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Google Chairman on WhatsApp: $19 Bn For 50 People? Good For Them!
theodp writes "Speaking at an SXSW panel, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt emphasized that Google is 'very, very worried' about the class tensions that underlie recent Bay Area protests, where high-salaried techies have driven up rents. 'Ninety-nine percent of people have seen no economic improvement over the last decade,' he said, adding that 'the data suggest that the problem gets worse' and will become the 'number one issue in democracies around the world.' Schmidt's solution to this displacement? Foster conditions — e.g., better education, looser immigration laws, and deregulation in strictly-controlled areas like energy and telecommunications — that encourage the creation of fast-growing startups ('gazelles') that generate lots of jobs. When interviewer Steven Levy noted 'gazelles' like the 50-employee WhatsApp which was acquired by Facebook for a reported $19 billion seem to lead to more inequality, Schmidt brushed aside the apparent contradiction. 'Let us celebrate capitalism,' the tax-us-if-you-can Schmidt said, opening his arms. '$19 billion for 50 people? Good for them.' Eric, meet Tom."
http://bit.ly/1dI04fH
Here's how you enact a sensible immigration policy. You crack down on the employers of illegals such that no one will hire them. You then offer a contingent amnesty to the illegals that allows them to come forward and face no charges if they leave the country of their own volition, and you even let them keep all of the money and property they've earned if they self-deport. Then, you only allow immigrants with provable skills to immigrate as singles or with their immediate family if they're married with children. None of this "let's bring the whole extended family" over. Grandma, the aunts and uncles and cousins have no business piggybacking on that green card. That's just a recipe for waking up one day and finding a large ethnic enclave in an American city (oh wait, that's precisely what's happened in many areas because of this, silly me).
How's that Tea Party Kool Aid taste? Self-deporting will never work. I'll explain why. Some years ago I had a girlfriend who lived in a country that is not part of the Visa Waiver group of countries that don't need visas to come to the USA. I applied for a fiancee visa for her. I have some insight into how immigration really works in this country, although I do have to say that we ended up breaking up after my application was approved and she did not ever come to the USA. I've read stories about how legal immigrants can't get visas for family members to visit them because the truth is that at the consulates where US employees make the decisions, many applications get denied. The system is set up so that if visitors overstay a visa, the person who approved it gets held accountable and they may not be able to get promoted if it happens enough. There is no appeal process if your application is denied, so it's just easier in many cases to deny a request than to gamble that the person who gets the visa won't overstay. I've even heard of parents of legal immigrants where one got a visa to visit their legal immigrant child and one did not simply because they applied on different days and each parent talked to a different worker at the same US consulate. Also, the whole process of legally immigrating is ridiculously long. If anyone self-deports, they know that they may not ever be allowed back in. If the person who works on their case just doesn't like them, they can deny or delay the application and the applicant can do nothing (they have no rights as they are not US citizens).
The guy who is trying to get the current residents evicted. That's whom.