The No-Brainer Issue of the Year: Let High-Skill Immigrants Stay
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I've mentioned a RAND study many times in my comments on hn. This study took a very objective look at the pay, career prospects, completion time, attrition rate, and so forth of STEM grad degrees vs the professions (MD, JD, DDS, MBA, etc). The conclusion reached was that STEM grad degrees are unappealing to young americans because they are no longer competitive with other career paths available to the "best and brightest".
So, does it make sense to specifically staple green cards to evey stem diploma when the most objective research suggests the shortage may be market driven?
I don't have a definitive answer. I think it's a complex question wothy of discussion, and not at all the no-brainer the atlantic article claims it it.
Also, this problem is not unique to America. The shortage of skilled STEM professionals is universal in every country with a modern economy. And I don't think this will ever change; STEM is not appealing to everybody, it's just too hard and too boring for most people. I don't say that in a demeaning way; Law or Health Sciences for example, are too hard and too boring for my thick skull. People are different. But in the modern world, the increasing demand for people with a STEM-friendly brain is clearly exceeding the percentage of the population who both have that kind of brain and are lucky/wealthy/hard-working enough to afford full education.
I do think that this last part is used - unintentionally - to manipulate international students, and is part of why the appeal of these programs has declined for people who don't need the program to gain US residency.
I would much rather see this problem resolved by empowering the immigrant to choose what field and degree path (or absence of degree path) he or she wishes to pursue than limiting their freedom. But what I can't do is pretend it isn't a factor in how abusive PhD programs can be toward their students. My first order of business in designing a better system would be to strip universities or employers of any control over an individuals immigration/residency status.
www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/N_pr_PhDC_bookII.pdf
Looks like there is a statistically relevant difference in completion rates - international students tend to complete at 67% vs 54% for US citizens - and that this gap is driven by math and physical science, while humanities only has a 2% gap. So while I wouldn't say there is a vast gap, there is a relevant gap.
While 67% is much preferable 54%, keep in mind that at elite law, med, and business schools, completion rates tend to be in the high 90s.
The subtitle says Our policy toward the world's best and brightest is currently: "Welcome! Enjoy this expensive education. Now go home!" Does that make any sense? But I think it makes even less sense to say to native-born Americans, "Enjoy this expensive education. Now go to Europe to get a job, because we decided to hire an Indian instead".
So it's your desire to consign the Indian would-be immigrant to a life of poverty (i.e., poorer than the bottom 5% of the US [1]) just to make sure your wage stays above $150k/year?
But as long as you are happy with me shipping jobs to India, I guess it's all good.
[1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...
We can pay the smartest people in the world to work here, or we can pay them to work elsewhere. If they work here, we get the externalities. Hence, no-brainer.
If someone expects to make 80k and they haven't updated their skills since the 90s, yeah they're gonna get laid off to make room for someone who can hack it. There's still a need for that someone. Artificial scarcity isn't a good thing for the industry.
Ok, let's roll with that. If that is the case here is a proposal: pay each skilled worker turned away and replaced by an American worker a stipend to help them rise above poverty in their country (say $2k/year?) then go and hire an American worker and pay them base salary-stipend.
The reality is that the government will make policies that favour citizens over foreigners. So yes, it may be someone's desire to cosign an Indian would-be immigrant to a life of poverty just to keep their wage stable. We're already doing that by not taking in unlimited immigrants from, say, war-torn Africa.
>But as long as you are happy with me shipping jobs to India, I guess it's all good.
Skilled immigration has nothing to do with offshoring.
Sure it does. Both are methods of tapping into the labor pool overseas.
We're already doing that by not taking in unlimited immigrants from, say, war-torn Africa.
Very true. Our unwillingness to take on more refugees has resulted in thousands of people being tortured, raped and murdered. Are you advocating this policy?
If anything, our population is already too high, verging on disposable "life is cheap" levels. We haven't learned to make a civilization that values individuals and treats them decently, except when they are scarce enough that resources are going underused (making it clear to everyone that we benefit from their presence).
If you advocate a general policy of unselfishness, please send all your money here: http://givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF#Whatdoyo... Every 2000 dollars donated saves a human life.
2. Skilled workers in India should be able to get above-average pay. (If the situation is really that bad, the ones who are willing to travel elsewhere to get education and jobs should do much better than average.)
Taking that graph at face value, the Indian immigrants could have no jobs at all, and still live better in the US than in India. They wouldn't have to compete with skilled workers here at all.
