Breaking up with America

http://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2014/09/breaking-up-with-america.html

by edward • 12 years ago

82 82 12 years ago

Rough.

I know a handful of talented developers stuck at a large company because of visa issues. They are too afraid to look for a better job because of immigration.

lambdasquirrel• 12 years ago

The U.S. seems much like the late Roman Empire in this sense. Whereas the growth and expansion of the Roman Empire was fueled by its wars and conquests, which brought back slaves and material wealth, the American Empire's growth has been fueled by skimming off the top of the middle and upper classes wherever there's been socioeconomic troubles elsewhere.

The U.S. can get away with policy inefficiencies like this because there's so many people who want to get in right now, and it actually works in favor of the Powers That Be, because they can get decent talent that's easy to "keep them in their place" because of said policy inefficiencies.

That having been said, the U.S. doesn't going blowing stuff up in Europe to make this advantages happen. For a lot of people, it is a beacon of opportunity. It's not all blue skies and roses though.

nolite• 12 years ago

no, they just blow stuff up everywhere else in the world.. either literally, or politically..

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

The US has done its share of economic imperialism as well, just not through colonies-in-name.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

That having been said, the U.S. doesn't going blowing stuff up in Europe to make this advantages happen.

No, just in the third and developing world.

In Europe they just push and abuse diplomatically lesser states (up to the point to having supported or even established specific goverments and even dictatorships over the last 60 years) to get the trade agreements and diplomatic support they want.

billbrown• 12 years ago

Every time I encounter the way our immigration policies treat various co-workers of mine, I'm ashamed and scandalized.

They are the last people to be a "drain on our economy" and they're effectively chained to their jobs, which seems so archaic.

dllthomas• 12 years ago

"they're effectively chained to their jobs, which seems so archaic."

Not just archaic, but wrong. And even if we say "but they're choosing to be here, so it still must be better than what they came from" - which isn't entirely false, but ignores some things - it still means that the rest of us are competing with these extra-abusable workers which some companies might not mind paying a premium for on paper.

owenmarshall4• 12 years ago

Reserve some blame for your company: the reason H-1B programs are so widely abused is because industry can't give up cheap labor.

omegaworks• 12 years ago

they're effectively chained to their jobs

Any restriction on the movement of free labor puts us all down. Their employers are less likely to treat them well because they know how dependent they are on the job just for the visa.

nilsimsa2• 12 years ago

Where are they located?

tomwilde3• 12 years ago

It seems like the author is a Briton.

As a Swiss citizen I don't understand how anyone from a first-world country would like to move to the USA. It's a downgrade in every aspect.

Giving up democracy, social-security, the practical absence of crime for a job in a country where every other Tuesday someone goes on a killing-spree, where people go to the doctor for moar Vicodine, where police will kill you for a donut. Nope.

Edit: changed englishman to briton. Thank you, commenters.

kelukelugames2• 12 years ago

Redmond. ;)

pm90• 12 years ago

Why isn't the author getting another L-1 Visa? Since his company has a base in SF and Belfast, that should be possible, right?

hlieberman• 12 years ago

L-1 visas are non-immigrant visas, and they require certain periods of absence from America in order to renew them, as well as lengths of employment at the company before you are eligible.

cylinder• 12 years ago

He has to have worked at the overseas company for one year out of the last three years for an L-1.

SeoxyS2• 12 years ago

You could always try for the O-1 visa. When everything else failed me, that's the route I went. I've now obtained an O-1 twice. It costs more, and the requirements are more stringent; but if you are able to get it, it's extremely efficient. The entire process only takes ~a month.

timtamboy632• 12 years ago

Hey! I'm actually going down this route as well. I'd love more information and maybe chat if you have a few minutes. Any chance you could shoot me an email? I'm chintan@capp.io.

randunel• 12 years ago

Guys, don't go private. Do request and share in the comments please :)

Synroc• 12 years ago

What constitutes as "exceptional" ? I'm worried I wouldn't qualify for that criteria.

SeoxyS2• 12 years ago

The criteria are outline on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa

http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers...

mathattack• 12 years ago

Why not an L1 if you have a job with the same company? Seems relatively easy.

lordbusiness3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure this is particularly interesting for Hacker News?

