Computing Pioneers Endorse Biden, Citing Trump Immigration Crackdown (nytimes.com) 310
Two dozen award-winning computer scientists, in a rebuke of President Trump's immigration policies, said on Friday that they were endorsing Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November's presidential election. From a report: The scientists, including John Hennessy, the executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet, are all winners of the Turing Award, which is often called the Nobel Prize of computing. In a group interview, four of the scientists said the Trump administration's restrictive immigration rules were a threat to computer research in the United States and could do long-term damage to the tech industry, which for decades has been one of the country's economic engines. "The most brilliant people in the world want to come here and be grad students, but now they are being discouraged from coming here, and many are going elsewhere," said one of the scientists who organized the endorsement, David Patterson, a Google distinguished engineer and former professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Turing winners are the latest members of the scientific community to find their political voice as the election nears. The research journal Scientific American also endorsed Mr. Biden this week, citing, among other criticisms, Mr. Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic and his skepticism of climate change. It was the first time in its 175 years that the publication endorsed a presidential candidate. The Turing winners' endorsement -- also a first for them -- was made against the backdrop of the Trump administration's increasingly antagonistic relationship with the tech industry. Several federal agencies are investigating the business practices of tech's biggest companies, and the Justice Department could bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month.
The Turing winners are the latest members of the scientific community to find their political voice as the election nears. The research journal Scientific American also endorsed Mr. Biden this week, citing, among other criticisms, Mr. Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic and his skepticism of climate change. It was the first time in its 175 years that the publication endorsed a presidential candidate. The Turing winners' endorsement -- also a first for them -- was made against the backdrop of the Trump administration's increasingly antagonistic relationship with the tech industry. Several federal agencies are investigating the business practices of tech's biggest companies, and the Justice Department could bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month.
In other news (Score:5, Informative)
In other news, they apparently they had no problem with Tata and Infosys exploiting H1B to offshore American jobs, one of the major factors in cracking down on immigration in the first place.
Re:In other news (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, these people are big fans of putting Americans out of work. If they are disliking Trump this much, then perhaps he's doing good things for We The People of The United States of America.
He's not (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither of these politicians are going to be good for tech workers. Biden will be marginally better because he will at least get the pandemic under control using the "Pandemic Playbook" he and Obama wrote (and Trump ignored). That will in turn get the economy back up and running faster which is good for all workers. I know us techies have mostly avoided layoffs, but unless something is done they're coming. It's not if, it's when.
As for solving H1-B abuse, that'll require top down changes to our political system. The current First Past the Post, Winner Take All voting system is just too ripe for abuse. It's what creates our 2 party system and makes pointless wedge issues like guns & abortion more important that economics. To fix that we need to end voter suppression with Universal Vote By Mail, Automatic Voter Registration and possible Mandatory Voting (mandatory voting makes voter suppression neigh impossible). Then we need Ranked Choice Voting or something like it.
Only then will you see a consistent pro worker government. Honestly if you dig into the history of our government you'll find it's full of ugly compromises made to protect wealthy land owners & slave owners. We never really addressed any of that, we just pretend it's not a thing.
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Honestly if you dig into the history of our government you'll find it's full of ugly compromises made to protect wealthy land owners & slave owners.
Some of the first "companies are people and have rights" court cases were settled in something like the first 20 years of this country existing.
When I was taken aback at Citizens United, I looked into how it happened that companies were allowed to meddle in elections. Turns out that such a thing is about as old as the country itself. Until we have the nation-wide drive to amend the constitution to put restraints on companies being involved in politics, we're going to have them successfully advocating for th
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They probably also dislike having tape worms. By your logic, that would mean we should all go eat raw meat.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, actually I do. You see when I watch my salary go down as a result of these actions, I have a problem with that. On the other hand, I have no problem helping lift the wages of people outside of the US so that they aren't in poverty, and the way to do that is to pay them the same amount that I make, rather than using cost of living factors to attempt to undermine me.
To deal with Tata and Infosys, raise min salary (Score:5, Informative)
In other news, they apparently they had no problem with Tata and Infosys exploiting H1B to offshore American jobs, one of the major factors in cracking down on immigration in the first place.
H1Bs are much more used to find cheap labor to stay in the US. You don't need an H1B to offshore a job....that's the point. H1Bs are abused by hiring immigrants willing to work cheaply. There's a very simple and elegant solution...make H1Bs expensive. Raise the min salary to 2x the local median...let's see if they're really being hired because they're "highly skilled." If so, the companies would surely be willing to pay them what they're worth.
