I am working from India for the past 3 months instead of my San Francisco office. Nearly every large IT company in India offers benefits at par with Google. Yes I mean multiple food vendors. Food being served 6 times a day.
The salary of an IT professional in India easily puts him among the highest wage earners in India (something similar to how Wall Street traders were a couple of years ago). Chauffeur driven cars, cooks and daily house cleaning services are all easily affordable.
The biggest question I have to ask myself is should I return to my studio in SF.
But seriously, that was my favorite bit of that movie:
Please read the books, they're far superior to the movies.
Edit: Downvotes, hmmm. Allow me to explain...
The LotR movie trilogy, while being excellent movies in and of themselves, do not do the books justice. PJ's interpretation (and subsequent plot hacking) left me wanting more, and not in a good way.
Admittedly, that may have more to do with the medium in which the storyline was delivered. Cinema, while more visually appealing than the written word, simply cannot offer the same depth that a book can.
I think it's safe to say that in most cases where books are translated to movies, the book remains the better of the two.
The biggest question I have to ask myself is should I return to my studio in SF.
Tough question. I just spent 5 days visiting family in Guadalajara, MX, which is a fairly large tech center for Mexico. You can live very well for $30k a year. I had coffee with a software engineer that is building online education for the University of Mex, Guadalajara. They have 7 full degrees that you can get online. That's a bit different than the Central America I grew up in the Contra/Guerrilla filled 80's.
It would be easy to make the cultural transition. I don't know that I'd like to move there, but it's certainly an interesting option, isn't it? For the price that I'm paying for rent in Silicon Valley, I could live like a king back where I grew up.Hmmmm...
I spent 3 months setting up the India operations for the startup I used to work for in 2006. The best part of the experience - Chai (and biscuits) served at my desk.
Lunch was served too, but I prefer taking a break for lunch anyway. When you don't have to take a break for caffeine, it does wonders for your productivity.
This article is about the problems that happen when foreign nationals with engineering backgrounds no longer want to live in the US. But it could just as easily be about what happens when the US is no longer able to fill these positions from its own population. And I suspect that there is a correlation between the huge numbers of visas issued and the slow decline of interest among Americans in these fields.
I know, it isn't entirely a zero sum game. But when I graduated with an MS in Engineering from Berkeley, we definitely weren't pulling in the starting salaries that the law and business students were earning - even the PhD students weren't at that level, not even close. And guess what? The MBA and Law programs had no problem attracting Americans, whereas Engineering had very few.
This article does highlight a danger, but it doesn't really suggest one good solution - encourage Americans into these fields, and this time, don't undermine their careers.
I think you are missing an important part. There is low barriers for your job to be shipped abroad.
A doctor's job is hard to ship, especially the emergency ones (you still hear about people going abroad for cosmetical work), and lawyers have barriers (you have to pass the Bar, laws changing constantly by state etc.), therefore they can command higher salaries.
But for software engineers, the barrier of job shipping is really low. My company has a team in Argentina, doing decent work. If I was twice as expensive as I was now, the company probably would have just hired all the engineering there, and maybe one or two "architect" types in the US.
Eventually american engineers with less experience would have to lower their salaries, to get into a level where the efficiencies that are gained by having somebody with the same culture/understanding on site is worth the extra cost that the average american programmer commands.
1. Remember, you are competing in a global pool of talent. Doctors/lawyers have an huge local advantage that engineers simply don't have.
2. H-1B is an recent trend (late 90s trend). I doesn't explain the lack of interest in engineering/math for american graduates. (see number 1. Even if your salary was so high to spark interest, your job it would be outsourced soon, or your company will go bust as so many did in 2001-2003).
3. In the late 90s salaries were really high. It motivated the wrong kind of people to get into school. I remember, a lot of "I am in CS for the money, not b/c the passion" types in late 90s (when I started school, and the dot com was all the rage. Within the year a lot of them were in a different major, b/c they couldn't handle it. Information technology, or business being the fallback majors of choice.
4. Even until lately, salaries for engineers have been really good. CS is one of the few majors where you can command 50-70k right after college, and where by 25 you can easily be pulling 6 figs. (I was by 25).
While I agree, that H-1B should be used to bring really skilled people in (and not used a simply a cost control school), eliminating it, is a sure path to Detroit-ing Silicon Valley.
It's hard to include all my points in such a nuanced issue. I actually agree with you that a visa program that brings in a smaller number of truly talented people (and preserves their freedom to choose their profession, job, and location) would be a good thing for the US. The H1B as it stands is wretched. Yeah, it brings in these folks, but it is also a massive scale indentured worker program, used extensively to facilitate outsourcing. A lot of people are surprised to discover that 6 or the top 10 users of the program are actually Indian outsourcing companies, who use the visa to cycle a worker through the US for a couple of years to facilitate moving the job overseas. And two of the remaining top 10 are based in the US but are essentially outsourcing companies. The first US company on the list, Microsoft, only comes in at #5!
I think a lot of the dispute comes from a misunderstanding about how the visa is used. It's almost like two completely alternate universes - one side is using it to bring in innovators, and the other is using it to replace ordinary american workers with ordinary workers from overseas at a lower rate. Everyone seems to agree about this, the only dispute is the extent. You might want to check out this article - :
>While I agree, that H-1B should be used to bring really
>skilled people in
It is becoming impossible to do academic collaborations with the US - you can't send postdocs/professors to work on US telescopes, particle accelerators etc because they can't get H1B visas. Initially this is great, other coutries part fund the projects but only americans can work on them. the trouble is that the next round of instruments won't be in the US, Cern was built in Switzerland for this reason, ITER is in France.
That's terrible. Those researchers should be able to get visas easily.
However, I disagree with the notion that we should solve this problem by just awarding more visas. Doesn't it strike you as strange (and genuinely horrible) that universities can't get visas while outsourcing companies are gobbling up these visas by the tens of thousands? Doesn't it strike you as strange that Microsoft claims it can't bring in super high paid developers because we've hit the visa cap, yet some of these visas have been going to firms that pay the "critical worker that couldn't be found in the US" $12/hr? (sorry, no cite on that, I heard it in an interview with Ron Hira, a professor of public policy... I'll try to dig it up).
The H1B lobby loves the example you gave, because they get to claim that the H1B detractors are "opposed to letting researchers into the US for innovative collaborations." Uh, no. We've taken hundreds of thousands, maybe even over a million H1B workers into the US (the dept of labor doesn't keep exact numbers). Maybe one of these visas could have gone to the researcher, rather than some average dude who read the Oracle manual?
