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posted by
martyb
on Friday November 30 2018, @09:47AM
from the Quite-a-few-from-Europe-and-China,-too dept.
from the Quite-a-few-from-Europe-and-China,-too dept.
As a former H1 visa holder, this article interested me and shows the value that immigrants bring to the USA.
According to this opinion piece, the USA and specifically Santa Clara county is only the leader in tech because of immigrants.
In 1965, the Immigration Act of 1924 was repealed, opening the gates to immigrants and allowing a critical mass of technology companies to develop in clusters around Boston and Santa Clara County. A significant proportion of all the best graduates from the best schools in India (IIT) came to the USA -- in effect, the USA siphoned off India's best talent and used it to develop leadership in technology and to grow the economy.
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The US is Only a Leader in Tech Because of Foreign Workers
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(1)
Never use "etc." -- it makes people think there is more where there is not
or that there is not space to list it all, etc.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by quietus on Friday November 30 2018, @10:21AM (6 children)
Can somebody explain the phrase 'leader in tech' to me? It's bandied about so often by talking heads, it becomes suspicious.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday November 30 2018, @12:31PM (3 children)
While it's difficult to explain 'leader in tech', it's very easy to point out the countries that are not.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday November 30 2018, @07:07PM (2 children)
Out of the following list, which are the countries that are not a leader in tech, according to you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @07:36PM (1 child)
Number two: Italy
Final answer, Regis.
Did I win a million dollars?
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday November 30 2018, @08:18PM
You're not the kind who drives a Maserati [wikipedia.org] or flies a heli [wikipedia.org] to work, are you?
If only you had that million, eh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @03:02PM
'Leader in tech' means scamming the world by siphoning up all the data that they dont value properly. Seriously though, go drive by 1 hacker way and you can smell the indian food for miles. I experienced this twice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:19PM
tech leaders are countries that provide you the people to do the thinking and work you seemingly can not do by your self. as many of those people serve in the usa, the media and money make the dumb assumption that it is that leader.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @10:45AM (14 children)
US has siphoned off talent from other nations for decades while promising the "American Dream". What do you think happened to engineers from Soviet Union sphere of influence? This brain drain always has detrimental effects on the source nations and positive on the destinations. But you can't fix stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @01:03PM (12 children)
> But you can't fix stupid.
I thought that the whole point of TFA was that you can, by importing smart people.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @01:20PM (11 children)
The imported smart people can't vote. It takes many years. And during that time the local stupid people vote.
Furthermore, each imported smart person supports a dozen local less-than-smart people, but the local less-than-smart people tend to say "fucking immigrants, taking our jubs"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @02:11PM (10 children)
There it is -- the exact sort of arrogant, dismissive, uncaring attitude that explains why Trump won. Perhaps people aren't as stupid as you think and when you come at them on your high horse, they might just take some satisfaction in bringing you down a notch or two, especially when the facts are clear that companies use immigrant labor to force wages down and rake in ever increasing profit for those at the apex of the corporate pyramid.
Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas To Pay Low Wages To Immigrants [huffingtonpost.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @03:35PM (1 child)
That's how capitalism works. Why do you hate capitalism?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:30PM
If I've learned anything from reddit, it is that capitalism sucks, is responsible for 600million annual deaths and is responsible for the destruction of the planet and all societal ills. And that socialism rules. Well, maybe not yet, but it will and we'll all be living in a ecotopia.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 30 2018, @06:10PM (6 children)
There it is -- the exact sort of arrogant, dismissive, uncaring attitude that explains why Trump won.
Yeah, 'cause there's no arrogant, dismissive, uncaring attitudes amongst the Trump supporters. I love how it's only the liberals who are supposed to be super polite all the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @06:20PM
>I love how it's only the liberals who are supposed to be super polite all the time.
HAHAHAHA firmly in dimension B.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by hemocyanin on Friday November 30 2018, @09:32PM (3 children)
Right, because Democrats are super-polite [to suburban upper-middle to upper class white collar workers, especially women]. Everyone else? They "cling" or they're "deplorable".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @10:13PM (2 children)
WOOOOOOOOOSH
No one said Democrats aren't rude, just that the GOP is pretty unique for treating people like shit then immediately turning around and saying "but let's be civil"
It is one of their most popular "tactics" and it works because they've riled up their base into a frenzy of hatred. The DNC started ramping up the hate rhetoric after 2016 but it is still primarily a GOP tactic to do one thing and then cry like spoiled children when people do it back to them.
#getaclue #criticalthinking #payingattention
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:56AM
#partisanRetard
Go back to your pantifa group.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 01 2018, @04:02PM
We've always been at war with Eastasia!
Back at you.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:08AM
No, not nearly as much. Mostly just exasperation and a weariness of being talked down to by arrogant, uniformed "educated elite". What's amusing to me is the regressive leftists I've met maintain the arrogant attitude but have open disdain for methods of rational thought and the scientific method (if they can even intelligently explain it, usually not). Blue collar people are simply tired of it. They generally recognize the unearned superior attitude. They recognize these people are attempting to control what they are allowed to say and even what/how they can think.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @01:07AM
Perhaps in reality, which has a well-known liberal bias, they are. Evidence, this post and Trump. That's two evidences. Those, and soybean prices, and futures. That's four (4) evidences!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:15PM
Yeah, it's US fault that Soviets failed... Because they were just so fucking good at not making life so miserable that people were ready to flee LOL.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @11:07AM (1 child)
And rampant "intellectual property" theft, when it was a younger nation. So are many other countries but hardly a legacy to be proud of.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:15AM
I was looking for this comment.
Europe stole tech from China (or better, found a nice use for their fireworks) and prospered. USA stole tech from Europe and prospered. Remember when Japan was the copycat? and then Korea? now China has been the copycat and is beginning to protect its intellectual property.
About slavery, I dunno. Many Americans worked their asses off as if they were slaves but they were free. A society who basically values only success, like the USA and now the world, tends to keep people enslaved, success means getting in different social circles and you are back to square one, e.g. when you see a cayenne in the driveway and an 4c under a roof and you are looking at the back entrance and you wonder "what are those guys keeping in the garage?"...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Friday November 30 2018, @11:50AM (1 child)
After excessive assertions that bringing in immigrants legally that have skills good for the economy is...good for the economy, and the false dichotomy that immigration of high value individuals was a CAUSE vs. an EFFECT.
.
