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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

A lot of Silicon Valley’s success is attributable to immigrants. Be careful what you wish for.

I've always been curious if it matters as much as people claim, or if the funding will just go to someone else with a similar result. We'll get to see if this becomes the new normal.

> if the funding will just go to someone else with a similar result

To Americans? They're being outcompeted for this funding despite having many significant advantages over the people they're competing with. I think it would be naive to expect people starting from a position of strength and getting outcompeted nonetheless to achieve "similar results" when given funding.

The reason people test ideas, is because our assumptions are often wrong. And really, our information is pretty terrible, as we lack any inside information.

Imagine you only learn the country that takes the gold metals at the Olympics, but you have no ability to learn about how the athletes actually performed. The USA rarely wins at some sport, so everyone assumes they're terrible at it.

But, of course, if they're winning sometimes, the performance is actually likely extremely close.

Labor protectionism is an idea that has been tested many, many times.

It's funny you should bring up the Olympics. Did you know some countries offer financial incentives and a pathway to citizenship for immigrant athletes who are able to compete at an elite level?

If there is a relevant example for this discussion, kindly share.

And yes.

"out competed" in this context means "not willing to work for less"

I was talking about founders, who are in direct competition with one another for VC funding.

But if you want to talk about employees, what you're saying isn't really true.

Sourcing, recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and relocating immigrant workers is very expensive. For an immigrant to outcompete a citizen on cost they have to be significantly cheaper than the citizen - but if they're on an H1B you have to pay them the prevailing wage for their position! So there's a floor on just how much immigrant workers can undercut citizen workers. Immigration certainly puts downward pressure on wages across a whole industry, but looking at software in particular we see wages having risen consistently for decades now. You can look at what companies are paying their H1B software workers and see that it's typically a very generous wage by US standards.

But, weirdly, a majority of US CS graduates don't work in software. It doesn't make sense that they would be holding out for more money than immigrant workers to the point that they end up exiting the industry altogether and taking a less lucrative job. Not to me, at least.

I think what you're saying, if it's happening at all, is likely only happening at the bottom end of the market. Which kind of proves my point.

There’s millions of us and billions of them. I think we’re doing okay.

Are you? Things seem to be going from bad to worse in the US right now. From the outside it seems like decades of terrible policy in all areas is catching up to the country.

You are actually correct, I believe. But this is exactly the principle of capitalism isn't it? Market forces, invisible hand, the theories changed over the years but it boils down to the same thing: letting everybody compete. But you cannot have your cake (only locals employed) and eat it too (big wages) in this free competition - some will be underbidding the others.

Is Silicon Valley a success? I would argue it has been an abject failure on culture and society at large. It has generated money for people by stealing every bit of data it can, but that really isnt success but for the few who can put theor fingers on that money stream. It has provided little past doomscrolling and narcissism fodder.

Well, I initially had a snarky remark about Federal involvement in Silicon Valley but it seems that both Shockley and his Traitorous Eight were quite European in national origin.

Federal involvement during WWII led to the founding of Silicon Valley.

Far beyond Silicon Valley: for example, we used to rely on immigrants to fill medical jobs – roughly ¼ of doctors, for example:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/11/how-immigrant...

You’re understating it by only mentioning Silicon Valley. I’ve worked with lots of great people from all over the world who brought their talents and education here to be productive in our economy, and I’ve never stepped one foot in Silicon Valley. We’ve become an embarrassment.

Being “productive in our economy” shouldn’t be the test. People are hardworking and productive all over the world. People in my dad’s village in Bangladesh work really fucking hard. That’s not what makes America different from Bangladesh.

The test should be, if we put the immigrants on an empty plain, could they recreate Iowa or Massachusetts? I.e. a bottom-up democracy characterized by self-government, rule of law, weak extended family ties and strong civic institutions. Because if they couldn’t recreate those things they can’t maintain America. Instead, what’ll happen (and is happening) will be a slow reversion to the global mean.

As we have seen time and time again with democracy experiments in the third world, these things are rare innovations and can’t be conveyed to other cultures just by writing government structures and laws down on paper. The corollary to that is that there is no guarantee we can perpetuate these things in America against immigration just because they’re written down on paper.

A lot of current American cultures with centuries of history would fail that test. The Amish have very strong extended family ties, and I think Pennsylvania would lose a lot of its culture if the Amish disappeared or assimilated.

Do you have any examples of immigrant groups establishing or asking control of communities in the US without self-government, rule of law, or strong civic institutions?

You don’t end up with communities that lack those things entirely, because they’re within America. Instead, what happens is that higher organizational units compensate by imposing the organization that’s lacking internally. These communities become dependent on others to provide law, organization, and civic institutions. That distorts the structure of society, making it a top-down structure rather than a bottom-up structure. The lack of social cohesion between different cultural groups further increases the need for top-down control and administration to manage that conflict. But I don’t think that’s sustainable over generations. Because over time those immigrants will start changing the culture of the host population.