You're looking at more skilled workers and thinking that they will add to our economy. So you're asking, "What's the absolute value of (say) and Indian worker to our economy?" But I'm thinking it's closer to a zero-sum game - more immigrants will mean less work for native workers - and I'm asking, "What's the difference in value between an Indian worker compared to a native one?"
That said, how does it benefit the US if the immigrant keeps his money here?
Skilled workers in India should be able to get above-average pay.
They do. It still puts them well below the US poverty line.
Taking that graph at face value, the Indian immigrants could have no jobs at all, and still live better in the US than in India.
Very true. Most poor Americans, who typically have no job at all, still have a higher standard of living than an upper middle class developer in India. So what?
"What's the difference in value between an Indian worker compared to a native one?"
Wages for developers will be lowered. This will cause quantity demanded to increase, resulting in more software being created. This will increase productivity and benefit consumers. I don't see any reason to believe that all the software we could possibly need is currently being created - do you?
It still puts them well below the US poverty line.
The US poverty line is completely irrelevant to a worker in India. Anyway, it's artificially adjusted to keep 20% of the US population below the line, so it's not useful as an indication of actual poverty.
Most poor Americans, who typically have no job at all, still have a higher standard of living than an upper middle class developer in India. So what?
I answered that in the very next sentence. If it's a simple matter of bringing Indians out of poverty, there's no reason for them to compete with skilled workers here. We could continue to bring random people here from India, which is the opposite of what the article recommends. In fact we should focus on the poorest and least-skilled workers.
I didn't see anything in this discussion about programmers.
No. Nor am I entitled to a particular job.
I'm only advocating allowing the job to go to the person who will offer the best cost/benefit ratio. I'm not advocating we should make it illegal to give the job to one person or another, you are.
Anyway, it's artificially adjusted to keep 20% of the US population below the line, so it's not useful as an indication of actual poverty.
This is very true, but regardless - the bottom 95'th percentile of India is poorer than the bottom 5'th percentile of the US.
I didn't see anything in this discussion about programmers.
My arguments are not specific to programmers. I would also advocate bringing over Indian cooks and house cleaners, subject to various non-protectionist limitations.
(In short, I want to limit immigration to people who leave their cultural baggage at home and who won't vote away our freedom. I've discussed this in the past: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619122 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=477733 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144340 )
Immigrants from the low skill tier lower the average skill level of the workforce (in the US), but they are still beneficial [1]. The time a low skill immigrant spends cleaning my bathroom is time I have to devote to my startup.
Trade benefits everyone because of the consumer surplus it creates, not due to some nebulous "raising the average" effect.
[1] For the sake of argument, I'm assuming purely market forces at work. The welfare state substantially complicates this picture. This article argues immigration overall is a net drain on the US, mainly due to redistributionist policies: http://cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011
You must have missed a paragraph or two of the article, see below. Wouldn't it be easier for skilled Americans to find jobs if there were more technology companies?
"High-skill immigrants innovate, patent, and start new firms at higher rates than natives. At least one-quarter of the new firms in technology and science fields, from software and semiconductors to biotech, are founded by immigrants. In Silicon Valley, more than half of the high-tech start-ups were founded by immigrants. High skill immigrants especially with degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (aka: STEM) create more jobs and higher wages for Americans."
Even so... my point above (about the RAND study) is that objective research shows that Americans are avoiding STEM graduate degrees for rational, market-driven reasons. While it's wonderful that high skill immigrants are innovating, patenting, and starting new firms, that may simply reflect the declining appeal of STEM fields to people who have a wider choice of career paths (ie., if we make it easier for smart immigrants to come here as STEM workers than as lawyers, it's not surprising that immigrants show a higher activity in STEM than in law).
The US may be locking itself into a vicious cycle - the appeal of STEM careers declines, so Americans begin to choose other fields. This creates a shortage, which leads to an increased call for more visas. This provides a stopgap measure that prevents the market correction that would might make STEM more appealing (relative to law, medicine, etc), causing even more Americans (well, anyone with choice) to avoid the field, which leads to calls for even more visas...
In many ways, I hate making this argument, because on a personal (moral) level, I feel immensely welcoming to immigrants, especially well educated immigrants who make a wonderful contribution. And as a matter of policy, yeah, it'd be nuts to refuse entry to such a remarkably productive workforce - the US is in trouble economically, and the fact that so many top people still want to come here is one of our best cards! But at the same time, when I set aside my emotions and take a cold, rational look at this, I do think that the emphasis on STEM immigration may very well be deterring young Americans (or, again, anyone here with the ability to choose a profession over STEM) from entering the field. And I believe that this could be dangerous to the US in the long term - sure, it's stupid to turn away our top graduate students, but shouldn't we see it as a crisis that so few of our graduate students in STEM fields are coming up through the ranks of our own educational system?
