July 2, 2008
Notes from the Aspen Ideas Festival 1
I’m in Aspen for the Ideas Festival. I’ll write a daily note, updated now and then, on things that strike me as interesting.
One thing that already keeps coming up—in this environment rich in high-tech executives and entrepreneurs—is the unfathomable bone-headedness of a US immigration policy that discriminates against the skilled. Intel’s Craig Barrett railed against this at a session last night and University of Maryland’s Dan Mote picked the theme up again this morning. What other country, Dan asked, deports its freshly minted science PhDs? Every PhD should come with a green card attached, he said.
A session featuring Sean Wilentz on his new book about the Age of Reagan disappointed me. I wanted to know how a card-carrying liberal commentator came to conclude that Reagan was a great president. He dealt with this perfunctorily at the beginning—saying (a bit oddly, I thought) that he wrote the book as a historian, thus using only a part of his brain, and setting his prejudices to one side. Are we to conclude that he writes his political commentary with the other part of his brain, letting his prejudices rip and suppressing his sense of historical detachment and disinterestedness? Anyway, I came away with no sense at all of why he thought Reagan was a great president despite (on Wilentz’s view) being wrong about most things.
A session on “Where will the next technological breakthroughs come from?”, featuring the aforementioned Dan Mote, was valuable even though the panel ignored that interesting question entirely. The brilliant Danny Hillis (pioneer of parallel processing) described three levels of innovation: building blocks (lasers, microprocessors), products that bundle them together (iPods, etc), and adaptation to innovations of the second kind (think of the way the telephone transformed business and society). Intriguing to think of the third level as itself a kind of innovation. America has great strengths in this area of adaptation—a flexible and relatively lightly regulated economy, an ability to reinvent itself—but perhaps some weaknesses too, at least as compared with rising Asia. Installed infrastructure can make adaptation difficult. In some ways it helps to have a blank slate—the better to leapfrog a technology (think of the way rural India and Africa are moving directly from no phones to cellphones).
[…] Read it. One thing that already keeps coming up—in this environment rich in high-tech executives and entrepreneurs—is the unfathomable bone-headedness of a US immigration policy that discriminates against the skilled. Intel’s Craig Barrett railed against this at a session last night and University of Maryland’s Dan Mote picked the theme up again this morning. What other country, Dan asked, deports its freshly minted science PhDs? Every PhD should come with a green card attached, he said. […]
Posted by: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Notes from the Aspen Ideas Festival 1 | July 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 am | Report this commentYou show yourself to be uncritical of tech industry propaganda.
The large majority of H1b tech visas (large = ~80%) go to Indian shops, who send engineers over here on contract gigs. “Studies have shown,” etc: look it up. It was a minor scandal last year (should have been a major one, in my view). Immigration was not the goal for these gigs: training cheaper workers, and then offshoring the jobs and laying off American workers, was the goal.
If tech companies were capable of acting in good faith wrt to their workforce, they would address this situation as part of dealing with high tech visas and immigration. But no, they want their cake and to eat it to: offshoring jobs at a rapid pace while importing scientists. And journalists like you accomidate their hypocrisy.
Posted by: lark | July 2nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm | Report this commentIn the US high school system 25% of math teacher teach math without having a minor in math, let alone a major. If a foreign teacher is hired to teach math in high school he has to pay $11,000 for the permant residency process and is forced to teach in the same school district for five years.
Posted by: paolo bruno | July 2nd, 2008 at 10:24 pm | Report this commentI apologiza for the incompletednes: a teacher has to teach in the same school district continuously for five years in order to receive the green card. If the teacher leaves the district before the five years the permanent residency process is halted, even though the teacher opts for teaching the same subject (math or science) in another school district (with the exception of an initial “portability” option after six months). The case mentioned above if that of a foreign teacher froma country experiencing a low level of immigration to the US. If the teacher if from China or India the waiting time could easily be seven years.
Posted by: paolo bruno | July 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 pm | Report this commentInteresting column as always. I do not know who Sean Wilentz is, but anyone of any political ideology who contends that Ronald Reagan was anything other than an empty-suit has a shaky grip on reality. Oh, well, so much for the nattering nabobs whether of something I agree with (by chance) or not.
I do happen to agree with Mr. Barrett and other big-business technology types even if they are hypocritical. The indigenous may suffer, but too bad. Let all people - whether Mexican or other South American laborers or Chinese or Middle Eastern or Indian geniuses - into the country. We all ultimately benefit.
“Third-level” kind of babbling is just that: babble - even if from a certifiable genius. The impact of the Internet and software development base on universal networking will in fact cause monumental social changes - we just do not know what they are yet.
Bill Gates is primarily an outstanding monopolist. Most geeks of his era or even now are so impractical that an extremely bright and aggressive individual such as Mr. Gates was able to parlay innovation from everyone else into massive corporate and individual wealth. What actually is fascinating is the fact the much superior technology through the FOSS (free and open source) paradigm has always been available to anyone with the motivation to investigate it.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | July 3rd, 2008 at 12:25 am | Report this commentSorry, but you’re wrong.
The purpose of the H1-B visa program is to import Cheap Slave Labor and replace US citizen workers.
The people who claim that there’s a shortage are lying to you.
I have a BS Computer Science, a MS Electrical Engineering, and 20 years experience in real-time embedded systems (mostly digital telecom). I can’t get a job in Santa Clara County, basically because I am a US citizen.
The H1-B visa program is the largest immigration fraud in US history, and accounts for a $20 Billion per year direct savings in corporation’s payroll expenses. That is the real reason why they want the program expanded.
Posted by: Dave Chapman | July 4th, 2008 at 1:03 am | Report this comment