As an immigrant who first came here as an exchange student in 2003, and is now a citizen, the point about Green Cards is exactly correct. Being on a student or temporary work visa and beholden to your school or employer for legal status is one thing, but it wasn’t until I got my Green Card in 2012 that I really felt like an American, with a real and concrete stake in the country. Trump’s idea is a good one, and I hope he follows through with something like it, because without permanent legal status any immigrant is only one life event away from leaving for good.
This is deranged, trump’s plan is to turn this into a Canadian job market. It is not the job of the US to sabotage its youth’s job market because other countries can’t fix theirs. Every immigrant who served in the military to get papers is more inept at than H1-Bs. H1-Bs are economic migrants they are not loyal to this country it’s been proven every time by people like Qian Xuesen. How many of you H1-Bs will fight for this country when war comes, the answer is barely any at all.
Each naturalized citizen is required to give Oath of Allegiance, which includes statement that "I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law"
But why'd you expect temp visa holders to defend a country where they cannot vote?
More lies, this country army has been famously with immigrants seeking to defend this country such as in the Civil War union troops filled with 48ers since 1860s. And why are we supposed to give opportunities to people who aren’t loyal to this country instead of the ones who are? You know this will be a high interest market for substantial amount of future and days of free and cheap debt for Silicon Valley is over meaning less demand. Being in this country is a privileged not right, they can go back to their destroyed job markets with high unemployment like China, India, Canada, Spain. There’s only a handful of countries that can compete at same economic footing (Switzerland, Poland for job market) and none at same vastness beyond one metro area or state as US. Also this is pure lies, before my grandfather came here from Cuba, the only country that offered him before was France and it would have been as a military doctor and serving in it for 10 yrs. This is the norm in other countries. My grandfather isn’t a doctor here because his credentials weren’t valid but even 50 years old he was trying to serve medically in Bush Sr’s Iraq intervention. My family before Cuba the Europeans one from Spain served in Cubas war against spacey fresh off the boat. Pure delusion from you, this is a nation state and you have to buy into it
I’m sure a 40 year old H1-B who is economic migrant primarily will totally serve. Or do you genuinely believe this country will fight wars in trenches Ukraine style? Why don’t u take a look at our previous drafts or former troops age.
How many of the H1-Bs that claim to love America would run the minute war broke out and there was a draft. Like in Ukraine or else where. All that opportunity given while giving nothing back to the US. What makes them so special like there aren’t thousands with their credentials based out of the country they come from or that their are Americans seeking that’s same opportunities. I guess to people like you fighting youth unemployment, industrial policy, tariffs, and interests are reserved for other nations not the US??
Every other option is an ethno state where you will never assimilate or a tiny rich country which will totally be safe and not destabilized in Europe as us continues to focus on info pacific and free trade keeps crashing. Get it though your brain this is the US and you have to buy into it. Not hard unless your from info silo Bay Area
The hatred for the backbone of the US while screeching for more entitlements and pandering is insane. What other country let’s you in? No country has been more open, it’s is harder for any of these people to immigrate to Poland, any eh country, Switzerland. The only one taking as many is all the gulf states in total while holding them at gunpoint. Hilarious how little of US history u know the 48ers (aka immigrant) served this country since civil war and WW2 troops were filled with Sicilians and other immigrant groups. It’s obvious your form the old world and can’t adapt to the new world form of nation state. It’s a privilege to be in the new world you just can’t comprehend that
Dude, you need at least permanent residence for being enlisted in US Army now. And that's for a good reason. But I'm sure many Indians and Chinese would take 1-2 year military service if that could give them at least a green card.
Yes bro the people running away from sky high youth unemployments and demographic collapse are totally willing to serve totally not fair weather type of friends
Lmao 1-2 years. It’s just never enough for you people, no barriers ever. I know multiple Latinos who have served this country and are now naturalized, and upskill after military service with gi bill to engineer roles. Please seek help with the delusion that there is more needed in a high interest environment and reshoring + de globalization. The pandemic and cheap rates until 2022 proved they should not be listened to or catered to, the feds hate u after all the dumb moves ur ceos did. Crypto, nft, and evry other rug pull under the sun instead of more nafta manufacturing. The only ones asking for more h1-bs are Silicon Valley CEOs doing mass layoffs when they should have been fired for incompetence during Covid, risky supply chains and need to pander and scream ai at investor meetings to not get fired. Only trump does this stupid stuff at a Silicon Valley ceo podcast about giving green cards to all foreign college grads. Canada proved its diploma mills have failed, and destroyed its job market with evry candian new grad trying to escape to us. No sane person believes any of this delusion, Silicon Valley is an info silo, get out of it. Almost every need for America is filled with tn-1 visa, no their isn’t any mass gap to be filled, domestic stem enrollment is almost more than enough
But the ones who’s are primarily economic migrants and lobby for the homeland are owed completely everything? It’s hilarious I hear H1-Bs who have worked in Silicon valley making millions/generational wealth were this opportunity is nowhere else complain and main like they have been oppressed over a 3 year wait line or over country limit quotas. I think it’s you who has think more before mindless outputs
Instead of sending deranged essays to others in a DM, be a man and post under your real name. You talk a big game about war and military but don’t even have the balls to use your real name.
Forever unable to accept reality that neoliberalism has lost. I hope for you your employment or future prosperity or liquidity isn’t caught up in chatgpt wrappers
When a Taiwanese immigrant woman invents a drone that can kill enemy soldiers, but is also super cheap to make... And in doing so if she saves the life of an American soldier, does qualify as "fighting for her country"?
What a low opinion you have of our country! Why do you think that a person who choses to come here and earn a higher income than they could when they came from will necessarily be less likely to love and be loyal to the country than someone born here? How many of the January 6ers were immigrants?
Emphatically thanks both posters, important points that immigrants are not just replacements for American workers but bring with them important qualities and skills that any advanced country needs to have.
Some immigrants are. I know because I work with them. But the vast majority of immigrants are cheap labor that serves to keep down wages which enriches the elite class who are consumers of labor. I think the vast majority of Americans would support a very selective immigration policy that targets the best from all over the world. But I won't trust any politician on this until they end mass unskilled immigration.
The UK is a great case of study: thanks to the EU, they had access to an almost unlimited pool of immigrants, both skilled and unskilled, attracted by their attractive salaries and English as a Lingua Franca. After getting out of it, they changed their entry visa criteria to try and attract only highly skilled workers; their points-based system was supposed to act as a filter so only the best and the brightest (they specifically aimed at highly skilled stem professionals) would be able to enter.
It hasn't worked. For several reasons, but my favourite is the fact that no individual with a Ph.D. in AI will want to live in a country that lets you in but where you cannot find a babysitter, a carer for your parents, a waiter to serve your overpriced coffee or anyone to replenish the supermarket stands.
Btw, salaries have not increased in those sectors that cannot find low skilled workers. Surprisingly, reducing legal immigration does not positively affect salaries for the local population.
With all due respect, I don't think the UK's lack of talent is due to the difficulty in finding servants. Very few of the scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who move to America do so because they imagine they'll be able to have someone clean their house for them. In fact, most skilled immigrants would be more able to afford servants back in their home countries.
And with all due respect, I believe you are missing the point. It’s not about finding “servants” (seriously?), it’s about the simple fact that a working economy needs people with different skills, and skill levels. If you cannot find produce in the supermarkets after 2pm because they cannot hire enough people to refill their stands (and that is happening in London right now), your economy is not working. And no one wants to move to a country whose economy is not working.
I don't think anyone considers the US economy writ large to be "not working". The extreme imbalances you're describing are on display in certain areas with extreme concentrations of highly skilled labor like San Francisco, but almost no where else.
People besides scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs aren't "servants." Entrepreneurs need employees and everyone needs customers. People don't need to be on the far right of the productivity bell curve to be a net economic benefit. Immigrants doing less flashy jobs are a critical part of the economy and an overemphasis on the "best and brightest" is a disservice.