This program is in desperate need of a fix, no question about that. But to me, fixing it by just removing the cap, or setting an extremely high cap, is unacceptable. I don't need a fire hose to blow out my birthday candles.
It's even becoming hard to hold academic conferences in the USA. You can't be sure that invited speakers from countries other than Europe/Japan will be allowed in.
Then there are the cases of people being arrested for speaking at computer security conferences, people working on eg. stem cell research outside the USA are worried that they might be next.
I left USA after being an H1B for 5 years with delay after delay in my GC application. HARD decision. Hated leaving...
Went to my home country, created a software company with successful products. Now a few dozen jobs are here instead of there and some million $$$ are flowing into my country.
Still, I would move to the US and open an office if I'd have a legal, fast way to get a residency there. Not likely though.
I love the country. It's beautiful. I like its philosophy. American values resonate close to my values. In the years I lived there I grew to think of it as my home much more than the country I was born in. I could see calling myself American.
When I went there I was received well. I was helped. I made friends. Now I think I can help in return. I would like to contribute, especially in a downturn. I would buy a house, I would create jobs.
Now, I travel a lot (including in US) so I live all over the world. And financially I'd have little to gain in States (no extra income, higher living costs, higher taxation, higher business costs). So it'd be mostly an idealistic gesture, a way for me to participate in building something larger than myself and what I've already built. Something I truly believe in.
But I am not getting myself again in the Kafka's nightmare that US immigration is. Waiting years for some bureaucrat to decide if your life will go on or will be completely changed "just because". No thanks. I'd only consider another country if I'd have a clear, legal and quick path to residency. Otherwise... I'll only be a tourist.
I know exactly what you mean. After 7 years in the H1B green card queue I finally got mine, but it was an agonizing wait. Like you I love the US, I feel more at home here than I do in the UK, but after close to a decade of delays the pressure of never knowing if I could settle was taking a toll. I wouldn't mind clear rules, but the sheer arbitrary illogical complexity and undefined duration of the process made it a nightmare.
A month after my GC came through, I quit my job and I'm now burning through my savings trying to get a startup off the ground, pumping money into the economy.
Just out of interest with #1 - what's to stop an immigrant from simply "buying" themselves a visa by hiring 4 people at minimum wage for 9 months? Even if you didn't make a cent of revenue, you could do still that for ~60K right? Doesn't seem like a lot to obtain US citizenship.
60k is a lot of money, especially for the people who have the most to gain from a US citizenship (i.e. people from the 3rd world who are not independently wealthy).
A Swede will not pay 60k because the US is, for the most part, not that much (if at all) better than Sweden, and most Indians don't have that kind of money.
I did, but I am not there yet. Soon, but not today. All my cash, time and energy are invested into my existing business. And trying to expand that business into US slowly without a massive and risky upfront investment would only give me a non-resident visa, not a green card.
I do have a master's but I've never stayed too long in Canada. I am actually planning to go over there later this year for a couple of months to see how I like it. But its regular immigration process takes years...
And I'm not big fan of its more socialist government. Just like I'm not big fan of UK's big-bro government, even though UK has (lately) a rather fast and straightforward immigration policy.
But they are the closest to US, from all the countries I visited, so I'll research them both a bit more.
Sucky, for all I know. Either expensive (you need 1 mil. USD - I may have a successful business but I am not rich until I sell it or something) or extremely risky: if your US business fails to grow as specified you may lose your visa.
Now I am not risk adverse in business, but when it comes to living in a place, I need to settle (for me and my family). We love to travel and explore, but home must be home: safe and stable.
I'm a US citizen in the SF bay area, bootstrapping a web company by myself, and I'm heading out to Beijing this summer. PG talks a lot about reaching 'ramen profitability' and there's no easier place to hit that than China. It's going to cost me about $400 a month to live (frugally), and if I needed to, I could teach English for about $60 / hr. Worst case scenario, a native English speaker could dedicate one or two days a month to paying the bills.
There is no lack of tech talent in Beijing - from personal work experience, Tsinghua's tech alums are just as bright as MIT's or Stanford's. And you can hire a fresh graduate for about $20k / year.
If you can speak Chinese and you don't want to take external investment, screw Silicon Valley, Beijing is a bootstrapper's paradise.
Same here, but back in Argentina after many years in Europe.
* ZERO visa problems, we welcome immigrants from hunger or financial disasters,
since 1890 :)
* Pretty women who like foreigners (never underestimate this!)
* Great nightlife (or this.)
* Projected economic growth (recession instead of depression.)
* After '01 default, the country works on zero credit already (no surprises.)
* But infrastructure and culture is significantly closer to US/Europe.
* The constitution is modeled after French and US.
* Hardworking culture.
* Affordable reasonably good health-care.
* Ubiquitous free Wi-Fi (cafés, bars, neighbors.)
* Hacker culture, many knowledgeable people around.
Granted:
* It is more expensive than China or India, but definitely within the
ramen-profitable range.
* Some places are not as safe as it used to be, but most of the country is very
safe. For example where I am people leave cares with the keys on ignition when
going to the shops.
* Banks aren't reliable but you can keep the bulk of money in US or use
safety deposit boxes.
About Language. Part of the population speaks basic English so getting around at first is not that hard. This is more so in business and of course tourism. We are a country of immigrants, so people are very friendly and welcoming to foreigners. Your basic Spanish can ramp up in a couple of months if you take basic lessons. If you are really on a shoestring you can always place an ad offering "my English for your Castellano, conversation" ad on some hostel or hotel or just go to a pub! (this is trivial, everybody would like freebie conversation, this is a classic way for hooking up, too :) (BTW: the language is called Castellano, like the language you speak isn't called British but English; but it's the same thing.)
There are no safe parts of the country as a whole, it depends on the citi or town you pick. The largest city, Buenos Aires, 13 million, is mostly OK if you follow some basic rules (e.g. don't carry expensive watches or too much money, and stay in nice parts of the city.) If you have a big budget, you can live in isolation within the very expensive neighborhoods. But beware, it can get as fancy as you can imagine and your expenses get to Manhattan-life level. There are many areas in this city.
About security outside Buenos Aires, security is mostly very good. There are a few exceptions and again, in large cities you are OK as long as you stay within OK areas.
And even in the not that common case of mugging, say you leave a house party at a friend's place, it goes like this: "give me your money", "here you go", you give them your wallet with $200 and the guy leaves. You lost u$d 57, big deal, yawn. Just always carry something over 50 so they take it and leave.
Argentina is the 8th largest country in the world with an extremely varied geography. Have a look in Wikipedia. There is mountain, sea, jungle, prairie, desert, you name it. :) My advice is don't plan settling before checking out the options. ADSL 3Mbit is available on most big cities for $40-$70. The quality of the connection varies significantly.
