I'm curious (1) how much of these people's education or experience was subsidized by the American economy and (2) how common the same situation is in China (i.e. US expats training up in China and taking that expertise back to the US).
If (1) and (2) aren't aligned, it could be one of the factors contributing to the growing sense that we pour a bunch of money into higher-ed without seeing much return.
I don't mean this from a US nationalist or political perspective - I'm merely speculating on the economics. Are the incentives for coming to the country aligned for both the person and the country? Many companies will pay for employees to go to grad-school but demand repayment if the employee isn't still with the company N years later. Would such a system for college/work visas make any sense to help keep talent?
In grad school I knew of several Singaporeans who had their tuition here in the US convered by the govt with repayment in form of returning to a govt job, which in Singapore is a highly prestigious job.
One of my biggest concerns with China - as a a European - is that Brussel allows Chinese companies to buy huge amounts of European IP(eg robots, automotives, AI) but the Chinese government, on the other hand, forbids (or makes it very difficult) that foreign companies buy Chinese IP. So its a one way road !
Luckily some government officials now realized that and are actively trying to combat Chinese acquisitions (eg German foreign minister), but its still a real danger. China essentially takes huge advantage of our openness and our liberal markets but does not return the favour...
My friends went back to China because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage. Why should intelligent hard working people put up with that? At a certain point dignity and a reliable future are more important than the chance at a higher salary. The more developed China becomes the less reason there is to put up with those hardships.
Grads are a large portion of the Chinese that work in SV.
Many of the Chinese who come to the states and pay for their education out of pocket couldn’t get into a good school back home and are going back after their education finishes. The others are rich, here for the experience, and will still go basic home because of their family expectations and connections.
As China becomes more developed, presumably the draw of going to the US to study will diminish (probably rapidly). If the US can't attract and retain top-talent from other countries, the US will fail to reap the benefits of a global economy.
Like, even if a daycare worker finds it easier to get a job with a college degree, are we better off as a society if more daycare workers have college degrees? I think not.
Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/international-enrollme...
I'd bet having a college degree is much more than a tie-breaker in most cases - it shows a level of work, discipline, and probable intelligence that is genuinely an advantage for most jobs.
(This is problematic because it also shows a huge set of advantages that the degree-holder has had. If somebody has enough advantages to have a degree and is applying for a daycare position, it might mean something is very wrong for this person and maybe it should tip the tie-breaker situation the other way!)
FWIW this is not my experience (GC holder, us educated, mixed south Asian origins). Not saying your friends are wrong, just saying it isn’t inherently unwelcoming, even these days.
I say that as someone who lived in the Bay area for almost a year and loved it. I had a great job, generated tons of wealth, got full-time offers with generous signing bonuses that I would have accepted in a heartbeat if it was not for the fact that not having a degree makes it impossible for me to get a visa.
The process would be a lot better for me if the work visa were simply allocated to the top N people in a priority queue where the weight of each entry is the salary.
Zurich, Toronto, and Montreal are my top choices now.
Unless you have family sponsoring you or $500k or $1m to invest, then there is no reliable path to permanent residence/green card. You are at the mercy of an opaque organization that answers to no one and also at the mercy of having an employer willing to take you on and jump through many hoops.
(It could be it was a subsidy-exchange between the university and a chinese institution but I didn't get that impression. It could have been a private party as well. In any case it was definitely a scholarship by a US institution - not sure if public or private.)
These friends were brilliant and couldn't have afforded to attend without it. However: last I heard, they have all since moved back to China and are doing quite well for themselves.
This is objectively good news for these people, but that scholarship money was effectively just given to China. There are ripple benefits that aren't so tangible (added diversity, the chance that they could have stayed, the impact they had while here, etc).
Overall it seems "fair" that scholarship money should be converted to a loan if the education isn't used long-term in the same economy as the scholarship.
I suspect that US actually profits off of foreign students, atleast thats what I've heard informally (since we have to pay much higher fees than natives), but I've never checked the fees to be honest.
