If the bodyshop and the employer won't even consider the US entry-level worker -- won't fly him in for an interview, won't relocate him, won't invest in the NORMAL 2-12 weeks of new-hire training -- his career ladder is forever disrupted. He can't learn on the job he does not have. He can't develop "work habits". He cannot make those contacts. ...
And if the job ads are placed where the experienced native citizen worker won't see them, if the immigration lawyers fabricate pretexts to declare him "unqualified" to even USE the kinds of software development tools he has actually CREATED, he remains unemployed longer, and then many agencies refuse to even consider him regardless of re-tooling, university classes he has taken or taught in the mean-time, etc. ...
Of course, the same applies as for the entry-level worker as well; if the employer jumps straight from candidates living within 2 miles to the cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics, refuses to fly experienced US candidates in for interviews, refuses to relocate able and willing US candidates, refuses normal training investment, then any local down-turn strands able and willing talent, and any period of unemployment becomes essentially permanent.
If the job ads do not contain e-mail addresses and desk and cellular telephone numbers of the hiring managers, but instead of the corrupt immigration attorneys, the US economy simply slides down the tubes.
Why, you ask, do I point out that cross-border bodyshopping is, in part, aimed at labor with flexible ethics, those who do not have the US cultural background where cheating on exams is punished rather than condoned, where violating the rights of others is not an acceptable "business plan"? Because that's exactly what we've seen develop. Can't find US candidates willing to do evil things? Bring in someone from outside. Keep the privacy violations expanding.
If there's any doubt that the Carly Fiorina's, Nancy Pelosis, Bill Gateses, Zoe Lofgrens, Mittenses, John Chamberses, Obummers, Craig Barretts, Bloombergs, Larry Ellisons, George Soroses of this world are rich because they write the laws or control who writes the laws they force us to play by, then have a listen to David Kay Johnson. It's pure, bipartisan corruption. ...
Also consider why it is that the primary process almost always guarantees the worst candidates reach the general election instead of the best.
Sorry, the USA doesn't have "classes". Even under the recent, increasingly corrupt executive regimes and congresses and judiciaries, we have a lot more economic and "social" mobility than the old class and feudal and caste systems.
It's been a while since I've seen a consceintious study. The last one I saw examined the allegedly "best of the best of the best", those H-1Bs being sponsored for a green card. It turned out that their compensation was 1.0001 times (100.01% of) the local market median salary for the general occupational category. This is interesting because if they really were great, they should be getting 150% or 200% or 400% of the median. (And, yes, the gov't figures are very dissatisfying, very vague aggregates. They should be reporting it by percentiles or giving the average, median, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis.)
What is the average H1-B wage?
What is the average US citizen STEM Worker salary?
Are either of these relevant?
What is the average US citizen vs. H-1B salary and total compensation package (including retirement benefits) for software product developers? What is the average US citizen vs. H-1B salary and total compensation package... for bodies shopped (programming services, bidness data processors, CRM which many believe should be expanded to CRiMinal activity...)? How do those compare with developers of software products used in science and engineering? (Does a bean counter require a higher or lower skill level than the guy designing a new sky-scraper, high-speed train, automobile, or that robotic surgery system?... or is it the same level but just different?)
Suffice it to say there is plenty of room in the H-1B visa program for under-paying, as Tata VP Vandrevala confessed, by 25%-35%, for hiring cheap young foreign labor with flexible ethics when able and willing US job applicants exist, and for age discrimination.
The ones who come into the USA on F visas mostly go to weaker programs (only a few to the best)... I'm paraphrasing Dr. Matloff, the UC Davis CS prof and advocate for Chinese immigrants, who has backed a few genuinely best and brightest immigrants to get faculty positions and such.
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Academic credentials should not count for much in a point system, and the cap exemptions should be eliminated. I've seen too many people with PhDs and MBAs who were not very bright.
A proper background investigation would take care of most of the other concerns.
But, since the H-1B guest-workers are disingenuously represented as "best and brightest" we should hold them (the executives, lobbyists, immigration lawyers, and the guest-workers) to that standard.
You could set top 1% or 0.5% IQ standard or SAT or ACT or GRE or MCAT score as the minimum, and that would create incentives for various kinds of cheating which we'd have to expend other resources to squelch.
You could set a minimum number of patents, but then we'd get a lot of feeble patent applications, and, due to politics, a lot of them would be approved when they should not.
We could set the number of student visas at 20K per year, hard limit, no waivers or exemptions; and a number of H-1B visa at 2K per year -- no exemptions, no waivers, a hard cap; run background investigations and charge the costs; then auction off a proportional number of visas each month to the highest bidding applicants and/or sponsors. This would create something like market discipline, market pricing, but we still wouldn't necessarily be getting the "best and brightest".
Right up into the 1960s the vast majority of Americans paid for their medical care out of savings or by taking out loans.
In 1940 only 10% of Americans bothered to purchase health care insurance. The move to insurance and the insertion of unnecessary intermediaries, helped drive up prices, because at point of purchase only about 5% of actual costs were seen by the purchaser, the rest was hidden in the form of past insurance premium payments and in the buffering functions inherent in insurance. This meant that we were tempted to buy more than we could afford, or, looked at from the other side, allowed the prices to go up.
Sorry, can't be PC with the Subject; it won't fit.
"it has been hard to find 'qualified' candidates for mid-level positions"
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Define "hard". How easy or hard or cheap or expensive should it be?
In how many major daily papers did you advertise? Were they only classifieds or display ads? On how many web sites? In how many of those ads did you include your e-mail address and telephone number (not your immigration lawyers')? What percentage of candidates did you fly in for interviews? How much were you willing to invest in relocation? How much were you willing to invest in normal -- 2-12 week -- new-hire training? (For that matter, how much do you invest in retained employee training? Is it the 2-4 weeks that was the norm before H-1B?) Are 10% of your employees in training at any particular time, as was the case at Infosys back in 2000? Is that investment in employee training 5% or more of annual revenues as it was at Infosys? It should be more in comparison with such a low-life bodyshop.
Define "qualified". Are those "qualifications" reasonable or outrageous? "Qualified" is such a weasel word that it means nothing at all without extensive explanation (and the folks at Cohen and Grigsby made it widely known how much the word is abused). Credentials, for instance, should be mere corroboration, supporting evidence of likely ability and productivity, not a deal-killer. I've seen bright high school and college students doing professional-grade work in economics, science, engineering apps, data-base analysis and design, statistical analysis... Is it really one job or are you trying to get one person who is willing to do 3 or 4 jobs for 1 professional's compensation?
Are there ethical issues that may repulse self-respecting STEM professionals? Does the work involve privacy violations? Does it involve force or fraud or anything else shady? Does it involve something which would make it easier for others to cheat or violate privacy in some way?