Budget varies a lot. Touristy prices are crazy high, don't fall into that. Temporary rent is also 50% more expensive. In BA an OK-good flat with 1 bedroom will go for u$d 350-500/mo and u$d 70-100 more for bills. In other towns you can get a beautiful house for that money. It all depends. Transport is cheap, just try to have always coins with you (trust me on this one.) Groceries depend on how fancy you live, for my spartan lifestyle is about u$d 55-80/week. Clothes and shoes are somewhat expensive, bring them. Same for skiing equipment and stuff like that. Computer hardware is mostly cheap, fancy things are a bit more expensive, like laptops.
Something important: Don't use your foreign credit card. If you plan to stay, get a basic account with debit card (also, payments with local debit card get 4%+ refund from taxes.)
And don't get too literal on statistics, in particular of the CIA "Factbook." For example, they say it is an "intermediate" chance of getting disease here. This is only applicable for people who come already in extreme poverty.
Forgot to say, there is already a boom of Westerners coming here to visit or settle in the last few years. There are hostels everywhere for u$d 12/day and most have free wifi, speak English, and have double rooms around u$d 40/day (usually with private bathroom and shower.)
> How easy it is to live there without knowing Spanish
Impossible, because if you move somewhere foreign, you're going to learn the language unconsciously within 6 months. People who have only lived in the US don't know this. It almost takes no effort. The human brain is good at this sort of thing.
As someone who has been living in Vienna for the past 4 years (and whose German is his 3rd language), I can tell you that that was certainly not my experience- I could speak basic German at 6 months but it took much longer than that to become fluent.
On the other hand, I've heard from friends who spent some time in South America that Spanish is an exceptionally easy language to learn, and that they could speak half-way fluently within several months.
To bring in the other extreme, I know people who lived in Japan for years and have only learned fairly rudimentary Japanese.
It is very dependent on the person and the language.
Actually I learned it for 2 semesters before coming to Vienna.
After 6 months in Vienna I could speak basic German but definitely not work & live without using English most of the time.
There is a big difference between being able to exchange pleasantries & understanding the menu at a restaurant and being able to conduct an intelligent conversation or explain complex ideas in it.
Maybe if you're a construction worker your requirements are different, but you cannot work as a (good) software developer without sharing a high level of understanding of at least one language with your coworkers.
Worst case scenario? Your numbers seem a bit wrong. $60/hr is incredibly optimistic as is $400/mo in expenses. Think more like $10-15/hr as an english teacher and $700-$1200/mo in expenses as a base. You will not be able to support yourself for a day or two a month, more like 20hrs a week and you're going to take a serious hit in quality of life from the US.
Fresh graduates from good universities in Beijing and Shanghai will typically be from 2000-5000RMB per month ($4k-$10k USD per year). There are some nasty Chinese labour laws you should be aware of if you want to hire people. They are also not as good for software development positions in a startup as a graduates from Stanford or MIT, that's pure fantasy.
Additionally you can't really set up a proper company in China as a foreigner the way you could in the US. There's a couple structures you can use but they take time to setup and have some tricky considerations.
That being said, Beijing is good to bootstrap an Internet startup. I did it and it's going well. There's a whole host of pitfalls and it isn't all roses but still a great experience.
I've lived off of these numbers in BJ before, by splitting a 2 bedroom apartment and rarely buying anything beyond essentials. Aside from the pollution, I felt that my quality of life actually went up compared to living in the states because, although I go out to eat with friends very rarely in the US, I go out slightly more in China. Also, the women are very friendly :)
We'll have to agree to disagree on the talent issue - I'm a Stanford CS grad and I've experienced no quality difference working with Qinghua CS grads.
Can you explain what problems you've encountered regarding having a corporation in China? I'm also setting up a dessert cafe in BJ with a Chinese co-founder. We've registered it as a Nevada LLC and we have had to jump through a few additional hoops because it's a restaurant, but nothing related to the actual corporation part. And my software company is a Nevada S-corp - my understanding is that I'll pay taxes to the Chinese gov't for operating a company in their territory (I have yet to learn how much), but the first $80k or so won't be taxed by the US due to a trade treaty.
And can you be a little more specific about the nasty labor laws? This is an area that I'm still looking into.
Beijing has gotten quite a bit more expensive in the couple years that I've been there. On top of that the currency exchange rate has gotten considerably worse. Probably in total a 25% difference since I arrived in 2006.
Most people reading this would not be happy at all living off of $400 per month, that's noodles for lunch every day. I'm in my late 30's and don't feel like living like a student nor having to, I spend $2k USD per month for a very comfortable lifestyle, $1k in rent and $1k on food/misc, about 25% less than what I'd spend back home.
In China it is not legal to employ Chinese people as a foreigner operating a business in China unless you're a Registered Office (RO) or a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise (WFOE). It is not legal to draw a salary personally unless you have a Z visa (not L or F), you need an RO or WFOE to get a Z. Furthermore the RO can not invoice Chinese customers, it is only an expense center (and is taxed on expenses). A WFOE requires registered capital typically between $10K USD to $100K USD depending on the business. Setting up one of the two can take several months depending on your luck with the government. As I understand it your LLC would be illegal to operate in China without either being an RO or WFOE (or a JV which is unlikely). You may be able get away with ignoring all this and many people do but if you're caught you can face stiff penalties and be ejected from China and are going to have a hell of a time getting more than $50K USD per year in or out of the country.
The labour laws basically require you to provide contracts to all of your employees or face stiff penalties. There's a number of pitfalls. See http://www.chinalawblog.com/ for more details, there's lots of discussion.
The women are very nice indeed, I'll never go back to American women...
Thanks a lot for the very informative legal info. Looks like I have more digging to do.
"Most people reading this would not be happy at all living off of $400 per month, that's noodles for lunch every day."
I did say I was talking about ramen profitability :). I'm in my early-mid twenties and at this stage in my life am accustomed to plowing every penny into investments.
It might be just my personal prejudice but I'm a little scared of China; mainly because of the fact that its own citizens don't enjoy freedom of expression, God knows what might happen to a foreign national.
You can say just about anything as long as you never question the ultimate ruling authority of the Communist Party of China.
As long as you aren't going around encouraging subversion, you're fine. And the internet police won't care that you are VPN'ing your traffic, they only care about locals and those that are actively spreading subversion.
So yes, it is a situation of "as long as you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear."
This is exactly my experience as well. I'm interested in hacking and making money - I have no interest in mucking about with a few hot-button political issues that, frankly, aren't any of my business. So, easily-circumvented firewall aside, nothing that they do really affects me.
