Increase Immigration of Highly Skilled Workers

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by madanthonywayne, Oct 6, 2011.

  1. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    12,461
    What if there were a simple and cheap method to improve the economy without the need for any government spending that would actually increase government revenues without the need for any increase in taxes? There is.

    Send us your doctors, your engineers, your poor huddled scientists yearning to be free.
     
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  3. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    Doctors, Engineers, and poor huddled scientists yearning to be free have come to the USA for years. Increasingly they don't need to come to the USA because their employment opportunities in their home countries are expanding. If they are coming to the USA they must be paid more than they would be in their home countries to compensate for the higher cost of living in the USA.

    Also the companies that used to import people with technical skills are increasingly setting up branches in the sources locations of these huddled scientists yearning to be free. Why bring the scientists to the USA when the support staff and real estate are cheaper elsewhere. Move the corporate engineering department to the scientists.

    Older executives may prefer face to face meetings with cocktails to video-conferences with PowerPoint but is the emotional bonding really necessary?

    American Hospitals send Xrays and MRIs to India. From a 2003 article http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/16/business/who-s-reading-your-x-ray.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm ''Who needs to pay us $350,000/yr if they can get a cheap Indian radiologist for $25,000/yr.''


    Neither educating Americans nor importing educated people will stop the American economic decline. For American's to be globally competitive the dollar must fall.
     
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  5. Telemachus Rex Protesting Mod Stupidity Registered Senior Member

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    I agree that the more immigration of high skilled immigrants, the better off we will be economically. What's strange is that the same arguments apply to low skill immigrants, to the extent they can come here and find jobs...the economy in the general sense doesn't care about "skill level". If you can find work for yourself, then that means you are adding to the economy...no matter what skill set you bring t bear. Doctors have a skill that adds value, engineers have a skill that adds value, farm laborer who are willing to stand in the hot sun for 10 hours a day picking blueberries may not have a "skill", but they have a certain endurance that adds definite value.

    Forbes has apparently worked out that the free flow of labor is good just like the free flow of capital is good, but they have yet to work out that this applies to all labor to the extent the market values that labor, *not* just to skills that Forbes thinks the market should value.

    This lesson applies not only when the economy is ailing, but when it's doing well. Free markets work, and barriers to entry (of any sort) are anti-free market.

    That doesn't dispose of the question of whether we should have immigration controls, since economics isn't everything. But we should understand that we are economically worse off for setting such limits.
     
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  7. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    Good for who?

    As a possessor of Capital free flow of labor is good. As a consumer free flow of labor is good. As a worker in a nation with too many workers having workers leave my nation or having jobs outsourced to my nation is good.

    For a worker in a wealthy nation free flow of labor means becoming much poorer until your wages are equalized with the global wage scale. As a merchant who produces goods and services exclusively for workers (skilled and unskilled) in a wealthy nation the free flow of labor means losing customers and lowering profit margins as your nation's workers become steadily poorer.

    Do American and European corporations really think they can replace their American and European customers with Chinese and Indian customers? Chinese and Indian companies will get those customers. The American corporation must make as much profit as they can from buying cheap labor and selling to wealthier customers before the wealthier customers lose their wealth and then the American company must buy Chinese and Indian companies otherwise the free flow of labor will eventually destroy the very companies that are importing the global labor.

    Forbes knows nothing except how to tell a segment of wealthy people and their imitators what they want to hear.
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Wouldn't it be better to educate our own highly skilled workers?
     
  9. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    The cost of education is too high in the USA. It is more efficient to import foreign educated people and simply discard the young American born people. The is really no point in even having schools in the USA any more. Foreign universities are perfectly good and foreign workers appreciate American money more than Americans do and are better workers.

    The only thing Americans are good for is getting credit and shopping to keep the economy afloat but they are not needed as skilled or unskilled workers.

    American companies complain about the lack of skilled workers but there are plenty of skilled workers. Farmers complain about the lack of farm workers. Pimps probably complain about the lack of quality prostitutes. The real problem is that they employers don't want to pay enough to attract the good employees away from less productive activities.

    Employers used to train employees. Americans today might be lazier than Americans in the 1950s but they are no lazier or stupider than the Americans living in 1973 which was by some measures America's economic peak. Good employees are available for American business but are good employers available for American workers.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2011
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I'm suggesting we fix our education system. How about make it free all the way through college?
     
  11. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    We don't need any more liberal arts grads or business school grads. Make it free for engineering students.
     
  12. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    False dichotomy - this isn't a zero-sum game.