In a profitable system, its a fair assumption that those who pay the most make atleast some contribution to profits right?
It's hard not to overlook the fact that a lot of would be immigrants make no effort to assimilate and cluster themselves off from mainstream society; especially in a immigrant welcoming area like Silicon Valley. I bet if you were to go to China/India etc., no one's going to go out of their way to accept you.
(BTW, I'm an Indian citizen on H1B and I'm saying this, you can downvote my post but it doesn't change ground realities)
Having a degree is a good indicator that you'll work hard and be disciplined. If I have to break a tie between two candidates, things that show levels of work/discipline/* will help me break the tie.
If you wish to become an American, I wish you all the best of luck (sorry for all the paperwork) and welcome you to our country with open arms.
What seems fair is to ban arbitrary "top-N" quotas. If you can get a job that pays you a living wage (such that you don't have to draw from subsidies), then you can stay without hassle. Tax forms generally give all the information needed to make this decision.
This is problematic. If you're a hard-working taxpayer who doesn't receive subsidies or cause a net negative on the economy, why do I care if you "assimilate" to my culture? In fact I'd rather you keep your culture proud and strong since it will make you happier and more productive. You may even encourage your hard-working friends to join you and make the economy even better.
("you" and "me" above are just rhetorical here...)
Instead of "assimilate", you can reframe your thinking to "be overall positive to the economy." I think that's what you intend but I could be wrong.
These scholarships were almost certainly awarded by the institution, not the federal government.
Also, what does assimilate mean in an American context? It’s not like America really has a strong well defined culture in the first place, it’s been like ever since the country was founded.
What exactly is the connection you are implying between the two?
China is far more unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency even if one is willing to marry for it. Unless you're very wealthy or famous, it just doesn't happen.
It's not easy to be an immigrant just about anywhere, but as closed as the US may seem, it's not even in the same league. The US grants more people green cards and citizenship each month than China has ever.
Please be careful about making generalizations based on race - they're generally incorrect/unprovable and rarely provide any value to a conversation. You can rephrase this to be "I've seen more Indians do better..."
I don't care about where waiver "should" be used as this is subjective, I'm merely talking about what's "fair" economically which is theoretically objective. If the US hands out "good job" money in the form of net-economy-negative subsidies, then it explains a lot of what's going on in higher education.
I wouldn't limit this to just internationals as well. If you get a huge subsidy to go to a US school and then leave the country it's the same situation even if you're a US citizen.
>> If you get a huge subsidy to go to a US school
The "US?" The school is the US? In the vast majority of cases, the institution hands out the waiver, not the government. Furthermore, international students are regularly charged a premium to attend.
If Microsoft pays me a huge salary, I learn a ton before contributing significantly back to private software industry, then quit and move to Canada, do I owe... taxpayers... Microsoft?... remuneration?
"I'm just asking questions"
per year. There are many many more than that on H-1B. Plus you have OPT and L1.
The bigger issue is being on an H-1B kind of sucks. If you get fired you're screwed. It's hard to maximize value because switching employers is a pain. You have people who accuse you constantly of being a low paid scrub stealing american jobs. You have the risk that the US government might pull the rug out from under you somehow.
Chinese and Indian people have to put up with this for years. Decades in the case of Indians.
> US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage.
From India and China (and a couple other places, to a lesser degree). If you were born in another country and get an H-1B (which is a pretty terrible system) you can get a green card in a couple years.
Why?
> if people decide to stay in the US they should try to assimilate
oh I see.
Apparently hte people who come to the US for school and try to live and work here right alongside you and me (white guy) aren't trying hard enough to assimilate.
> BTW, I'm an Indian citizen on H1B and I'm saying this
So? You're criticizing chinese people pretty explicitly. Don't try to hide behind your race.
Doesn't explain the "why" though.
I am not American, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the melting pot metaphor about taking people from different cultures and backgrounds and "melting" them together into one much more homogenous culture?
I'm sorry, I thought we based policy on what we thought was right and not what totalitarian regimes in other countries do.