The final point of TFA is essentially don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by stopping immigration of highly skilled individuals that has been and continues to be good for the economy in attempting to stop illegal immigration.
.
IMO The opinions are the point of the article, rather than the uncontroversial conclusion which is actually there to support the opinion portion.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:21PM
aye
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @02:25PM (25 children)
As a black American, I fully support ending all immigration into the United States, and am a Patriotic American, and I can attest that Leftist/Democrat Party policies are most detrimental to black americans and keep us mired in policy, as well as sowing divisiveness and hatred of our country. Heres why:
The Analysis within the article that America could not do without foreign STEM workers, is incorrect and is most likely inspired by propaganda by industry associations and the US Chamber of Commerce which represent the interests in large corporations in importing cheap foreign labor. The notion that American citizens would not want well paying STEM jobs is absurd. The reason that there are foreign aliens in US STEM jobs is that American citizens have been laid off and unable to find work due to their being replaced by cheaper foreign workers in order to increase corporate profits. Foreign workers are preferred by corporations because they are cheaper than American workers. Numerous examples of this exist and its been going on for decades. Anyone looking at the data can see evidence of this and as well many have seen it with their own eyes. For instance, the issue of the Disney World workers being laid off and replaced with foreign workers is a small but visible example of this, of what has been widespread but has been ignored by the Corporate controlled Leftist Mass Media in the US which is a mouthpiece for large corporations and the elite structure who benefits from importation of cheap foreign labor and the dismissal of American workers. Many of us personally know people who have been laid off and replaced by cheap foreign workers, simply because foreign workers are cheaper, and thats the reason why Corporations want to hire them.
They would say that Disney World could not run, therefore, without cheap foreign workers. Actually it could run without cheap foreign workers, the reason they are employed there is not that American workers are not available, they are but were laid off, but that it is cheaper to hire Foreign workers and so companies import foreign workers instead of hiring American workers.
Over and over again, repeatedly in the media, we hear a constant ridicule of the United States for being racist, furthermore, of the plight of its downtrodden, this diatribe is coming from the same voices on the Left who extol the virtues of hiring cheap foreign aliens rather than American citizens. The fact is, it is Leftist policies, that are leading to greater poverty in the US,generally and less upward mobility, and as well serious harm to Americas blue collar workers. If Leftists truly cared about the plight of Americas poor, the first thing it would want to do is stop all immigration and to establish apprenticeship programs to train poor American families (of any racial group) for these well paying jobs that are available. The idea that America is a bad place for the poor flies in the face and is hypocritical coming from people who extoll the virtues of replacing American workers with cheap foreign labor. We should not allow them to get away with these lies.
In response to a proposals to end immigration, Leftists begin to hurl insults and derogatory pejoratives, as if simply having a border and not having immigration is a crime. This is despite the fact, it flies in the face of the fact, that immigration most severely impacts Americas black population, support for ending immigration is strongest among Americas black population, and that despite the fact that we could move Americans, including Black Americans, into well paying jobs that are available, who want a better income, rather than give jobs to foreign aliens.
Leftists jump to conclusions by their own spoken statements assuming anyone who opposes immigration and wants to stop immigration is someone who is driven by racism. It is they who instantly assume that American refers to only one racial group, not others. This flies in the face of the fact the most severely impacted by immigration are black americans, and that zero immigration policy would protect and benefit all Americans and their jobs and opportunities equally, it does not protect one racial group more than another one, and that it can be a part of a set of policies which can dramatically improve the condition of all impoverished Americans, regardless of race, by moving them into more well paying jobs in a condition of equal opportunity for All Americans, regardless of race, including Americas black people. Leftists statements also shows they are the ones who harbor hatred and bigotry, against the United States and its people, with a mentality that foreign aliens are superior to Americans which is built into the pro immigration mentality, immigration would have no point if Americans were not inferior to foreign aliens. It also shows how Leftists are themselves divisive by sowing the seeds of discord in American society through toxic attitudes that American society intrinsically benefits some of its citizens more than others (in fact, Leftists themselves advocate policies which benefit some more than others, this writing herein actually proposes policies that will ensure that americas prosperity is equally accessible to all citizens regardless of race), and that if the country fails, is overrun and damaged, its borders erased, that this benefits certain parts of its citizen population while harming other parts of the population. That is they are telling people in the US that if the US fails that its good for some of its citizens thus telling groups of citizens that they should want their country to fail. They also push an idea that America doing well in the area of creating jobs benefits some more than others, when in fact a rising tide raises all boats, and furthermore, the new policies which are being suggested in this discourse, which will be strenously opposed by leftists, actually would ensure equal opportunity and better access to opportunity for all americans including the black population, ensuring no one is "left behind" and showing that zero immigration policies coupled with other policies can equally benefit all americans regardless of race. The Leftist opposition to the policies proposed herein in this text demonstrates it is they who want to oppress American citizens. The idea that having no immigration and a border is absurd and outrageous, furthermore, considering as well that the advocates of closed borders more than anyone want to improve the lives and ensure equal opportunity for all of Americas citizens, including our Black communities.
As much as the left loves to accuse others of being racist for its own sheer, arrogant and self serving political agenda, the fact is the left seems to be driven by racist attitudes that America's black population and other American populations are not as suitable for well paying STEM fields as foreign alien populations. The lefts/democrat ideologies are also based on the idea that we need to hurt certain racial groups in the US to help other racial groups as a way to get and capture votes using a clearly racist ideology. They also assume that blacks are generally of this abhorrent mentality that we support this ideology that harming other Americans is something we want to do for our own benefit, instead of the truth which is that policies that benefit the United States as a whole , such as zero immigration policies, equally protect and benefit all Americans. Leftists also want to assume that all blacks like welfare and vote for more welfare. This is in fact where we can expose the fact that Leftists are the true racists and bigots who actually themselves help keep minority groups in the US in poverty so that they can rely on them as welfare voters and who do not want them to have upward mobility and to be able to obtain well paying jobs easily and accessibly. Liberals know that immigration and importation of cheap foreign labor is instrumental to maintain a captured welfare voter base by ensuring that Americas own citizens have much less of an opportunity to be able to enter these well paying professions due to the jobs being stolen by foreign aliens.
