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Silicon Valley Says Trump Plan To Reduce Immigration Will Hurt Economy (cbslocal.com) 273

Posted by BeauHD from the cut-in-half dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS Local: President Donald Trump's push to cut legal immigration to the United States in half is being met by opposition from Silicon Valley leaders, economists, and even some Republicans senators, who all say legal immigration is key to economic prosperity. The Trump administration Wednesday endorsed the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act or RAISE Act, a Senate bill introduced by two Republican senators earlier this year, that aims to cut all U.S. immigration in half. Business leaders, especially those in California's tech industry, say the bill will stymie their ability to fill jobs and grow the U.S. economy. California's economy is the sixth largest in the world and many attribute that success, in part, to immigration. The Information Technology Industry Council, which represents companies including Amazon, Apple, Adobe, Dell, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Visa, Nokia, and Microsoft railed against the bill.

Dean Garfield, President and CEO of the council said, "This is not the right proposal to fix our immigration system because it does not address the challenges tech companies face, injects more bureaucratic dysfunction, and removes employers as the best judge of the employee merits they need to succeed and grow the U.S. economy." Garfield argues that the tech industry cannot find enough STEM-skilled Americans to fill open positions and that U.S. immigration policy "stops us from keeping the best and brightest innovators here in the U.S. and instead we lose out to our overseas competitors."
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Silicon Valley Says Trump Plan To Reduce Immigration Will Hurt Economy More

Silicon Valley Says Trump Plan To Reduce Immigration Will Hurt Economy

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  • H1B.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Steve Jackson ( 4687763 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:02PM (#54943253)
    Hurts it MORE.

  • What Would We Have To Pay Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:04PM (#54943279) Homepage Journal

    If we couldn't outsource their jobs (and actually get them done, which is a problem with outsourcing) and we couldn't import cheap labor from overseas, we'd have to pay programmers over $200K/year. And that would be terrible, because

    Oh. Never mind.

    • Re:What Would We Have To Pay Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by computational super ( 740265 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:15PM (#54943369)
      It would be terrible because it would hurt the economy. Well, Zuck's own personal economy, anyway. He'd have to go from making 100 times what the average American makes to only 99 times as much.
      • Something is so incredibly off about him.

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

        Hey now, that's the future POTUS you're talking about, better watch yourself.

        At least, that's what Zuck the Shmuck would like us to think.

      • Re:What Would We Have To Pay Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dAzED1 ( 33635 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:49PM (#54943651) Journal
        https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/1... [cnbc.com] - the average American doesn't make 1/100th of over $4m per day from birth to present. I don't know what you think Americans make, but...btw, that article is less than 15months old, and he's made $19billion since then. Facebook has 17k employees. That means he could have given each of them a $million in the last 15 months, and still had more left over from that 15months of income to give a thousand average Americans an entire lifetime of income earnings. I know you were just being silly, but people don't really appreciate the...scale...of the income inequality.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Dorianny ( 1847922 )
          You don't seem to understand the difference between asset evaluations and monetary wealth. Jeff Bezos briefly became the wealthiest person on earth on July 27 with an estimated net worth of $90.6 Billion and relinquished that title 4 hours later by loosing an estimated 6 billion. That happens with paper assets, not real money! In fact Bezos would love to sell much of his paper assets (amazon stock) to fund his other projects but can't sell more then about 1 Billion worth a year without causing the stock pri

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
            man, now I feel so sorry for him. It must be so hard to be unable to yearly liquidate 1000x more than the average American will make in a lifetime. I had no idea. Send him my most sincere apologies next time you're polishing his shoes? Thanks

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
            I'll rephrase: utter bullshit. If he had given away $17billion in stock to his employees the last 15 months, enough to give them each a $million bonus, their productivity would have SKYROCKETED (much more than it did, natch) and the company itself would be worth substantially more than it currently is. The idea that giving away that much would crash the company is not only absurd, it's downright idiotic.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by OYAHHH ( 322809 )

      Someone close to me makes over $200k salary programming in Silicon Valley. And quite frankly she is worth every penny of it. She gets the job done, works normal hours which means the boss can walk into her office and actually chat with her rather than having to get out of bed at 3am to talk to someone on the other side of the world, and I suspect she gets 10 times the work done versus her juniors in other countries.

    • When engineers are really cheap, you can hire them by the boatload (pun intended). How else can you justify hundreds of engineers for a company like Twitter? Especially when a company like Craigslist gets by with a few dozen... Investors want to see growth, and if you cannot grow your bottom line, perhaps you can grow your expenses and claim some budget items are booming?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Last I looked it was terrible because it enables tech workers to out-compete everyone else for scarce resources like housing. Recently was talking to someone living in Montana, and she reported that prices have spiked in the last 10 years and it's no longer inexpensive to live there because of all the inrush dollars from tech. It's already happened in SF. A one-bedroom shack there with no garage space costs more per month than a million dollar mansion with property in the Capital. And the million dollar

    • we'd have to pay programmers over $200K/year.

