Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:57:50 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: misguided SJ Mercury News column To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter The San Jose Mercury News ran a column today, enclosed below, that purports to "prove" that an expansive immigration policy is good because some of this year's American Nobel prize winners are immigrants. Though this column was predictable, I wish there had been some nuance mixed in with the trite and simplistic. As longtime readers of this e-newsletter know, I've always strongly supported the notion of welcoming "the best and the brightest" to the U.S. from around the globe. I've not only written that, but acted on it, such as by pushing my department colleagues to vote in favoring of hiring some foreign faculty applicants that I felt were brilliant. Though I have some misgivings of the nature of the selection process for the Nobels these days, and would point out that for every one who gets the prize, there are hundreds who are just as talented, I do agree that Nobel laureates are super researchers who richly deserve the honor. I was told a couple of years ago, coincidentally by a reader of this e-newsletter, that Elizabeth Blackburn is especially bright, and sure enough, now she has won the Nobel (and she's an immigrant). But it's absurd to use these immigrant Nobel laureates as support for the H-1B visa program, as the columnist here is doing. As I have shown statistically, only a tiny fraction of H-1Bs are of extraordinary talent. Most are ordinary people, doing ordinary work--for less money than Americans. This is statistical fact, not rumor or anecdtoe, shown by many academic and government studies. And it's perfectly legal to underpay H-1Bs (noted even by the GAO, as well in public statements by lawyers), via loopholes that are exploited by employers across the board, including the large mainstream firms. In addition, there is the extremely important point of America's internal brain drain. The Chris O'Briens of the world would argue, "Hey, a country can never have too many smart people in science and engineering," but that simplistic mantra ignores the fact that having too many does force many talented people OUT of the field. The best example of that is Douglas Prasher, a former scientist about whom one of last year's Nobel winners in Chemistry said, "They could've easily given the prize to Douglas and the other two and left me out." After that comment, the press discovered that Prasher was employed as a shuttle bus driver for a Toyota dealer in Alabama. How did this terrible waste of talent come to pass? Simple. Today a would be scientist must undergo a series of post doc jobs at low pay for years and years, so that he/she won't even have a shot at a permanent job until age 35 or later. Most don't make it, yes, even with great talent. As was pointed out on NPR at the time by Shirley M. Malcom, head of education and human resources at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, these low wages, 15-year training periods, poor career prospects and so on are direct evidence that we have an OVERsupply of scientists, not a shortage as claimed by the lobbyists. That oversupply comes from the large influx of foreign scientists. Though Prasher's case is more dramatic, and though I suspect he made a strategic error or two along the way, this certainly illustrates the point: The influx of foreign scientists is causing an internal brain drain in the U.S. Many, like Prasher, are ultimately lost to their fields, and a lot more decide to avoid careers in research science in the first place, as they see the prospects for such careers are so dim. AND WORSE, our own government planned for this to happen. When O'Brien says, "According to statistics from the National Science Foundation released in February, foreign-born science and engineering students in 2003 earned one-third of all Ph.D.s awarded in the U.S.," what he's not telling you (because he doesn't know) is that 20 years ago the NSF actually pushed Congress to establish the H-1B program for the express purpose of holding down PhD salaries. The NSF wrote in an internal memo, A growing influx of foreign PhDs into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries...[The Americans] will select alternative career paths...[as] the effective premium for acquiring a PhD may actually be negative. (Eric Weinstein, How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers, NBER, 1998, http://nber.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF.html#SG ) The NSF's projection came true, of course, as their current data cited by O'Brien show. Little does O'Brien realize how hypocritical that current NSF report is. (As longtime readers of this e-newsletter also know, in pointing this out I like to cite the old joke about the boy who kills his parents but asks for mercy from the court because he's an orphan. :-) ) Equal hypocrisy is shown, I'm afraid, by an article (also enclosed below) in the current edition of the Computing Research News, a publication of the Computing Research Association. The CRA is a consortium of most university computer science departments in the U.S., and thus it is not surprising that the CRA in general, and coauthor Lazowska in particular, have over the years been very strident supporters of the H-1B visa. Now suddenly the CRA finds that there are no jobs for "the best and the brightest" new PhDs graduating from U.S. computer science departments, and CRA has established a program aimed at avoiding losing the most talented computer scientists from the profession. And get this: The nature of this new program is essentially a new kind of post doc. Maybe it has some merit, but it underscores Dr. Malcolm's point that it's a symptom of oversupply, and as a promoter of H-1B, CRA has contributed much to the creation of that oversupply. Getting back to the Merc column, it's ironic that the same issue that carried