Maybe try comparing to Canada or other comparable democracies instead.
No it's true for Indians too. I said "It's hard not to overlook the fact that a lot of would be immigrants make no effort to assimilate" which includes Indians too.
One of the most obvious things I saw different about Americans is their sense of individuality; you'd see a super conservative person living next to a hippie in peaceful co-existence (although these days the media would make you think otherwise).
As an example, I'm mostly vegetarian (for staying healthy, I'm atheist) but I do like the occasional steak. If I say to a fellow Indian (or naturalized Indian American) that I eat beef, I will be mostly ostracized (I'm assuming that this person is Hindu, which may not be the case). I personally don't care what anyone thinks about my personal choices, but this is an example of people not assimilating and accepting what is generally accepted American trait of "individuality".
This is still (probably) a draw from the US economy on net. Unless the institution is offsetting it somehow or is somehow not a part of the US economy.
> do I owe... taxpayers... Microsoft?... remuneration?
If Microsoft paid a lot to train you up and you leave before they get that value back, then they may want you to repay them.
That's generally not how things are done, but if the learn-and-run thing that this article talks about were to spread more into private industries, I can imagine private companies either paying less during the first N months or having minimum-term work-contracts with early-termination fees.
Current US admin seems to strongly prefer giving opportunities based on citizenship (which is arbitrary) rather than saying anybody who wants to work an economic-net-positive job can do so.
> whereas your alternative would just deprive upstanding americans from those jobs
My stance is to not treat 'american citizens' as being more (or less!) deserving of US jobs. Anybody who contributes to the economy in a positive way deserves the same opportunity.
This is a rather extreme stance since it would probably lead to wages going down short-term as there's more job-supply than job-demand. The "gamble" in this ideology is that since you're requiring everyone to be a net-positive to the economy, the economy will thus grow and there will be more jobs as a result.
That's a weird qualification to me, as if most other vegetarians do it because of their religion. I don't have any data/stats, but environmental destruction based on our farming practices, and cruelty to animals, both factor a lot higher than religion (has been my experience anyway, but it might be an interesting difference in the US given the deeply entrenched state of religion there).
The American melting pot rejects plenty of aspects from other culture, and does more along the lines of "this is how we do things in USA, take it or leave it" rather than assimilation (at least from what I've observed in the recent decade). From elementary schools to the workplace environment, things have only been getting harder for immigrants, to the point where I'm not sure if USA can claim to be multicultural by strict terms.
By contrast, a mosaic setup like in Canada, where every cultural aspect brought into the country are welcomed and celebrated, is much more comforting to immigrants. Because multiculturalism is actually incorporated into the Canadian federal policy thanks to, surprise surprise, the previous Trudeau.
If you look up the original Hindu texts, it specifically says you should not eat meat, respect nature and animals; which means you should NOT eat any kind of meat.
Most vegetarians on the Indian subcontinent/Asia in general do not eat meat for religious/cultural reasons. Growing up in a Hindu/Buddhist-adjacent culture is often enough to cause someone to avoid red meat.
I do have some ideas about why, but it requires going into some sociological analysis. (note: I'm a minority so I speak from that experience).
I could go on at length at what is fucked up about the US, and I could go on at least as long about what’s great about it. Some things are better here, some are...pitiful. My wife never adjusted to the lower standard of living in the US (the 1% don’t live as well as the 50% in Europe for example) while I found it more than compensated by the work and other interesting things.
"he country as a whole does not experience large-scale human capital flight as compared with other countries, with an emigration rate of only 0.7 per 1,000 educated people,[199] but it is often the destination of skilled workers migrating from elsewhere in the world.[200]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight#United_St...
The point of moving to a country is to make a better life for yourself. We are not trying to comfort immigrants, we are trying to make countries stronger.
There are plenty of abhorrent views held by people out there in the world. What part of the mosaic should that be part of?
The end goal of any country is to become more powerful. Who cares about fairness and compassion when other countries let people move to you and they don't let you move to their country?