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How do you determine the median salary for a particular job? Every job has its unique nuances. The wage should be above the median salary for all jobs that require a 4 year degree -- maybe as determined by surveys conducted by the department of labor, that could be more reasonable I guess. Which is what the current H1B law is.
Anything more would be bad for the economy because it will increase production costs while reducing or stagnating productivity levels. Think about it, if a job requires a person who c
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How do you determine the median salary for a particular job? Every job has its unique nuances. The wage should be above the median salary for all jobs that require a 4 year degree -- maybe as determined by surveys conducted by the department of labor, that could be more reasonable I guess.
My company is hiring a line cook who's proficient in Pascal. Also a janitor who has 10 years of expertise in optimizing Oracle databases.
And no, I don't need to explain the reasons I need those skills to you. I'm hiring a line cook and a janitor, and I can't find anyone in the area with the skills I need.
The problem with H1Bs are that they are just too easy to game, and there's no political will to crack down on them. Every suggestion for how to limit the abuse I've heard so far is either trivial to game or
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In other news, they apparently they had no problem with Tata and Infosys exploiting H1B to offshore American jobs, one of the major factors in cracking down on immigration in the first place.
Nice strawman. Fortuantely we know for a fact your argument is right and it's impossible to have an immigration system that allows for highly skilled / research migration but blocks offshoring. Yessirree, there's no fixing that. The only solution is to block it all. #MAGA!
No biases there (Score:4, Insightful)
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Several federal agencies are investigating the business practices of tech's biggest companies, and the Justice Department could bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month.
Their monopolies are being threatened, so they need a lackey candidate to win.
Politics (Score:3, Insightful)
Politics is resulting in bias in places it doesn't belong. Scientific American, Operating Systems even the Medical community are all recent examples. Mixing politics into any of these is inexcusable, irrespective of who the politician is. The result is to increase polarization and further divide our country.
It's long past time to separate politics and things that should have nothing to do with politics. Cranking the dial up to 11 solves nothing and heals no wounds. Instead it increases racial animosity and bigotry of all kinds. The result is an increase of violence across the board. A civilized society is one where people can have disagreements without suffering violence - or being cancelled.
It's long past time to purge politics from places it doesn't belong. A person's politics shouldn't be relevant for their career, medical care or education. To be perfectly blunt it really shouldn't matter for much of anything unless their running for political office or getting a government security clearance. I say it's time for people to get back to being tolerant of those who are different from themselves again.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
So Scientific American, a magazine that has been dedicated to science for nearly two centuries, should just sit placidly by while an Administration takes fundamentally anti-science stances on public health, atmospheric and oceanic sciences, because, you know, calling out an Administration for being fundamentally anti-science, while the main competitor for the job says he's going to trust the science, is somehow increasing polarization.
If the Republicans don't want to be labeled as anti-science, then perhaps they too should demand the Administration start acting upon reality, and not on fantasy, lies, and outright idiocy. I have no fault with SciAm's position, as it fits in exactly with what that publication has stood for for 175 years. And if that makes Trump's supporters miserable, well, that's what you get for supporting a fucking moron who doesn't care about you, your health or your welfare.
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I've been reading or subscribing to them since I was a kid. Like National Geographic they were once above the fray and focused on science. Politics was beneath them.
They have lost their way and become advocates first and that has hurt the science. As soon as you start to advocate a political position, whatever that position is, the other thing becomes second. Whether that thing is science, medical or otherwise is moot. People get wrapped up in the politics and start to position their work to support or hurt
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By injecting politics into their pages, they undermine their credibility.
I don't read Scientific American to find out which candidate the editors prefer in the next election. FFS it's a science journal, not People Magazine.
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Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not politics to care about human beings. Racism and nationalism are barriers to overall scientific progress. Restricting institutes from bringing in the candidates they think are best suited harms science. A large number of scientific and technological acheivements of the USA would not have been possible if it weren't for immigration. I just look at how many immigrants helped to design the iPhone. SpaceX has a lot of immigrants working there too. I mean, what if we didn't allow Elon Musk to immigrate .. where would the Space program be? Or what if the founder of Apple's biological dad wasn't allowed to immigrate because he was a muslim from Syria? What if Google's founder and his parents were not allowed to immigrate as refugees from Russia in the 1970s? 55% of America's billion-dollar startups have an immigrant founder. Numerous immigrant scientists have won Nobel prizes for the USA. Xenophobia harms science and technology, organizations that care about science and tech should do their part to end it.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
What does xenophobia have to do with anything? My wife is an immigrant, I'm hardly the xenophobic type. I get to live mixed cultures and races on a daily basis and have for years. There is certainly a significant difference between supporting legal immigration and being xenophobic. Remember, all of those immigrant at some point become natives and want to protect their own jobs. I've known guys who immigrated legally from India only to lose their job when it was outsourced to India.
