Friday 11 August 2017

Understanding Trump's new immigration bill

Hi guys, sometimes you just stumble upon something that sets you off and well, get ready for one of those rants. Many people on Facebook have reacted negatively to Trump's new immigration bill - the RAISE Act. If you haven't heard about it, it is a points based system for anyone looking to move to America. Now America is hardly the only country to have a points-based system to evaluate new migrants: many other countries including Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand all have simlar systems. I've had a look at it and thought some of the criteria were really quite impractical, such as winning Olympic medals or the Nobel prize (or "any other international award")? Like how many people would that apply to? What if someone won a gold medal at the World Championships but didn't participate in the Olympics due to an illness? What if someone won a major award for something like architecture - who is going to decide if it is on par with the Nobel prize or not, because frankly, every other award is going to pale in comparison compared to a Nobel prize.
How should a country control immigration?

And what about degrees? A foreign bachelor's degree (say from Oxford or Cambridge) gets you only 5 points but an American bachelor's degree gets you 6 points - even if the American university that issued it may be languishing at the very bottom of the league tables? In any case, how can you treat all American degrees as if they are a monolithic entity? Sure there are Ivy League universities which are very famous and prestigious, then you have those like the University of Southern Mississippi and Embry-Riddle University at the very bottom of the league table. Never heard of those two? Well why would you, unless you're deliberately searching for the worst university in America - and that that doesn't even include those online degree mills who will sell a degree to your cat if you pay them a small fee. There also is a heavier weighting towards those with post-graduate qualifications in science, technology, engineering and mathematics - again, simply having a qualification in those fields doesn't guarantee you will earn more money or get a better job than say, someone who works in financial services or even someone who works in IT and may be an expert in a field so niche that he is a pioneer in that field, hence no university in the world can teach him when he is the one developing the cutting edge technology. Heck, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg all didn't have a degree: they didn't need one!

This RAISE act would favour those from rich kids say from Russia or China, who can afford to get an education in America for many years. And even if they are not that intelligent, no worries, they can get the relevant qualifications from a university on the bottom end of the league tables. You need to score at least 30 points to be eligible under the RAISE act So imagine the applicant is 26 - 30 years old (10 points), has a US master's degree in engineering from the University of Southern Mississippi (8 points) and is fluent in English (12 points). That's enough - the potential migrant doesn't even need a job offer, any kind of award or Olympic medal or even invest any money in the US. Hence this migrant may have scored 30 points and is eligible for immigration, but even if the system does give them the green light, the job market wouldn't be as kind to that same person because hey, his degree is from Southern Mississippi. Even if there are loop holes in the system for immigration, you're not going to fool the gatekeepers. Contrast that to say a migrant who is also the same age and also fluent in English but got his masters degree in engineering from Oxford - he would fall short at just 29 points, even though he is probably going to get far more successful in the long run than the migrant who scored 30 points with his degree from Southern Mississippi. Thus the criteria for degrees in the RAISE act is deeply flawed.
Does the RAISE Act actually attract the best talents to USA?

The job offer may be enough to tip the migrant over the 30 points barrier - but again, this is still massively unfair to those who are dependent on that job offer to stay in the US. Those who have qualified independently and reached that vital 30 points without the job offer can change jobs as often as they change socks, but for those who are dependent on that job offer for their immigration status, they are subject to exploitation. I personally knew two cases - an Israeli in California and a Ukrainian in London - who were dependent on their companies sponsoring their work permits and they were seriously overworked and underpaid. Their employers were evil - "well if you don't like it, you can fuck off back to Israel/Ukraine, but hey, I know you don't want to. Now shut up and do as you're told." It does give the rich kids who could afford an American masters degree a huge advantage - even if they did get it from somewhere like Southern Mississippi. The system favours the rich, rather than those who have more to contribute to society. After all, take someone like a nurse for example - a nurse provides a vital service in our hospitals, yet a nurse would almost certainly fall short - the best case scenario is 28 points (age + English + US bachelor's degree). Would you rather have a hardworking nurse or some rich Chinese kid with a useless degree in your country? Who do you think is going to contribute more to your country?

