Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 23:59:18 -0800 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff , H-1B/L-1/offshoringe-newsletter@laura.cs.ucdavis.edu Subject: Science Magazine writer gets it right Most discussion of the H-1B work visa program focuses on IT, not suprising since the computer fields take a plurality of the visas. Yet H-1B's impact on science and academia is equally important, with the abuse being equally rampant (though, as with IT, fully legal). Enclosed below is a piece by Beryl Lieff Benderly in Science Careers, a publication of Science Magazine, highlighting this issue. It's startling but gratifying to see such a staid publication take such an un-PC, though correct, stance. (I've also enclosed a second article by Benderly.) Many readers of this e-newsletter will recall that I've brought up the subject myself in various ways, most recently in connection with Douglas Prasher, the "almost-Nobelist" who is working as a van driver for a Toyota dealer. I urge you to read my entire posting at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/Prasher.txt as Prasher exemplifies what Ms. Benderly writes about in the enclosures even better than her own Dr. "Otto B. Doing-Better." In summary: Prasher's work was central to research that led to this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry, and one of the winners said he could well have been selected for the award himself. Yet he went through a series of jobs in science, with shorter and shorter duration and less and less security. In the end he was reduced to driving the van for a living. The point is that Prasher is a victim of a crushing oversupply of scientists, in turn caused by a large influx imported from abroad under the H-1B program, just as Ms. Benderly describes. What Benderly probably doesn't know, though, is that all of this was deliberate. When the National Science Foundation was lobbying Congress to establish the H-1B program in the late 1980s, the NSF cited as a major goal holding down PhD salaries, which would be accomplished by flooding the labor market with H-1B PhDs. The NSF also noted that the low salaries would drive away American students from PhD programs, which is of course exactly what has happened. See Eric Weinstein's investigative reporting on this, at http://users.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF.html and quotes of it, at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/ForeignStudentGreenCards.txt Bottom line: The H-1B program is being used in academia for cheap labor, just like in IT. It's ruining the careers and lives of people like "Otto B. Doing-Better," even to the point of forcing a Nobel-level researcher into blue collar work to earn a living. And all this is occurring unseen behind the hype that "Johnnie can't do science" and the U.S. is on the verge of losing its technical edge. Well, WHY is it unseen? Are Benderly and Weinstein and I really the only ones who know this? Of course not. Any academic with her eyes open knows it. Shirley M. Malcolm, head of education and human resources at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, knows there is a huge oversupply of scientists, and surely understands the role of H-1B in it. She spoke of the oversupply on NPR (without explicitly mentioning H-1B); see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16150041 But almost no one is willing to rock the boat, as the personal consequences would be severe. Though I must note that my own university has been remarkably tolerant of my gadfly writings on H-1B, even bestowing its Distinguished Public Service Award on me in part because of H-1B. But if for example Dr. Malcolm had mentioned H-1B explicitly in that NPR segment, her days at AAAS likely would have been numbered, and she would been blocked from obtaining other positions of that type. Greg Zachary of the Wall Street Journal wrote some great pieces on H-1B in the mid-90s, then later changed 180 degrees; why the change of heart? Several academics who have been strong H-1B critics in the past have in the last year or so come out in favor of expanding the employer-sponsored green card program, in spite of the fact that that program has essentially the same adverse effects as H-1B. Hal Salzman, whose Urban Institute report is cited by Benderly (see below), was on that show with Malcolm, and he didn't mention H-1B either--in spite of the fact that he was the investigator on a 2001 congressionally-commissioned study which found that use of H-1Bs as cheap labor is rampant. Again, I believe that this reticence on his part is due to H-1B being a kind of Third Rail in the research world. Meanwhile, those with huge vested interests in the program--academia, industry and last-but-not-least the immigration attorneys--have been flooding the press with PR, which is the source of the "Johnnie can't do science" perception. By the way, Benderly appears to be unaware that one report she cites, by NAP, was written by a researcher who has been quite partisan in favor of the industry. See http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/NFAP.txt And these people, e.g. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, have Barack Obama's ear. Not coincidentally, Obama's Secretaries-designate of Commerce, DHS and Labor all are in favor of expanding H-1B and employer-sponsored green cards. Obama's own position paper, linked to in Benderly's article, might as well have been written by the industry, and may well have been. And even though Obama's fellow senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, has sponsored a good H-1B reform bill and Durbin was one of Obama's most active supporters in the election campaign, Obama doesn't seem to have been educated by Durbin very much, or worse, Obama sees that reform of H-1B is a political nonstarter. I'm sure the Durbin-Grassley bill will languish this coming year just as it did during the Bush years. Voices like Lindsay Lowell, whose outstanding Urban Institute study with Hal Salzman is cited below by Benderly, are lost in the shuffle. Though UI is well-respected in DC and is especially valued by Democrats, you could knock on doors on the Hill all day and not find more than one or two staffers who are aware of the Lowell/Salzman report. Similarly you could talk to all the science and business reporters at the New York Times and likely not find any who know about Lowell/Salzman. Nor for that matter would you find congressional staffers who are aware of Congress' own findings, in two of its commissioned reports (the one by NRC that Salzman contributed to, as mentioned, and another by GAO), that H-1B is used widely as a means of cheap labor--as reported by the employers themselves. You might find some staffers who know of a recent DHS study that found a substantial percentages of irregularities (some fraudulent, most not) in H-1B applications, but that is missing the real point, which is that most abuse of H-1B for cheap labor is fully legal, due to the loopholes, as pointed out in the GAO study. The sad truth is that Congress hears what the monied and powerful want them to hear. Norm http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2009_01_02/caredit.a0900001 Taken for Granted: Brother, Can You Spare a Temporary Worker Visa? By Beryl Lieff Benderly January 02, 2009 "Postdocs hired at U.S. universities have become, for some time now, a new kind of cheap labor ... who are most of the time only allowed to do those experiments that please their bosses, and, on the other hand, cannot many times contribute to the creative scientific process." --Otto B. Doing-Better Four and a half years ago, a young scientist we'll call Otto B. Doing-Better began what he thought would be his dream postdoctoral appointment. Otto is one of the tens of thousands of foreign scientific and technical workers in the United States on H-1B visas, which admit nonimmigrant skilled workers for a limited number of years. A lab chief we'll call Manny Grants had promised to help him get the prestigious publications needed for a shot at a faculty post--and maybe even permanent residence in the United States. Instead of the career he had hoped for, today Otto has a life in ruins, professionally and personally. His employment prospects are stymied, and his permission to stay in this country is about to run out. He sees no choice but to return to his native land and seek work outside of science. "I am a postdoc who has been ground up by the current system in U.S. academia, where most of us are foreigners who rely on visas to remain in this country," he tells Science Careers. Professor Grants proved dictatorial and duplicitous when Otto "made interesting and reproducible findings," the young scientist says. Some of these results "contradicted some of [Prof. Grants'] views." The lab chief used his power, Otto says, to prevent their publication. He gave Otto no raises and then, citing funding difficulties, fired him. Lukewarm references kept Otto from moving to another lab, ultimately costing him the right to remain in this country, which depends on his staying employed. Most heartbreaking of all, Otto's American-born child will stay here with his estranged wife, who has filed for divorce. H-1B holders' vulnerability to their employers' whims is only one of the many features of this controversial visa that attract sharp criticism. Just about everyone with a stake in the system--American engineers, scientists, and IT professionals; high-tech executives and their lobbyists; influential U.S. senators and the Department of Homeland Security--finds fault with the program's provisions, enforcement, or both. Visa holders such as Otto complain of exploitation and abuse. But many American scientists and technical professionals blame the H-1B visa for allowing temporary foreign workers to drive down wages and displace them from jobs. Employers, meanwhile, denounce limits on the number of H-1B visas available, which they say keep them from finding the skilled employees they need. In ordinary times, the controversy flares into public consciousness in the spring, during well-orchestrated industry lobbying and PR campaigns seeking more visas. This year, with unemployment mounting and degreed workers feeling the effects more strongly than in past recessions, the issue appears likely to grow much hotter than usual. Missing Data Taken For Granted logo Complicating the debate, as usual, is a shortage of basic facts about the H-1B and its effect on the American scientific and