O'Brien's column also included an article titled "Bargain-Priced Homes Expected to Drive Silicon Valley Market Next Year," illustrating the oversupply of engineers there, and another titled, "China's Internet Search King [Robin Li] Cut His Teeth in Silicon Valley." Good for Li--I use Baidu myself--but it certainly undermines O'Brien's point that the U.S. is better off with the immigrants coming here rather than working in other countries. One more point: O'Brien refers to the "sad, sickly state of California," and offers immigration as a solution. But the blunt truth is that that "sad, sickly state" is due precisely to a combination of immigration, i.e. the import of low-skilled workers, and its flip side, the export of high-skilled jobs via offshoring. No one is more sympathetic to the poor or to immigrants than I am, but it's abundantly clear that if the state imports the poor while exporting the good jobs, it's a recipe for fiscal disaster. That, of course, is exactly what we have. By the way, some readers must be baffled that I haven't posted a review here of the October1 BusinessWeek article, "America's High-Tech Sweatshops" (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_41/b4150034732629.htm). If they are longtime readers, they should know my answer: The article, in focusing on violations of the law, totally misses the point, which is that most abuse of the H-1B program is fully legal, due to loopholes. And again, the abuse occurs with the large mainstream companies too, not just with the Indian bodyshops profiled in the article. Norm O'Brien: Nobel prizes remind us why immigration matters By Chris O'Brien Mercury News Columnist Posted: 10/06/2009 05:10:41 PM PDT Updated: 10/07/2009 02:49:30 PM PDT If you're looking for reasons to puff out your chest and take pride in being American, then take note that the first six Nobel Prize winners announced this week are U.S. citizens. Here's something else you should know: Four of those winners were born outside the U.S. That dynamic neatly summarizes the current state of our innovation economy. We are increasingly dependent on brainpower from overseas that migrates here to drive the research and discoveries we need to power economic growth. Silicon Valley has been a bigger beneficiary of this influx of brains and talent than perhaps any other region in the U.S. And that means we have more to lose when the debate about immigration turns to demagoguery. However you feel about the H-1B visas that our tech companies hunger for, or the swarms of bodies crossing our borders to pick our crops, these hot-button topics obscure the reality: We need these immigrants to renew our economy and to prosper. Our demonization of them is shameful. Instead, we should celebrate the presence of people like Elizabeth Blackburn, professor at the University of California-San Francisco. Blackburn was born in Australia and moved to the U.S. in 1975. On Monday, she and two other researchers learned they would receive the Nobel Prize for medicine and split the $1.4 million it brings. That money should more than make up for the 5 percent pay cut and furlough Blackburn (and most other University of California employees) received courtesy of the sad, sickly state of California. I wonder how many other Nobel winners took pay cuts just before receiving the award? When Blackburn came here in the 1970s, it was clear that the U.S. was the undisputed center of the universe when it came to research. But that advantage is slipping away, as Blackburn noted that she sees exciting work being done in many other regions. Given the growing options for new researchers, erecting barriers to them coming to and staying in the U.S. seems ill-advised. "I'm a big proponent that the flow of intellectual ideas is crucial," Blackburn said. "To have borders for it seems counterproductive." Such walls hurt our country and our economy far in excess of whatever benefits they produce. We need to recognize the enormous contributions immigrants are making to the innovation economy. According to statistics from the National Science Foundation released in February, foreign-born science and engineering students in 2003 earned one-third of all Ph.D.s awarded in the U.S. And the study noted that "those who do decide to finish advanced study in the United States overwhelmingly choose to stay in the country after earning their advanced degrees." Thank goodness. In addition to Blackburn, the other foreign-born Nobel winners over the past two days included: Charles Kao, who was born in Shanghai, and has both U.K. and U.S. citizenship. William Boyle, of Bell Laboratories, was born in Nova Scotia and holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship. Jack Szostak, of Harvard Medical School, was born in London, grew up in Canada and is now a U.S. citizen. We should be particularly proud that these people did not go to Russia or Germany, but came here. Our nation remains as dependent today as on the day of its founding on the ideas and imagination brought by fresh waves of newcomers arriving on our shores. How strange that a nation founded by immigrants so easily forgets their value. Contact Chris O'Brien at 415-298-0207 or cobrien@mercurynews.com. ************************************************************ [Published originally in the September 2009 edition of Computing Research News, Vol. 21/No. 4] The Computing Innovation Fellows Project: Strengthening the Field in Difficult Times by Peter Lee, Ed Lazowska, and Anita Jones In this difficult economic time many Ph.D. graduates would be lost to the research and education track if--due to severely reduced hiring by universities and research labs--they accepted positions that would not permit them to pursue their independent scholarly interests. Doing this would diminish dramatically the possibility of a future research career. To address this situation, the Computing Innovation Fellows Project (http://cifellows.org) was conceived in February 2009 by