~~~
Arizhel
Oh please. Congress has been stuffed with GOP people who are in league with
him. The only time they complain is when he does something that isn't
conservative enough for them, like when he issued a statement that his
administration would uphold the LGBT anti-discrimination order from Obama, and
a few GOP congressmen complained how this infringes "religious freedom".

The only people in Congress who'll oppose him are (some) Democrats, who simply
aren't numerous enough to make a difference.

You might as well get used to the new reality; Trump has the power to do
almost anything he wants, unless it's so bad that it pisses off much of the
GOP.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The only time they complain is when he does something that isn't
> conservative enough for them

That's not entirely fair. Several Republicans have objected to things he's
done on other bases, including the immigration E.O.

The partisan duopoly created by the structure of the electoral system creates
an illusion of a simple unidimensional political divide, and partisan
tribalism is high, but, still, even conservatives in Congress sometimes have
more nuanced policy views than "is it conservative enough?"

~~~
Arizhel
>That's not entirely fair. Several Republicans have objected to things he's
done on other bases, including the immigration E.O.

Ok, to be fair, out of several hundred Republicans, you're going to find a few
here and there who object to many things he does (and the ones who object will
be different, based on the issue). Similarly on the Democrat side, you're
going to find a few here and there who break ranks with the rest of the Dems
and side with him.

But by and large, you're not going to see any unified opposition from the GOP.
You might from the Dems, but that doesn't matter much because they're a
minority in Congress.

~~~
dragonwriter
Unified opposition from Dems + some opposition from the GOP can be enough to
constitute a majority, though. (It's why the DeVos nomination is on the edge
of failing right now.)

~~~
Arizhel
Yes, I'll admit that in some extreme cases like that, Congress might be able
to push back against Trump. But it has to be pretty ridiculous it seems (DeVos
is an especially horrible pick).

------
allengeorge
Meh. I doubt it. The US has huge advantages: a large internal market, large
numbers of early adopters, an appetite for risk, an innovative mindset,
excellent research institutions, plenty of world-class cities, lots of cash...

I mean, yeah, the current furore is "not good", but it doesn't cancel out the
combined effects of all those advantages (and I've only listed a few!)

~~~
johncolanduoni
Well the excellence of the research institutions (as far as CS and STEM in
general are concerned) is pretty heavily dependent on immigration...

Also remember that people aren't completely rational actors, and an action
like this carries a lot of symbolic significance for both proponents and
opponents. Would you want to stay at a party your friend was rudely kicked out
of for no reason just because the booze is good?

------
diego_moita
Wherever there are big risks there are also great opportunities.

As a Canadian, I wonder how/if Canada can benefit from Trump's lack of vision.

We already have the same time zone, language, almost same culture, similar
economic regulations, tight economic integration with the US, a very skilled
and educated workforce, some good centers of technological excellence and an
immigration policy regarded as the best in the world.

If only we could convince more American companies to open branches in southern
BC, Ontario and Quebec...

~~~
Arizhel
How exactly are they supposed to afford to live there? A ramshackle crack
house in Vancouver costs $1M+. Silicon Valley is dirt cheap by comparison.
Toronto is also quite expensive these days.

Also, Canada does _not_ have the same language if you're talking about Quebec
(which you mentioned).

The only way Canada makes any sense is if somehow Calgary and/or Edmonton
suddenly become fast-growing tech hubs. But have fun with the cold. Most tech
immigrants are not going to be too enthusiastic about that, considering most
of them come from very warm parts of the world like India.

------
mataug
I prefer the points system that many countries, including Canada, implement.

Its a lot more deterministic and clear whether a person will be admitted or
not instead of a lottery or salary based system.

~~~
refurb
It also has drawbacks. You get residency in a country, but can't find a job. I
remember reading a number of stories about Canadian immigrants in that
situation.

The US employment visa system ensures a job is waiting for any immigrants.

------
dominotw
in my experience

> Its borerline impossible to find someone who will sponsor your visa in April
> for a job that begins in October

> you can be rejected by h1b visa lottery

> if you win the lottery, your visa application can be denied

> you can be rejected by immigration official at visa interview

> You can be turned around at port of entry

> you visa might not renew after 3 yrs, forcing you to go back.

so on... . These things happen _all_ the time even to the most well
qualified/well prepared .

Immigration uncertainty is not new

~~~
pyb
But it has been getting worse and worse in the last 10-15 years.

------
cronjobber
Let's assume that after years of drastically reduced immigration, America's
tech dominance remains unchallenged. Would that make you happy or sad?

~~~
mda
Would you be happy or sad if after years of drastically reduced Immigration
America's tech dominance is destroyed?

