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I have a hot take that ultimately a lot of the kerfuffle about immigration *everywhere* is about the growing class and wage disparity of tech money and other jobs.
Across the world, people who work in tech hubs: have similar profiles, backgrounds, education, experience, and a lot more mobility than most others.
Every country’s ‘native’ population that feels left out and ignored and neglected by their own situation, finds it easy to blame the ‘foreign elite’, when it’s their own elites messing them up too.
I said it a few days ago: a software developer from Bangalore or Singapore or London or Berlin has a shorter cultural and professional distance to traverse to Silicon Valley or New York jobs and money, than someone from Fresno or Salinas. What more someone from a totally different state.
The visa gets them in, and there is some exploitation (in other ways than wages); but they aren’t the reason why ‘Americans’ aren’t getting these jobs. They’re the symptom, not the cause.
My experience working in tech jobs across the world has also shown me: while tech jobs are varied and diverse in SF and Silicon Valley, this is also where the industry ‘professionalized’ (and ossified, if you ask me) much earlier. So someone with no or very little experience is going to find it hard to break in, no matter what their nationality or immigration status.
It’s not as easy to ‘switch roles’ or ‘industries’ (in London or Berlin or SG I can easily see someone doing software dev at a fintech place then going to like consumer, not so here). You’re defined by the last job(s) you had. It’s also harder for people with non-STEM background to get in the way it used to be >10 years ago. The ‘office jobs’ like events planning or sales.. have also professionalized. You just do that thing and only that.
People are frustrated they don’t have a shot, especially when tech jobs feel like the only way to make a living wage these days in some cities.
And those of us who are >15 years in tech from a time when you got (eventually) well paid jobs for knowing how to turn on and off a computer (at first), and being in the right place at the right time (cities that eventually became tech hubs), don’t appreciate how hard it is to get into it now. The field needs people of all backgrounds. But at the same time, the industry has also been transformed by shareholder maximization over technological developments, above all else.
It’s hard to make an argument ‘learn to code’! The ‘better life’ hasn’t exactly always panned out for people who did that through bootcamps and other methods, who don’t have the cultural cachet of top schools and industry relationships. Maybe it did for a while, but no longer, I think.
Look at housing prices of all the tech hubs around the world: they are almost the same, too. Neoliberalism has made a certain same-ness about each one of these cities. Including the same tech vs non tech disparity.
Sometimes, I help acquaintances from China and India tech cos apply for Singapore tourist visas (citizens can apply for others). They have to send me their salary info to do that. Without fail, the people who work at the top companies in these countries make far more than the median U.S. tech salary, in USD. (Not *everyone*, but the people most likely to get international job offers, do)
They have no interest in coming to the U.S. to make an average Silicon Valley salary (they already make close to this number, and live in places where this goes further).
They will come for career growth, to do interesting things they can’t do elsewhere, to work at big tech with good stock options.
‘Everyone is a wage slave!!’ Is a lot of concern commenting, ultimately rooted in the exceptionalist belief that everyone wants the opportunity to come to the U.S.
Maybe it was true 20 years ago, it’s certainly not as true now.
I’ve had comments turning their stomachs into pretzel logic, saying well tech companies are surely only spending this much money so they can exploit these people later!!!
Sometimes, the truth is simpler. These jobs are in high demand. Everyone wants them. It’s true these companies are unlikely to hire across a broad swathe of the market. Because global tech is a cult, and you can only be a part of it if you are already in it.
It has no national affiliation, or concern for workers’ rights. You’re right that a lot of exploitation happens, but not in the way that you’re all saying.
I’ve said elsewhere: a well-compensated software developer with 15 years’ experience in Bangalore or Beijing has a better shot at a good tech job in the U.S. (or literally anywhere in the world), than a 5 years’ experience person who is a national of whatever country, no matter how arduous or tough a visa is to get.
For example, there are almost no paths for non-EU immigration to the EU outside of marriage — unless you work in tech. We see this play out everywhere.
It’s the class and wage and opportunity disparity of tech vs non-tech that is motivating this issue.
@skinnylatte https://youtu.be/QZxcg1NiN2A?si=RDQcPjB3heCGjGh3 ... For a talk to counter the tech Vs non tech cult, so yes, fully agree with your analysis
@skinnylatte I would argue that this is true not just for tech, but for pretty much every sort of globalised business; corporate-sponsored expats move almost effortlessly between countries compared to everyone else.
It's sort of an international business class for whom the host country is interchangeable infrastructure, complete with special tax exemptions and the like, which of course makes them one of the prime targets for the ire of the locals.
Resentment is very tempting, even if you know it's a lot more complicated than it appears, because it FEELS unfair 
Thank you for the thread, as usual 