> A lot of current American cultures with centuries of history would fail that test

Well we created a lot of national myths in the mid 20th century to reconcile our historic immigration trajectory. But we have a lot of data from which we should be able to draw conclusions. If we take Denmark as the benchmark for rule of law, civic institutions, and good governance, which place looks more like that: Minnesota, or New Jersey? The answer to that question should guide our immigration policy.

> If we take Denmark as the benchmark for rule of law, civic institutions, and good governance, which place looks more like that: Minnesota, or New Jersey?

Violent crime rate in 2024 according to the FBI DB (incidents per 100k population)

New Jersey - 217.7 Minnesota - 256.6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

So I guess you’re an open borders person?

Crime rates don’t measure the quality of democratic governance. You can have very low crime rates by having a top down authoritarian government like Singapore. They are also unreliable metrics across states because of differences in measures and reporting rates. Homicide is the most reliable metric. Homicide rates in Minnesota have been historically among the lowest in the country, almost at Canadian levels.

This is overhyped by a lot. A lot of SV grift is attributable to exploited immigrants, too, it's not like it's a city of moral champions.

H1B and other employment based immigration programs are some of the worst influences on the market, because people get screwed, wages suppressed for non immigrant workers, and the donor class for the uniparty are the ones paying for the status quo, and a big reason nothing ever gets fixed.

I'm not a big fan of defacto indentured servitude or a lot of the crap people end up saddled with under the schemes immigration middlemen and agencies come up with to skim off wages, take government funding, and other grifts.

I'm a big fan of success stories too, but those are almost always in spite of the immigration policies.

The current CEO's of Alphabet, MSFT, Nvidia, Uber, IBM, Adobe, AMD and many more are themselves immigrants.

There was an article from last year about Meta's AI lab, claiming all top researchers were foreigners. If you look into the research teams in any of the big tech companies you will see they are riddled with people born abroad. It turns out if you want the best in the world, many won't be American born.

Its not just about standard H1B's working in normal SWE roles. Immigrants hold key roles at key companies in SV and have a disproportionate influence on tech's direction. I agree with parent that we should be careful what we wish for.

Found the Meta article:

https://m.economictimes.com/nri/latest-updates/no-american-g...

That's more of a damning indictment of the American education system than praise of immigration. I'm not a fan of autarky in general but it seems reasonable that a country should be self-sufficient in smart people.

Its not intended as praise, but a reality-check on the status quo.

Our leadership in science and tech has always been linked inextricably with sourcing talent from everywhere. You can look at immigrant Nobels, patents, enrollment in doctoral programs, representation in executive teams in tech companies, % of American unicorns founded by immigrants -- it will point to the same conclusion.

Whether or not we should be self-sufficient is another matter, but we aren't even close, not in the highest echelons of STEM.

I'm curious though, what country would serve as evidence that sourcing talent domestically alone can propel a nation to global leadership in these fields?

It’s weird how people don’t recognize that most of these companies started with American founders who then decided to use exploitative labor policies including collusion then slowly became more and more detached - and hired other people to do the exploitation for them. Who better to do the exploitation than those who know the ins and outs of what makes the exploitees tick?

Do people really have no clue that the rise of Leetcode has come from exam culture in eastern countries? Are they that clueless?

I am one of the only Americans in my department at faang. The people I work with aren’t some special level of intelligence. It’s just not cool to work in tech and Americans know that. That’s why you see 2nd gen Asian Americans joining finance and going to nyc. They know it’s fucking lame.

That's like saying "a lot of Silicon Valley's success is attributable to people." It's not a useful statement without specificity.

Key Silicon Valley companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard were founded during the highly restrictive immigration policy that prevailed between the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. Intel was founded just a few years after. A lot of golden age Silicon Valley companies were founded around or shortly after 1970, when the U.S. foreign-born population hit the lowest point in American history, under 5%.

Of course, even during that period, we allowed in German scientists, leading professors, etc. It's a handful of people. The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants. That has very little to do with this story, which is about reversing mass immigration.

This comment is starting to turn gray for me, which means that it’s being downvoted.

I don’t know much about this topic, but all of the factual content mentioned above seems to be true.

Can anyone who disagrees with ‘rayiner here explain why they downvoted? Is it just an unpleasant observation? Is it a disagreement with his conclusion in the last few sentences? Is it just a downvote against the commenter (iirc, he tends to make conservative talking points)? Something else?

I genuinely want to know, as this seems like it would be an important set of talking points around immigration as a whole that any policy maker would want to consider.

From the guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Thank you. I’m very familiar with the guidelines. I’ve think I can play my OG card on this one.

I added substantial commentary that makes it more than a “why the down votes?” type of comment.

‘rayiner gets beat on here a bit due to what appears to be his conservative stances on some issues.

While I don’t agree with many of the things ‘rayiner says, we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water if we’re going to have meaningful discussions here — especially ones that are intellectually stimulating.

IMHO, one of the reasons we (in the US) are where we are politically is precisely because we ignore, or downvote, or denigrate views from the opposing side (whichever side that is). It’s not really prudent to blithely downvote a considered and articulate comment without commentary just because you disagree with it or dislike the implications. In the case of hacker news, this type of behavior is antithetical to the goals of the site — intellectually stimulating content.

