On the bright side, a cyber war doesn't sound quite as bad as a global thermonuclear holocaust. Treat it like a grand computer game and keep the post office around just in case.
I'm fairly sure "the greatest defeat any nation has suffered in war or peace" would not leave said nation with the largest economy in the world or leave it with the largest, most powerful military.
If I cut off my right arm, a tourniquet and a trip to the ER will probably save me. I can say "it was not a defeat", but it doesn't mean I'll be better off for it.
very few are going as far as having their military actively conduct heavy corporate espionage to benefit their native companies
I don't know why China bothers. "American" companies will happily give away their know-how for the promise of a few bucks from a joint venture, or even just the promise of compliant slave labor for their next Chinese factory. Want to know how to build good jet engines? Just call Jeff "Jobs Czar" Immelt at GE and he'll accommodate you.
Since much of it seems to be done by the PLA, maybe it's their equivalent of our military insisting it needs to build up defenses around Seattle in case of a Canadian invasion. Or maybe the problem is that there are a few Chinese stalwarts who just can't believe it's this easy. Kind of like to thief who insists on picking the lock while his accomplice just walks through the unlocked back door. Or perhaps it's a matter of sport, which when it comes to espionage we certainly don't give them. Try doing it the hard way just for fun, or treat it like a computer game. Maybe even keep your skills in shape in case someday an adversary doesn't make it so easy.
85 million is just for a few major cities. Even Uncle Joe didn't have anything to say about billions. It's one thing to starve a few million in the middle of a breadbasket, or kill 'em with the secret police or gulags, but billions? What's the point in being a dictator if there's nobody left to be a dictator of?
Computers have been getting "slightly better than last year" for a few decades now.
Yes, but that sort of innovation is not the kind that gets VC's excited or makes headlines. More people hear about Google's or Facebooks latest geegaw than about MuGFET's, hi-k dielectrics, the challenges of the latest semi-process or improvements in OLED fab. That kind of innovation is largely done by big companies like Intel and Applied Materials. Personally I love small companies, but if you look at the economics, it makes most of that sort of important on-going development is done by large companies. Gone are the days when Fairchild Semi or Intel could get started for a few million. Maybe in a completely different field, but not there.
Seventeen is getting kind of old for tech stuff. Whenever I have a question I ask my nine year old daughter. She's very helpful, but then gives me a look and says "daddy, I thought you were an electrical engineer". Me: shut up kid.
Which ones? You said it yourself - the RAZR's (I'll take you word on the HD's as I'm not that familiar with them). But the OP said "throw out anybody that made decision about Motorola phones for the last 10 years", which is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Honestly, sometimes it just seems like Google doesn't now how to run themselves in spite of billions in profit. The are succeeding in spite of themselves.
OTOH there I agree with you. Obviously they've been enormously successful, but it all goes back to a better search engine and ad revenue. They've certainly made some nice acquisitions, like YouTube, Google Maps and Android. Maybe Moto if they don't screw it up, but an Internet services company and a hardware manufacturer are very different things. But do they really have a strategy? They've got so much cash that it seems like they fish in every pond they can find, hoping to catch another big one. Maybe in their position that's the right thing to do, but I'm skeptical of any great strategy.
In Silicon Valley fashion though one thing they are great at is hype. The automated cars? Interesting project that they hype to the hilt, but do people realize that many other companies, like Toyota and Mercedes, have been working on things like that for years?
Throw out anybody that made decision about Motorola phones for the last 10 years
Why? The latest Moto phones are awesome. Oh, that's right, modern management strategy: change things to show you're "doing something". Don't worry about silly things like what was being done well in the past. When your big screwup (oops, I mean change) becomes apparent, just blame it on some uncontrollable and unforeseeable factors, like evil spirits.
They don't have to be great. There just has to be enough of them to so that anybody that threatens to sue Google for patent infringement can be counter-threatened with 10,000 billable man-years of legal work to prove that the other company isn't infringing on Google's patents (i.e. they can be used defensively). A portfolio like that can also be used for shakedowns of smaller companies:
Big Company: Nice little business you've got here. Hate to see it fail due to you failing to pay any patent royalties you owe us.
Small Company: But we don't infringe on any of your patents, and we can prove it too.
