[HN Gopher] A case for dynamic scoring of high-skilled immigration
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A case for dynamic scoring of high-skilled immigration
Author : btilly
Score : 26 points
Date : 2023-08-30 10:51 UTC (12 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.slowboring.com)
| sharts wrote:
| "And so we are left with problems like Taiwan Semiconductor
| Manufacturing Company's recent announcement that it can't find
| enough skilled workers to get its new Arizona chip plants ready
| in time"
|
| Wasn't this shown to be false because skilled workers exists. But
| just not willing to work for peanuts?
| ummonk wrote:
| Well the problem is that Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing
| workers work long hours for middling wages, so for
| semiconductor manufacturing in America to be financially viable
| in a global marketplace, something has to give.
| runnerup wrote:
| Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a
| monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then let
| whichever companies will pay the highest salaries get the
| slots. This guarantees that we get the most valuable immigrants
| and makes it a lot harder to drive down local wages because low
| salary bids won't win visa slot auctions.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Economists have been suggesting that the US should move to an
| H1B auction for decades.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/h1b-visa-lottery-auction-
| tech-w...
|
| An auction would be good for everyone aside from companies
| that are abusing the system to get cheap labor that's
| basically trapped in the US.
| slt2021 wrote:
| how about nurses and all other specialized professions that
| are not IT?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| You could have auctions per profession.
| ianferrel wrote:
| You could, but the whole point of the auctions is to
| allocate the visas economically efficiently, which this
| would undo.
| [deleted]
| acchow wrote:
| Wages for those will rise accordingly, benefitting local
| nurses (but raising costs for nursing)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Personally I always felt H1B visas should be awarded on a
| monthly auction. Decide how much immigration we want, then
| let whichever companies will pay the highest salaries get the
| slots.
|
| H-1B is a non-immigrant (but dual intent) visa capped
| annually at less than 1/10 the level of the cap on immigrant
| visas, it has very little to do with "how much immigration we
| want".
| samvher wrote:
| Interesting idea. I'd argue that while salary correlates with
| value, it's not the same though. It seems most likely to me
| that this mechanism would just reserve the privilege of
| employing immigrants to a few high income sectors, rather
| than filter the most skilled immigrants evenly across
| sectors.
|
| To make it more concrete, it would be nice if NGOs could hire
| foreign talent just as effectively as Google can.
| reaperman wrote:
| I'm split on this. In the case where they need someone who
| has specific local knowledge and connections in the foreign
| locale they're serving, it makes sense. But I fear this
| would still be used to hire full-stack devs at non-profits
| for $65,000/year.
| ftyers wrote:
| I don't think NGOs can currently sponsor H1Bs... But maybe
| I'm wrong...
| slt2021 wrote:
| not every NGOs, only universities and associated non-
| profities can sponsor any H-1B without going through the
| lottery
|
| "Universities and related nonprofit entities, nonprofit
| research organizations and government research
| organizations are exempt from the cap"
| esotericimpl wrote:
| I like this idea, i always thought a salary floor of
| 150k-200k was a good idea, but the auction seems even better.
| abigail95 wrote:
| what's moral theory that says if an american refuses the job
| because they have better options, it's unethical to import a
| person from a poorer country to do it who doesn't have a better
| option?
|
| the answer to me seems obvious.
|
| if i lived in honduras and you said i could come to america but
| i had to work for tsmc, what's the chance i decline?
| robbiep wrote:
| Aah yes, the renown Honduran semiconductor engineer surplus
| Muromec wrote:
| What would be the moral justification to deny the better
| option itself to this hypothetical immigrant? It's the most
| obvious question here, there are more.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Not just low ages.
|
| Insane work hours. Long stretches of unpaid overtime sometimes
| without weekends. No autonomy. No freedom. No say. Oh and shift
| work.
|
| TSMC not being able to find workers has nothing in the US has
| nothing to do with a shortage of workers. They're just terrible
| to their people.
|
| So they'll get H1B workers who are then basically trapped and
| can be mistreated.
|
| The current system is terrible for everyone. Bad for the
| economy by keeping smart hard working people out. Bad for the
| workers who make it here who need to put up with TSMC. And bad
| for local Americans because H1B wage lower bounds aren't high
| enough.
| [deleted]
| joak wrote:
| In Singapore they have the following system: if you want to
| hire a foreign worker you need to pay they more than the
| local worker for the same position. This ensures foreign
| workers don't steal jobs from locals. Another good thing is
| that there is no hard limit on the number of foreign workers
| you can hire.
| axus wrote:
| When I read a recent article, the US workers were complaining
| about "too much" freedom and autonomy. TSMC management would
| say "build this", with no blueprints or milestones.
|
| "They keep saying we're slowing them down, but they're not
| giving us the information we need. Most of us are capable of
| doing it if you gave us the correct information."
|
| Also safety was not important.
| dangerwill wrote:
| This is a recurring theme with MattY's work. He takes any
| statement by a company or government body at face value and
| turns it into ammo for a certain political agenda. His position
| as a hot take generator in favor of centrism (in the US
| political context, so read it as economically neoliberal and
| culturally soft liberal) means he often avoids criticism due to
| his banality. But he has no useful insights at all, especially
| when he is working off of corpo/government propaganda.
| coderintherye wrote:
| Dynamic scoring sounds great on the surface, but I agree with the
| commenters that it essentially allows for "making shit up" to
| drive an agenda.
|
| To make a better case, the CBO or other entity should be making
| predictions today and tracking how well their prediction panned
| out in reality. Ideally, there'd be a built-in mechanism of only
| allowing dynamic scoring when there is > X years of accurate
| predictions at > YY% and that if the average accuracy dips below
| that threshold then dynamic scoring is disallowed until it gets
| back above.
