There are many negative externalities of mass migration that are borne by the locals while benefits mostly accrue to a handful of... shysters.
I urge you to understand that housing prices in Seattle are largely driven by supply inelasticity, more than anything.
If the premise was true, we'd have seen large drops in rent/home prices after mass layoffs (we didn't).
Also, it would be hard to explain the prices finally falling in Seattle for the last few months, which aligned perfectly with the largest supply since Feb 2014.
I think it’s pretty clear that Immigration has a direct strain on housing. It’s been a big problem in Canada too. Of course if you just keep building to increase the supply, that would be desirable.
Obviously supply matters most but that doesnt mean demand isnt still a significant factor.
Would you say that supply and demand share some kind of economic relationship?
Supply inelasticity comes from increased demand. Much of that demand in the past 20 years has come from the increase in Tech workers. A significant % of those tech workers are foreign workers. Places like Bellevue, Redmond, Bothell, etc. have dramatically changed in ethnic makeup.
What are some of the other "many negative externalities" you mention?
I feel like we could have the best of everything if you we just built more housing to keep up with demand.
Look at how people vote with their wallets: there is an enormous demand for housing in places like Brooklyn. That doesn't mean we need to turn the whole nation into Brooklyn, but I think (given the massive demand) why shouldn't we have a few more places like Brooklyn, i.e. dense urban areas?
Most places in the US have a remarkably low population density; we can definitely greatly expand the housing supply with a little infill and still have lots of suburbs.
A benefactor decided to solve the housing crisis, created a development company. Gave up 2 years later. Stating the legal burden to get permits was the biggest financial obstacle. We are ready to build from the start, 2 years later we still couldn't build and spend most of our capital in lawyers in hope to get any approval.
So, I am not sure if that housing argument alone makes that a better outcome for America (and workers).
Its Azure Hardware division that manages its first party silicon and its deployment has a huge hardware and electrical engineering presence. These fields don't have as many people in America in them, because Software has paid so much more for the last two decades, why would anyone go EE when they could go CS and make 2-3x more. In other countries, these degrees were paid similar so there is a larger pool to pull from then in America.
You can't train a software engineer overnight to be a silicon engineer
And they are good at it.
Remote work makes that easier now, but with silicon / EE its not always the most optimal way to work.
Middle America EE is also not building data center class chips or infrastructure most of the time, would it be easier to get one of them up to speed, yes. But it's the equivalent of throwing a front-end engineer into C or embedded programming or vice versa.
My question is more on software roles, those CRUD or React component roles, where the work can be done remotely. Instead of Americans filling those positions, companies may/will simply hire those engineers abroad.
H1B and offshore jobs can be beneficial to America though, and that was why the program started. Sufficient guardrails just never went up and now there is opportunity for some abuse. But that abuse isn't across the board, there is still beneficial H1B and offshoring going on mixed in with abuse.
How would that work if the remote people were employed by a different company that was given a contract by the home company to provide certain pieces of software or specific computing services?
My best effort, the contract is a red herring, we only care about the company that employs the abroad remote employees which is the contractual company in this case. If that contractual company is also abroad, we tax (tariff?) the contract.
But but but I was told that unions will force employers to retrain folks instead of laying them off.
Sorry, what now?
If a company hires an engineer in India, instead of Seattle, how does America (and workers) benefit? Software doesn't require factories, or supply chains, its just a hiring decision.
The question is whether these restrictions increase American employment or just accelerate the exodus of jobs while making the US a less attractive place for talented people.