

America’s Secret Innovation Weapon: Immigration  - mspeiser
http://gigaom.com/2009/07/04/americas-secret-innovation-weapon-immigration/

======
ianbishop
Ironically, the 'secret' is one that everyone but the American government and
the majority of the American population are aware of.

A NY Times article [[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/googles-
immigration...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/googles-immigration-
fixer/)] published not too long ago outlined how much Google was spending on
H-1B visas and their demand for the cap to be raised. If you read the comments
or the backlash which followed, it made you very aware how the American public
is still convinced immigrants are 'stealing their jobs'.

~~~
ardit33
To back your thing:

My current company was closing down. So I started looking for a new job, and I
was really worried as an H-1B that I am, companies are really reluctant to
hire in this environment, b/c of the huge amount of paper work, and cost
required for them to eventually sponsor me.

Within two weeks I got 3 job offers, and getting one more next week (they are
doing background checks), with a lot of money. I mean a lot more than I
thought I could make. What it shows me, that there is a real demand for highly
skilled engineers, even in a downturn, and a lot of "i am an American, I can't
find a job lets send the h-1bs home", are probably voices from people that
have no talent, or desire to work.

This is truly work Americans can't do, as I am not cheap at all, actually very
expensive, money and paperwork wise.

The secret in the Silicon Valley is that 80% of the code is produced only by
20% of the engineers. If I have my own company, (or you had your own), I'd
want to hire from that 20% pool, no matter what their race, ethnicity, or
immigration status they are. Unfortunately, you have people on the 80% pool,
that scream (or wishfully thinking) that if immigrants weren't here, there
would be able to command higher salaries, and find job easily.

It is often much easier to blame others, instead of just looking in the
mirror.

~~~
avner
Good post. The other end of the spectrum: I used to write code for autonomous
UAVs back home (commercial and military). After completing my second degree in
the US, I made it through to 90% of the interviews and selection process at
the top firms that play in such applied heuristics. At that point I didn't
think I was wasting my time, given my background and experience.

In the end, I was apologized to almost everywhere as they couldn't offer me a
position because of my immigration status and there were existing federal
restrictions limiting their hiring of foreign workers. Nonetheless, almost all
those companies still e-mail me today asking whether I would take a position
at their operations in my home country because there just aren't that many
_good_ people who do this kind of shit in the US.

Why, I ask? Later, I got multiple offers from companies back home who were
willing to pay 5 times as much and were either in direct competition to the
folks in the U.S. or were selling them patented technologies that cost
billions in licenses every year.

~~~
Retric
I think the simple solution to the H1B program is to have companies biding on
slots. When people see companies are willing to pay 10-20k+/year extra to
higher the highest levels of talent few are going to complain.

Also, I once worked for a body shop which cared little for talent and just
wanted people to fill the spots as cheaply as possible. And unlike at that
paperwork this would stop them for using H1B's.

~~~
noaharc
Bidding is often not a bad idea, as it does help to uncover the "true" value.
But it's not the solution to the H1B program. That solution is simply to let
any and every qualified person into the country -- indeed court their
attention and residence. Anything else is selfish, chauvinist myopia.

------
mbadoiu
Immigration law actually deters innovation of the top immigrants. These
students come to US to study at top universities, undergrad or grad and
afterward they cannot legally start a business on their own. They have to wait
to get a green card, which is years away. By then, as people become older,
they lose some of the hunger.

The next best thing for them is to team up with Americans.

------
emontero1
Indeed. We've talked about this phenomenon before. Here's the link:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678144>

This was my remark on the matter:

 _As a foreigner in the US about to finish a MS degree in IT and travel back
home, I find Friedman's words apropos. The limitation on H-1B visas does more
harm than good. I've met many young, intelligent knowledge workers about to
get their advanced degrees who, unfortunately, find themselves unable to stay
in this country because of visa restrictions. Sending those brains back home
is a mistake. A new approach is required if the US veritably wants to foster
innovation and entrepreneurship._

It's good to see more and more people are joining us and voicing their
opinions loudly. Evidently, the H-1B program needs some major tweaking. The
more people know and understand the implications of what's at stake here, the
better.

------
chancho
> If we assume that talent is evenly distributed throughout the planet...