Of course, the more interesting the work the more people are likely to want to do it. And the more interesting it is, the more likely they are to put up with poor working conditions, pay, risks, etc. If it's not interesting you'll get fewer nibbles and will have to offer better compensation. (Some kinds of risk can make work more interesting in the right circumstances, else we'd never have lumberjacks, commercial fishermen, farmers, or people to maintain radio and water towers and high-voltage lines. Hrmph, then again recent headlines suggest that some commerial fishing outfits have turned to slavery. I hope you're not trying that hard.)
"Putting artificial barriers in the way of who can and cannot get into the country is the exact opposite of the free market."
Making sure they're not criminals is not an "artificial" "non-free market" "barrier". It's good common sense.
The executives and their lobbyists and the immigration lawyers who just happen to make a good living from the visa applicants, have been claiming shortage since 1986, when they knew quite well, and most of the rest of the citizenry knew, that there was no evidence of a shortage, and no such evidence has been presented. That's fraud, and thus not "free market".
The executives have been fraudulently claiming that every H-1B recipient is "best and brightest", but the vast majority are neither. That's not "free market".
Either you initiate force or fraud, or you do not. But don't demand cheap, young, pliant labor with questionable ethics in one breath; conspire over means of rejecting every US applicant regardless of their ability and drive; and then complain about it not being an undistorted market, because YOU are the one distorting the markets.
For the last decade, there have been US employers demanding that US citizens travel hundreds of miles to another state, to work for 1-3 months, for less than the median -- no housing allowance, no travel allowance, no meal allowance or per diem to cover the extra expenses of such a working arrangement/circumstance. Why? Because of the talent glut and the bizarre expectations of executives, distorted by the existence of the F+OPT and H-1B and L-1 visa programs and the explosion in bodyshopping.
I've seen estimates that about 50% of people who came to the USA with intention to stay went back. Another significant percentage came to the USA, went back, then returned to the USA.
If they were being paid local market total compensation, their pay wouldn't be much of an issue.
If US tax-victims were not subsidizing foreign students' educations, and they were not learning US research methods, how to use or modify capital equipment developed in the USA, didn't have access to intellectual property developed in the USA, that wouldn't be much of an issue.
If all H-1B recipients were genuinely "best and brightest" and were paid at local "best and brightest" total compensation levels it wouldn't be much of an issue. If they were all truly "best and brightest" and stayed in the USA, became US citizens, refrained from spying or intellectual property theft or smuggling of US national security secrets, invested in the USA, created jobs for other US citizens, it wouldn't be an issue.
(I include those last 2 having recently read Gurcharan Das's book and noting his mentions of several "great entrepreneurs" who came from India to the USA, attended US colleges and universities, learned the ropes, gained access to information and technology and business contacts, then poured their US earnings and/or US investment funds and US technology and other intellectual property from the USA back into creating jobs and infrastructure in India. This is very good reason for the USA to make serious cuts in the numbers of student and guest-work and LPR visas.)
It's an issue because the vast majority of H-1B grantees are not "best" or "brightest", they're not doing work that requires above-average ability, they don't create jobs for US citizens, they aren't loyal to the USA, they're not paid local market compensation for the job, and because there is a glut (1.8 million or more) of able, knowledgeable, experienced US citizen STEM professionals who could be doing those jobs but instead are unemployed or under-employed, because they can't get a recruiter let alone a hiring manager to conscientiously read their resumes and make the small effort to evaluate their knowledge, intelligence, creativity, and industry. And then, of course, it's an issue because it would be nice for US citizens to actually be flown in (at this stage, a train or bus would do) within the USA for interviews as was common before the H-1B program. It would be nice if even the minority of H-1Bs sponsored for green cards, which many believe is a sign that they're a cut above the average H-1B, were paid salaries (total compensation is not reported) significantly above the median, or better, a compensation commensurate with being "best" or "brightest" as they claim. It would be nice if immigration lawyers were not engaging in bias against US citizens, advising clients to advertise those jobs in obscure places so that few capable US citizens will have the chance to apply, and otherwise to favor the person in the PERM process applying for the green card.
"some people on Slashdot portray of an easy life for H1B workers"
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More likely it is a disagreement over what constitutes "easy" or "difficult"... especially when compared with the difficulties the lax and excessive E-3, F+OPT, H-1B, J, L and green card programs create for bright, creative, industrious, experienced US citizens in the top 5 percentile or even the top percentile for intelligence or academic achievement or autodidactically obtained knowledge in STEM fields.
"Assuming you're not from a country where security issues might be a concern."
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Huh?
Everyone is a "security concern" until and unless they've passed a background investigation. Whether they came from or through YorkShire or Bangalore or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Mexico or Montreal or Tokyo or Rome or Geneva is irrelevant.
Whether that individual met with gangsters or terrorists or other associates of gangsters or terrorists, at his origin or along the way, is a concern. Whether that individual had already committed crimes is a concern.
(This clumsy, kludgey, slow discussion interface is frustrating!)
"It took me six years of waiting and thousands of dollars in lawyer's fees to adjust my status, i.e. go from H1B to Green Card."
...
So, it was too cheap and too easy.
You never paid for or underwent, let alone passed, a proper background investigation (which, adjusting for inflation, could run from $20K to $50K or more).
It only took you a little more time than it takes many 5th or 6th or 7th or 8th-generation native US citizens to get a passport.
You never had to undergo a blind competition with US job applicants (one where the person(s) filtering the job applicants did not know whether you or any of the other applicants were US citizens or non-citizens).
You never had to make a case that you were in the top half-percentile, or even the top 10% or top 20% (to borrow the unfounded assertion of the original poster) or top 50% (i.e. merely above average) in order to gain entry to the USA.
A visa to enter or work in the USA (or any other country) is a privilege.
If you want a visa, if you want the privilege of visiting, attending college or university, or working in the USA, then you should expect to meet some significant standards.
1. You must not be in the habit of initiating force or fraud, or advocating such. That's why every applicant ought to pass a proper background investigation.
2. You should expect to have to prove that you're good at something people in the USA want. Do you have an IQ in the top half of a percent? Good. Do you have 5 significant patents (not these feeble "put a camera in a cellular phone" things, something surprising, new, and good) to your name. Good. Are you one of the best 10 brick-layers in your country? Good. Are you one of the best 10 precision machinists in your country; can you set up a part and select the right mill to get within 4 ten-thousandths of an inch tolerance? Good. All such things should count in your favor toward qualifying, but no one of them should suffice.
3. Are you bringing some significant investment capital into the USA with you? Are the funds you're bringing to the USA sufficient to at least build something significantly more than a burger/chicken joint (call it $300K at the very minimum) and do you have at least 3 US citizens who are not relatives or recent (within the last 15 years) immigrants lined up as employees for opening day? Are you able and willing to post a bond of $50K guaranteeing that you will employ at least 10 US citizens (as above) within the first year? Good. You're on your way to qualifying.
The whole equal rights and privileges thing begins when you give up allegiance to foreign governments and rulers, learn about the US founding, Bill of Rights, etc., and swear/affirm with penalties for perjury that you will uphold the US constitution and be honest and peaceful in your dealings with others.
