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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.'"
My girlfriend's mom is from the Phillipines, where the economy is pretty much shit-astic. Her dream, as a young girl in the Phillipines, was to come to America and make enough money to support a family and drive a Mercedes--which she accomplished. This report makes sense to me, because it's natural that a lot of people coming from poorer countries come to America because they're sick of living somewhere poor, and thus have a lot of ambition to make good money. Just my thoughts.
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I believe in freedom and liberty for all men.
And by all men, I don't just mean the men in this country.
I don't see how any man can ethically justify excluding others from the land in which they live.
If a man from India, or Zimbabwae, or Sweden - where-ever - wishes to come here, the only basis upon which we could deny them is self-defence.
How can we say - all men are born free and equal - and then say "ah, but you lot can't come in".
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
I have read TFA, and the linked study.
Dear God, if this is what passes for research at prestigious places like Berkeley these days, I am not surprised that immigrants outperform U.S.-born citizens
And that's just two examples. I am at a loss for words to see such stupidity even get past a professor's review.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
It's stupider than patents. I have several friends caught up in this crap, and it is bad for everyone. Let me explain how the H1B forces down wages for American workers (who it was supposed to protect): once you get an H1B person over here they are pretty much locked in their job, so the company can massivly underpay them, which makes American born workers even less desirable. If the H1B's had job mobility, they might come in on the cheap (like college kids do anyways), but they'd job-hop and be sucked into American consumerism and they'd demand more and wages would go up for everyone. Well, everyone who can do a decent job.
And that's just it -- the entire immigration debate (from the high-tech workers to strawberry pickers) is simply an effort to protect our lazy and/or stupid people at the expense of everyone else in the country and the world. Worried about there being too many people who come to take advantage of the system? And what controls are there for keeping US citizens from popping out more babies than they or the government can take care of? None. At least most of the immigrants want to work. The immigration debate is a thinly veiled double standard that has it's roots in racism and fear of legitimate competition.
Even with the illegal strawberry pickers, the fact that we don't give them legal status forces them to make shady deals with their employers, which in turn allows the employers to pay them less and refuse them benefits they'd have to pay for legal workers. Who suffers? Not just the illegal immigrants -- but also the citizens since they can't reasonably compete with what amounts to slave labor. Every attempt at protecting ourselves backfires.
And don't just say we need to increase security. That just does not work. We can't get security in Iraq even having the country overrun by military. Force can not stop a people who truly believe their life is only worth living if they violate the laws of that force. And even if it were possible to succeed in that endeavor... what? We get the honor of being like all the lousy countries who have fought to close their borders over the years? Name them for me... not a prestigious list. Rather, we should be finding ways to make the most of the reality that people want to come here, take advantage (in the positive sense of the word) of the people who want to be a part of America. Stop trying to change, outlaw, or discourage them. They are customers of the American lifestyle and economy.
Here's a vague starting point: make the rule that anyone who wasn't a convicted felon in their country could come here for 3 months. If they could find a job and stay off the streets during that time, they (and their dependents) could stay as long as they were working somewhere. After 5 years, they'd be citizens. That would give them the motivation to become a group we can appreciate, perhaps even better than your average natural born American.
Cheers.
According to some reports, there are a couple tens of millions of undocumented workers in this country. Given the maximum number of visas allocated in any given year, it would take on average about 4,000 years for someone to legally enter this country from the less-favored areas of the world. I don't know about you, but I would have a hard time waiting that long.
Of course they do! They aren't stupid, despite the stereotypes. That's why they want a path to citizenship.
This country has a long and proud history of civil disobediance concerning unjust laws. I don't know about you, but I'm doing that right now every time I watch a DVD on my MythTV box. I'd say our new neighbors are learning quite quickly, wouldn't you?
Classic fear-mongering argument. Are you really so afraid of other people? How sad.
Our responsibility is to our fellow human beings, regarless of race, creed, country of origin or any of the other silly things we use to divide ourselves against each other
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
I'm just drooling to know who this Pavlov person is.
You appear to have lost track of what the United States is here for. Let me give you a reminder, starting with a few things it's not.
It's not here to guarantee you a bigger car than the guy in the next country over.
It's not here to guarantee you a job.
It's not here to let you tell other people how to spend their money.
It's not here to compete with other countries.
It's not here to put you in a master class based on which side of some line on a fucking map you were born on.
It's here to give people a place to do as they will, and to give everybody a chance to compete with one another, if they so choose, on a level playing field. It's here to give them that because they deserve it, because they're people, not because of where they're from or who their parents were.
The United States is an instrument created for a purpose. Insofar as it has lost track of that purpose, it is not worthy of the loyalty of any human being... and even if it follows that purpose, the true loyalty ought to be to the purpose, not the country... and sure as hell not to every fuckwit with an inflated sense of entitlement who happens to have been born within its borders.
You nativist idiots, the my-country-right-or-wrong assholes, the xenophobic safety-obsessed cowards, and all the other lame excuses for Americans who seem to run the joint these days, are a disgrace to the principles the USA used to think it stood for.
You make me sick.