People besides scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs aren't "servants." Entrepreneurs need employees and everyone needs customers. People don't need to be on the far right of the productivity bell curve to be a net economic benefit. Immigrants doing less flashy jobs are a critical part of the economy and an overemphasis on the "best and brightest" is a disservice.
People besides scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs aren't "servants." Entrepreneurs need employees and everyone needs customers. People don't need to be on the far right of the productivity bell curve to be a net economic benefit. Immigrants doing less flashy jobs are a critical part of the economy and an overemphasis on the "best and brightest" is a disservice.
I suspect the Tories went for a "hard" Brexit that ended EU freedom of movement (as opposed to a Norway-type setup that retained it) primarily in order to appeal to "white van man": self-employed tradesmen who enjoyed very high pay at the turn of the millennium (due to a labour shortage as the Blair administration neglected the trades in favour of expanding university access) only to have their gravy train derailed by competition from Eastern European workers.
The kind of immigration that is truly unpopular in the UK is the same as the unpopular immigration to other European countries: asylum and family-reunification immigration from the Middle East and Africa.
This does not sound credible. I do not believe that people are saying "I would like to move to the UK, but those babysitters and baristas are just so expensive there."
I think it actually failed because salaries for highly skilled tech professionals are not competitive on the world market. If I were a software engineer in a low wage country why would I want to go to the UK when all the major tech companies are in the. US and they also pay 3x as much? If you can't get into the US there is also Canada which still pays way better than the UK and is much easier to get into than the US.
What it is for salary to be competitive is for salary compared to cost of living to be competitive. High cost of living just is a shortage of service workers.
The other thing too is that those highly skilled workers have family members in their homelands stuck in subsistence or intermittent work. A scientist may very well have siblings, cousins or parents who lack skills but are willing to take domestic and low-wage, low-skill jobs because in a high-cost society there is a support network and an opportunity to move up the ladder to a higher-paying job or be an entrepreneur of a low-margin business. (Everyone needs gas stations, nail salons, locksmiths, shoe shining and repair, and dry cleaners.)
You can absolutely increase nominal wages by engineering a labor shortage (and this did happen in the UK after Brexit), but it will have zero (or even slightly negative) effect on real wages.
And of course it will depress public finances and the pension system
Considering our current domestic over-production of college graduates, it's absolutely imperative for Noah and other leading American intellectuals to make a clear distinction between *highly skilled* foreign-born STEM immigrants, and *semi-skilled* IT, accounting and finance immigrants. The former are, as Noah rightly asserts, essential for our future survival and prosperity.
IT and Accounting immigrants who are only semi-skilled--possessing merely an Associate's or Bachelor's degree, and/or who've graduated from lower-tier universities--are beloved of Corporate employers like Disney because they're cheap and docile and can greatly pad a corporation's bottom line. But they also take jobs away from American-born graduates. At one point pre-Pandemic, supposedly, 1 in every 13 US IT jobs was held by an H-1B vias holder. In order to prevent a nativist backlash to needed highly skilled immigrants, we need policies in place to separate the truly gifted from the chaff.
How might we do this? Perhaps by prioritizing those with higher levels of education, like master's and doctorates; prioritizing STEM degrees over accounting and finance; and prioritizing graduates from top foreign universities over those that are not. We need to skim the cream--not import the entire bottle of milk.
Would you be willing to set the salary minimum at like $200,000? Require $1,000,000 to sponsor a visa?
For genius level talent that isn’t a restriction. In fact if someone is an actual genius I would pay them to come here.
Programs that slap green cards on anyone with a degree tend to turn into degree mills. Employment based programs often end up with someone setting up a company and hiring all their cousins from back home.
It’s like anything else that when you have a target people find shortcuts to hit the target.
It would make more sense to auction off a small number of green cards every year. If a particular genius immigrant is worth it, they should be able to raise the money to win the auction. You’re an effective altruist right? Can’t EA’s make the case for buying green cards for geniuses?
A bigger question is that if you started to have success recruiting china’s geniuses at scale that would likely respond with their own set of carrots and sticks to retain them.
But major problem with the salary minimums is for start ups, with often lower salary (with much more comp in stock options). I think multiple paths are needed - qualify with a high salary, or a high level of qualification etc
Hasn't the "domestic over-production" somewhat resolved itself as enrollment in non-STEM majors has declined tremendously? I think of that lump of excess humanities degrees as a one-off millennial phenomenon.
Most of the domestic over production comes from the increase in percentage of students attending college rather than choice of major. This increase has come from dumbing down admission and degree requirements on the lower end. You can see this here in the stats from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_dem_edu.asp
Note that the average graduate degree holder doesn't even score in the "proficient" category. Also note that between 1992 and 2003 the scores for degree holders declined sharply while the average score for the whole population remained flat. This shows that the larger percentage of degree holders comes from dumbing down and has not produced any skill improvement.
Wait, if I accept your numbers and we are using college as remedial high school education, how does that create elite overproduction? They are not elite then.
How about this chart showing a true decline in the number of graduates - never mind that's even a bigger decline as a percentage of the population.
That's more what I have in mind - and then stack in the data on changing majors and the decline of the humanities, and things are a lot better than they were 10-20 years ago.
It's down, but not by much. Its a reversal of the trend, but we have been overproducing university grads for decades now so IMO that is nowhere close to resolving the problem.
1 in 13 is lower than I expected: that would be about 7%, a miniscule amount. Seeing as 13.8% of the US are immigrants, that actually means that native Americans are overrepresented in the IT sector, contrary to your assertions.
That's not an apples-to-apples comparison: you're forgetting that the majority of immigrants are naturalized citizens rather than visa holders. And in fact, the H-1B is considered a *non*-immigrant visa, so although I'd certainly consider some H-1B holders to be immigrants — unlike with some non-immigrant visas, you're allowed to use it even if you do intend to immigrate — I doubt that they'd be included in your statistic. So you're probably comparing two mutually exclusive groups, and it's no surprise that the numbers are unrelated.
(Note: this is not to defend NubbyShober's broader point, which sounds like fearmongering to me, though I don't really know.)
In 2024 underpayment has possibly (?) become moot, as employers are now supposedly (?) not allowed to pay under market for H1-B holders; which could mean there's no longer an incentive for employers like Disney to go for cheaper foreign hires. Average salary for H1-B holders is now $168k, due to a new 2024 law or EO.
While controls might be more stringent, I think it's mostly just stricter selection: as the number of aspiring HB1s grows on one side, and the American economy grows on the other, but the number of visas stays the same, only particularly committed companies will sponsor and only very committed workers will keep trying
Do you have a source for the 1 in 13 US IT jobs? Or a source for IT and Accounting immigrants taking away jobs from American born graduates? Interested in reading more about it.
There is a long-running debate on whether or not the H1-B program takes jobs from US professionals, and/or is used by large corporations to depress wages, with data-supported arguments both pro & con: https://www.quora.com/Are-H1B-visa-holders-taking-American-jobs
My hypothesis is that there in conflation in this debate due to the "cream" of top H1-B applicants--i.e., those with amazing skills from top foreign universities that the American economy sorely needs--being mixed in with less skilled but profit-boosting (due to low salaries) hires beloved of corporations like Disney. The new 2024 prohibition on below-market H1-B salaries could soon make this issue moot (depending on how it's enforced), as cheapskates like Disney can no longer hire for less.
As a CA Bay Area practitioner of Chinese Medicine (TCM), I've heard many accounts from patients who are IT professionals of H1-B holders brought in for less to replace them and/or their coworkers. All anecdotal, I know, and without context; but these are people I care about.
Prioritizing by education is not good enough. Idiots with degrees are all around us. There should be an IQ test requirement. I'll take smart with no degree over the opposite. If you're super smart we can train you to do the job. Too bad that is politically impossible.
