-In a vacuum, you might be right, but companies in the US increasingly compete on a global scale, and since other countries are more friendly to immigration of skilled professionals, we risk losing our global competitive edge.-
That there is a "global economy" and that this is somehow a new thing is a myth perpetuated by Milton Friedman's view of the "flat earth." What is a new thing is the USA relaxing tariffs and trade restrictions so that American companies can outsource work to other countries and not pay taxes on their goods if they manufacture them abroad. Besides that, there has been a "global economy" for many hundreds of years. It's at least as old as the British empire. What the US has been doing over the last thirty years has not so much been "opening markets", as it has been destroying our country's internal regulations that protect American workers from competing with the workers of foreign countries. In my opinion, such regulations were a good thing, and they built the strongest economic power the world had ever seen.
In brief, we don't have to compete on global scale if we choose not to. Your statement assumes that we do.
-It's a nice idea to think that artificial barriers will result in us ramping up education, but that's a process that will take decades.-
USA, 1945: "It's nice to think that if we eliminate artificial barriers to education, we'll have a skilled workforce that will build America into an industrial and economic superpower, but it would be easier to keep all the money in the hands of a few wealthy people. It would take decades to accomplish being an economic superpower, so it's really not worth the effort." I'm glad this wasn't the prevailing attitude then. I'm sure the country I live in would look a lot different.
-You can't just start teaching advanced computer science to high school seniors who can barely read and struggle with basic math.-
Again, reframing. The correct question is, "Why are so many American high school seniors barely able to read and struggle with basic math?" There are many facets to this problem, I'm sure, but I think a large chunk of the problem is that for many American families, there is a culture of anti-intellectualism. School, teachers and education are derided, and with this derision comes an unspoken message that being educated is not that important. And it's not just families. Our culture as a whole doesn't value education. Even in the tech industry, we have superstars Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as the problem's biggest contributors -- they are both college drop outs, yet they are both ridiculously rich and famous.
I think that we could undercut this whole sociocultural phenomenon by having our government step in and do something really drastic, like waive the student loans of anyone who gets a tech degree and holds a job in the industry for some number of years. The more ridiculous the price of an education becomes, the more American teenagers you're going to have who feel that the path of least resistance to a good life doesn't lead through a university.
-So what's more likely is that the lack of skilled professionals in this country will gradually reduce our pace of innovation relative to other countries and cause a relative decline in our wealth, causing us to fall further and further behind.-
-It's far faster and more efficient to let the hoards of skilled professionals in other countries come here, especially since many of them are willing to risk almost anything to move their families here and would stay forever if we let them.-
The assumption made here is that we simply don't have enough skilled labor in this country to meet our demand, and that the only way meet it is to import that skilled labor. I disagree with you. I think we can easily create a social and economic environment conducive to creating the demand we need. Is importing it easier and cheaper? Yes. But it doesn't pay out in the long term.
Here's an example situation. Let's stay Startup X has one American engineer, but it needs fifteen more of him. For the sake of argument, let's say his skill set is utterly unique in the US. No one knows what he knows but him. So, Startup X needs fourteen more of him, but they don't exist in this country now. There do exist internationals with the skill set, and it would be really cheap to get the internationals to come over, and Startup X would have all the labor it needs within a matter of weeks. Cheap labor, lots of profit. The CEO is seeing dollar signs. But, his partner points out something else. They've got the one American engineer. The government just recently instituted a bunch of economic incentives for students who get tech degrees. Under the same bill, Startup X could also get money to pay the salaries of interns learning a skilled technology trade. Bingo! Their one American engineer could train the new engineers. Each of them might further innovate, have new ideas, form his own startup one day, and they'd be American startups. Yeah, it'll take longer. And, you might not be able to pay them the same as internationals. Since they're American, they're likely to have higher standards for pay. Oh, but right, I forgot. Using international labor is cheaper and faster, our country be damned.
Again, this kind of tunnel vision is really damaging to our industry, because all of the negative societal consequences of conservative economics come back around to bite us in the ass. If we keep addressing our problems with the same kind of thinking that caused the problems in the first place (lower taxes, fewer trade restrictions, etc.), we'll be perpetuating a vicious and dangerous downward spiral.
Here's an example situation. Let's stay Startup X has one American engineer, but it needs fifteen more of him. For the sake of argument, let's say his skill set is utterly unique in the US. No one knows what he knows but him. So, Startup X needs fourteen more of him, but they don't exist in this country now. There do exist internationals with the skill set, and it would be really cheap to get the internationals to come over, and Startup X would have all the labor it needs within a matter of weeks. Cheap labor, lots of profit. The CEO is seeing dollar signs. But, his partner points out something else. They've got the one American engineer. The government just recently instituted a bunch of economic incentives for students who get tech degrees. Under the same bill, Startup X could also get money to pay the salaries of interns learning a skilled technology trade. Bingo! Their one American engineer could train the new engineers. Each of them might further innovate, have new ideas, form his own startup one day, and they'd be American startups. Yeah, it'll take longer. And, you might not be able to pay them the same as internationals. Since they're American, they're likely to have higher standards for pay. Oh, but right, I forgot. Using international labor is cheaper and faster, our country be damned.