LIberals will also predictably strenuously oppose any effort to reform higher education policy in the USA by making more use of apprenticeship and certificate training programs to equip many Americans for higher paying jobs at a much lower cost than college. This is because not only are Liberals pets of college lobby but Liberals like the fact that college is inaccessible to a large number of people and presents a barrier to upward mobility thus ensuring they maintain a large welfare state in the US by preventing people with the college barrier from moving upward. Doctors and some high level Professional Engineers should go to college of course but most of the jobs, including programmer, IT, accountant, finance, etc do not require a college degree and apprenticeship, self study and test certificates can be just as effective. The cost savings by requiring fewer people to go to college could then be used to provide free college for the people who do need to go to college, the Doctors and top tier Professional Engineers. Approximately 10-20% of the American population actually needs to go to college. This would further reduce barriers to upward mobility and would have further benefits by helping reduce the amount of student loan debt doctors must carry, and increasing the supply of doctors which will help with improving access to health care.
Ending immigration together with changes to education policy with an emphasis on non-college apprentice training, will benefit all Americans, including black americans, and leftist pro-immigration policies are highly detrimental to americans, and are based on hateful, bigoted, divisive attitudes towards the people of the Unites States. Thanks for listening.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @02:37PM
Is that you Ivan? Nice diatribe. Putin will be proud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @02:59PM (1 child)
I think you should refer to the people you call leftists/liberals as the DNC instead.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Friday November 30 2018, @05:16PM
The terms "left" and "right" barely make any sense in America where we basically have the pro-abortion-warmongering-corporate-sellouts and the anti-abortion-warmongering-corporate-sellouts.
There's plenty of rhetoric to be sure but nothing ever really changes -- as an example, there's a caged migrant child photo used to criticize Trump that was taken during the Obama administration. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-28/caged-migrant-children-photo-goes-viral-left-rages-trump-except-it-happened-under [zerohedge.com]
What is plain about American politics to me, is that the DNC and GOP don't really care about policy (see the entirety of Obama's term which looked like what one might expect a GWB term 3 & 4 to look like) -- they only care about inflaming their base and proving to independents that that the other guy is worse. What a shit show.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 30 2018, @03:11PM (10 children)
Thank you.
Can you say that bit a little louder, Brother (or Sister)? #walkaway So many seem to be trapped on the plantation, and can't escape.
FWIW, the only problem with the #walkaway thing is, many who are getting off the plantation seem to think their only other choice is to become a Republican. Americans of all types, colors, cultures, and classes need to get past that two-party bullshit.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday November 30 2018, @03:50PM (8 children)
I thought it was supposed to be 'African' American, or is this a "black people can call black people black but white men can't" thing like Nigger?
The longer I live, the more confused things be.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:05PM (1 child)
oh, a joker, you must be the american here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Saturday December 01 2018, @01:05AM
Nope: a confused Canadian who has lost his way in a PC world.
"I'm shrinking.... SHRINKING!....Oh what a world, WHAT a world..."
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @07:15PM (3 children)
As a white man I can tell you that the majority of black people prefer "black".
Since you're autistic I'll explain that "African American" is a sort of safe word that nobody is allowed to get pissy about. Also PoC. Anyone using these terms in casual conversation is probably a load of snakes wandering around in human skin.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday November 30 2018, @11:15PM (2 children)
So don't call you a Caucasian-American?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday December 01 2018, @01:03AM
Just don't call me late for supper!
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @05:01AM
I think very very few white Americans have any connection to the Caucasus Mountains. Germans are the single largest ethnic group... Nazi-American sounds about right.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 01 2018, @06:02AM (1 child)
It's sort of like how you can call a friend a cunt, but not a stranger a cunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @05:58AM
And you can grab a friend up by the cunt, but you can't grab a stranger by the cunt unless you're paying her.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:03PM
Thesis -- Anti-thesis -- Synthesis.
Setting up polarities is the time-honored way of 'divide and conquer'. Divide it down to where everyone is an exception and your opponents literally kill themselves for you.
e.g. its not a problem, its hegelian dialectic. read machiavelli if you've not been introduced to the plutocratic mind before. its a way of structuring the argument in such a way that you believe the only way is to drop-out/walk-away/ignore. see also anacyclosis. file under
stupid mind-games played to make you a porn-consuming divorced druggy gamer living on welfare .. or everything opposite of that.
its called and hailed as 'excluding the middle' as you need to be polarized (in conflict with) for you to ignore the theft/thievery of the good-life intangibles in and around you. that includes the decaying roads, bridges, health and pensions systems otherwise protected as the commons by everyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @03:50PM (2 children)
Hey, what nonsense!
(i doubt that you've done any actual systems work, and from your writ, i'd never want you to work for me!)
I'm an idiot to reply to you at all. That out of the way --
and cutting out your blatant straw-man arguments (for which you would pretty much get fired or beat up anywhere) --
I've given 25yrs to the US, worked almost exclusively for 1..3rd gen immigrants with European and Hispanic Backgrounds, provided software and software services to mostly people with those backgrounds and had but two business contacts with black americans during that time, aside from having some working for customers when i was doing coaching. i wound up having bad experiences with blacks and females that were not of an immigrant background.
These are facts from my life experience. I've also seen the 'established' Americans succumb to drugs, inheritance squandering, sleezy business practices and suffer from lack of a drive for self-improvement, if not outright mental degeneracy that would never have had them pass the schools i had passed through by the age of 20.
So, sorry. While I'm glad to have left the country whose destruction you're advocating by way of the policies you suggest, please wise up to being out of touch with who's actually delivering the value in your so called 'society'. its likely not to be you.
And, hey, sure, i'm a smart good looking white guy who knows his stuff. I got in at 20 under an H1-B because i brought a unique value to an industry which i helped to obsolete. And no, I have no nightmares about having put scores of kind and always friendly to me unionized black people who's managers, at the time, were.. you guessed it .. also all f* white and brownish immigrants.
Don't put form over function bro. and yeah, that 'your' colleges and schools are not serving to 'you' is kinda obvious from anywhere else in the world. They can be excellent, mind you, but yeah, they are not really for average Americans, many are in high esteem just to attract more future immigrants :)
Enjoy my 'tremendous' contribution to your tax-base, the fruits of which/sosec i'll likely never see because .. as you demo .. hubris rules over there; but we'll talk about that again after the great crash of '19
(Score: 1, Troll) by curunir_wolf on Friday November 30 2018, @05:43PM (1 child)
I sure am glad you left to go back to your hell-hole country. I'm sure you're living the life of Riley now that you've got all those American dollars you can use to hire cheap-ass untouchables to wait on you hand and foot.
