59 Comments
Aug 17, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Great article, don't disagree with a word.

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Well done. I promise I will never comment on this subject again.

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"A majority of Americans (66%) say they would prefer to either increase the rate of immigration or keep it the same, according to Gallup. A minority — 31% — want to decrease it."

This is misleading framing.

The percentages from the poll are 31% less, 33% more, 35% same.

You could just as easily say "64% want less or the same amount...and only 33% want more."

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I had the same thought.

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It is increasingly common for high-tech immigrants stuck in the green card queue to secure permanent residency in Canada. Canada is thus the most likely beneficiary of our inability to reform immigration laws.

I also heard of a more (to me) amusing case of a high-tech professional from India taking up religious studies on the side. His backup plan, should his green card petition get bogged down, is to apply for an R visa, with the intent of becoming a priest in a Hindu temple. Apparently - and I view this is as a solid plus for America's commitment to religious freedom! - it's a lot easier to get one of those R visas and eventually transition to a green card than to do it as a software engineer on an H-1B. Perhaps Silicon Valley companies could also invest in building temples/mosques/synagogues/etc. and bring in high-tech workers as priests/imams/rabbis/etc. who also happen to write a bit of code or design chips as a side-hustle.

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I need to let my relatives in India know about that visa track haha

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Aug 17, 2022·edited Aug 17, 2022

There's an elephant in the room that article doesn't address: entire higher education industry in US and their vested interests. Presently American universities make a ton of money from high tuition fees paid by the foreigners in STEM (mostly Chinese and Indian students). A STEM degree allows a foreign student to work atleast for 3 years in OPT scheme and provides a sub-quota in H1B. If US were to allow foreigners with advanced degrees such as master's and PhD to immigrate (similar to Canada's express entry PR scheme), then it takes away the unique selling point of the American universities and adversely impact their revenue.

If a CS graduate from IIT or Tsinghua can easily immigrate to US, then the so-called prestigious American universities (especially private!) such as CMU, USC etc would lose their shine as their cashcow master's programs would no longer be attractive. I think American universities would lobby hard to stifle any immigration reforms for this precise reason

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I'm skeptical we'd see large-scale opposition out of the US post-secondary sector, but to the extent there might be reluctance on their part to support such a bill, it seems a solvable problem: add sweetener provisions for US universities that would dovetail with the overall purpose of the legislation. There are two I can think of off the top of my head: 1) streamline the process for acquiring US student visas in such a way as to help US schools recruit, and codify reversals of Trump era anti international student policies; 2) add a provision that confers a long-term work visa (significantly longer than OPT and, ideally, convertible to a green card) upon successful completion of a qualified degree. This would render US universities gatekeepers for an important immigration portal that would exist alongside some of the proposals outlined in this article.

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I agree. I had an excellent entry level engineer working for me who had gotten a Ph.D. from a top US university. His visa allowing him to work on the US expired a couple of years ago and he had to leave. He is now in Britain doing well and we haven't been able to backfill his position yet with anyone close to his quality. Foreign STEM grads, especially MS and Ph.D, should have a green card stapled to their diploma when they graduate and get a job offer if we want to be competitive in the coming decades.

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Most grad students in US universities are on assistantships or fellowships, i.e., the University pays them for work in research programs or as teaching assistants and covers a large portion of their tuition, mostly by waiving the non-resident component.

It is in undergrad programs where most Universities charge full freight to international students who are looking to get a US degree and go back to their homes with the sheen of a US education in their resume. However, if you look hard, you can find even state-run universities, who normally do not provide financial aid to foreign undergrads, that have programs to help meritorious international students, typically by waiving the non-resident component of tuition if you score above a certain number in the SAT. Since these are the kinds of students we likely want to hang on to, you could actually make universities part of how we attract talent by subisidizing their ability to expand such programs, subject to objective criteria (SAT scores, etc.).

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Aug 17, 2022·edited Aug 17, 2022

RAs are mainly for the PhDs. It's extremely rare for bachelor/masters students to get Research assistantship positions. Most of the universities treat STEM master's programs as cashcow (an

M.S from a private university typically costs 80-100k).

Even for a PhD student with assistantship, the stipend is nowhere enough to survive in HCOL area as American universities treat PhD students as a source of cheap labour (around 30k for 9 months is downright horrible, far below the median wages). In my field (CS), PhD students tend to do summer internships in big tech companies and typically earn higher more in 3 months than their 9 months stipend from RA positions. But this luxury is not available to PhD students in other STEM fields such as material science or biotech.

Contrast this with Western Europe (apart from UK) which pays STEM PhD students competitive salaries for 12 months and charges little or no tuition for their bachelor's/master's programs. US education system is exploitative!