Your example would be a lot more compelling if it took into account a few factors:
1. For a large percentage of those internationals, making it easier to come here will mean that they will come here and stay, which means that all those potential benefits you say will accrue from the use of the hypothetical interns will also accrue from the internationals, only faster. I don't really understand this line in the sand you've drawn between "us" and "them", because what we're talking about is letting "them" become one of "us". Where is the harm in that, exactly?
2. Training interns is hard, hard work, doesn't scale as well as you seem to think, and often isn't feasible at all. Even if it is, it'll take forever, and Startup X very likely won't be around by the time those interns are competent.
-In a vacuum, you might be right, but companies in the US increasingly compete on a global scale, and since other countries are more friendly to immigration of skilled professionals, we risk losing our global competitive edge.-
That there is a "global economy" and that this is somehow a new thing is a myth perpetuated by Milton Friedman's view of the "flat earth." What is a new thing is the USA relaxing tariffs and trade restrictions so that American companies can outsource work to other countries and not pay taxes on their goods if they manufacture them abroad. Besides that, there has been a "global economy" for many hundreds of years. It's at least as old as the British empire. What the US has been doing over the last thirty years has not so much been "opening markets", as it has been destroying our country's internal regulations that protect American workers from competing with the workers of foreign countries. In my opinion, such regulations were a good thing, and they built the strongest economic power the world had ever seen.
In brief, we don't have to compete on global scale if we choose not to. Your statement assumes that we do.
-It's a nice idea to think that artificial barriers will result in us ramping up education, but that's a process that will take decades.-
USA, 1945: "It's nice to think that if we eliminate artificial barriers to education, we'll have a skilled workforce that will build America into an industrial and economic superpower, but it would be easier to keep all the money in the hands of a few wealthy people. It would take decades to accomplish being an economic superpower, so it's really not worth the effort." I'm glad this wasn't the prevailing attitude then. I'm sure the country I live in would look a lot different.
-You can't just start teaching advanced computer science to high school seniors who can barely read and struggle with basic math.-
Again, reframing. The correct question is, "Why are so many American high school seniors barely able to read and struggle with basic math?" There are many facets to this problem, I'm sure, but I think a large chunk of the problem is that for many American families, there is a culture of anti-intellectualism. School, teachers and education are derided, and with this derision comes an unspoken message that being educated is not that important. And it's not just families. Our culture as a whole doesn't value education. Even in the tech industry, we have superstars Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as the problem's biggest contributors -- they are both college drop outs, yet they are both ridiculously rich and famous.
I think that we could undercut this whole sociocultural phenomenon by having our government step in and do something really drastic, like waive the student loans of anyone who gets a tech degree and holds a job in the industry for some number of years. The more ridiculous the price of an education becomes, the more American teenagers you're going to have who feel that the path of least resistance to a good life doesn't lead through a university.
-So what's more likely is that the lack of skilled professionals in this country will gradually reduce our pace of innovation relative to other countries and cause a relative decline in our wealth, causing us to fall further and further behind.-
-It's far faster and more efficient to let the hoards of skilled professionals in other countries come here, especially since many of them are willing to risk almost anything to move their families here and would stay forever if we let them.-
The assumption made here is that we simply don't have enough skilled labor in this country to meet our demand, and that the only way meet it is to import that skilled labor. I disagree with you. I think we can easily create a social and economic environment conducive to creating the demand we need. Is importing it easier and cheaper? Yes. But it doesn't pay out in the long term.
Here's an example situation. Let's stay Startup X has one American engineer, but it needs fifteen more of him. For the sake of argument, let's say his skill set is utterly unique in the US. No one knows what he knows but him. So, Startup X needs fourteen more of him, but they don't exist in this country now. There do exist internationals with the skill set, and it would be really cheap to get the internationals to come over, and Startup X would have all the labor it needs within a matter of weeks. Cheap labor, lots of profit. The CEO is seeing dollar signs. But, his partner points out something else. They've got the one American engineer. The government just recently instituted a bunch of economic incentives for students who get tech degrees. Under the same bill, Startup X could also get money to pay the salaries of interns learning a skilled technology trade. Bingo! Their one American engineer could train the new engineers. Each of them might further innovate, have new ideas, form his own startup one day, and they'd be American startups. Yeah, it'll take longer. And, you might not be able to pay them the same as internationals. Since they're American, they're likely to have higher standards for pay. Oh, but right, I forgot. Using international labor is cheaper and faster, our country be damned.
Again, this kind of tunnel vision is really damaging to our industry, because all of the negative societal consequences of conservative economics come back around to bite us in the ass. If we keep addressing our problems with the same kind of thinking that caused the problems in the first place (lower taxes, fewer trade restrictions, etc.), we'll be perpetuating a vicious and dangerous downward spiral.