It sucks that you have ZERO gratitude for those opportunities WE gave you, and even come here to disparage the ones that gave it to you.
But, again, I'm glad you're gone. Please don't come back. So many foreigners like you are so horribly racist, it a real drag to see you.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @06:37PM
What a little ahit you are, pleade move to another country that doesnt mind being portrayed as a bigoted shitheel.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @03:53PM (4 children)
Imports from south of the border are to replace lower class blacks. The immigrants have no derogatory credit or criminal record, nor an alternative of welfare. The democratic party is fine with maintaining the blacks on welfare as long as they keep voting for them. They do not care that the community sinks in an ocean of uselessness, drugs, poverty and crime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @11:22PM (1 child)
You know what, if this insane level of projection gets Republicans to help out minority communities to "stick it to the libs" then I am OK with it. Let me know when Republicans reverse their racist policies that disenfranchise minority voters and cops (overwhelmingly conservative) stop murdering innocent minorities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @02:45AM
Christ, you need an ID to buy a pack of smokes or a beer, it just isn't the onerous racist policy you make it out to be that you should present an ID to vote. I'm way off to the left BTW.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:16AM (1 child)
Why are you calling illegal invaders (criminals) "imports"? I take the points you are making but we should call them what they are.
I'm generally for immigration as long as it's legal and the applications bring something to the country, and are willing to fully integrate into USA culture. Meaning they value what this nation stands for: personal freedom, self-determination and actualization, and personal accountability. Citizens above government bureaucrats.
I wonder though. These so-called third world shitholes: if we siphon off all of their talent how are we not just making the illegal immigration (invasion) problem worse? Why can't we help build up this talent in-place, making their country a desirable place to live, and even to relocate to?
This article seems highly-motivated by global corprotists who simply want to depress domestic wages and stripe-mine nations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @07:32AM
I am calling the illegal immigrants imports because we could stop them if we wanted to, but there are interested forces in this country that harbor and employ them.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @05:42PM
yes, american kids are trained to be prisoners or consumerist slaves in "schools"/indoctrination centers while the "leaders" of the country purposely flood it with ignorant third world slaves, destroying any chance of the people recovering the nation politically. this is the obvious plan of the NWO that has been underway for decades now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @11:19PM
Lawl, whattup Kanye?
"As a black American, I fully support ending all immigration into the United States"
So illegal immigration is A-OK? H1B visas are great? You're so full of shit, most likely another liar trying to sway opinion through identity. Your post is riddled with supposition, opinion, and bad facts.
I'm not surprised to see you modded up, you basically just hit all the emotional buttons of the conservative crew here.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:23AM
First, President Trump came posting here, now we have Ben Carson. Good.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Shire on Friday November 30 2018, @03:39PM (25 children)
The gist of this article is not so much that America would flounder without immigrants, it's that LEGAL MERIT BASED immigration is what helps drive the global tech industry. There are American scientists and engineers who work overseas as well - there's a constant exchange of highly skilled workers around the world.
On the flip side, ILLEGAL UNSKILLED immigrants are a massive burden on the US.
This is a great opinion piece in support of significant immigration reform moving the US towards a strictly merit based immigration system.
That being said, why are we seeing a constant stream of OPINION pieces on Soylent NEWS. Opinion != News
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Whoever on Friday November 30 2018, @03:54PM (19 children)
Do you actually have any citation to support that assertion? Or is it more xenophobic bullshit?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:17PM
Phobia inituates some sort of irrational fear. I assure you we are neither affraid, nor are our concerns irrational.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Shire on Friday November 30 2018, @04:19PM (13 children)
You mean things like this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2018/02/26/how-american-citizens-finance-health-care-for-undocumented-immigrants/ [forbes.com]
I know whipping out the nazi|xenophobe|racist terms are the favored retort, but the facts are that the vast majority of ILLEGAL immigrants come here to take advantage of our lax welfare system. I have yet to meet anyone who opposed LEGAL immigration. Why is it some people have so much trouble differentiating between the two?
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 30 2018, @07:01PM (3 children)
I have yet to meet anyone who opposed LEGAL immigration.
Applying to asylum/refugee status is not a crime. But Fox News and the entire Trump admin are very much opposed to it.
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Friday November 30 2018, @09:08PM (2 children)
If they really came en-masse to apply for assylum then why didn't they take it when the Mexican government offered it. I'll tell you why, because they dont need asylum, they just want to latch on to our welfare system for a free ride.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @10:11PM
It seems many of them did:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/11/13/migrant-caravan-some-border-most-mexico-far-us/1992059002/ [usatoday.com]
But is it really the welfare, or the fact that Mexico has its own trouble with drug lords?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @04:20PM
can we stick with why Trump hasn't prevented HCL and other H1B abuser companies from replacing so many of the people that could be at least employed? my company laid off a few hundred people after telling them that agile devops would make life easier, just cross train these people so you can then be freed up to learn your new responsibilities.
none of those IT workers probably give a shit about unskilled laborers making food cheaper right now. they have problems enough buying food and probably would be upset if the prices went up.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Friday November 30 2018, @09:52PM (6 children)
I like how that Forbes assessment conveniently leaves out the fact that a huge number of undocumented workers get income tax withheld from their pay but never even get their refund back because obviously they can't, and how we keep all that. We can assume the rest of that opinion piece is just as reliable.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday November 30 2018, @10:43PM
Plus, there is the bogus inclusion in the calculation of taxes that are not paid because hospitals are non-profits. If no illegal immigrants used the hospital facilities, there would be no additional revenue on which taxes would be due.
That article is written for consumption by uncritical supporters of Republican talking points. In other words: "Useful idiots"!
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Shire on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:03AM (4 children)
I like how you conveniently leave out the fact that we ALL pay income tax but we don't all get free health care. Or that our income tax pays for their health care but not for our own. How does that fit in your little narrative?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by digitalaudiorock on Saturday December 01 2018, @02:28AM (1 child)
...and you think that immigration is the cause of that situation?? I'll just leave it with this, as it's hard to top:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=28723&page=1&cid=765795 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by The Shire on Saturday December 01 2018, @05:02AM
That post is among the most naive I've ever read. If you think humanity can be grouped together into one giant homogeneous "Our Kind - HumanKind" all holding hands singing kumbaya together then you're out of your tiny little mind. The fact is people ARE different from one and another. Some are intelligent, some not so much. Some are dexterous, some not so much. Some are strong, some are weak, some are handicapped. There are personality types which are completely incompatible with other personality types. You can't pool all these people together, they are inherently different - not by race or skin color or creed, but by characters and skill and merit for a particular task or field.
