Michael Moritz on immigration reform

Newsflash: tech industry investor wants immigration reform to increase supply of labor with tech skills, thereby decreasing cost.<p>Whether you're for immigration reform or not, let's not ignore the Econ 101 here, and let's call a spade a spade. There is no such thing as a "shortage of engineers." The state and federal governments have spent literally a hundred years subsidizing the technology industry by building massive public research universities that pump out thousands of engineers each year. My alma mater (Georgia Tech) is precisely one such institution. When companies talk about a "shortage of engineers" what they mean is that there is a shortage of people willing to work as engineers at the prices they would like to pay. Of course, it's Econ 101 that if they raised the prices they were willing to pay, the number of willing suppliers would go up.<p>I'm actually in favor of skilled immigration. My dad was an H1-B, and I have very bright friends who came here to study and struggled to get sponsorship. However, claiming that anyone who opposes the status quo is simply xenophobic is disingenuous. Let's not pretend that there isn't a trade-off between limiting labor supply to maintain wages and expanding it to make the U.S. a more attractive place to start a technology company.<p>It is the people of the United States that defend our borders, and it is therefore the right of those people to decide who gets in those borders and who does not. The people are entitled to decide for themselves what kind of trade-offs they want to make re: immigration, based on what benefits them the most. One can make a credible case that the U.S. is in danger of losing it's place as an attractive place to start a technology company if we don't allow more skilled immigrants. One can also make a credible case, without any xenophobia necessary, that we already do a lot to create a large supply of engineers in this country, and that the U.S. is not in any danger of losing it's attractiveness at the moment, and that we'd rather enjoy the higher wages that come from limiting the labor pool.

I don't think it's xenophobia that's preventing us from "stapling a green card to every diploma," as Mitt Romney put it while advocating for the idea. Making immigration easier for educated workers is popular and has fairly broad bipartisan support.<p>So why hasn't it happened? Many of those in favor of a "comprehensive" solution are wary of letting the most popular parts of immigration reform pass individually, lest they end up with the less popular remainder (some form of normalization for existing undocumented immigrants) standing on its own and thus harder to pass. Similar logic worked against passing a real "DREAM" act prior to the President's somewhat dubious selective-enforcement scheme.<p>Relatedly, there's a strong feeling among some reform advocates that focusing on skilled labor from Europe or Asia at the expense of unskilled labor from Central and South America is yet another example of discrimination and at least metaphorical fence building. Why help those who are already well off enough to get a college degree in the U.S.?

Everybody who supports this bill should really read it first. There's SO much wrong about this bill that I don't even know where to start.<p>1) This bill will remove per-country quotas for Employment Based Green Cards. Just look at the backlog right now and imagine what would happen if these quotas were removed.<p>2) The cost of applying for H-1b will be INCREASED. What that means is that small companies and start-ups who struggle with hiring engineers will have to pay more for each one of them. It used to be 2-3K/application and for a small company it might be pretty substantial. At the same time companies like Wipro and Infosys will not even notice this increase.<p>3) The bill does not really help people who graduated here to STAY in the US. Yes, it will make it easier for them to get a visa, but what they really need is their green card. I was on H-1b for many years and the only thing I wanted during these years is to get my green card ASAP and start my own business.<p>Take a look at Canada's startup visa that just was introduced. They bring new jobs to Canada by giving permanent residency to people who want to start businesses and CREATE jobs (not take the existing ones). Current US bill will NOT allow entrepreneurs to stay in the US, it will only help to bring more cheap labor from overseas, but will not solve the problem of talented people leaving the country.

I don't think I could even count how many contractors I've worked with that were on H1-B's and yet were doing basic Struts and Dreamweaver code monkey work for my place of employment. Work so basic that it doesn't even need a software engineering or computer science degree. I have absolutely no idea if we have a shortage of "highly skilled" workers, but I've seen with my own eyes that H1-Bs are abused for work that definitely could be done by a citizen. So I'm not inclined at all to be sympathetic to the call for more H1-B's that will lead to just as much abuse, and leave the same shortage of actually highly skilled workers.

