Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 00:01:57 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: academics to the rescue! To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter A subscriber called my attention to the Harvard conference reported in the enclosure. I'd been meaning to discuss a similar event at UC Berkeley held about a year ago, at which I was a speaker, so I'll discuss them both here. Both conferences had the goal of informing reporters of the "truth" above immigration. The audience at UCB consisted almost entirely of working journalists, and apparently this was the case at Harvard as well. In both cases, the term "immigration" was defined primarily in the manner it has come to be defined in the national dialog in the last 10 years--a "definition" that as devolved, originally meaning people who move to the U.S. from elsewhere and stay here permanently, then meaning only people who do so without authorization, then meaning only Latino people who do so without authorization. In other words, when many people in these conferences speak of "immigrants," they means Latinos who are here illegally. So, things like H-1B and employer-sponsored green cards don't come into play much anymore. Nevertheless, it was at least somewhat covered in the UCB conference (one pro speaker, one con), and judging from the enclosed article, it was at least alluded to at Harvard. You can view the UCB videos at http://journalism.berkeley.edu/conf/2011/immigration/videos/ and read about the conference at http://journalism.berkeley.edu/conf/2010/immigration/ The 12th is of Angelo Paparelli, a very prominent immigration attorney, who naturally spoke of H-1B as being a wonderful thing. The 14th is of me, and you can guess my position... :-) What was interesting was that during the Q&A session after my talk (apparently not included at the above site, though some Q&A sessions are there), Paparelli said, "I agree with you that the prevailing wage is below the market wage, but that problem is solved by the requirement that the employer pay either the prevailing wage or the actual wage, whichever is higher." The "actual wage" he was referring to is a legal term, defined to be the average wage of workers in the same job with the same employer. I replied that there are loopholes there too, and have discussed them elsewhere. In any case, the green card data show that most employers pay only the prevailing wage anyway. The Harvard conference claimed that "academics can clarify contentious issues." That's caused me to chuckle, because in the immigration field, virtually every economist and other academic specializing in that field is known to have a position, either pro or con. Some are more moderate, even subtle, while others are more to one side, but nearly everyone is "marked." For instance Professor Freeman, quoted in the article below, is viewed as being more on the critical side of the immigration issue (my comments later in this post notwithstanding). He and Harvard colleague George Borjas (who's viewed as quite critical) published controversial research in the late 1990s finding that immigration was costing the average California family $1500 in extra taxes. Both have done some research that is critical in various senses of H-1B, foreign student programs and so on. There are various economists on the other side as well. Since the academics don't agree on immigration, it's hard to see how they might clear things up for the press. Hence my chuckle. Some of the passages in the article beg for comment. Let's start with one by Freeman: But expand the definition of immigrants to “foreign-born people” who are now citizens, and the impact at Harvard would be drastic, Freeman said. “Imagine if all the immigrants went home from Harvard University. I would say 40 percent of the classes would have nobody teaching them,” he said. “I have a slide I used in science presentations: What would happen if foreign-born people left our labs? [It’s a] photo of an empty lab.” Great sound bite (or "image bite"), but very highly misleading. I won't bore you readers by yet again citing the infamous NSF internal report in detail. I'll just summarize: The report said PhD salaries were too high, and called for reducing their growth by bringing in lots of foreign students, thus flooding the market with PhD grads. The report noted that the resulting stagnant salaries would drive most American students away from doctoral programs. And that's what turned out to occur. But go back to Freeman's remark. I've been involved with faculty recruiting for many, many years. In every single case, there were some excellent American applicants for these faculty positions. This was IN SPITE OF the restricted pipeline due to the displacement of the American PhD students. Now one can argue whether these American applicants were the absolute best. At the top level of the applicant pool, quality is often in the eye of the beholder. And I myself have vigorously argued in favor of hiring at least two of our current faculty, one Chinese, one Indian (recall that I strongly support the immigration of the truly Best and Brightest), whom I felt would turn out to be stars (which they did). But the fact remains that there were certainly excellent Americans available. And if the influx of foreign students hadn't kept wages down and thus made PhD study unattractive to many Americans, there would be even more first-rate Americans to choose from in hiring faculty. So Freeman's example, while the kind of stuff that goes over well with people in DC, is quite misleading. Last I heard, 30% of the nation's small hotels were owned by Indian immigrants (the subject of the excellent film, Missippi Masala). Good for them, but it doesn't mean that without the Indians we'd have no motels. Now consider this passage: Undocumented workers do negatively affect the bottom 10 percent of the American labor pool, said Edward Schumacher-Matos, the ombudsman for National Public Radio and the former director of Migration and Integration Studies at Harvard School of Public Health. However, he noted, perhaps half of that 10 percent is made up of former immigrants. “So who’s being hit the most by undocumented workers? Previously undocumented workers,” he said. Well, here is an example in which the researchers fall into two camps. That $1500 finding by Borjas and Freeman suggests that lots of ordinary Americans are hurt too, contrary to the above claims of Schumacher-Matos. Of course, the other side would counter that the ordinary Americans actually come out ahead, due to lower consumer prices arises from the use of immigrant labor. But...my UC Davis colleague Phil Martin (who also was featured in one of the UCB videos) calculated that, no, such savings are quite small, far less than the $1500. So a conference designed to clear things up may have had the opposite effect. Norm http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/10/sorting-immigration-facts-fiction/ Harvard Gazette Wednesday, Oct. 05, 2011 Sorting immigration facts, fiction