Reciprocity agreements would be find. Just because your country is not pleasant to live in doesn't mean you should live in ours.
I am not US American, but to me this description rather sounds like that you don't accept his individuality, too.
Ok. I just know that this won't happen anytime soon. My top-N solution feels like something the current administration would not be too reluctant to implement. It also address the concern that foreign labor pressure downs salaries for US citizens.
This comment from nopinsight goes through the scores:
Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills as well as huge population and the hard working and competitive culture of its populace. An objective measure is PISA results [1]. When comparing with even the best performing US state, Massachusetts, China has many more top performers in Math, as a proportion of population [2].
(In 2015 only four provinces of China participated, but their combined population was 230 million vs Massachusetts's 6.8 million. The math result of Shanghai (24 million pop.) alone would show an even larger gap.)
Since PISA results are scaled such that OECD country's mean is 500 and standard deviation is 100. China's 531 math score implies country mean at 0.3 SD above PISA mean, and US' math score at 470 implies 0.3 SD below mean. If people capable of doing AI research or proper AI implementation need to have math skills at, say, 2 SD above PISA mean, then there will be a tremendous difference in proportion between two populations with 0.6 SD difference. My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the difference in proportion will be about five times. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be over 20 times. (Since other provinces may drag down China's mean, it could be a bit less. We'll see soon since China as a whole will participate in 2018.)
There's usually a lot of horse-trading that goes on before the formal application to figure out what's kosher to buy, and what's not.
Are you suggesting that the Irish and Italians brushed up their communication skills in order to succeed? The Irish and Italian immigrants weren't considered white initially - I can't say if there is a causal relationship between their success and this perception changing.
(Potential) immigrants care. Attracting skilled immigrants is not just US vs. China (which doesn't really play the game); it's US vs. China vs. Canada vs. Germany vs. ...
Or to be more precise, Chinese émigrés abandoning SV for China. You'll find that China is very welcoming to this population.
The example I used for myself is the typical group/herd mentality that people have (unlike individuality). The assumption is I'm a Hindu Indian, hence by definition I should not eat beef. And if I do I'm a "bad" person/outcast, rather than someone who is different from you despite sharing a similar background.
Who's going to pay back societies that send off educated, healthy young adults to the US economy? The value invested in individuals does not accrue all at once while they are at university.
It makes zero sense to try and balance the value at level of individuals. It is better to look at it at a larger scale (tens of thousands to millions) and approximate the value of what's coming in and leaving. There is a lot of guess-work involved, especially around future-value. There are no precise control-knobs to get the exact number and caliber of people you want; the best countries can do is set policies and hope for the best, without accounting for second and third order effects.
I do not disagree with general idea in your post - I would just change the first sentence to "The salad palette is what makes America strong."
Agreed. There's a huge gulf between the coast and the inner provinces, but China has tremendous human capital and that is why I'm bullish in the long term, despite the current crises and issues with its neighbors.
In the sense that you are cautious to accept that the other side is rather serious about religion and vegetarism.
What anyone eats is their own business, me or anyone should not judge. My point was there is a slanderous judgement on one's character based on personal diet choices which is ridiculous.
Let me give you an example; in Texas I once had colleague who was extremely conservative and has a tremendous amount of Southern pride (he has a confederate flag on his Jeep). Professionally speaking, I never had any issues with him whatsoever. I can't say the same about a fellow Indian who despises me (personally and professionally) just because I have a personal choice of eating beef. This is the a subset of American "individuality" I'm talking about; that despite the differences they are willing to work together. In India (and Asian countries, or so I've heard) people conflate personal and professional lives, which IMO is backward and stupid.
Therefore if you choose to be American or live in America, you need to accept that people are different and learn to accept as they are. Just because someone is different from you doesn't make you superior or inferior. Now, I know you can give me examples of tensions between race relations in the US (which I agree totally exists), but people try not to mix professional vs personal lives as much in the US as elsewhere in the world.
There is some compassion for Grandma, but other cultures are seen as "backwards" as not being "developed" enough.