America is sabotaging itself in the global battle for talent

> A Harvard study tried to measure this by looking at what happened to researchers when a colleague died. The loss of an immigrant brainbox reduced co-workers’ productivity (measured in patents) by nearly twice as much as the loss of a native. From this, the study estimated that immigrants in America, though only 14% of the population, are responsible for a colossal 36% of innovation.

1) What the hell is a brainbox?

2) What does the death of a colleague have to do with innovation?

3) Can you really measure innovation with "# of patents"? By that measure, Panasonic is the most innovative company in the world.

Another issue is the US education System.

Yes there is and always will be a need for skilled people from other Countries. But in the US, many High School grads need to be re-taught some basic high-school level courses as freshmen.

This started in the 80s. I remember a couple of profs telling me this.

But many US communities cannot afford to provide a good education for various reasons. To me, the largest reason is no one wants to pay taxes.

Personal experience - emigrating to the Netherlands after higher education is a well-defined and relatively easy process. After graduating you're able to apply for a "search year" residence permit which entitles you to residence and full access to the Dutch job market. (https://ind.nl/en/residence-permits/work/residence-permit-fo...)

Normally then you're able to get a "highly skilled migrant" permit (with less restrictive criteria than had you not studied in NL) which is renewable, then eventually after passing some language and integration tests and sufficient time you're eligible for long-term permanent residence (or even citizenship).

It's a refreshingly sane approach compared to the US.

Simple fix to running out of H1Bs would be to ban body shops from the program.

I think it's good for the world and good for America if we don't siphon off the best and brightest from everywhere else, especially more developing countries.

Dangling green cards in front of the most motivated people from other countries is not better than actually working to develop our own talent, which we're doing an awful job at. Think of how things would be if school funding was something being demanded by industry to develop the best candidates. Instead we have the lucky few and a bunch of people who feel very rightly left behind.

When I looked I found that the top math talent in the world has been increasingly concentrated in the US (specifically MIT) over the last 30 years [1]. Staying in academia is an easy way for immigrants to stay in the US but it would be nice if there was an easier path out into industry.

[1] https://xquant.substack.com/p/where-have-the-international-m...

Nah. Skilled immigrants simply do not have a backing votebank to push this through. Capital, as is well known, is more mobile than labor. The reverse 'brain drain' began a while ago. Google India has close to if not more employees than in the US. Indian and Chinese immigrants in tech returning to India and China is (in my anecdotal experience) at an all time high.

It's interesting that some tech jobs could also be leaving the US, cost of labor is too high for what you get out of it: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/why-is-it-so-expensiv...

This is one of 3rd rail of US Tech Workers so stepping into it is fun.

This is discussing recent comment made by Donald Trump: “You graduate from a college, I think you should get, automatically as part of your diploma, a green card [permanent residence in the United States].” and wondering why United States doesn't do this compared to many other countries who have similar programs.

On one hand, United States educates a ton of foreigners, some of them with extremely advanced Degrees, then kicks them out of the country. This seems counterproductive to growing US economy.

On other hand, many in Tech Sector have seen recent layoffs, H-1B hiring to replace workers and offshore outsourcing and see such a proposal as a threat to their livelihood. Tech is still good sector to make a decent living in despite many companies' desperate attempts to reduce the cost.

As US Tech Worker, I think I would oppose such systems where "Visa handed to all graduate degree holders" since I think schools would just create graduate programs to increase enrollment regardless of if those programs actually contributed great candidates or not.

55% of all US unicorns have immigrant founders. 36% of all US unicorns are founded by Indian immigrants alone. No other statistic is needed to validate the value of immigration.

Another problem is the propensity for Congress to want to do "immigration reform" as a giant omnibus action. The discourse inevitably gets bogged down in mudslinging over the southern border, and any useful discussion over topics like this gets lost in the noise.

It's amazing how the USA can deflect immigrants to Canada, and still have housing problems.

> Its success is an implicit rebuke of places that still have paper forms and surly border officials, such as America.

