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Like I said, change to an Australian immigration system. Make it based on skills, limit the number of people from a particular country, so that half the visas aren't just going to India. The biggest winners of skilled immigration are Asians and Europeans.
Make it easier for people from OECD or high HDI countries to come here as well. Germans and Japanese aren't going to hurt Americans, and will likely create jobs instead. Make it more difficult for low-skilled workers to arrive, and instead let in more doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc, whose wages are extremely high, even relative to the same positions in Western Europe.
And like I continue to state, who are the top graduates in math and science programs in the US? Asian Americans represent a very disproportionate share. A lot of the "Americans" hurt by high-skilled immigration are children of immigrants themselves. Even among Black Americans at top universities, a highly disproportionate amount are children of African immigrants.
Having a long foreign born population doesn't have to hurt "Americans". Switzerland has one of the largest immigrant populations in the developed world, around 1/4 of their total population. Yet their unemployment is very low, and incomes are among the highest in the world. They also have higher per capita GDP than us, and higher human development index. Australia and Canada are decent examples as well. It's just about who you're letting in, and high-skilled immigrants don't really have many negative effects.
You're making it sound like all these people are smarter than us. With the exception of maybe Japan, we already have a high number of well educated STEM graduates and pioneers in the field. American continues to lead the world in innovations.
H-1B workers are not being brought here because they are top of their field in their country. They enter a lottery to win a visa, and if they are randomly selected in the visa lottery, they are brought here to work in a subservient position (they are not leaders or innovators in their field, they are worker bee drones who do busy work). They are paid less than the American citizen, and they are frequently exploited in ways American workers cannot be, because US labor laws do not cover them in the same capacity as American citizens.
H-1B visa workers are exploited because they know that they can loose their job at any time and be sent back to their country of origin. Because they and their employer know this, they are over made to work overtime without comp, they are given few if any benefits or sick leave, and they may be too afraid to ask for a raise or better working conditions for fear of losing their job. They don't understand or know about American labor laws, and they rarely know their rights, although they do have less rights than an American citizen worker does.
This is not only about taking away American jobs, or lowering wages for Americans. This is also a human rights issue because these H-1B visa workers are EXPLOITED. Their empoyers can abuse them without answering to US labor laws. This is lose lose situation for everyone, except for the corporations that hire H-1B, because they are making a profit by paying the visa holders less, while extracting more work out of them.
Around here most of our Indians speak Telugu at work but everything else you said is accurate.
Indian recruiters are time-wasters; they only talk to Americans to cover their own butts. I refuse to help them in that endeavor. I hang up on them.
Yep, I know, I do the same. I don't waste my time with Indian recruiters anymore. I have already spent too much time sitting in offices interviewing with them, asking questions about the work environment, and then they casually mention that nearly everyone in the office is from India. Could have told me that up front, but of course they don't because they have to make it look like they give a fair consideration to everyone. Of course I never get called back after those interviews.
You're making it sound like all these people are smarter than us. With the exception of maybe Japan, we already have a high number of well educated STEM graduates and pioneers in the field. American continues to lead the world in innovations.
H-1B workers are not being brought here because they are top of their field in their country. They enter a lottery to win a visa, and if they are randomly selected in the visa lottery, they are brought here to work in a subservient position (they are not leaders or innovators in their field, they are worker bee drones who do busy work). They are paid less than the American citizen, and they are frequently exploited in ways American workers cannot be, because US labor laws do not cover them in the same capacity as American citizens.
H-1B visa workers are exploited because they know that they can loose their job at any time and be sent back to their country of origin. Because they and their employer know this, they are over made to work overtime without comp, they are given few if any benefits or sick leave, and they may be too afraid to ask for a raise or better working conditions for fear of losing their job. They don't understand or know about American labor laws, and they rarely know their rights, although they do have less rights than an American citizen worker does.
This is not only about taking away American jobs, or lowering wages for Americans. This is also a human rights issue because these H-1B visa workers are EXPLOITED. Their empoyers can abuse them without answering to US labor laws. This is lose lose situation for everyone, except for the corporations that hire H-1B, because they are making a profit by paying the visa holders less, while extracting more work out of them.
This is about the greed of American corporations.
Totally ignore the point where I say we should CHANGE the immigration system. I'm not a huge fan of H-1bs, at least not in their current state. Make it more like Australia's system, just based on skills on merit. You seemed to miss most of the points I actually made. I know there are problems with the H-1b, never said that there wasn't. Besides, I rather make it about permanent residence than temporary visas, which indeed favor corporations over the immigrants themselves.
You're not addressing facts such as...
a) A disproportionate amount of "Americans" in skilled careers or graduating in skilled careers are born to immigrants. 25% of MIT is Asian, as an example. Older STEM workers are not representative of who's graduating into the fields.
b) You can maintain cities (and a country) with a higher quality of life than us AND a higher immigrant population. Major cities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland are great examples.
c)I will continue to make the point about test scores. We don't have a high proportion of people ready to compete in the global market. In raw number, sure we can compete with Germany or Korea, but that's because we have such as a large population. If we're graduating so many people in the top fields, than simply based on testing, they're not as qualified as the ones in Korea or Japan.