Big Company: How many billable hours for you to prove you don't infringe on any of our 10,000 patents?
Small Company: That's extortion!
Big Company: Such an ugly name for a business proposition. Just pay the protection money and we'll call off our lawyers.
That's not some far fetched scenario. I worked for a small company that was shaken down like that, and we wound up paying the protection money just to stay in business. It's not just patent trolls that do it. This was a larger company (who's name I'll avoid mentioning) that had actual products and stuff. It's just a sideline. It's well known that IBM did that to Sun in its early days. AFAIK Google hasn't done it, but it's always a possible sideline.
Person sits at desk from 9-6. Person taps keys. Appears to be breathing. It tells you nothing about whether they're doing their work, so if you can't tell by other means, you're an incompetent employer. And if you can tell by other means, then there's no problem with telecommuting.
it starts with the premise that for the H-1b program to be desirable or economically valid, its workers should be, on average, "better and brighter"
It does no such thing. Read the introduction at least. It says that the idea that foreign students are the "best and the brightest" is an argument often made by proponents, not that it's the only or even an essential argument for the program. You're making the claim that Matloff states a premise that he clearly doesn't (or perhaps that that's the only possible premise - you're unclear) hence you're the one creating a straw man.
Furthermore, if the idea that foreign students are the "best and the brightest" was true, it would be a strong argument for the H-1B. Yet you dismiss it as irrelevant. What you mean, presumably, is not essential. Not even close to the same thing.
You seriously claim to be a statistician
No, I never claimed that. Are you still suffering from the delusion that I'm Matloff? If you're unable to control such irrational and unfounded delusions then I urge you to seek professional help.
Let's leave that discussion to peer review, shall we?
No, because this study is not and never was intended for publication in a peer reviewed journal. Matloff publishes in peer reviewed CS journals, and this debate is a sideline of his. Your hiding behind the excuse that it wasn't peer reviewed is weak, unless you're now going to claim that the only plausible studies or analysis come from peer reviewed journals. And since you claim to do "data analytics professionally", you should be qualified to critique it instead of hiding behind a "wasn't peer reviewed" excuse.
It was an allusion to Adam Smith's classical work "The Wealth of Nations"
No kidding. I never would have gotten that allusion. Great name for a book, but in this post-18th century world of greater precision it's a lousy economic term.
I don't have to be precise, I'm not publishing a paper.
Standard excuse used by people who rant without thinking, and then have difficulty supporting their arguments.
I don't pretend that there is objective statistical data that can answer this question, Matloff does. He needs to make his case.
So you think an economic question like this cannot be analyzed by objective statistical data. Interesting. We're not discussing which poem is better or which flower is prettier. As a proponent of H-1B's, how would you make the argument? Subjectively? Good luck.
My bad on the first point. Matloff sometimes makes that key distinction, but I guess he's given in on the sloppy language used in common discourse. I stand by the importance of the distinction though. Calling H-1B visa holders immigrants is simply incorrect, and is often just an attempt to make it sound better than "guest worker".
As to the second point, again with the weird assumption that I'm Matloff? And even if I was "you should know what one needs to correct for in such an analysis" is a very weak argument. It's often made by people who cannot support their assertion.
it starts with the premise that for the H-1b program to be desirable or economically valid, its workers should be, on average, "better and brighter" than US workers (a straw man)
A straw man? It's a claim made by H-1B proponents. Matloff even gives examples with attribution. If you think it's a straw man, take it up with the proponents.
It is statistically unsound because he infers that foreign workers are "less bright"
Your rhetoric needs work, at least if honesty counts. Matloff never uses the phrase "less bright", and to suggest that he does is dishonest. The only place he uses the word "bright" (or variants such as the superlative form) is in the context of the infamous phrase "the best and the brightest". He does that precisely because that phrase is so often used by H-1B proponents, who are apparently unaware that the originator (Halberstam) used it ironically, as in why did the supposed best and brightest get us into the quagmire of the Vietnam war. To use the phrase without irony is waving a big flag that tells people you're ignorant of American history.
it is easy to construct scenarios for which such negative correlations exist even if the workers are objectively still "brighter" than US workers
Then please give us some plausible scenarios, without which your argument is hand waving. So far the only criticism I've seen of Matloff's statistical analysis is that it's not absolutely air tight. I've never seen one that was. There is almost no mention (and none from you) of what a better way to do this analysis would be. Proponents fall back on arguments that are not backed by any data that they present. The only places I've ever seen hard data analyses of the effect of the H-1B program is from Matloff and some congressional research services (which never find any justification for the program).