So, while I appreciate your citation of the rules (which may itself be a middlebrow dismissal), I stick by my original comment, and I look forward to anyone who could reply to it.

For me it’s because he’s having to go back to the fucking 1970s in reference to Silicon Valley companies instead of what any modern day person thinks of, to refute their point.

As a piece of historical information, or if we were discussing that time period, cool. The discussion wasn’t about that.

I don't think it's wrong to go back that far. I think SV is it what it is because of those companies but also the schools, some local charm and quirks, etc. and the same reasoning applies there. The tech companies begot more tech companies basically. Before Meta and Alphabet it was Microsoft and Yahoo and before MS it was Sun and Netscape and before that Oracle maybe and the list keeps going back and add in hacker culture in the Bay Area I guess which existed for a long time. It's a fair thing to point out.

Immigration to SV is probably a result of SV success not the other way around. Likewise, why would immigrants even come here if there was nothing for them before they arrived? I think the adulation of immigration is historical revisionism. Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.

> Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.

"If you bulid it, they will come".

In the power curve growth of SV fortunes "home grown" second, third, fourth generation, and longer immigrants certainly built the groundwork, drawing upon education from schools founded upon Oxbridge and other offshore inspirations, absolutely as you say, all the same more recent first generation immigrants played a big part in inflating it sky high.

With no additional immigrants drawn to SV it's not hard to imagine SV stalling out at 1980s Microsoft levels, impressive but far short of where it is today.

>I don't think it's wrong to go back that far.

I think in a discussion about the effect of immigration on the current state of an area, in this case Silicon Valley, you can totally reference its history if you are making a claim about a chain of events. If instead, you skip over 50 years of history which includes multiple generations of how the industry worked and multiple generations of immigration policy, to start talking about

> The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants

then you are making a narrative that has nothing to do with the point, and I am unwilling to accept your framing.

I was responding to the following assertion:

> A lot of Silicon Valley’s success is attributable to immigrants

Successful industries stick in particular geographic locations. Why is New York the epicenter of the financial industry? It’s not because it’s the best place you’d choose in 2025. It’s because the city was the country’s preeminent port and stock brokers set up a financial exchange under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street in 1792.

Similarly, Silicon Valley’s success traces to its origins in the 1950-1980. Many leading Silicon Valley companies that are still around today were founding back then. So it’s highly relevant that America was able to build Silicon Valley in the first place during and only shortly after a highly restrictive immigration policy.

But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunification. Whatever contribution you think immigration is making to Silicon Valley today can be accomplished with 1/30th of the immigration levels we had over the last few years.

> Many leading Silicon Valley companies that are still around today were founding back then.

Define “leading”, then tell me what companies are still around. I can think of two off the top of my head and one of them has an immigrant CEO.

> But the whole argument is disingenuous. The article is about mass immigration. Silicon Valley’s success has fuck all to do with the millions of immigrants that come in every year illegally or through family reunifications.

Ah, I’m done responding to you with this conflating illegal immigration with family reunification

> Define “leading”, then tell me what companies are still around. I can think of two off the top of my head and one of them has an immigrant CEO.

Intel, AMD, Apple, Cisco, and Oracle, all have above $200 billion market cap and were founded in the 1960s or 1970s.

Being CEO of an established company obviously is a much easier job than building one in the first instance.

> Ah, I’m done responding to you with this conflating illegal immigration with family reunification

They’re both immigration pathways where people aren’t filtered based on skills and credentials.

Useful feedback. Thank you.

For more useful feedback, this is the sort of commentary that means I’m disregarding the posters views going forward.

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642131

He snuck in “family reunification” in a discussion about mass emigration and conflated it with illegal immigration in scope.

I went through the family reunification process. It was a benefit extended to me by the government as a citizen, and I’m native born before the jingoists join in.

You have to sign up to take care of said family’s welfare until the point that they have made enough payments into the system that they are no longer a burden. I remember having to calculate it for my spouse during the citizenship application for them a decade after the green card application.

I legitimately detest this person and their views over this, their attempt to lump in all forms of immigration with violating the law, and now you know why they get comments grayed out whenever enough people hear their dog whistles.

I am also here on someone else’s H1B. I wasn’t even a citizen until high school. It doesn’t matter, it has nothing to do with the aggregate effects of immigration on the country. I’m sure you’re a highly intelligent person. You should be able to separate yourself from the analysis. Even more than that—we should be skeptical of conclusions that flatter our own personal narratives.

Family reunification is a broken feature of our immigration system. It’s why a handful of skilled immigrants from my home country have begotten massive enclaves of poorly educated and poorly assimilated immigrants in places like Queens. They're transmission vectors for home-country culture. The New York Times did a great podcast that covers the broken promises of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act and how family reunification was a major loophole in it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...

Nah.

This is down to axioms. I find your views on immigration abhorrent and I think you’re a piece of shit.

There’s no more analysis to be done, it’s a personal set of values and you’ve crossed them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com