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U.S. should import more skilled workers
Commentator Will Wilkinson
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TEXT OF COMMENTARY
Scott Jagow: A new report says that within seven years, the U.S. needs hundreds of thousands of new graduates in math and science fields. That's to keep up with the rest of the world.
But commentator Will Wilkinson says an advanced degree in science won't necessarily protect Americans from cut-throat competition.
Will Wilkinson: If you're a highly-skilled worker, America needs you. But if you've got a foreign passport, we probably won't let you in.
The U.S. issues only 65,000 H-1B visas for skilled workers each year and that's not very many. Senators McCain and Obama have both said they would support raising the cap. They acknowledge we need more skilled workers, and they're right. Yes, it would be good for innovation and growth and it would bring down the prices of goods created by skilled workers, but here's another reason you might not have thought of: Wage inequality.
Increases in wage inequality over the past few decades is primarily a story of the supply and demand of skilled labor together with the effects of technological innovation. Wage increases tend to track improvements in the productivity of labor and gains in productivity tend to be driven by innovations that help workers do more in less time. But in recent decades, technical innovation has increased the productivity of more highly-educated workers faster than it has for less-educated workers. These growing inequalities in productivity have helped create growing inequalities in wages.
But that's not the whole story. The American system of higher education produces skilled workers too slowly to keep up with the demand. This scarcity in the supply bids up the wages of the well-educated even more, further widening the wage gap. If we raised visa quotas on skilled labor, that would help bring supply in line with demand and reduce the wage gap between more and less skilled workers.
These days, almost everybody but their beneficiaries think agricultural subsidies are a lousy idea. They benefit a few already relatively wealthy American farmers and agribusiness firms to the detriment of poor farmers around the world. But H-1B visa restrictions are subsidies that benefit relatively rich domestic workers over their poorer foreign peers, and so it turns out many of us liberal-minded college grads are enjoying our own protectionist boost.
In this case, it seems the moral outrage is... well, we seem to be keeping it to ourselves.
Jagow: Will Wilkinson is a research fellow at the Cato Institute.
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I could not believe Marketplace aired this piece. Will Wilkinson is clueless, and has no data to base his delusional ideas on. According to this idiot, the US cannot graduate engineers fast enough, so wages are too high and workers must be imported. If that was true, every new US engineering grad would have a job waiting for them, and unemployment among experienced engineers would be zero. The reality is new graduates are struggling to get that first job, and many experienced engineers get laid off and cannot find work. Outsourcing, age discrimination, and cutting wages and benefits are de-facto policies of American corporations. The H-1B program only caters to this.
If you give weight to arguments about inequality , then you should be in favor of more immigration--this is what Wilkinson is arguing. The greatest inequality is inter-nation, not intra-nation inequality.
The idea is that just because someone is born in a poor country like India doesn't mean that they should be doomed to poverty for the rest of their lives. People, as human beings, have the same moral standing, regardless of where they were born.
Most anti-immigration people are arguing "I think Americans have a greater moral claim to a wealthy lifestyle." Or more charitably "Sure, I care about the world's poor, but not if helping them means competing with them in the labor market"! Pretty pathetic.
Does Will Wilkinson know he is lying, or does he beleive he is telling the truth, or both? His solution for pay disparity between lower class and the middle class is to due away with the middle class. By an large the pay disparity is largest at the top of the corporate ladder. I doubt that he means the us should import foreign corporate officers. If he beleives that the payroll "savings" for importing labor is going to go to the lower class then he is a fool.
The whole H-1B is a joke - a rape of the American tech professional!
Some of you might know the LCA's (labor Condition Applications) are public record. One can access these Applications from the DOL, www.h1b.info and www.zazona.com ( temporarily down) websites.
Interesting checking the databases on H-1b appplications. You never know what you might unearth....
Months ago I found an H-1B application for a store manager of a Jimmy John's fast-food restuarant. Guess the Franchise is need of one of the best/brightest skilled professionals to run the restuarant.