It is economically unsound because he keeps arguing in terms of a "labor shortage"; while such a fuzzy term is often being used to justify H-1b visas politically
In other words, like the infamous phrase "best and brightest", Matloff is guilty of rebutting the arguments of the proponents using exactly the terminology that they use. Once more: complain to the proponents.
Matloff also argues for trying to create an artificial scarcity of workers in his profession by restricting admission of foreign workers.
Matloff argues for the same conditions that exist for almost every other part of the US labor market except tech and farm workers. Those are the only significant "guest worker" programs we have. Why not spend your effort complaining about all the other labor categories that don't have "guest worker" programs? Tech is already taking a hit with 65k/yr "guest workers". Time for the accountants or lawyers or somebody to demonstrate their self-destructive loyalty to the fiction of an international labor market.
But if H-1b workers... free the best and brightest Americans to work in higher paid professions
That's a mighty big "if". Check the job market lately? Even if the H-1B was justified at some point (not that it was) this is the worst time to increase it since the Great Depression. And by the way, will there be any compensation for the exorbitant sums that Americans paid for the education to get into the tech field, before the government decided to change the rules at the behest of tech billionaires?
that is a good thing from an economic point of view and for the wealth of the nation
"Wealth of the nation"? Such a brilliantly precise term from someone who called "shortage" ambiguous. What the hell does "wealth of the nation" mean? If you mean the US estimated assets of $54T, then lets say it doubled, but it all went to the top 0.1%. That would increase the wealth of the nation, wouldn't it? (not really, because tho
Which is why I didn't call it an ad hominem, I called it an ad hominem circumstantial.
Salary - of course it's going to be lower considering higher administrative costs of an H1B.
Do you have data showing that the administrative costs outweigh the salary savings? That would be an extraordinary claim to demonstrate.
rate of patent production - people who produce the most IT patents are generally not innovative
Huh? I think the US patent system is out of control, and many garbage patents are issued, but you're saying that more patents means less innovative, or that it's no measure at all? You're grasping at straws.
But if you take the best 5 students from all lower tier universities and compare them to the average graduate from top 10 universities, are they going to be worse?
Granted, the article does not attempt to make such absurd and irrelevant comparisons. What matters is the statistics of those graduates, not a handful of cherry picked cases like you suggest. I've known idiots from MIT and non-degreed geniuses, but those are anecdotes, not statistics.
the most renowned employers don't have trouble getting US graduates to apply for their R&D positions
Nor do they have trouble getting non-US graduates to apply. So what's your point, that the renowned employers prefer the US graduates? If so, why? Are they better?
Matloff has been on a crusade to stamp out immigration of high tech workers for many years
Really? I've never heard him say a word about immigration of high tech "workers" (sometimes called people). He only complains about the H-1B and L-1 guest worker visas. If you don't understand the difference and its ramifications, then you know nothing about this issue.
But he fails to correct for differences in the populations.
What specific differences should he correct for? And do correspond with Prof. Matloff about your reservations. He's quite accessible. And as a former professor of statistics I think he can either give you a good answer or correct his studies. He's a stickler.
I live in an emergent economy (South America) and 90% of the companies that develop software or expot other kind of product/services have the US or Europe as target.
So what are you complaining about? Good luck with your company. I'm not opposed to imports.
it's much easier to "steal" American jobs by not being in America than being there
Then why did the Indian Commerce Minister refer to the H-1B as the "outsourcing visa"?
the worker will pay taxes in America and will help create jobs
The "worker" (sometimes called a person) will pay taxes, but the unemployed American won't. And what jobs will they help create? Sure, if we had 500M instead of 300M people in the US there would be more jobs, but so what? It's the unemployment rate that matters.
Other countries, like Canada or Germany, understand this much better than America and welcome reasonably talented people and gives them citizenship very easily
Germany? You've got to be kidding. It's almost impossible to get German citizenship unless you're of "German blood". It's the US has has constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship (no such thing in Germany - there are 3rd generation Turks who are still not citizens). Naturalized US citizenship simply requires a 5 years with a permanent residence status.