I get so sick of this PC crap about how we're all equal - well we're not. We have equal RIGHTS but we are not all equal in ability. It should be horribly obvious to anyone who cares to look around themselves that people are not all the same. And if that offends you then good - be offended. It's healthy to be offended. It stimulates you to improve yourself. This bull about everyone being the same and deserving to be treated the same is just that, bull. If you have a brilliant mind or a desirable skill then you deserve to be treated with respect. If you're an utter useless moron then you deserve none. And god knows there are plenty of the latter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @04:57AM (1 child)
Fits by showing "The Shire" needs a scouring, since it has been taken over by the remnant forces of Mordor and stupid. So tell us again why Obamacare is pure evil socialism that will make us all into illegal Central American immigrants who get health care, education, food clothing and housing, and the prospect of a productive and happy existence! That's how it fits!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 02 2018, @05:37AM
Who better to scour The Shire than orcs? [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @07:51PM
Here is an example of someone who doesn't want 'legal immigrants', or more correctly, wants the law to change to make what is legal today to no longer be legal: https://youtu.be/ygVX1z6tDGI?t=780 [youtu.be]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @01:20AM
No, they do not. They are illegal, so they cannot. Instead they work for sub-legal wages for dodgy Republicans who threaten them with deportation if they try to stand up for their human rights. What you have asserted here is wrong, in error, not correct, false, and completely untrue. If you have asserted this knowingly, you are a liar, a mendacious twit, a racist and probably a Nazi, but at least a Republican. I suggest you stop being so afraid, stress shortens your life, lowers your IQ, and can cause your dick to fall off.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Friday November 30 2018, @05:49PM
How about the lowest minority unemployment in history, correlated with a much lower rate of illegal immigration? With less illegal foreign labor, it leaves jobs available for unskilled American labor. Clearly, those are NOT jobs that no American would do.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:39AM
> Do you actually have any citation to support that assertion?
- i spilled wine on the pants, they are stained
- do you actually have any citation to support that consequence? Or are you some winephobe?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:58AM (1 child)
How about we discuss the rampant xenophilia that you seem to have? Why are so many people so concerned about all the people of the world except their own people?
Is it a lust for someone to feel superior to? Do you get off sexually on lording it over other people, and since your fellow countrymen generally won't let you lord it over them, you have to illegally import people in to control? Does your inner commissar delight in ordering people about, perhaps even using them for physical pleasure, since they don't dare go to the police to report you for your crimes?
Inside every liberal is someone who wants to rape brown people, hence the eternal call for more immigration to supply you more victims.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @05:21AM
You mistake American values of justice and fairness for something else. It not that we care about others in the world more than "our people", whatever that is supposed to mean. It is just that we do not like racist xenophobic bastards like you, and especially you. Log in an use your real username so we can punch you in the face, you goddamned Nazi!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:15PM
imo, it's enough to be pro-enforcment of the laws, because, having gone through the process, you need to have merit to get in.
but hey, its easy to make a stink about immigration while nothing is/has been done about financial fraud. the way i see it its the locust capitalism that caused the middle-class annihilation and lawlessness, not some random group of sick poor bastards with or without criminal intent.
even the idea that immigration is an important issue is nuts imo when you compare it to the decrepit extortionary monopolist health system and the unprosecuted mess of financial crimes still lingering from '08.
i could say that the discourse is entirely manufactured.. but then i might offend your sensibilities by speaking from first hand knowledge of the reality of how these things are done. .. do like the romans .. follow the money and ask 'qui bono' from direction your attention this way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 30 2018, @05:09PM
Perception is all there is. Nothing new about the fact that many (most?) people regard opinions as not only news, but often fact.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday November 30 2018, @06:40PM (2 children)
If we were going to have merit-based immigration, the first thing we should do is eliminate country-by-country quotas and replace them with a worldwide selection system. The US does not do that, and none of the people who are making immigration a key political issue have proposed doing that.
As for the people you're calling "unskilled" illegal immigrants: There are no jobs without some kind of skill. For instance, the illegal farm workers that are used throughout the agriculture industry definitely have the skills needed to do those jobs well, or they would be replaced. And if you don't believe me that there's skill involved, try to do one of those jobs.
The thing that doesn't make much sense to me, though, is all the hate directed at desperate people coming to the US because they'd like to make enough money to live and also would like to not be shot at. If you want to hate someone, hate the people that already have plenty of money but are preferring to hire those desperate people rather than the desperate people who are already here.
And if you want to end illegal immigration, here's how you do it: Punish the heck out of people who hire them. Hefty fines to meat packing plants, hotel chains, au pair agencies, etc. Take away the incentives, the illegal immigrants will stop coming.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Shire on Friday November 30 2018, @09:14PM (1 child)
Illegal immigrants are responsible for driving down the wages paid to farm workers. If you want to impose that $15/hr minimum wage for the work they're doing I guarantee you tons of real Americans will be more than happy to do the work.
I would love nothing more than to see a significant crack down on any company who hires illegals. I think that would make for an awesome start. But many of these people aren't even working, they're sucking up welfare and free medical care that most real Americans can't even qualify for. They're leeches.
Meanwhile, LEGAL immigrants are working hard within the system and ironically have fewer options than those illegals who undercut them. It's completely topsy turvy.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 01 2018, @07:17AM
Up here in Canada, we have to import foreign farm workers, mostly from Central America, fly them in, pay them $15+ an hour, give them housing, and fly them back at the end of the season due to Canadians refusing to do the work for $15 an hour. I think you'll find the same down there, at that didn't Georgia or somewhere get rid of all the illegal farm workers and was left with crops rotting in the fields?
It's shitty hard work, which takes certain skills to do well. I tried it a bit when I was young. It was contract then and I made about $10 a day while the Central Americans and E Indians were making over $50 a day, at a time when minimum wage was about $4 an hour.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday November 30 2018, @03:55PM (5 children)
it's new thoughts and ideas that make things better? Breaking people out of the "this is how I think and how I think is right...the world IS flat!" ways.