Yes. Most of them, actually. But don't take my word for it. Look at this national assessment where the median graduate degree holder didn't even score in the "proficient" category in an adult literacy assessment: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_dem_edu.asp
That's the paradox. The people who score highly on an IQ test have the savvy to know that the notion of intelligence as a quantifiable entity is bullshit.
How many tradespeople could pass an IQ test? Now, flip the question. How many people who could pass an IQ test have the ability to demonstrate the skills a building tradesperson could in order to be allowed to work?
Workers needed to work in semiconductor foundries need to be smart and understand the manufacturing process, and very few of them need masters degrees or PhDs. Americans educated with a basic knowledge of engineering and semiconductor manufacturing could do this work, and schools are starting this work, but since the new TSMC and Samsung fabs being built here are planning on starting production within a year, there isn’t time to wait for workers to get their advanced degrees when there are many experienced workers already in Taiwan, Korea and Japan (even China) without advanced degrees that could immigrate here, so restrictions on type of degree are limiting.
As long as unemployment for college graduates is lower and wages higher than for non-graduates, I see zero evidence of "over-production".
1 in 13 is far too little, if you follow the article it has to be at least 1 in 2 in chip manufacturing. Ofc with more durable visas (with a path to green card) than H1-B.
Right now the labor market is tight in many fields, so even expanding the H1-B and other programs would be a non-issue. But when the economy contracts again, during the next recession or "Great Recession", I see nothing wrong with upping standards for skilled immigrants, to accept the best. Cream, not milk.
But I'm also a Democratic Socialist, and believe we need to do more to educate our own citizens with a more merit-based system like that of Germany.
Having said that, if a crucial need exists for skills that Americans cannot supply, then we absolutely need to import them. As needed. But not just because they come cheap, are exploitable and can boost the profits of a select group of corporations.
As a liberal, I believe that Americans are overeducated and overcredentialed, and education has been used as a fig leaf to cover for intractable cultural defects resistant to political reform or progress.
Like you know where we need to import immigrants, their labor and their know-how? Building American infrastructure. As Alon Levy demonstrates on the pedestrianobservations.com blog, the problem with American infrastructure being bad is really bad infrastructure being American. We really need the world to tell us what we're doing wrong (why it's so expensive, badly designed, badly engineered, overly expensive, overstaffed, and of such poor quality), but neither our politics nor our culture will allow us to scale that wall because it would be so psychically painful.
Thank you for staying so polite in this article, but it's an absolute disaster and evidence of a blindsighted Congress to send back more than 100k college graduates every year, not just for national security but also innovation, entrepreneurship and jobs.
It 100% is an exaggeration to say that Chang’s emigration from the U.S. to Taiwan is responsible for Taiwan’s dominance of chip manufacturing. Chang provided much needed knowledge and talent, but it was sustained investment by the Taiwanese government that allowed TSMC to flourish
This doesn’t also go at all into the fact about rising costs for evry new type of fab, which is constantly happening with moore’s law and demand from TSMC’s customers like Apple meaning it became uncompetitive in Bay Area with cost to high after evry new improvement in r&d meaning entire new factory needed. Literally outside of Asian Tigers and 1st world countries most can’t afford to even keep up with Taiwan and TSMC in having a new fab cost 5-10 billion easily. As was the case why became uncompetitive in 80s for Bay Area with 50 million cost for evry new fab, plus geography was horrible in Bay Area for this type of manufacturing with only advantage being local talent pool which why design offices are still there
You give me an enforced border and deportation, I'll give you all the skilled immigration you want.
That's what those of us on the Right have been saying for decades! We want a points based system. We want immigrants to be evaluated on the basis of how they help America not how America helps them. And elites and progressives (folks like you, Noah) have been calling us racists and bigots and haters and Nazis since I was in college 30 years ago and CA passed Props 187 and 209.
Our kids don't have to go to war to defend Taiwan just to maintain our supply of computer chips. Close the southern border. Open effectively unlimited skills-based green cards from Taiwan. Bring the chip-making skills here! This is a great idea.
But no Republican will ever get on board with it until the Democrats are willing to get serious about our illegal immigration / "asylum" (we all know 95% of them aren't) problem. e-Verify. Deport. Then open the skilled, legal immigration floodgates. That's the sequence.
If the U.S. goes to war over Taiwan, it won't be because of computer chips. It'll be because China taking over Taiwan is the start of them taking over Asia in general, which will allow them to really screw over the U.S. in a number of ways. I'll write more about this soon.
I'm pretty sure I've heard a theory like that before. If we let A march into B, they'll take C, D, E, and F right away too. Domino theories can happen, but historically, they are rare. (Ukraine is a great example of why -- actual contact with the enemy tends to destroy your battle plan.)
However, even if it is true, that's an even worse reason to send my kids to war. At least going to war for computer chips makes some logical sense. I look forward to your analysis on it though; perhaps you'll convince me otherwise.
You’re the unAmerican one. Taiwan is important because it’s the first island chain. The island chain is to contain China’s attempt of Prussianism and conquest of Asia. The fact that you think are loyal allies like Japan, Korea, Philippines and Australia should be subjugated by China says everything. Every day the indo Pacific becomes more important and the belief that China would stop after just their neighbors is deranged, Chamberlain’s copystriking your foreign policy. Also your partisan lies fall short every time in the Republican primary where half are calling for invading Mexico to fight narcos (a dirty war with our #1 trade partner neighbor never goes well), our constantly taking about drafting the American youth for another Middle Easy quagmire where US troops weren’t attacked. It’s hilarious to me republicans like you say America 1st but ignore Israel’s Ip theft and loyalty to Russia, ignore Ireland sabotaging American companies and economy with tax breaks, ignore Saudis tight relation with China, ignore Russians price wars against American shale but can’t pump any gas without Canada and American perma frost experts on fracking, or even letting Bolsonaro run around Florida like he wasn’t pro China pro Russia pro BRICS anti dollar.
You threw a lot into that (which makes it kind of sound like a domino theory -- there are a lot of steps between "China conquers Taiwan" and "China subjugates Australia") so I will just summarize my views this way:
I'm done playing "America, world police".
That doesn't mean we walk away from allies, but it does mean we gradually wind down our overseas military commitments. For example, I would favor winding down our Japan treaty commitments as they ramp up their "self defense forces". I would also favor recentering NATO in Brussels instead of D.C. ; the Europeans are more than capable of being their own first line of defense now, and they should be. I certainly don't think we should cut and run on anybody, but we're near broke and still borrowing 5% of GDP every year -- something's got to give. And it's far better for everyone if it give slowly and in a managed way.
Where we have national interests, we should enforce them. Where they intersect with friendly nation's interests, we should do so together. But actual military alliances should be few and far between lest we be sucked into someone else's problem. We've been "going abroad in search of monsters to destroy" for so many decades that most people can't picture any other way.
You claim military alliance are bad which I agree for some but there are literally political apparatus trying to give one to the Saudis and a Israel more when we have already given them almost everything for barely anything. Or certain ones trying to give tech transfers to India with nothing in return. It’s crazy to compare these and European freeloaders (or disloyal) like France, Hungary, Ireland, Belgium, Italians, Austrians. Korea and Japan take defense seriously. Also I don’t think you have ever once talked to a Han nationalist, China is filled with them in the CCP and also where there is Chinese diaspora to some extent. They constantly talk about Korea isn’t real, revenge on Japan, subjugating Philippines, and so much more. As we close our economy to China if they could the Chinese would for sure attack us to try to force us to open to them like European powers did in the 1700s. Also Korea with an amazing standing army, Japan with amazing standing navy, plus most of these like Taiwan have mandatory military service. Plus Australia has joined America in everything and been loyal, look up Australians in Iraq for proof, same as UK. The only freeloader/disloyal in indo pacific is New Zealand. We are trying to build up Japans cyber defense and intelligence with them just pointing in right direction and advising so they can join AUKUS. These countries have never been disloyal put your I’ll will towards the right ones being freeloaders, disloyal or in bed with China. Hungary, Merkel’s Germany, Ireland, Hungary, Serbia, France, Austria, Israel, Gulf states, Sweden until after start of Ukraine war.