Most H-1Bs and green card sponsorees are ordinary people doing ordinary work, NOT "the best and the brightest".
"Computer-related H-1Bs have a median age of 27.4; 52% have less than 2 years of experience, and another 41% have 2-5 years."
Only 3% of a typical MSFT H-1B visa intake are US DoL level-four workers -- i.e., do work that requires independent judgment. Most H-1b use "level one" which is 17th percentile of U.S. wages -- $10k to $15k below what average-skilled Americans get paid. The 75th percentile for pay of new H-1B computing professionals was just $60K, below the median, in FY2005. Phiroz Vandrevala admitted that "Our wage per employee is 20%-25% lesser than US wage for a similar employee."
DoL PERM data show that the average H-1B worker sponsored for a green card is paid a tiny fraction of one percent above the median wage for the industry (Matloff found 109%, whle Perelman claimed 121% for the same prominent firm), not the 150% or 200% or 300% one would expect the very "best and brightest" to deserve. DoL is required by law to reject any H-1B or green card application that lists a salary below prevailing wage, so the ratios of actual to prevailing wage should never be below 1.00. Even "Einstein" workers on O-1 visas at MSFT were paid only 140.4% of the median.
Half of the 52,352 H-1B computing professionals admitted in FY2005 earned less than entry-level wages. 56% of the H-1B applications for computing jobs were for the lowest skill level, 'Level 1'.
The "prevailing wage" requirement is a fraud, since the name gives the impression that it requires paying the actual, previously existing market compensation for the same work, done by someone with the same talent, knowledge, credentials, experience, etc., while, in actuality, it allows the guest-worker to be paid significantly less. Census data, the INS/USCIS H-1B data, and the DoL green card (PERM) data all show a pattern of paying the H-1B grantees less than comparable American STEM workers.
"STEM foreign students at U.S. universities tend to be at the less-selective universities [and] Most foreign workers work at or near entry level, described by the Department of Labor in terms akin to apprenticeship."
When Industry wants more cheap H-1B labor these are "highly skilled" workers. When it comes to determining how much they have to pay, they suddenly become "low skilled". DoL ETA has shown several times that it has perverse notion of "state-of-the-art" "highly skilled occupations".
The 3 most-needed reforms to the E-3, H-1B, J, L, and even O visa programs are (1) put in place some reasonable minimal competence/skill standards which applicants need to meet, (2) reduce the numbers of such visas, and (3) run reasonable and proper background investigations on every visa applicant.
Being bright or "best" is not about having a "degree". And, besides, degrees are not the same. You can have a string of degrees without being very bright, and you can be a brilliant high school drop-out -- like Linus Pauling or Albert Einstein -- or a very bright college drop-out like Steve Jobs.
I've helped several PhD candidates who were not all that bright (and professors likewise).
But the fact is that there are no requirements that H-1B recipients actually be very bright, and both GAO and the US DoLabor have admitted as much, stating that the vast majority are not.
But what if a visa applicant were, indeed, very bright? What if his IQ were in the top 0.5%, or his GRE or MCAT scores were? Under the current, lax regime, his application would be dumped into the pile with hundreds of thousands of dullards. It would not get conscientious consideration. It would take more time process, as would his green card application, than if the USA had a reasonable process of conscientiously selecting the best, conducting proper background investigations and only admitting those who pass muster.
Right. They never should have been admitting so many foreign students. They shouldn't have been admitting/keeping as many guest-workers. They shouldn't have been admitting as many "cultural exchange" people and letting them work in the USA. They shouldn't have been issuing as many green cards. And they shouldn't have been leaving the borders so wide open and refusing to even attempt to make sure those in the USA on temp visas had left by the time their visas expire.
The glut of student visas and creation of the H-1B visas did what they were intended to do: drive down compensation in targeted fields, with the knowledge that this would prompt US students to shift to fields that had better pay and more reliable life-time employment.
The USA has always exhibited excessive angst over education.
Back in the early 1800s, a bunch of Boston busybodies were all in a dither about the numbers of children running about playing instead of being cooped up in schools. They feared that we were turning out generations of ignorant illiterates, so they commissioned a survey... and found that only a tiny percentage (less than 5%) of children had not completed grammar school (where English and usually either Greek or Latin vocabulary and grammar and a modicum of math were learned; they were also called "classical schools") roughly equivalent in most ways to having completed junior college, today.
In northern Virginia a little earlier, a former indentured servant who had become quite successful bequeathed his fortune to set up and operate schools in what, by that time, had become 2 counties. Those funds allowed the schools to be constructed and operated until after the Civil War.
In back-woods PA in the early 1700s, a fellow named William Tennant set up a crude log-cabin school, with very high standards; though at first it was ridiculed for its rude quarters. He inspired others, including the graduates, of course. Some of them founded other colleges and academies, the graduates of which became presidents of Princeton, and founders of Hampden-Sidney and numerous other colleges. This cluster of scholars was inter-connected with the Scottish Enlightenment.
The USA still has the best universities in the world.
OTOH, there are many problems. There's a definite impression that university executives and sports coaches are a little excessively remunerated for the work they do. (They don't seem to work nearly as industriously as Witherspoon did to build and improve Princeton, for instance, and yet are paid far more.) Life in academia is, well, weird. In a way, it's highly sheltered from the need to produce what those outside value. So long as the politicians are willing to extort from the public and direct considerable sums to academia, they don't worry so much about monthly, quarterly, and annual sales; academicians just keep coming back to demand another few billion, regardless of how the general public is doing financially and what the average person can afford. And yet, Americans, including politicians, value education so highly that they tend to just keep on upping the appropriations and grants.
Of course, most US universities were historically shoe-string operations, where the more advanced students taught the newer, and students at every level worked in the labs and even university vegetable gardens and dairies and such to keep things going. Now, they're using/abusing a lot more adjuncts and and other temps, keeping grad students in multiple post-docs before they can land real jobs, holding down on the numbers of tenured posts, and that's all of a piece with the F, H-1B, J and L visa abuse.
We've always been ambivalent about tenure, too. It's actually a relatively recent innovation in US universities, though they'd like you to believe it's been part of universities since the classical Greek academies, and the Muslim academies of the 9th century. OT1H, it gives academic freedom to follow research where it leads and protection from political winds. OTOH, it allows bad profs to become entrenched and abuse their posts to spread propaganda to relatively defenseless students who must go along to get their credentials.
But, to shift gears back to the topic of "fairness", the issue is not just whether flooding US job markets with cheap, pliant labor which has not passed a background investigation to help ensure they're not criminally inclined.
The big issue with these visas is the many forms of fraud surrounding the system: fraudulent credentials (though measures have been reluctantly taken which have slowly reduced that), and the "best and brightest" fraud when in reality there are no substantial standards, the "talent shortage" fraud when we've been producing nearly 3 times as many capable US citizen STEM workers than have been employed to do STEM work, and the "Americans are inadequate" when even a former cross-border bodyshopper admits that "by every measure" "American engineers are the best".