You see, countries like Australia and the UK have a special list of professionals who are in high demand - such as nurses - who may not meet the other stringent requirements, but we desperately need nurses and recognize the contribution they make to society. So there is a fast track scheme for those, like nurses, whose profession is on that special list of skilled occupations. Oh and if you're seriously thinking of moving to the West, stuff your dream job and get real - you need to make sure you get the right training in a skill that will lead to a work permit for a job on that special list of skilled occupations. Would the RAISE act have special provisions for people like nurses, or would Trump's people see that as a loophole that needs to be plugged? Well, what is more likely to happen is that politicians like to be seen to be tough on immigration and if they really need nurses at some later stage, they would get someone to do a backroom deal with a country like the Philippines to supply nurses. The Time article only gives us the basics of the RAISE act and certainly, it is easy for me to tear it apart and find faults, but there was something else on social media that I found equally disturbing.
How do you calculate what a migrant is worth?

Many people have commented that a lot of Americans would not score 30 points on this test either and they should be stripped of their citizenship. Well, that's not how it works. Practically every country (well at least the nice ones) have some kind of criteria to manage immigration, that is to make sure that they attract the right kind of immigrants to their country. If a rich country were to have an open door policy, where they welcome economic migrants from every country in the world, that's never going to happen in a democracy - apart from Singapore, there really isn't another developed country in the world where you can have this kind of open-door policy without having a backlash against the government at the next election. We have already witnessed Brexit and the election of Trump, And more to the point, America has always been a very hard country to emigrate to - just to get a work permit in America, you have to be a highly skilled migrant in any case. That is why so many economic migrants from Latin America who will never meet those high standards take the dangerous and difficult route to sneak across the border as illegal immigrants. Thus by that token, little has changed - they just need to make sure they let some experts look at the criteria under the RAISE act before it is going to look a lot more sensible, to make sure it acts as a filter that ensures America gets the right kind of migrants. But let's talk about stupid people for a while - you know, those unskilled, uneducated people who will not score well on this test. Firstly, let's look at something I use a lot on my blog time and time again - the bell curve distribution graph for IQ.
It is not a precise science and I know IQ isn't the only factor that determines how much you ultimately earn, but it helps a great deal. Having a higher IQ means you will be able to breeze through the education process a lot more easily, getting those vital degrees and qualifications that will enable you to get well paid professional work. Having a lower IQ means you're probably going to end up doing menial work - using your muscles to make a living rather than your brains. Now if you accept that you live in a nice country and people are going to want to move to your country, what would you rather have? Doctors, scientists, engineers and IT experts who capable of making great contributions to your society or those at the bottom end of the food chain, who will struggle to make ends meet, doing menial work? Of course you'll grab the doctors first along with other highly skilled migrants. Imagine you go to a buffet dinner and there's a huge spread of food - do you go for the high value items like lobsters, steaks, prawns and oysters? Or do you pile your plate up with rice, bread, french fries and pasta? That is why the quality of the migrants do matter - they have to be of the right quality in order for a country to justify keeping their borders open to the right kind of migrants. A doctor may directly contribute to society by working in a hospital, but even a banker still contributes through the tax system - without the higher rate tax payers filling the government's coffers, where are they going to find the money to fund their schemes to help the poor?

Every country will have their share of stupid people who will end up doing menial work. And whether you are charitable or not, whether you like it or not, rich people do end up subsidizing these people doing menial work through taxation - although this is far more the case in the West than in Singapore. Rich people pay a lot more taxes and the government then has a pot of tax money to spend on poor people who are struggling to make ends meet. Letting in more migrants who will earn a lot of money means that they will end up paying more taxes, which the government can in turn spend on the poor. You can't realistically banish stupid people and put them all on an island in the middle of the ocean - but what you can do is help balance the government's coffers by making sure that you will have enough tax revenue to spend on helping the poor. Tax the rich too harshly and the money will go offshore or you may face a brain drain as in the case of the Finland where well educated, highly skilled Finns leave their country to escape the very high income tax. So if a Finnish engineer ends up working in America, it is a win-win situation. The alternative is the Singapore model - where the elderly, poor and the destitute are left to fend for themselves and I'm not a fan of that either: please see the video below.
This is an aspect of immigration that few people talk about - but if governments can use immigration to help increase their tax revenues and reduce their deficits, then of course it makes sense for them to continue welcoming immigrants. However, a Finnish engineer working in Germany is going to contribute a lot more in the short run, than say a Syrian refugee who speaks no German and is completely dependent on the government in the short run at least. This is why the system needs to be managed carefully - Germany can afford to be generous for now, but for how long? This scheme is not meant to decide who is worthy to be a citizen and who is not, but rather, simply a means to ensure that migration does have an overall positive effect on the country, rather than a drain on the already stretched resources. Take Greece for example - it is a country whose economy is already totally wrecked by years of mismanagement and recession, yet it is the first EU country that many refugees from the Middle East arrive at and seek asylum in. The Greek people have hardened their stance against the refugees because they are already so deep in the shit, there simply isn't enough money left in the government's coffers to act in a generous way towards the refugees. Sweden on the other hand, is a much richer country and can afford to be generous to refugees. The Swedish government can be both generous with poorer Swedish people and have enough money still to help refugees but not many countries have that luxury.