This is insane Europe and Russia is the sick man of the world so less commitments make sense except for Arctic Sea and UK. Also this is crazy Japan signed a humiliating trade deal under trump and have not seemed a new one under Biden. They do everything we ask and we have no other partner as competent. They literally never have not taken defense seriously they still have a an amazing navy and give a blank check for it, they have no army because of our treaty, this is crazy. The Chinese will come for all of the indo pacific they have done or tried every time in their history, Han nationalism has always been like this. After Taiwan they will absolutely come for Okinawa, Philippines, Korea, outer Manchuria and Sakhalin. Have you ever looked at their claims, they literally now days claim Kashmir. This is literally the Prussian world of view how do u not see this. Their is Chinese dispose in places like Malay Peninsula and Myanmar and they will do the same thing as the Germans, they’ve always done this look at their history. This country reached budget surplus under Bill Clinton by lowering spending, work requirements, and raising taxes plus no tax breaks. That is the only way this country will get it plus increasing government efficiency to save costs and pay down interest. None of that means we need to a abdandon Pacific. Every since Bush Sr has said this is where everything will matter outside of the ones trying to rope us back to the Middle East. America before world police, policed the Americas, the French and German literally tried to take Venezuela and Mexico as theirs and would have unless America (nobody knows how well the natives population could have rebelled). America has to police the indo pacific and island chain, yes it will affect, outside of NAFTA that’s were America is most invested for a reason. What else abandon Guam? Indo pacifc is not world police, world police is Red Sea when none of Americas trade depends on it and the most affected are disloyal allies (France, Israel, Saudis, Gulf royals) or enemies (Iran, China, South Africa, possibly India or Pakistan, who knows?). World police is keep getting the blowback for Ukraine not targeting Oil stations (when Europeans most affected) or pressuring US like we are equal and not number one contributer. World police is trying to form a coherent nation state in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of letting chips fall where they may in dissolution in Caucasus, parts of Middle East outside Persian Gulf, and Central Asia. We are literally winning right now just giving Ukraine weapons and intelligence is enough to prevent Russia gaining leverage in Neon, Gas, Grain, or control of the Eurasian hordelands
Brian, I wish for the same immigration system you do. I could tell you that most people in My Tribe want a helpful, legal path to immigration.
I will also point to Washington and tell you why America will never get a capable, skills-based immigration system. For one, way too many veto points to thwart policy. Two, in order to make the sausage, the bill is loaded with contradictory policy directives and misaligned incentives. What do both parties have no trouble signing on to? MOAR BORDER COPS! We'll get saturation patrols to stop a particular kind of entry but miss all of the other ways immigrants can evade detection and capture. Congress won't also fund the courts and administration required to make such a skilled immigration system workable. All immigration bills will be heavy on enforcement and light on administration.
So immigration policy fails, immigrants will take a chance on coming to the U.S., Americans will learn nothing and remember nothing. We are doomed to repeat this cycle.
Canada (near socialist Canada!) has a functional immigration system. Finland has a functional immigration system. Japan has a functional immigration system. Heck, Sweden and Hungary agree on essentially nothing... but they both manage to enforce their borders. Most countries in the world manage to do this. If we can't, we deserve to expire. And we will. A nation is defined as a shared culture within a particular set of borders. Fail to defend the latter and you cease to have the former.
The one thing offhand I can think of as socialist in Canada is booze and weed. (You buy your alcohol and recreational marijuana from a BevMo that's owned by the province, which also issues liquor licenses and wholesales and imports alcohol. In the case of Ontario, LCBO brings the government an annual profit of $2.5 billion.)
The only aspect of healthcare that's socialist is the insurance. The medical care itself is either private hospitals/practices or municipal general hospitals.
I don't mean commie-socialist. I mean Euro-socialist.
Canada is generally more left-leaning than we are, they have a nationalized health system (yes, private care exists, but few can afford it for anything serious), and their overall tax burden runs about 8% GDP higher than ours. To most Americans, these are markers of a system that is considerably more centralized (socialized) than our own. However, not at EU levels. Finland's tax rate is about 10 points above even Canada's.
However this is deside the point. The vast majority of countries (even some very poor ones like Hungary) have functional immigration systems. We choose not to despite the overwhelming popularity of cracking down on illegal immigration (just consider that you and I come from relatively different political camps, and yet we largely agree on this.) The present system obviously benefits the politically powerful. I don't accept that we can't do it, only that we don't. (Yet.)
Asylum immigration is good idea; I agree. But we don't have that today,
If you're really seeking to escape persecution (a Christian convert in Iran for example), you flee your country and request asylum in the first place you can. (My understanding is that the asylum treaty actually requires this.) If you flee Venezuela, travel through 9 countries with the help of organized coyotes, and finally jump the US border before turning yourself in to a CPB officer and screaming "I request political asylum"... you ought to be deportable instantly.
Also, the vast majority of our "asylum" seekers are summarily not qualified since they can't prove actual persecution. They're looking for a better life. They're not political refugees; they're economic refugees. And that is not a valid asylum claim. I have sympathy for their plight, but at the end of the day, my duty is to my fellow Americans first.
Isn't "seek asylum in the first place you can" NOT actually required because of the Holocaust, and the fact that the vast majority of German Jews escaped Nazi Germany, only for many of them to still get killed because the Nazis conquered the countries that had given them refuge?
It’s inspiring to see how seriously Americans take research and innovation to stay ahead by driving the world forward. Being in India I can only dream that maybe one day the people and government of India will think on this level.
> The loss is worse the higher you go up the skill ladder. Over three-quarters of foreign-born U.S.-trained PhDs end up leaving America after they get their degrees!
The chart shows that *retention* increases as you go up the skill ladder, with over three-quarters of these PhDs *staying* in America.
(But the overall point is solid anyway. We want to retain as many skilled workers as we can, even if they *don't* have PhDs!)
What a lot of stupid nonsense. The number of immigrants America needs is none, zero. For at least the next 20 years. While also evicting tens of millions.
Is it accurate to say that legislation on skilled migration is broadly popular but it's being held up because the Left wants a comprehensive bill, and they want the business-friendly skilled migration to be a "carrot" in a package that also deals with the arrivals at the Southern border?
I've heard that on podcasts, but I'm not finding solid news reporting at this moment.
PLease consider submitting a shorter version of this essay to the Op-Ed of either the Wall Street Journal or NY Times.
As an immigrant who first came here as an exchange student in 2003, and is now a citizen, the point about Green Cards is exactly correct. Being on a student or temporary work visa and beholden to your school or employer for legal status is one thing, but it wasn’t until I got my Green Card in 2012 that I really felt like an American, with a real and concrete stake in the country. Trump’s idea is a good one, and I hope he follows through with something like it, because without permanent legal status any immigrant is only one life event away from leaving for good.
This is deranged, trump’s plan is to turn this into a Canadian job market. It is not the job of the US to sabotage its youth’s job market because other countries can’t fix theirs. Every immigrant who served in the military to get papers is more inept at than H1-Bs. H1-Bs are economic migrants they are not loyal to this country it’s been proven every time by people like Qian Xuesen. How many of you H1-Bs will fight for this country when war comes, the answer is barely any at all.
Each naturalized citizen is required to give Oath of Allegiance, which includes statement that "I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law"
But why'd you expect temp visa holders to defend a country where they cannot vote?