How can you say this when the Bush administration has just spent the past 8 years systematically dismantling your privacy rights and running a global kidnapping and torture network?
Meanwhile, the US imprisons more of its population than any other nation on earth, especially for non-violent crimes. It doesn't scare you that you can be thrown in jail for years because you like to smoke a little weed?
I think what you meant to say is "I'm afraid of Chinese people/China and I haven't really put much thought into this." Why don't you go there before you start getting afraid of it. Do you even own a passport?
>How can you say this when the Bush administration has just spent the past 8 years systematically dismantling your privacy rights and running a global kidnapping and torture network?
Because he knows the difference between the current value and the derivative?
Besides, Obama has pretty much signed onto everything, so it's all good.
"Besides, Obama has pretty much signed onto everything, so it's all good."
No, it's more than that. When they actually investigate things, it turns out they weren't as bad as painted; for instance, it turns out that Guantanamo meets all relevant Geneva conventions after all, according to the Obama administration, and I'm citing this as an example not the complete list of what I've been seeing go by lately.
There's many people here who will never necessarily like Bush, but the sooner everyone realizes that the media ran a massive disinformation campaign on him and that the Bush accusations and the Obama bootlicking in the media on the exact same policies can't both be right (and that the truth is probably in the middle), the better off our democracy will be.
Wait a minute! Media disinformation campaign? So you are saying that there never existed a camp in Guantanamo Bay where the prisoners waited eight years without right to trial, placed in Cuba to avoid U.S. constitutional law? I've never used the word Nazi in an argument, so I won't start now, but it's really difficult.
If you actually examine the legal issues in depth, it's way more complicated and nuanced that what you imply; that simplifies the problem to the point of falsehood. Something that the Obama administration has actually flat-out said (or "admitted", if you prefer), albeit not to anywhere near the media blitz of the accusations, when they said they need a year to look at the issues involved with closure, because it's not a simple, obvious problem after all.
As a for instance... why would "avoiding US constitutional law" matter when it doesn't cover the detainees anyhow, as the Constitution only really covers citizens? You might be able to spin an argument about penumbric emanations or build an ethical argument of some kind out of that, but you certainly aren't going to get a straightforward argument out of the actual text of the constitution. There's been a lot of very careless assumptions about what the US Constitution and the Geneva convention contain tossed around on this issue, and on the whole I've found the debate almost entirely disconnected from reality in these past years.
You are free to "not like it" or think it is immoral, but its actual illegality is way murkier than the disinformation campaign has conveyed, to the point that it may not be actually illegal at all. Moreover, the moral and ethical issues haven't gotten a fair hearing either as the conditions have been routinely grossly misrepresented, to the point that almost universally when somebody actually goes there and visits it they expressed surprised at the way it really was. I totally believe that there are those who would consider the reality immoral or unpleasant, but very few people are actually operating off of a realistic view of the problem.
The real takeaway is that the situation is complicated, and when somebody says "the situation is complicated" and you have a hard time resisting calling that person a Nazi... hello! Wake up! That's a sign you're running on propaganda, not rational thought.
As a for instance... why would "avoiding US constitutional law"
matter when it doesn't cover the detainees anyhow, as the
Constitution only really covers citizens?
This is dead wrong. The Constitution covers all residents of the United States. Even illegal aliens are entitled to constitutional protections thanks to the 14th Amendment, which specifically says that no state shall "...deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." See the cases of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 369, 6 Sup. Ct. 1064. and Wong Wing v. U S, 163 U.S. 228 (1896) 163 U.S. 228.
Now, the U.S. argued under Bush (and perhaps is still arguing?) that the detainees at Guantanamo are neither citizens nor are they within the territory United States. But I think this theory is far from completely decided. Arguing that Guantanamo is somehow not part of the territory of the United States, when clearly we exert our sovereignty there takes a special sort of blind sightedness. Furthermore, after Guantanamo is closed, if the detainees are brought onto US soil, then the Constitution will unquestionably apply to them.
Getting back to my original point: saying that the Constitution only applies to citizens likewise ignores nuance and simplifies the problem to the point of falsehood.
If you murdered someone, that would be a simple act; the legal process, though, would be complicated. I'm sure there are aspects of the legal process in terms of repatriating the inmates, for example, that are complicated. What is not complicated is the violation of human rights they suffered.
I apologize for the "Nazi thing". I lost my temper; I'm sorry. But that brings up an interesting point: the holocaust was legal. Some did "not like it," but it was legal. So in 1948, the entire world came up with a set of guidelines called the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights that gave everyone -- Jews, Blacks, Muslims, everyone -- basic rights, regardless of what a country currently wants to make legal to "expedite its security".
You talk about propaganda, so let's talk about facts that no one disputes: More than 90% of the inmates in Guantanamo Bay were sold into captivity, most were never even charged with any crime let alone given a trial, and they were tortured. For eight years. Don't you see? If that's legal in any way, it can't be. The minute we make an exception for a dark-skinned Afghani, we send ourselves back to the time when exceptions were made for Jews and Gypsies, and we undo all the good work that was accomplished in the shadow of our shame.
And I'm pretty sure that the U.S. has signed a treaty (treaties?) making torture illegal, so the administration's behavior is illegal in addition to being immoral. The Bush administration gave absurd definitions of torture to try to classify the torture they were engaged in as not-torture, but I do not think anyone outside of the Bush administration, or knee-jerk partisans, take their definitions seriously.
I think the vast majority of Americans didn't notice any restriction on what they want to do in the 8 years of the Bush administration. The biggest impact for most was probably added hassle when flying or opening a bank account, but even that seems minimal in retrospect. If there'd been a terrorist attack or two every year, it might have gotten much worse, but it turns out that there are, to a first approximation, no terrorists who have the ability and desire to attack US soil.
Other than Beijing, I am trying to get the government permission to start a start-up paradise in Qinghai, a province in the north-west of China with a very large and beautiful lake inside. Beijing's air quality is bad and the rent here is high (not comparable to bay area, but other parts of this country). As the first step, I am building a data center in Qinghai:)
Out of curiosity, have you spent much time in China? More important, do you speak Chinese?
I've spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia, but only a couple months in China. One thing that struck me there was that it's one of the few places where you really can't get by in English alone. I mean sure, you can feed yourself and find places to sleep, but it's really tough to get to know the people because pretty much nobody speaks any English at all. I met some Chinese-speaking Americans along the way, and it was simply amazing to see what I'd been missing out on.
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. are much easier places to get by as an English speaker. They figured out long ago that nobody is going to learn Laotian, so they'd better start labeling things in English. China never had that problem, so it's still a bit painful to travel in unless you know the language.
