To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Sun May 5 23:01:52 PDT 2013 My e-newsletter posting today, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/OvertIndianBashing.txt accidentally inserted spaces in the URL of the NYT article. It should be http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/us/politics/tech-firms-take-lead-in-lobbying-on-immigration.html?nl=todaysheadlines or search for the title, "Latest Product From Tech Firms: An Immigration Bill." There was also a very provocative article yesterday in the Seattle Times, http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020924182_h1bworkersxml.html titled "Do Visas for Skilled Foreigners Shut Out U.S. Tech Workers?" I'll report on it tomorrow (I hope). You'll find it interesting reading, especially the example of the former Microsoft worker. The research paper (apparently) cited in the article, which you can find at http://www.aei.org/files/2012/01/23/-immigration-productivity-and-competitiveness-in-american-industry_150136627858.pdf unwittingly illustrates an interesting issue regarding research methods. It's a nontechnical paper, so don't be afraid to tackle it without economics or statistics background. Here's an amusing but informative bit: The author, Gordon Hanson of UCSD, cites a 2009 paper by Bound, Turner and Walsh, in support of his view favoring an expansive policy on high-skilled immigration: ************************************************************** In contrast to low-skilled immigration, high-skilled immigration appears to have direct effects on economic growth. High-skilled immigrants are disproportionately represented in technical fields, in which recent US productivity growth has been most rapid. In 2003, foreign-born students accounted for 51% of PhDs in science and engineering fields awarded by US universities, up from 27% in 1973 (Bound, Turner, and Walsh, 2009). In theory, expanding the supply of scientists and engineers increases the US labor force devoted to R&D, which contributes to higher rates of innovation and has positive effects on economic growth (Jones, 1995). Empirically, increases in high-skilled immigration are associated with increases in patenting. ************************************************************** By contrast, in recent EPI paper, with the theme that most of the STEM foreign students are of ordinary talent, not the best and the brightest, I include a quote from the SAME paper that Hanson cited: -------------------------------------------------------------- If the "best and brightest" image projected by the industry for STEM foreign students were accurate, it should be reflected in a tendency for the students to be enrolled in the more highly ranked U.S. institutions. However, Bound, Turner, and Walsh (2009) found the opposite to be the case: "In physics, biochemistry, and chemistry much of the expansion [from the mid-1980s to mid-90s] in doctorate receipt to foreign students occurs at unranked programs or those ranked outside the top 50; the growth in foreign students in engineering is distributed more evenly among programs. Among students from China, Taiwan, and South Korea growth has been particularly concentrated outside the most highly ranked institutions." -------------------------------------------------------------- So, Hanson is saying, immigration is great, because it's bringing us all these PhDs, while I'm saying, yeah, but they tend to be of low quality. :-) And while Hanson says the foreign PhD influx is good because we need PhDs for R&D, in my paper I show that the foreigners are actually LESS LIKELY than comparable Americans to work in R&D, in the CS and EE cases. So, if you as a policymaker, journalist or just an interested citizen wish to draw conclusions from the research literature, you need to watch out for the hidden (and often unknown) premises, in this case the notion that a doctorate is an inherently good thing, that there are no displacement effects and so on. Norm