More lies, this country army has been famously with immigrants seeking to defend this country such as in the Civil War union troops filled with 48ers since 1860s. And why are we supposed to give opportunities to people who aren’t loyal to this country instead of the ones who are? You know this will be a high interest market for substantial amount of future and days of free and cheap debt for Silicon Valley is over meaning less demand. Being in this country is a privileged not right, they can go back to their destroyed job markets with high unemployment like China, India, Canada, Spain. There’s only a handful of countries that can compete at same economic footing (Switzerland, Poland for job market) and none at same vastness beyond one metro area or state as US. Also this is pure lies, before my grandfather came here from Cuba, the only country that offered him before was France and it would have been as a military doctor and serving in it for 10 yrs. This is the norm in other countries. My grandfather isn’t a doctor here because his credentials weren’t valid but even 50 years old he was trying to serve medically in Bush Sr’s Iraq intervention. My family before Cuba the Europeans one from Spain served in Cubas war against spacey fresh off the boat. Pure delusion from you, this is a nation state and you have to buy into it
one from Spain served in Cubas war against slavery** fresh off th
I’m sure a 40 year old H1-B who is economic migrant primarily will totally serve. Or do you genuinely believe this country will fight wars in trenches Ukraine style? Why don’t u take a look at our previous drafts or former troops age.
Less than 1% of Americans enlist in the army. So STFU about using that as the criteria for patriotism.
How many of the H1-Bs that claim to love America would run the minute war broke out and there was a draft. Like in Ukraine or else where. All that opportunity given while giving nothing back to the US. What makes them so special like there aren’t thousands with their credentials based out of the country they come from or that their are Americans seeking that’s same opportunities. I guess to people like you fighting youth unemployment, industrial policy, tariffs, and interests are reserved for other nations not the US??
H-1Bs are not citizens so there should be no expectation that they should fight for the US.
If people are paying taxes and spending their money here and not breaking laws, that’s more than what most US citizens do.
Every other option is an ethno state where you will never assimilate or a tiny rich country which will totally be safe and not destabilized in Europe as us continues to focus on info pacific and free trade keeps crashing. Get it though your brain this is the US and you have to buy into it. Not hard unless your from info silo Bay Area
UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore.
The hatred for the backbone of the US while screeching for more entitlements and pandering is insane. What other country let’s you in? No country has been more open, it’s is harder for any of these people to immigrate to Poland, any eh country, Switzerland. The only one taking as many is all the gulf states in total while holding them at gunpoint. Hilarious how little of US history u know the 48ers (aka immigrant) served this country since civil war and WW2 troops were filled with Sicilians and other immigrant groups. It’s obvious your form the old world and can’t adapt to the new world form of nation state. It’s a privilege to be in the new world you just can’t comprehend that
Dude, you need at least permanent residence for being enlisted in US Army now. And that's for a good reason. But I'm sure many Indians and Chinese would take 1-2 year military service if that could give them at least a green card.
Yes bro the people running away from sky high youth unemployments and demographic collapse are totally willing to serve totally not fair weather type of friends
Lmao 1-2 years. It’s just never enough for you people, no barriers ever. I know multiple Latinos who have served this country and are now naturalized, and upskill after military service with gi bill to engineer roles. Please seek help with the delusion that there is more needed in a high interest environment and reshoring + de globalization. The pandemic and cheap rates until 2022 proved they should not be listened to or catered to, the feds hate u after all the dumb moves ur ceos did. Crypto, nft, and evry other rug pull under the sun instead of more nafta manufacturing. The only ones asking for more h1-bs are Silicon Valley CEOs doing mass layoffs when they should have been fired for incompetence during Covid, risky supply chains and need to pander and scream ai at investor meetings to not get fired. Only trump does this stupid stuff at a Silicon Valley ceo podcast about giving green cards to all foreign college grads. Canada proved its diploma mills have failed, and destroyed its job market with evry candian new grad trying to escape to us. No sane person believes any of this delusion, Silicon Valley is an info silo, get out of it. Almost every need for America is filled with tn-1 visa, no their isn’t any mass gap to be filled, domestic stem enrollment is almost more than enough
But the ones who’s are primarily economic migrants and lobby for the homeland are owed completely everything? It’s hilarious I hear H1-Bs who have worked in Silicon valley making millions/generational wealth were this opportunity is nowhere else complain and main like they have been oppressed over a 3 year wait line or over country limit quotas. I think it’s you who has think more before mindless outputs
Instead of sending deranged essays to others in a DM, be a man and post under your real name. You talk a big game about war and military but don’t even have the balls to use your real name.
Forever unable to accept reality that neoliberalism has lost. I hope for you your employment or future prosperity or liquidity isn’t caught up in chatgpt wrappers
If I do, I’ll figure out something else to do. Only losers like you worry about stuff that you have no control over.
It’s insane the entitlement you feel while not willing to give anything back. Keep reading Nate silver
I give more than losers like you. Just tipped my Uber driver 15%.
33175 if you have such a problem
What is that number?
The current wait is more than 10 years. My wait was almost 5 years 20 years back. Anyone can complain and petition. That’s in the constitution.
*Every immigrant who served in the military to get papers is more important at than H1-Bs
When a Taiwanese immigrant woman invents a drone that can kill enemy soldiers, but is also super cheap to make... And in doing so if she saves the life of an American soldier, does qualify as "fighting for her country"?
What a low opinion you have of our country! Why do you think that a person who choses to come here and earn a higher income than they could when they came from will necessarily be less likely to love and be loyal to the country than someone born here? How many of the January 6ers were immigrants?
You are definitely saying the fact Sir...
Yes but we need fewer political scientists and more people with useful skills to make our country better.
Emphatically thanks both posters, important points that immigrants are not just replacements for American workers but bring with them important qualities and skills that any advanced country needs to have.
Some immigrants are. I know because I work with them. But the vast majority of immigrants are cheap labor that serves to keep down wages which enriches the elite class who are consumers of labor. I think the vast majority of Americans would support a very selective immigration policy that targets the best from all over the world. But I won't trust any politician on this until they end mass unskilled immigration.
I guess it's a sign of our wealth that we use the term "cheap labor" to talk about people earning more than the average American, lol!
The UK is a great case of study: thanks to the EU, they had access to an almost unlimited pool of immigrants, both skilled and unskilled, attracted by their attractive salaries and English as a Lingua Franca. After getting out of it, they changed their entry visa criteria to try and attract only highly skilled workers; their points-based system was supposed to act as a filter so only the best and the brightest (they specifically aimed at highly skilled stem professionals) would be able to enter.
It hasn't worked. For several reasons, but my favourite is the fact that no individual with a Ph.D. in AI will want to live in a country that lets you in but where you cannot find a babysitter, a carer for your parents, a waiter to serve your overpriced coffee or anyone to replenish the supermarket stands.
Btw, salaries have not increased in those sectors that cannot find low skilled workers. Surprisingly, reducing legal immigration does not positively affect salaries for the local population.
With all due respect, I don't think the UK's lack of talent is due to the difficulty in finding servants. Very few of the scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who move to America do so because they imagine they'll be able to have someone clean their house for them. In fact, most skilled immigrants would be more able to afford servants back in their home countries.
And with all due respect, I believe you are missing the point. It’s not about finding “servants” (seriously?), it’s about the simple fact that a working economy needs people with different skills, and skill levels. If you cannot find produce in the supermarkets after 2pm because they cannot hire enough people to refill their stands (and that is happening in London right now), your economy is not working. And no one wants to move to a country whose economy is not working.
I don't think anyone considers the US economy writ large to be "not working". The extreme imbalances you're describing are on display in certain areas with extreme concentrations of highly skilled labor like San Francisco, but almost no where else.
People besides scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs aren't "servants." Entrepreneurs need employees and everyone needs customers. People don't need to be on the far right of the productivity bell curve to be a net economic benefit. Immigrants doing less flashy jobs are a critical part of the economy and an overemphasis on the "best and brightest" is a disservice.
People besides scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs aren't "servants." Entrepreneurs need employees and everyone needs customers. People don't need to be on the far right of the productivity bell curve to be a net economic benefit. Immigrants doing less flashy jobs are a critical part of the economy and an overemphasis on the "best and brightest" is a disservice.
