To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Mon Apr 29 21:58:09 PDT 2013 Interesting blog by The Atlanitc's Jordan Weissmann, titled "The Myth of America's Tech-Talent Shortage: And What It Should Mean for Immigration Reform," at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-americas-tech-talent-shortage/275319/?google_editors_picks=true%29 The blog is based on the recent EPI paper by Salzman, Kuenn and Lowell. The writer notes at the end of the piece ********************************************************* A note to regular readers: A few Atlantic fans might recall that I've written much more blithely in support of increasing the H1-B program cap in the past. As I've learned more about the program, my thoughts about it have obviously changed. While I would love it if all of my opinions were unimpeachably well thought out, I think I have an obligation to be transparent in cases where they were not. ********************************************************* Weissmann's turnabout shows just how devastatingly effective the tech industry's PR machine has been in the last 10 years or so. I've mentioned this often, noting that in my opinion the press is especially gullible on this issue because of what I call "physics envy," referring to people who steered as far away from STEM as possible in college, but are now mesmerized by computers and the like. They think you have to be a genius to program those things, and they are highly suscpetible to the industry lobbyists' relentless "Johnny Can't Do Math" image. (Never mind that most software engineers never use math in their work.) In addition, there's the "anyone who has reservations about any aspect of immigration must be a Tea Partyer" mentality which I find common in the press and certain DC circles. So, Weissmann had readily accepted the industry claims. In spite of his admirable mea culpa--how often do we see a journalist say such a thing?--he still seems to be conflicted. In spite of his new skepticism on H-1B, he agrees with a Brookings report that claims H-1B needs at least to be geographically redstributed. How is that consistent, especially in view of his apology for an earlier pro-H-1B column that was based on Brookings? As I understand it, the Brookings geographical analysis doesn't do much more than say "Employers in region X hire a lot of H-1Bs, so they must be using the program responsibly." If Weissmann believes in that logic, the rest of his current blog just doesn't make sense. Similarly, how does he reconcile the findings of Salzman et al with those in the working (i.e. draft) paper by my UCD colleague Giovanni Peri and his coathors? As I said recently, based on just a skim-through, I see very serious methodological problems with the Peri paper, but my question here is how Weissmann views it. Granted, he uses very cautious language regarding that paper, but the two papers are certainly at odds with each other. Maybe Weissmann reconciles the two papers by a "the more the merrier" argument. He does say, "over the long term we really do want more immigration," and describes the H-1Bs, educated in STEM, as ideal immigrants. But that would seem to really contradict another of his previous blogs, linked to from this one, in which he shows how bad a glut of STEM people can make things for everyone. Another possibility is that Weissmann still believes in the very column he is now recanting, titled "Why Is the United States Telling Immigrant Geniuses to Get Lost?" In other words, Weissmann is interpreting the Peri paper as saying that the H-1Bs tend to be "geniuses" who have disproportionate positive impact. (Though he mentions my work on H-1B, it's not clear whether he's seen my EPI study debunking that image, at http://www.epi.org/publication/bp356-foreign-students-best-brightest-immigration-policy/.) Still another possibility, hinted at in his current blog, is that he thinks that most of the abuse of H-1B comes from the outsourcing firms, which he does briefly mention. But this would be contradictory too, since his overall theme seems to be that he is (properly) skeptical of the "shortage" claims of the mainstream firms. Indeed, as I have shown in http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/MigLtrs.pdf the abuse pervades the entire industry, not just the outsourcing firms. It would appear that the effect of all that PR work by the industry and its allies still has not completely worn off in Jordan Weissmann. It will be interesting to see his further blogs on this subject, if he sticks with it. By the way, there's a Science Careers interview of Hal Salzman at http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_04_29/caredit.a1300088 Norm Archived at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/AtlanticMty.txt