Us Foreigners Ain’t So Bad . . .
I know that some Americans are concerned about the large numbers of foreigners – especially in the computing professions and I just wanted to pull together a couple of links to suggest why us foreigners may not be such a bad thing after all . . .
The biggest argument I've heard against foreign (especially Indian and Chinese) programmers is that they take American jobs. As a business owner, I don’t really agree with this argument. I run an extremely small business, but I will still hire the right talent wherever it is. If the right person for the job is in Madras, I might be willing to fly him to the US despite the higher salary and other costs I’ll have to pay, but if you make that too difficult, I’ll just set up a programming lab in Madras and let him work for me there. (That is what EVERY big programming company has done – including Adobe, and it isn’t just me being unpatriotic – most of the people making such decisions are US citizens.)
He’ll still get the job. The only real difference is that in Madras he’ll not be paying US taxes, he won’t be buying from a US deli, drinking in a US bar or getting his laundry done at a US Laundromat. Even more insidiously, the cool technology he invents won’t be owned directly by a US company but via an Indian subsidiary so at least some of the profits from that intellectual property will have to be sent back to India to pay Indian taxes instead of being left in the US to pay federal, state and city taxes.
There are some jobs that require physical presence in the US – primarily because of the benefits of cultural affinity, but in my experience, someone just "off the boat" will be unlikely to fill those jobs as well as a US native (I think it is something about attending a US high school :->) – whether they’re coming from England, Argentina, Indonesia or India.
As for the argument against letting foreign entrepreneurs into the country, usually I don’t really hear one. I’ve honestly never met someone who said “they should keep all those foreign entrepreneurs out and let them spend their money and create their jobs in another darn country”. That said, any foreign entrepreneur reading this who has ever tried to DO business in the US will know how much of a pain it is – especially if you are in a technology field where you don’t have the traditional requirements for large initial head counts or large investments in inventory or property. If I wanted to set up and operate a Dunkin Donuts in New York, I could do it tomorrow. If I wanted to set up a software company (which I’ve done) and operate it (which I’m not yet allowed to do), it is much more difficult to do so. Guess America needs donuts more that software innovation. Go figure!
In fact it is even better than that. I would have been quite happy to just create a US company and develop my Intellectual Property (IP) over here. After consulting with my attorney I realized that the only way I could get a visa would be to set up a Scottish company, develop the IP there, and sell the technology to my US clients – repatriating a substantial part of the profits to the UK. From a tax perspective it is a wash – they are both high tax countries, but the US government effectively requires me to send most of the profits from my business back to pay UK taxes instead of US ones. If I wanted to pay ALL the taxes in the US, they wouldn’t let me back in the country again. If anyone can explain THAT one to me . . . !
As to what spurred this posting, I saw an interesting article pointing out just how influential immigrants are in US start ups. I fully understand American concerns about immigration. The US is a great country and with a high standard of living, nobody wants to lose that advantage. But I also think that a war for talent has already started. It starts with the students and the post 9/11 snafus with student visa processing were a bad move that competing countries such as England, Singapore and Australia took full advantage of to woo more of the top brains that might otherwise have studied in the US. The truth is that in many ways the US is still the best country in the world to live in. But nothing lasts for ever (ask the Greeks, the Romans and more recently the Brits). I think it is about time that the US started focusing on attracting talent rather than repelling it. Any thoughts?!
[update] Just to be fair, I probably shouldn't single out the US as many countries are pretty stupid about this. I believe it is equally tough for an American trying to do business in the UK (although I might be wrong). Only thing I've heard is that SOMETIMES British officials will be a little less rigid about the letter of the law, but I can't speak about that either way and all of my experienced (to date) with US border patrol officials have been extremely positive (long may it continue!).
Of course there are also a lot of situations where factories that could provide thousands of American jobs are moved overseas so that more greedy bastards can lower their costs and maximize their profit. If we would stop trying to slowly turn the US into a third world country, there would eventually not be a motive to do so.
So its not immigrants exactly, because if you arent a member of a Native American Indian tribe, you owe your American life to immigration, bottom line.
