Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:59:46 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: MIT Pres., US Pres., "best and brightest" To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter The enclosed op-ed by MIT president Susan Hockfield is basically a recycling of arguments used by the industry lobbyists in support of expansive policies for the H-1B work visa and employer-sponsored green cards. As such I would ordinarily not comment, but there is an new example Hockfield brings up that I will relate to an important issue I've discussed in the past. I just recently commented on a similar op-ed that highlighted the immigrant background of some of this year's American Nobel laureates; see http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/NobelImms.txt There I detail themes I've stressed over the years: 1. I strongly support facilitating the immigration of "the best and the brightest." 2. However, the vast majority of H-1Bs are not in the "best and brightest" league. 3. The presence of the foreign workers is causing an internal brain drain in the U.S., by making careers in science and engineering financially unattractive. 4. Our National Science Foundation, whose job it is to fund university research, explicitly called for bring in a lot of foreign scientists and engineers in order to hold down PhD salaries. Why would they do this? Simple--the NSF, being in the research business, wants to get the most bang for its buck, and thus benefits from low PhD salaries (and low PhD student stipends, again kept low by the swelling of the labor market). Most importantly, the NSF forecast, correctly, that the resulting stagnant salaries would discourage Americans from pursuing PhDs. I should note that several subscribers of this e-newsletter are MIT graduates, now in mid-career age but have had trouble finding tech employment in the last 10 years. My guess is that President Hockfield is unaware of this situation, and of the fact that a core reason that employers want to hire H-1Bs is that they are younger, thus cheaper, so that the H-1B program gives employers a means of avoiding hiring older Americans. The new example Hockfield uses is Technology Review's list of Top Innovators Under 35 for 2009 (http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35). She writes Of the 35 young innovators recognized this year by Technology Review magazine for their exceptional new ideas, only six went to high school in the United States. Needless to say, one should be cautious in taking a magazine list so seriously, but let's accept it and discuss some of its implications. First of all, there is my internal brain drain point above. The H-1B program caused it--and remember, the NSF knowingly promoted this--and thus one should not conclude that H-1B has increased net innovation in the U.S. It has brought in some innovators, but also pushed some innovators out of tech. Second, the surnames of those 35, there are only five Indians and three Chinese. That's in contrast to the fact that among H-1Bs, and indeed among foreign engineering grad students, the vast majority are Indians and Chinese. This underrepresentation in the awards of the Indians and Chinese illustrates my point that the H-1B and employer-sponsored green card programs are NOT generally bringing in the best and the brightest. Note carefully that I am not saying that there are no innovative Indians or Chinese. I have my own list of brilliant immigrants from those countries. Instead, I'm simply saying that the nationality data show that these foreign-worker programs are generally not about hiring the best and the brightest. This disconnect between TR's innovator data and the H-1B demographics meshes with what David Hart of George Mason University found recently (http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/DavidHart.txt), as well as one aspect of a study by McGill University's Jennifer Hunt (http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/JenniferHunt.txt) and my CIS article (http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back508.html). Again, I very strongly support bringing in the best and the brightest, whether they be Chinese or Indian or Russian or Nigerian. But a key point is that current immigration policy already has a separate mechansim for doing this that works well, a specialized version of employer-sponsored green cards called EB-1, Foreign Nationals of Extraordinary Ability. Processing is very quick, in contrast to the five years or more wait for ordinary green cards. Yes, you really have to be good to get EB-1, but then isn't that the point? Speaking of policy, Hockfield is incorrect in claiming, Our immigration laws specifically require that students return to their home countries after earning their degrees and then apply for a visa if they want to return and work in the U.S. This is false, as MIT's International Students Office could have explained to Hockfield in detail. Finally, the big news on the MIT campus is that President Obama will visit this Friday, to give an address on energy. I wonder if he will talk about "innovation" and maybe allude to foreign workers. Another thing he might do is increase the stipend in the NSF traineeships, which would help a bit to stem the internal STEM brain drain. It's always hard for the person at the top, be it Hockfield or Obama, to know what's going on in real life, sad to say. Norm The Wall Street Journal OCTOBER 19, 2009, 7:01 P.M. ET Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels It's crazy to drive away talented young scholars. By SUSAN HOCKFIELD Of the nine people who shared this year's Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, eight are American citizens, a testament to this country's support for pioneering research. But those numbers disguise a more important story. Four of the American winners were born outside of the United States and only came here as graduate or post-doctoral students or as scientists. They came because our system of higher education and advanced research has been a magnet for creative talent. Unfortunately, we cannot count on that magnetism to last. Culturally, we remain a very open society. But that openness stands in sharp contrast to arcane U.S. immigration policies that discourage young scholars from settling in the U.S. Those policies come at a high price. Graduate and postgraduate student immigrants are essential to creating new, well-paid jobs in our economy. Of the 35 young innovators recognized this year by Technology Review magazine for their exceptional new ideas, only six went to high school in the United States. From MIT alone, foreign graduates have founded an estimated 2,340 active U.S. companies that employ over 100,000 people. Amazingly, if as incoming students they had told U.S. immigration authorities that they hoped to stay on as entrepreneurs after graduation, they would have been turned back at the border. Our immigration laws specifically require that students return to their home countries after earning their degrees and then apply for a visa if they want to return and work in the U.S. It would be hard to invent a policy more counterproductive to our national interest. If the U.S. was the only country in the world that offered scholars scientific freedom, a cumbersome immigration process might not be that harmful. But the world today is teeming with well-funded opportunities to do first-class science. To be competitive, the U.S. needs to send the unmistakable message that we want scholars to stay. To do that we need the kind of broad new immigration policy that would allow foreign students who earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math to easily become legal permanent residents. President Barack Obama and many others are already calling for such a policy. We also need to aggressively develop more homegrown talent. A recent report from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that we have lost our lead in education. In the 1960s, the U.S. had the highest high-school completion rate in the developed world; by 2005, we ranked 21st. In college completion, as recently as 1995 we ranked second. In 2005, we ranked 15th. The OECD's report explains that we slipped in the rankings "not because U.S. college graduation rates declined, but because they rose so much faster" elsewhere. The U.S. now trails more than 16 nations in Europe and Asia in the proportion of 24-year-olds with bachelor's degrees in the natural sciences and engineering. What we need is not just college graduates. We also need Ph.D.s in the sciences. Unfortunately, in the fields that spawn world-changing research and innovation, American graduate output has stagnated. From 1989 to 2003, despite a growing population, the number of American science and engineering Ph.D.s remained constant: an average of 26,600 a year. Over the same period and in the same fields, Ph.D.s awarded in China shot up to 12,000 from just 1,000. In education, the world is accelerating while we are standing still, which is why Mr. Obama is pressing to revive our Sputnik-era commitment to science and math education. Today, discovery and innovation increasingly spring from a creative network of the finest talent everywhere across the globe. From new advances in medicine to scientific breakthroughs that spawn new industries and sustainable jobs, the work of science and engineering is being done by individuals who can live almost anywhere. To be part of that global creative network we must inspire more young Americans to pursue scientific careers, and we must rapidly reform U.S. immigration policies that drive away talented young scholars who would otherwise decide to live, work and innovate here. We should be proud of our Nobel Prize winners. But we should also craft policies that make it more likely that future Nobel laureates will do their work inside the U.S. Ms. Hockfield is president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.