Who has surlier? I'm always appalled at the US border attitude. You can perform all the same actions with a professional or friendly demeanor.

It is very hard to immigrate into the U.S. if you're a skilled worker. The system is almost nonsensical.

There are annual H1B lotteries (with a small chance of winning). There are L1's requiring you to work abroad in an American company for at least a year before applying. And none of those visas get you residency — it is a wholly separate process taking many years and a huge amount of paperwork, during which you live in a constant fear of losing your job and subsequent deportation if you can't find a new employer ready to sponsor your visa immediately. And for L1 you can't even switch employers which leads to a possible exploitation of a worker.

There are often huge wait times in U.S. embassies, you can't just go there and get a visa in a week or so — often you need to wait for many months for your interview.

And a cherry on top — specifically for technology workers, there is an "administrative processing" step in obtaining a visa. Basically, if you have a STEM degree, it triggers an additional security check (U.S. will automatically imply that you're a spy). It is a check that has no SLA on completion time — I know people who waited for many years (!) for that "administrative processing" to finish. What employer will wait for multiple years until every three-letter agency approves your case? It is madness, yet, it is the norm.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Alert_List

And yet, the U.S. lets millions of people across the border with absolutely no paperwork, no security checks — it is actually 10x easier to just walk through the border than try to get to the U.S. legally even if you're a high-profile engineer or a scientist. It's a clown show.

So you're telling me that people who go through the trouble of leaving their home country and going through a grueling process to emigrate to a new one are not typically very lazy?

Wow! Thanks again, Harvard, you truly are pushing on the boundaries of human knowledge over there.

I'm not a specific talent but I was a globetrotter having choose a different country than my original one. Some aspects I've valued and I still value:

- country stability, in term of internal and external projection (I would not look for a country about to go to war or suffer a civil war if I can) witch migh be counterbalanced by...

- ...country population, a population I trust or not, detached or not form the country ruling cohort, meaning mean corruption, attitude toward others, conformism etc;

- current fiscal policies, a high heritage tax for instance is a very BAD point, I can accept only if I know how to escape;

- climate status and possible evolution, orography, food production potential to nourish citizens in case of deep crisis etc;

- scholar system, a free one vs a paid one, an open one vs a casts based one;

- a balance of forces between the public and private sector, when one of both prevail the eventual current stability will not last longer;

USA for me might be partially attractive:

- in climate, orography, food production potential, they are safe;

- in terms of overall stability they are not so much stable, even though not more unstable than many others;

BUT:

- the fiscal system is very oppressive to my eyes;

- the private sector essentially is the State;

- the scholar system have some positive points, like a presence of talents, even if they are declining, but it's largely a cast bases system, and overall not attractive at all;

- the health system is good enough to be annihilated in a thermonuclear heat;

As an western European what can I get from USA? Some beautiful nature, but a byzantine bureaucracy, a very bad health system, a bad scholar system, a private sector more and more similar to a corporatocracy where the "American Dream" was a distant memory.

Trying to imaging a Chinese talent why exchange a growing, technically, industrially active country for the USA? Oh sure China future due to their demographic imbalance is essentially doomed, but not tomorrow morning. It's a bit like Nazi German of the '30s compared to the USA '29s disaster. Very similar for many aspects, but in a totally different shape.

Trying to imaging a Japanese I think Japan is doomed for many reasons but still being from Japan I can hope for better chance than facing a big switch to a totally different country with a similar corporate sector imbalance.

Maybe an Indian might decide to go for mere climatic reasons and chaotic, corruption level of the country itself.

I can keep going but the whole point is that USA was attractive because they was very active and they pay well (this is still valid today, but less than the past), now they a are a giant finance machine still with natural resources about to go to war to save a financial system that can't stand. Of course a vast country is many things, but that means at least civil war or significant risk of it. Not interesting for a life choice in a turbulent time.

IF the public came back to the cold war model of public funded research lead by researchers not by managers pretending to design the research itself and the researchers are just another kind of Ford model workers or while they have many interesting aspects those are not enough.