So yeah, if you know what you're getting into, then I bet you're going to have a great time. If not, I might recommend looking south a ways. Hanoi is quite livable for a SE Asian city, for instance.
In China without some Chinese the basics such as transportation, food and shelter are a real pain. If you're going to spend any great amount of time in China you must learn Chinese, especially if you live outside of Shanghai and Beijing.
or come to the Philippines - most of the Filipinos are English speaking. Mor.ph is based here (they are trying to get some market share from Heroku - sorry pg) - you can incorporate in Hong Kong a pvt ltd to fast-track your corporate entity and have access to the a big pool of I.T. talent :)
Is there any reason why Beijing is better than other large Chinese cities? I heard it was expensive and polluted. As for teaching English, do you have first-hand experience backing the (very high) 60$/hr figure? And what kind of visa will you get?
If you're seeking tech employees, Beijing is probably the easiest place to find them. It's China's tech hub - the best universities are there. Google and MS, for example, locate their headquarters right next to Tsinghua University (China's MIT).
It's not expensive compared to Shanghai, but it is more expensive than some of the lesser known big cities like Chongqing or Wuhan.
The pollution is bad in Beijing. That's the only real downside, from my perspective. Shanghai is certainly cleaner. I'm not sure about the other big cities, but I'd bet they're something like BJ in terms of pollution.
I do have first-hand experience on the teaching money, but I also advertised to my students that I have a degree from a prestigious American university, so my sample data might be skewed.
Tourist visa for as long as possible (fewer hassles), but eventually I'll need to switch to a business visa.
At least back in 2006, Beijing was more polluted than most other Chinese cities (a notable exception be Lanzhou, which is ridiculous). This is in part due to the huge population, but also due to the geography (there are mountains nearby that trap a lot of pollutants, like LA -- and the Gobi desert is close enough to blow a lot of stuff in as well).
I lived pretty well there on about $700 / month (going out and with a 2 bedroom apartment).
"The best way to understand Beijing's size is to visualize what Manhattan might be like without the Hudson and East Rivers. Beijing just keeps going. Manhattan is almost 23 square miles. Beijing is more than 150!... Given the size, you can probably imagine the traffic. It's like Los Angeles without interstates, at rush hour, in the rain. It's impossible to get anywhere quickly. I was warned before my trip that traffic would be worse than anything I'd ever seen, and it was. One evening, it took our crew nearly two hours to go about eight miles... Had the Olympics been held last August, the air quality in Beijing would have been in violation of the World Health Organization standard every single day..."
Beijing is not just polluted, it's absurdly polluted. Think taking on a pack a day habit and that's nearly the long term impact on your health. Not good.
$60/hr seems quite optimistic to me. I have never taught english but the teachers in China I know typically make between $1-$2k USD per month depending on where they are and their experience.
Also, teaching english here is something that most introverted geeks couldn't handle. You'd often be called to teach quite young children. Think standing up and leading a class of kids in silly songs and dancing and you get the picture. I've been in classrooms visiting friends while they do this and I could never do their job.
Additionally what you need to keep in mind about China is that as a foreigner you're going to pay more than the locals just because you're a rich foreigner. How much more is going to depend on you, but you do prepare a premium.
Doing basic things in China takes a lot of time, for instance paying your rent at the bank could take you 2hrs. Sometimes you'll try to do a routine thing and you'll just fail. That's China, people have a lot of spare time and they don't optimize for a fast moving convenience lifestyle like in the US.
I'm also going to Beijing, albeit for a short trip, this summer -- my business partner is there right now doing a year of study abroad, and I've been thinking along the same lines as you. Although I don't think you get $60/hr for teaching English, unless you mean the equivalent of that in local wages.
That said, how do you plan on coping with the Great Firewall? We've had nothing but problems with connectivity outside of China...
The bigger problem with the Chinese Internet is that it's just slow. Foreign links to the Internet are often congested and will slow down incredibly at times. It sucks.
The Great firewall is mostly just a pain in the ass. However, it's easy to get around. Use FoxyProxy and OpenVPN to a server in the US (or one of the hosted VPN companies). I end up tunneling all my traffic most of the time.
You can target wealthy families, build relationships so that you get recommended to their friends, and market yourself as an upscale tutor.
Re: firewall, I haven't found it to be particularly problematic. Just set up a server in the US and use an SSH tunnel. The speed can be slow, but you should be ok as long as you're not trying to stream video or the like.
Hum... It is not that they (we) are leaving, it is more like they (we) are not even going.
I'm a Spaniard, I have worked in five different countries in Europe and Latin America. I'm currently settled in the U.K. I have worked as a consultant, as a developer in a "one-product" company and now I´m working as an in-house developer in a non-tech company.
It simply does not make sense to relocate to USA for me. I have had a couple of offers to work in Boston or New York in the last few years and I turned them down. Weak dollar versus euro means that I won´t be able to pay my euro denominated mortgage while living in the U.S. I am free to work anywhere within the European Union, and I have always been very welcomed in Spanish speaking American countries while I would need some paperwork to work in the U.S.
The political climate doesn't help either. I have never been in the U.S. and I realize that T.V. is not necessarily correlated to real life, but every other day you get news about some guy who was traveling to the U.S. for some perfectly legitimate reason, with all their legal documents in good shape and gets detained at the border for 30 hours, their families are not notified and they are not allowed to drink, eat or sleep.
On the other hand, I personally know some people (about 15 persons) who travel frequently from Europe to the U.S.,for both professional and personal reasons. They have never had problems in the border. There is clearly a dissonance between my "real-life" experience and my "media-induced" experience. Nonetheless, if I had to travel there, I would be a bit scared... my mother would definitely be very scared.
I really hope that things change. My wife is eager to spend a few years living in the U.S. We won't be going for now... may be during Obama's second term (if it happens) it would be economically feasible (strong dollar) and professionally interesting for me. As anyone with a passion for our craft, I have read countless histories about Silicon Valley, and I think the odds would be better for my own (future) start-up in there rather than in Europe, where bureaucracy and lack of funding make things more difficult.
"Not to defend the US Immigration service, but those samples aren't comparable - one is orders of magnitude larger and less reliable."
Not to defend the climate of fear generated by media scare stories, but it's more complex than that - the problem isn't that every once in a while someone screws up; the problem is that it can happen at all and they're not screw-ups, it's policy.
Everyone knows someone with a story about some horrible entry into the US. The fact that it happens at all, the idea that all "foreigners" are untrustworthy terrorists-in-disguise to be treated with suspicion and contempt, slowly sinks in. This is a very powerful antidote to the "land of the free" rhetoric, which starts to seem like a myth in itself - one media illusion demolishing another, if you will.
