It’s the same culture that sends tidal waves of students to American universities to earn Ph.Ds, and because of our piss-poor immigration system, most of them have to go back home with all of that valuable education and use it in China or India or wherever instead of the USA.
Just my personal anecdote but a vast majority of the Chinese students I've known do not want to stay after their degree. A couple have rattled off the statistics on the huge advantage they have in the job market back home with a degree from the US.
Not that I'm arguing against immigration reform, though. Just playing devil's advocate.
The U.S. helps to educate and provide opportunity to people, regardless of national origin - regardless of the arbitrary, invisible lines on a map, drawn by the powerful, in which they were born. Partly as a result, the greatest economic miracle in history has occurred since WWII (and especially since the end of the Cold War), with hundreds of millions of people pulled from millennia of hopeless, abject poverty.
Another great result is that U.S. businesses now have enormous markets in China and India in which to sell, vendors from which to buy, and more talented employees which to hire. China and India are the top two markets in the world for many products, including cell phones IIRC. Imagine the impact on the bottom line of SV companies if they went away. A smart businessperson wants other businesses to do well; they want rich, successful neighbors; otherwise, who do they sell to? Who do they hire? Who provides goods and services to them?
Yet another result is that those people are familiar with the United States and its values, and can bring them home. Wars start because political leaders can propagandize about how evil the <other people> are, which is hard to do with populations that have direct experience with each other. And the values of democracy and universal human rights (i.e., regardless of political borders) have revolutionized humanity.
And finally, due to immigrants the U.S. has become the academic center of the world. You may notice that much of the great scientific work before WWII was done in Europe, but then nationalism and ideology in Europe chased out their great scientists, who emigrated to the U.S. English become the language of science. The halls of U.S. academia have been filled with immigrants since then. If the center of knowledge and research moved someplace else, the U.S. will have lost what has really become an enormous, and really an unfair benefit. How much does SV benefit from all that research, talent, and knowledge at Stanford and Berkley?
So I want more immigration, more opportunity for more people. How absurd that people with the talent and drive to get PhDs would never have had the opportunity. If the U.S. has to build more universities, that's great.
I'm mostly with everything but the second half of your first sentence here, but unfortunately that embeds such a huge misconception that the net value of your comment could very well be negative unless you acknowledge and clarify/correct this.
The boundaries of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. are "arbitrary [and] invisible" to some extent, and obviously drawn by the powerful. But "the current set of lines are arbitrary and clearly not the only possible solution" does not imply that "no lines is a better solution"; indeed, the latter has only been empirically true when there are preexisting strong and stable force(s) which perform enough of the function of explicit admission criteria to render the latter unnecessary. In real life, you find formerly-exceptional institutions which quickly and irreversibly declined to a lower level after switching to the open admissions policy that your phrasing advocates for (consider the City College of New York in the 30s-60s vs. afterward).
Instead, the most impressive results in both hiring and immigration policy have combined race/nation-blindness with a distinct lack of blindness to other criteria which really do matter. You cannot do the latter (and perhaps more importantly, properly incentivize cultivation of the relevant personal and institutional qualities across the world) without maintaining some "arbitrary, invisible" lines across at least a multi-decade timescale.
So, more immigration and education of foreign students? I'm totally fine with that, for both national and universalist reasons. (This is particularly clear for India, which is a natural US ally. None of the 'frenemy' complications we have with China; I WANT Indians to 'steal' more of our tech!) But only on the right terms, which are not being offered by anyone using the language you're currently using in the second half of your first sentence. I suggest that you explicitly distance yourself from those people if you want the rest of your comment to be heeded by anyone outside your tribe.
> This is particularly clear for India, which is a natural US ally.
India has only become a natural US ally fairly recently... And largely due to the 'frenemy' status that the US has with China. (Which in itself is a consequence of the 'frenemy' status that the USSR had with China... It's turtles all the way down.)
Through much of the Cold War, US-India relationships were very, very cool. Instead, they had good relations with Russia, while the US had good relations with Pakistan.
There's nothing 'natural' about nation-state alignment. It's all political, and politics is capricious.
I agree that "India and the US are natural allies" is not the kind of statement that has a multi-century shelf life, for the reasons you describe.