      Why only programmers? Why shouldn't fast food workers also get $200K/year? Babysitters should get $200 / hour. Everyone can be rich.

      • Of course the end result of that is having to bring a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread.

        But given the value of software, I can't help but feel that some of it should go to the people who write the software.

  • Conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)

    by x0ra ( 1249540 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:05PM (#54943281)
    Of course SV will be against, they have a huge conflict of interest in the matter. They keep importing under-paid code monkey who accept to work 70h a week in constant stressful environment with no job security, while firing and discriminating against older, more pragmatic, american staffers.

    • Re:Conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:22PM (#54943423)

      Exactly, they lie through their teeth.

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

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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Reality is, there is a real security issue ie https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] (that buffoon was lucky that the Russia government was happy to treat him like an Inspector Clouseau clone, laugh at him and just toss him out). Each and every time you bring in a foreign H1B you increase the chance of employing a foreign agent, a real solid chance, just ask the NSA and CIA where they recruit, as for them, so for other countries. The home country always gets first look and first chance to recruit and the recruit

    • It's worth mentioning the proposed bill does not actually affect the H1-B program. It's a rework of the green card program, and allocates green cards to tech people with a degree instead of to cousins of people already living here.

  • Whatever this guy takes in his hands fails or even worse - endangers others. 100 % system failure and no "checks and balances" for this situation built-in.

    Bummer!

  • Source (Score:5, Funny)

    by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:07PM (#54943297)
    A San Francisco station is reporting Trump policy is making some people upset? I'm -shocked-.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      It's not your typical whining screaming 20's something with dyed hair that frequent starbuck, but your typical whining screaming 30's something with suit that frequent microsoft.

  • Depends on what kind of immigrant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:08PM (#54943309) Homepage Journal

    because not all immigrants are alike.

    People bringing with them cold hard cash, and spending them in USA = boon for the economy

    People bringing nothing, and actually sending whatever money they make back to their original country to feed their relatives back home = drain on the economy

    People with skills who produce wealth = boon for the economy

    People with no marketable skill who collect entitlements = drain on the economy

    • You are ignoring the social aspects. Male to female ratio for example.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 )

      because not all immigrants are alike.

      People bringing with them cold hard cash, and spending them in USA = boon for the economy

      People bringing nothing, and actually sending whatever money they make back to their original country to feed their relatives back home = drain on the economy

      People with skills who produce wealth = boon for the economy

      People with no marketable skill who collect entitlements = drain on the economy

      In the 60's, when the US dropped all sane policies with PC ones, immigration law was changed from favoring immigrants likely to help the economy (ie skills based) with immigrants unlikely to help the economy (ie family based). We've seen the results and it is obvious to anyone to who looks around. California went from leading class infrastructure and quality of life to where we are today - hopeless infrastructure and mired in debt. Schools went from leading class to middling and worse. Huge steps backwa

      • To those who jump to the racism charge - I don't hate Mexicans I just don't want to live in Mexico or a close approximation. Neither do you if you care to be honest.

        I'd like to live in what Mexico would be without the US war on [some] drugs.

        • You can - visit Colombia or the Northern half of Peru...
          • A huge reason for Colombia having experienced such huge problems with narcotics traffic is an aborted coup attempt a few generations ago. The aftermath saw the rise of a rebel group (FARC) that has persisted for more than 50 years. This guerrilla military group, living in the jungles, began using drug production and trafficking to fund themselves in the 80s and its been a problem ever since. Within the last several months there has been completely unprecedented progress in the demilitarization and breakup o
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • California is not mired in debt. They've had a budget surplus for the last few years and it looks like the budget might dip back below the break even point. And this is not because of exorbitant public good spending costs, but rather declining tax receipts.

        I also reject your assertion that regions of the state or country being multilingual is some sort of problem or a sign of decline. Most Spanish-speaking people in the country also speak English either as a primary or secondary language. Even recent immi

  • BS detector just lit up like a Christmas tree (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EndlessNameless ( 673105 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:10PM (#54943325)

    It hurts their ability to grow the economy? Oh, boo hoo, they have to pay more for American workers.

    If a handful of American salaries turns your project from a profit to a loss, you are running on razor-thin margins to begin with. Maybe your company should be doing something else instead.

    On the other hand, if you're making a decent profit and just want more---get fucked. Public policy doesn't need to hand out special benefits to successful businesses. Right now, the middle class needs a little more help than the shareholders.