Sometimes new blood can change an organisation for the better.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Shire on Friday November 30 2018, @04:22PM (4 children)
Perhaps if the PC culture weren't so stifling to opposing thoughts, the nation as a whole would be better off.
Intelligent discourse involves offending and being offended by alternative ideas.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 30 2018, @06:14PM (3 children)
Perhaps if the PC culture weren't so stifling to opposing thoughts, the nation as a whole would be better off.
Except, the world actually is not flat. It's not "PC" to point that out.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Shire on Friday November 30 2018, @09:17PM (1 child)
That's a completely nonsensical response. No one is claiming the world is flat. But a large group of people seem to believe that everyone who thinks differently than they do must automatically be a nazi|racist|misogynist|supremacist and if you oppose them they will lynch you. This authoritarian PC group represents the very monsters they claim to hate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @10:30PM
What stupid paranoid rambling.
There are some very specific things that will get you bombarded by the PC crowd and often a heart felt apology goes a long way to escaping the METAPHORICAL lynching. Unlike with racists where you will get ACTUALLY beaten/lynched/killed for simply existing.
Yeah, I'm crying a river over here for your problems.
And you types wonder why we look down on you as bigoted assholes. Well wonder no more!!
Maybe you yourself are not a racist and might even be a decent person, but this ridiculous whinging about non-problems while other groups have real problems makes you complicit in the on going racism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @09:28PM
And biological males are not females either, but the irrational backlash directed at anyone who publicly points out that out simple non-"PC" fact is appalling.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 30 2018, @04:29PM
The whole thing is about saving money. Good enough workers at a low low price. The rest is just baloney. Also, saying they are the "best and brightest" is highly misleading. Perhaps they are the best where they come from, perhaps, but I have not seen much excellence. Maybe this comes along with the situation of being held hostage to a visa and culture shocked in a different county; I always wondered if the shoe were on the other foot what would happen. As always, the best of the best are a pleasure to work with, but those too few and far between, and on the whole I wouldn't hire them except as a matter of price point.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheFool on Friday November 30 2018, @05:06PM (5 children)
Like many writers, this one seems to be confusing "the USA" with "some regions of the USA". Unless you are a believer in trickle down economics, they are not the same thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday November 30 2018, @05:47PM (4 children)
And if any of you are believers in trickle down economics, I wish to make sure you understand the dynamics completely. In order to help with that, I present this visual aid [flickr.com].
The underpinnings for many who make the argument that importing skilled labor has helped the US is that the importing of skilled individuals provides us with skills we don't already have in our citizenry. This is highly dubious (in fact, so much so, that without specific data to prove it, I can't take it seriously.)
What it does do is:
If business here actually needed US workers with the appropriate skillsets, they'd be a lot more willing to go after them than they are now. The constant influx of skilled workers from external sources eases that pressure on the businesses.
And that is why I'm a lot more concerned about legal immigration policy than illegal immigration policy.
TL;DR: Legal immigration WRT tech jobs is bad, mkay?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday November 30 2018, @06:51PM (3 children)
I usually call it "tinkle-down economics": It seems totally fine for the people on top, but the rest of us are just getting pissed on.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by TheFool on Friday November 30 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
In the rural parts of the country there isn't even any tinkling down. The people at the top may be tinkling on the street corners near their employment centers, but we don't even get that. Instead we get some a few bizarre dehydration machines parked over us, slowly turning all our businesses and wallets into dry husks. A few of us figure out how to avoid that fate, but most don't. At this point, many of us would gladly drink piss if it was offered - it is at least something.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday November 30 2018, @08:23PM
I've been a city mouse, and now am a country mouse. And I can assure you that the system sucks plenty for both of them. Urban decay and rural decay look different, but both of them are set up so that, as you say, most people gladly drink piss if it's offered, because it's better than nothing.
The whole "cities are great, the rural areas are the ones in shambles" versus "the rural areas are great, the cities are in shambles" debate exists to keep the people in rural areas and cities from recognizing that they're only in shambles because they're being robbed wholesale by a relatively tiny number of people who have been making out like bandits. Oh, and don't think you can vote your way out of this problem, either, because the relatively tiny number of people have control over both major parties, and everybody with power gladly works together to make damn sure those two parties are the only ones with a chance of winning.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @07:00AM
Very clever. Did you think of that yourself? Did you also think of piddledown and reject it, or did you not even think of it. You sound like a very clever individual with a bright future of thinking of things.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday November 30 2018, @09:07PM
Well yeah. Who else would we have to push the technological edge of ... uh ... not using all parts of the buffalo?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @01:06AM (2 children)
I don't want neighbors who want me dead because I'm an infidel. I don't want real no-bullshit actual rape culture. I don't want to be surrounded by people speaking in foreign tongues. I don't want people from failed nations who will vote for more of the same dumb policy that made those nations fail.
That trumps all the rest.
I think we can do pretty well anyway, but if not, oh well. Diversity brings conflict, normally including lots of violence. Diversity is not strength; it is weakness. Even I, an atheist, can see that the story about the Tower of Babel is damn right.
Not that the economic arguments are good (labor prices do get pushed down, despite globalist lies to the contrary) but that just doesn't matter if I feel like a stranger in my own country. When I wake to some foreign blabbering from loudspeakers on a tower, and then see women dressed like ninjas following behind men in gowns, I know that this isn't my home. These people won't be nice to me when I'm in a nursing home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @02:55AM (1 child)
As an atheist myself, I am concerned by any religious flavor that dictates a particular manner of dress or grooming. The fact is, if you let your religion dictate your fashion, you take it way to seriously and are a danger to civil society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @07:03AM
https://ninaonstyle.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/ucarecdn.jpg [wordpress.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @01:26AM
I've spent half a century thinking about just what it is that constitutes leadership.
I first noticed this phenomenon when I was in junior high school, in PE, and later, in high school ROTC. People did not always take their lead from the person who was officially in charge. There was another dynamic at work.
Back in the 1980s there was a lot of research on monkeys and the term "alpha male" got bandied about. However, a bully is not a leader. They rarely CREATE. Bullies tend to excel at CONTROL. That is not leadership. So what is?
In Silicon Valley, for instance, I have noticed that when you have a team of fairly technical subject matter experts, smart enough and honest enough with themselves to admit that they do not know everything - a bunch of INTJs, basically - that they self-organize and tend to take their instructions from the person who knows the most. That focus may change with the nature of the task. There is no one "leader". There are no "followers". They operate by consensus. You see this dynamic at work in all good teams - there is no power or control, there are only skills and responsibilities.