Not trying to troll, and I apologize if I'm way off the mark on this. I don't intend to cause offence.

tehwalrus• 12 years ago

Hi! thanks for contributing to Hacker News.

If you don't think an article is HN-material, please use the "flag" link on the post, rather than posting a comment to that effect. You may not see the flag link if you don't have a high enough Karma score yet.

Personally, I've seen advanced discussion on US visas on here before, and I would assume that this would be of interest to many in this community.

lordbusiness3• 12 years ago

Thank you for the welcome. :-)

It's not really an advanced discussion or even jumping off point. It's just one person saying they don't live in the US anymore.

And yah, I don't have enough karma. Though it appears I lost a point for positing my original comment. :-) C'est la vie.

timtamboy632• 12 years ago

Definitely relevant for any non-US citizens reading HN.

lordbusiness3• 12 years ago

Why? There is no immigration policy discussion, nor notable deviation from immigration status quo for the past decade at least.

jrmg• 12 years ago

If you were born in Northern Ireland, you are eligible to apply for the Diversity Visa lottery, if you want to try that route. 'Winning' nets you a green card (yes, this is a real thing; the US immigration system is crazy). There's a low chance of success - looks like 1.25-2% for Europeans, according to Wikipedia.

https://www.dvlottery.state.gov http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/dive... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa

Britons born in other parts of the UK are not eligible.

The next lottery takes place next year, applications can be made from October. The only qualifications needed, other than nationality, are a high school education and two years work experience (http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/dive...).

juggling-engine3• 12 years ago

I'm in the exact same situation. I wasn't selected for the H1-B lottery twice in a row, and have to leave after seven years in the US. Oh well, I hear Vancouver is nice :)

CodeMage2• 12 years ago

Are H-1B extensions also subject to lottery?

potatolicious• 12 years ago

No, but there is a 6-year limit to being under the H-1B status.

juggling-engine3• 12 years ago

Yes. They are subject to a lottery when te number of applications exceeds the number of available spots. This has been true for the last couple years, and last year was almost three times over.

chishaku2• 12 years ago

Question: How do "free market" proponents support the free flow of (financial) capital across borders but not the free flow of (human) capital across borders?

I appreciate any insight/references regarding this topic.

EDIT: I know this is a loaded question but I think it hits to the heart of this immigration issue. I trust there are many smart (and civil) members of this community from across the politecon spectrum who could provide more insight on this or related debates.

icebraining• 12 years ago

That's a loaded question :) most of what I read by libertarians is supportive of free immigration, e.g. http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/tag/immigration/

cottonseed• 12 years ago

This is economic, not political, but there is a good Planet Money on the economic perspectives on immigration:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/02/298383246/episode-...

x1798DE• 12 years ago

What free market proponents are in favor of free trade but against free immigration? In my experience part of the libertarian ethos is about opening up immigration.

The only way I can imagine a free-market proponent who is in favor of free trade holding consistent beliefs which are also against immigration is if they are for immigration from a trade perspective, but against it on some other grounds such as national defense or national identity. You can imagine that the justification for at least the national defense reasoning is that if you let in a lot of people, you'll end up allowing some sort of fifth column or something to develop in the heart of the nation. Frankly, I don't buy any of the objections I've seen to basically unlimited immigration, but there are at least some that are intellectually consistent with a free-market position.

You can find a laundry list of anti-immigration positions (many of which are at least intellectually consistent with a free market philosophy), alongside their specific refutations over at http://openborders.info

chishaku2• 12 years ago

Thanks, http://openborders.info looks like a great starting point.

a8da6b0c91d• 12 years ago

A nation is in a sense an extended family. Members feel some duty to look out for each other beyond simple self interest. This breaks down when too many foreigners crash the party. They don't have skin in the game or ties to the soil. They will leave at the first sign of serious trouble. They will be less inclined to think about the long term.

rwallace• 12 years ago

As a pragmatic libertarian, I'm fine with the free flow of capital across borders, but people are not mere capital. We are agents with opinions about how the world should be, who reserve the right under certain circumstances to back up those opinions with force. Unless you're willing to have a nightmare police state like North Korea, you can't maintain a civilized society by fiat. You have to have consensus among the governed. Hence nationalism: the principle that political borders should coincide with cultural ones. If you break that, if you try to impose a single state on people of different cultures who have different ideas about how things should be, you end up with, as has been demonstrated over and over again, misery at best and genocide at worst. How many times does history have to teach us that lesson before we learn it?