technical labor market. Complete statistics are not collected on how many temporary foreign scientific and technical workers are in the country, where they work, and whether they leave the country when their visas expire or, as critics suggest, move into the illegal immigrant pool. One widely quoted report asserts a relationship between the presence of foreign workers and increased job opportunities for Americans, although another analysis debunks the claim. Recently, the number of available engineering positions has fallen as H-1B availability remained constant. What those claiming a technical talent shortage lack in evidence, they make up for in well-funded persuasion. Indeed, the industry view has won over most national politicians and policymakers. The plan for science and technology proposed by the Obama campaign, for example, calls for "comprehensive immigration reform that improves our visa programs to attract some of the world's most talented people to America" and supports an increase in the number of foreign scientists and technical people permitted to study, work, and stay in the United States. Thousands of Americans struggling to start or maintain scientific and technical careers are unlikely to support such a plan. The plan does, however, promise to answer some of Otto's complaints by ensuring that "workers are less dependent on their employers for their right to stay in the country" and holding accountable employers "who abuse the system and their workers." The Obama document goes on to note that "while highly skilled immigrants make strong contributions to our domestic technology industry, there are Americans who could be filling those positions given appropriate opportunities for training." These are encouraging words, but the statement doesn't go far enough: What about the thousands of Americans already able to fill those jobs without any further training? The United States routinely graduates several times more people with scientific and technical degrees than it employs in those fields, according to the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators 2008. Even without importing scientific and technical workers from overseas, these figures indicate, employers can find a large supply of skilled talent. But employers would very likely have to pay these workers more than they pay temporary visa holders. The desire to pay lower wages--and not a talent shortage--is the real reason behind the demand for more H-1B visas, critics insist. And, though it may lack political clout, this view has some world-class intellectual backing. "There is no doubt that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy, " the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, godfather of market economics, has been quoted as saying. "If you get a number of computer programmers who are moving to the United States, as we do under the H-1B program, ... then computer programmers' earnings are either going to be hurt or not rise as much as otherwise," agreed Friedman's fellow economics Nobelist and University of Chicago faculty colleague Gary Becker in a lecture. Reaching for Reform When the H-1B visa was established in 1990, it was "intended to fill jobs for a temporary amount of time while the country invested in American workers to pick up the skills they needed. ... Unfortunately, the H-1B program is so popular that it's now replacing the U.S. labor force," said Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) on the Senate floor in November 2007, according to a press report. "Some employers have abused the H-1B and L-1 temporary work visa programs, using them to bypass qualified American job applicants," added Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) in a statement. Recently, a report by the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services found widespread fraud in the H-1B system. But far more important and damaging than dishonesty, critics insist, are the loopholes and abuses clearly permitted by existing law. Indian outsourcing firms, for example, currently use large numbers of H-1B visas to bring workers into the country to train for jobs that are then moved overseas. In 2007, Grassley and Durbin co-sponsored a bill, as yet unpassed, that would increase protections for both American workers and H-1B visa holders. As the recession deepens, bringing hiring freezes and furloughs to budget-strapped universities across the country and threatening the solvency of private-sector firms, supporters of the Grassley-Durbin proposals appear likely to press anew to pass the bill. At the very least, H-1B critics will have strong ammunition--in the form of high unemployment rates--against industry's annual campaign to get lawmakers to raise the H-1B limit. None of this, of course, is any help to current H-1B casualties like Otto, who is leaving the country embittered by an academic system he believes harms not just powerless individuals but science itself. "Postdocs hired at U.S. universities have become, for some time now, a new kind of cheap labor ... who are most of the time only allowed to do those experiments that please their bosses, and, on the other hand, cannot many times contribute to the creative scientific process," he says. His former lab chief "used