~~~
testUser69
That assumes that the sole reason America has tech dominance is because of
international diversity. But we've always been tech dominant, and according to
many people we're not even diverse.

~~~
logicalmind
There are certainly a couple of examples of international diversity, and
refugee acceptance, among two of the largest tech companies ever. Steve Jobs
is the son of a Syrian refugee. Likewise, Sergey Brin's family came to this
country as a Russian refugee.

------
kozikow
America, UK or others can close their borders all the way they want.
Programmer who don't get the Visa won't switch careers, but will be
programming in a different country.

As American startup, it's already common to hire people remotely in other
country as "contractors". Majority of top 50 Silicon Valley companies has a
tech office outside of USA. Continue with closing borders, and center of tech
will move somewhere else. Many countries are drooling at having their own
Silicon Valley, but American politics treat it as given (same as other areas
of American dominance).

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think the best way would be to sort the applicants by compensation, and
grant H1B starting at the highest compensation on the list until you run out.

For a fixed number of visas, this maximizes the utility of the applicants.
This pairs the most productive workers with the most productive employers.

This would be beneficial to both American workers and foreign workers. The
only one who would not benefit would be companies trying to get workers below
market rates. I do not see why we should prioritize this groups interests over
the workers interests.

------
bsvalley
No matter what happens in the US immigration department, we already know
things are moving fast in India and China. 2.5 billion people versus 60-120k
H1b's per year?

~~~
devmunchies
Yeah but America has a lot more established companies, universities, and
infrastructure. To get the required resources for the 2.5 billion people in
China and India is gonna be a while.

~~~
bsvalley
H1b's are for skilled workers who already went to college in their respective
countries. So you can take universities out of the picture.

In terms of companies, think about Uber, Amazon, FB, etc. They're huge right?
Well, India and China have their own products. It's hard for US companies to
gain market share in Asia because people already use local products!

Last but not least, you don't have to make 2.5 billion people rich in order to
become the number 1 Tech hub in the world. All you need is a tiny place like
San Francisco bay area.

------
joe563323
High time for fully remote companies.

~~~
devmunchies
Is there a single company in the fortune 500 that is fully remote?

~~~
joe563323
Don't know if wordpress is fortune 500 company. But it is 15th most visited
website in the world in 2013 [https://hbr.org/2013/03/how-wordpress-thrives-
with-a-1.html](https://hbr.org/2013/03/how-wordpress-thrives-with-a-1.html)

~~~
bb611
wordpress.com is owned by Automattic, which I don't believe publicly publishes
their revenues (a requirement for a fortune ranking). To break the 500 a
company needs over $5 billion in annual revenue, Automattic's total valuation
in its last round was only $1.16 billion, so they're not even playing in the
same ballpark.

------
unityByFreedom
As if this administration cares about the economy.

Trump is scared. He projects fear. He doesn't want to live amidst diversity.
He only supports people who agree with him (e.g. Milo). He figures fights will
cause us all to run to our safe spaces and believe that the world is black and
white.

The world isn't b&w, it's colorful.

~~~
golergka
Well, you're certainly painting a very black and white picture here.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Trump is a proud American, as am I. I don't disagree with him on everything,
and I imagine everyone could find some overlap if they looked hard enough.

Unity is not the image he's projecting. He seeks revenge on anyone who crosses
him [1]. In politics, every day someone will challenge your views or perhaps
vote against you and "screw you".

> In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness
> for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in
> Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted
> there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful
> people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: "Get even
> with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really
> believe it."

[1] [http://motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-
obsesse...](http://motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-obsessed-
with-revenge)

------
lupin_sansei
America's tech dominance is at least partly due to the ability to offer stock
options without the employees having to pay tax until they vest isn't it?
Other countries mostly make you pay the tad on the value of the option when
you receive it don't they?

~~~
inglor
In Israel, form 102 is exactly this exemption. You pay stock-market tax (25%)
and not income tax (up to 25%) and you only pay the tax after you convert the
options to stocks. (So, when you vest or as late as you'd like if you don't
leave the company).

------
sunilkumarc
I don't have a subscription to WSJ. Could someone provide any other link with
the same news?

~~~
grzm
Try the "web" link under the subscription title. That may get you around the
paywall (though recently it's been inconsistent with the WSJ).

~~~
mark-r
Even opening the article through Google (via the "web" link) in a Chrome
Incognito window refuses to get through the paywall. I think I'm done with
WSJ.

------
comments_db
Dear policy makers and sections of HN, please maintain this unfavorable
attitude towards immigrant tech workers for at least 4-8 years. Once this
(unpleasant) feeling gets under our skin we will start departing in hordes and
take that American Dream appeal with us.

