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H-1Bs Reduced Computer Programmer Employment By Up To 11%, Study Finds (marketwatch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the pros-and-cons dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MarketWatch: There would have been up to 11% more computer science jobs at wages up to 5% higher were it not for the immigration program that brings in foreign high-skilled employees, a new study finds. The paper -- by John Bound and Nicolas Morales of the University of Michigan and Gaurav Khanna of the University of California, San Diego -- was conducted by studying the economy between 1994 and 2001, during the internet boom. It was also a period where the recruitment of so-called H-1B labor was at or close to the cap and largely before the onset of the vibrant IT sector in India. In 2001, the number of U.S. computer scientists was between 6.1%-10.8% lower and wages were between 2.6% and 5.1% lower. Of course, there also were beneficiaries -- namely consumers and employers. Immigration lowered prices by between 1.9% and 2.4%, and profits increased as did the total number of IT firms.

7 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Open borders! Open borders! Open borders! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If H1Bs are bad, why are illegal immigrants from Mexico good?

  2. "equalize the marketplace" by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you increase the supply of something and demand remains fixed - the cost of that something will go down.

    Econ 101

    The US does not need to import low to mid-skill labor. We have plenty of that here. We definitely want to import brilliant PhDs - but that's not how H1B is being used.

    H1B is a cheap guest worker program - it is enriching companies at the expense of the US worker.

  3. Re:Xenophobia by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds like free market competition to me.

    H1Bs are not "free market", since it is difficult (although not impossible) for the visa holder to change employers. There should be several reforms to the H1B program:
    1. The workers should be able to change employers at will.
    2. Instead of a lottery, there should be an auction. That way the quotas go to the companies that need/value them the most, and it is doubtful they could be used for "cheap labor".

  4. Skilled labor? by plopez · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hahahahah that's a good one. I have met maybe 1 in 5 H1Bs who weren't clueless and unmotivated ("severity 1 for our biggest client? I'll fix it Monday").

    And most of the ones with a clue were the women. The men were a waste of oxygen.

    India! Send us your women!

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    1. Re:Skilled labor? by Stonent1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I worked with someone from Bangladesh and he said "guys from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh are all mamma's boys who are served by their moms. They live in the house until they get married. Mom cooks and cleans for them. When you separate them from their mother, they become useless until they can figure out how to live on their own, which is why so many just get married as soon as they can." Those were his words.

  5. Re:give them green cards by slew · · Score: 4, Interesting

    However, it seems I misjudged the H-1B program specifically-- the truth is that I thought it was an alternative path for immigration (which, based on your comment, it seems not to be).

    Actually H-1B can be a defacto alternative path for immigration. It is one of a few *dual-intent* visas that allow you to simultaneously be a guest worker, and apply for a green card (which gives you resident alien status). The problem specifically for India and China is the lack of available green-card slots at the end of the H-1B 6-year tunnel as employment based green-cards from a specific country are limited to 7% of the max total. Basically no other countries come close to the limit, so they are the only which are actually impacted in the ability to convert an H-1B to a Green Card, so H-1B is effectively a path for immigration for many high tech workers *NOT* from India or China.

    The H1-B *gotcha* is that if the employee only qualifies for EB3 green card status (employment based preference level, basically a Bachelor's degree only) the employer needs to sponsor the green card and that is where the staffing companies can withhold this support and effectively make H-1B into indentured service. If the employee only qualifies for EB3 level preference and they are immigrating from India or China, well, the 7%/country bottleneck will make it unlikely for them to get a green card before their 6-year H1-B expires without lots of support from their employer and if they used up say 3 of 6 years, it's mighty unattractive to an alternate employer to hire them away so they are effectively stuck...

    On the other hand, if the employee qualifies for EB1 or EB2 (basically extraordinary ability, PhD, masters+5years, or executive preference level), they can probably self-sponsor (and often companies will sponsor them anyways as a good will measure) and these are not the stereotypical low-wage H1-Bs and are ahead of the queue for those seeking green cards from a country with only EB3 preference.

  6. Let them off-shore by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "And no kicking out the H1s will not mean the jobs will be filled by American citizens- they will go offshore"

    I've got news for you - almost every job that can reasonably be off-shored has been. Companies going back a few years have been bringing work back on-shore:

    http://upstatebusinessjournal....

    Lots of companies got burned by off-shoring work and getting higher cost and lower quality work than was expected. Managing "blended rate" teams half a world away turned out to be a much more difficult challenge than many expected.

    H1B as it stands now is being abused and not used for its intended purpose - and there is an administration in place that is committed to fixing that problem. The only losers here will be the H1B body shops.