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The Impact of Immigrant Innovators
Ramakrishnan writes "The Wall Street Journal is carrying a report on immigrant innovators and entrepreneurs. According to the piece, nearly a quarter of all California startups which went into business between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant as a founding member. These businesses, together, employ almost half a million workers and generated about $50 billion in sales in the year 2005. The study seems quite topical, given recent discussions in the U.S. capital. From the article: 'Supporters of an immigration bill are likely to use the study to argue the importance of foreign-born workers to the U.S. economy. An immigration bill passed by the last Congress and heavily lobbied by business groups would have greatly increased the number of green cards available to skilled workers. Business has long argued that the U.S. schools aren't turning out enough scientists, mathematicians and engineers, and that the economy will lose its competitive edge without more skilled foreign workers.'"
I am intensely uncomfortable with the morality in that statement: that it is acceptable to have a separate group of people being paid less than minimum wage in order to make living easier for the rest of the country. I am making no statement regarding immigration, legal or not. I just think that the concept of "well, we have to keep a lesser class of people around because they accept wages below the norm in order to make products cheaper" is not a valid argument.
Again, the fact that the single argument is invalid is not in any way support for any other side of the debate. It just strikes me that this particular line of argument is morally repugnant.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Really? I came to the UK with a VC funded company I co-founded. We brought with us 20 people, all of who paid tax. We employed 30 more for a while. The company had to scale back a few years ago, but every single one of the people who left found other high paid jobs and are helping to fund UK. I currently work for another startup and pay almost as much in tax every year as the average UK person earn. Over the last year I was also offered another position in another UK startup, VC funded and again started by two immigrants. For that matter, most of the local businesses where I live in South London were started and and are run by immigrants. Relying on anecdotal evidence will invariably give us biased viewpoints.
But, as I've found out, apparently my experiences in the matter "doesn't really count" because I'm white, from Europe (Norway to be precise), and not muslim. Conveniently, people complaining about immigration almost invariably find ways to redefine the "immigrants" to mean "low paid poor people that look different from us" - I hope you're not one of the people stooping that low.
They take priority over British citizens, because they are a 'minority'.
Really? Can you cite proof, please?
In fact, people who arrive in the UK without a proper work permit, visa or right to work (as a EU/EEA member state citizen for instance) risk being put in detention centers. Of the ones that don't, most are hard working and pay their taxes.
Ever noticed how most parking attendants in the UK are black? Turns out almost the only people prepared to take the level of abuse a parking attendant gets are Nigerian immigrants. Similar situations are found in many other professions that "native" British people just don't want to take, or aren't performing well.
Notice how Polish immigrants are changing the UK building industry? It's because British builders are shit - they overcharge, don't show up on time, and do an overall crappy job, while the Polish and other builders that come here do their jobs well and deliver on time. In fact, given the choice between hiring a British builder and a Polish builder, I'd likely pick the Polish guy even if I had to pay more. I have used a couple of skilled British builders, but they're the exception rather than the rule, and even the skilled ones tend not to understand the concept of delivering to an agreed timeframe.
Notice how nurses in the UK are often African or South Asian? In fact, this is one of the areas where immigration to the UK IS a problem, though not to the UK - the UK is sucking many developing nations dry of skilled workers, especially in the health field.
Immigrants cost me a fortune in tax. And they can't be bothered to learn the language, so now street signs in London can even be seen in Arabic!
Actually, immigrants save you a fortune in tax. It costs the UK far less to import skilled labour than paying child benefit, health care, school and university costs for a child born here and loose the tax revenues from the mother during maternity leave etc., and the immigrants that do come here to work far outnumbers the few that end up on benefits. Immigration is a net economic benefit to most industrialized countries that have reasonable unemployment rates.
The main issue with immigration is that in some professions it's "reverse aid" from developing nations to the developed nations.
And if you even think of bringing up citizens of poorer EU/EEA states, keep in mind that they are required to pay for themselves or leave unless they've been working in the UK for four years and apply for indefinite leave to remain (i.e. even though I've worked here for 6 years, if I become unable to pay my way myself, I could get throw straight out despite having paid around GBP 150k in taxes and n