Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate our economy: immigration.
“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate ”” no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.”
While his tongue was slightly in cheek, Gupta and many other Indian business people I spoke to this week were trying to make a point that sometimes non-Americans can make best: “Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.”
While I think President Obama has been doing his best to keep the worst protectionist impulses in Congress out of his stimulus plan, the U.S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas.
[blockquote]“Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.â€[/blockquote]
So, so, so true.
Years ago, I hired a Vietnamese fellow who had been dogged out of his country by the Communists. He was one of the “boat people.” He got to the US, learned enough English to get by, then learned some more. He applied to an engineering school and was accepted. He got his degree, then brought his family over. In a matter of years, his son was getting his MS in Mechanical Engineering and his daughter was enrolled at St. Louis College of Pharmacy. After he told this story to me and a colleague, he walked off. I turned to my colleague and said, ‘We need a lot more Vietnamese in America.”
It’s not hard, people, other than in keeping the discipline required to follow the simple formula in this column.
Wow. Carlos Slim’s investment in the Times is sure paying off.
Here’s a question I never see people like Friedman asking: if 2 million immigrants are good, why not 20 million? 200 million? Of course the answer is it’s not good, and Americans have been voting with their feet for green space and smaller families for a long time now. And if you import enough Indians (or Mexicans, Somalians, etc.) you are eventually going to get India. How many Americans do you see clamoring to get into India? How many high IQ Indians do you see clamoring to stay there? Of course, Friedman’s rose-colored view is that we will just skim the cream (ha!). But that just begs another question: is it right for the US to cherry-pick talent from Third World countries, leaving them with an irreversible brain drain?
The immigration debate is long on ideology, short on critical thought.
#2, I suspect we’re on the same side of the immigration debate as far as insisting that laws should be enforced and that the nation has a right to know who’s coming in and whether they are criminals or are carrying infectious diseases or able to take care of themselves financially.
However, I doubt that India, with a billion people, is going to be bereft of high IQs by the few who get in to the U.S. High achievers among the well-educated get visas, but that leaves huge numbers who don’t get the chance not because they’re stupid but because they weren’t born into the right caste. This is probably true for most third world countries. They’re not meritocracies, and academic achievement is tied to socio-economic class and opportunity rather than innate ability.
Also, from whence springs this belief that the US is suffering such a dearth of higher IQ individuals that we simply [i]must[/i] import them? It’s unfortunate that Friedman lacks any sense of irony, so he could see how ironic his citation to Intel, Google and Microsoft is.
[i] If 2 million immigrants are good, why not 20 million? 200 million? [/i] —#2
Right-o! If one tetanus vaccination is good for you, why not 1000 tetanus vaccinations? If 90 milligrams of vitamin C is good for you, why not 90 kilograms?
Given the vitriolic anti-immigration we regularly see from some T19 commenters, I was wondering what sort of response this article would elicit.
Some of the most vitriolic anti-immigration commentary I’ve heard is from immigrants who are astounded that the US is importing the very people they came here to get away from.
A look at history will show how much past immigrants have meant to America, culturally, economically, etc., etc. Nikola Tesla, anyone? Andrew Carnegie? It is hard to look at our history and not see that successive waves of hard-working immigrants have re-energized this country time and again.
Folks, the point is not immigration, it’s work ethic.
Not to mention that there’s a big difference between being an advocate of open borders and being pro-immigration but also pro-let’s-check-IDs-shall-we. The process we put good, decent, law-abiding immigrants through is almost as disgraceful as our failure to rigorously enforce our borders.
This is not, primarily, an immigration point. Mr. Gupta’s point is that we in the United States have forgotten what causes economic prosperity and what causes economic depression.
Propserity is caused by working hard, paying your debts, not borrowing more than you can repay, rewarding innovation. Of course, the opportunity to succeed demands the possibility of failure.
In an effort to maintain “safety” we have told people that it is OK to not repay your debts (bankruptcy) and it is OK to entice people to borrow more than they can repay.
The roots of this current economic crisis can be laid at both the consumers who borrowed too much and at the lenders who encouraged it and at the governments who decided that everyone can have the american dream – regardless of ability, training, education, or job status.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
#8
Shortest answer,
Hardest truth.
[i]How many Americans do you see clamoring to get into India? How many high IQ Indians do you see clamoring to stay there?[/i]
There are quite a few Americans who do work in India especially in the software and mid-upper management of global brand names like GE, Procter and Gamble etc. There are many high IQ Indians who have advanced degrees from US and Canada and go back to India.
[i]High achievers among the well-educated get visas, but that leaves huge numbers who don’t get the chance not because they’re stupid but because they weren’t born into the right caste.[/i]
This is not true – higher education, especially to the best professional schools uses a very egalitarian system where caste is not a factor. Not everything in India works on the basis of caste and the professional sector is a case in point. The H1B visas are handed out by the American Consulates which also do not use caste as a basis for their selection – there are only 65,000 H1B visas available worldwide every year.