And it's just this, I don't know, malicious arrogance to the whole thing. From the very beginning, to be treated in that way, and for such treatment to be institutionalised and officially accepted, even encouraged, as the price to pay for the privilege of being allowed to enter the country? After a while anyone with any pride at all is forced to consider whether America is such a shining utopia to be worth rolling the dice every time you dare to try and get into the place. And as countries like India and China grow in wealth and stature, the pride of their citizens rises too.
But it's not just the risk of drawing the short straw on the "your name reminds us of something" list, every single visitor faces invasive biometric ID procedures to be kept for god knows how long, shared with god knows who, and used for god knows what purpose.
I am an Australian citizen from birth (a country which is a longtime ally of the USA and actually the only country who has fought alongside her in every war for a century), non religious, educated and of sufficient means. If I want to enter the US I face being photographed and my fingerprints taken like a common criminal. Jokes about convict ancestry aside - do you have any idea what kind of message that sends?
Whatever the intention is, I understand it as meaning that foreigners are not wanted in the USA, and I'm happy to oblige. You might think that sounds ridiculous and childish, taking such an impersonal message personally and all that, but think about it. Would you choose to visit a country that treats you like that, all other things being equal, which they pretty much are?
> Everyone knows someone with a story about some horrible entry into the US.
Everyone knows someone who has a friend who knew the guy who tried to dry his poodle in the microwave.
I'm not saying that Immigration and/or Homeland Security is great, but the rumor-mongering is unjustified.
> the problem is that it can happen at all and they're not screw-ups, it's policy.
And you know this because....
> I am an Australian citizen from birth
Ah, Australia. I know a Stanford CS PhD student who was put through hell by the Australian equivalent of US Immigration/Homeland Security because she wanted to visit a guy who she met while he was in the US. They were concerned that she might want to stay, contaminate the gene pool, or somesuch. (She's pretty and white, so they weren't applying any sort of appearance standard.)
Really. I actually know her. And, you should have paid her to emmigrate because she is seriously talented. And yes, she was seriously pissed.
Nevertheless, I don't get hysterical about it. I'm looking forward to diving the Great Barrier Reef in a couple of years.
> If I want to enter the US I face being photographed and my fingerprints taken like a common criminal.
I don't know how things are in Australia, but we can't identify criminals and the like without actually checking. (For some reason, they don't mention that in their visa application.)
> I don't know how things are in Australia, but we can't identify criminals and the like without actually checking.
Interesting viewpoint. Would you have a problem with having your photograph and fingerprints taken whenever you boarded a domestic flight? I'm sure they'd catch plenty of criminals that way too.
> Interesting viewpoint. Would you have a problem with having your photograph and fingerprints taken whenever you boarded a domestic flight? I'm sure they'd catch plenty of criminals that way too.
It's interesting that you think that domestic travel and crossing a national border are the same.
I know that Australia is concerned about young women visiting. Does it also care about criminals? Does it have any checks?
And, if it does, I'm sure that you're fighting any that aren't applied to domestic travel, right?
"It's interesting that you think that domestic travel and crossing a national border are the same."
You're deliberately missing his point.
His point is that if your objective is to catch criminals, and in pursuit of that goal you're willing to set up checkpoints to collect fingerprints, and you're the US authorities primarily concerned with US criminals - wouldn't it be far better to set up those checkpoints inside the country?
It would be, and so obviously these fingerprint checks are not to catch criminals.
And before you say it, no, I can't prove that, I am merely using deduction to make an argument for use in debate, which I believe is the point of this site.
"I know that Australia is concerned about young women visiting. "
Oh yes, from your personal anecdote about one (1) person. Australia is not perfect but you would be hard pressed to find much evidence, even anecdotal, that on balance it even comes close to the oppresive US border experience.
And personally I am firmly in favour of as many young women visiting as possible : )
"Does it also care about criminals? Does it have any checks?"
Yes, of course, and yes, it has checks. I am assuming you're a US Citizen - you'd need an ETAS visa; you apply in advance, pay some nominal fee, and the check is performed before you even get on the plane. Your visa is then automatically keyed to your personal information and passport number.
Australian citizens need a similar visa from the US, which is called USVISIT. The fingerprints are then taken upon arrival regardless, making everyone wonder what the damn point of the visa was in the first place.
And Australian passports are electronically encoded with biometric information, btw, and are very hard to fake. It would be much easier to simply fake the fingerprints, as Japan has discovered (one South Korean was recently arrested after entering Japan using fake fingerprints five times).
"And, if it does, I'm sure that you're fighting any that aren't applied to domestic travel, right?"
A spurious strawman argument which I won't respond to.
> His point is that if your objective is to catch criminals, and in pursuit of that goal you're willing to set up checkpoints to collect fingerprints, and you're the US authorities primarily concerned with US criminals - wouldn't it be far better to set up those checkpoints inside the country?
The US has no laws against criminals travelling (assuming that they're not being pursued). It has laws against people with certain characteristics entering the country.
In short, the "catch criminals" premise was wrong.
"Everyone knows someone who has a friend who knew the guy who tried to dry his poodle in the microwave."
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not talking about some urban legend that gets passed through 10 generations of "friends of friends", I'm saying that many people have had bad experiences with US Immigration, and word gets around. I personally know someone who now enters the US by land via Canada because of his repeated horrendous experiences at the air border.
"I'm not saying that Immigration and/or Homeland Security is great, but the rumor-mongering is unjustified."
Rumours? It goes a bit beyond rumours, don't you think? It's large-scale and well-documented. Personal anecdotes alone do not make something true, but that's not the case here. The personal anecdotes just add a more of a "this could happen to me" dimension to otherwise abstract reports of it happening to someone else.
"And you know this because...."
Because .. it's self evident and obviously true? What are you trying to say - that the hostile suspicion of foreigners at the US Border is not policy?
"I know a Stanford CS PhD student who was put through hell by the Australian equivalent of US Immigration/Homeland Security"
I'm not trying to say we're much better, although at least we don't fingerprint. I have many (in some cases personally witnessed/experienced) grievances against the Australian system.
No need to turn this into a "my country is better than yours" pissing match, I have a real fondness for America and wouldn't even bother having a strong opinion if I didn't care ; )
"Nevertheless, I don't get hysterical about it."
Sigh. I hope I didn't come across as hysterical. I put a bit of emotion into my writing in an attempt to get the point across that it's important to me, not as a sign that I have taken leave of my senses.
"I don't know how things are in Australia, but we can't identify criminals and the like without actually checking."