But why are you talking about immigration? If you understood the first thing about the H-1B you'd know that it's officially and explicitly called a "non-immigrant visa". Employers like it that way. Permanent residents in the US can do almost anything a citizen can do except vote. And (unlike with the H-1B) they can accrue time towards the citizenship requirement. Best of all they can quit their jobs any time they like. If they get laid off they can look for another job just like a citizen. They can say "the hell with tech" and open a popsicle stand if they like (probably pays better - no "guest worker" program for popsicle sales). And they can stay in this country until their dying day if they like, regardless of whether they choose to become a citizen or what type of work they do.
Why not make H1B's more mobile - after six months or a year in the US allow them to freely change jobs.
Why not just eliminate the H-1B visa? There has never been any objective data that supports the program, including studies by various congressional research offices. Before we had the H-1B program the US was the tech capital of the world. We also had lots of immigrant engineers (my father worked with many). But we did not have "guest workers" brought in by the hundreds of thousands every year because poor starving tech billionaires complain to well paid off politicians that it's the only way they can survive.
And let's not forget, the H-1B is not an immigration visa, it's a guest worker visa. Big difference. I'm pro-immigrant but very much opposed to guest worker programs. They're the antithesis of the American ideal of immigration. And guest worker programs have never worked as advertised, either in the US or any other country that doesn't adopt draconian measures. They work in Singapore. If a guest worker gets pregnant she's immediately kicked out of the country. Is that the sort of "immigration" we want in America? Hell, I once advised a friend who was here on an H-1B visa and got laid off at the same time as me to just stay in the country if he wanted - they'd probably never catch him.
Slashdot Mirror
He meant what he wrote and wrote what he meant. I'm sure he's well aware that an alter[ed] boy is not the same as an altar boy.
or of that role being hereditary
That's something the papacy has generally avoided.
On the bright side, a cyber war doesn't sound quite as bad as a global thermonuclear holocaust. Treat it like a grand computer game and keep the post office around just in case.
I'm fairly sure "the greatest defeat any nation has suffered in war or peace" would not leave said nation with the largest economy in the world or leave it with the largest, most powerful military.
If I cut off my right arm, a tourniquet and a trip to the ER will probably save me. I can say "it was not a defeat", but it doesn't mean I'll be better off for it.
very few are going as far as having their military actively conduct heavy corporate espionage to benefit their native companies
I don't know why China bothers. "American" companies will happily give away their know-how for the promise of a few bucks from a joint venture, or even just the promise of compliant slave labor for their next Chinese factory. Want to know how to build good jet engines? Just call Jeff "Jobs Czar" Immelt at GE and he'll accommodate you.
Since much of it seems to be done by the PLA, maybe it's their equivalent of our military insisting it needs to build up defenses around Seattle in case of a Canadian invasion. Or maybe the problem is that there are a few Chinese stalwarts who just can't believe it's this easy. Kind of like to thief who insists on picking the lock while his accomplice just walks through the unlocked back door. Or perhaps it's a matter of sport, which when it comes to espionage we certainly don't give them. Try doing it the hard way just for fun, or treat it like a computer game. Maybe even keep your skills in shape in case someday an adversary doesn't make it so easy.
85 million is just for a few major cities. Even Uncle Joe didn't have anything to say about billions. It's one thing to starve a few million in the middle of a breadbasket, or kill 'em with the secret police or gulags, but billions? What's the point in being a dictator if there's nobody left to be a dictator of?
Computers have been getting "slightly better than last year" for a few decades now.
Yes, but that sort of innovation is not the kind that gets VC's excited or makes headlines. More people hear about Google's or Facebooks latest geegaw than about MuGFET's, hi-k dielectrics, the challenges of the latest semi-process or improvements in OLED fab. That kind of innovation is largely done by big companies like Intel and Applied Materials. Personally I love small companies, but if you look at the economics, it makes most of that sort of important on-going development is done by large companies. Gone are the days when Fairchild Semi or Intel could get started for a few million. Maybe in a completely different field, but not there.
These days a degree in Medieval Russian Poetry is as employable as any other degree.