And don't forget Fashion Models qualify for those H-1B visas! And you thought fashion models were just pretty faces!
For anyone interested in proposed solutions, I suggest you visit the IEEE USA web site (www.ieeeusa.org) and read their stance on reforms to the H-1B situation. As an engineer (with the privelage of being a US citizen), I don't feel threatened by competition in the job market. However, the logic of importing more people on temporary work visas (without a similar employment-driven fast track to citizenship) seems like a short-term "market" solution rather than a means to America's long term economic success. Today's commentary seemed analagous to arguing "America's solution to high energy costs should be: import more foreign oil." Instead, let's make more American's interested in math/science careers and encourage skilled foreign workers to stay here as citizens.
Previous responses have already done a great job of ripping this commentary (and alarmist report) to shreds, so let me just add a couple of points.
First, the current cap on H-1B is actually above 85,000. That's the 65,000 mentioned in the article plus another 20,000 for applicants who claim a Masters degree or better (the industry group Compete America lobbied heavily for this one), plus exemptions for education institutions.
Second, one of the reasons the current cap is being hit is that the majority of visas are going to the large bodyshops such as Wipro, Tata, and Infosys. These businesses make money by displacing Americans with cheaper indentured labor. They offer low salaries and create no jobs.
Changing the allocation of H-1B visas from a lottery to an auction would allow those employers who are willing to pay to import a "skilled" worker to get their visas without raising the cap (in fact it could be lowered). Let's see Wipro stay in business if they had to pay their contractors a living wage.
I would love to see the H1-B program opened wide open. If you have a college level degree in a technical field, the US should welcome you with open arms. The problem is Will is arguing that increases in wages are simply because of a lack of demand. But if the demand is really that tight, why do US companies continue to nit pick over candidates who have the exact experience they're looking for? If there's such a shortage why aren't more places hiring software engineers flexible about the exact program language experience of a candidate? The same nit-picking is rampant in other engineer fields, also. Seems to me if this "shortage" was such a big deal employers would be less picky.
Perhaps, if our government, provided an adequate living stipend, as well as paid for tuition and books, based on academic merit, we would have many more students pursuing both undergraduate and graduate technical degrees. Many, if not most, foreign countries do just that. But here in the USA we expect poor and middle class students to somehow manage that on their own. I made straight A's in high school, was valedictorian, and scored in the 99th percentile on every achievement test. I heard the mantra every day, "Keep this up and you can go to any college you want!" Total hogwash! Even with scholarships, student loans, and a 30 hour per week job, I lived on two meals a day, had holes in my shoes, no transportation, no phone, and no medical care. I badly wanted to study physics and engineering, but could not spare 4 hours per lab per course on top of study time and work time. If America wants home grown engineers and scientists, she should invest in them.
I disagree with Will Wilkinson's commentary on H-1B labor. There are too many foreign engineers taking jobs way from U.S. engineers. American corporations use the "labor shortage" and H-1B as a lame excuse not to hire domestic talent.
Gary Burt
unemployed Chemical Engineer
H1-B visas should be issued and family immigration should hat right now. Imagine unskilled workers who are coming in as relatives of citizens and permanent residents are the real burden. Does anyone understand how much it costs and what a time consuming process it is to bring one worker on a H1-B ? What is happening to the billions of dollars that are being collected in H1-B fees by the DOL and USCIS ? Not to mention the billions they pay into the Social Security System though they have no claims to it or any unemployment benefits ? Are people aware how expensive it is to sponsor one candidate and in fact my personal observation has been that h1-B folks are more competent and better paid plus cost a lot to process and retain. These are specialized jobs for which no competent American exists. Many who have qualifications and are not able to get a job may be facing this due to their attitude, obsolete skills or technology or unable to pass background checks. If H1-B visas remain at curent level it will only increase outsourcing. Many entreprenuers and folks who generated billions of dollar in wealth entered the country as a Student or as a beneficiary of the H1-B program there are facts around it.
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