(Probably a very bad analogy) a product is only as good as its fan base. We
are fan of American Dream that's why we are okay with lining outside in the
rain for 5-10 years. May be not for long.

~~~
Arizhel
>we will start departing in hordes and take that American Dream appeal with
us.

And where will you go? I can't think of very many nations which are remotely
competitive with the US as a place for tech work. Either their infrastructure
is terrible, the culture and government too corrupt, their government too
oppressive, the quality of life and standard of living too poor, the ability
to immigrate too difficult, or the cost of doing business too high. Various
places have tried copying Silicon Valley for quite a while now, without that
much success.

You could try going to China, but good luck learning Mandarin and have fun
putting up with massive pollution and the Great Firewall that hampers any kind
of IT work. You could go to Switzerland, but good luck affording it, plus the
place is just too small anyway (the country's whole population is less than
just the Bay Area). You could go to El Salvador but have fun dealing with gang
crime and the world's highest murder rate. The only place I can think of that
might actually become serious competition is Canada.

~~~
comments_db
India for East Indians, but not right away. It'll take continuous backlash
against tech immigrant for a period of 4-8 years. Then you are going to
witness new Silicon Valleys growing up organically in those places.

Remember not much can be expected when everything is going smooth. That's why
so many failed Silicon Valley projects.

Think 10 years, not right away.

~~~
Chris2048
And how will you combat the corruption?

~~~
comments_db
Slow organic development under stressful foreign environment. Corruption is
everywhere, it just takes different forms.

~~~
Chris2048
> Corruption is everywhere, it just takes different forms.

In India, it takes a form that apparently disrupts startups.

What do you mean "under stressful foreign environment"?

~~~
comments_db
> What do you mean "under stressful foreign environment"? That's the whole
> premise of my argument. If backlash against immigrant tech worker continues
> for an extended period of time, think 5-10 years not 5-10 months. You can
> expect exactly what I have stated.

It's not pleasant to come thousands of miles away from home, leaving family
and friends behind, paying proper taxes, being a responsible community member,
and doing as best as we can. Only to read all these and live thru uncertainty.

Nope, Thank You.

I'd really hope these backlash would continue for a long period of time.

~~~
Chris2048
Maybe, but the native environment would have to be as prosperous.

------
brilliantcode
Nah. It's the deal flow, the aquisitions that drives silicon valley and
America's tech dominance.

If Alibaba started acquiring American startups left and right we just might
see a seismic shift.

------
vondur
I'd like to see the numbers on the salaries of H1B employee's vs U.S.
employees. My hunch is that there will be a large discrepancy.

------
geebee
Tech leaders need to take some time to think about their role in bringing all
this about.

Truth is, we've all known there were serious problems with the H1B visa for
some time. It was clearly conceived and sold to the US public (and congress)
as a program designed to bring highly skilled workers to the US who would
supplement and enhance, not replace and undermine, the existing workforce.

Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Yes, it continued to be used properly
some of the time, but abuses of this program were hardly rare and unusual
aberrations. We ended up in repeated situations where companies where not just
replacing US citizens with H1B workers, but were arm twisting the US workers
into training their replacements. Stop and think about this, for a moment.
This is a program designed to bring workers who have skills that you can't
find among the existing workforce. If the existing workforce must train its
replacement, doesn't that demonstrate that the existing workers do have these
skills, and their replacements don't?

Did you not see these workers testify in front of congress, after Disney, and
Edison, and even UC San Francisco did this? Some of them actually broke down.
One of the few who spoke up said he was able to do so because he had no
dependents and had given up on working in tech, and felt that because he could
speak out, he had to.

And in all of this, we got what I felt were pretty sanctimonious essays from
people like Zuckerberg, who were, as far as I can tell, really lobbying for
corporate control over the US immigration system. Facebook wasn't arguing for
greater freedom to immigrate, they were lobbying for the power to decide who
is and isn't allowed to immigrate to the US, and the circumstances under which
they are allowed to remain.

And in all of this, Trump saw an opportunity. He slammed the H1B (then he flip
flopped a bit, then slammed it again). Many of the displaced Disney workers
publicly supported Trump.

Now, tech leaders are terribly upset, and are taking a principled stand
against Trump's actions. In many ways, I do agree with them, but I don't enjoy
it. I don't enjoy being on the same side of an issue with Zuckerberg or Brin,
at this point. Certainly not after Brin's involvement in the insidious wage-
fixing scheme (ugh, did you see those emails?)

There's reason so many Americans were so enraged. I don't at all agree with
their choice of president, but why now? Why did it take a Trump administration
to get tech leaders, along with their supporters in congress like Zoe Lofgen,
to start seriously criticizing this very corrupt program?

Tech leaders: It's time to take some inventory here, folks. As you oppose this
new administration, think about what role you might have played in utterly
alienating the US public. And be clear, we do need to welcome top talent from
around the globe. By supporting a self-serving and corrupt program, and
implying that those who opposed you were "anti-immigrant" (when in fact many
of us just opposed corporate control over the immigration system, and couldn't
support a program that give employers this kind of power over immigrant's
lives), you played right into the hands of people who started to see this
"anti-immigrant" card as nothing more than a cynical, corporate ploy.

Things are really bad now, and tech leaders, in my opinion, had a great deal
to do with it. I think Zuck's and Brin's speeches against Trump are about as
helpful as Madonna's, at this point.

------
Traubenfuchs
Good! I am not living in America. (:

------
testUser69
Americas "tech dominance" threatens the breadbasket.

The coastal areas, mostly certain cities, have become "international" and any
worker from a rural area who wants to earn a living wage doing a technical job
(e.g. STEM) now not only has to compete with other Americans, but everyone in
the world.

What exactly do the elites expect people in the breadbasket to do? If America
is an international country then we're going to see wealth distribution
change. The coastal tech cities may accumulate all the money and have an
average wage of $100,000, some of the highest wages in the world, but the
inverse will happen to the rest of America. If you aren't in a tech city near
the coast you're going to be on the lowest rung, not in America, but
internationally. Think about the poorest communities in the world, and as the
poor of America merge and become the international poor, we'll see incomes
fall to well below poverty levels. Some of the lowest wages in the world.

Look at China, they already have a similar situation where all their wealth is
accumulated in their big international cities.

Let China become the world international tech center. Their "breadbasket" is
already use to being poor.

The thing about these tech centers is that they are international, it doesn't
matter where they are.

As long as the rural areas get a vote and as long as the coastal areas
continue to concentrate all wealth in smaller and smaller areas, the more we
will see people like Trump get elected. Corporate tech-elitists living on the
coast are in a huge cultural bubble. All of our news and media come from these
areas too btw.

What I think would really help America (and the world by proxy) is if for
every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American
workers from a community that's average income is less than the national
median.