| [deleted]
| maxweylandt wrote:
| Politicians, especially republicans, don't actually care about
| CBO scores, as evidenced by many many tax cuts and military
| expenditures.
|
| That they haven't done this just means they don't want to, a Mitt
| Romney here or there notwithstanding
| [deleted]
| Tee3993 wrote:
| > U.S. government as being a net cost to the U.S. economy rather
| than a net benefit.
|
| How about you allow anyone who manages to get a job with decent
| salary? Let's say $250000 year?! Residential permit obviously
| includes family. Very fair, very transparent and easy to
| implement.
|
| This "dynamic scoring" is unfair, untransparent, and will just
| lead to mistreatment of foreign workers by large companies!
| flakiness wrote:
| Someone getting a high salary doesn't signal the country's
| overall prospect. That might be just a "take" case where that
| job was supposed to be served by a US citizen.
|
| Any US citizen (or citizens in any country) doesn't want fair
| competition against immigrants/foreign laborers. They accept
| immigrants because it (is supposed to) enlarge the pie to
| share. That's why things like dynamic scoring attempt to
| capture a bigger picture.
|
| I'm personally skeptical about metrics with a lot of guess
| work, but I appreciate the effort here. The impact of the
| immigration is just hard to quantify.
| Tee3993 wrote:
| My case is more about motivating smart people to come into
| US. Current system is broken.
|
| Immigration system is byzantine and unpredictable. Person can
| even get kicked out with very short notice. And frankly
| salary in US quite often does not even cover expenses (rent,
| insurances, taxes...).
|
| Semiconductor engineer from Taiwan has options in mainland
| China, Singapore, UAE... If you count expenses (living,
| travel and legal), cultural values, taxes... This engineer
| may actually make more money outside of US!
| [deleted]
| returningfory2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by "dynamic scoring" here - maybe
| you mean a points based immigration system? The article is not
| about this. It's about how Congress scores legislation based on
| its economic impact, and is advocating for using a system
| called "dynamic scoring" for scoring immigration law. It has
| nothing to do with how workers are treated by companies.
| Tee3993 wrote:
| Fair point, I got the meaning wrong.
| [deleted]
| balls187 wrote:
| > the idea that we should make green cards more easily available
| to foreign-born STEM graduates.
|
| Why, just so companies can have cheaper wages?
|
| What benefit does America get by having more foreign born and
| trained tech workers?
|
| Why not make it easier for police, doctors, nurses, social
| workers, and teachers instead?
| soligern wrote:
| If nothing else then because it works. Immigrants have founded
| 51% of our top 500 billion+ unicorns. Indian entrepreneurs
| alone account for 66 out of 500. How many jobs is that
| creating? Millions at the very least. At 1% of the population,
| Indian immigrants pay 6% of all taxes. These people also will
| become/are American citizens.
|
| You have to be a hardcore racist and/or an idiot to argue with
| data that overwhelming.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It enables the US to weaken other countries by draining away
| their intellectual capacity. Think of it as 'Cognitive
| Imperialism' and then it fits in well with the historical
| patterns of how the US treats the world.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| > It enables the US to weaken other countries by draining
| away their intellectual capacity
|
| Are you implying that if they don't emigrate they'll be
| properly utilized in a way that is a threat to the US's
| current hegemony? If so, why aren't these countries doing
| that now?
| dahwolf wrote:
| Well, perhaps because they can't afford it?
| wslh wrote:
| That is how the world works and is working until now. I don't
| find any surprising effect. Do you?
| coding123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| To clarify for anyone confused, "extremist leftist
| organizations" appears to be referring to Harvard University,
| Yale University and Stanford University, although one of the
| authors also received funding from a noted left-wing terrorist
| organization called the "United States Department of Defense".
| [deleted]
| jmpman wrote:
| I want a bidding system for the H1B slots, paid not just once,
| but yearly by the companies which hire the H1Bs. That money
| should then go for scholarships to educate American citizens for
| these jobs. It first allows American citizens to compete, as they
| would be cheaper than the H1B salary (market rate) + fee, and it
| would provide funding for scholarships in areas which apparently
| aren't being supplied by US graduates. In addition, there should
| be a multiplier on that fee for any company which lays off US
| citizens with that skill in the past N years.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I want a bidding system for the H1B slots, paid not just
| once, but yearly by the companies which hire the H1Bs
|
| I want to eliminate the H-1B (and some other non-immigrant
| economic visa categories, but the H-1B is the most salient) and
| instead allow would-be immigrants or temporary workers not
| admitted under any other visa category but not personally
| disqualified from entry to get an annually renewable paid self-
| sponsored work-eligible visa (with lower fees for those
| eligible but on a waitlist in an immigrant visa category) . If
| employers want to pay for the cost, they can, but the worker's
| visa status won't be dependent on them.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| This is very similar to an idea proposed by the late economist
| William Vickrey. He suggested having an auction for visas, and
| distributing the revenue generated by the auction evenly
| between every citizen. This would somewhat align the incentives
| between citizens and immigrants without introducing feel-good
| steps like scholarship subsidies.
|
| Realistically, there's not very many Americans who could get
| become an engineer if only they had a little more scholarship
| money. Those Americans can mostly get loans to pay for college,
| then pay off their loans using all the extra money they make
| now that they're an engineer. If you have any empirical data
| that contradicts this I'd be interested in seeing it.
| asu_thomas wrote:
| A mountain of loans is utterly terrifying when you're already
| in debt. You have to be eagerly ignorant, incredibly
| privileged, or just plain out of touch to not grasp that
| reality and the scourge that it is on working Americans. When
| you aren't in dept, then sure it's "an investment" but what
| kind of financial advice says to take out loans for
| investments when you're already in debt?
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