Seventeen is getting kind of old for tech stuff. Whenever I have a question I ask my nine year old daughter. She's very helpful, but then gives me a look and says "daddy, I thought you were an electrical engineer". Me: shut up kid.
Which ones are those?
All the RAZRs, but the HDs have pathetic screens.
Which ones? You said it yourself - the RAZR's (I'll take you word on the HD's as I'm not that familiar with them). But the OP said "throw out anybody that made decision about Motorola phones for the last 10 years", which is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Honestly, sometimes it just seems like Google doesn't now how to run themselves in spite of billions in profit. The are succeeding in spite of themselves.
OTOH there I agree with you. Obviously they've been enormously successful, but it all goes back to a better search engine and ad revenue. They've certainly made some nice acquisitions, like YouTube, Google Maps and Android. Maybe Moto if they don't screw it up, but an Internet services company and a hardware manufacturer are very different things. But do they really have a strategy? They've got so much cash that it seems like they fish in every pond they can find, hoping to catch another big one. Maybe in their position that's the right thing to do, but I'm skeptical of any great strategy.
In Silicon Valley fashion though one thing they are great at is hype. The automated cars? Interesting project that they hype to the hilt, but do people realize that many other companies, like Toyota and Mercedes, have been working on things like that for years?
Throw out anybody that made decision about Motorola phones for the last 10 years
Why? The latest Moto phones are awesome. Oh, that's right, modern management strategy: change things to show you're "doing something". Don't worry about silly things like what was being done well in the past. When your big screwup (oops, I mean change) becomes apparent, just blame it on some uncontrollable and unforeseeable factors, like evil spirits.
They don't have to be great. There just has to be enough of them to so that anybody that threatens to sue Google for patent infringement can be counter-threatened with 10,000 billable man-years of legal work to prove that the other company isn't infringing on Google's patents (i.e. they can be used defensively). A portfolio like that can also be used for shakedowns of smaller companies:
Big Company: Nice little business you've got here. Hate to see it fail due to you failing to pay any patent royalties you owe us.
Small Company: But we don't infringe on any of your patents, and we can prove it too.
Big Company: How many billable hours for you to prove you don't infringe on any of our 10,000 patents?
Small Company: That's extortion!
Big Company: Such an ugly name for a business proposition. Just pay the protection money and we'll call off our lawyers.
That's not some far fetched scenario. I worked for a small company that was shaken down like that, and we wound up paying the protection money just to stay in business. It's not just patent trolls that do it. This was a larger company (who's name I'll avoid mentioning) that had actual products and stuff. It's just a sideline. It's well known that IBM did that to Sun in its early days. AFAIK Google hasn't done it, but it's always a possible sideline.
I think Google is starting to turn evil, guys.
Google: do no evil
Haven't you ever heard of the Big Lie theory?
Oh come on, you've never heard of fairy tales?
Person sits at desk from 9-6. Person taps keys. Appears to be breathing. It tells you nothing about whether they're doing their work, so if you can't tell by other means, you're an incompetent employer. And if you can tell by other means, then there's no problem with telecommuting.
Choose color of tape. No wonder they make the big bucks.
Matloff choosees to rebut irrelevant arguments ...
No, your logic is lacking. You originally wrote:
it starts with the premise that for the H-1b program to be desirable or economically valid, its workers should be, on average, "better and brighter"
It does no such thing. Read the introduction at least. It says that the idea that foreign students are the "best and the brightest" is an argument often made by proponents, not that it's the only or even an essential argument for the program. You're making the claim that Matloff states a premise that he clearly doesn't (or perhaps that that's the only possible premise - you're unclear) hence you're the one creating a straw man.
Furthermore, if the idea that foreign students are the "best and the brightest" was true, it would be a strong argument for the H-1B. Yet you dismiss it as irrelevant. What you mean, presumably, is not essential. Not even close to the same thing.
You seriously claim to be a statistician
No, I never claimed that. Are you still suffering from the delusion that I'm Matloff? If you're unable to control such irrational and unfounded delusions then I urge you to seek professional help.
Let's leave that discussion to peer review, shall we?