Occasionally one gets testosterone-fuelled interactions between two wannabe alpha males and that tends to destroy the group, from which I infer, leaders are NOT testosterone-fuelled males. So what ARE leaders?
Here's my take on it.
REAL leaders are loners.
Real leaders are OUTLIERS. They prefer the fringes of society, where there is more room for exploration.
Real leaders are EXPLORERS.
Real leaders, out on the edge, see something interesting, and they start heading for it.
Everyone else watches them to see what will happen. Perhaps a few follow along, behind.
If they are successful, they will turn around and find everyone following them. "Why are you following me?" they will cry. They don't want to be leaders. They don't CALL themselves leaders. They want to be ALONE. Out on the fringe. Where there is room to explore.
THAT IS A LEADER. A leader is one who leads.
So if those are the REAL leaders, that everyone is REALLY following ... who are those other "leaders"?
Somewhere back in the crowd, close to the middle of the crowd, as far from the edges as they can get, there is another sort of person.
This person ALSO calls themselves a leader.
They like attention. They like to talk. They tend to be social. Which may be why they prefer to be in the middle of the crowd, where it is, only coincidentally, also the safest place to be.
They are, basically, herd animals. They possess a pack instinct. They understand how to herd other herd animals, like themselves.
They call this herding behavior, "leadership" ... and they describe themselves, as "leaders".
It is painfully obvious that they are NOT the leaders because one cannot lead a group from the CENTER of the herd - one can only lead a herd, from the EDGE. From the center of the herd, one cannot even see where one is going.
People not under such people's spell will more accurately describe such people as politicians, or worse.
Being a real leader involves taking risks. Silicon Valley doesn't take risks. Therefore, Silicon Valley has relinquished the leadership role to those whom WILL take risks.
The same can be said for the United States. The lawyers have taken over ... and everyone is more concerned about keeping their liability to a minimum, than they are in doing risky things like build supersonic trains or deep underwater submarine bases or hypersonic missiles or orbital space stations or Moon bases or missions to Mars or other star systems.
Also, Silicon Valley has crippled itself with a poisonous philosophy that claims that one can have it cheap, AND fast, AND good ... if only one finds the right third world shithole to do the hard work, while the dot com assholes watch their stock split.
Obviously these morons know nothing about project management - see Project_management_triangle [wikipedia.org] for details.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mr_mischief on Saturday December 01 2018, @02:26AM
tl/dr: Invest in education, research, and proximity of yourself and your business to an educational/industrial/investment cluster. That's what works in the US, and also in Europe and Asia.
Just from Bell Labs, since parted from AT&T through the Lucent spin-off and now part of Nokia, we got transistors, lasers, packet switched networks, Unix, C, p-n junction PV cells, DSPs, communication satellites, radio astronomy, lightwave communications, laser cooling and trapping of atoms, CCD sensors, the electrical relay digital computer, information theory, PCM encoding, wave/particle duality of photons, and a whole lot more.
Fairchild, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Motorola, and more refined semiconductors, made integrated circuits part of everyday life, and went on to work with microprocessors first invented by Intel. Intel itself was founded by many senior staff who left Fairchild together. Some of these companies are out of the mainstream microprocessor market, but still make all sorts of other integrated circuits. Intel and AMD have huge R&D budgets. So do any companies competing with them in chip design like IBM (US), ARM (UK), Apple (US), or Samsung (South Korea). So do any companies making the chips like Intel, TSMC (Taiwan), IBM (US), Global Foundries (US), Fujitsu (Japan).
Xerox invests heavily in R&D, with their own dedicated campus at Palo Alto. They invented Ethernet, laser printers, the GUI, the mouse, WYSIWYG editors, class-based OOP, prototype-based OOP, and more. They contributed to work in LCD and optical disks.
It's the single largest industrial research group on Earth. As of 2013 the company held the record for most patents generated by a business for 22 consecutive years and its employees had garnered five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science. It's IBM Research. IBM invented many of the technologies used by computers, powering computers, and which use computers. How about your bank's ATM? Dynamic RAM, electronic keypunch, floppy disk. They also invented the fixed-head hard disk drive - in 1956 - and later the floating head drive. The magnetic stripe and reader, scanning tunneling microscope, UPC, virtual machines, time clocks, automated test scoring, relational databases, silicon-on-insulator fab technology, copper wiring within semiconductors. They brought us the venerable Fortran. They do all this through a whole branch of the company which includes 12 research institutes and gets 6% of corporate revenue.
From MIT and alumni we got the world wide web (WWW), GPS, Doppler radar, safety razors, wind tunnels, nuclear fission, the microprocessor (Noyce of Intel graduated MIT), refined petroleum, the genetic link to cancer, air conditioned buildings, the computer spreadsheet (Bricklin is an alum), E-ink, electronic mail, The Human Genome Project, PET scans, and some formalized engineering discipline (electrical, aeronautical, nuclear). People from MIT have been directly involved in the founding of Boeing, Intel, HP, TSMC, Raytheon, Boston Dynamics, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Akamai, DEC, EMC, Gillette, Apollo Computer, Teradyne, 3Com, LinkedIn, Coursera, Khan Academy, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lisp Machines, Douglas Aircraft, Fairchild Semiconductor, KLH, and Thinking Machines. Also the Internet Archive and the EFF involved founders from MIT.
Harvard pioneered human organ transplants; the hydrogen maser; the pacemaker; the relationships among DNA, individual genes, and proteins they encode; synthetic hormones; the heart defibrillator; the understanding that radioactivity and electromagnetism are two manifestations of the same force; and mapped the mechanism by which blood vessels grow in tumors. Alumni gave us much more, including spreadsheets (Bricklin went to more than one school). Microsoft, Facebook, TSMC, Morgan Stanley, Textron, Baker Hughes, Electronic Arts, Viacom, Polaroid, Sun Microsystems, 3com, AirBnB, Cloudera, Valve, 3DO, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, BBN Technologies, FitBit, Yelp, Zynga, Broderbund, Cognizent, Computervision, Intuit, O'Reilly Media, and Software Arts were among the companies to come from Harvard alumni.