However, I claim that it can be expected to be sufficiently true for the next several decades, to the point that continued rapid development of India should not only be something the US doesn't have a problem with, it should be an explicit strategic goal of 21st century US foreign policy. It's not every day that self-interest and humanitarianism align so well on a matter of such importance; it would be a pity if the opportunity was not taken.
What has made the past 50 years so peaceful (amongst the big powers, at least) is that nations that share values have aligned. France and Germany and the US and Australia share a philosophy of governance, not just a short term realpolitik goal. (Of course sharing a language helps too: Canada, UK, US, Aus, NZ are tight for that reason in good part)
(And also don't forget Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and almost all of Latin America among the liberal democratic governments, and Turkey until recently.)
But I think the emphasis on values is unfortunately not true. The parent overlooks all the right-wing dictatorships that the U.S. allied with, from Indonesia under Suharto to Iran (under the Shah) to Iraq under Saddam Hussein (when Iran turned against the US) in the 1980s to Chile under Pinochet to the junta in Greece to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Mobutu in Zaire/Congo to Central American dictators to many more on every continent.
And today, right-wing dictatorships are arising among NATO allies, but I haven't heard a word about ejecting them from the alliance.
I'm not interested in your advice but I'm happy talk about the issues. That said, I'm not sure what you're saying or what you think I said.
Immigration is, I believe, a human right. It's liberty - liberty to travel, to make the most of yourself, and it's opportunity. People should be free to make the most of themselves. It's also economic freedom, which generally yields more productive economies for all.
For practical reasons, mostly to prevent the economic shocks of mass migrations, it needs to be somewhat limited and controlled. But I want the poorest, most oppressed people coming to my country; they are the ones who need freedom the most - the most marginal social and economic gain. I'm completely confident that they and their children will thrive and make my country better. And for practical and moral reasons, I'd like more diversity; the sooner we can do away with the dominance of any ethnic group, the sooner we can be rid of their BS bigotry, which is a drain on us all. (Imagine, for a moment, the world without bigots - so many problems solved.)
Exit makes sense as a human right. This is true across many levels of organization: you are free to quit your job, drop out of school, even emancipate yourself from your family after a certain age, and it's widely recognized that protecting the freedom to do these things improves collective outcomes.
A corollary is that you should be allowed to join organizations that want you.
But entry to any organization, regardless of whether they want you or not? In a world where Google has to hire everyone who applies, or Stanford has to admit everyone, or families have to house and feed anyone who shows up at their doorstep even when they don't want to, you no longer have a Google or a Stanford or a family functioning anywhere close to its current level. "Entry to anywhere as a human right" is an idea which may be initially attractive due to its simplicity, but the only people I know who stick with it after further thought appear more interested in harming groups of people they don't like than trying to lift up everyone.
And as a practical matter, for all of its flaws, the US has nevertheless done more than any other country over the last 7 decades to enforce a right of exit across most of the globe. A more diverse and stronger US would be an improvement, yes, and I'm pretty sure Canada/Australia-style immigration policy will get us there. But there are ways to become more diverse and weaker, too; and importantly, in that world, bigotry is even further from being solved, because the probable leading superpower is a more bigoted, monoracial China. (In contrast, when the City College of New York ceased to be a top-tier institution, the damage was fortunately limited to just itself; other top universities had ended anti-Jewish admissions practices some years earlier.) You seem completely blind to this danger.
Private business was just one of several examples I gave to illustrate principles which hold across a wide range of scales of human organization.
It is straightforward to verify that they don't stop holding at nation-scale. A good place to start is Lee Kuan Yew, who's both one of the only leaders in history to preside over the entire transition from Third World to First World for millions of people, and an architect of what's currently the most open immigration policy among Chinese-majority states. Singapore is a multicultural place whose government is widely acknowledged to have one of the best technocratic track records in the world, and they spent considerable effort on trying to get immigration policy right, iterating through alternatives while deliberately taking a popularity hit; what were their conclusions?
Or what are the odds, under your stated worldview, that two of the closest things to actual open borders existing in 2018 are
(i) the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which lets almost anyone stay as long as they can support themselves ...but ranges from 74 to 81 degrees N latitude, and
(ii) the United Arab Emirates, which has more than five times as many expats as actual citizens, the largest number from India ...but ruthlessly maintains a two-tiered society, where even people who were born in the UAE and have lived there their entire lives are exceedingly unlikely to be granted citizenship unless they are Arab?
