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Silicon Valley Says Trump Plan To Reduce Immigration Will Hurt Economy (cbslocal.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS Local: President Donald Trump's push to cut legal immigration to the United States in half is being met by opposition from Silicon Valley leaders, economists, and even some Republicans senators, who all say legal immigration is key to economic prosperity. The Trump administration Wednesday endorsed the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act or RAISE Act, a Senate bill introduced by two Republican senators earlier this year, that aims to cut all U.S. immigration in half. Business leaders, especially those in California's tech industry, say the bill will stymie their ability to fill jobs and grow the U.S. economy. California's economy is the sixth largest in the world and many attribute that success, in part, to immigration. The Information Technology Industry Council, which represents companies including Amazon, Apple, Adobe, Dell, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Visa, Nokia, and Microsoft railed against the bill.
Dean Garfield, President and CEO of the council said, "This is not the right proposal to fix our immigration system because it does not address the challenges tech companies face, injects more bureaucratic dysfunction, and removes employers as the best judge of the employee merits they need to succeed and grow the U.S. economy." Garfield argues that the tech industry cannot find enough STEM-skilled Americans to fill open positions and that U.S. immigration policy "stops us from keeping the best and brightest innovators here in the U.S. and instead we lose out to our overseas competitors."
Dean Garfield, President and CEO of the council said, "This is not the right proposal to fix our immigration system because it does not address the challenges tech companies face, injects more bureaucratic dysfunction, and removes employers as the best judge of the employee merits they need to succeed and grow the U.S. economy." Garfield argues that the tech industry cannot find enough STEM-skilled Americans to fill open positions and that U.S. immigration policy "stops us from keeping the best and brightest innovators here in the U.S. and instead we lose out to our overseas competitors."
Has't this sort of thing been heard before?
Modern American politician : "The economy cannot survive without immigrants"
Ancient Greek politician : "Civilisation cannot survive without slavery"
Yeah they do. Trump wants to severely reduce the number of LEGAL immigrants we take in and his supporters are frothing white supremacists who would completely end all immigration tomorrow.
Trump has admitted that he wants to stop all legal immigration for one or two years.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sixty percent of Americans are "Trump-hating liberals", I guess.
https://projects.fivethirtyeig...
You are welcome on my lawn.
You don't seem to understand the difference between asset evaluations and monetary wealth. Jeff Bezos briefly became the wealthiest person on earth on July 27 with an estimated net worth of $90.6 Billion and relinquished that title 4 hours later by loosing an estimated 6 billion. That happens with paper assets, not real money! In fact Bezos would love to sell much of his paper assets (amazon stock) to fund his other projects but can't sell more then about 1 Billion worth a year without causing the stock price to tank. At this pace it will take a literal lifetime to liquidate his assets and that's assuming that the Amazon stock doesn't split or go back to climbing . Granted he could simply gift large chunks of his stock holdings but if all the recipients tried to liquidate the stock it would turn into a nightmare for Amazon
I would have thought Silicon Valley would have supported this proposal. More (legal) high-skilled domestic labor means downward pressure on wages.
What exactly are tech leaders railing against?? Higher wages in the future for their gardeners and nannies?
Maybe. If the "merit" system for proposed green cards makes it harder for low skilled gardeners and nannies to get green cards...
The proposal sharply reduces the green cards available for so-called "chain" immigration by limiting them to spouses and minor children, eliminating the green-cards currently reserved for parents, siblings, and adult-children that have no quota. It also cuts the number of refugee green cards in half and eliminates the diversity green card (aka lottery green card) and puts everyone else including those that don't get employment based green cards because of quota limits into a new points based system.
The reason that it is predicted that the number of green cards will go down is that "chain" green cards did not have a quota (diversity had a 50,000 quota), but now the new combination of "chain" + "diversity" will be capped at somewhere between 120,000 and 250,000
Not that I'm in favor of limiting immigration, but I think most of these folks are simply objecting on political grounds. By making "chain" immigration harder they think it will be more difficult to attract the "skilled" people to the US. I'm not so sure about that actually being the case in reality (hard to say, there are conflicting studies), but it certainly fits their political narrative...
FWIW, here's the green card proposal they are making. There are two tiers proposed, each would have a crack at 50% of the total green cards allocated on points. As far as I can determine here are how the points are allocated.
For Tier 1 (aimed at college/professional level folks, 50% of green cards)
15 points for PhD (10 for a masters, 5 for a bachelors)
2 or 3 points per year up to 20 for employment in the US (e.g, legally under another work visa like H1 or H2)
10 points for employment (or job offer) in a job requiring a PhD/masters (8 points for a Bachelors degree)
10 points for entrepreneurs employing at least 2 people
10 points for a high demand occupation
2 points for civic involvement
10 points for English skills
10 points for being a sibling or adult child of a citizen
8 points if you are under 25 (6 points for under 33, 4 points for under 38)
5 points for a being from a diversity country (e.g., less than 50,000 immigrants/5years)
For Tier 2 (every one else, 50% of green cards)
2 points/year up to 20 points for employment in the US (e.g, legally under another work visa like H2 or H3)
10 points for high-demand occupation employment (or job offer in those occupations)
10 points for being a caregiver
10 points for getting a promotion or having long-term employment
2 points for civic involvement
10 points for English skills (5 points for basic "knowledge" of English)
10 points for being a sibling or adult child of a citizen
8 points if you are under 25 (6 points for under 33, 4 points for under 38)
5 points for a being from a diversity country (e.g., less than 50,000 immigrants/5years)