Immigration versus Education - the H1B Frenzy

On Capitol Hill, in the White House and increasingly on Main Street America, there is a debate raging, daily more shrill and polarizing, about H1B visas.

There are two camps:

Be American, Hire Americans

vs.

Business Leaders Trying To Survive the Deep Recession
High Tech Entrepreneurs 
Venture Capitalists.

To best evaluate the debate, I recommend The New York Times' well-researched series on the broader immigration issues called Remade in America.

The article quotes one of the most honest and articulate spokesman for the Business Leaders, Dr. Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel.

Dr. Barrett is retiring soon and really has no ax to grind on this topic. He is genuinely concerned about US education and the decline in student interest in math, science and engineering.

He has 30 years of global business experience in one of the largest and most competitive high-tech industries - semiconductors. He was a key executive in the microprocessor battle with Japan - when many on Wall Street assumed the company would be crushed - much as GM has been crushed.

Intel didn't succumb to foreign competition. They invested heavily, innovated globally and came roaring back to become the world leader in silicon technology. Craig has personal experience hiring scientists and engineers around the world, giving him a unique perspective.

In the Times article, Craig is blunt and candid with his views:

“We are watching the decline and fall of the United States as an economic power — not hypothetically, but as we speak,” said Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel.

Mr. Barrett blames a slouching education system that cannot be easily fixed, but he says a stopgap measure would be to let companies hire more foreign engineers.

“With a snap of the fingers, you can say, ‘I’m going to make it such that those smart kids — and as many of them as want to — can stay in the United States.’ They’re here today, they’re graduating today — and they’re going home today.

There are plenty of people who disagree with Craig. Regrettably, they seem to have a much narrower range of business expertise and little experience starting or funding technology companies. They see "foreigner's brains" as a threat to "American" jobs.

Again from the New York Times:

[Barrett] is opposed by staunch foes of liberalized immigration and by advocates for American-born engineers.

“There are probably two billion people in the world who would like to live in California and work, but not everyone in the world can live here,” said Kim Berry, an engineer who operates a nonprofit advocacy group for American-born technologists. “There are plenty of Americans to do these jobs.”

"[Indian and Chinese visa holders] get little sympathy from Mr. Berry of the Programmers Guild, a nonprofit group with a volunteer staff that lobbies Congress on behalf of American-born high-tech workers.

To Mr. Berry, 50 — who lives in Sacramento, where he was born — it is unfathomable that Google, which receives one million résumés a year, cannot find enough qualified Americans. Further, he says immigrants depress wages."

The data in the New York Times makes very clear that foreign talent is NOT depressing US wages among the highly skilled. Moreover, foreign born highly skilled people make up a disproportionate share of the technical and scientific workforce. In short, we depend on highly skilled workers for our national prosperity. 

            

Comments

[David]

What I don't understand is this: if we hire masses of H1B and L1 visa holders for engineering positions (mostly entry level) then why would a young person want to go into engineering? The H1B and L1 visa holders crash the wage scale. I see no reason to take the debt and opportunity cost to get an engineering degree in a non-lucrative field. Seems reational to me that smart kids don't go into engineering.

BOB COMPTON COMMENTS:

1- HIGH PAY - The highest paying jobs for U.S. college graduates go to Chemical Engineers, Computer Engineers, Chemistry majors, Mechanical Engineers, Electrical Engineers and Biomedical Engineers - all above $50,000 to start. Every other major starts at a lower salary out of college.

2- CAREER FLEXIBILITY - Engineering degrees show the widest range of flexibility in adaptability to other careers. Education majors shows the narrowest range.

Those seem like good reasons to me.

[Kyle S]

Politicians (the overwhelming majority of which are are hypocrites) are destroying the United States as we know it - not just in education, but in all aspects of our nation. Very sad.