    If you restrict the skilled labor force, the companies who employ such will just move away to wherever they can be found. Then you won't have any skilled jobs to train your workers for anyway. If you encourage lots of skilled laborers to show up, then you will attract companies that employ them, and have a ton more skilled jobs to educate people for.

    The options are as follows: allow lots of skilled immigration and train lots of skilled works or restrict skilled immigration and don't bother training skilled workers. Alternatively: attract employers of skilled labor, or repel employers of skilled labor.

    At least for stuff like science, math and engineering, this is a good idea. Although, note that all of those fields are already effectively free once you get past undergrad, and offer - by far - the best-paying internships for those in college. I know a guy who supported a family of five while working his way through an engineering degree, because the internship money was so lucrative. Probably it's as much a matter of getting high school kids more apt in calculus and science, than it is of throwing money at undergrads. The capable, motivated skilled workers already have little trouble finding money once they're in college.
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I've worked with a few of these foreign (mostly Chinese) workers, and I think there is a place for them, their skills are highly specialized, meaning there are probably only a few in the world with their specialties. That being said, we should do more to educate our people so that there is a larger set of native workers to fill these roles.

    I don't accept that we have to be submissive to corporations or they will move. Let them move, but if they want to bring any money back to the states, there will be a penalty. We control them, they shouldn't control us.


    I see what you mean.
     
  14. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    I work in a company that employs thousands of them, situation in a neighborhood that houses thousands more. This doesn't seem to harm my own prospects for employment - quite the contrary. This company might as well be located in India, if all the various immigrants weren't over here.

    It isn't a matter of being submissive or exercising control, but recognizing reality. Let's say we force some corporation to stay where it is, despite also reducing the supply of skilled workers there. Eventually some other corporation will start up where the skilled workers are at, and leverage that advantage to outcompete the former company, which will then have to lay people off and eventually go out of business. So the end result is the same as if the corporation had just moved to wherever the workers are.

    Point is that the way you "force" a company to stay in some location, is by making that outcome the best business choice for them. Sometimes this is done in counterproductive ways like handing out tax breaks. But cultivating a strong ecosystem of skilled workers (both domestic and imported) is a good way to do it - it will also attract other companies to move there, which will attract yet more skilled workers and help improve the local universities, etc.

    But, basically we're agreed - we should do lots to encourage the presence of skilled workers of all types (educate them, import them, etc.). This will draw in the companies who want to employ them, and so on. The idea that we need to keep the foreign workers out doesn't work - it just ensures that we have neither foreign workers, nor jobs for domestic workers. It's a win-win option, versus a lose-lose option.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    We can use trade tariffs are equalize the differences between foreign and domestic companies.
     
  16. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Only on sales within the USA - they'll still eat our lunch in every other market in the world.

    And the WTO will allow others to issue retaliatory tarriffs that do as much harm to us as our own tarriffs do good. Supposing you think it's "good" overall to force Americans to pay more for inferior products, that is.

    Protectionism and isolationism are not good approaches, no matter how comforting they may appear in the short run.
     
  17. desi Valued Senior Member

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    This is a great idea. By allowing immigration of unskilled workers the bottom has dropped out of the unskilled labor market. By importing more skilled labor employers will be able to pay them less too. Corporate avarice knows no bounds.
     
  18. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    This sort of demogoguery misses major points. What has happened in recent years is that capital has become extremely mobile and globalized, but labor has not. This mismatch results in a lot of perverse outcomes, especially for the labor end of the equation. Factories can just up and close down and move halfway across the world - the workers are unable to follow them.

    So unless we plan to restrict global capital movement to bring it back down into scale with labor mobility (which is probably a bad idea on balance), we need to improve the mobility of labor to keep it in scale with that of capital, in order to keep a lid on the perversities that spring from such a mismatch.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That must be why China does it. And good luck bringing any of that money back into the US, we can legislate against that too.
     
  20. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Why China does what, exactly? Manipulate the value of its currency?

    The thing about forcing all of the competitive corporations outside of the US, is that they won't need to bring their money back here. They'll just keep it where they live, in China or India or Germany or whatever.
     
  21. desi Valued Senior Member

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    Right, now people like doctors and nurses are the only people with relatively high paying jobs. But watch out. In order for corporations to continue to drive down wages we will import people to cut down wages on jobs we can't send overseas.

    I don't know what your jobs is but I'm pretty sure you aren't interested in competing with foreigners who will work for 1/4 of what you receive in wages. Wherever you are, eventually it will affect you too.
     

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