To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Wed Jun 12 13:16:56 PDT 2013 Two interesting items brought to my attention today: http://www.businessinsider.com/cheap-skilled-tech-workers-good-for-us-2013-6 http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/09/4092273/senate-immigration-bill-a-job.html The first item gives a twist to the usual free-trade argument that consumers benefit from lower prices. A similar argument is often made to justify exploiting vulnerable unauthorized immigrant workers. Like many of the industry lobbyists' talking points, these are finely calculated to sound plausible to the target audience--Congress, the press and the populace. But folks, it doesn't work that way, because the labor costs in question are typically small fractions of the overall cost of producing a product or service. The benefit to the employers is big, because their profit margins are small and a small savings can translate to a large increase in profit. But no real benefit to consumers. My UC Davis colleague Phil Martin once calculated the amount of consumer "savings" accrued from growers employing unauthorized immigrant labor--about a nickel savings on a head of lettuce! Another economist told me that in buying a shirt made in China, one saves about a dollar. Just how much does this Business Insider author think you consumers are saving on a copy of Microsoft Office due to that firm's use of H-1Bs? Maybe $2 on the Student Edition? ($100+ retail price.) We're taking jobs away from U.S. citizens and permanent residents so we can save $2? I submit that most consumers would not find that swap appealing. And how much money are you saving in your access to Google, due to the H-1Bs working there? You know the answer. The second item is truly remarkable in that an engineering professor is speaking out. I know that I've had various colleagues tell me privately that they think the H-1B program is terribly destructive BUT that they don't dare speak out. One of them recently told me that even though his own family member was having a hard time finding engineering work, he (my colleague) would never criticize H-1B publicly, even in a faculty meeting, as it would jeopardize his ability to get research funding from industry and government. Note by the way that the engineering professor wrote in his op-ed that he is especially outraged by S.744's STEM green card giveaway. So far, I haven't seen a single politician bring this up, even those who criticize the bill's H-1B provisions. What a sad state of affairs. Norm Archived at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/ClemsonProfessor.txt