Immigration to the United States

A recent discussion on the same topic with a friend "inspired" me to "pen down" my thoughts on this issue, and many many other related ones.


The American perspective

The Americans believe that the world has gained a lot from the Americans, and America has been a donor nation, giving away aid, education, peace, democracy and technology to the rest of the world.

Being from a different country, I know that ALL governments have a similar doctrine to feed to their general populace. This is the political stuff the governments are made out of. Only that the people are so easily tricked into believing that all of that is true.


A nation of immigrants

Contrary to what the Americans themselves believe, the world has NOT always stolen from the US. Au contraire, the US has always and regularly tapped from the best resource pool of the world. I took this list from the Time Top 100 scientists of the 20th century:

Leo Bakeland, the inventor of plastic was Belgian. Enrico Fermi, the Nobel laureate and particle physicist was Italian. Albert Einstein, the Nobel laureate and discoverer of relativity was a German. William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor (who brought silicon to the Silicon Valley) was born in London. Kurt Godel, the mathematician who gave the incompleteness theorem, was an Austrian.

All of the above ended up being Americans.

I added to the list some other most influential scientists the US has had:

Neils Bohr, the particle physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project was Danish. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb was the son of German immigrants. Wolfgang Pauli, also a particle physicist (of the Pauli's exclusion principle fame) was an Austrian.

Even in sports, the US has benefited by immigration. Martina Navratilova is Czech. Andre Agassi is the son of Iranian parents. Arnold Schwarzenegger is Austrian.

Even the bureaucrats like Madeline Albright (Czech) and Henry Kissinger (German) are first generation immigrants.

A more comprehensive list can be seen in the third reference.

Americans created this wealth themselves?

No doubt US is the only superpower. No doubt that it is the largest economy in the world. But the notion that all this power was generated in vacuum, by Americans themselves is farcical, and anyone believing this is indeed kidding himself. Indeed a lot of wealth that the US has created in recent times was generated by immigrants to the US.

The symbol of Americana, the Levi's Jeans were first created by Levi Strauss, a German immigrant. The man who created the Mustang, Lee Iacocca was the son of Italian immigrants. The co founder of Intel, Andy Grove is a Hungarian immigrant. The co founder of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia is an Indian immigrant. The co-founder of Yahoo, Jerry Yang, is a Taiwanese immigrant. The Bose Corp was founded by Amar Bose, the son of Indian immigrants. The "Father of the Pentium processor" is Vinod Dham, an Indian immigrant. Sun Microsystems was co-founded by Vinod Khosla, an Indian immigrant. Tibco was founded by Vivek Ranadive, an Indian immigrant.


Why the US immigration policy sucks

Many many immigrants to the US cannot turn entrepreneur because of the archaic laws that prevent them from opening up ventures on their own, and hence the major reason why so many of the technology companies were founded by immigrants as co-founders. Those who wait for a more favorable status find their wait extraordinarily long. In an age and time of rapid progresses in science and technology, such a wait can ruin entrepreneurship. This hurts the competitiveness of the United States in the long run.

The Xenophobia

The xenophobia that is sweeping the US is acquiring some of the shades of the Nazi Germany, where the more successful Jews were loathed and blamed for the ills of Germany. While the xenophobia at this time is merely at the hate level, and has not acquired the violent shades as observed in the Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

Still the xenophobia is apparent in the campaign against the H1B visa holders, especially the Indians and Chinese who, in the words of the campaign, lower wages, and increase joblessness in the country.

The US immigration system is completely broken (or is created thus) to create modern-day slaves for businesses. Slaves who have to work on lower salaries, who cannot change jobs or positions or open their own companies. They are stuck in queues for years, waiting for an absolution,

The cracks appear?

The unfavorable myopic policy in the United States, coupled with a more favorable one in most other nations is rapidly reversing the flow of immigrants into the US. Many students, especially from China now return back to China to set up start-ups after studying at the US universities. According to the Chinese Ministry of Personnel, by the end of 2005, more than 930,000 Chinese had studied abroad, and about 230,000 returning to China over the last decade.

What the future holds
The stifling of entrepreneurship and discouragement to immigrate to the US is causing the US to miss out on the next big thing. With China, Australia, India and Ireland rapidly making strides in research and development, the US superiority in much of new research areas has already appeared to crumble. Indeed the US has already fallen behind a lot of development in the automobile (hydrogen and electric/hybrid autos) biotechnology (stem cell research) and Wireless (3G). With a failing manufacturing sector, stagnating housing, and decreasing profits, the US is rapidly turning from a net producer to a net consumer. The rapidly falling value of the dollar is a testimony to the danger the future holds for the US economy. That the dollar has lost 43% of its value against the Euro in 2003-2006 portends worst for the future.

I hate to be the pessimist guy here, but the result does not appear to be too rosy or too far for the US.

References:
http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/
http://www.ailf.org/notable/famous.htm
http://immigration.about.com/od/usfamousimmigrants/Famous_and_Notable_Immigrants_in_the_US.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Americans
http://english.cri.cn/4426/2007/02/17/164@197584.htm