People besides scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs aren't "servants." Entrepreneurs need employees and everyone needs customers. People don't need to be on the far right of the productivity bell curve to be a net economic benefit. Immigrants doing less flashy jobs are a critical part of the economy and an overemphasis on the "best and brightest" is a disservice.
I suspect the Tories went for a "hard" Brexit that ended EU freedom of movement (as opposed to a Norway-type setup that retained it) primarily in order to appeal to "white van man": self-employed tradesmen who enjoyed very high pay at the turn of the millennium (due to a labour shortage as the Blair administration neglected the trades in favour of expanding university access) only to have their gravy train derailed by competition from Eastern European workers.
The kind of immigration that is truly unpopular in the UK is the same as the unpopular immigration to other European countries: asylum and family-reunification immigration from the Middle East and Africa.
This does not sound credible. I do not believe that people are saying "I would like to move to the UK, but those babysitters and baristas are just so expensive there."
I think it actually failed because salaries for highly skilled tech professionals are not competitive on the world market. If I were a software engineer in a low wage country why would I want to go to the UK when all the major tech companies are in the. US and they also pay 3x as much? If you can't get into the US there is also Canada which still pays way better than the UK and is much easier to get into than the US.
What it is for salary to be competitive is for salary compared to cost of living to be competitive. High cost of living just is a shortage of service workers.
Top UK tech workers are making, what, 1/3 of their US counterparts? The cost of living difference is definitely not 3x.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18349996
The other thing too is that those highly skilled workers have family members in their homelands stuck in subsistence or intermittent work. A scientist may very well have siblings, cousins or parents who lack skills but are willing to take domestic and low-wage, low-skill jobs because in a high-cost society there is a support network and an opportunity to move up the ladder to a higher-paying job or be an entrepreneur of a low-margin business. (Everyone needs gas stations, nail salons, locksmiths, shoe shining and repair, and dry cleaners.)
You can absolutely increase nominal wages by engineering a labor shortage (and this did happen in the UK after Brexit), but it will have zero (or even slightly negative) effect on real wages.
And of course it will depress public finances and the pension system
Considering our current domestic over-production of college graduates, it's absolutely imperative for Noah and other leading American intellectuals to make a clear distinction between *highly skilled* foreign-born STEM immigrants, and *semi-skilled* IT, accounting and finance immigrants. The former are, as Noah rightly asserts, essential for our future survival and prosperity.
IT and Accounting immigrants who are only semi-skilled--possessing merely an Associate's or Bachelor's degree, and/or who've graduated from lower-tier universities--are beloved of Corporate employers like Disney because they're cheap and docile and can greatly pad a corporation's bottom line. But they also take jobs away from American-born graduates. At one point pre-Pandemic, supposedly, 1 in every 13 US IT jobs was held by an H-1B vias holder. In order to prevent a nativist backlash to needed highly skilled immigrants, we need policies in place to separate the truly gifted from the chaff.
How might we do this? Perhaps by prioritizing those with higher levels of education, like master's and doctorates; prioritizing STEM degrees over accounting and finance; and prioritizing graduates from top foreign universities over those that are not. We need to skim the cream--not import the entire bottle of milk.
I think salary minimums take care of this problem. Those are already being built into new visa proposals.
Would you be willing to set the salary minimum at like $200,000? Require $1,000,000 to sponsor a visa?
For genius level talent that isn’t a restriction. In fact if someone is an actual genius I would pay them to come here.
Programs that slap green cards on anyone with a degree tend to turn into degree mills. Employment based programs often end up with someone setting up a company and hiring all their cousins from back home.
It’s like anything else that when you have a target people find shortcuts to hit the target.
It would make more sense to auction off a small number of green cards every year. If a particular genius immigrant is worth it, they should be able to raise the money to win the auction. You’re an effective altruist right? Can’t EA’s make the case for buying green cards for geniuses?
A bigger question is that if you started to have success recruiting china’s geniuses at scale that would likely respond with their own set of carrots and sticks to retain them.
But major problem with the salary minimums is for start ups, with often lower salary (with much more comp in stock options). I think multiple paths are needed - qualify with a high salary, or a high level of qualification etc
Qualifications are arbitrary and can be gamed.
If talent is unique people will be willing to pay for it. If it’s not unique we don’t need special rules.
Hasn't the "domestic over-production" somewhat resolved itself as enrollment in non-STEM majors has declined tremendously? I think of that lump of excess humanities degrees as a one-off millennial phenomenon.
Most of the domestic over production comes from the increase in percentage of students attending college rather than choice of major. This increase has come from dumbing down admission and degree requirements on the lower end. You can see this here in the stats from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_dem_edu.asp
Note that the average graduate degree holder doesn't even score in the "proficient" category. Also note that between 1992 and 2003 the scores for degree holders declined sharply while the average score for the whole population remained flat. This shows that the larger percentage of degree holders comes from dumbing down and has not produced any skill improvement.
Wait, if I accept your numbers and we are using college as remedial high school education, how does that create elite overproduction? They are not elite then.
How about this chart showing a true decline in the number of graduates - never mind that's even a bigger decline as a percentage of the population.
https://educationdata.org/number-of-college-graduates
That's more what I have in mind - and then stack in the data on changing majors and the decline of the humanities, and things are a lot better than they were 10-20 years ago.
It's down, but not by much. Its a reversal of the trend, but we have been overproducing university grads for decades now so IMO that is nowhere close to resolving the problem.
1 in 13 is lower than I expected: that would be about 7%, a miniscule amount. Seeing as 13.8% of the US are immigrants, that actually means that native Americans are overrepresented in the IT sector, contrary to your assertions.
That's not an apples-to-apples comparison: you're forgetting that the majority of immigrants are naturalized citizens rather than visa holders. And in fact, the H-1B is considered a *non*-immigrant visa, so although I'd certainly consider some H-1B holders to be immigrants — unlike with some non-immigrant visas, you're allowed to use it even if you do intend to immigrate — I doubt that they'd be included in your statistic. So you're probably comparing two mutually exclusive groups, and it's no surprise that the numbers are unrelated.
(Note: this is not to defend NubbyShober's broader point, which sounds like fearmongering to me, though I don't really know.)
Could be fearmongering. I presumed Noah includes the H1-B holders in his definition of skilled immigrant.
There is also a history of abuse in the H1-B program; including underpayment (i.e., Disney et al hiring on the cheap), and employer (alleged) abuse under threat of visa revocation; multiple (foreign) hiring agencies filing lottery ticket applications for the same worker: https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2023/05/us-government-launches-fraud-investigations-into-dozens-of-companies-for-h1b-lottery-abuse
In 2024 underpayment has possibly (?) become moot, as employers are now supposedly (?) not allowed to pay under market for H1-B holders; which could mean there's no longer an incentive for employers like Disney to go for cheaper foreign hires. Average salary for H1-B holders is now $168k, due to a new 2024 law or EO.
While controls might be more stringent, I think it's mostly just stricter selection: as the number of aspiring HB1s grows on one side, and the American economy grows on the other, but the number of visas stays the same, only particularly committed companies will sponsor and only very committed workers will keep trying
Do you have a source for the 1 in 13 US IT jobs? Or a source for IT and Accounting immigrants taking away jobs from American born graduates? Interested in reading more about it.
There is a long-running debate on whether or not the H1-B program takes jobs from US professionals, and/or is used by large corporations to depress wages, with data-supported arguments both pro & con: https://www.quora.com/Are-H1B-visa-holders-taking-American-jobs
My hypothesis is that there in conflation in this debate due to the "cream" of top H1-B applicants--i.e., those with amazing skills from top foreign universities that the American economy sorely needs--being mixed in with less skilled but profit-boosting (due to low salaries) hires beloved of corporations like Disney. The new 2024 prohibition on below-market H1-B salaries could soon make this issue moot (depending on how it's enforced), as cheapskates like Disney can no longer hire for less.