As for jobs going overseas, we need to fix the healthcare system in this country. It is obscenely expensive with poor results. Most developed countries have developed a single payer system that eliminates the insane wastefulness of our current privatized system. The rising costs of our healthcare system drives up the cost of maintaining employees stateside each and every year. Not only that, but most peoples paychecks have been going down because they are required to contribute more and more of their money for lesser and lesser coverage. I think big business is finally starting to realize that the only way to end this vicious circle is to come up with some form of nationalized healthcare system - neither side (employee or employer) can maintain the current system for far too much longer. Eliminate spiraling healthcare costs and you will make hiring American workers on American soil less cost prohibitive.
Anyway, that is my 2 cents...actually looking at the length of the comment maybe it was a nickel ;)
There are strong feelings on both sides of that argument and everyone has a pretty fair point. I'm not convinced that it is realistic to believe 15M people will just pack up and go home, but I think most people like myself who have legally followed all of the immigration rules for years would be a little disappointed to find ourselves unable to immigrate in the future if we wanted to because we were at the back of a 15M person line :->
@Brian - definitely a nickels worth there. ROI on US healthcare is indeed a real issue. As for jobs going overseas, I don't think we can ever fix that - we can just continue to make the US more and more attriactive to innovation and those who want to pursue it - relentlessly climbing the value chain. I'd love to see some kind of entrepreneurs visa that allows you to start a business but does NOT allow you to work for anyone else. Maybe you need to show $15k in assets per family member, you need to pay a $5k bond in advance which will be used to cover your deportation should you fail, and you must create at least 2 new American jobs in the first two years and another 3 more within the first five years. No access to social security or medicare and you have to get long term travel insurance which will fly you AND YOUR FAMILY back to your home country in case of serious injury or illness. Dependents would not be allowed to work on the basis of this visa. What would be the downside, and how many more hungry entrepreneurs would you get if we gave THAT a shot?! Limit it to people who would quality either for a visa waiver or a B1 or B2. In that way, if they'd wanted to overstay their visa that would have been able to get in and do so anyway, so you won't get any more people overstaying illegally than you would have with the current visas. Why would THIS be so hard to sell? Who would it hurt?!
Good luck Peter.
The only way I could marry a US citizen would be if I was on a non-immigrant visa that supported dual intent at the time (H1 or L1 I believe). I need to keep traveling between the US and various countries where I do business and I can't afford to spend months or years while waiting for the paperwork to be taken care of. As such, even if I wanted to marry a US citizen, I would have to choose not to as in practice it disqualified you from entering the country on the vast majority of other visas while the paperwork is pending.
Go figure!
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com...
Here's a shout out for U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). In a statement for Policy Soup, the blog of the Fairfax County, Va., Chamber of Commerce, Webb wrote: "I do not support guest worker programs. This applies to H-1B visas, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. I do not believe the myth of the tech worker shortage."
Congratulations Mr Webb. You are helping in the noble fight to push high paying tech jobs to other countries so that Indian and Chinese natives and governments will make more money. I salute your willingness to hurt the American economy for the benefit of citizens of other countries to more fairly redistribute wealth around the globe. (You mean that WASN'T his intent?!).
My wife and I went many years without health insurance and I can assure you, the very first question I asked, no matter how sick I was or how much it hurt was, 'how much is this going to cost?'. Once the answer was given, invariably we would then have a discussion on how to lower the price (the shock on most receptionist faces told me not too many people asked).
I have had insurance for over one year now, not only have I never asked what it something was going to cost, but we no longer wait until we know for sure something is serious...we just go.
Take prescription medicines as a great example...right now, if Big Pharma Inc. comes up with a new drug, they can put unlimited amounts of funds into marketing the drug...they can charge whatever they want as long as they get the patient to request it. Several prescription drugs have gone OTC in the last few years. Claritin comes to mind...it was like 150 per month as a prescription drug and $30 per month OTC. But guess what? The sale of Claritin crashed...$30 was more than most peoples co-pay! So they just switched to more a more expensive (but not to them) prescription drug.
A single payer system will only work, unless you take choice away from Americans and give it to Doctors and gatekeepers...good luck with that.