CRA's Computing Community Consortium (CCC). The National Science Foundation funded the project, and in just five months 60 new Ph.D. graduates in the computing field were designated to receive fellowships for scholarly appointments at the nation's universities and industrial research labs. In doing so, the project aims to keep the fellowship winners in the research community "pipeline." Why did the CCC create this project? Our primary concern all along has been the strong possibility that we might lose the full benefit of the investment that the nation has made in educating these individuals--one can only imagine their potential research contributions. Furthermore, increasing enrollments and rising research budgets may soon create pent-up demand for hiring at universities and research labs. As the economy improves and adjustments to new budget realities are made, we can hope that many of these Fellows will be absorbed to fill the demand. The CCC has the mission to foster the creation of visions for future computing research and to work with funding agencies to turn these visions into reality. In February 2009, members of the CCC envisioned the project and brought it to the attention of the National Science Foundation's CISE Directorate. Realizing the need to act quickly, the CCC wrote a proposal and submitted it to NSF/CISE before mid-March. NSF/CISE, in turn, convened a review panel and responded in less than four weeks with a decision to provide funding for up to 100 Computing Innovation Fellows. Up to 60 CIFellows were authorized for the first year, with the remaining funding to be used for renewals and new awards in subsequent years. Between March and July, the team worked closely and intensively to make sure that all of the necessary processes would be put in place as quickly and sensibly as possible. In parallel with the NSF review, members of the CCC Council and an ad hoc steering committee, led by Peter Lee, defined the fellowship application process, a selection methodology, and web resources support so that the process could be executed rapidly while retaining a discipline of merit evaluation. A selection committee to review submitted applications was also formed. The CIFellows Project is in essence a "stimulus program." It was designed to address the extraordinary economic situation as quickly as possible, and ideally in time to help this year's new Ph.D. graduates. NSF on its own could not respond in a timely way. The existence of CCC and the track record that CCC has established gave NSF the confidence to move forward with this project, administered by CCC. When we created the CCC, no one envisioned an economic crisis and no one envisioned the CIFellows Project. Yet, only a community-sanctioned organization outside of government could have executed such a national-scale program on such an extraordinarily tight schedule. The hallmark of this unusual project is that it is broad-based. This was achieved in three ways. First, awards were made to Fellow/mentor pairs: each candidate Fellow could specify between one and three potential mentors, each of whom submitted a letter describing specific mentoring plans for the candidate. The goal was to ensure a highly productive experience for both the Fellow and the mentor; the quality of these plans had a major influence on selection. Second, no more than two fellowship awardees could have earned their Ph.D. from the same university, and no more than two awardees could go to the same organization (university, industry, laboratory or not-for-profit organization). We had two goals in mind here: to ensure broad participation, and to build bridges by means of the CIFellows between diverse institutions. Third, we encouraged diversity of other forms--not only of institutions, but of research areas, individuals, and so on. Interest in the CIFellows Project was extraordinary. In all, 526 valid applications were received. More than 1,300 established researchers registered as potential mentors. Evaluation of the applications was performed by a committee chaired by Peter Lee. The committee consisted of an ad hoc selection committee of 24 members plus a subset of the CCC Council members. In a show of remarkable responsiveness, all of the reviewing was performed in less than four weeks. Every reviewer completed all of his or her assigned reviews on time, and all 526 valid applications received multiple reviews. Final approval of awards was given by the steering committee with oversight by the CCC Council. The Fellows were selected on July 7, 2009 and the awardees were given preliminary notice on July 10. Final approval was given by NSF for these selections on July 29. The 60 CIFellows awardees were educated at 43 distinct colleges and universities and will be mentored at 48 different organizations. Among the fellows, 40% are women; 11% are African American, Hispanic American, or Native American; and just over 70% are US citizens or permanent residents. Their scholarly interests span a wide range of subdisciplines, from core computer science research to computational science to computing education. In sum, this is a remarkably accomplished, promising, and diverse group. Fellows were paired with mentors who should be able guide them effectively. Several years from now the community can evaluate whether the CIFellows Project met its several ambitious goals: to maintain an impressive group of researchers in the research and education "pipeline," to build bridges between computing researchers and computing research organizations with differing characteristics, and by doing this, to contribute to the long-term intellectual vitality of the field. We are planning to hold a session on the project at the next CRA Conference at Snowbird. __________________________________________________________________ Peter Lee (Carnegie Mellon University) and Anita Jones (University of Virginia) are CCC Council Members; Ed Lazowska (University of Washington) chairs the CCC Council.