America's immigration policy is driving away future AI leaders(restofworld.org) |
America's immigration policy is driving away future AI leaders(restofworld.org) |
Current administration policy thinks to shut the whole pipeline down. Missing diamonds? Tough.
Previous US policy was to let in the whole set, hoping to capture all the diamonds, and ignoring the negative impacts of the duds.
Corporate America cared more about slashing labor costs than whether the new hires were duds or diamonds . They played, and largely continue to play, the narrative that they whole set are diamonds.
Voters' lived experience is not this at all. They see their jobs being done rather badly by people and their bosses replacing them with cheaper talent. Into this stew rides the racist demagogue, the natalist, the culture warrior, etc, looking to score points.
Right now the nativist wing is in the ascendant. One day they'll be gone. But it doesn't follow that immigration policy should return to the status quo ante.
Not a rhetorical question: is that their actual lived experience, or is it just what they want to see? How often does it occur that the boss drops by to say, "John, meet Ashook. He's your replacement. Clean out your desk"?
I'm sure it has happened, but it seems to me very easy for people to generalize what happened to that guy to account for any reason why they personally didn't get the job they wanted. Were you really smarter than that H1-B, or are you just telling yourself that? Does he actually suck at that job, or are you just assuming that everybody from his country is bad at it?
Like I said, I mean this sincerely. I'm not in Silicon Valley so I'm not seeing this firsthand. But what I do see (here on HN) is an awful lot of culture war, making it easy to believe that a huge amount of chowder is being made out of the scraps of an oyster.
However, you raise a second point, about locals being outcompeted by immigrants already on staff for new positions, promos, etc which is slightly different. It's quite possible that an H1-B holder could (legitimately) outcompete a native citizen. It's also quite possible that a native citizen who got the job that the H1-B got instead could have learned enough on the job to outcompete the other citizen. Hard to tell. Again, none of this is the fault of the immigrant - the engine of these issues is (imho) is the relentless drive by corporations to lower the costs of labor.
UC San Francisco[5] shows what the logical conclusion of this drive would be, even in light of the today's Administration's extremely anti-immigration stance. UCSF brought in H1-B labor to learn the tasks and then offshored the labor.
To me this is the obvious issue that must be solved: if there is no source of cheap immigrant labor, corporations will not say, "oh ok, we'll go back to hiring local citizens at $150K/year with healthcare and a 401k". They will simply automate what they can and offshore the rest.
[0] https://labor411.org/411-blog/disney-fired-employees-after-m...
[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/1628728/southern-calif...
[2] https://www.axios.com/2019/12/29/trump-att-outsourcing-h1b-v...
[3] https://cis.org/Report/Untold-Stories-American-Workers-Repla...
[4] https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/guest-worker-visas-the-...
[5] https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/03/after-pink-slips-ucsf...
Used to visit the USA every year for work and conferences. Refuse to go there under current regime and probably forever unless USA does about face and sends their war criminals to the ICC (and signs uo to the international accord).
Also need to send ICE and other complicit individuals to jail domestically.
America has an over supply of stupidity. This is reflected in our leadership and bass akwards policy making.
Thanks!
"Canada is exporting its highest earners to the United States."
https://thehub.ca/2026/04/03/can-anyone-solve-canadas-brain-...
"This is hurting my ability to make venture investments."