The trouble is that all of those things increase systemic costs. They cause costs for nearly all to go up both directly and indirectly, and direct costs for some to go down a little.
I've got a few better ideas... just off the top of my head:
Eliminate (or at least greatly reduce) the socialism, the initiated force and fraud.
Stop giving away US intellectual property and national security secrets.
Charge the full reasonable costs for running a background investigation on every visa applicant (and incremental investigations on those applying for change of status).
Charge the full reasonable costs for education while verbally (non-coercively) persuading people of the merits of being charitable (i.e. making scholarship donations).
Encourage spying on and hacking of governments and government officials who have declared their enmity for the USA and its citizens by offering small rewards for information which enhances US security (e.g. reveals measures and counter-measures they are taking to give them an advantage or reduce the US advantage in defense) and encourages those government officials to respect individual rights (e.g. outing instances of initiation of force and fraud).
Charge the full reasonable costs for inspecting in-coming cargoes for safety and honesty in labeling and respect for intellectual property rights.
Stop creating artificial incentives in the tax and education and transportation and regulatory systems to encourage bodyshopping (both domestic and across borders) and otherwise harm the productive.
Stop subsidies for agriculture and VAT kick-backs.
Lower privacy violation by government by eliminating income extortion and replacing it with taxes on the states in proportion to population (i.e. repeal the 16th amendment, and, for safety against federal abuses and favoritism amongst states, repeal the 17th amendment), get the federal government out of education and 90% of transportation (those inter-state navigable waterways), and put a reasonable hard cap on import tariffs at below 10% (while allowing up to 100% penalties in cases where reciprocity has been violated).
Eliminate the unconstitutional systemic cost-increasing Socialist Insecurity abomination, Medicare, Medicaid and National Socialist Health Care Perversion/Obamacare/PPACA/HCERA, which discourage employing people.
And give out only so many visas as can be reasonably managed, i.e. as will allow ensuring that 99.99% of visa grantees leave by the time their visas expire.
"reduce systemic costs... (socialized) college Socialized medicine (socialized transportation socialized housing)"
That's not mere coincidence, Oz. The off-shoring has been facilitated by the huge numbers of foreign students and guest-workers.
When John Deere was considering off-shoring, they set up a separate facility, connected via satellite links, on their property, manned by guest-workers, so they could test the set-up. They couldn't have done that without the ready supply of guest-workers.
Guest-workers and foreign students also ease knowledge transfer. They learn US academic state of the art and research methods, and even production methods, and take them back with them. Of course, other guest-workers and green card grantees also take defense secrets with them from time to time, while others (who went from F to H-1B to green card to naturalization without being spotted) have been known to try to bomb NY, NY, and they've added to the numbers of illegal aliens in the USA.
1995-06-05: Doctorate surplus in science and engineering continues
"The United States is still pumping out tremendous numbers of new Ph.D.s in the sciences -- more, in fact, than our economy can presently absorb, as there is a well-reported dearth of jobs for newly-minted science Ph.D.s. The same is true in engineering: According to a recent National Science Foundation report, the number of engineers graduating from U.S. schools will continue to grow into the foreseeable future, out-stripping the number of available jobs..." --- 2005 Summer _New Atlantis_ "How We Measure Up"
2009-01-08: Cheap Science
Studies carried out from the 1990s through 2010 by researchers from
Columbia U,
Computing Research Association (CRA),
Duke U,
Georgetown U,
Harvard U,
National Research Council of the NAS,
RAND Corporation,
Rochester Institute of Technology,
Rutgers U,
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
Stanford U,
SUNY Buffalo,
UC Davis,
UPenn Wharton School,
Urban Institute, and
US Dept. of Education Office of Education Research & Improvement
have reported that the USA has continually been producing more US citizen STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) workers than we've been employing in these fields.
In testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee, Harold Salzman reported that we've been producing as many as 3 times the numbers of STEM workers as we've been employing in these fields.
"Unemployment rates are available and plotted in Figure 6 for chemists, recent mathematics PhDs, and recent biomedical PhDs and MDs. Although not fully comparable in population or time period, these 3 rates, when compared to the overall U.S. unemployment rate, suggest a general increase or leveling in the 1990s, while the general unemployment rate was falling substantially. Rising unemployment in one sector, while the overall economy is doing well, is a strong indicator of developing surpluses of workers, not shortages. Hence, neither earnings patterns nor unemployment patterns indicate an S&E shortage in the data we are able to find." --- William P. Butz, Gabrielle A. Bloom, Mihal E. Gross, Terrene K. Kelly, Aaron Kofner, Helga E. Rippen 2002-11-12 "Is There a Shortage of Scientists and Engineers? How Would We Know?" _RAND Science and Technology Issue Paper_
2009-10-28: "U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics..."
* 2010-12-24: "AT&T is getting about 50K applications a month, or around 30 for each person it hires on average, Mr. Smith says." (James R. Hagerty & Joe Light _Wall Street Journal_ "Job ads rising as economy warms up")
* 2010-12-24: Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System receives 10K applications per month (Eileen Ambrose _Baltimore Sun_/_Grand Forks Herald_)
* 2011-02-03: Google received 75K job applications last week.
That's just it. The foreign workers are not as good as US workers.
Even former cross-border bodyshopper Vivek Wadhwa admitted that "by every measure" US engineers are better, and the reason the guest-workers are used and abused is that they're cheap:
"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200801.html#20080104
There are a few under-achievers, from families with cultures which do not value academic achievement, or who have been given incentives by the government not to value academic achievement, but the majority of students are being pushed or pushing themselves to excell.
"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."
"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
"the mean literacy test score for U.S. adults (272) was 2 points above the mean for all adults in the 20 country survey (270)... Larger, statistically significant, literacy gaps between us and them unfold when you separate immigrant from native-born test takers, as is done in 17 high income countries surveyed by ETS. U.S. natives scored 8 points above the average native of the 17 high income countries. U.S. immigrants scored 16 points below the average immigrant in the 17 countries." --- Edwin S. Rubenstein 2005-12-22 _V Dare_ "The stupid American? Think again"
"I've mentioned the TIMSS test, for instance, which showed that if [Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming] -- none of which has a substantial under-class -- had been treated as separate nations, each of them would have been out-scored only by Singapore (professor David Berliner, 'Our Schools Versus Theirs', Washington Post, 2001 January 28)... This [both the TIMSS and PISA tests] once again shows, tragically, that the U.S.A. is not doing enough to bring up the educational performance of its under-class. But if one takes the white score as 'main-stream', the U.S.A. would rank 7th out of 27, instead of 18th."
"while our average test scores are mediocre, the U.S.A. is a leader with respect to the gap between our best and worst performers. Our best and brightest are equal to, or better than, those of other advanced countries. Our worst rank, well, among the worst anywhere. For several reasons, immigrants exert more of a downward test score drag here than in other advanced countries. First, they account for a larger share of the population. Only 7 of the 27 OECD countries have larger foreign born population shares than the U.S.A. Second -- and more importantly -- our immigrants do poorly on standardized tests compared to the immigrant populations of other advanced countries. The U.S.A. ranked 18th out of the 20
Why educate them here in the first place? Why should US tax-victims be forced to subsidize the transfer of knowledge and research techniques and capital to non-citizens who are not especially gifted and most likely to take that knowledge with them?
