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A comment on Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?. Parent comment

Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by yummyfajitas on Saturday April 13, 2013 @03:14PM (#5544285)
If they are poor, why are Chinese/Indians more likely to get into engineering/compsci than other demographics that are more local, such as poor African Americans / Hispanic Americans?

Both the Indians and Chinese are almost certainly poor. At least 95% of India is poorer than the bottom 5% of America, and about 80-85% of China is.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

Granted, they might be rich by Indian/Chinese standards, but that's a far cry from actually being lower middle class in the US.

I'm not sure it is more likely for Chinese/Indians to enter STEM fields than your various aforementioned demographic groups. The ones who do enter STEM fields are more likely to immigrate to the US, however...

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Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by smm2000 on Saturday April 13, 2013 @04:08PM (#5544490)
Most Indians in US are from top 1% in India - pretty much every Indian I know had maids/gardeners/cooks at home. One guy cooked/washed clothes himself for the first time when he came to US.
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Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by davidw on Saturday April 13, 2013 @04:35PM (#5544583)
> pretty much every Indian I know had maids/gardeners/cooks at home.

In poorer countries - especially those with fairly unequal societies, hiring help is cheaper - not just absolutely, but proportionally, as well, so it's much more common. I read some economics discussions of this years ago, but don't really recall the details.

In other words, an Indian is a lot more likely to have hired help than a Norwegian, even if the Norwegian is better off.

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Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by yummyfajitas on Sunday April 14, 2013 @09:18AM (#5546826)
Inequality is irrelevant. India has a Gini index of 33, compared to the 45 for the US.

Incentives are a much more plausible explanation. The US pays people not to work. India doesn't.

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Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by unholyalliance on Saturday April 13, 2013 @03:55PM (#5544434)
Most of the Indians and Chinese that I went to school with were the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, and professors.
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Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by yummyfajitas on Saturday April 13, 2013 @04:07PM (#5544485)
What makes you believe that Indian/Chinese doctors, lawyers and professors are not poor by US standards?

You might be a "rich" corporate lawyer living in Bandra, but that doesn't mean you can afford a car, or more than 1 room/person for your family (most poor Americans have these things).

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Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by unholyalliance on Saturday April 13, 2013 @04:17PM (#5544522)
Well, what about having several house servants? Rich Americans don't have these things.
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Re:Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? by davidw on Saturday April 13, 2013 @05:00PM (#5544657)
Despite having 'help', it seems that the Indians tend to migrate towards the US, rather than people from the US migrating towards India. See my other comment.
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