As a CA Bay Area practitioner of Chinese Medicine (TCM), I've heard many accounts from patients who are IT professionals of H1-B holders brought in for less to replace them and/or their coworkers. All anecdotal, I know, and without context; but these are people I care about.
Prioritizing by education is not good enough. Idiots with degrees are all around us. There should be an IQ test requirement. I'll take smart with no degree over the opposite. If you're super smart we can train you to do the job. Too bad that is politically impossible.
Depending on the major and school yeah I could buy many phd holders not having great IQs.
130 is probably the minimum cutoff for unique talent, and I’m guessing many of the names Noah listed here are 140+.
Yes. Most of them, actually. But don't take my word for it. Look at this national assessment where the median graduate degree holder didn't even score in the "proficient" category in an adult literacy assessment: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_dem_edu.asp
That's the paradox. The people who score highly on an IQ test have the savvy to know that the notion of intelligence as a quantifiable entity is bullshit.
How many tradespeople could pass an IQ test? Now, flip the question. How many people who could pass an IQ test have the ability to demonstrate the skills a building tradesperson could in order to be allowed to work?
Workers needed to work in semiconductor foundries need to be smart and understand the manufacturing process, and very few of them need masters degrees or PhDs. Americans educated with a basic knowledge of engineering and semiconductor manufacturing could do this work, and schools are starting this work, but since the new TSMC and Samsung fabs being built here are planning on starting production within a year, there isn’t time to wait for workers to get their advanced degrees when there are many experienced workers already in Taiwan, Korea and Japan (even China) without advanced degrees that could immigrate here, so restrictions on type of degree are limiting.
As long as unemployment for college graduates is lower and wages higher than for non-graduates, I see zero evidence of "over-production".
1 in 13 is far too little, if you follow the article it has to be at least 1 in 2 in chip manufacturing. Ofc with more durable visas (with a path to green card) than H1-B.
Right now the labor market is tight in many fields, so even expanding the H1-B and other programs would be a non-issue. But when the economy contracts again, during the next recession or "Great Recession", I see nothing wrong with upping standards for skilled immigrants, to accept the best. Cream, not milk.
But I'm also a Democratic Socialist, and believe we need to do more to educate our own citizens with a more merit-based system like that of Germany.
Having said that, if a crucial need exists for skills that Americans cannot supply, then we absolutely need to import them. As needed. But not just because they come cheap, are exploitable and can boost the profits of a select group of corporations.
As a liberal, I believe that Americans are overeducated and overcredentialed, and education has been used as a fig leaf to cover for intractable cultural defects resistant to political reform or progress.
Like you know where we need to import immigrants, their labor and their know-how? Building American infrastructure. As Alon Levy demonstrates on the pedestrianobservations.com blog, the problem with American infrastructure being bad is really bad infrastructure being American. We really need the world to tell us what we're doing wrong (why it's so expensive, badly designed, badly engineered, overly expensive, overstaffed, and of such poor quality), but neither our politics nor our culture will allow us to scale that wall because it would be so psychically painful.
Thank you for staying so polite in this article, but it's an absolute disaster and evidence of a blindsighted Congress to send back more than 100k college graduates every year, not just for national security but also innovation, entrepreneurship and jobs.
It 100% is an exaggeration to say that Chang’s emigration from the U.S. to Taiwan is responsible for Taiwan’s dominance of chip manufacturing. Chang provided much needed knowledge and talent, but it was sustained investment by the Taiwanese government that allowed TSMC to flourish
This doesn’t also go at all into the fact about rising costs for evry new type of fab, which is constantly happening with moore’s law and demand from TSMC’s customers like Apple meaning it became uncompetitive in Bay Area with cost to high after evry new improvement in r&d meaning entire new factory needed. Literally outside of Asian Tigers and 1st world countries most can’t afford to even keep up with Taiwan and TSMC in having a new fab cost 5-10 billion easily. As was the case why became uncompetitive in 80s for Bay Area with 50 million cost for evry new fab, plus geography was horrible in Bay Area for this type of manufacturing with only advantage being local talent pool which why design offices are still there
You give me an enforced border and deportation, I'll give you all the skilled immigration you want.
That's what those of us on the Right have been saying for decades! We want a points based system. We want immigrants to be evaluated on the basis of how they help America not how America helps them. And elites and progressives (folks like you, Noah) have been calling us racists and bigots and haters and Nazis since I was in college 30 years ago and CA passed Props 187 and 209.
Our kids don't have to go to war to defend Taiwan just to maintain our supply of computer chips. Close the southern border. Open effectively unlimited skills-based green cards from Taiwan. Bring the chip-making skills here! This is a great idea.
But no Republican will ever get on board with it until the Democrats are willing to get serious about our illegal immigration / "asylum" (we all know 95% of them aren't) problem. e-Verify. Deport. Then open the skilled, legal immigration floodgates. That's the sequence.
If the U.S. goes to war over Taiwan, it won't be because of computer chips. It'll be because China taking over Taiwan is the start of them taking over Asia in general, which will allow them to really screw over the U.S. in a number of ways. I'll write more about this soon.
I'm pretty sure I've heard a theory like that before. If we let A march into B, they'll take C, D, E, and F right away too. Domino theories can happen, but historically, they are rare. (Ukraine is a great example of why -- actual contact with the enemy tends to destroy your battle plan.)
However, even if it is true, that's an even worse reason to send my kids to war. At least going to war for computer chips makes some logical sense. I look forward to your analysis on it though; perhaps you'll convince me otherwise.
You’re the unAmerican one. Taiwan is important because it’s the first island chain. The island chain is to contain China’s attempt of Prussianism and conquest of Asia. The fact that you think are loyal allies like Japan, Korea, Philippines and Australia should be subjugated by China says everything. Every day the indo Pacific becomes more important and the belief that China would stop after just their neighbors is deranged, Chamberlain’s copystriking your foreign policy. Also your partisan lies fall short every time in the Republican primary where half are calling for invading Mexico to fight narcos (a dirty war with our #1 trade partner neighbor never goes well), our constantly taking about drafting the American youth for another Middle Easy quagmire where US troops weren’t attacked. It’s hilarious to me republicans like you say America 1st but ignore Israel’s Ip theft and loyalty to Russia, ignore Ireland sabotaging American companies and economy with tax breaks, ignore Saudis tight relation with China, ignore Russians price wars against American shale but can’t pump any gas without Canada and American perma frost experts on fracking, or even letting Bolsonaro run around Florida like he wasn’t pro China pro Russia pro BRICS anti dollar.
You threw a lot into that (which makes it kind of sound like a domino theory -- there are a lot of steps between "China conquers Taiwan" and "China subjugates Australia") so I will just summarize my views this way:
I'm done playing "America, world police".
That doesn't mean we walk away from allies, but it does mean we gradually wind down our overseas military commitments. For example, I would favor winding down our Japan treaty commitments as they ramp up their "self defense forces". I would also favor recentering NATO in Brussels instead of D.C. ; the Europeans are more than capable of being their own first line of defense now, and they should be. I certainly don't think we should cut and run on anybody, but we're near broke and still borrowing 5% of GDP every year -- something's got to give. And it's far better for everyone if it give slowly and in a managed way.
Where we have national interests, we should enforce them. Where they intersect with friendly nation's interests, we should do so together. But actual military alliances should be few and far between lest we be sucked into someone else's problem. We've been "going abroad in search of monsters to destroy" for so many decades that most people can't picture any other way.