No, because this study is not and never was intended for publication in a peer reviewed journal. Matloff publishes in peer reviewed CS journals, and this debate is a sideline of his. Your hiding behind the excuse that it wasn't peer reviewed is weak, unless you're now going to claim that the only plausible studies or analysis come from peer reviewed journals. And since you claim to do "data analytics professionally", you should be qualified to critique it instead of hiding behind a "wasn't peer reviewed" excuse.
It was an allusion to Adam Smith's classical work "The Wealth of Nations"
No kidding. I never would have gotten that allusion. Great name for a book, but in this post-18th century world of greater precision it's a lousy economic term.
I don't have to be precise, I'm not publishing a paper.
Standard excuse used by people who rant without thinking, and then have difficulty supporting their arguments.
I don't pretend that there is objective statistical data that can answer this question, Matloff does. He needs to make his case.
So you think an economic question like this cannot be analyzed by objective statistical data. Interesting. We're not discussing which poem is better or which flower is prettier. As a proponent of H-1B's, how would you make the argument? Subjectively? Good luck.
My bad on the first point. Matloff sometimes makes that key distinction, but I guess he's given in on the sloppy language used in common discourse. I stand by the importance of the distinction though. Calling H-1B visa holders immigrants is simply incorrect, and is often just an attempt to make it sound better than "guest worker".
As to the second point, again with the weird assumption that I'm Matloff? And even if I was "you should know what one needs to correct for in such an analysis" is a very weak argument. It's often made by people who cannot support their assertion.
it starts with the premise that for the H-1b program to be desirable or economically valid, its workers should be, on average, "better and brighter" than US workers (a straw man)
A straw man? It's a claim made by H-1B proponents. Matloff even gives examples with attribution. If you think it's a straw man, take it up with the proponents.
It is statistically unsound because he infers that foreign workers are "less bright"
Your rhetoric needs work, at least if honesty counts. Matloff never uses the phrase "less bright", and to suggest that he does is dishonest. The only place he uses the word "bright" (or variants such as the superlative form) is in the context of the infamous phrase "the best and the brightest". He does that precisely because that phrase is so often used by H-1B proponents, who are apparently unaware that the originator (Halberstam) used it ironically, as in why did the supposed best and brightest get us into the quagmire of the Vietnam war. To use the phrase without irony is waving a big flag that tells people you're ignorant of American history.
it is easy to construct scenarios for which such negative correlations exist even if the workers are objectively still "brighter" than US workers
Then please give us some plausible scenarios, without which your argument is hand waving. So far the only criticism I've seen of Matloff's statistical analysis is that it's not absolutely air tight. I've never seen one that was. There is almost no mention (and none from you) of what a better way to do this analysis would be. Proponents fall back on arguments that are not backed by any data that they present. The only places I've ever seen hard data analyses of the effect of the H-1B program is from Matloff and some congressional research services (which never find any justification for the program).
It is economically unsound because he keeps arguing in terms of a "labor shortage"; while such a fuzzy term is often being used to justify H-1b visas politically
In other words, like the infamous phrase "best and brightest", Matloff is guilty of rebutting the arguments of the proponents using exactly the terminology that they use. Once more: complain to the proponents.
Matloff also argues for trying to create an artificial scarcity of workers in his profession by restricting admission of foreign workers.
Matloff argues for the same conditions that exist for almost every other part of the US labor market except tech and farm workers. Those are the only significant "guest worker" programs we have. Why not spend your effort complaining about all the other labor categories that don't have "guest worker" programs? Tech is already taking a hit with 65k/yr "guest workers". Time for the accountants or lawyers or somebody to demonstrate their self-destructive loyalty to the fiction of an international labor market.
But if H-1b workers ... free the best and brightest Americans to work in higher paid professions
That's a mighty big "if". Check the job market lately? Even if the H-1B was justified at some point (not that it was) this is the worst time to increase it since the Great Depression. And by the way, will there be any compensation for the exorbitant sums that Americans paid for the education to get into the tech field, before the government decided to change the rules at the behest of tech billionaires?
that is a good thing from an economic point of view and for the wealth of the nation
"Wealth of the nation"? Such a brilliantly precise term from someone who called "shortage" ambiguous. What the hell does "wealth of the nation" mean? If you mean the US estimated assets of $54T, then lets say it doubled, but it all went to the top 0.1%. That would increase the wealth of the nation, wouldn't it? (not really, because tho
It's not 'ad hominem'.