I've worked with people from Germany and Poland who were educated abroad and I had no problem with that. I've also worked with people from VietNam, Thailand, Guatemala, Poland, India, England, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Republic of China, Red China, Malaysia, France, Republic of Congo, Jamaica, Somalia at one time or another who had been educated or were being educated in the USA and, with very few exceptions, had no problem with that or them. I enjoy picking up scraps of languages and information about different cultures and history and economics.
My objections are to
Hideously hugely vastly excessive numbers of visas of every kind being given out as our problems from over-population and over-crowding worsen,
Extremely low or non-existent standards when choosing to whom visas should be granted (including failure to require them to pass a proper background investigation),
Excessive time limits for "temporary" visas,
Under-pricing of visas (below what it costs to rubber-stamp the applications),
The attitude that non-citizens should be privileged and treated more favorably than citizens (both naturalized and native), and the attempt to set aside the weak standards for the sake of speed and, in turn, the convenience of the non-citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
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And if the job ads are placed where the experienced native citizen worker won't see them, if the immigration lawyers fabricate pretexts to declare him "unqualified" to even USE the kinds of software development tools he has actually CREATED, he remains unemployed longer, and then many agencies refuse to even consider him regardless of re-tooling, university classes he has taken or taught in the mean-time, etc.
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Of course, the same applies as for the entry-level worker as well; if the employer jumps straight from candidates living within 2 miles to the cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics, refuses to fly experienced US candidates in for interviews, refuses to relocate able and willing US candidates, refuses normal training investment, then any local down-turn strands able and willing talent, and any period of unemployment becomes essentially permanent.
If the job ads do not contain e-mail addresses and desk and cellular telephone numbers of the hiring managers, but instead of the corrupt immigration attorneys, the US economy simply slides down the tubes.
Why, you ask, do I point out that cross-border bodyshopping is, in part, aimed at labor with flexible ethics, those who do not have the US cultural background where cheating on exams is punished rather than condoned, where violating the rights of others is not an acceptable "business plan"? Because that's exactly what we've seen develop. Can't find US candidates willing to do evil things? Bring in someone from outside. Keep the privacy violations expanding.
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Also consider why it is that the primary process almost always guarantees the worst candidates reach the general election instead of the best.
Sorry, the USA doesn't have "classes". Even under the recent, increasingly corrupt executive regimes and congresses and judiciaries, we have a lot more economic and "social" mobility than the old class and feudal and caste systems.
It's been a while since I've seen a consceintious study.
The last one I saw examined the allegedly "best of the
best of the best", those H-1Bs being sponsored
for a green card. It turned out that their compensation was 1.0001 times (100.01% of) the local market median salary for the general occupational category. This is interesting because if they really were great, they should be getting 150% or 200% or 400% of the median. (And, yes, the gov't figures are very dissatisfying, very vague aggregates. They should be reporting it by percentiles or giving the average, median, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis.)
What is the average H1-B wage?
What is the average US citizen STEM Worker salary?
Are either of these relevant?
What is the average US citizen vs. H-1B salary and total compensation package (including retirement benefits) for software product developers? What is the average US citizen vs. H-1B salary and total compensation package... for bodies shopped (programming services, bidness data processors, CRM which many believe should be expanded to CRiMinal activity...)? How do those compare with developers of software products used in science and engineering? (Does a bean counter require a higher or lower skill level than the guy designing a new sky-scraper, high-speed train, automobile, or that robotic surgery system?... or is it the same level but just different?)
Suffice it to say there is plenty of room in the H-1B visa program for under-paying, as Tata VP Vandrevala confessed, by 25%-35%, for hiring cheap young foreign labor with flexible ethics when able and willing US job applicants exist, and for age discrimination.
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Academic credentials should not count for much in a point system, and the cap exemptions should be eliminated. I've seen too many people with PhDs and MBAs who were not very bright.
A proper background investigation would take care of most of the other concerns.
But, since the H-1B guest-workers are disingenuously represented as "best and brightest" we should hold them (the executives, lobbyists, immigration lawyers, and the guest-workers) to that standard.
You could set top 1% or 0.5% IQ standard or SAT or ACT or GRE or MCAT score as the minimum, and that would create incentives for various kinds of cheating which we'd have to expend other resources to squelch.
You could set a minimum number of patents, but then we'd get a lot of feeble patent applications, and, due to politics, a lot of them would be approved when they should not.
We could set the number of student visas at 20K per year, hard limit, no waivers or exemptions; and a number of H-1B visa at 2K per year -- no exemptions, no waivers, a hard cap; run background investigations and charge the costs; then auction off a proportional number of visas each month to the highest bidding applicants and/or sponsors. This would create something like market discipline, market pricing, but we still wouldn't necessarily be getting the "best and brightest".
In 1940 only 10% of Americans bothered to purchase health care insurance. The move to insurance and the insertion of unnecessary intermediaries, helped drive up prices, because at point of purchase only about 5% of actual costs were seen by the purchaser, the rest was hidden in the form of past insurance premium payments and in the buffering functions inherent in insurance. This meant that we were tempted to buy more than we could afford, or, looked at from the other side, allowed the prices to go up.
Sorry, can't be PC with the Subject; it won't fit.
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Define "hard". How easy or hard or cheap or expensive should it be?
In how many major daily papers did you advertise? Were they only classifieds or display ads? On how many web sites? In how many of those ads did you include your e-mail address and telephone number (not your immigration lawyers')? What percentage of candidates did you fly in for interviews? How much were you willing to invest in relocation? How much were you willing to invest in normal -- 2-12 week -- new-hire training? (For that matter, how much do you invest in retained employee training? Is it the 2-4 weeks that was the norm before H-1B?) Are 10% of your employees in training at any particular time, as was the case at Infosys back in 2000? Is that investment in employee training 5% or more of annual revenues as it was at Infosys? It should be more in comparison with such a low-life bodyshop.
Define "qualified". Are those "qualifications" reasonable or outrageous? "Qualified" is such a weasel word that it means nothing at all without extensive explanation (and the folks at Cohen and Grigsby made it widely known how much the word is abused). Credentials, for instance, should be mere corroboration, supporting evidence of likely ability and productivity, not a deal-killer. I've seen bright high school and college students doing professional-grade work in economics, science, engineering apps, data-base analysis and design, statistical analysis... Is it really one job or are you trying to get one person who is willing to do 3 or 4 jobs for 1 professional's compensation?
Are there ethical issues that may repulse self-respecting STEM professionals? Does the work involve privacy violations? Does it involve force or fraud or anything else shady? Does it involve something which would make it easier for others to cheat or violate privacy in some way?