Contrary to claims that nothing like open borders has ever been tried, the existence of cases like this make it abundantly clear that this area of policy space has already been subject to substantial exploration. And every surviving result has an obvious and unusual force that does something similar to what traditional immigration controls accomplish in most countries, such as Svalbard's -40C winters. This is, to put it mildly, not a likely result if traditional immigration controls no longer have a useful function.
Academic immigrants these days are also potentially undercutting/warping expectations about labor in academic labs. 36k (for grad students) or 50k (for postdocs) are hardly acceptable salaries from an American perspective, but to folks from India and China those salaries are fortunes relatively speaking. To Indians/Chinese a 70 hour work week for that money might be worth it.
Contrast this to past academic immigration in the 40s that you refer to, where immigrants were from countries with similar sensibilities and levels of development (primarily German Jews).
I don't think that this necessarily invalidates your points, but it's worth pointing out that there are economic consequences when larger slices of the PhD candidates out there are from developing nations instead of other developed nations.
> immigrants were from countries with similar sensibilities
People in the U.S. have been complaining about the 'values' and 'sensibilities' of the new immigrants since Benjamin Franklin would go off about Germans. Then of course it was Irish, the Italians, etc. etc. Older generations of Central European Jewish people even complained about the Eastern European Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Of course, for most Americans, those people with the 'wrong values' and 'foreign sensibilities' are your ancestors.
Human beings have their own sensibilities as individuals, not those of some country or ethnicity - people in my own family don't even share those things. I'm sure the parent would not want to be told what they will think and what they will do based on where they were born; that they can't determine their own character; it's absurd. And the truth is that when you give them liberty and opportunity, they thrive and share those same universal values. The track record is undeniable.
So please let's not make the same mistake again. The sensibilities of 1930s Germany? Italy? Egads. Though I guess they also discriminated based on nationalism and ethnicity.
It's a happy, wonderful thing: Let's believe in people, give them freedom and opportunity, and everyone thrives.
Or maybe the sensibilities of early 20th century Europe, which was friendlier towards socialist, pro-labor policies than both modern India and China (people tend to forget that the SPD existed before Hitler).
I know it's a hot-button issue, but I'm not anti-immigration and you're preaching at the wrong person. I will strongly disagree with your somewhat extreme belief that sensibilities are purely individual; having lived two separate countries, with two separate languages and cultures, it's a bit quixotic to claim that cultural and other environmental factors are irrelevant, and cultural universals are notoriously difficult to pin down.
These are the sensibilities that led to the two worst wars in world history, that gave birth to both Nazism (and other fascists) and Bolshevik totalitarian Communism, that produced millions of people (in Germany, Russia, Eastern European countries, France, and more) who participated in or stood by while tens of millions were murdered in German-controlled territory and were starved in Ukraine?
All those people were the products of the 'sensibilities' of early 20th century Europe. By the standards of some, the U.S. should never have let any emigrate.
> I can't believe what I've read in this sub-thread.
Human naturally follow the norms around them. It's how they choose their clothes, their music, their phones, and unfortunately, their politics. If they see other people saying these things, they will think it's acceptable; if they see lots of other people saying them, they will think it's the norm and join in.
> Thanks for sticking up for liberty and opportunity
First, I want to make clear that I'm nothing special. Second, I'm going to be an a-hole for a moment and quote a line from a song I heard from a frustrated advocate:
It's nice that you listen; it would be nicer if you joined in.
It's critical that everyone speak up. Imagine that nobody responded in this thread; think of the impression that would leave for readers - these prejudices are an unchallenged, widespread belief. Look at what it means for just one person to speak up. Now imagine two, or three. It's like bullying; one person speaking up can change things. Two do even more, and provide even more inspiration to the third and fourth and fifth people. It takes some nerve and courage for me, but never let these things pass; speak up; in social situations it can be tricky, but find polite ways to speak up. I have the privilege of safety; I'm not going to let some social pressure and natural human herd mentality stop me while people are suffering; people have suffered far more for liberty than that! People worry that there's nothing they can do, but in fact every single voice counts.
Your comment is excellent, and I agree with everything you say.
