To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Thu Sep 5 09:40:13 PDT 2013 A lot of people have been bringing to my attention an article in this month's IEEE Spectrum, titled "The Myth of a STEM Crisis," which I will indeed discuss below. But I'd like to put this in a larger context. I've been writing about H-1B and related issues for--are you sitting down?--20 years. Yep, started in 1993, with testimony to the California state legislature. During these 20 years, I've found it fascinating to watch the press' take on H-1B, especially starting in 1998, the year of the industry's first big push to expand the program. It's my tentative view that after all this time, the press is now starting to "get it" regarding the H-1B issue. Journalists are handicapped in their reporting on this issue, first because they typically are of the sort who fervently avoided STEM courses while in college, but more importantly, because they cover completely different topics every day, and thus don't have time to confirm whether the Emperor is indeed wearing any clothes regarding H-1B. Another handicap is that even among critics of H-1B, a number of people have a misunderstanding of the issue, based on an incorrect view that the main abuse of H-1B is limited to the Indian bodyshops; this muddies the already murky waters, as I've explained before. I credit Computerworld with "getting it" about H-1B, starting very early (1998). Businessweek also has done some good pieces here and there, and except for a couple of overtly biased staffers who are now long gone, the San Jose Mercury News has been pretty good, as has the San Francisco Chronicle. The Washington Post has generally done a good job, though with a drought during the time that Melinda Gates was on the Post board. There are also a number of individual writers who have been first-rate, but here I'm trying to speak of general publications that have covered the topic well across multiple reporters; but you people know who you are, thanks. The National Journal has done some very good articles too, though today they ran a pretty outrageous one, http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/many-people-agree-on-high-skilled-worker-visas-so-why-no-changes-20130904 I say "outrageous" not because I disagree with the contents (which I do), but because for an article of this length, the author should have done better research. For instance, she shouldn't have taken as her only source on the cheap labor issue the badly flawed Brookings study, especially given Brookings' close relationship with Microsoft. But in general, the press has fallen down on the job, not giving the industry PR people and their allies proper skepticism. Having said that, I have to say that I have the impresssion that the press is finally starting to understand H-1B as cheap labor, especially its relation to the age issue (employers hiring young H-1Bs in lieu of qualified Americans over 35). Why the change? I first must credit EPI for having the courage to publish a number of research papers (including mine) on H-1B, especially this year. They have name recognition and a fair amount of gravitas, and I believe this got the attention of the press. Second, the self-contradictions in the industry PR machine's story may have reached critical mass. For instance, I think most people in the press know someone--a spouse, sibling, friend etc.--who is well-qualified in STEM but has had trouble finding a job in the field. This causes considerable cognitive dissonance when journalists are told by industry PR people that we have a dire STEM shortage. Mind you, just because many journalists now understand that the industry lobbyists' claims are problematic, that doesn't mean that members of Congress understand -- or, for that matter, that they even WANT to understand the issue well. Ignorance is bliss, especially when ignorance brings in campaign donations -- and in the Democrats' case, also when the H-1B issue is used to leverage legislation on undocumented workers. Sadly, based on a number of disparate bits of information, I believe the president and his advisers also take an ignorance-is-bliss view. The IEEE Spectrum article -- the piece itself is at http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth and there is an interesting discussion page at http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth-an-ongoing-discussion -- is of interest not only because it reflects this trend in the press, but also because it's IEEE. That makes it a man-bites-dog story in its own right. The IEEE article has a lot of people scratching their heads. What, IEEE says there is no STEM shortage? Spectrum is IEEE's flagship magazine, and the "shortage myth" article is totally out of character with the organization. Remember, IEEE, an organization dominated by those with heavy vested interests in the H-1B program (industry and academia), bullied its U.S. suborganization, IEEE-USA, into doing a U-turn on H-1B in 2000. Up to then, IEEE-USA was in the vanguard of the movement to scale back the H-1B program, pointing out its use as a tool for cheap labor. Cowed into submission (fearing dissolution), IEEE-USA did back down. As noted above, a very important aspect of the use of H-1Bs as cheap labor is hiring young H-1Bs instead of older (35+) Americans. One good thing IEEE-USA did in the late 90s was to set up its Misfortune 500 Web page, which profiled 500 older engineers who had difficulties finding work, right in the middle of the Dot Com Boom. Well, this was politically incorrect, as it undermined the industry's case for H-1B expansion, and one of the things IEEE-USA did in response to IEEE pressure was to dismantle the Misfortune 500 page, (IEEE-USA also started its "green cards, not guest worker" push, which exacerbates the age problem, rather than solving it, as I've explained before.) This IEEE Spectrum article is especially interesting in light of the recent remark by Senator Schumer, author of the Senate immigration bill that would greatly liberalize foreign tech worker policy: "Because this bill helps high-tech companies and highly skilled immigrants, it is endorsed by every major high-tech organization and groups representing highly skilled immigrants." The "groups" likely means just one, IEEE-USA, referring to their support of automatic green cards and punitive policies toward the Indian firms. But IEEE-USA did object to the bill's raising of the H-1B cap, and as to the word "representing," IEEE-USA has never polled its members on the issue, and I believe most aren't even aware that IEEE-USA is "representing" them on it. But taking Schumer's remark at face value, it's interesting that this "endorsing organization" has an article titled "The Myth of a STEM Crisis" in the flagship magazine of the parent group. Norm Archived at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/IEEEOutOfCharacter.txt