There are 96 comments.

1. Member
   MarciN

   @MarciN

   7:33 AM EDT ⋅ Jul 4, 2020

   Zafar (View Comment):

   MarciN (View Comment):

   I don’t believe these students from foreign countries are genetically different and “more valuable” than American kids.

   No, I was saying that migrants with skills in high demand are more valuable to a country than migrants without those skills.

   [Edit add: at a macro level it’s arguable that foreign money being spent in the country to educate people whose skills then benefit the country because migration is good for the country, but at a micro level it’s not so good for some of the country’s citizens. I’d tend to agree with you.]

   Their families may have more money to pay the colleges and universities than some of the American kids do, but American kids are just educable….But looking at that chart–wow. As a moneymaking strategy for schools and businesses, it has been popular and it has absolutely made an impact on income distribution in this country.

   Yeah, it comes down to who the country’s policies and institutions are meant to benefit – ordinary people or business owners. They don’t always have the same interests, often their interests are in conflict. Imho framing it as a conflict between ordinary people (who can vote) and migrants (who can’t until they migrate and naturalise) is a misdirect, imho.

   We have the same issue with higher education and foreign students here in Australia. The Universities can charge foreigners more, and that creates a huge incentive to enrol more foreigners. It’s even sold as ‘subsidising education for Australian citizens’ – which I guess it sort of does, but at a cost to Australian citizens as well.

   Yup. We are watching the same scenes, Zafar. 

   These policies sound so good on paper, but in the aggregate, apparently, there has been some quantifiable harm done. 

   When Disney laid off two hundred or so of its high-tech workforce in its Orlando offices, it was a major national scandal. These employees had to cheerfully train their replacements. The issue came up at that time that the existing immigration policies were originally written to prevent this employment practice. We have an attractive and higher standard of living here than is true in the foreign workforce’s countries of origin. Our standard of living got that way because we have been careful with our immigration policies. Companies were required to spell out in writing that they could not replace their resident workforce. Companies had to establish a genuine need to import high-skilled labor from other countries. I forget how Disney resolved this and got around these restrictions. I bring it up only to say that I’m not the only person to be concerned about these business and university practices. 

   I really hate poverty. :-) I believe that a great many of the people whom we have written off as unfixable actually were fixable at some point. We just need to work harder and have some faith in each other. :-) 

2. Inactive
   Jon1979

   @Jon1979

   8:31 AM EDT ⋅ Jul 4, 2020

   MarciN (View Comment):

   Zafar (View Comment):
   Economically they are more valuable to the US. That’s precisely why they got their visas.

   This is what I find to be very sad. I have heard this expressed frequently for the last twenty years.

   I understand what is behind it, but I’m a family-first person. I want to help the existing poor in America first, I want to help American kids get into the top schools, and so on. I don’t believe these students from foreign countries are genetically different and “more valuable” than American kids. Their families may have more money to pay the colleges and universities than some of the American kids do, but American kids are just educable.

   I’ve been reading and hearing this rationale for increasing the numbers of high-skill and high-education immigrants through schools and businesses sponsoring them, and I’ve also known a lot of kids who were on the line in terms of their qualifications but did not get the job or spot in the college or university they wanted and were qualified for.

   There seemed to be a change during the Obama years, especially by corporations who were overtly big Democrat supporters like the tech giants or Disney, from “Here’s a foreign worker who has the skills to help us,” to “Let’s hire nothing but foreign workers on H-1B visas, because we can pay them less, and threaten to pull their visas if they leave.”  It was actually something that animated both Trump and Bernie Sanders’ campaigns in 2016, though Bernie had to pull back in 2020, based on the idea whatever side Trump is on, the Democrats are on the other.

   If you’re the Democrats, the idea is a win-win to have a native-born labor force locked out of top jobs and more dependent on government jobs or government handouts, at the same time that the schools don’t have to be as good at educating people to fill top skill jobs, because they’re not getting them, anyway.

3. Inactive
   Vectorman

   @Vectorman

   8:41 AM EDT ⋅ Jul 4, 2020

   MarciN (View Comment):

   I love immigrants. I have a problem with immigration policy. I’m not the only person to worry about this. There are some controls built into our immigration policy to prevent this. A weakened United States is not good to anyone–as my old Italian mother-in-law used to say, “You’re no good to anyone if you don’t take care of yourself.”

   I’ve seen a lot of kids–friends of my kids–work really hard and get rejected by the professional schools they wanted to attend. They were absolutely qualified and rejected for some subjective reason. Then I pick up the paper and read that we’re importing doctors to the United States because we don’t have enough here–it’s upsetting. We threw away some incredibly talented kids.

   We need to fix this. We should be looking inward, not outward, to fix our employment and higher education problems.

   

4. Inactive
   Jon1979

   @Jon1979

   9:31 AM EDT ⋅ Jul 4, 2020

   Bad post. disregard.

5. Coolidge
   Taras

   @Taras

   12:20 PM EDT ⋅ Jul 4, 2020

   Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

   Zafar (View Comment):

   MarciN (View Comment):

   I simply wish we had invested more in American high schools twenty years ago. Instead seeing the demand for high-tech and healthcare skills as a great way to motivate kids and build better schools, we let them languish and imported people who really didn’t need a leg up. That’s exactly what Europe did. It’s not a healthy way for a society to take care of itself.

   Why wasn’t the investment made, and what do you think would turn that around?

   I am not answering for marci, but I think that the problem with schools is they don’t exist just to teach, or primarily to teach kids. Their most important function is to exist. Then provide jobs for teachers, then to be sitters for dual income families. Then they are there to teach leftist thought. Oh and then, education.

   “Investment” is usually the wrong word to use when we’re talking about government spending.

   In the sense of increasing government spending, we’ve “invested” billions in our public schools.

   However, much of that is pure waste, like giving raises to people who are already overpaid; or even of negative value, like giving bad teachers raises so they can’t afford to improve the education system — by leaving it.

6. Coolidge
   Taras

   @Taras

   12:24 PM EDT ⋅ Jul 4, 2020

   A quick way to distinguish between immigrants who are joining the United States, and immigrants who are merely exploiting it.

   The former join the Republicans; the latter, the Democrats.