The real solution is to move on from this 19th-century idea that having a job has to mean locating your body in physical proximity to your employer. The round-trip delay for a lightspeed signal across the Atlantic is less than a tenth of a second. Being located in Belfast should not be an obstacle to working for an American company.

spikels• 12 years ago

While personally I am generally for both free markets and open borders I think most people make these judgements based on their understanding of their own self-interest - as they probably should. Depending on your specific situation you can easily be for both of these seemingly contradictory positions.

Imagine you are an electrician working on a foreign funded construction project. Your pay comes from foreign investment while your wage rate is boosted by reduced competition from foreign workers.

Or imagine you are a politician who is supported by multinational manufacturers and investors but know immigrants don't tend to vote for you. I bet you will be pro-free market and anti-immigration (and your opponents will hold the opposite views).

Or imagine you run a US based tech business with international ambitions. You will likely be for free international investment and more immigration for high tech workers.

I find it much more useful to try to understand people's incentives than their professed philosophy if you want to explain their behavior. While people hold all kinds of views about things that don't directly affect them. Philosophy often gets left behind when it's implications start to actually matter to them.

MarkMc2• 12 years ago

I find it much more useful to try to understand people's incentives than their professed philosophy if you want to explain their behavior.

Sure, but if you want to change their behavior then it helps to be able to show that it contradicts their stated beliefs.

MarkMc2• 12 years ago

Good question. Here's my attempt at a 'free market' answer:

When you import capital, the cost of that capital is borne by a single individual. When you import labour, the cost is spread amongst society.

Consider a US farmer who sells part of his farm for UK pounds. The price is paid by the farmer and no-one else. But now imagine the farmer wants to import a rural Indian laborer to work on his farm. The farmer pays wages but other US citizens must either (a) provide hospitals, schools, and roads for the labourer; or (b) bear the costs of letting the laborer live in abject poverty (eg. slums, higher crime rates, environmental damage). In true 'free market' fashion US citizens may decide that those costs outweigh the benefit of slightly cheaper farm produce, and so the labourer is denied entry into the US. This is not a restriction on free trade but simply the result of supply not matching demand.

Perhaps a purely free market approach would be to charge an 'immigrant fee' which equals the present value of (a) the expected cost of providing social services and infrastructure to the immigrant; less (b) the total expected tax receipts from the immigrant. An Indian labourer might not be able to pay the fee, but a computer programmer from the UK probably could. In fact, if the expected tax receipts were larger than the expected costs to society, the US might pay the programmer to immigrate!

coldtea2• 12 years ago

Question: How do "free market" proponents support the free flow of (financial) capital across borders but not the free flow of (human) capital across borders?

Lots of free market proponets, especially those in the higher echelons, are also full in favor of immigration. For them it means the availability of cheaper, less demanding, employees willing to work for worse working conditions for them, without having to go to China to find them.

I think that proponents of the "free market" come in two flavors: poor idealists that really believe in the thing, and rich people who are its greatest advocates only to use the notion as they see fit to influence policy in their favor. For the latter group, it's all about their bottom line.

If they have an oligopoly, they want laws and regulations to block the entrance to the market to newcomers.

If they produce something that has competition from abroad they ask for subsidies, tarrifs and bailouts.

If they want to take on something that's free or communal and make a business out of it, they want "deregulation" and "freer market".

If they make their money out of human capital, either skilled or unskilled, they want more immigrants and less labor protections, to have more access to cheaper workers.

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

Man, I would love to work in some other country than the US, but getting approval to work elsewhere is apparently harder than getting approval for people elsewhere to get approval to work here.

Breaking up with America

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