Which is why I didn't call it an ad hominem, I called it an ad hominem circumstantial.
Salary - of course it's going to be lower considering higher administrative costs of an H1B.
Do you have data showing that the administrative costs outweigh the salary savings? That would be an extraordinary claim to demonstrate.
rate of patent production - people who produce the most IT patents are generally not innovative
Huh? I think the US patent system is out of control, and many garbage patents are issued, but you're saying that more patents means less innovative, or that it's no measure at all? You're grasping at straws.
But if you take the best 5 students from all lower tier universities and compare them to the average graduate from top 10 universities, are they going to be worse?
Granted, the article does not attempt to make such absurd and irrelevant comparisons. What matters is the statistics of those graduates, not a handful of cherry picked cases like you suggest. I've known idiots from MIT and non-degreed geniuses, but those are anecdotes, not statistics.
the most renowned employers don't have trouble getting US graduates to apply for their R&D positions
Nor do they have trouble getting non-US graduates to apply. So what's your point, that the renowned employers prefer the US graduates? If so, why? Are they better?
Matloff has been on a crusade to stamp out immigration of high tech workers for many years
Really? I've never heard him say a word about immigration of high tech "workers" (sometimes called people). He only complains about the H-1B and L-1 guest worker visas. If you don't understand the difference and its ramifications, then you know nothing about this issue.
But he fails to correct for differences in the populations.
What specific differences should he correct for? And do correspond with Prof. Matloff about your reservations. He's quite accessible. And as a former professor of statistics I think he can either give you a good answer or correct his studies. He's a stickler.
I live in an emergent economy (South America) and 90% of the companies that develop software or expot other kind of product/services have the US or Europe as target.
So what are you complaining about? Good luck with your company. I'm not opposed to imports.
it's much easier to "steal" American jobs by not being in America than being there
Then why did the Indian Commerce Minister refer to the H-1B as the "outsourcing visa"?
the worker will pay taxes in America and will help create jobs
The "worker" (sometimes called a person) will pay taxes, but the unemployed American won't. And what jobs will they help create? Sure, if we had 500M instead of 300M people in the US there would be more jobs, but so what? It's the unemployment rate that matters.
Other countries, like Canada or Germany, understand this much better than America and welcome reasonably talented people and gives them citizenship very easily
Germany? You've got to be kidding. It's almost impossible to get German citizenship unless you're of "German blood". It's the US has has constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship (no such thing in Germany - there are 3rd generation Turks who are still not citizens). Naturalized US citizenship simply requires a 5 years with a permanent residence status.
But why are you talking about immigration? If you understood the first thing about the H-1B you'd know that it's officially and explicitly called a "non-immigrant visa". Employers like it that way. Permanent residents in the US can do almost anything a citizen can do except vote. And (unlike with the H-1B) they can accrue time towards the citizenship requirement. Best of all they can quit their jobs any time they like. If they get laid off they can look for another job just like a citizen. They can say "the hell with tech" and open a popsicle stand if they like (probably pays better - no "guest worker" program for popsicle sales). And they can stay in this country until their dying day if they like, regardless of whether they choose to become a citizen or what type of work they do.
Congratulations! You've won the non sequitur contest!
Why not make H1B's more mobile - after six months or a year in the US allow them to freely change jobs.
Why not just eliminate the H-1B visa? There has never been any objective data that supports the program, including studies by various congressional research offices. Before we had the H-1B program the US was the tech capital of the world. We also had lots of immigrant engineers (my father worked with many). But we did not have "guest workers" brought in by the hundreds of thousands every year because poor starving tech billionaires complain to well paid off politicians that it's the only way they can survive.
And let's not forget, the H-1B is not an immigration visa, it's a guest worker visa. Big difference. I'm pro-immigrant but very much opposed to guest worker programs. They're the antithesis of the American ideal of immigration. And guest worker programs have never worked as advertised, either in the US or any other country that doesn't adopt draconian measures. They work in Singapore. If a guest worker gets pregnant she's immediately kicked out of the country. Is that the sort of "immigration" we want in America? Hell, I once advised a friend who was here on an H-1B visa and got laid off at the same time as me to just stay in the country if he wanted - they'd probably never catch him.