Of course, the more interesting the work the more people are likely to want to do it. And the more interesting it is, the more likely they are to put up with poor working conditions, pay, risks, etc. If it's not interesting you'll get fewer nibbles and will have to offer better compensation. (Some kinds of risk can make work more interesting in the right circumstances, else we'd never have lumberjacks, commercial fishermen, farmers, or people to maintain radio and water towers and high-voltage lines. Hrmph, then again recent headlines suggest that some commerial fishing outfits have turned to slavery. I hope you're not trying that hard.)
Making sure they're not criminals is not an "artificial" "non-free market" "barrier". It's good common sense.
The executives and their lobbyists and the immigration lawyers who just happen to make a good living from the visa applicants, have been claiming shortage since 1986, when they knew quite well, and most of the rest of the citizenry knew, that there was no evidence of a shortage, and no such evidence has been presented. That's fraud, and thus not "free market".
The executives have been fraudulently claiming that every H-1B recipient is "best and brightest", but the vast majority are neither. That's not "free market".
Either you initiate force or fraud, or you do not. But don't demand cheap, young, pliant labor with questionable ethics in one breath; conspire over means of rejecting every US applicant regardless of their ability and drive; and then complain about it not being an undistorted market, because YOU are the one distorting the markets.
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For the last decade, there have been US employers demanding that US citizens travel hundreds of miles to another state, to work for 1-3 months, for less than the median -- no housing allowance, no travel allowance, no meal allowance or per diem to cover the extra expenses of such a working arrangement/circumstance. Why? Because of the talent glut and the bizarre expectations of executives, distorted by the existence of the F+OPT and H-1B and L-1 visa programs and the explosion in bodyshopping.
If they were being paid local market total compensation, their pay wouldn't be much of an issue.
If US tax-victims were not subsidizing foreign students' educations, and they were not learning US research methods, how to use or modify capital equipment developed in the USA, didn't have access to intellectual property developed in the USA, that wouldn't be much of an issue.
If all H-1B recipients were genuinely "best and brightest" and were paid at local "best and brightest" total compensation levels it wouldn't be much of an issue. If they were all truly "best and brightest" and stayed in the USA, became US citizens, refrained from spying or intellectual property theft or smuggling of US national security secrets, invested in the USA, created jobs for other US citizens, it wouldn't be an issue.
(I include those last 2 having recently read Gurcharan Das's book and noting his mentions of several "great entrepreneurs" who came from India to the USA, attended US colleges and universities, learned the ropes, gained access to information and technology and business contacts, then poured their US earnings and/or US investment funds and US technology and other intellectual property from the USA back into creating jobs and infrastructure in India. This is very good reason for the USA to make serious cuts in the numbers of student and guest-work and LPR visas.)
It's an issue because the vast majority of H-1B grantees are not "best" or "brightest", they're not doing work that requires above-average ability, they don't create jobs for US citizens, they aren't loyal to the USA, they're not paid local market compensation for the job, and because there is a glut (1.8 million or more) of able, knowledgeable, experienced US citizen STEM professionals who could be doing those jobs but instead are unemployed or under-employed, because they can't get a recruiter let alone a hiring manager to conscientiously read their resumes and make the small effort to evaluate their knowledge, intelligence, creativity, and industry. And then, of course, it's an issue because it would be nice for US citizens to actually be flown in (at this stage, a train or bus would do) within the USA for interviews as was common before the H-1B program. It would be nice if even the minority of H-1Bs sponsored for green cards, which many believe is a sign that they're a cut above the average H-1B, were paid salaries (total compensation is not reported) significantly above the median, or better, a compensation commensurate with being "best" or "brightest" as they claim. It would be nice if immigration lawyers were not engaging in bias against US citizens, advising clients to advertise those jobs in obscure places so that few capable US citizens will have the chance to apply, and otherwise to favor the person in the PERM process applying for the green card.
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More likely it is a disagreement over what constitutes "easy" or "difficult"... especially when compared with the difficulties the lax and excessive E-3, F+OPT, H-1B, J, L and green card programs create for bright, creative, industrious, experienced US citizens in the top 5 percentile or even the top percentile for intelligence or academic achievement or autodidactically obtained knowledge in STEM fields.
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Huh?
Everyone is a "security concern" until and unless they've passed a background investigation. Whether they came from or through YorkShire or Bangalore or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Mexico or Montreal or Tokyo or Rome or Geneva is irrelevant.
Whether that individual met with gangsters or terrorists or other associates of gangsters or terrorists, at his origin or along the way, is a concern. Whether that individual had already committed crimes is a concern.
(This clumsy, kludgey, slow discussion interface is frustrating!)
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So, it was too cheap and too easy.
You never paid for or underwent, let alone passed, a proper background investigation (which, adjusting for inflation, could run from $20K to $50K or more).
It only took you a little more time than it takes many 5th or 6th or 7th or 8th-generation native US citizens to get a passport.
You never had to undergo a blind competition with US job applicants (one where the person(s) filtering the job applicants did not know whether you or any of the other applicants were US citizens or non-citizens).
You never had to make a case that you were in the top half-percentile, or even the top 10% or top 20% (to borrow the unfounded assertion of the original poster) or top 50% (i.e. merely above average) in order to gain entry to the USA.
A visa to enter or work in the USA (or any other country) is a privilege.
A criticism from VerySlime is reason to adopt it, because it must mean it hampers at least some of their privacy violation schemes.
1. You must not be in the habit of initiating force or fraud, or advocating such. That's why every applicant ought to pass a proper background investigation.
2. You should expect to have to prove that you're good at something people in the USA want. Do you have an IQ in the top half of a percent? Good. Do you have 5 significant patents (not these feeble "put a camera in a cellular phone" things, something surprising, new, and good) to your name. Good. Are you one of the best 10 brick-layers in your country? Good. Are you one of the best 10 precision machinists in your country; can you set up a part and select the right mill to get within 4 ten-thousandths of an inch tolerance? Good. All such things should count in your favor toward qualifying, but no one of them should suffice.
3. Are you bringing some significant investment capital into the USA with you? Are the funds you're bringing to the USA sufficient to at least build something significantly more than a burger/chicken joint (call it $300K at the very minimum) and do you have at least 3 US citizens who are not relatives or recent (within the last 15 years) immigrants lined up as employees for opening day? Are you able and willing to post a bond of $50K guaranteeing that you will employ at least 10 US citizens (as above) within the first year? Good. You're on your way to qualifying.
The whole equal rights and privileges thing begins when you give up allegiance to foreign governments and rulers, learn about the US founding, Bill of Rights, etc., and swear/affirm with penalties for perjury that you will uphold the US constitution and be honest and peaceful in your dealings with others.
"Computer-related H-1Bs have a median age of 27.4; 52% have less than 2 years of experience, and another 41% have 2-5 years."