You claim military alliance are bad which I agree for some but there are literally political apparatus trying to give one to the Saudis and a Israel more when we have already given them almost everything for barely anything. Or certain ones trying to give tech transfers to India with nothing in return. It’s crazy to compare these and European freeloaders (or disloyal) like France, Hungary, Ireland, Belgium, Italians, Austrians. Korea and Japan take defense seriously. Also I don’t think you have ever once talked to a Han nationalist, China is filled with them in the CCP and also where there is Chinese diaspora to some extent. They constantly talk about Korea isn’t real, revenge on Japan, subjugating Philippines, and so much more. As we close our economy to China if they could the Chinese would for sure attack us to try to force us to open to them like European powers did in the 1700s. Also Korea with an amazing standing army, Japan with amazing standing navy, plus most of these like Taiwan have mandatory military service. Plus Australia has joined America in everything and been loyal, look up Australians in Iraq for proof, same as UK. The only freeloader/disloyal in indo pacific is New Zealand. We are trying to build up Japans cyber defense and intelligence with them just pointing in right direction and advising so they can join AUKUS. These countries have never been disloyal put your I’ll will towards the right ones being freeloaders, disloyal or in bed with China. Hungary, Merkel’s Germany, Ireland, Hungary, Serbia, France, Austria, Israel, Gulf states, Sweden until after start of Ukraine war.
This is insane Europe and Russia is the sick man of the world so less commitments make sense except for Arctic Sea and UK. Also this is crazy Japan signed a humiliating trade deal under trump and have not seemed a new one under Biden. They do everything we ask and we have no other partner as competent. They literally never have not taken defense seriously they still have a an amazing navy and give a blank check for it, they have no army because of our treaty, this is crazy. The Chinese will come for all of the indo pacific they have done or tried every time in their history, Han nationalism has always been like this. After Taiwan they will absolutely come for Okinawa, Philippines, Korea, outer Manchuria and Sakhalin. Have you ever looked at their claims, they literally now days claim Kashmir. This is literally the Prussian world of view how do u not see this. Their is Chinese dispose in places like Malay Peninsula and Myanmar and they will do the same thing as the Germans, they’ve always done this look at their history. This country reached budget surplus under Bill Clinton by lowering spending, work requirements, and raising taxes plus no tax breaks. That is the only way this country will get it plus increasing government efficiency to save costs and pay down interest. None of that means we need to a abdandon Pacific. Every since Bush Sr has said this is where everything will matter outside of the ones trying to rope us back to the Middle East. America before world police, policed the Americas, the French and German literally tried to take Venezuela and Mexico as theirs and would have unless America (nobody knows how well the natives population could have rebelled). America has to police the indo pacific and island chain, yes it will affect, outside of NAFTA that’s were America is most invested for a reason. What else abandon Guam? Indo pacifc is not world police, world police is Red Sea when none of Americas trade depends on it and the most affected are disloyal allies (France, Israel, Saudis, Gulf royals) or enemies (Iran, China, South Africa, possibly India or Pakistan, who knows?). World police is keep getting the blowback for Ukraine not targeting Oil stations (when Europeans most affected) or pressuring US like we are equal and not number one contributer. World police is trying to form a coherent nation state in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of letting chips fall where they may in dissolution in Caucasus, parts of Middle East outside Persian Gulf, and Central Asia. We are literally winning right now just giving Ukraine weapons and intelligence is enough to prevent Russia gaining leverage in Neon, Gas, Grain, or control of the Eurasian hordelands
Brian, I wish for the same immigration system you do. I could tell you that most people in My Tribe want a helpful, legal path to immigration.
I will also point to Washington and tell you why America will never get a capable, skills-based immigration system. For one, way too many veto points to thwart policy. Two, in order to make the sausage, the bill is loaded with contradictory policy directives and misaligned incentives. What do both parties have no trouble signing on to? MOAR BORDER COPS! We'll get saturation patrols to stop a particular kind of entry but miss all of the other ways immigrants can evade detection and capture. Congress won't also fund the courts and administration required to make such a skilled immigration system workable. All immigration bills will be heavy on enforcement and light on administration.
So immigration policy fails, immigrants will take a chance on coming to the U.S., Americans will learn nothing and remember nothing. We are doomed to repeat this cycle.
Canada (near socialist Canada!) has a functional immigration system. Finland has a functional immigration system. Japan has a functional immigration system. Heck, Sweden and Hungary agree on essentially nothing... but they both manage to enforce their borders. Most countries in the world manage to do this. If we can't, we deserve to expire. And we will. A nation is defined as a shared culture within a particular set of borders. Fail to defend the latter and you cease to have the former.
Canada? Near socialist? Bruh.
The one thing offhand I can think of as socialist in Canada is booze and weed. (You buy your alcohol and recreational marijuana from a BevMo that's owned by the province, which also issues liquor licenses and wholesales and imports alcohol. In the case of Ontario, LCBO brings the government an annual profit of $2.5 billion.)
The only aspect of healthcare that's socialist is the insurance. The medical care itself is either private hospitals/practices or municipal general hospitals.
I don't mean commie-socialist. I mean Euro-socialist.
Canada is generally more left-leaning than we are, they have a nationalized health system (yes, private care exists, but few can afford it for anything serious), and their overall tax burden runs about 8% GDP higher than ours. To most Americans, these are markers of a system that is considerably more centralized (socialized) than our own. However, not at EU levels. Finland's tax rate is about 10 points above even Canada's.
However this is deside the point. The vast majority of countries (even some very poor ones like Hungary) have functional immigration systems. We choose not to despite the overwhelming popularity of cracking down on illegal immigration (just consider that you and I come from relatively different political camps, and yet we largely agree on this.) The present system obviously benefits the politically powerful. I don't accept that we can't do it, only that we don't. (Yet.)
Asylum immigration is good idea; I agree. But we don't have that today,
If you're really seeking to escape persecution (a Christian convert in Iran for example), you flee your country and request asylum in the first place you can. (My understanding is that the asylum treaty actually requires this.) If you flee Venezuela, travel through 9 countries with the help of organized coyotes, and finally jump the US border before turning yourself in to a CPB officer and screaming "I request political asylum"... you ought to be deportable instantly.
Also, the vast majority of our "asylum" seekers are summarily not qualified since they can't prove actual persecution. They're looking for a better life. They're not political refugees; they're economic refugees. And that is not a valid asylum claim. I have sympathy for their plight, but at the end of the day, my duty is to my fellow Americans first.
Isn't "seek asylum in the first place you can" NOT actually required because of the Holocaust, and the fact that the vast majority of German Jews escaped Nazi Germany, only for many of them to still get killed because the Nazis conquered the countries that had given them refuge?
Really excellent piece here.
It’s inspiring to see how seriously Americans take research and innovation to stay ahead by driving the world forward. Being in India I can only dream that maybe one day the people and government of India will think on this level.
Going to buy a T-shirt that says "National Security Priority"
Wait, that may be misinterpreted.
There seems to be a mistake here:
> The loss is worse the higher you go up the skill ladder. Over three-quarters of foreign-born U.S.-trained PhDs end up leaving America after they get their degrees!
The chart shows that *retention* increases as you go up the skill ladder, with over three-quarters of these PhDs *staying* in America.
(But the overall point is solid anyway. We want to retain as many skilled workers as we can, even if they *don't* have PhDs!)
Yeah I was very confused about whether the text was mis-describing the chart, or whether the caption that said “retention” was mis-describing it.
What a lot of stupid nonsense. The number of immigrants America needs is none, zero. For at least the next 20 years. While also evicting tens of millions.
“The U.S. has to start seeing skilled foreign recruits as complementing skilled native-born American workers instead of competing with them.”
International students actually subsidize U.S. students tuition costs:
https://theworld.org/stories/2024/03/28/high-fees-paid-international-students-help-us-universities-balance-their-books
If there’s a better deal for the U.S. and U.S. corporations, I’d like to know it.
The US and its allies behave as if it were as one country. Perhaps it may time to consider open borders with them as the EU has done.
Is it accurate to say that legislation on skilled migration is broadly popular but it's being held up because the Left wants a comprehensive bill, and they want the business-friendly skilled migration to be a "carrot" in a package that also deals with the arrivals at the Southern border?
I've heard that on podcasts, but I'm not finding solid news reporting at this moment.