Last Sunday I was at a park in one of the most vibrant cities in the Silicon Valley and noticed a curious phenomenon the park had two little league games on and to my surprise the entire crowd as well as the kids in the games were white, not a single non native (so to speak), something unusual I though for a place like the valley. After a while I walked over a couple blocks to the public library and looked in the children's section and wasn't surprised by the fact that about 80% of the kids and the parents were either Asian or Indian. This got me thinking about our society culture and current debate on immigration. Now I am a person who believes that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and there is definitely room for games fun and arts and out of life but the big problem I see with today's American society is that the choice we give our kids is not between physics or biology but between gap and Banana Republic. It's no coincidence that most of the H1B (high skill) visas are given to either Indians or Asians, basically because we aren't training kids in math and science, our kids are spending more time with the latest Xbox and Game Boy when they should be spending time reading or hacking code for a new video game.
We have come to complain about high tech jobs being outsourced or being given to H1B visa holders when in fact are partly responsible for this and have brought it upon us by shirking responsibility. Don't get me wrong I believe that high skilled immigrants are extremely valuable for this country and gain do more good than harm to the society. The folks over at the Programmers Guild love to moan and bitch that these programmers are lowering the costs and putting people out of work I think it's a bunch of baloney. There is no doubt in my mind that some companies mainly Indian and abusing the system by getting a low paid programmers into this country paying them 40 or 50K. for a job that the prevailing wage would be 80 to 100K. These companies need to be ferreted out and severely fined maybe even send some of the execs to jail.
- encourage your kids to read, especially physics, math and biology.
- teach them economics and financial literacy
- teach them about credit, the convenience and the pitfalls
- teach them geography
- learn from the immigrants, make friends with them
- don't complain about immigration it's good for the country
- teach your kids about balance “learning and fun” can both go hand in hand
