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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."
Hurts it MORE.
If we couldn't outsource their jobs (and actually get them done, which is a problem with outsourcing) and we couldn't import cheap labor from overseas, we'd have to pay programmers over $200K/year. And that would be terrible, because
Oh. Never mind.
Bruce Perens.
Of course SV will be against, they have a huge conflict of interest in the matter. They keep importing under-paid code monkey who accept to work 70h a week in constant stressful environment with no job security, while firing and discriminating against older, more pragmatic, american staffers.
because not all immigrants are alike.
People bringing with them cold hard cash, and spending them in USA = boon for the economy
People bringing nothing, and actually sending whatever money they make back to their original country to feed their relatives back home = drain on the economy
People with skills who produce wealth = boon for the economy
People with no marketable skill who collect entitlements = drain on the economy
It hurts their ability to grow the economy? Oh, boo hoo, they have to pay more for American workers.
If a handful of American salaries turns your project from a profit to a loss, you are running on razor-thin margins to begin with. Maybe your company should be doing something else instead.
On the other hand, if you're making a decent profit and just want more---get fucked. Public policy doesn't need to hand out special benefits to successful businesses. Right now, the middle class needs a little more help than the shareholders.
Real immigration means coming over here, making a life, and investing long-term in the well-being of this country. The H1B program isn't immigration; it's indentured servitude V2.0
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
So much brainwashing. It hurts already to read such comments on FB posts, or Yahoo News comment section, but here, which is supposed to be a website for educated IT people ... dreadful.
Most Silicon Valley executives are centrists, not liberals, and focus more on what their company "needs" than the 99%.
They want cheap labor without any training needed so they can be more profitable and/or grow faster. That's their primary concern and what they are paid to focus on. They don't spend a lot of time researching or philosophizing on middle class economics, except when they want to sell them something.
I hate to say it, but I'll side with (gulp) Trump on this one: CEO's look out for their profits, and I'll look out for my paycheck: same thing, just a different angle.
Whether it slows the general economy is hard to say. While I agree it may make services a bit more expensive, it may also shift money from the 1% to the 99%. It's currently log-jammed at the top.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm a Canadian in the US who's had a TN, then an H-1B, and now I have a green card. I have a Ph.D. in a highly sought-after technical field and I'm holding down a pretty good job here in the States, doing something specialized related to my academic work. There aren't enough Americans with my specialty nor enough Canadian jobs requiring it for it to make sense for me to "go back home" - it's not in anyone's interest.
Even with the strong tailwinds of Canadian-ness and a useful high education, it's not exactly straightforward to get your green card. There are background and medical checks, as well as pretty long waiting periods due to H-1B quotas and other administrative delays. It's much harder for friends of mine from India with *only* a Master's degree, who have to wait for something like 15 YEARS before they're able to get a green card. The uncertainty this breeds can be a real hardship, and I think it's unnecessarily cruel to ask good people who contribute more than they're paid to have to endure anything more than a few years of probation.
Moreover, getting my wife's parents enrolled in local healthcare looks like a complete non-starter, and while we'd like my daughter's grandparents to be able to visit with us for more of the year, they can't because of silly immigration and healthcare rules. Who knows how much more of this we're going to choose as a family?
I'm always disheartened how fellow Slashdotters often plump for more regulations impeding the freedom of people to live where they are wanted and loved. I understand there might be some folks who think that immigrants hurt American workers, but that's a tough stance to take when unemployment is so low. I also think most immigrants are not going to parts of America where jobs are scarce.
So, have a heart or a brain, and sympathize with the pro-immigration bunch on either humanitarian or economic grounds. I know it's in the American DNA to embrace the hard-working foreigner wanting something better, and now's a great time to grow the economy by admitting those willing to work for the wages offered here.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Eat a dick
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."
Translated: "Where the fuck are we going to get our cheap programmers????"
"removes employers as the best judge of the employee merits they need to succeed"
You mean all those Indian managers, who once get a management spot, only hire other Indians? yea, it'd be a shame if they couldn't hire only other Indians.
I'm sorry but I've personally seen this multiple times in multiple places and it's no longer funny. I've had to deal with the bugs and blame-game that comes from this favouritism so much it's downright aggravating.
Yes, I know not all Indians are like this, and it's not just Indians, but there are enough that are, that's it's troubling.
And this isn't even talking about the sweatshop problem that other posters have mentioned.
You think you can just have stuff for free made by low-rent "other" people, in perpetuity, with no cost to you or your children? Aren't we a little entitled? And by we I mean you and every other armchair economist who's never set foot inside a factory and has to call a repairman to plug in your refrigerator.