It's like saying Brazil can compete with Sweden. Well yeah, look how many people they have.
^I don't know why you push so hard for more immigration. Nor do I know why you are so dismissive of American students and out of work American STEM/IT workers. It's galling for those unemployed Americans to see H1-Bs holding jobs.
We, as a nation, are running out of potable water and buildable land.
You must not be aware that all these H1-Bs tend to create overcrowded housing conditions. They think nothing of living 10-15 per house. They do this in part because they are paid less than their American counterparts and because back in India, overcrowded housing is the norm rather than the exception.
You keep bringing up test scores. Again, even if we ramped up math and science education, what good is it if Americans coming out of college can't find work due to so many H1-Bs?
Totally ignore the point where I say we should CHANGE the immigration system. I'm not a huge fan of H-1bs, at least not in their current state. Make it more like Australia's system, just based on skills on merit. You seemed to miss most of the points I actually made. I know there are problems with the H-1b, never said that there wasn't. Besides, I rather make it about permanent residence than temporary visas, which indeed favor corporations over the immigrants themselves.
You're not addressing facts such as...
a) A disproportionate amount of "Americans" in skilled careers or graduating in skilled careers are born to immigrants. 25% of MIT is Asian, as an example. Older STEM workers are not representative of who's graduating into the fields.
b) You can maintain cities (and a country) with a higher quality of life than us AND a higher immigrant population. Major cities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland are great examples.
c)I will continue to make the point about test scores. We don't have a high proportion of people ready to compete in the global market. In raw number, sure we can compete with Germany or Korea, but that's because we have such as a large population. If we're graduating so many people in the top fields, than simply based on testing, they're not as qualified as the ones in Korea or Japan.
It's like saying Brazil can compete with Sweden. Well yeah, look how many people they have.
I see that you are talking about making our immigration system like Australia. I don't know much about their system, only that it's supposed to be difficult to migrate there unless you can prove you have a required and needed skill. Their immigration policy has been historically much stricter than ours has. However, I have read other things that Australia is also taking in large numbers of refugees seeking asylum from 3rd world countries, so I would not be in favor of the US doing that anymore than we already do. Your previous comment about Switzerland being an ideal model for the USA because Switzerland has a large percentage of immigrants did not make sense to me. Switzerland is a tiny, very rich country and to compare it to the enormous USA, which also has millions upon millions more people and is trillions of dollars in debt does not seem like a realistic comparison.
New Zealand barely has any immigrants as it is very, very hard to immigrate there. I know this because I have family who tried to move there. Canada has a much, much smaller population than the USA, and once again, it's not trillions of dollars in debt like the USA is. There is no way to compare these countries to the USA and then declare that we need to continue to import more unskilled and cheap labor into the USA when we have so many US citizens who are unable to be hired because corporations would rather pay less.
We need to stop taking in unskilled immigrants, but we also need to END the H-1B visa program entirely. There are already enough people with those skills here. There does not need to be a permanent residence program for these people. We need to be taking care of American citizens FIRST. Why H-1B hurts workers: How the United States H4 Visa Traps Foreign Workers’ Family Members in a ‘Golden Cage’ · Global Voices
Do you have a source for MIT being 25% 2nd generation Asian? Are you aware of the growing trend of American universities admitting foreign students from China and elsewhere? That a percentage of those Asians at MIT are probably Chinese nationals.
This perception you have of there being no STEM graduates in this country is not what I have witnessed at all. I've attended large universities in this country, as well as a local community college, as have my friends, and I have met many STEM students. I meet many recent STEM graduates when I go out in the major city that I live in. It's preposterous to say they are still not enough graduates in those fields. It could not be true given how many young adults I talk to who want to get into IT "for the money". STEM is absolutely growing in this country and has been since I first attended university 10 years ago, where many of my friends were IT grads. Again you are falling prey to the manufactured belief that because we don't have skilled graduates, we have to import them. That again is a myth that's spread in the media and is fueled by the corporate lobbyists who want to keep abusing the guest worker visa program. It is not reality.
Do you have a link to these test scores? Because I have many, many links for why immigration is bad idea and hurts our economy.
^I don't know why you push so hard for more immigration. Nor do I know why you are so dismissive of American students and out of work American STEM/IT workers. It's galling for those unemployed Americans to see H1-Bs holding jobs.
We, as a nation, are running out of potable water and buildable land.
You must not be aware that all these H1-Bs tend to create overcrowded housing conditions. They think nothing of living 10-15 per house. They do this in part because they are paid less than their American counterparts and because back in India, overcrowded housing is the norm rather than the exception.
You keep bringing up test scores. Again, even if we ramped up math and science education, what good is it if Americans coming out of college can't find work due to so many H1-Bs?