Huh? We're talking about the US Border, specifically about foreigners trying to visit, many who have never been there before. Are you suggesting that there is a huge list of outstanding arrest warrants for foreign criminals whose faces and fingerprints are on record, and this system is an attempt to catch them? Or that US Border agents are cooperating with overseas police forces to catch escaping criminals or something?
Of course not. I actually don't know why they do it. The whole thing is post-9/11 so I suppose it's part of the "war on terror", but surely the number of "terrorists" who are on the run but whose fingerprints have somehow been recorded is vanishingly small.
Anyway, I hope that with the new administration in charge and the memory of 9/11 receding, this horrible system will be turned off.
> Because .. it's self evident and obviously true? What are you trying to say - that the hostile suspicion of foreigners at the US Border is not policy?
As I suspected, you're guessing - it's sort of like fundamental attribution error.
> Huh? We're talking about the US Border, specifically about foreigners trying to visit, many who have never been there before.
How does immigration/homeland security know that someone has never been to the US before? (Hint: their passport isn't reliable information.)
And, if the US isn't trading fingerprint info with everyone it can, it isn't doing its job.
BTW - The US does collect fingerprints overseas in certain countries. However, thanks to discrimination laws, it can't just check fingerprints of folks who look like they might be from those places.
If you argued that we're practicing "security theater", not security, you wouldn't get an argument from me.
> Anyway, I hope that with the new administration in charge and the memory of 9/11 receding, this horrible system will be turned off.
"As I suspected, you're guessing - it's sort of like fundamental attribution error."
I don't think so. It's merely the most likely explanation. I note you haven't advanced any competing theories. However, not like I have any hard evidence, so consider the point retracted if it bothers you.
(various points about fingerprint collection)
Well, everything you say is true, as far as it goes. My point is not that fingerprint collection is utterly useless and no case whatsoever can be made for its enactment. What I am trying to say is that it is an extreme tactic with high costs, not least of which that it turns people off visiting the US at all, and its benefits are nebulous and require a lot of unlikely "what-if" scenarios to pay off at all. Meanwhile, the data collected is, IMO, very dangerous.
Ah, I see you've heard of the term "security theatre". Yes, that's exactly what it is, and a very damaging and costly act it is too.
"Be ready to be disappointed."
I am, but I don't think it's impossible that the draconian entry procedures will be dropped. They're really a product of paranoia and irrational fear; this dissipates in time.
When the drumbeat of terrorism scaremongering has died down a bit, and the post-crisis economic reality has dawned on everyone, it might well occur to the leaders of the country that perhaps they can't afford to throw away tourist and business dollars on misguided security theatre any more. It might take a while, but economic pragmatism wins out every time.
I agree, but there's different levels of "broken". The photography and fingerprinting is an egregious breach of privacy and dignity and surely puts the US (and Japan, btw) at the front of the pack in terms of just how broken the system is.
In my experience (about 10 visits to US as Latino) US Immigration was always nice, even if sometimes slow. But Homeland Security and Customs seem to be filled with ignorant bigots. I've heard of cavity searches and like OP and 30h+ detention on harsh conditions. Only because they don't like your face.
I have now heard of 3 cases of friends who are engineers (with graduate degrees from the U.S.) working at well known US software companies, being held back in India because the US consulate is taking months to do a "background check" after they went to get their H1-B renewals, which have already been approved, stamped on the passport. This used to be an "in and out" procedure since the US government already does background checks on H-1B applicants when they apply for the first time, get their visas stamped for the first time and then apply for a renewal while still in the U.S.
At least one of these guys is considering resigning his position in the U.S. and starting something in India rather than sitting at home doing nothing.
Maybe this is just random chance. If not, kicking skilled immigrants with jobs out of the country is not a wise move.
Growing demand for their skills and shining career opportunities back home were cited by 87 percent of
the Chinese and 79 percent of the Indians as the major professional reason for returning. Most also
cited the lure of being close to family and friends.
No surprise here. A few years back, when I was working for a IT company in Chicago which went through a kind of "reverse takeover" by an (East) Indian firm, most of my co-workers gave similar reasons for leaving our U.S. office soon after the .com bubble popped. The stories told me by my supervisors reaffirms the article's contention that Indian programmers have a lifestyle in stark contrast of the countrymen in the rural areas of India proper.
Well actually the labor government in Australia is currently reviewing the migrant intake policies mentioned in the main article ... http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/18/business/ozjobs.2-410... But it looks like we're going to keep up the high intake for the most part. We're certainly not losing any from what I've observed.
As an aside I have to say I haven't seen much of anti-immigration sentiment here even with the economic downturn. Sure, there's been a fair bit of talk against moving jobs overseas, but barley a whisper with regards to immigration.
I actually think we should increase the rate. Double it. Triple it, even. There will need to be a concommitent infrastructure investment but with that, no problem.
This should be a time of amazing opportunity to absorb the talent leaving other countries.
Yeah, I agree with you. Given the great talent in the Asian region we're sitting on a people gold mine. Also given the already short-supply of housing it would invigorate the property sector as well.
But I don't think the media and public would respond well to it with companies like pacific brands and the mining companies laying of so many in the last few weeks. It's probably best if the government doesn't rock the boat on immigration, lest we get a public reaction against it.
It's interesting the dynamic that IT fields have added to the immigration issue. In a broad sense, it makes for different "kinds" of immigrants, with different skill sets, etc. And I can't help wondering if this adds an element to this country's understanding of race. That's to say: IT has changed the way we see immigration from China and India - more so, I think, than from any other country. Has it changed the way we see the people themselves? Is it a pos. or neg. influence? What does that mean for the way we see immigrants from countries like Mexico that often work in jobs that are harder to organize? And what are these magic factors that so well prepare one or two groups of immigrants for the American work force? Is it the educational systems in India and China? And maybe I'm crazy - does anyone else think IT is playing a role in our collective approach to race?
If the people leaving are scientists and engineers, people aren't going to be concerned. These folks are getting laid off in droves no matter where they come from and if some ultimately leave the country no big deal.
Looking at the last 50-100 years, if there's suddenly a market demand for these fields, students will reappear. It'll take a few years, but people chase money.
It's tempting to think that the job market works that simply. However, it takes at least 10 years to train a good scientist / engineer. Waiting 10 years is a luxury.
Moreover, people who choose a career based on earning power tend not to be talented or creative. In other words, people who would be attracted to Science / Engineering if the salaries would rise a bit are exactly the kind of people that make mediocre scientists or engineers.
Link, please. I think you are painting with too broad a brush. Many people are attracted to many things, and economics is one of the factors they use to discriminate between them.