I support this reform, but we should consider the unintended consequences.<p>Tying US citizenship with graduate work will incentivize universities to treat graduate students like slave labor, moreso than they are already. This is a recipe for exploitation.

"Stripe’s engineering department would be at least twice as large if we could get working papers for the programmers we are eager to hire."<p>It looks like Stripe has decided hiring foreign workers is the only solution to the problem instead of trying to find another solution. There are _plenty_ of good programmers who could work for Stripe in the US, maybe they just aren't attracted to the company, to living in SF, don't know about the company, etc. Maybe they should think about their hiring process more generally rather than waiting on hiring some particular group.

The unintended consequence I most fear from this kind of immigration law modification is the same unintended consequence I've observed from every attempt to tie real-world advantages to diplomas: watering down the diplomas. The blog post author writes, "It would be wonderful to provide foreign-born students with advanced degrees in STEM subjects from U.S. universities a clear path to permanent residency." From the lawyer's point of view, the interesting questions then follow. What is a foreign-born student? What is an advanced degree? What is a STEM subject? What is a clear path to permanent residency?<p>I by no means oppose expansion of skills-based grounds for legal immigration to the United States. Mindful that all of my own ancestors arrived to the United States (or to the pre-independence colonies of Britain) in an era before there were any restrictions at all on immigration here, I'm generally quite supportive of expanded immigration to the United States. That improves the local cuisine, the local music, and the local economy in general. Mindful that my wife was able to find a legal channel for immigration to the United States (based on that status of being my wife, in that case) and that many of my friends and neighbors are first-generation immigrants to the United States, I am also aware that there quite a few channels to legal immigration to the United States already, some of which already strongly favor people with STEM degrees or STEM work experience. I'd be glad to see more people like that come into the country--that would be good for my personal local business of teaching mathematics to the children of people who are aware United States K-12 education underperforms (see my user profile for more details on that). But the tricky issue will be setting detailed criteria for immigration on those grounds and perhaps (or perhaps not) an annual number of visas issued on those grounds that fit an overall sound immigration policy for the United States.<p>Anyone who doesn't think a simple policy proposal like that of the blog post kindly submitted here might be subject to abuse and fraud needs to think again. Immigration to the United States is very highly desired, and some people will cheat to attain it. There is no particular reason for United States voters to vote to make immigration any easier than it has to be to achieve some generally agreed national policy goal, despite own my pro-immigration opinions.

&#62; <i>Today, it is impossible to satisfy Silicon Valley’s appetite for engineers and scientists with people born in America.</i><p>Well, at the price you're willing to pay anyway. Try competing with banker bonuses (or even <i>gasp</i> VC pay) and watch the population shift.<p>Sounds like he's all for capitalism until he has to open his own wallet.

Meanwhile many of our locally born students are graduating with unemployable degrees and wondering why they can't find a job. Maybe we can get our acts together and start raising children in this country who aren't under the delusion that everything they do is special, and that a degree in Sumerian with a minor in communications will entitle them to anything other than a pile of student loan debt.

"In Silicon Valley, which has always been blind to any attribute other than ability." I look at what laughably passes for management and leadership in the valley, and wonder if anyone actually believes that anymore.

I find it hard to believe that it would be bad for the US overall to let highly skilled people come here and work. They would increase innovation, grow the economy and raise employment as immigrants have done throughout US history.<p>However I have to admit it would probably reduce the wages of similarly skilled existing workers at least in the short run. This is basic supply and demand: more supply means lower prices at least in the short run.<p>For example would skilled US programmers be paid as much if any skilled programmer in the world could come here compete for their job? Probably not just look at the prices for contract programmers in India, Eastern Europe, China, etc.<p>However in the long run almost everyone should be better off because the flip side of lower prices is greater volume: more innovation, economics growth and employment as well as lower prices. There are other less understood benefits such as immigrants increased likelihood to start businesses.<p>Also in the long run it won't matter as much where people are located. Eventually most US skilled workers will be competing with similarly skilled workers throughout the world. So we might want to adapt to this future reality now as it will only get harder in the future. People piling up student loans need to know what future wages will be.<p>Overall I think we should be willing to take the risk and accept some disruption now. It should help almost everyone in the long run and it will happen in some form anyway. But I can understand people's reluctance to personally bare the costs.

