Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 21:29:34 -0800 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: Conryn's "Ah, shucks, this ain't an H-1B bill" disclaimer To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter I'm told that a staffer for Senator Conryn, sponsor of the current H-1B bill, tried to downplay the H-1B aspect, saying it was just a bill to give foreign students an incentive to stay here after graduation, rather than, the staffer warns, their returning home and forming companies abroad which will compete with the U.S. This is of course a complete obfuscation of the issues. Note the following: 1. The bill is ALL about H-1B, and the related employer-sponsored green card program. See my section-by-section analysis of Conryn's bill, at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SKILAct.txt It's irrelevant whether it applies to foreign students or not; n more H-1Bs means n fewer jobs available to U.S. citizens and permaent residents. 2. Giving the foreign students an incentive to stay here after graduation certainly has not stopped them from forming companies abroad which will compete with the U.S. Most people know, for instance, that many of the offshoring companies in India are founded or given technical assistance by Indian-Americans who first came to the U.S. as foreign students and later obtained green cards. UCB Prof. AnnaLee Saxenian, who writes from a pro-industry point of view on issues like immigration and offshoring, admits that keeping the former foreign students here in the U.S. won't stop them from getting involved in companies back home. On the contrary, she found in her survey that "Overall, the majority of Silicon Valley's Indian (76%) and Chinese (73%) immigrant professionals reported that they would consider starting businesses in their native countries in the future." (See http://www.ppic.org/main/pressrelease.asp?i=281) The fact is that if people like Conryn were genuinely afraid of foreign companies being formed, they should cancel the student visa program outright. 3. Implicit in all this is the oft-heard argument that the H-1Bs with Master's degrees or PhDs are the "good" H-1Bs. The argument claims that these workers are hired many by the big firms like Intel and are "therefore" not exploited, are filling a genuine shortage, are a major source of innovation for our industry, etc. As I've explained many times, NONE of these claims is true. In fact, I refuted all three of them in my San Francisco Chronicle op-ed which ran today. I pointed out that Intel's H-1Bs are paid poorly, that starting salaries for new Master's grads have been flat and thus there is no shortage of them, and that most major innovations in the field have been made by U.S. natives. (I've gone into each of these in detail in the past.) 4. The fact is that the provisions concerning foreign students in the Conryn bill are even more pernicious than those directly concerned with H-1Bs. They pose even more of a danger to American programmers and engineers. See my CIS article on this, at www.cis.org/articles/2001/back301.html Norm