As for nationalism, one can well argue that is what drew many of those immigrants to America to begin with. Nationalism is pride in nation. Immigrants are coming to America in particular for a reason, why? We must be doing something right that they want to come here, ergo that is something to take pride in. The fact that 1/4th of Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrants goes to show that America is not a Xenophobic country, that it is in fact a country where immigrants can in fact thrive.
Nuance is needed here, not a broad brush.
Politics is everywhere (Score:2)
I get that it's mess and ugly and you just want to go back to your fun science toys. But burying your head in the sand won't end well.
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Politics is resulting in bias in places it doesn't belong.....even the Medical community are all recent examples.
Such as adding former campaign officials with no medical background into high level spots within the CDC who then go on to insert themselves into a typically apolitical weekly reporting process in order to ensure those reports back up the current administration, all while being advised by an outside medical "expert" from some random university instead of using actual experts already on the government payroll.
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Amazing how the truth is downmodded as flamebait.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
Should be true for BOTH sides (Score:2)
While I agree with your basic premise that Scientific American, Operating System Developers/Providers and the Medical Community should not be involved in politics, the reverse should also be true. Do you really think that that any of these people would be taking this public stance if President Trump didn't decide to attack Alphabet (and make misleading statements on issues like H1B) as well as politicize the Corona virus followed by making the CDC, HHS, FDA, etc. take his side?
I think everybody would be ha
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If we were to be tolerant of intolerant people, would that increase or decrease aggregate tolerance?
And if we were to fire all law enforcement officers, would the personal liberty we gain, by being able to do anything we want with impunity, increase or decrease aggregate freedom?
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I've been reading the likes of Scientific American and National Geographic since I was a kid. They have changed significantly over the decades. Whilst they have had some political leanings, they at least tried to be neutral in their political stances. You never would have seen either one of them openly advocate anything political even 15 years ago, and certainly not 20.
"Computing Pioneers Endorse" (Score:3, Insightful)
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The story was only posted a little while ago and already has over 40 comments. So evidently a lot of people care.
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Obviously you do, you stupid, mindless troll.
(Pointless, but sometimes it feels good to call one out.)
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Google and all of big tech are direct threats in their current form to the American Republic and our constitution.
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Haha did you think the Duckduckgo founder is anti-immigrant? Good luck with that, they have employees around the world. Also, they too have hired at least 1 H1B worker even though they're a tiny company.
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Also, if you aren't reading up more on why Tesla had “a violent aversion against the earrings of women” you can just go ahead and disconnect from the power grid.
All these recent endorsements (Score:2, Troll)
Just make me want to vote for Trump even more.
Re:All these recent endorsements (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you think there is any level of stupidity and lies where some of Trump's voters would stop and think "Much as I love Trump, I just can't believe that"?
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You misspelled "I like racism".
Republicans got us into the never-ending wars in the middle east, Republicans make the deficit worse. This administration is the most corrupt ever.
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"Racist" is such a broad-brush term now I wonder if there's a single human left on the planet that can't be labeled with it by those who used to hate labelling people.
Are you really unbiased? (Score:2)
If so then if all these recent endorsements were for Trump, you'd then vote for Biden?
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Just make me want to vote for Trump even more.
You're joking (I hope), but the reality is that there are people stupid enough to use this method to decide who rules their country. That's how you end up with another 4 years of self destructive moron at the helm.
So u want more Indians here to do IT work, Got it. (Score:2)
Geniuses endorsing Trump (Score:2)
Here's a list of pioneering scientists who made groundbreaking inventions or discoveries endorsing Trump:
bad candidates (Score:2)
pretty sad when both candidates are given approval by big corps / big military / anti-privacy interests. Sad one is a buffoon who won't listen to experts because of his fat head, and one has dementia but now is hopped up on drugs for attention focus and energy.
Pathetic state of the union, and no real change in sight.
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Well, US Presidential Candidate Kayne West will certainly take claim to being the "baddest" one of them all.
So you think I should vote for him . . . ?