Only 3% of a typical MSFT H-1B visa intake are US DoL level-four workers -- i.e., do work that requires independent judgment. Most H-1b use "level one" which is 17th percentile of U.S. wages -- $10k to $15k below what average-skilled Americans get paid. The 75th percentile for pay of new H-1B computing professionals was just $60K, below the median, in FY2005. Phiroz Vandrevala admitted that "Our wage per employee is 20%-25% lesser than US wage for a similar employee."
DoL PERM data show that the average H-1B worker sponsored for a green card is paid a tiny fraction of one percent above the median wage for the industry (Matloff found 109%, whle Perelman claimed 121% for the same prominent firm), not the 150% or 200% or 300% one would expect the very "best and brightest" to deserve. DoL is required by law to reject any H-1B or green card application that lists a salary below prevailing wage, so the ratios of actual to prevailing wage should never be below 1.00. Even "Einstein" workers on O-1 visas at MSFT were paid only 140.4% of the median.
Half of the 52,352 H-1B computing professionals admitted in FY2005 earned less than entry-level wages. 56% of the H-1B applications for computing jobs were for the lowest skill level, 'Level 1'.
The "prevailing wage" requirement is a fraud, since the name gives the impression that it requires paying the actual, previously existing market compensation for the same work, done by someone with the same talent, knowledge, credentials, experience, etc., while, in actuality, it allows the guest-worker to be paid significantly less. Census data, the INS/USCIS H-1B data, and the DoL green card (PERM) data all show a pattern of paying the H-1B grantees less than comparable American STEM workers.
"STEM foreign students at U.S. universities tend to be at the less-selective universities [and] Most foreign workers work at or near entry level, described by the Department of Labor in terms akin to apprenticeship."
When Industry wants more cheap H-1B labor these are "highly skilled" workers. When it comes to determining how much they have to pay, they suddenly become "low skilled". DoL ETA has shown several times that it has perverse notion of "state-of-the-art" "highly skilled occupations".
The 3 most-needed reforms to the E-3, H-1B, J, L, and even O visa programs are (1) put in place some reasonable minimal competence/skill standards which applicants need to meet, (2) reduce the numbers of such visas, and (3) run reasonable and proper background investigations on every visa applicant.
I've helped several PhD candidates who were not all that bright (and professors likewise).
But the fact is that there are no requirements that H-1B recipients actually be very bright, and both GAO and the US DoLabor have admitted as much, stating that the vast majority are not.
But what if a visa applicant were, indeed, very bright? What if his IQ were in the top 0.5%, or his GRE or MCAT scores were? Under the current, lax regime, his application would be dumped into the pile with hundreds of thousands of dullards. It would not get conscientious consideration. It would take more time process, as would his green card application, than if the USA had a reasonable process of conscientiously selecting the best, conducting proper background investigations and only admitting those who pass muster.
The glut of student visas and creation of the H-1B visas did what they were intended to do: drive down compensation in targeted fields, with the knowledge that this would prompt US students to shift to fields that had better pay and more reliable life-time employment.
Back in the early 1800s, a bunch of Boston busybodies were all in a dither about the numbers of children running about playing instead of being cooped up in schools. They feared that we were turning out generations of ignorant illiterates, so they commissioned a survey... and found that only a tiny percentage (less than 5%) of children had not completed grammar school (where English and usually either Greek or Latin vocabulary and grammar and a modicum of math were learned; they were also called "classical schools") roughly equivalent in most ways to having completed junior college, today.
In northern Virginia a little earlier, a former indentured servant who had become quite successful bequeathed his fortune to set up and operate schools in what, by that time, had become 2 counties. Those funds allowed the schools to be constructed and operated until after the Civil War.
In back-woods PA in the early 1700s, a fellow named William Tennant set up a crude log-cabin school, with very high standards; though at first it was ridiculed for its rude quarters. He inspired others, including the graduates, of course. Some of them founded other colleges and academies, the graduates of which became presidents of Princeton, and founders of Hampden-Sidney and numerous other colleges. This cluster of scholars was inter-connected with the Scottish Enlightenment.
The USA still has the best universities in the world.
OTOH, there are many problems. There's a definite impression that university executives and sports coaches are a little excessively remunerated for the work they do. (They don't seem to work nearly as industriously as Witherspoon did to build and improve Princeton, for instance, and yet are paid far more.) Life in academia is, well, weird. In a way, it's highly sheltered from the need to produce what those outside value. So long as the politicians are willing to extort from the public and direct considerable sums to academia, they don't worry so much about monthly, quarterly, and annual sales; academicians just keep coming back to demand another few billion, regardless of how the general public is doing financially and what the average person can afford. And yet, Americans, including politicians, value education so highly that they tend to just keep on upping the appropriations and grants.
Of course, most US universities were historically shoe-string operations, where the more advanced students taught the newer, and students at every level worked in the labs and even university vegetable gardens and dairies and such to keep things going. Now, they're using/abusing a lot more adjuncts and and other temps, keeping grad students in multiple post-docs before they can land real jobs, holding down on the numbers of tenured posts, and that's all of a piece with the F, H-1B, J and L visa abuse.
We've always been ambivalent about tenure, too. It's actually a relatively recent innovation in US universities, though they'd like you to believe it's been part of universities since the classical Greek academies, and the Muslim academies of the 9th century. OT1H, it gives academic freedom to follow research where it leads and protection from political winds. OTOH, it allows bad profs to become entrenched and abuse their posts to spread propaganda to relatively defenseless students who must go along to get their credentials.
But, to shift gears back to the topic of "fairness", the issue is not just whether flooding US job markets with cheap, pliant labor which has not passed a background investigation to help ensure they're not criminally inclined.
The big issue with these visas is the many forms of fraud surrounding the system: fraudulent credentials (though measures have been reluctantly taken which have slowly reduced that), and the "best and brightest" fraud when in reality there are no substantial standards, the "talent shortage" fraud when we've been producing nearly 3 times as many capable US citizen STEM workers than have been employed to do STEM work, and the "Americans are inadequate" when even a former cross-border bodyshopper admits that "by every measure" "American engineers are the best".
I've got a few better ideas... just off the top of my head:
Eliminate (or at least greatly reduce) the socialism, the initiated force and fraud.
Stop giving away US intellectual property and national security secrets.
Charge the full reasonable costs for running a background investigation on every visa applicant (and incremental investigations on those applying for change of status).
Charge the full reasonable costs for education while verbally (non-coercively) persuading people of the merits of being charitable (i.e. making scholarship donations).
Encourage spying on and hacking of governments and government officials who have declared their enmity for the USA and its citizens by offering small rewards for information which enhances US security (e.g. reveals measures and counter-measures they are taking to give them an advantage or reduce the US advantage in defense) and encourages those government officials to respect individual rights (e.g. outing instances of initiation of force and fraud).
Charge the full reasonable costs for inspecting in-coming cargoes for safety and honesty in labeling and respect for intellectual property rights.
Stop creating artificial incentives in the tax and education and transportation and regulatory systems to encourage bodyshopping (both domestic and across borders) and otherwise harm the productive.
Stop subsidies for agriculture and VAT kick-backs.