If talented people want to come here to study and work, we all benefit from having them here. But, let’s be clear about something: High IQs aren’t going to make us a better country, nor is a strong work ethic, necessarily. The Vietnamese immigrant Jeffersonian admires was not driven by a work ethic. He was driven by love for and commitment to his family. The work ethic was a means to a higher end–getting his family out of Vietnam and over here. In fact, how many families today structure their family life around their true priority: work and career? Many. Too many. A lack of work ethic is merely a reflection of the absence of commitment to something worth working for.
JGeorge, I must disagree with you. Higher education in India does not use an “egalitarian system where caste is not a factor.” It uses, in fact, a strict quota system by caste. This is intended to break down the caste barriers. Discrimination by caste is illegal and pervasive. Many lower-caste students who get into the top professional schools report severe social and academic discrimination. I’ve lived there. Caste determines almost everything. I never knew the caste of the person I was talking to, but the Indians always know among themselves.
Naturally the U.S. does not consider caste in granting visas. However, it’s still true that higher castes predominate among the people who have the education required to get a visa, so in effect, not in intention, Indian immigrants to America are drawn heavily from the higher castes.
I agree with #8. Work ethic and savings habits are the core problems in our country today.
Katherine,
Thanks for an extremely offensive post.
1. [blockquote]JGeorge, I must disagree with you. Higher education in India does not use an “egalitarian system where caste is not a factor.†It uses, in fact, a strict quota system by caste. [/blockquote]
It is not a completely caste based quota. The breakdown is approximately as follows:
7.5% = Scheduled Tribes (ST)
15 % = Scheduled Castes (SC)
27.5% = Other Backward Castes (OBC)
The above categories are defined by the government. The remaining 50% is determined by merit and people in the above categories are welcome to compete in it (and many do).
So only 50% is determined by caste.
2. [blockquote]Discrimination by caste is illegal and pervasive[/blockquote]
Unfortunately not when the government does it (see above).
3. [blockquote] Many lower-caste students who get into the top professional schools report severe social and academic discrimination.[/blockquote]
Utter BS. Have you studied in any of the top professional schools? These schools (IITs and IIMs) are extremely egalitarian. Students are not given grades based on their castes. Grades are assigned based on exam performance only. However since 50% of the class got in based on caste (rather than only merit) the average performance of this category is poorer than the average performance on whole. Socially in these schools (which are mostly residential) students eat at the same tables and bathe in the same bathrooms and share the same rooms. Unlike in the US where in university cafeterias you see the black students sitting by themselves in these top professional schools in India there is no self segregation.
Does casteism exist in India? Unfortunately it does. Fortunately in the urban centres the importance of caste is diminishing pretty fast though a lot of work needs to be done in the rural areas.
In a country where 82% of the population is Hindu, in 60 years of independence 3 heads of state have been Muslim, 1 has been a woman (the current one), 1 woman head of government, 1 sikh head of government (sikhs are less than 2% of India’s population), and the leader of the ruling party is an Italian-Indian (born and grep up in Italy) and at one time was a practicing Roman Catholic (not sure of her current religious status), and the head of government of India’s most populous province is an OBC (low caste) woman.
Compare it to the US, which in around 230 years of freedom has just now got around to breaking just the “white-male” mold of “head of state/government”. It will probably take more time to break the “Christian” mold.
So “eff off” for being condescending.
4. [blockquote]Work ethic and savings habits are the core problems in our country today.[/blockquote]
And immigrants on average have higher commitments to work ethic and saving habits than the natives.
5. For all those who oppose immigration (of legal or illegal kinds) you are no better than racists. You want Jobs in America to be reserved only for American born people. How are you different from people who want Jobs in White-owned businesses to be reserved only for white people? Katherine, as a woman, would you support a male-owned company to reserve its jobs only for men?
Immigrant, ordinarily I wouldn’t even answer a commenter who has so much irrational rage that he needs to tell me to “eff-off.” As the wife of a son of immigrants and the fond sister-in-law of a Thai immigrant, and a friend to numbers of Indians whom I knew in India and in the U.S., I think you’re way over the edge in your assessment of me. India is indeed improving, and the government is making commendable efforts to break the caste system. My impressions have been formed in part by discussions with lower-caste Hindus, with Catholics who do social work with lower-caste Hindus and tirbals, and with Anglican Christians in Maharashtra state, who are primarily converts from the lower castes and tribes. (Most Americans know nothing about the various schedules, and so “caste” is imprecise, of course, but expresses the stratification of society.) I have also talked to numbers of higher-caste Hindus who go to the U.S. because they feel their options are limited by the quota system in their native land.
It would be entirely unreasonable to expect a social system which has existed for 3,000 years or so to disappear in a generation.
Try in the future not to impute ideas and attitudes to people about whom you know nothing.
I see my comment has been deleted. I apologise for hitting so close to home.