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Aug 17, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Very interesting, thanks for covering this topic. I am a working foreign national (used to be international student) in the US and all of these feel all too familiar :)

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I'm afraid your main premise (Immigration is America’s superpower) in toto is demonstrably false:

https://cis.org/Report/63-NonCitizen-Households-Access-Welfare-Programs

The current number of skilled immigrants does not come close to eliminating the negative effects of unskilled/semi-skilled immigrants. There's a lot more to falsify it than that, but the above should be enough. If welfare funds were eliminated for all immigrants for 20 years after arrival, that would change things dramatically in favor of your premise, but don't hold your breath on that changing until after the American Empire collapses.

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the center for immigration studies is a very questionable source for info https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center-for-immigration-studies-cis/

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That's let's saying Trump is a very questionable role model for those aspiring to eat a healthy diet.

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I'm afraid your linked article doesn't justify your sweeping premise. It doesn't explain why a household accessing welfare is itself bad, and I don't see it mentioning confounding factors for why immigrant-headed households might access welfare (the word "size" — as in household size — appears 0 times, for instance). So "the above should" absolutely not "be enough" to warrant your conclusion.

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The UK is an interesting case study. We actually had a *low*-skilled labour shortage around the turn of the millennium, which we addressed by allowing the new members of the EU to send us their plumbers/builders. And this is repeating post-brexit - with our most extreme shortages in the lower wage/skilled segments such as fruit picking/building/hospitality.

I understand why they want to focus on high-skilled immigration - and hopefully it can help destigmatize all migrants, but I wonder if the assumption that its the most productive/best type of immigration is a bit reductive.

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How about we spend money training the existing American citizens before we start importing more people as competition for them?

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Aug 17, 2022·edited Aug 17, 2022

Who will train them? You can't just take a pile of money and sculpt it into a good teacher/mentor/colleague. As an "existing American citizen", most of what I have learned that is useful, I have learned from foreign-born professors and coworkers. And if you deprived me of their so-called "competition", you would also deprive me of a job environment worth competing for.

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The fact that we "need" to import people with certain skills is proof that our educational and training institutions are not producing the skilled and trained people that are needed.

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... or that your population is not generating by itself the % of people smart enough to be productive in a (starting to be) technologically advanced economy...

i.e. you (advanced economies in general) "need" (benefit) from brain draining everyone else...

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"not generating by itself the %"

A nasty thought that I prefer to ignore. Such head-in-the-sand behavior does not impact the validity of your argument.

"(benefit) from brain draining"

I'm not saying that the U. S. does not benefit from immigration. (Who? Whom?) I'm just saying that given current socio-economic facts, our policy should be a complete immigration hiatus (except for Einsteins and beauty queens) until we make changes necessary to prevent the collapse of our country.

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??!

It's not a nasty thought, just a reality that our technology may have moved us where a lot of people can't contribute much anymore. And, as our technology keeps advancing, the percentage of us not able to contribute a lot will only increase... very much including me and likely Noah too.

As to the idea that the US is about to collapse?!! I don't even know what you're referring to. But I disagree. The US is not collapsing and will not collapse anytime soon.

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Nasty as to considering the consequences of it being true, not thinking that it is true.

We are not "taking care of" those less able to contribute, and more so each year.

If you are unaware of the changes in the economy between the early 70's and today and its effects on the populace, I will leave that alone.

Political survival is going to be a close-run thing.

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I'm strongly anti-illegal immigration/pro-border control/pro-deport them all.

But we could do both of these things.

At least for high skilled immigrants, having more of them is clearly a net boon for the US.

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First things first. I'm not opposed to immigration, but we need to take care of our less skilled and under trained people first.

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¿Por qué no los dos?

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There is truth in this. If you look at the valedictorians of many inner city schools, they are often foreign born or US-born children of immigrants. They are in the inner city schools because their family has not made money yet but are driving their kids to academic success.

Institutionalized multi-generation poverty in the US is leading to an under-achieving underclass of Americans that is wasting a valuable resource (leaving aside the moral issues). There are lots of studies out there showing that upward mobility is dramatically reduced today compared to a couple of generations ago. If you are poor today, it is very likely your children and grandchildren will be as well. There are numerous causes for this, but a main one is that poverty is much more concentrated and physically separated from wealthier groups than it used to be so networking to success is a near impossibility. Also, since many resources are dictated by local taxes, these areas do not have much financial capability for improvement. Turning this around needs to be addressed as much as immigration.

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The US already spends about 7% of its entire GDP on education, much of that on existing American citizens.

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I think you're confusing a supply problem with a demand problem. As long as STEM pay is low, why would people with STEM talent want to enter STEM? They can make more money as lawyers or corporate executives. We need foreign STEM talent for the same reason we need foreign ag laborers: they're cheaper than the US citizens who would otherwise do the work. Pay is determined at least as much by social convention as it is by marginal productivity, and MIT folk still work for Harvard folk.

