By “skilled immigrants” I mean people with advance degrees (PhD, MD, …) holding all types of highly technical and managerial positions.

Asking this because skilled immigrants, at least in theory:

  1. knows, and has first-hand experience of how much bullshit one has to go through to immigrate,
  2. has enough bargaining power to move to another immigration-friendly country,
  3. let’s just say that the upcoming US policies don’t seem to be friendly to any immigrants at all…

But then US tech and research are supported largely by the same skilled immigrants. So I’m curious how that is supposed to play out…

Sorry this is a bit of a strange question.

P.S.: I’m… not asking for a friend. I’ve been constantly worried for the past two weeks; I try not to rush to conclusions, so the fact that I’m still worried concerns me. Double quotation marks because in the US it’s literally the same government agency that manages all immigrants no matter how they got in the country (highly skilled worker, family of citizen, asylum, literally just crossed the border, …)

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
    81·
    1 day ago

    I work in big tech, and in the US there is a lot of money being thrown at knowledge workers. IMO it’s not a bad thing, but I do wish that other workers also got their fair share.

    Regardless, the dirty secret of these companies is that a big part of your compensation is usually restricted stock units, and when you relocate through work to a different country you usually get to keep the same amount of stock. You’ll get a good base pay, but your stock once vested will usually put you leaps and bounds above the average pay.

    So, work for one of these companies that pays stock, and move to the UK, France, Germany, somewhere with a MUCH cheaper cost of living and better social net. At a high enough level, you could arguably quit your job and prop up your future salary from interest.