This is a terrible assumption. 71% of the planet's surface is practically
devoid of talent.

~~~
TriinT
Hey, dolphins are smart!!! ;-)

~~~
sho
They're not distributed equally, either.

~~~
TriinT
The point I was trying to make was not that they're equally distributed, but
that the oceans are not devoid of "talent" ;-)

~~~
dangrover
Yeah, I hate it when companies hire dolphin engineers instead of humans.
Dolphin programmers will work for half of what a human one will -- often times
being paid under-the-table in fish.

~~~
noonespecial
I've heard, though, that they have an uncanny habit of disappearing one day,
just before disaster strikes, with nothing more than a "so long, and thanks
for all the fish".

------
kirubakaran
I wonder what will happen if people around the world can sell their
citizenship.

Of course host governments have to do a background check etc and sign off on
the bidders/buyers. Everybody wins, right? And I bet you can IPO 'eBay for
citizenship' overnight.

~~~
DenisM
Citizenship of a given country is a commodity in that piece is no differnt
than any other piece, so it will be traded on an exchange and not in an
auction house.

~~~
kirubakaran
This is not much different from how Gmail invites were sold on eBay. While the
invites themselves were no different from each other, auctioning helped the
market find the 'fair' price.

Auction price will reflect the current supply and demand, affected by economic
conditions and a million other factors. Remember that I proposing that people,
not countries, sell their citizenship and move out to a country where they
have bought new citizenships.

~~~
DenisM
Good point. I suppose this will depend on the trade volume - no one will set
up an exchange for the low-volume stuff so one arises on top of the nearest
thing such as ebay. If volume is high and exchange must form tho.

Imagine the news roll: "Canadian citizenship was 5 points up today on soaring
energy prices and the new healthcare proposal". Hilarious, but also kind of
makes sense.

------
petercooper
_one that targets the best and brightest around the globe and makes it easy
for them to become permanent residents. We should be recruiting the world’s
best talent the same way top companies recruit the best talent._

No! Google ostensibly hires all of the "best talent" in the industry, yet what
do you see of it?

If the government takes on some policy of allowing the world's "best and
brightest" to immigrate, you're not necessarily getting the people who would
have produced the most value. Instead you'll get people who have tons of
qualifications and degrees.

Let's say France had this same immigration idea back in 1980. Would Bill Gates
have been considered one of the brightest and greatest and allowed in? No.
Would Larry Ellison? No. Would Steve Jobs? No. It's next to impossible to pick
out the true people who provide value before the deed is done.

------
tokenadult
I buy into the conclusion that immigration is good for the United States in
general and particularly good as a source for innovation. Having lived
overseas, in one of the countries that is a big source for immigrants to the
United States (Taiwan), I have to respectfully disagree with the idea that
what is going on here is mostly selection of people from very high-IQ echelons
of source countries, and those people then doing things that lower-IQ people
INHERENTLY can't do.

Most human beings don't come close to maximizing the realization of their
potential. And many of the countries that are the biggest sources of
immigrants to the United States have very much of a "growth mindset"

[http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/feat...](http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html)

in general in their cultures, and particularly in the subcultures that supply
most of the immigrants to the United States, such that those immigrants,
whatever their IQ scores, do more to realize their potential than people with
"fixed mindset." Indeed, there is a whole book on this subject, James R.
Flynn's Asian Americans: Achievement Beyond IQ.

[http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Americans-Achievement-Beyond-
Iq/...](http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Americans-Achievement-Beyond-
Iq/dp/0805811109/)

The IQ threshold for eminent achievement and even "genius" (as carefully
defined by psychologists) is not particularly high, but is only about 120 on a
currently normed IQ test. That, by definition of IQ standard scoring, is less
than two standard deviations above the population mean.

Follow-up comments to this by request.

------
naveensundar
Most of the evil in this world comes from people believing in and fighting
over imaginary borders.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations,
of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary
civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains
another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of
nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike,
with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its
collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours
and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

\--alexander solzenitzen

~~~
naveensundar
I am not saying cultures should disappear. What I meant was national and other
imaginary boundaries have engendered wars, genocides and other evils. Bringing
boundaries down will not makes us clones in a 1984 like manner but may give
rise to even more diversity due to the mixing. And these indigenous cultures
are of no use when people are not free to roam the world!

~~~
kingkongrevenge
War and genocide predate the nation state. It's perhaps as easy to argue that
the nation state has been a force for restraint of violence and a bulwark
against broader tyranny. Violence is worst in the modern world where nations
are weakest and least independent. The endless wars in Europe only wound down
when national boundaries were finally properly drawn along ethnic lines.

> more diversity due to the mixing

You are confusing diversity within a place with diversity between places.
Whereas London was once an English city with a distinctive English character,
it is now a "multi-cultural" stew that is much like any of five other large
global multi-ethnic cities. The loss of an English London is a loss of
diversity.

~~~
naveensundar
English London has been replaced by multi-cultural London. There is no net
loss of diversity here. Old cultures die and new ones form (just like
languages, species etc). There is nothing to cry over here. I am in favor of a
global state which prevents broader evil and within this state there should be
no borders. One nation state. People get scared by this notion believing it
will lead to 1984 but that is only one of many possible outcomes. Are cultures
and languages more important than the universal freedom to go anywhere in the
world without fetters?