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Any immigration reform has to update the antiquated rules that allow immigrants to sponsor extended family members. It may have made sense a century ago, when communication was by letter and travel was expensive--moving to the US meant never seeing your family again--but times change. If an immigrant family wants to bring a parent over, say to provide child care or work in a family business, that family member should be allowed a guest worker visa, but not be automatically ahead of other qualified immigrants with more relevant skills.

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Aug 18, 2022·edited Aug 18, 2022

Why do you view this as zero sum? Why not allow both...besides, why would skilled immigrants want to come if they can't support their elderly parents? Also, more immigrants with family ties means a stronger connection and sense of belonging to the country.

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Couldn't agree more on the higher productivity note. I'm an Aussie software engineer in the Bay for a bootcamp, and my experience thus far indicates if I immigrated here I'd be a multiple more productive simply because the rate of learning and growth and opportunity is so much higher. You get this network effect attracting new talent (just like with top universities) which bad immigration policy only serves to stifle.

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So... Is there really anyone seriously against high skilled immigration?

I'm not saying systems cannot be badly designed and put intentional and unintentional road blocks in front of high skilled immigrants but it's really attacking a strawman.

It gets tenser (politically and economically) when speaking about low skilled immigration. First, the numbers of people concerned are significantly higher. Second, they tend to be the less westernized/less socially adaptable immigrants. Third, they are the more threatening to local employment (whether this is a real threat, a perceived one or depending on other variables such as whether your local economy is growing or not).

And it get tenser still when you're importing criminals or people prone to violence. Again and again. Check out Europeans/Germans experience with Afghans. It's very very meaningfully different from the US one and I doubt it's all due to Americans being more tolerant of foreigners.

It's very very likely due to the different type of Afghans who ended up in Germany vs. those who ended up in the US.

If you want a different example ("oh, that Afghan stuff is just an unlucky one off") - consider the UK experience with Indian vs. Pakistani immigration. Differences cannot be genetic. People sometimes like to blame religion but I call BS. Almost all religions can be extremist or modern in its outlook. It all depends on the worshippers. It's down to Indians being high skill and Pakistani being low skill.

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Yes, there are people seriously against high-skilled immigration. It's not a strawman, look around this comments section. The whole starting point of your comment is wrong!

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Regardless of the fact you may have found individual counter example, I don't think my starting point is anywhere close to wrong

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fapp.20190081&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

"Our main contribution is to show that an increase in high-skilled immigrants decreases the share of Republican votes, while an inflow of low-skilled immigrants increases it. These effects are mainly due to the indirect impact on existing citizens' votes, and this is independent of the origin country and race of immigrants. We find that the political effect of immigration is heterogeneous across counties and depends on their skill level, public spending, and noneconomic characteristics".

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Interesting paper, thanks for sharing it. I hadn't seen it.

I don't see how it helps you, though. The paper might show that the AVERAGE voter between 1990(!) and 2016 wasn't "seriously against high skilled immigration" but that doesn't substantiate your ambitious premises that (1) NO ONE is "seriously against" it and (2) the idea's a strawman.

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While this is a decent post on the immigration topic it misses the other half of this problem, low-skilled immigration. There are still several million low skilled jobs in the US that are filled by immigrants. Some of these such as in agriculture are filled by guest workers (I'm not sure this is the correct term) on a seasonal basis. Some of these jobs such as slaughterhouse work are ongoing. In my area (suburban DC) most of the landscaping, roofing, moving, housekeeping, kitchen restaurant, and there are a number of others, are staffed by recent immigrants (mainly Latino). I don't know what the demographic breakdown of warehouse workers that serve e-commerce is but I would not be surprised if there was a significant immigrant component to this.

While it is good to focus on hi-skill immigration, that is not the only type of worker the US needs.

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Par for the course. The US is all about the dollar. Who cares about anything else?

Makes me sick.

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One thing struck me as odd.

The text states: "Facing ever-growing wait times for green cards in the United States, talented immigrants are increasingly looking abroad for opportunities. According to a survey released last year by Boston Consulting Group, for the first time Canada has replaced the U.S. as the most desirable location for migrants moving for work."

But the survey report itself doesn't talk about "green cards", and in fact measures the stated desire/interest in relocating. In fact, the element highlighted in the study as significant in influencing country preferences has to do with Covid response.

The report itself states:

"When the question is about working for a foreign employer remotely versus having to pull up stakes and move to a country where the employer has physical offices, the preferred destinations shift in some interesting ways. The US is the most desirable destination under this scenario, suggesting that American employment retains a lot of appeal if you take away the political and social risks that come with living in the country."

That is, if we take this study at face value, then the problem is not visas, but that less foreigners consider the USA an attractive place to live, in comparison to other options like Canada or Australia.

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This is what we need to get done. Re-reading after the most recent post on immigration and wages.

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Agree, but high-skill immigration reform has seemed like a stones throw away for the past decade now.

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