I hope you can tell I feel a lot of ambivalence about this. I don't ask people to agree with me, I just ask that people recognize that this issue is complex, and absolutely is not a "no-brainer"
http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html
Now, this study doesn't mention anything about immigration systems, it just concludes that the aversion to STEM graduate degrees (particularly PhDs) is market driven.
So to me, there are a few factors here:
- Our K-12 system failing to produce graduates that can go on to advanced study in STEM
- The declining appeal of STEM careers relative to other options available to the best and brightest
- The relationship between the decline of the appeal of STEM fields and the increasing use of visas to fill these positions (for instance, the RAND study makes recommendations for changes to PhD programs... but these programs will be able to resist change if they have the power to bestow visas).
I'm not at all claiming to have a definitive answer here, but I do think you've gone way too far in attributing it to the decline of math education in the US. I would never try to argue that you haven't identified a major factor, but I think your claim that this is the only factor or even the single overwhelming factor is weak, especially in light of the RAND study.
As for filling the jobs... well, I haven't argued that we shouldn't base immigration on job skills, I've argued the opposite! However, I do think we need to consider the possible impact of emphasizing one particular field (STEM) over another, and make sure that we aren't using these visas to the extent that the prevent the market correction that would - slowly as you've pointed out - improve the appeal of STEM careers and bring "Americans" (by which I mean people living here with broad choice of career paths) back into this field.
I did feel at something of a disadvantage, not because my math education was poor (I was a math major), but because US students specialize later. In college, US students do much more general ed. I spent some time in France as a teenager and was surprised to discover that at age 13 I was going to have to pick a track (letters vs science)... I returned to the US at that point, so I completed my high school in the US.
I think that a broad education can be helpful in STEM fields in ways that are not predictable, but if you're hitting advanced stochastic processes for the first time, and the student next to you did this course already as an undergrad, you're at a disadvantage - but that advantage may be a temporary one, and the benefits of a broader education may well kick in later. Hard to say.
As the percentage of US students continues to dwindle in US based graduate programs, I think that these courses will be increasingly taught assuming a European or Asian style undergraduate experience (ie., earlier specialization) - after all, that's becoming the typical background in these programs. I don't think that the US students necessarily lack the talent or core prerequisites, but they will be more likely to be seeing "graduate level" material for the first time, whereas it may be review for the international students.
To give an example, suppose there's a graduate course in advanced stochastic processes, and prerequisites are calculus based statics and an undergraduate course in introductory stochastic processes. The American took the prerequisites, and also took a lot of coursework outside his major (as required by his university). An international student took far less coursework outside the major and instead used the time to take what in the US would be graduate level courses in stochastic processes. The international student, in this case, would be at a substantial advantage.
The American, though, will probably choose some other path than a PhD in a STEM field - I personally that the RAND study has pretty much identified why that's the case (better pay and prospects in other fields). I think your insight into the difference between US and international students around markets is a good one - if your failure rate is higher, you'd be more inclined to avoid that program, so they are responding differently. That said, I think that the difficulty of gaining admission to professional schools in the US is a also a major factor (medical and law schools make it far more difficult for international students to gain admission than PhD programs in STEM fields, and if we go the "staple a green card to any STEM degree" but don't take comparable actions in other fields, we should understand that this will probably exacerbate the trend away from STEM and toward other fields among people who can choose their profession in the US).
Oh lastly, to answer your question - yes, the dropout rate from STEM undergraduate majors in the US is high (new york times did an article on this recently), and my undergraduate program was no different. But those Americans who make it through often go to professional schools or into finance (though the trend toward finance has reversed somewhat recently), again (I believe) for the reasons specified in the RAND study.
Also, why this obsessive focus on indians? I'm an H1B from Sweden and there's many fellow europeans working in the valley and all over US. Judge each individual for their skills instead of lumping huge categories together.
Just look at how many H1B positions are advertised and how much legal but shady stuff goes on. Put ad in local paper among classifieds for "free dirt available", if any resumes are received from US citizens they are discarded (note they have to be "considered" but not accepted), and so on.
If it was just about "skills" there would be no need for this shit to go on.
This was for a programming role in New York City- I do not know anyone that gets paid $45k. I'm unsure how they calculate prevailing wages, but I'd suggest that the formula could do with some tweaking.
That video has nothing whatsoever to do with H1B.