I'd be a bit concerned about the "American schools are not performing, and getting worse, and thus Americans aren't suited to tech jobs" message, politically, even if it is largely true. The us citizen voters who will lose out (if they believe the economy is zero sum and of a fixed size) will think foreign competition will hurt them as the primary effect, and thus will vote against it.

I have one question: from the perspective of a sincere, hard-working individual who wishes to immigrate legally to the US, what hope is there if a proven advanced degree or experience is not going to do it?

I've frequently discussed this, most often in dejected frustration among friends and colleagues. My wife went through a Ph.D. program in electrical engineering and 90% of her research group were foreign born. As native US citizens ourselves, we did not suffer the desperate living conditions to which Ph.D. students on a half- or quarter-RA subject themselves and their nascent families. But we observed it plenty.<p>Many of her research colleagues were effectively deported (forced out of the United States) after graduation if they could not find a firm willing to sponsor them. Sponsorship is itself an exploitative and extremely costly endeavor. Many small companies cannot afford it.<p>The situation seems to me a travesty from every angle I can conceive.<p>The author of this article paints the situation adequately, but I want to add a few more points:<p>1. Since many of the more xenophobic among us Americans are strongly motivated by national defense, I find it especially important to paint the following picture for their consumption: educating these bright minds in the United States and then sending them packing may in fact exacerbate national defense. Considering how many engineering students arrive to our universities from nations we are fearful of (rightly or not) such as Iran and China, it seems especially naive to educate their brightest to the pinnacle of our ability and then send them home--especially since they want to stay here.<p>Similarly, if your aim is to keep your enemies weak (and again, I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, just that it may be what the more xenophobic among us desire), then certainly creating a brain drain within their society serves us at their expense.<p>2. A commonplace misguided belief that economics is a zero-sum game may also explain some xenophobia. This colloquially takes the flavor of, "they are taking our jobs." The only way to combat this is through repeating the point that immigration creates jobs. We as Americans are better off having these highly-educated job-makers in America than overseas creating and enriching companies that may end up competing with our own.<p>As a free-marketer, I am not all that motivated by such an "America over everyone else" point of view, but if that IS your point of view, then again you should want these bright people staying here and creating jobs or bettering our firms rather than overseas in the hands of our competition.<p>3. It's quite frankly inhumane in many cases to send these students packing. Even in the relative squalor that they endure living, for example in Los Angeles on mere hundreds of dollars a month, they still want to live here and create a family here. The American dream exists in their eyes. Sometimes I think of those who were sent back and wonder whatever became of them, but I cut those thoughts short because no happiness comes from that.<p>4. Just as a minor point, can you imagine the feeling of being kicked out of the US after earning your Ph.D. here? I imagine it might breed a tinge of America hatred when they get back home.

One things conspicuously missing from the post is the idea that companies will set up foreign offices to hire the workers there if they can't hire them here. Maybe that idea died along with the whole outsourcing push of the mid-00s.

<i>The xenophobia underlying current immigration policy</i><p>Absolute, shameless liar. <a href="http://peoplemov.in/" rel="nofollow">http://peoplemov.in/</a>

The current immigration setup ensures that high skilled immigrants come into the country only as employees which understandably depresses salaries.Immigration reform on the other hand ensures that some of them have the autonomy to found companies which increases demand for more engineers and raises their salaries.

Michael Moritz is a billionaire investor. It's easy to understand why he'd like to increase the supply of technical labor in the US. This lowers his cost of labor, contributing to his further enrichment.<p>Foreigners desirous of US citizenship similarly favor "immigration reform" for self-interested reasons.<p>The marks here are American tech workers (and American workers in general) who buy into various elite rationalizations for why labor needs a pay cut so people like Moritz can pile up more billions.