Carnegie Mellon gave us artificial intelligence, the precursor technology to WiFi (Wireless Andrew), autonomous cars, and the Mach kernel. They have given us the Alice and Bliss languages and an alum gave us Java. An alum gave us emoticons, and another CAPTCHA. Alumni have founded or cofounded Adobe Systems, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Xerox PARC, Activision, Juniper Networks, and DuoLingo.
Stanford and their people have given us antibody therapy, FM sound synth, DSL, the optical fiber signal amplifier, recombinant DNA testing, the diagnostic test for TB, refocus photography, and bioplastics from municipal waste. Their alumni and past faculty have founded or cofounded Google, Cisco Systems, Dolby Laboratories, eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Instagram, Intuit, LinkedIn, Logitech, MIPS Technologies, Netflix, Nike, NVIDIA, Orbitz, Rambus, SGI, Sun Microsystems, TSMC, Tesla, VMWare, Yahoo!, and Zillow among other companies.
UC Berkeley and their people discovered vitamins E and K. They developed the cyclotron. They brought us nuclear medicine. They developed the flu vaccine. Together with IBM, they gave us RISC with an ARPA grant. They pushed AT&T Unix into something more modern and usable. In fact, some aspects of Unix were based on Project Genie from when Ken Thompson worked on that university project. They discovered the first cancer-linked gene. They discovered telomerase and developed CRISPR. We got from them BSD, vi, Tcl, and the GIMP. They have discovered 16 periodic elements, carcinogens, covalent bonds, and the molecular clock. Folks from here went on to found or cofound Apple, Softbank, Sun Microsystems, Intel, eBay, HTC, Mozilla, SanDisk, Marvell, Tesla, and VMWare.
UCLA regularly leads all universities in the country in new patent awards. It leads #2 UC San Diego and #3 UC Berkeley this year. They actually have an organization called the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property & Industry Sponsored Research. Vint Cerf went there, for you Internet folks. Alonzo Church of the Church Thesis and lambda calculus for you functional programming folks. Asad Ali Abidi gave us CMOS RF circuits, for you software defined radio people. Turing Award laureate Judea Pearl brought us Bayesian networks and probabilistic AI. Gottlieb was the first to diagnose AIDS.
USC alumni include Neil Armstrong. There's also George Lucas, founder of Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic, and Skywalker Sound. Thomas Knoll gave us PhotoShop. Fred Cohen gave us computer antivirus (and among the first computer viruses). Rangaswamy Srinivasan while at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center gave us LASIK. William Wang founded Vizio. Tomlinson Holman while at the school gave us THX, at the request of George Lucas.
Alan Kay gave us Smalltalk; the Dynabook precursor to laptops, tablets, and e-readers; Tweak; a big influence on Squeak; and the overlapping window GUI. He attended Bethany College and the University of Utah. He was a professor at Utah and at UCLA. He's also worked at high levels within Atari, Xerox PARC, Apple, Disney Imagineering, and the HP Advanced Software Research Team. He founded Viewpoints Research Institute largely on a grant from the US National Science Foundation.
Most of the schools mentioned, along with others and several private companies, were involved with the ARPA-funded invention and NSF-funded growth of what is now the Internet.
Notice that Harvard, MIT, Boston College, and Boston University are in the same basic metro area. UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC San Francisco, San Francisco State U, Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, San Jose State University, and many more schools are near one another around the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley. LA and San Diego and larger southern California area has UCLA, Cal Tech, Cal Poly Pomona, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Pepperdine U, and USC. Princeton, Bell Labs, and IBM are near one another. As are all the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay area companies and their schools. And all the tech startups in Boston and Cambridge are near that cluster of one another and those schools.
Farm tech and health tech often enough come from the University of Wisconsin, which has something called the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to connect people from the school with one another and businesses. WARF filed and won a half billion dollar patent suit against Apple, too, in case you need electronic tech.
Houston looks interesting. There's a medical center district. There's all the oil and gas companies with their tech. There's Rice University, University of Houston, and it's not far from Texas A&M. There are also TSU, a trio of strong community college systems, Baylor's college of medicine, UT Health, the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of St. Thomas. It's not terribly far from UT Austin or the main Baylor campus, nor Prairie View A&M, Stephen F. Austin, and Sam Houston State U. UT is discussing opening more than their health campus, adding a UT Houston to the University of Texas system.
Dallas, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Seattle, Baltimore, Arlington, Salt Lake City, Kansas City, and a bunch of other US metropolitan areas have the qualities to put them close to this sort of clustering effect just like Houston. Some of them already experience it to a lesser degree than the Valley, Seattle, and New York. A few right moves and it'd be off to the races.
Silicon Valley invented modern venture capital investment. Watch "Something Ventured" on Netflix. The US also had, until 2013, a different patent system than most of the world. It was tilted in favor of rapid invention, being a first to invent country rather than a first to file model. That is no longer the case, but the advantages are still felt.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @03:15AM
I have several conflicting opinions on this. I believe we should import skilled workers, not as temporary workers, but with a direct straight-line path to citizenship. Skilled people willing to uproot and move halfway around the world to do technical work have a benefit to their new home. That said, basic economics says that increasing the supply of technical workers will decrease the cost (wages) of those workers.
Balancing wage suppression vs. the benefits of importing useful brains is not easy, and we're not doing a great job of it today. I've seen first hand abuse of the H1B system. I saw the (mandatory law required) Tata H1-B disclosure for two positions for the job I was doing. It paid $15,000 (25%) less than what I was making for the same job description. I reported it to the department of labor. The response was to move the (mandatory law required) disclosures into the HR office where we couldn't see them any more. Our allotments were filled. One of the guys was great, the other wasn't. Both were worth more than $45k/year with three years of experience doing basic software dev work in Atlanta in 2011.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Saturday December 01 2018, @09:14AM
The people who were behind the technology that launched companies like Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Apple Computer, IBM, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Origin Systems International, Cisco, etc. were overwhelmingly of European descent, and the vast majority of them were born in the US. (Many did have parents or grandparents who had immigrated here legally and assimilated as rapidly as they could.) The vast majority of their skilled employees up into the 1990s were also Americans. They eventually moved the manufacturing process outside the country to save money, but those jobs had been performed by regular Americans before that point.
Advocating for legal immigration is fine, but BSing about history to do so isn't going to do the cause any favors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @11:51AM (1 child)
Take back your country
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday December 02 2018, @05:27AM
"America! Love it or give it back!"
"Homeland Security. Fighting Terrorism since 1492."
Crazy Wašícu.