There were better reasons (Score:2)
Those are all fine points, but Trump's opposition to/denial of math and logic should be more fundamental disagreements with computer science.
i agree, i prefer Biden too (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or perhaps they just want the cheap labor, and further want to screw fellow Americans out of jobs.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Have you talked to any Americans lately? A large number seem to think jesus will protect them from Covid. Some even believe the earth is flat and surrounded by an ice wall guarded by the military. In this country education and science are looked down upon by too many. No wonder they're looking elsewhere for good talent.
Scientific American is not a research journal (Score:2)
Americans are too expensive! (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
The immigration policy (Score:5, Insightful)
is not about award-winning computer scientists.
It is about grunts much lower down on the work-world food chain.
Don't these computer scientists know that, or are they lacking in empathy for coders, designers, engineers not as well endowed in their personal intellectual gifts?
difficult to generalize such a broad group (Score:3, Informative)
My coworker came to the US on an H1B visa, and over his career here he managed to file over 40 patents for his employers. And real honest to goodness novel inventions that turned into real products. Even that aspect is irrelevant because in the end he made his employers a LOT of money.
Re:difficult to generalize such a broad group (Score:5, Informative)
The problem people have with H1B isn't that it exists. It's that its often abused to exploit cheap labor and keep wages low. Assuming your anecdote is true, and no offense but you are some guy on the internet giving an anecdote with no documentation, then your coworker sounds exactly like the kind of person H1B was intended for. The point was to attract rare talent from overseas. But many companies, including John Hennessy's employer abuse the program to bring over large numbers of contractors who are under paid. These positions could and should be filled with qualified American workers. Java developers and Network engineers are not scarce in america. And they should not be allowed to use the H1B system for those positions.
Re:difficult to generalize such a broad group (Score:5, Insightful)
I left out details to protect the identity of my coworker. But at the risk of confirming stereotypes, he's white, British, and well educated.
It's that its often abused to exploit cheap labor and keep wages low.
There is a lot of wage pressure caused by the H1B programs, but that pressure is far less than what is created by outsourcing. As a compromise, the current system is satisfactory (within limits). Yet I think there is a lot of room for improvement with how we handle immigration in the US. We do want to continue the "brain drain", where our low taxes and high salaries can attract top highly skilled labor from the industrialized world.
But like every good idea that we try to codify into legislation, it is easy to find loopholes for abuse. Ultimately a law is only a document, and a document is just a lifeless object and is no match for the creativity and persistence of a human being ready to circumvent the document.
These positions could and should be filled with qualified American workers.
No, we should scale up our labor force beyond what only American workers can fill. We should aim for over 100% employment, and drive economic growth upwards with our productivity. Stopping at some point of "filling jobs" is how you create a stagnant economy that is perpetually trying to catch up. If we don't employ people from other countries, they'll instead produce output for their home country and not ours.
Java developers and Network engineers are not scarce in america.
And they are generally not unemployed. If we have 8% unemployment in the US, the software developers are not proportionally represented in that. Even with all the immigrants, the American tech worker is fairly secure in their job. That's not to say people don't lose their jobs, I was out of work for 9 months and it really sucked. But I also am far better off right now than a waiter or cook.
P.S. All labor is exploitation, but it is a matter of degrees. As a society we can choose to set things up for mutual benefit and an improved quality of life.
Re:difficult to generalize such a broad group (Score:5, Informative)
The problem people have with immigration isn't that it exists. It's that its often abused to exploit cheap labor and keep wages low.
FTFY
And lower the standard of living in the US.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You do know thats what happens right?
As corps take advantage of H1B wage slaves (and yes, they are that, because they are indentured to their sponsor) it costs locals jobs.
The wage slaves are often paid barely more than they were back home, because they are 'chasing the american dream' and often lied to about what they will get.
The only people who win are the owners of the companies. It is just a modern form of slavery.
Globalism is a system FOR the ultra rich BY the ultra rich. I doubt you are one of them. You are the meat in their grinder.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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American education is a failed system in the lower grades.
Looking at the colleges of note, go look at a list of honour graduates.
They aren't from America, and they don't have student debt.
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It is tribalism. It's just that the group is too large to be called a tribe, but it's exactly the same mechanism.
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You have to look no further than the example of Nikola Tesla to make a solid argument that part of what's made America the country it is today is the work of immigrants. In fact, immigration has always been important to the USA's economy, and will continue to be in the future. There's a lot of high-paying jobs in the USA, a pretty significant skill gap in some areas, and our birthing numbers are falling off, especially in the middle class.
