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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

if US wants to put pressure on and punish China, then instead of shooting itself in the foot and everywhere else with tariffs US could have just offered say 10K Green Cards (each coming with $1M resettlement bonus) to the top China researchers&engineers in any industry in China that US would want to cripple as a punishment. At $1M per such a top head it would be a steal for US, and for China it would be a very painful damage. Rinse and repeat ... (Such a solution comes to my mind as result of observing of pitiful state of Russia resulting from the brain-drain (immigration as well as just tech heads switching away into business/etc) it suffered especially during 199x)

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I don't think this would work, for a number of reasons.

First, anecdotally, I've known a number of Chinese-national but US educated persons, who after receiving their higher education and 5-10 years of work, returned to China. The main reason being the "bamboo ceiling". Often, returning means accepting a lower salary but with higher career trajectory and a more peaceful life. I don't think throwing visas + cash at researchers (at least those I've worked with) would alleviate all the cultural problems that lead them to return home in the first place.

Secondly, a recent push for change in Visa distribution (S.386)[1]. Would make it extremely difficult to attract talent. As this bill stands it will significantly harm prospects of Chinese applications for EB2 visas. The kind of change being suggested here (recruiting researchers and engineers) falls into the EB1 - EB2 category. Given how difficult it's been to even get a bill changing pool statistics this far, I doubt you'd be able to do anything of the nature you're mentioning.

[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/386

Great way to get a bunch of spies, and pay for it.

I love this idea; it plays strongly into American strengths.

However, I don't know if China would be more successful in convincing it's top talent to stay with their families, and I have no idea how to sell this idea politically to American voters. The stereotype of Chinese culture is that they tend to be more collectivist, and the stereotype of the general population of American voters would most likely rather spend any money on Americans first. For the later problem, it is hard to articulate concisely the roundabout way this ends up causing brain drain, and the eventual benefits to the US citizenry. It is much easier to sell "China did something bad, we will punish them with tariffs" than "Chinese government bad, we will pay top Chinese citizens to defect."

We were basically doing that via universities until the anti-Chinese sentiment shot up drastically in the past few years.

You can't turn the clock back. The anti-Chinese sentiment is very high now in America.

I think it's certainly possible for a gifted politician to make the distinction of Chinese people != Chinese government party. Not so much "turning the clock back" as directing any anti Chinese sentiment.

This won't work for a lot of reasons. People make more than that even in china if they are top engineers. The green card maybe would be attractive.

The West should do this with Hong Kong.

There must be many wealthy, educated HKers who are interested in leaving at this point and they would be a huge asset to whichever country accepts them.

Its called Vancouver.

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