My opinion is based on my personal experience, not on anything I have read. Of all the people I met, the ones who achieved the most were driven by a desire to do things, to deliver impact, to create. Of course, people are attracted to many things... and money is a very important motivating factor. I never argued otherwise.
My mentor, a former academic turned serial entrepreneur, once told me: "The best engineers in the world are the ones driven by dreams."
I agree with Rod. I witnessed this first hand during the dot-com boom. (i was in school then). I attracted a lot of types "I am going to retire by 25" types, which had no talent. They would soon quit within the year when they hit the wall on the mid-higher level CS classes. My school had a notorious class that you had to take either second semester, or first in Sophomore year, which was challenging, but it went deep down in CS concepts. A lot of people failed that class.
They will either try again, or just switch to Business, or Information Technology (watered down CS/bussiness combination. Good for somebody doing IT work at some large corp).
Just raising salaries is not a path to get more great engineers. More mediocre ones, yes. I think there is a hard limit in the general population on how many good engineers it can produce.
Someone motivated purely by money will usually be chasing the field after the fact, whereas those that truly love something will likely have been practicing and gaining information and skills in the area for a much longer period of time with greater concentration. It naturally follows that the later entrants will be, on average, of inferior quality. Not in all cases, but probably most.
At the risk of getting modded to oblivion again, I'll say it again: we need to change our immigration policies to encourage high-skill immigration from high-IQ countries, and discourage low-skill immigration from low-IQ countries. We don't need more yard-workers -- they don't contribute much to GDP, suck up a lot of social services (tax dollars), and even their grand-children have trouble graduating high school.
Build a fence across the Mexican border (it's cheap, and it worked for Israel despite the naysaying) and require high-level skills for every immigrant coming in after tomorrow.
I'm confused. Are you claiming that the populations of all countries score the same on IQ tests? Are you saying that it's all explained by culture and that all that culture goes away when someone immigrates? Do you believe in creationism? What?
While I'm sure that your conviction is sincere, I doubt it's based on any actual evidence. Instead it's an expression of how you'd like the world to be.
Okay, sure. But then I'd have to think of an explanation for why adopted Asian-Americans do just as well (or better) academically than Asian-Americans raised by their own parents. Culture can't explain that. Maybe you could help me out?
You're looking to compare the psychology of adopted Asian-Americans and un-adopted Asian-Americans? This is definitely a place where correlation can be a million things other than causation. I'm no social scientist, but two things come to mind right away:
Consider the financial situation of a household which adopts children - adoption is a very expensive and rigorous process, so adopted children of any nationality are going to be in a family which is financially secure and meets some kind of standard psychologically and legally. Not so for many Asian immigrants - I would imagine that on average, Asian immigrants aren't as well off as foster parents. Culturally, their environment will be quite different.
Cultural identities also come into play - adopted or not, Asian children will identify themselves as "Asian", just as Jewish children identify themselves as "Jewish", Russian children will identify themselves as "Russian", and African American children identify themselves as "Black".
Of course, none of this proves that there are no common genetic traits in the Asian gene-pool that help them excel at math, just as there are obviously genetic traits in the African American gene-pool which help them excel at running. Still, it doesn't mean much - the standard deviation in standardized math scores within any population is magnitudes larger than the difference in mean score between Asians and whites and blacks.
You're looking to compare the psychology of adopted Asian-Americans and un-adopted Asian-Americans? This is definitely a place where correlation can be a million things other than causation. I'm no social scientist, but two things come to mind right away:
Consider the financial situation of a household which adopts children - adoption is a very expensive and rigorous process, so adopted children of any nationality are going to be in a family which is financially secure and meets some kind of standard psychologically and legally. Not so for many Asian immigrants - I would imagine that on average, Asian immigrants aren't as well off as foster parents. Culturally, their environment will be quite different.
Cultural identities also come into play - adopted or not, Asian children will identify themselves as "Asian", just as Jewish children identify themselves as "Jewish", Russian children will identify themselves as "Russian", and African American children identify themselves as "Black".
Okay, you have a hypothesis. It seems a little unlikely, but I agree that it could be true.
Now, let's get to the proof side of things. What evidence makes you think this is a good explanation for the range of phenomena that you see? What else does it explain? Why can we discount other explanations, etc.
When it comes to social science, there is no one single comprehensible good explanation for the vast majority of phenomena - what I was pointing out is that there are systematic biases when comparing "adopted Asian Americans" and "Asian American immigrants". These biases - financial, psychological, etc - will have a significantly larger influence on how children perform than what you're testing for (genetic differences).
Only they don't, because when you measure it, you can predict 80% (studies differ on the exact number) of IQ from parent's IQ. The rest is mainly unshared environment (what we don't know how to fix).
Oh hey, I remember you from last time. No, I'm a number of years past that age.
I am a little depressed to be arguing with people who think that calling names is a valid way to argue this sort of thing. The closest I've gotten to a real intellectual response is someone who claims that thinking you're Asian will make you better at math (alert the schools of this discovery!).
I thought that Hacker News was a place where intelligent people were willing to hold intelligent discussions. If you're going to talk about immigration (which HN wants to talk about a lot) you have to consider this sort of thing at least.
Instead, what I see is the view: "On this subject it's okay to turn off our reasoning facilities." Why? I guess because thinking about it would be wrong. You'd have to be a Nazi to know about the Hapmap data or brain genes that vary across population groups like ASPM and microcephalin. Ah well.
Maybe I should begin attacking people for being dirty culturists instead. Attacking African culture, claiming that it causes IQ drops, is a terrible slander against what are sometimes a very beautiful set of social systems. Only evil people could claim that.
I am saying that considering the average IQ of a country in deciding how difficult it should be for an individual (from that country) to get a visa would be stupid even if IQ was a good determinant of the value an individual brings to the country of his residence.
I think that's an absolutely fair comment (as opposed to your "must be the water" brush-off). Now, if you'd also be willing to end chain-migration, I would be all for your proposal as the best solution.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." "
But the border with Mexico is huuuge. Also, this article is about Indians & Chinese. Are they high or low IQ? My understanding of the racist consensus is that that of the Chinese is at least as high as American whites; Indians, it's more mixed or unknown. What was your angle, that the US should make it easier, /for the better educated/?
Sure, education is a fairly good indicator of IQ. Could you care to explain what you mean by "racist consensus"? Why don't you explain to me what right-thinking people believe about the genetics of intelligence.
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. "
The salary of an IT professional in India easily puts him among the highest wage earners in India (something similar to how Wall Street traders were a couple of years ago). Chauffeur driven cars, cooks and daily house cleaning services are all easily affordable.
The biggest question I have to ask myself is should I return to my studio in SF.