    Real immigration means coming over here, making a life, and investing long-term in the well-being of this country. The H1B program isn't immigration; it's indentured servitude V2.0

    • On the other hand, if you're making a decent profit and just want more---get fucked. Public policy doesn't need to hand out special benefits to successful businesses. Right now, the middle class needs a little more help than the shareholders.

      If you have a retirement account, you're very likely one of those shareholders. You're cool with getting a lower rate of return than you currently do, right?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        I'll take money now versus when I'm 65. It will make the lower long term rate of return mostly wash out when I'm investing more money on the front end.

        • Keep in mind that when you retire your income stops but your investments will continue to compound. Back of the envelope, you'd have to invest around 3x more on the front end to beat a 2% drop in your portfolio's CAGR. So if you're already maxing out your 401(k), you'd have to make in the neighborhood of $50k more to keep your retirement income the same (and just to end up with exactly the same take-home as you have today). Salaries are highly unlikely to move even close to that much across the entire ma

  • but I'm pretty sure neither Trump nor any American citizen* has any issues with LEGAL Immigration. Go through the steps, do it right and we'll welcome you right in.

    It's the illegal variety that we have issues with. Those people should be deported. Just like what would happen if I entered any other country illegally.

    *Unless you're a member of the Klan or similar group.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

      but I'm pretty sure neither Trump nor any American citizen* has any issues with LEGAL Immigration.

      Yeah they do. Trump wants to severely reduce the number of LEGAL immigrants we take in and his supporters are frothing white supremacists who would completely end all immigration tomorrow.

      Trump has admitted that he wants to stop all legal immigration for one or two years.

      http://www.breitbart.com/big-g... [breitbart.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by x0ra ( 1249540 )
      Abusing H1-B to import indian worker to replace US staff *is* a problem, yet "legal".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      OK I'll correct you.
      What would your idol Reagan do?
      Even better, look up what he actually did about illegal immigration.
      It was actually a very good idea instead of what we have now with a shadow economy of non-citizens paid under the table and ranting about trying to turn back a tide with a toothpick as if it would work.

  • Gee, what a surprise (Score:3, Funny)

    by computational super ( 740265 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:11PM (#54943339)
    Trump-hating liberals oppose something that Trump supports. I may die of shock.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

      Trump-hating liberals oppose something that Trump supports.

      Sixty percent of Americans are "Trump-hating liberals", I guess.

      https://projects.fivethirtyeig... [fivethirtyeight.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Nate Silver, the same guy that said Trump had ZERO chance of winning. Ok, seems legit to me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )

          Nate Silver, the same guy that said Trump had ZERO chance of winning. Ok, seems legit to me.

          He appears to have overestimated the Republican party's competence in blocking a Cuckoo from outside from taking over the primaries. He should have had zero chance.

        • Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight polling organization definitely didn't say trump had ZERO chance of winning [fivethirtyeight.com]. Looks like the lowest forecast point they had for Trump was around 10% at Aug 14, 2016. If memory serves, that was right after the Access Hollywood recording of Trump talking in misogynistic terms was published. That was the point when the leaders of the Republican party were distancing themselves from the candidate and Reince Preibus reportedly asked Trump to drop out of the race.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Most Silicon Valley executives are centrists, not liberals, and focus more on what their company "needs" than the 99%.

      They want cheap labor without any training needed so they can be more profitable and/or grow faster. That's their primary concern and what they are paid to focus on. They don't spend a lot of time researching or philosophizing on middle class economics, except when they want to sell them something.

      I hate to say it, but I'll side with (gulp) Trump on this one: CEO's look out for their profits

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by x0ra ( 1249540 )
        They're not. They only care about their business, and it turns out being an SJW cunt is good for business in America. In China, you can be a cold Governemnt's bitch, same in EAU/Qatar/SA nobody's give a shit about that.

  • Economy.

  • Heard before (Score:5, Informative)

    by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @04:22PM (#54943421)

    Has't this sort of thing been heard before?
    Modern American politician : "The economy cannot survive without immigrants"
    Ancient Greek politician : "Civilisation cannot survive without slavery"

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The skill requirement makes it practically a carbon copy of Australia and Canada: your ability to enter is a function of your knowledge of the local language (English, or in Canada's case English or French), skills, education level, and ability to get a job. They want people who are useful to the country and can fit in.

    The difference is the path to legal citizenship in those commonwealth countries is once you've lived/worked there for 5 years or so, citizenship opportunity. No country of origin quotas or green card queues which encourage queue-jumping, visa overstays and under-the-table work. This second part should be copied as well.

  • I'm a Canadian in the US who's had a TN, then an H-1B, and now I have a green card. I have a Ph.D. in a highly sought-after technical field and I'm holding down a pretty good job here in the States, doing something specialized related to my academic work. There aren't enough Americans with my specialty nor enough Canadian jobs requiring it for it to make sense for me to "go back home" - it's not in anyone's interest.