It is for a green card application which is completely a different thing. The choice the employer faces is, does he sponsor a green card for someone working for many years and has invaluable company knowledge, or send them home and hire someone with the same qualifications but train them again on the company internals.
They're associated, rather than "linked" because, well, they're both immigration driven by a labor shortage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/obamas-...
"Low-skill immigration and amnesty" is quite clearly talking about latino immigrants. Not accusing him of being racist or anything but that's who he's talking about.
Comprehensive immigration reform is needed in some form and a startup visa is one aspect of immigration reform. So it's really not outlandish to include it when talking about the subject. I'll spare you a websters-mirriam definition of comprehensive, immigration and reform.
Sorry, the original comment just sounded like off-topic whining to me. Lots of putting words in people's mouths, very little contribution.
EDIT: And the conservative downvote brigade has arrived. I'll just call it a day here.
If you want the startup visa to pass, there is a very good reason to do it by itself: the startup visa is likely to pass, whereas comprehensive immigration reform is not.
Lots of putting words in people's mouths, very little contribution.
It contributes even less to deny his claims, which are basically correct. Obama's blueprint for immigration reform does include amnesty (you need to scroll to page 3 to find it).
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/imm...
Again, nobody was talking about this at all until anamax brought it up. And Obama proposing a startup visa by itself absolutely will not pass. You know why? Because it would involve Obama proposing it. See the House Republicans refusing to pass a tax cut this week.
"back of the line"? They're starting in front of everyone who applied to immigrate, didn't get accepted, and waited until they did.
Are you really arguing that it isn't amnesty because there are some conditions?
Amnesty International isn't campaigning for prisoners to be released "about 10 years from now".
But, you know this.
Yes, they get to wait to be eligible for citizenship, just like every other legal immigrant. Are you seriously arguing that not letting them jump that line is punishment?
Most people understand that I'm talking about the political process, said process being how the US makes changes in immigration law.
The advocates of "high skill immigration" are asking for different changes to said law than the advocates for low skill plus "forgiveness". However, they're putting both sets of changes into a single package.
As to the "labor shortage", I've done farm labor and other "jobs that americans won't do". The "shortage" is a combination of wage-busting and unwillingness to pay for the relevant automation.
Then again, you won't find me arguing that someone is entitled to cheap golf, to mention one of the arguments for low skill immigration.
Why do you need "absolute certainty"
I, on the other hand, am sick and tired of the immigration authorities questioning my degree from the UK and refusing to confirm that it is equivalent to a US degree. Hardly third-world.
But in any case, your problem is solved very easily- by firing people. At a previous job we hired a guy with a Masters from a college in New Jersey (I forget which, sadly). He was useless. We fired him. Education can get you in the door, but it can't keep you in the room.
The problem with this is that hiring immigrants is more expensive and time-consuming because of the process you have to go through. Although it sounds backwards, if it was easier to hire immigrants it would be easier to fire them when they aren't as good as they say they are.
Also, once again this is a problem for temp visas with their complex and expensive sponsorship deals; if you just give a green card to any high-skilled worker, if he is incompetent because his education was much below American standards, the guy is fired after the first month, problem solved. (I would support some scheme where such a new GC holder is denied social security benefits in the first X years of residence or Y years of actual employment and tax paying.)
Why do you guys keep posting these articles?
2) All routine immigration should be immediately stopped, and indefinitely kept that way. Exceptions should be made only for the few, true geniuses who could definitely benefit the US in a big way.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9PpaoZE8oXk NumbersUSA - Immigration by the Numbers - Part 2 of 2
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XyTmClBU7nA NumbersUSA - Immigration by the Numbers - Part 1 of 2
Yes, and to be consistent also ban imports. Each suitcase produced abroad takes the place of one that could have been produced in the US, if the manufacturing industry was better and governmental policies were aligned with the interests of blue collar workers.
I mean, North Korea is so successful, there's no reason to not emulate their economic policies!
I find it interesting that nobody ever talks about national solidarity anymore when discussing immigration. It seems taken for granted that the USA is not a real nation, a real "people". It's just some sort of bazaar for various people with nothing in common to do business, so let in the hordes to do business. No need to worry about literally millions of people coming here without strong loyalties and intent to fully and permanently assimilate.
Finally, it's very funny how people like you are favorable to a closed working market (let's say this is possible) but an open, fair and competitive market for everything else. Will you be happy if all foreign countries fight back with unfair commercial practices? This is not a theoretical question, as you already have at least one important commercial partner that's strong and ingenious enough to screw you -- China -- and this is apparently bad enough already. The fact is, the globalization cat is out of the bag and there's no way back, and no way to play only half of the music.