Lower privacy violation by government by eliminating income extortion and replacing it with taxes on the states in proportion to population (i.e. repeal the 16th amendment, and, for safety against federal abuses and favoritism amongst states, repeal the 17th amendment), get the federal government out of education and 90% of transportation (those inter-state navigable waterways), and put a reasonable hard cap on import tariffs at below 10% (while allowing up to 100% penalties in cases where reciprocity has been violated).
Eliminate the unconstitutional systemic cost-increasing Socialist Insecurity abomination, Medicare, Medicaid and National Socialist Health Care Perversion/Obamacare/PPACA/HCERA, which discourage employing people.
And give out only so many visas as can be reasonably managed, i.e. as will allow ensuring that 99.99% of visa grantees leave by the time their visas expire.
"reduce systemic costs... (socialized) college Socialized medicine (socialized transportation socialized housing)"
When John Deere was considering off-shoring, they set up a separate facility, connected via satellite links, on their property, manned by guest-workers, so they could test the set-up. They couldn't have done that without the ready supply of guest-workers.
Guest-workers and foreign students also ease knowledge transfer. They learn US academic state of the art and research methods, and even production methods, and take them back with them. Of course, other guest-workers and green card grantees also take defense secrets with them from time to time, while others (who went from F to H-1B to green card to naturalization without being spotted) have been known to try to bomb NY, NY, and they've added to the numbers of illegal aliens in the USA.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ09FacilitatingOffShoring.html more on how visas facilitate off-shoring
"The United States is still pumping out tremendous numbers of new Ph.D.s in the sciences -- more, in fact, than our economy can presently absorb, as there is a well-reported dearth of jobs for newly-minted science Ph.D.s. The same is true in engineering: According to a recent National Science Foundation report, the number of engineers graduating from U.S. schools will continue to grow into the foreseeable future, out-stripping the number of available jobs..." --- 2005 Summer _New Atlantis_ "How We Measure Up"
2009-01-08: Cheap Science
Studies carried out from the 1990s through 2010 by researchers from Columbia U, Computing Research Association (CRA), Duke U, Georgetown U, Harvard U, National Research Council of the NAS, RAND Corporation, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers U, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Stanford U, SUNY Buffalo, UC Davis, UPenn Wharton School, Urban Institute, and US Dept. of Education Office of Education Research & Improvement have reported that the USA has continually been producing more US citizen STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) workers than we've been employing in these fields.
In testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee, Harold Salzman reported that we've been producing as many as 3 times the numbers of STEM workers as we've been employing in these fields.
"Unemployment rates are available and plotted in Figure 6 for chemists, recent mathematics PhDs, and recent biomedical PhDs and MDs. Although not fully comparable in population or time period, these 3 rates, when compared to the overall U.S. unemployment rate, suggest a general increase or leveling in the 1990s, while the general unemployment rate was falling substantially. Rising unemployment in one sector, while the overall economy is doing well, is a strong indicator of developing surpluses of workers, not shortages. Hence, neither earnings patterns nor unemployment patterns indicate an S&E shortage in the data we are able to find." --- William P. Butz, Gabrielle A. Bloom, Mihal E. Gross, Terrene K. Kelly, Aaron Kofner, Helga E. Rippen 2002-11-12 "Is There a Shortage of Scientists and Engineers? How Would We Know?" _RAND Science and Technology Issue Paper_
2009-10-28: "U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics..."
2010-06-14 Beryl Lieff Benderly _Miller-McCune_ http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/ The Real Science Gap Is a Shortage of Employment Opportunities
* 2010-12-24: "AT&T is getting about 50K applications a month, or around 30 for each person it hires on average, Mr. Smith says." (James R. Hagerty & Joe Light _Wall Street Journal_ "Job ads rising as economy warms up")
* 2010-12-24: Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System receives 10K applications per month (Eileen Ambrose _Baltimore Sun_/_Grand Forks Herald_)
* 2011-02-03: Google received 75K job applications last week.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ01NoShortage.html more corroboration and citations.
Even former cross-border bodyshopper Vivek Wadhwa admitted that "by every measure" US engineers are better, and the reason the guest-workers are used and abused is that they're cheap:
"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200707.html#20070702
"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200801.html#20080104
"Dynamic" US engineers vs. "transactional" foreign engineers.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051213
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051227
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200601.html#20060110
There are a few under-achievers, from families with cultures which do not value academic achievement, or who have been given incentives by the government not to value academic achievement, but the majority of students are being pushed or pushing themselves to excell.
"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200707.html#20070702
"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200801.html#20080104
"Dynamic" US engineers vs. "transactional" foreign engineers.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051213
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051227
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200601.html#20060110
"the mean literacy test score for U.S. adults (272) was 2 points above the mean for all adults in the 20 country survey (270)... Larger, statistically significant, literacy gaps between us and them unfold when you separate immigrant from native-born test takers, as is done in 17 high income countries surveyed by ETS. U.S. natives scored 8 points above the average native of the 17 high income countries. U.S. immigrants scored 16 points below the average immigrant in the 17 countries." --- Edwin S. Rubenstein 2005-12-22 _V Dare_ "The stupid American? Think again"
http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051222_nd.htm
"I've mentioned the TIMSS test, for instance, which showed that if [Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming] -- none of which has a substantial under-class -- had been treated as separate nations, each of them would have been out-scored only by Singapore (professor David Berliner, 'Our Schools Versus Theirs', Washington Post, 2001 January 28)... This [both the TIMSS and PISA tests] once again shows, tragically, that the U.S.A. is not doing enough to bring up the educational performance of its under-class. But if one takes the white score as 'main-stream', the U.S.A. would rank 7th out of 27, instead of 18th."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200603.html#20060317
http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/readings/timssroped.html
"while our average test scores are mediocre, the U.S.A. is a leader with respect to the gap between our best and worst performers. Our best and brightest are equal to, or better than, those of other advanced countries. Our worst rank, well, among the worst anywhere. For several reasons, immigrants exert more of a downward test score drag here than in other advanced countries. First, they account for a larger share of the population. Only 7 of the 27 OECD countries have larger foreign born population shares than the U.S.A. Second -- and more importantly -- our immigrants do poorly on standardized tests compared to the immigrant populations of other advanced countries. The U.S.A. ranked 18th out of the 20
I've worked with people from Germany and Poland who were educated abroad and I had no problem with that. I've also worked with people from VietNam, Thailand, Guatemala, Poland, India, England, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Republic of China, Red China, Malaysia, France, Republic of Congo, Jamaica, Somalia at one time or another who had been educated or were being educated in the USA and, with very few exceptions, had no problem with that or them. I enjoy picking up scraps of languages and information about different cultures and history and economics.
My objections are to
Degrees http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoEduStats.html (from US DoEducation's National Center for Education Statistics annual Digest of Education Statistics)
Employment/Unemployment in a selection of industries http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoIndustries.html (from BLS)
Employment/Unemployment in a sampling of occupations http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoOccupation.html (from BLS, and NACE press releases)