H1B visas, immigration and history - an American story
- Summary:
- There are many competing opinions about the potential impact of tinkering with the H1B visa program. Here is one point of view that draws heavily upon history for its context.
There’s a lively debate going on behind the scenes at the Enterprise Irregulars, of which I am a former member, over the place of political discussion in a forum that trades on information about the tech industry. Under most conditions I think political discussion should be sidelined from a forum like this but the conditions in play are far from what a reasonable person might call “most” or “normal” conditions. HiB visas are a top of mind case in point.
There are multiple real facts (as opposed to those alternative ones that are suddenly in vogue) that support the contention that these are not normal times and that the technological and the political have fused regardless of wishful thinking about keeping politics out of any technology discussion.
Sadly this is not the first, or even second time in American history when the foreign born were excluded from these shores and the Statue of Liberty had to carry an asterisk on her famous inscription. I’ll get to that. For now let’s review some facts.
Tech leaders speak out
There’s a story from January 30 in the New York Times about Silicon Valley tech executives’ positions eschewing any separation of politics from tech business, which says in part:
Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, wrote on Facebook that Mr. Trump’s actions “are so un-American it pains us all” and that “it is time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity."
Sergey Brin, a Google founder who immigrated from the Soviet Union when he was 6 … attending an impromptu protest on Saturday evening at San Francisco International Airport…“I’m here because I’m a refugee,” Mr. Brin said, according to a Twitter post by the Forbes writer Ryan Mac…
"Like many of you, I'm concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook on Friday…
Even some of those working closely with the Trump administration were critical. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who sits on two of Mr. Trump’s advisory committees, wrote on Twitter that the ban was “not the best way to address the country’s challenges.
It goes on but there’s fair use to consider. Also to consider but unable to speak having died a couple of years ago, Steve Jobs was the son of a 1954 immigrant from Syria.
The reason for the reaction and the reason tech and politics have merged on this point says the Times is obviously that,
Just about everyone in Silicon Valley came from somewhere else or is a son or daughter of someone who did or is married to someone who did.
Techcrunch has also been busy reporting on the situation quoting Bloomberg that round two of the immigration ban would involve H1B visas, which is really hitting home for the tech industry. Tech Crunch notes that:
Current U.S. legislation caps the number [of H1B visas] at 85,000 work visas annually, a number which has been in place for years and is oversubscribed. It’s not clear if the draft would seek to reduce the number of workers allowed to enter under such programs, and by how much if so; or it if (sic) will make it harder to get applications approved — and by what measures.
Amid all this, it’s also reported that some tech executives are offering to match donations to the ACLU to defend against Trump’s executive order, saying in part,
Early Twitter investor Chris Sacca, for example, was an early one to start the trend and offered to match donations to those who would direct message or respond with receipts.
About a dozen executives and venture capitalists have followed suit. But also,
Google has created a $2 million “crisis fund” that can be matched by up to $2 million in donations from employees.
There’s a lot more in the press, but you get the point.
H1B visas are seen as a vital component in attracting the skilled talent Silicon Valley needs in order to maintain its global high tech dominance. By way of response, the tech world has not gone silent over the immigration executive order, except for my friends at the Enterprise Irregulars.
Perhaps a better question would be why this is all happening and the answer is not as simple as a new administration taking root.
There’s been some discussion here and elsewhere recently about automation and job insecurity. Many people are concerned that further advances in automation with AI and machine learning could threaten jobs in the immediate future and they are understandably concerned. But then America has a long history of selective exclusion.
A dark history
In a historical context we’ve often cited similar eras such as the early 19th century when the Luddites a group of British textile workers concerned about job loss rampaged disabling or breaking the newest automated textile machinery. Their rebellion had global consequences including fostering the American Group or the American Party, which morphed into the Know Nothings, a political party, in the 1850’s. According to Wikipedia,
The movement arose in response to an influx of migrants and promised to "purify" American politics by limiting or ending the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants, thus reflecting nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, whom they saw as hostile to Republican values and as being controlled by the Pope.
Even in the face of that hostility, immigrants notably from China and Ireland continued to come to America. In “Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863 to 1869,” the late Stephen Ambrose documented how Chinese labor was instrumental to building the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento to Promontory, Utah. The road climbed roughly 7,000 feet into the Sierras and used more than a dozen tunnels blasted through granite by Chinese labor using black powder explosives and later unstable liquid nitroglycerine. Progress was measured at just under one foot per day in a 16 by 32 foot hole in the side of a mountain. It was a job few whites wanted especially when the Chinese could be paid less.
As thanks, once the railroad boom was over the U.S. passed the Chinese exclusion act, a federal law signed in 1882 by then president Chester A. Arthur prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. It remained the law of the land for more than half a century. Says Wikipedia,
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law implemented to prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. It was repealed by the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943.
There were other laws like the Immigration Act of 1917 and according to Wikipedia,
The law was primarily aimed at further restricting immigration of Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans, especially Italians and Eastern European Jews. In addition, it severely restricted the immigration of Africans and outright banned the immigration of Arabs and Asians.
The act was not repealed until 1952 just in time to let Steve Jobs’ dad into the country.
The Irish were another group allowed into the country to do things that the native born had less interest in during the 19th century but their welcome was short lived. Even today, you can ask a resident of Boston or New York the meaning of NINA and you’ll get the right answer, No Irish Need Apply which was prominently displayed with help wanted ads in that era.
All this happened despite the fact that Irish immigration to the United States had taken place since colonial times and six Declaration of Independence signers were of Anglo-Irish or Scots-Irish descent and Andrew Jackson was partially Scots-Irish.
The Irish fled famine in their native land in the 1850s, settled in eastern cities and fought bravely in the American Civil War. Again according to Wikipedia:
Seven Union generals were Irish-born while an estimated 150,000 Irish-Americans fought for the Union during the war. Irish-Americans living in the Union states often formed their own regiments, notably the 69th New York State Volunteers. The Volunteers flew a green flag with a golden harp on it, symbolizing Ireland.
After the First Battle of Bull Run, the 69th New York Infantry was incorporated into a larger unit, the Irish Brigade. At the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, the brigade charged up Marye's Heights, suffering 41.4% casualties.
For space limitations and because the story is still well known, we won’t even get into the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two or raw shameful treatment of Jews escaping from Nazi Germany.
My take
There is a kind of paradox at work here. Ask Americans where they come from and they'll gladly reel off stories about their ancestry involving immigration. Home of the brave, land of the free has been a well rehearsed siren call.
But then you might be tempted to say that U.S. immigration policy has fluctuated over the course of history and we shouldn’t get our knickers in a knot over the latest installment of the story.
But there are far more differences this time than the obvious similarities might suggest. Throughout the 19th century there were fewer than two billion people on the planet and in that pre-telecommunications era it was hard to gauge the effect on the greater population of some of these acts.
Today with the global population exceeding seven billion people, most of whom are attached to the Internet, communication is instantaneous and a global interdependency has already become manifest. Breaking down that order can serve no good especially if order is replaced with chaos.
More to the point, in promulgating its new policies America is breaking promises and implied contracts with the global community. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the melting pot that is the tech world. More than ever, advances in technology require input from numerous interdisciplinary people who happen to live all over the world. How will we get our good name back?
An immigration ban or even the threat of one will have a chilling effect on technology advances and will likely move the center of gravity from the U.S. to some other place with pleasant weather, nice people, and the stability needed to foster innovation and invention. This is already being mooted among tech leaders keen to get the ear of the current administration. I hear Canada is rather nice.
As a country, the U.S. is playing with fire and for no good reason other than to appeal to a populist agenda that in reality will more likely lead to economic harm than do good.