The slump in new births among the middle class is a common scenario b
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Re:The immigration policy (Score:5, Informative)
H1B jobs don't count towards that figure. That figure is based on Google full time employees. Not H1B contractors who conveniently enough dont ever work for the host company. There are fall guy recruiting firms for that. And they pay garbage. Companies like Robert Half. They will put up insulting job posts like 6 months as a network engineer for $15.hr, no benefits. And when shockingly they can't find any takers they use it as an excuse to bring in H1B workers. I've seen it plenty of times. Its exploitative as all hell. The guys they bring in are more than willing to do it but then get abused when they get here. But since the contractor can get their visa canceled at any time they have no recourse.
Its an anti-worker race to the bottom completely supported by limousine liberals who are either too stupid to realize what they are doing or are hypocrites who dont care.
Re:The immigration policy (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: The immigration policy (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found that many academics and scientists bristle at the idea that such a prioritization is warranted, let alone desirable. Many of these people experience the positive sides of other countries. They mingle with other academics and scientists who are largely on the receiving end of government largesse and rarely on the receiving end of oppression, regulatory burden, or lack of physical security. As such, they may assume that all nations are largely equal, and defense of any notion of American or Western exceptionalism is misguided jingoism at best and harmful hate mongering at worst.
This is a provincial viewpoint. It is safe to ignore many of the conclusions that derive from it.
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Well, at least it's clear the /. editors and the Guardian are all-in for Biden, although like most of his supporters, they're probably just anti-Trump.
Probably doesn't affect which stories are selected though, right?
Maybe some sanity will return after the election is over with and they can get back to more normal "news" than "People who dislike Trump announce they dislike Trump!"
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We're sick and bloody well tired of having a rude, crude, lying, criminal, traitorous, self-serving piece of shit as the so-called 'leader' of our country
You forgot rapist. And I probably forgot a dozen other reasons this man should never have been elected in the first place.
Who you calling "rapist"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Although Trump's supporters reject "rapist" accusations as lies, Biden's supporters accept, that their champion is a rapist — and vote for him anyway [nytimes.com].
Which proves, if anyone had any doubts, that it was never really about "rape", and that the vile accusations like that were just means — weapons in fight over, well, "policy disagreements".
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Re: The immigration policy (Score:5, Insightful)
The view of Patriotism and Religion is often brought up by your environment.
Many of the uneducated, they see being a good employee is doing what the Boss says, being a patriot is doing what the president says, being religious is doing what the minister says. It isn't that they are stupid, but the environment they are in benefits those who know to keep their heads down and do what they are told. Their experience also shows problems when they don't do it the way that was prescribed. Confusion, Anger and the feeling of betrayal happens when they see others doing or supporting something different. Because from their point of view, doing something like that only creates problems.
Many of the educated people, will see being a good employee by improving on what the Boss says, being a patriot is doing what you think will help the country at on a whole, being religious is working to understand the teachings and apply them subtly and thoughtfully to the situation, working on the bigger picture. vs just following the rules. When faced with people who just do what is told of them, Confusion, Anger and the feeling of betrayal happens when they see others just doing what they are told when it seems obviously wrong and outdated. Because from their point of view, we should work to get better, and work out problems when they come up.
The right wing media makes it seem like when people go to college there is some underhanded group that will turn them into Liberals. However what normally happens is these people who grew up conservative, are exposed to different ideas, and different types of people. Those people who were considered problems, evil, or just someone broken, Race, other Religions, Sexual Orientation... You find they are not as different than you think, and their ideas that may be different have value, and are often based on some fact.
Oddly enough very Liberal students will also pick up many more Conservative values, as well. Realizing about money how much of it goes to taxes, seeing that their lives needs more propose than just survival. However that doesn't make interesting news.
Re: The immigration policy (Score:4, Insightful)
Healthy societies require an ample supply of personalities at both extremes and even more in the middle. That does not happen when any one group of people start to tell themselves that they hold the monopoly on absolute universally-applicable truth, any school of thought is either blasphemous or superfluous, and disagreement is a not an indication of the existence of alternative perspectives not available to the in-crowd, but a mark of evil.
Borderless market of the best ideas (Score:2, Troll)
Maybe they care about all coders, designers, engineers instead of being race or tribe-selective? Maybe they care about all the humans on the planet, not just some?
Quoted against the censor moderation by trolls, even though your point is weak. Looks to me like the trolls are changing their game plan for destroying Slashdot. Jokes on them. Too late.