It is actually surprisingly hard to strip someone of their citizenship. Most of us acquire our citizenship at birth - it is something that is usually passed down from your parents, the babies take the nationality of their parents at birth.  Even if they have done a heinous crime, you trial them, put them in jail and subject them to the whatever punishment the courts can dish out. There are some pretty extreme cases when it has been done - in the UK, it is usually related to terrorism offences and when the offender is still a citizen of another country. Other cases also relate to fraud - so if someone is exposed to have lied or used fake documents to obtain their citizenship, then the government legitimately strip that person of their citizenship. But simply for being a stupid, uneducated, unemployed bum? No, they are still the burden of their country of birth no matter how useless they are. Every country is saddled with this burden and often, the governments are good to these people for two reasons: firstly, it is the kind, decent thing to do, to help those less fortunate than us. Secondly, even dumb people get to vote in the democratic process - just because you're an unemployed, uneducated bum doesn't mean you're excluded from the elections, you get one vote, just like the rocket scientist genius who is a multi-millionaire. Thus, for all the right and the wrong reasons, governments still help the poor.
Quick, deport her.

Thus any kind of points-based test system to regulate immigration was never meant to existing citizens and yes, of course the majority of citizens would probably not qualify if they had to sit for such a test to retain their citizenship. The only modern government that has ever done any culling of what they considered undesirable elements of society was the Nazi government under Hitler - when Jews, gays, gypsies, the disabled and other minorities were put to death in the holocaust. Yeah, we know how that ended, let's not even go there. But going back even further, there is the practice of senicide (sometimes known as geronticide) in some cultures - this involved the culling (well, killing) of the elderly and the sick from the tribe as they were no longer productive and a drain on the tribe's resources to keep them alive. You can read about how the elderly and the sick were killed off in the Wikipedia link, but it does seem rather barbaric at the very least. So if we are naturally conditioned to feel compassion for people like that in our society, why the talk of stripping people of their citizenship simply for being too poor, too uneducated and unskilled to score 30 points in a test set out for migrants then? But just because the majority of the citizens would fail this test doesn't mean that the benchmark is set too high - rather, the criteria needs to reflect the needs of the country, so that they attract precisely the kind of skilled workers the country needs to plug gaps in the economy. It can be all explained very rationally of course. Thus the principle of the test is totally fine with me - it is just the way that it has been sold to the public that is quite questionable.

So that's it from me on this issue - let me know what you think about Trump setting the bar even higher for those thinking of moving to America. Do you agree with his new policy? Please leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.

5 comments:

  1. Fuck me, i soon going to have 2 qualification in very in demand fields but due to age and lack of money and awards i wouldn't qualify under their arbitrary point system. Not that i am interested in immigrating to US any point soon with their shitstain of a President.

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    1. The principle of the policy is fine, the details aren't.

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    2. Yes i understand the principal of having a point system is needed. But probably less than 0.001% of the world has a nobel prize or Olympic medal and what makes them think they want to migrate to US, especially with a science denying President? As for rich people they could pretty much go where ever they want now since they can buy property so i don't see how that has changed.

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    3. Exactly - sports stars and those who have won the Nobel prize are probably doing very well in their own countries and don't need/want to move to the US. But you need an effective method to evaluate skilled professionals like nurses who are indeed in demand.

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    4. Not that their current system is any better:
      https://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/what-part-of-legal-immigration-dont-you-understand_50290c8272a8d_w1500.jpg

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