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."

Comments

H1B....

[Zurkeyon3733]

Hurts it MORE.

What Would We Have To Pay Programmers?

[Bruce Perens]

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.

Re:What Would We Have To Pay Programmers?

[computational super]

It would be terrible because it would hurt the economy. Well, Zuck's own personal economy, anyway. He'd have to go from making 100 times what the average American makes to only 99 times as much.

Re:What Would We Have To Pay Programmers?

[dAzED1]

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/1... - the average American doesn't make 1/100th of over $4m per day from birth to present. I don't know what you think Americans make, but...btw, that article is less than 15months old, and he's made $19billion since then. Facebook has 17k employees. That means he could have given each of them a $million in the last 15 months, and still had more left over from that 15months of income to give a thousand average Americans an entire lifetime of income earnings. I know you were just being silly, but people don't really appreciate the...scale...of the income inequality.

Conflict of interest

[x0ra]

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.

Re:Conflict of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, they lie through their teeth.

Under Trump's plan, there would actually be more high-skilled immigrants , but they would no longer be indentured to the sponsoring companies:
if the wages are too low, they take their green card and walk away (not something an H1-b non-immigrant can do, or else he loses sponsorship).

Obviously the tech companies hate it, because they can no longer rely on skilled immigrants to undercut skilled Americans. No visa tie-in, no h1-b sweatshops, no people living in fear of pissing off an employer.
Don't be surprised if Tim Cook starts to speak about "Russian treason" now. (Bezos already does through Washington Post)

Depends on what kind of immigrant

[Spy Handler]

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

BS detector just lit up like a Christmas tree

[EndlessNameless]

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

Re:Come to Europe...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Plenty of opportunities here. And no Trump.

Funny thing is... this proposed plan would move US immigration policy closer to that of Canada and the EU, with more emphasis on prioritizing immigrants with particular skills and/or some level of wealth.