I will retort, however, that we Americans should not take our technological dominance for granted, just as a precious generation of carmakers and related industries had to learn what happens when foreign competitors (especially with government support) eat up domestic markets that companies like Ford and GM thought belonged to them forever.
I’m not suggesting that in 20 years Americans will do all their social networking on RenRen or shopping on Alibaba, but there are many, many high tech companies most people have never heard of, churning out profits and paying the taxes that support our society. The more talented, US-educated non-citizens we turn away after graduation, the harder it is for domestic high tech firms to form and hire.
And another thing to note: just because the rest of the world is getting wealthier doesn’t mean they’ll share our values. The biggest geopolitical fucky-wucky of the post-Cold War era was the assumption that Chinese people would demand more freedoms like we have in the West as their living standards approach ours.
China owns A LOT of Hollywood. How many big budget films these days criticize China or make them the bad guys? I grew up watching films that stamped “Russian” and “villain” as inseparable qualities in my impressionable, young American mind - at least until 9/11 happened and the Russians and Arabs changed jerseys.
The economic development of China has been nothing short of a miracle for the hundreds of millions of poor farmers lifted out of extreme poverty, but at what cost to us?
The correlation of the rise of Europe/US and the decline of China/India (55% of world gdp at the time) is directly tied to a massive amount of illegal drugs pumped by US/England/France into China for a 100 year period.
The reaction of a society to a forced drug epedemic will create 2nd and 3rd order effects (like a closed society) that are very easy to criticize today by people who are unaware of one of the largest poisonings in modern history (done by Roosevelts and Forbes family) ...but I digress.
The destructive civil war between 1927 to 1950 between the Kuomintang and the CCP had a big impact. So did the 1930s Japanese invasion.
Most damning of all, Mao's bad economic policies directly killed more than 35 million people, mostly through starvation. He killed more people than Stalin or Hitler.
But the CCP does not discuss these much. It's harder to accept that another 30 years of humiliation (from 1949 to 1979) was the leadership of China shooting itself in the foot.
Remember that second and third order effects are difficult to measure. EVERYTHING is first, second, third etc order effect of something that happened in the past. China's current growth can only occur in the post WW2 US world order that allows all nations to lift themselves out of poverty through trade.
For other readers: parent account is 10 months old with only 1 other comment. This is an indication of a 50 cent army member or at least someone who has been influenced by CCP propaganda, which has grains of truth but systematically exaggerates the influence of certain things.
It is though an interesting question to what China would be like if the Opium Wars never happened.
The secret treaty between President Roosevelt (relation of the leading drug pushers) and Japan, giving the Japanese permission to invade Korea/China in 1905 didn't help either.
Many historians believe reversal of this treaty caused Pearl Harbor and started WW2.
Quite embarassing for the Nobel Prize winning Roosevelts indeed.
Did not record password to 'asdfasdfklj' throwaway acc.
I agree that great power horse trading before and after WW1 has caused a lot of issues. A rules based world order is an improvement on that. I wish USA followed the rules and did not invade nations such as Iraq.
I forgot to mention relative GDP is a bad measure. Absolute GDP (on a log scale) is a much better measure. The relative GDP graph will falsely make it look like India and China declined far worse than they did around 200 years ago. The reason is the industrial revolutions, which separated population size from a nation's GDP (at least until recent globalization). One nation growing due to industrial revolution by itself does not make a stagnating non industrial economy weaker in absolute terms.
I think a large fraction of that relative decline would have happened even if there was not an absolute decline due to misdeeds of certain British and American people in the 1800s.
+1 for focus on values.
America itself would do well to refocus itself internally on its long-held values.
(To do that, it needs to fix the huge right-wing propaganda apparatus in America, beginning with right wing radio. You can’t understand modern America until you listen to Limbaugh for a few hours. But that’s another story. Americans have to start thinking again about what their values are.)
What is wrong with that? Some of them might not want to stay in the US. Also do you want the US to deprive all other countries of their smart people that might improve their own society also? Its not always us vs them.
See forapurpose’s excellent comment and my reply for the answers to most of your questions.
No, I don’t want to “deprive” other countries of the education their people get here. I work in higher education. I believe in the transformative power of education for everybody. But the American immigration system leaves talent on the table when people who really do want to stay in America are not given the option of a US green card stapled to their US diploma.