~~~
throwaway729
This "rural communities don't need tech" narrative is tiring and false.

"Tech" is more than Google. How many engineers do you think John Deere hires?
How many scientists does Monsanto have on staff? How many lines of code go
into the average modern factory?

If I had a dime for every time I talk to a farmer/laborer who plants fields
full of GM crops and/or harvests those fields with impressive machinery, and
then insists that "tech" is a useless industry. Or CNC mechanics who insist
"tech" is a fad. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Rural america needs tech more than ever before. They'll learn to leverage tech
built in coastal cities, or they'll become so irrelevant that not even high
tariffs can save them.

 _> is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural
American workers from a community that's average income is less than the
national median._

I came from rural America. So do lots of software engineers in coastal and
especially non-coastal cities. There's nothing stopping those people from
getting an education and joining a big tech company. Literally. Nothing.

Seriously. Even in poor rural communities without high school CS courses, you
can sit your ass down at a computer, learn to code, then fill out college
applications.

The one exception is maybe lack of access to higher education. And the GOP is
an odd choice if that's your primary problem...

~~~
yokisan
> There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining
> a big tech company.

"There's nothing stopping somebody from the ghetto from getting an education
and joining a big tech company".

In both cases, sadly there is. And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for
every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American
workers") is a step towards remedying this.

~~~
throwaway729
_> In both cases, sadly there is_

If you read further, I state the obvious: _" The one exception is maybe lack
of access to higher education. And the GOP is an odd choice if that's your
primary problem..."_

 _> And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company
imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards
remedying this_

Huh?

Google et al. _already do this_. If you're a competent programmer, you can
find a tech job. Tech companies don't discriminate against rural hires...

Is your suggestion that Google should hire a bunch of _completely untrained
and totally unqualified_ rural folk as software engineers, purely because
they're from a rural part of the country, and train them on sight?

Wouldn't improving K12 STEM education and making college more accessible make
_a lot_ more sense? Google isn't a school, and education isn't their core
competency.

It's one thing to say "we should be more supportive of STEM education and make
college more accessible".

It's completely another to insist that Google over-look college educated
immigrants because some rural Americans weren't given the opportunity to
attend an IIT.

------
uppercasenut
US Tech: We need the brightest blah blah ...

US Gov: Fine, Big Co with $15b in yearly profits, if he's so bright then pay
him at least $150K a year. If he's not worth that much then he's not that
special.

------
alexmingoia
_Tech salaries are high and unemployment is low._ End of story. There is no
problem that needs solving. So sad to see so much ignorance over immigration.
Ignorance because tech immigration is not hurting the economy, and Muslim
immigration isn't killing people.

