I'm working on high-skill immigration; or, being a doer, not an opinion-haver (at least trying)

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I recently switched from working in consulting to working at a startup (1).

This has forced a general mindset shift from “I want to sound smart about the stuff I’m talking about” to “do things”, that affects how I think about political issues.

It’s easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking I should have smart political opinions so I can have intelligent conversations about nuclear energy, police reform, or zoning laws. But a lot of this is just posturing. I look smart, my friends look smart, we pat ourselves on the back, nothing changes.

I want to focus on being a good citizen by actually achieving things.

In politics though? There are so many problems though! And they are so big and complicated and difficult! It seems hopeless.

So I’m trying out a new rule for civic engagement: Everyone should have one political cause of choice.

There are lots of important political problems. You can’t work on all of them. Pick one that is important, that you care about, and that you think you can reasonably make progress on (2).

I have decided that my political cause is: The US should allow many more highly-skilled people to immigrate.

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Why high-skill immigration?

I have a strong belief in the importance of immigrants to the US, both as a matter of fact (economically/ culturally/ scientifically) and as a matter of what the US should aspire to be.

Living in Kenya makes this especially salient - it was so easy for me to move here and I think I am doing good. There are so many people here who can’t move to the US, and I think that they would do good.

I think allowing immigration of skilled workers is pretty indisputably good for the US, those individuals, and (more disputably) for the world. This article captures arguments for high-skill immigration quite well.

There are lots of arguments I could make, but I find this Tweet to be the most concise and emotionally effective argument:

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Smart hardworking people from all over the world (3) want to come to the US to build things, and we should let them (4).

What do I actually want to do?

Turns out it’s hard to find actual productive things to do on big political issues. It makes sense that it’s easier to just have opinions.

At root what needs to happen is that congress or the executive branch needs to change the law or the enforcement of the law to make high-skill immigration easier. This means that the avenues to affect change are:

  • Convincing / bothering my representatives or people in the state department to change things

  • Growing my blog to hundreds of thousands of readers and then using it as a soap box (5)

  • Getting involved with activist organizations that know how to be effective much more than I do

A pre-requisite to this is knowing exactly what things I want changed. So the first step is learning a ton about how immigration to the US actually works, and where potential avenues for change are. Get ready for a blog post on that soon!

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It’s been a fun journey so far, trying to transform from an opinion-haver to a doer (6).

Let me know what political cause you are working on, and if you disagree with me or if you have any suggestions on how to make an impact through activism.

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  1. Stealth mode, can’t talk about it, going to change the world

  2. For those of the Effective Altruism persuasion, I think it should pass a gut check on Importance, Neglectedness, and Tractability. Don’t need to be too rigorous because a) it’s pretty hard to really quantify on-the-margin effects of activism, and b) intrinsic excitement is more important for hobbies than for jobs - the fact that you are doing this activism in your spare time (as opposed to a career) means you really need to be motivated on a weekly basis to work on it

  3. You know, people like Albert Einstein

  4. The issue is important and I’m excited about it. It may be the case that I find it is impossible for me to take any useful action, outside of becoming a senator, but I’m optimistic.
    I personally would be much more in favor of lots more immigration of all kinds - low-skill and refugee as well. But I’m focusing on high-skill immigration since those are politically much tougher issues, high-skill immigration is more important from a scientific / economic progress perspective, and the fact that it seems likely that increased high-skill immigration makes countries more receptive to immigration of all kinds.
    A further clarification that I’m saying “immigration” here for simplicity, but I am including temporary residence status that enables people to work (e.g., H1B visas) in the scope of what I am working on.

  5. I could pretty well believe that long-term my best shot at having impact is being a top-level executive at a super successful company and then lobbying from a position of power

  6. Though I haven’t actually accomplished anything yet