Comment by rayiner
24 days ago
That's like saying "a lot of Silicon Valley's success is attributable to people." It's not a useful statement without specificity.
Key Silicon Valley companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard were founded during the highly restrictive immigration policy that prevailed between the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. Intel was founded just a few years after. A lot of golden age Silicon Valley companies were founded around or shortly after 1970, when the U.S. foreign-born population hit the lowest point in American history, under 5%.
Of course, even during that period, we allowed in German scientists, leading professors, etc. It's a handful of people. The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants. That has very little to do with this story, which is about reversing mass immigration.
This comment is starting to turn gray for me, which means that it’s being downvoted.
I don’t know much about this topic, but all of the factual content mentioned above seems to be true.
Can anyone who disagrees with ‘rayiner here explain why they downvoted? Is it just an unpleasant observation? Is it a disagreement with his conclusion in the last few sentences? Is it just a downvote against the commenter (iirc, he tends to make conservative talking points)? Something else?
I genuinely want to know, as this seems like it would be an important set of talking points around immigration as a whole that any policy maker would want to consider.
From the guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Thank you. I’m very familiar with the guidelines. I’ve think I can play my OG card on this one.
I added substantial commentary that makes it more than a “why the down votes?” type of comment.
‘rayiner gets beat on here a bit due to what appears to be his conservative stances on some issues.
While I don’t agree with many of the things ‘rayiner says, we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water if we’re going to have meaningful discussions here — especially ones that are intellectually stimulating.
IMHO, one of the reasons we (in the US) are where we are politically is precisely because we ignore, or downvote, or denigrate views from the opposing side (whichever side that is). It’s not really prudent to blithely downvote a considered and articulate comment without commentary just because you disagree with it or dislike the implications. In the case of hacker news, this type of behavior is antithetical to the goals of the site — intellectually stimulating content.
So, while I appreciate your citation of the rules (which may itself be a middlebrow dismissal), I stick by my original comment, and I look forward to anyone who could reply to it.
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