Computerworld columnist Steven Vaughan-Nichols is warning that foreign tech workers are avoiding attending US events and are not interested in jobs in the Land of the Fee.
Vaughan-Nichols said that after President Donald Trump returned to office in January, European conference attendees told him they would not take jobs or attend conferences in the United States.
The mood is not exactly mysterious when the US feels like it has “Keep Out!” and “No Trespassing!” signs nailed to the arrivals hall with bizarre rules about handing over all your data to check you have not made a social media post taking the Michael out of Trump.
He said that even top tech people who flew in with proper visas and paperwork were getting turned away at the border.
Trade show organisers are seeing the same pattern, and they are not pretending it is a blip. Getting speakers and attendees from outside the States to commit to US events is getting harder, and plenty refuse to try.
Quelle surprise.
As a US researcher (social sciences) who left, I warned my EU colleagues not to go to our big conferences. They were floored. Many thought it wasn’t that bad, but the selling point that worked is, “do you want to risk being on the wrong side of an unaccountable border agent who hates how you look?” A gulag, literally a fucking gulag in a foreign country, could await. Its not worth the risk.
However, context. What I dont appreciate about these articles is that they assume a broad ban on the US because of morals, ethics, national pride, or solidarity. Nope. It’s risk. Hubris and prestige of a career trump all other things. That simple. These same researchers still go to Hungary and Turkey. Its really discouraging to me as a critical theorist.
Likewise, I’ve heard from scientists that conferences here in the US that used to be full of researchers from around the world have become mostly US-only as people abroad don’t want to travel here.
Europe experienced a “brain drain” for quite a few years to the US. I suspect that a lot of talented US citizens will be looking at the rest of the world to set up home, careers and families.
Canada would be happy to receive many of these skilled refugees. There are programmes now for medical workers, and if global companies prefer American timezones for worker surveillance, then have I got news for them !
And Europeans and their governments are currently talking of denying all Americans immigration. Europeans are for more xenophobic, and refuse to see Americans trying to leave the US want to leave this all behind.
Lol? Source?
Where did you hear that we or our systems are xenophobic? I live, work and travel here.
I’ll bite and share my experience. There is absolutely an issue. I’ve had applications for bank accounts denied, two people on hiring committees tell me I don’t belong here, a grant application simply withdrawn, another (confirmed insider knowledge) threw any application despite a valid work permit with any hint of US on the application into the trash. I have so many people ask me why I’m here, how I’m here, when I’m leaving. In professional settings and social. My partner, a entrepreneur, for the first time ever is having government entities stonewall her and representatives tell her off when she does any paperwork. She was in tears one day as she called to get some advice on a regulation and was told her business didn’t deserve advice. People. Are. Cruel. There is very little empathy left, and honestly, I get it. It’s not right, but I understand.
I want to integrate but there is absolutely an informal unwelcome mat being put in front of the door to Europe, and Canada.
I won’t be responding to posts as I am likely to get brigaded and trolled for writing the above. Americans wanting to get to safety, leave gun violence and fascism behind, and build a better world, are simply not welcome or have many barriers in place that didn’t exist before.
At this point, there are a good percentage of citizens that would leave if they could! This is no shock.
There was a time when tech talent would uproot their lives for the US because it offered collaboration, publishing, company-building and a big conference circuit. Now they run a gauntlet at the border, where even a green card or citizenship does not guarantee they will not be hassled.
Thus it can be seen how when industries aren’t mitigated in their self defeating behavior by unions, the associated job market and domestic industry can be driven to collapse and there will be zero ability to slow the process down once it begins spiralling.
Unions, even if you are a super smart techbro who understands EVERYTHING about the world better than other people because you understand computers… you still need Unions or else the company you are working for will inveitably blow itself up and leave nothing but a crater behind.
I wish union work was more common place. It seems where I live unions are mostly for blue collar work and less common than I would hope to see.
Conversely, the company I’m working for has been around for 45 years, isn’t unionized, promotes from inside, and provides reasonable wages and great benefits.
They know that if they mess that up, we’ll all leave and go work somewhere else.
Of course, the company isn’t American, which likely makes a difference.
Oh believe me I have also seen precarious tall stacks of rocks that manage to stay standing for much longer than you would expect. Usually it is because they are surrounded by a forest of other much more solid formations of rocks or the ground is solid and well suited to support a base stone.
Sometimes though I see someone waving to me smugly from atop a precarious stack of rocks amidst a sea of other precarious stacks of rocks and I chuckle to myself and wave back condescendingly… and then feel guilty about the ugliness of pre-emptive disaster tourism.