On the actual topic, I don't know why they feel like that's an important hill to fight on. Worker migration is just one aspect of the free flow of ideas that helped create the Internet in particular and advanced technologies in general. The larger problem is nationalistic and xenophobic stupidity that wants to shut out new i
Re:Borderless market of the best ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
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Concurrence, though I think you could have included many more examples, such as Italians, Poles, Jews, Spaniards, Russians, and I even think the Danes (Vikings) have gotten some bad press. Also the religious nuts, like the Calvinists.
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Irish was the first example that came to mind, probably because they're so closely related, really, to the English (although you'd get punched in the nose if you said that to an Irishman, I think, and for damned good reasons) and they're about as 'white' as you can get, yet they were treated poorly because they were immigrants, and they were *poor*. Just another sad instance, amongst all the others you mentioned (and more: Chinese. Bring up how the Chinese were
The concern is he reduced legal immigration (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a great job working for a company co-founded in the USA by an immigrant on a student visa. I'm all for reducing barriers to getting brilliant people born abroad starting companies in the US. Trump has only added them. There are smart ways to reform H1Bs from abuse from companies like Cognizant and Tata, like raising the minimum salary. Trump didn't take the smart way. He took the way that will impact our economy and our economic prestige tangibly.
Whiney bleeding heart liberal critics have long complained about the "brain drain" of the US taking the best talent from all over the world...let's keep it up. Drain the globes of the best brains. I want them starting companies here, not where they're born, because I don't want to move.
Re:The concern is he reduced legal immigration (Score:5, Insightful)
Why ruin a good point with a partisan political strawman? It really devalues your post.
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In software engineering, you bet. But it isn't illegal immigration they're worried about- Donald Trump closed the loopholes in the H-1b visa class which used to enable them to replace expensive aging programmers with cheap recent college graduates from 3rd world countries that could sleep in pods instead of having a family and a house.
Re: Why would they care about illegal immigration? (Score:2)
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They said "immigrants", not "illegal immigrants". Trump's policies have greatly reduced legal immigration.
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So by highlighting Trump's credentials as an anti-intellectual xenophobe, they are actually helping him with his base.
Please accept a virtual +5 from me.
Travel restrictions (Score:2)
allowing foreign researchers to attend American conferences.
That shouldn't be a problem, when all these people are so paranoid about having in-person conferences to travel to. There are no visa/permit problems with virtual conferences.
And since they champion on-line virtual learning, students not being able to come to the US to virtually attend their virtual classes shouldn't be a problem.
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I think these sorts of endorsements are important. I know when I was younger working crazy hours and filling sparse f
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I'm in Joe Biden's base. He's got good policy ideas that will help the country move forward out of this mess.
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Many of his supporters oppose immigration in any form.
source?
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This isn't about illegal immigration. It about restrictions on legal immigration, including student visas, giving residence status to graduates, and allowing foreign researchers to attend American conferences. Trump's excessive restrictions are harmful to America's long term interests.
Nonetheless, an endorsement by these scientists is not helpful. Trump is supported by many people because he doesn't listen to egghead academics. Immigration is Trump's signature issue. Many of his supporters oppose immigration in any form.
So by highlighting Trump's credentials as an anti-intellectual xenophobe, they are actually helping him with his base.
Quoted against the censorious troll moderation. Seems like the trolls are changing their tactics, the better to destroy Slashdot 2020. Joke's on the trells, since they're too late. I let the troll Subject stand, even though playing with trolls is so pointless.
I actually do have a response to your main point, which is about Trump's base. I think that it might be possible to drive Trump so far over the edge that he starts breaking the heads of his own base. "Much as I love Trump, I just can't believe that." I
Re:Why would they care about illegal immigration? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I've been watching a lot of RVAT videos, so I'm aware of the schisms. Several prominent staffers from the national security side have recently flipped. As I noted elsewhere, I think Biden should be pushing Trump to lie harder, which is easy, though it may be hard to get the lies to the point where Trump's fans actually stop and think "As much as I love Trump, I just can't believe that."
Another part of the original immigration topic: I have rather high hopes for this latest fiasco involving the wome
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point, the alleged president doesn't listen to egghead academics because he is incapable of understanding them. It isn't as though he's well-read or can think beyond his bank account.
Re: Endorse Biden? (Score:3)
I was being polite.
Nothing useful in Bidenâ(TM)s case means being in line with the succession of laws that has lead the USA from a country where a single income paid a decent wage and allowed a large majority of citizens to have a decent apartment or house.
He is in fact one of a breed of politician that has zero memory/knowledge of the idea of a public servant - something senators and congressmen should be. A breed of politician that has grown fat on the backs of the people. A politician that has activ