Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches Back Home

We could keep talent if we just allowed people to work here. We don’t. We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations, in specific industries, at the behest of the company, under constant threat of deportation and after gambling thousands of dollars on the chance at approval.

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.

This is an excellent point - if you've got a US education, the US should do everything possible to help you stay to use that education in the US.

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.

> because the US is incredibly unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants and provides no reliable path to citizenship or permanent residency besides fraudulent marriage.

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.

The process is ridiculously complicated and not worth the time and effort, when it is possible at all.

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.

In your experience, what is the welcoming part of immigrating to the US?

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.

There is no denying the fact that it's hard to get permanent residency in the US. But immigration should be a two way street, if people decide to stay in the US they should try to assimilate. Is there a "bamboo celing", yes there is; so is a "curry ceiling" and what have you "ceiling". But if you do not push yourself to better your communication skills and other relevant skills required to be successful, you can't expect to shatter this ceiling. This was true for other immigrants too (18th/19th century Irish, Italian etc.)

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)

The melting pot is what makes America strong. We are stronger together than any of our constituent parts.

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.

Optimizing just for salary doesn't add incentives for lower-pay but higher-reward-to-economy jobs (e.g. public-sector, research, etc.). Any sorting criteria is probably going to throw incentives way off.

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.

> if people decide to stay in the US they should try to assimilate

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.

Indians do much better in SV/tech senior management positions than Chinese.

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.

While I agree with both of your points individually; I fail to see how your two points are connected. The complicated process of getting a permanent residency has nothing to do with your willingness to assimilate or degree of assimilation.

What exactly is the connection you are implying between the two?

> 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.

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.

> Indians do much better in SV/tech senior management positions than Chinese.

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..."

That’s true. I’m not sure being more open than China says much. Just because we have more open immigration than China doesn’t mean our immigration policies are fair, compassionate, or in service of American ideals of freedom and opportunity.

> We only allow 65,000 people to work in large corporations

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.

> But immigration should be a two way street

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.

Actually it's pretty easily provable, you just need diversity numbers.

Doesn't explain the "why" though.

> The melting pot is what makes America strong. We are stronger together than any of our constituent parts.

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?

> China is far more unwelcoming to hard-working immigrants

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.

Huh? This is quantifiable. It’s no big mystery to anyone who works in tech, and is not saying anything about abilities, just outcomes.

> So? You're criticizing chinese people pretty explicitly. Don't try to hide behind your race.

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.

I've experienced the opposite in general, but I've seen some huge outliers in both directions on both sides.

Yes - its the Borg concept of multiculturalism - people come here, add their cultural distinctiveness to the whole and become an American by adopting a certain set of ideals.

When I mentioned assimilation, I meant a certain acceptance of the American culture. I did not in any way mean complete abandonment of your "native" culture.

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".

Isn't the rationale of the current administration rather the opposite ? E.g., the proposed merit based system explicitly wants to only get the 'top-N' in, whereas your alternative would just deprive upstanding americans from those jobs. I'm not judging either approach, I just want to understand what you propose and how to square it with the conservative viewpoint.

> Isn't the rationale of the current administration rather the opposite ?

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.

Yes they aren't, and I'm arguing is that it should. My point was specifically towards "For MS and PhD students staple their passports with a green card immediately", although the op did not use this phrase it is somewhat implied that someone who has a graduate degree should be allowed to stay and work indefinitely.

> As an example, I'm mostly vegetarian (for staying healthy, I'm atheist).

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).

In theory, but I'm not actually too sure multiculturalism is actually the case for America, at least not from my personal experience.

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.

I can bet my bottom dollar that Indians (who are Hindus) give me weird looks and comments, not based on environmental destruction but some moron who came up with this rule that Hindus are not supposed to eat beef (but meat from other animals is okay).

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.

>That's a weird qualification to me, as if most other vegetarians do it because of their religion.

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.

Buddhism isn’t so much veg like Hinduism. Lots of meat eating in Buddhist countries (Myanmar, Thailand) and even the monks eat meat if the elevation is high enough (Bhutan, Tibet).

See my example of assimilation to my reply to "ryanianian" in the thread below.

It's not a generalization, there's public data for this. Just take a sample of the top N SV companies, go to their Management/Staff page, and do a count. (note, we're talking senior management, not middle management)

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 got a good education and then got a job I was qualified for and got paid well. Which is how the law is in fact written. Sure I hear anti-immigrant sentiment but not worse than in my wife’s country, or mine, or those of my parents’ home countries.

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.

Sure, there are plenty of meat eating Buddhists but there are plenty of vegetarian(ish) Buddhist schools as well. Full vegetarianism isn't as common as among Hindus, but restricting meat consumption to fish and poultry is fairly common (mostly among schools originally influenced by Chinese Buddhism iirc).

like I said, the Borg concept of multiculturalism we add elements from our immigrant cultures, food, some cultural customs, they are woven in like thread into a tapestry, but the whole remains American - no one who came here, even the folks from the UK had their culture in total preserved, instead they add some of their distinctiveness to the whole.

Well, pork is popular in Thailand.

The article isn't about abandoning SV for Canada.

It's about abandoning SV for China.

I can't compare to other countries' immigration processes, and maybe the US's process is good compared to others, but I still don't classify it as welcoming. It seems like an extremely beaurocratic mess that served as a political tool that one is lucky to get through.

> 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.

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?

> Just because we have more open immigration than China doesn’t mean our immigration policies are fair, compassionate, or in service of American ideals of freedom and opportunity.

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.

> 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".

I am not US American, but to me this description rather sounds like that you don't accept his individuality, too.

>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.

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.

At risk of being politically incorrect, China has some of the highest quality human capital in the world per capita. Add in their huge population and they have roughly 20 times the number of people capable of high-level technical research. China, frankly, has little need of immigration. It's technical dominance is assured without it.

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.)

> This was true for other immigrants too (18th/19th century Irish, Italian etc.)

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.

> Who cares about fairness and compassion...

(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. ...

> It's about abandoning SV for China.

Or to be more precise, Chinese émigrés abandoning SV for China. You'll find that China is very welcoming to this population.

No. I used them as an example to highlight them as a group who had to assimilate in a mainly protestant country.

How so?

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.

America has never been a melting pot - more like a salad palette, with clear boundaries between constituent parts. Melting pot is but a nice-sounding rhetoric. Racial bias aside, people usually prefer to live closer to their own kind. For minorities, this is usually because of better access to their ethnic groceries and cultural engagements.

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."

Cool so you had to make a "throwaway" account to make your point, very brave. If you see my other posts I am not sucking up to white people or any other people. I call a spade a spade.

> At risk of being politically incorrect, China has some of the highest quality human capital in the world per capita.

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.

> How so?

In the sense that you are cautious to accept that the other side is rather serious about religion and vegetarism.

> In the sense that you are cautious to accept

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.

This is an open secret, at least for us minorities.

City folk often start out camping in designated grounds before moving on to solo trecks in the wild. "modern" cultures that have had more time to assimilate looser and more free conventions don't see how discerning or unsafe certain things are to a more traditional worldview.

There is some compassion for Grandma, but other cultures are seen as "backwards" as not being "developed" enough.

I suspect it's because they speak English natively