    Even with the strong tailwinds of Canadian-ness and a useful high education, it's not exac

    • I'm right there with you, my friend. A good number of my friends are expats that have struggled against the American legal immigration system. A couple have even given up and tried to start over in other countries because of how onerous and stressful it is to try to become a permanent resident and then citizen here. One of my closest friends fled Iran and managed to get asylum here because she's a gay woman and was living under threat of imprisonment or forced gender reassignment in her country of birth. Sh

  • Dear Silicon Valley, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by budsetr ( 4952293 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @05:00PM (#54943735)
    Eat a dick

  • Allow me to translate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @05:18PM (#54943835)

    This is not the right proposal to fix our immigration system because it does not address the challenges tech companies face, injects more bureaucratic dysfunction, and removes employers as the best judge of the employee merits they need to succeed and grow the U.S. economy." Garfield argues that the tech industry cannot find enough STEM-skilled Americans to fill open positions and that U.S. immigration policy "stops us from keeping the best and brightest innovators here in the U.S. and instead we lose out to our overseas competitors."

    Translated: "Where the fuck are we going to get our cheap programmers????"

  • BS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ensign Nemo ( 19284 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @05:37PM (#54943935)

    "removes employers as the best judge of the employee merits they need to succeed"

    You mean all those Indian managers, who once get a management spot, only hire other Indians? yea, it'd be a shame if they couldn't hire only other Indians.

    I'm sorry but I've personally seen this multiple times in multiple places and it's no longer funny. I've had to deal with the bugs and blame-game that comes from this favouritism so much it's downright aggravating.

    Yes, I know not all Indians are like this, and it's not just Indians, but there are enough that are, that's it's troubling.
    And this isn't even talking about the sweatshop problem that other posters have mentioned.

    • > You mean all those Indian managers, who once get a management spot, only hire other Indians?

      Wow. I mean, wow. It's not just me seeing this? Previous job, my US native manager was pushed out by a remarkably aggressive Indian manager here on H1B. He grew the department (then numbering 18) to 26, with every single new hire being another H1B worker. He was openly hostile to employees who were locals, (even bragging in meetings of his intention to improve his budget by filling vacancies with workers fr

      • I see this, too.

        countless interviews over the last 10 years have been filled with entirely indian employees and I'm the only american there in the group (applying). once I had a job where I was working in redwood city for a US corp, at their corp HQ and I was the only american engineer there (out of about 50 or 100, depending on how you count 'engineering'). I fully believe I was kept as the token white guy, but I sure felt out of place.

        pet peeve of mine: you know a company culture is broken when the h1b'

      • I think that it is the norm, at least in tech. I've talked to others, including an Indian who's been in the states for 20+ years and he confirmed it. ;(

        If an Indian gets into a management position (men at least, I'm not sure about Indian women), expect him to only hire other Indians under him (or all young, single females for those that are trying to build harems [yes, i've worked with one of those also. he was a complete jerk] ).

        Indian men being aggressive in their drive to climb the corporate ladder is

  • Silicon Valley here you go, (opens giant bag of dicks) help yourself. Please go fuck yourself.

  • Yeah.... no. (Score:3)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @06:09PM (#54944105) Journal

    > "employers as the best judge of the employee merits they need to succeed and grow the U.S. economy"

    "employee merits" being, cheap labor willing to work killer hours, terrified of being fired. I mean, what employer wouldn't want that?

    "grow the U.S. economy" being, grow the net worth of US-based companies.

  • How the hell could it hurt? (Score:3)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Friday August 04, 2017 @06:30PM (#54944191) Homepage Journal

    Seriously.

    It's basically "have job prospects", and "know english well enough to get by".

    How the fuck is that going to hurt the economy?

    Because they can't hire stupid, illiterate illegals for pennies on the dollar to watch their kids and clean their homes/offices?

    BOO FUCKIN' HOO!

    And Silicon Valley. One of the most overheated real estate markets on the planet?
    Where are these poor schlubs going to live? You expect them to commute from what? OREGON?

    These people need to pull their heads out of their a^H^H^SAFE SPACES...and take a look at the really real world...
    Because their attachment to fantasy is destroying them and trying to take the state and country down as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      40 years of liberal hollywierd brainwashing has done it's job. There is literally nothing you can say to these people to wake them up. Its cult like. You hit them with some logic and common sense and they immediately yell out the mansplaining and fascist insults. Literally a cult in every sense of the word. I don't even try anymore, I just mock them like I would any other cult. Fuck'em.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eWarz ( 610883 )
      What's really sad is that this plan has almost nothing to do with H1B. I'm surprised they even have an issue here.

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