~~~
defen
Why is being able to go wherever you desire so important to you? And how
exactly do you plan to reconcile fundamentally different belief systems (such
as, say, modern liberalism and fundamentalist Islam)? By imposing some global
beauracratic tyranny, I presume?

~~~
naveensundar
People with fundamentally different belief systems are not hostile to each
other. I have seen people with very radical beliefs who are very accepting of
people with opposite views. Almost always it is the politicians and people in
charge of nation-states who divide so that they can rule easily (us vs. them
mentality). We can achieve harmony and unity through means other than tyranny
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolence>) .

------
preview
FTA: So I would argue further that the “innovation probability” of a high I.Q.
individual whose family has been in the U.S. for many generations is less than
that of someone who’s new to our nation and has a comparable intellect, but
far more desire.

It sounds to me like the author stating an obvious, and often repeated, point.
Perseverance/hard work is a much better predictor of success than raw
intelligence. Immigrants, for a couple of generations at least, have the work
ethic. Based on other posts to this discussion, this fizzles our by the fourth
generation, so you're stuck on a tread mill of bringing in new hard workers to
fuel the engine. Is that really the only way to handle this? It doesn't seem
to address the root cause.

As far as the requirement to post a job to prove no American worker could fill
the role, I think it's common knowledge that this aspect of the system is
heavily (and easily) gamed.

The H1-B program does need to be reworked. It seems like the H1-B visa should
provide more freedom to the individual to innovate--start their own company
and not be so beholden to their sponsor. I am making an assumption that the
hard working, hungry H1-B holder is more likely to start their own company.
This is where innovation creation thrives and, therefore, where there is great
potential value in H1-B visa reform.

------
sho
Unfortunately this strategy does not have the potency it once did. The two
largest possible sources of talent for the US, India and China, have rapidly
growing economies and plenty of opportunity. I don't know all that much about
India but if you're smart and "hungry" in China there is a _ton_ of
opportunity. Why on earth would you go to the US? Same, to a lesser degree
perhaps, for Brazil et al.

I suppose the attractiveness of migration to the USA remains high in ex-
communist states, the middle east, Africa, etc, so it's certainly possible
they could make up the numbers, but the days of automatically assuming Chinese
and Indians dream of building their companies in the USA are over, IMO.

~~~
tokenadult
_if you're smart and "hungry" in China there is a ton of opportunity. Why on
earth would you go to the US?_

The freedom to criticize the government openly and vote in contested elections
for the national leadership? That works for a lot of the Chinese immigrants I
know in the United States. (Net immigration flows from China to the United
States are still strongly positive in the direction of smart people leaving
China and settling in the United States.) India actually presents the more
interesting example, as people in India enjoy press freedom and free
elections, but still find reason to move to the United States.

~~~
jibiki
So people immigrate because they want to vote in US elections? What kind of
change in American policy do they wish to effect? Wanting to vote seems like a
very abstract motivation for making such an immense personal sacrifice. All of
the Chinese immigrants I know moved for more obvious reasons (personal gain,
marriage, etc.) And none of them seem particularly critical of the US
government, or the Chinese government, for that matter. (But most of them work
in academia, so take that with a grain of salt.)

~~~
sp332
People move to somewhere they will have a say in local government. Casting a
vote now and then is a very small part of that participation. Or maybe they're
interested in politics and are sick of not being able to have a real debate.

~~~
tokenadult
_maybe they're interested in politics and are sick of not being able to have a
real debate._

This correctly characterizes many of the Chinese people I met in the United
States in 1989 as part of the democracy movement at that time. Many of them
were physical scientists or biological scientists or students about to enter
those occupations when I met them, but they were deeply interested in politics
and organized a "salon" with some very interesting discussions of politics,
including guest speakers from newly post-communist Poland and public speeches
by democracy movement activists who were able to escape from China after the
post-Tian An Men Square Massacre crackdown.

------
kingkongrevenge
This narrative where the second generation immigrants ascend economically is
not actually true. For certain ethnic groups it may have been true at one
time, but the data actually show that Hispanics _descend_ economically after
the first generation, for one example.

~~~
anigbrowl
Which data? Back up your argument.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
<http://www.amazon.com/review/R60O7705YNTL7>

"Throughout this book, our statistical models have shown that the low
education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of
assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and
white Americans."

As is well known, American-born Mexicans average more years of education than
do their Mexican-born immigrant ancestors. Unfortunately, as Telles and Ortiz
report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue
to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites:

"In education, which best determines life chances in the United States,
assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates
thereafter."