Exactly. Greed wins out, because corporations would rather hire the cheap foreign workers than pay an American a decent wage + benefits, for the same job. Americans are being undercut by cheap labor and corporate greed. To blame Americans for not being "educated" enough and saying they aren't good enough in STEM or these mythical test scores is just propaganda to increase support of guest workers who major corporations will gleefully exploit and pocket the difference themselves.
Exactly. Greed wins out, because corporations would rather hire the cheap foreign workers than pay an American a decent wage + benefits, for the same job. Americans are being undercut by cheap labor and corporate greed. To blame Americans for not being "educated" enough and saying they aren't good enough in STEM or these mythical test scores is just propaganda to increase support of guest workers who major corporations will gleefully exploit and pocket the difference themselves.
It's the same reason the greedy employers hire illegal aliens. Of course the pro-illegals remain in denial about that while they claim that the employers can't find any hard working Americans to do the same jobs they had been doing for years for a fair wage such as in the construction industry until the arrival of this cheap, illegal labor. Just how stupid do they think we are? Their favorite argument is about crop picking when that's all been debunked over and over.
Just to clarify, the US is about 14% foreign born (including illegals). Australia is 27% foreign born. That's a huge difference. New Zealand is 25% foreign born, so you're very off on that. Canada is 20% foreign born.
I'm not sure how being trillions in debt has anything to with skilled immigration, seems like you're trying to grab at straws. If anything, younger skilled immigrants will pay disproportionate taxes, and will help low-skilled Americans.
Japan has a higher debt to GDP ratio than us, likely because over 1/4 of its population is 65+, and 33% are past Japan's retirement age of 60. The biggest proposals to fix their problem are either an increased birth rate, or increased immigration. If it was true that stopping immigration would push American wages up, Japan would've been a good example of it. Highly developed economy with low unemployment, and a shrinking worker base. Yet wages have been stagnant, and were growing fastest when Japan's workforce was growing at a fast pace decades ago (they are finally starting to rise again, but this is after two decades of a stagnant economy).
I don't care about anecdotal evidence, and will not waste my time in addressing it.
MIT is 25% Asian, and about 10% of its population are foreign students. Even if everyone of the foreign students were Asian, that's still 15% Asian, 3x their representation in the American population. This is on the MIT's Office of the Provost website. Not only that, but affirmative action works against Asians, so the numbers may even be deflated if anything.
I agree with slowing low-skilled immigration. But high skilled immigrants are an economic and social benefit. They'll produce low crime rates in a country with very high rates of violent crime, and help push forward us on international test scores.
^I don't know why you push so hard for more immigration. Nor do I know why you are so dismissive of American students and out of work American STEM/IT workers. It's galling for those unemployed Americans to see H1-Bs holding jobs.
We, as a nation, are running out of potable water and buildable land.
You must not be aware that all these H1-Bs tend to create overcrowded housing conditions. They think nothing of living 10-15 per house. They do this in part because they are paid less than their American counterparts and because back in India, overcrowded housing is the norm rather than the exception.
You keep bringing up test scores. Again, even if we ramped up math and science education, what good is it if Americans coming out of college can't find work due to so many H1-Bs?
"American" is extremely broad and general. It means little but a national boundary. It's not an ethnicity or a very specific cultural belief. It's not the same as saying someone is Japanese or Swedish or Italian. Anyone born in this country is "American", regardless of who they are. Not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I never understood it, but maybe because I live in New York. Here in NYC you have old Irish and Italian Americans that complain when "non-ethnic midwesterners" move into their neighborhoods. They're not just proud of being American, they're proud of their cultural heritage, which if anything, is more legitimate.
Just as, if given the choice, most "Americans" would probably live in an Asian or European immigrant neighborhood rather than an African American one, simply because they understand averages. We're not all that connected, and regionally, Americans can be very different.
If you want to understand my beliefs, you can read articles by Ron Unz and stuff by the notorious Charles Murray.
"American" is extremely broad and general. It means little but a national boundary. It's not an ethnicity or a very specific cultural belief. It's not the same as saying someone is Japanese or Swedish or Italian. Anyone born in this country is "American", regardless of who they are. Not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I never understood it, but maybe because I live in New York. Here in NYC you have old Irish and Italian Americans that complain when "non-ethnic midwesterners" move into their neighborhoods. They're not just proud of being American, they're proud of their cultural heritage, which if anything, is more legitimate.
Just as, if given the choice, most "Americans" would probably live in an Asian or European immigrant neighborhood rather than an African American one, simply because they understand averages. We're not all that connected, and regionally, Americans can be very different.
If you want to understand my beliefs, you can read articles by Ron Unz and stuff by the notorious Charles Murray.
Actually, America does have an identifying culture and language. It's not just a national boundary. There are those however that identify more with their ethnic, ancestoral roots as you described above. Is this a good thing? IMO, not it's not.
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