To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter

Thu May 29 16:11:03 PDT 2014


Earlier I reported on the media briefing held by Sen. Sessions' office
on H-1B, green cards and the claimed STEM labor shortage,

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/SessionsBriefing.txt

I cited a Breitbart article, and since that time two more articles, more
mainstream in nature, have appeared:

Computerworld,
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248416/An_H_1B_cap_hike_would_mean_a_grim_future_for_workers

Science Careers,
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_05_29/caredit.a1400133#tab1         

These new articles cover largely the same ground as Breitbart, but there
are some new points that I wish to comment on.

First, on the Computerworld article:

Ron Hira made a correct point about the legal wage requirements of H-1B
and green cards (note that it is both!):

      "The wage floors set in the H-1B program are far below market
      wages for American workers, and there is no requirement to recruit
      or look for U.S. citizens first, said Hira. 'You bring them in to
      undercut Americans,' he said."

However, in saying that the H-1Bs are hired as cheap labor, Ron's
quotes elsewhere in the article might be misread as meaning that the
underpayment of H-1Bs mainly occurs with the IT outsourcing firms.  This
is not the case--the household name mainstream tech firms are plenty
culpable too.  My Migration Letters paper shows that those firms hire
many foreign workers at the same below-market wage floors that Ron cites
above.

Now consider this quote:

      "H-1B visa holders earn 5% to 10% less than U.S. citizens with
      comparable skills, and the H-1B program shifts hiring to younger
      workers, displacing older professionals, said Salzman. It also
      weakens the bargaining position of older workers, he said."

I don't think Hal quite said everything in the quote.

First of all, I believe that his 5-10% figure is NOT for comparable
skills, but rather for comparable age, education, occupation and region.
All these are important variables, but so is skill sets, e.g. Android
programming, that typically command wage premiums of around 20% in the
open market.  Remember, the employers say they hire H-1Bs because they
have special skill sets that are rare among Americans in the field.  So,
in other words, the underpayment is more like 20%.

I don't think Hal talked about the bargaining position of older workers
either.  The sad fact is that older workers in this field typically
DON'T EVEN GET A PHONE CALL WHEN THEY APPLY FOR A JOB.  They are simply
summarily rejected, with NO chance to bargain.

Hal's points about H-1Bs currently holding a large portion of IT (mainly
software development) jobs is very important.  Keep this in mind next
time you hear a firm like Microsoft say something like, "Only 10% of our
workers are H-1Bs"--technically true, but they're including all the
clerks, accountants, marketers, custodians etc. in the denominator
there, an unfair fraction since H-1Bs generally don't become clerks etc.

One thing that the two sides of the H-1B debate do agree on is the
supreme importance of STEM jobs to our economy, world competitiveness
etc.  So the proper analysis is to see what percentage of STEM jobs,
especially the computer-related ones, that the H-1Bs are taking, not
accounting jobs.

Now let's look at the Science Careers article.  (As I often do, I'll
point out that Science Careers is associated with Science Magazine, 
one of the most prestigious STEM publications in the nation.)

I had to laugh when I saw myself described as a "self-taught expert on
high-skill immigration"--as if Hira, Salzman and Teitelbaum have formal
training in that field, which of course they don't.  I think the author
is alluding to the fact that these other three have degrees in social
sciences.  But I ought to point out that actually my own formal training
was in statistics; I do have a "license" for this kind of analysis.
Plus, I know what these workers actually do, e.g. what Android
programming entails, as opposed to treating them as widgets.

On the other hand, the issue of self-training is an important point.
The author mentions that I am a computer science professor, but he is
probably unaware of the fact that I have NO background in CS.  I'm
entirely self-taught in that field, and I'm not alone:  The large
majority of those who work as software developers are self-taught too.
In fact, some of you may be surprised to know that many of the H-1Bs in
the computer field don't have CS degrees either, though they typically
have some coursework in the field.

The author makes a big point of the fact that Sessions, a conservative,
is coming to the defense of American workers while the putatively
pro-labor Democrats are gung-ho for policies that bring the Americans
harm.  Indeed!

As the article points out, the politics here are that the Democrats want
to leverage the H-1B issue to get amnesty for the unauthorized, whom Jay
Leno cleverly described as viewed by the Democrats as "undocumented
Democrats." :-)

But there is more to be said on this.  Though amnesty is viewed as a
Latino issue, and indeed various entities have talked Latino-Americans
into making it such an issue, the fact is that immigration harms
low-skilled Latino workers.  Ask any (legal) blue collar worker on Soto
Street in East LA (my old neighborhood--yay!) if he wants more people
brought in to compete with him.  Guess what his answer will be; need you
ask?

Antonia Hernandez, then president of MALDEF, one of the most strident
Latino organizations in the country, once said publicly,

      "...migration, legal and undocumented, does have an impact on our
      economy...(in) competition within the Latino community...There is
      an issue of wage depression, as in the garment industry, which is
      predominantly immigrant, of keeping wages down because of the flow
      of traffic of people."

Various academic studies have confirmed it.

I recently happened to be talking to a very active member of an
Asian-American political organization.  Over the years, the driving
issue in immigration for such organizations has been retention of the
Fourth Preference, which allows (usually naturalized) U.S. citizens to
sponsor their adult siblings for immigration.  Since Chinese and Korean
immigrants make heavy use of this immigration avenue, their lobbyists
have fought fiercly against proposals to repeal this part of the law.
This has been their focus all along, during the 80s, 90s and 2000s.
Indeed, the current Senate bill contains a provision to repeal Fourth
Preference, and it was immediately attacked by these groups when the
bill was introduced.

So, I said to the above activist "I assume your organization is lobbying
to keep the Fourth Preference, right?"  He floored me with his answer:
"No, were pushing to enact STEM visas."  When I pointed out that a large
portion of undergraduate CS majors are Asian-American, and thus STEM
visas would bring them harm, he was shocked, and said he would need to
rethink the issue.

So much for the putatively pro-labor, and pro-minority, Democrats.

I was recently told that all Democratic politicians take their marching
orders on the H-1B issue from the very top, and I've seen lots of
evidence confirming it.  For instance, all the letters I've seen from
Democratic senators and representives to their constituents about H-1B
use identical language, showing that it comes from one central source.

I've reported before on a DC conference I attended that consisted not
only of academics but also about two dozen of the most influential
policymakers in DC,

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SloanDC.txt

I wrote,

      "One of the policymakers, one in especially highly-placed position
      in the Executive Branch, did point out very frankly that they take
      orders from the top (Obama or whoever is president at the time),
      and must act accordingly, whether they think the policies are
      proper or not.  This policymaker's comment was in response to a
      barrage of comments from other panelists along the lines of, 'Why
      do we have these destructive policies?'"

(I urge everyone who asks that last question to read my report on that
conference, at the above URL.  It was a real eye opener for me, even
though I was hardly naive when I went in.)

I know of no Democrat willing to speak out in the manner Sessions has.
(No, I don't count Sen. Durbin, sorry to say.) For example, Sen. Sherrod
Brown, who is passionate about the impact on American workers of
shipping WORK abroad, has been totally silent about bringing workERS
here from abroad with the same impact.

The H-1B/green cards issue is an excellent case study of the loss of our
democracy--and the loss of our Democrats.

Norm


Archived at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SessionsBriefing2.txt