The fourth generation (whose grandparents were born in America) was
particularly unaccomplished:

"Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth
generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of
only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era]."

The fourth generation Baby Boomers averaged 0.7 years less schooling than the
second and third generation Mexican Americans born in the same era.

Telles and Ortiz found:

"...the educational progress of Mexican Americans does not improve over the
generations. At best, given the statistical margin of error, our data show no
improvement in education over the generations-since-immigration and in some
cases even suggest a decline."

~~~
anigbrowl
This hardly seems to justify your sweeping assertions above, and the review
(by Steve Sailer, who I'm afraid I do not consider an objective commentator)
seems to suggest that the fault lies entirely with the population in question,
ignoring the book authors' own conclusion that institutional discrimination is
a major limiting factor in Mexican-American economic development.

Sailer writes: _Their book is a monument to disinterested, objective social
science._ but seems uninterested in reporting the context in which these
trends take place, preferring an interpretation of racial degeneracy.

The publisher's description and one other review present a considerably more
nuanced picture than the one you chose to quote
([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871548488/ref=cm_rdp_produ...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871548488/ref=cm_rdp_product))
I do not think a selective book review from a tinfoil-hat-wearing race baiter
makes the cut.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
The reviewer is irrelevant. I posted quotations from the book.

~~~
anigbrowl
You quoted and linked to the review rather than original source material, and
as such you own the selectivity and bias too. The quoted sections do not, in
any case, validate your original argument, but only offer partial support for
one of your assertions.

------
ilkhd2
I already gave my points about immigration in some earlier posts, but my
opinion is: Immigration is irrelevant to prosperity of country. Several
reasons for that: 1\. The countries many immigrants are from, you know they
have very affordable medicine and education (former Soviet Union, for
example), so in fact any modern American big software company parasite on this
cheap facilities, without any interest in developing similar things
domestically. 2\. There plenty of examples of countries with high rates of
innovation, but with low immigration rates: Sweden (ericsson), Finland
(Nokia), Japan. 3\. I dare to claim, that immigration erodes values of
American society.Imagine a person from China or India (the country where 60
million people literraly live in poop, they are born in cast of poop-cleaners-
by-bare-hands), the person comes to USA and imeddiately becomes middle class
(upper sometimes). Well, this new middle class built from immigrants from ugly
places, thet have a lot higher tolerance for injustice and corruption.

~~~
_debug_
Systems are more powerful than the people caught up in them. The person who is
escaping the "cast of poop-cleaners-by-bare-hands" is trying to escape the
system that casts him thus. If you (America) ensure that only the best and the
brightest are granted entry, then you get to both

a) preserve your system, without dilution of it's core principles

b) allow new entrants into the system who are hungry and desperate to succeed
and start a new life

What the article correctly identifies is that someone who is desperate to
succeed will go much further than others. This kind of inner motivation is
extremely valuable and is what fuels the engine of America's growth.

------
mynameishere
Disproof:

[http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_nob_pri_lau_percap-
nob...](http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_nob_pri_lau_percap-nobel-prize-
laureates-per-capita)

So, so tired of the BS. The reason you think immigration is so wonderful is
because you have been brainwashed since childhood. Period.

But really, look at this:

 _Smart immigration policies will do more for American innovation and
productivity than better math and science education, more spending on basic
research and additional venture capital combined._

Boil this off...what is he saying:

"You should not improve the people...you should _replace_ the people."

~~~
ardit33
Disproof to your above claim:

The US soccer team is mostly out of first-gen recent immigrants, or people
that were given a passport just to play here. I think a fair-er comparison is
of Noble prize laureates by ethnicity or country where they were born. You
probably will see a lot more even distribution. Americans are not any smarter
then, lets say Europeans. It is just they have more means.

You will probably see a great correlation to economic output and noble price
laureates because:

1\. Richer countries attract smart people. You are smart, you probably are
smart enough to be given great jobs/research positions and the best places to
live in this earth, which happen countries that are rich already.

2\. To do nobel price research, you probably need a lot of
financial/instutinational backing, which you are most likely to find in rich
countries..

~~~
thras
"I think a fair-er comparison is of Noble prize laureates by ethnicity or
country where they were born. You probably will see a lot more even
distribution."

Ha. You seriously believe that, don't you? I'm impressed almost. In the U.S.,
13% of the population is black. 2% is Jewish. Guess who get Nobel prizes and
who don't.

Evolution is a nasty, nasty theory that happens to be true. The magical
equality fairy theory is beautiful, full of peace and love, and is wrong and
stupid.