Panel probes how press, academics can clarify contentious issues By Stephanie Schorow Harvard Correspondent Monday, October 3, 2011 Nieman605_Main.jpg Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer “If you don’t want [undocumented workers] in the country, you should be happy. But in fact you would be much happier if they were trying to get into the country because that means we have a good recovery,” said Harvard Professor Richard B. Freeman (far left) during “The Futures of Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue” conference at Harvard. Joining Freeman were Cindy Rodriquez (second from left), Gary Painter, and Edward Schumacher-Mato. Can emotional media narratives about undocumented workers be tempered with data about the true economic impact of global immigration? Could scholars help journalists dispassionately analyze a red-hot political topic? These questions were discussed — sometimes soberly, sometimes passionately — during a conference on “The Futures of Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue” held Friday at the Walter Lippmann House, home to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. The afternoon conference brought together academics and working reporters to hash out immigration topics such as the law, economics, and the future impact of the new arrivals’ children on U.S. labor markets and culture. Richard Hornik, moderator of a discussion on “Immigration in a Time of Economic Crisis,” repeatedly challenged his panel concerning how professors and other academics could work with journalists to present a fuller portrait of immigration issues. But the former Time magazine editor and Harvard Business Review contributing editor may not have found the answers, despite the lively give-and-take about points that panelists acknowledged were often passed over in public debates. For starters, Richard B. Freeman, the Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics, noted that undocumented immigration to this country has diminished amid the recession. “Those people come for jobs. And when there are no jobs — and the country certainly is not in a good situation with respect to jobs — we then see the immigrants stop coming,” he said. There’s also a decrease in those coming in with non-immigrant work visas. Still arriving are students in higher education, many of whom historically settle here, he said. “If you don’t want [undocumented workers] in the country, you should be happy. But in fact you would be much happier if they were trying to get into the country because that means we have a good recovery,” Freeman said. Undocumented workers do negatively affect the bottom 10 percent of the American labor pool, said Edward Schumacher-Matos, the ombudsman for National Public Radio and the former director of Migration and Integration Studies at Harvard School of Public Health. However, he noted, perhaps half of that 10 percent is made up of former immigrants. “So who’s being hit the most by undocumented workers? Previously undocumented workers,” he said. The drastic decline of the housing market seems to have had a less dramatic impact on immigrant populations, said Gary Painter, the director of research at the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California. The gains in housing ownership made from 2006 to 2007 by the general population have been all but washed out, but ownership rates among Latino immigrants were not hit as hard, and this is particularly notable in smaller metro areas. Painter said this data should be viewed with caution, because it may reflect the increased economic status of immigrants the longer they are in this country. Another fact discussed by the panel: Undocumented workers are helping to plug the Social Security shortfall. According to 2007 figures, unauthorized immigrants contributed 5 to 10 percent of the Social Security trust fund, Schumacher-Matos said. “We would already be having a solvency problem today with Social Security if it weren’t for that money. [Insolvency] is going to happen anyway. Will this save Social Security? No. Does it make a difference? Yes.” Such information may not be getting sufficient attention, as economically troubled newspapers and other media outlets are cutting back on reporters and resources devoted to immigration issues. “Fewer stories are being told,” said panelist Cindy E. Rodriguez, a former Boston Globe reporter on immigration issues and a journalist-in-residence at Emerson College. Even more sadly, time-strapped journalists “don’t really cover the issues in depth.” Conference organizer Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, professor of globalization and education at New York University, said the problem may be one of overreach. “We have a $14 trillion economy. The impact of immigration … is relatively moderate. Immigrants are not going to make the U.S. economy; they’re not going to break the U.S. economy,” he said. Rodriguez countered that if undocumented workers went on strike, “You would have a hard time finding a place to eat. There would be no one cooking the meal, no one doing the dishes.” But expand the definition of immigrants to “foreign-born people” who are now citizens, and the impact at Harvard would be drastic, Freeman said. “Imagine if all the immigrants went home from Harvard University. I would say 40 percent of the classes would have nobody teaching them,” he said. “I have a slide I used in science presentations: What would happen if foreign-born people left our labs? [It’s a] photo of an empty lab.” However, Freeman said, “The bulk of the economic benefits of immigration go to immigrants. They may send money back to their villages and so on, but the gap between the pay in their home country and the pay in our country is massive.” Schumacher-Matos underscored the point made by Suarez-Orozco, by observing that “in a macro sense, for the U.S. economy, the impact [of immigration] is about zero.” He added that if worldwide immigration (which is restricted by virtually every country, as Freeman noted) were to be even slightly loosened, this would help the global economy. “Over time we would all become richer. The problem is, it’s over time,” Schumacher-Matos said. “The best way to raise global health and global wealth would follow … would, in fact, be a free flow of people.” Audience member Abraham F. Lowenthal, professor of ethics, globalization, and development at the University of California, chided the panel for not focusing more on specifics of how academics can help the media grasp the complexities and nuances of issues. Lowenthal then described how he tries to educate reporters who call him but noted he has learned to include a “seven-second” sentence or sound bite. Predictably, someone in the audience shouted out, amid laughter, that Lowenthal had used up his seven seconds. The session was sponsored by Immigration Studies at New York University and by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, with support from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, and the Nieman Foundation.