his powerful position to impose his will and cover up some exciting results of mine, which could have moved the field of cancer research forward." The H-1B, Otto argues, made this possible. If the Obama Administration truly wishes to inspire a new generation of Americans "to excel in, and embrace, science and engineering" without excluding "innovators from overseas" as its science and technology document proclaims, then it needs to craft programs that protect both the many Americans hoping for decent-paying science and technology jobs and the foreign scientists coming to this country to work and learn. An overhaul of the H-1B is an obvious place to start. Beryl Lieff Benderly writes from Washington, D.C. http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/08/its-the-money-stupid/ It's the Money, Stupid What's Really Wrong with American Science Law, medicine, research science. The first two pay. SOURCE: SP It isn't a scientist shortage or a poor public education system. It's the lack of decent-paying, tenured job opportunities for young graduate and postgraduate research scientists. By Beryl Lieff Benderly | Thursday, August 7th, 2008 | Share This | Print Print According to a continuing stream of reports and white papers from eminent think tanks and government agencies across the country, the United States faces a shortage of technical talent that threatens our future competitiveness. This shortage, they say, arises largely from inadequate public school Kindergarten through 12th grade education in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM curriculum. But this perception of dearth and mediocrity, though widespread and widely accepted in political and policy circles, ignores the real flaws in U.S. science. Reforms are urgently needed, but not the ones that shortage proponents suggest. Prominent labor economists who have examined the problem from a different perspective argue that poor STEM education isn't the problem at all. In fact, they believe there are far too many qualified student-scientists. Rather, it's the perverse financial incentives that American society (and specifically the U.S. government) provide wannabe American scientists that lie at the heart of our nation's science and technology competitiveness crisis. At first glance, though, the scientist-shortage supporters make some valid points. It's true that fewer top students from the demographic that long provided the bulk the nation's technical and research professionals--native-born white males--are pursuing graduate studies in science. Ditto that a growing percentage of the scientists-in-training at the nation's universities are foreign-born.[1] And the average performance of U.S. K- 12 students on international standards is indeed undistinguished. It's the perverse financial incentives that American society (and specifically the U.S. government) provide wannabe American scientists that lie at the heart of our nation's science and technology competitiveness crisis. But these facts do not add up to the crises that critics describe. Rather, according to a number of distinguished economists, they reveal a labor market gone seriously awry. In the first place, average test scores tell nothing about the supply of students capable of becoming scientists. Such youngsters are not average for their age group, but outstanding, and the U.S. produces them in large numbers. One frequently cited international comparison, for example, shows that the United States had far more top-performing science students than any other nation tested, as well as a big lead in the number of top-performing readers, according to Hal Salzman of the Urban Institute and B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University.[2] Americans also came second only to Japan in the number of top scorers in math. What pulled down the U.S. average was not any overall deficit but the very poor performance of the students at the bottom, largely products of inferior schools serving poor minority communities. These disparities are a national disgrace that must be ended, which in turn would result in an even more qualified and more diverse pool of talent to improve our nation's competitiveness. But our poor test scores say nothing about the quality of America's best schools, which rank among the world's finest. An Enticing Promise, An Elusive Goal The top performers from those excellent schools then proceed to study at some of the world's best universities, also conveniently located here. Professors at these universities encourage the most promising to continue on for science PhDs, in preparation for careers as academic researchers. The students who take this advice hope for satisfying careers resembling those their senior professors have enjoyed, pursuing their best ideas as independent researchers, heading labs amply supported by federal funding, and enjoying job stability and comfortable upper-middle class incomes as faculty members in secure tenured positions. But the world that nurtured today's senior professors, with PhDs earned in four years and appointments as faculty members and lab heads in their 20s, has vanished. What the great majority of today's young scientists find instead is a penurious decade or more working in university labs, first as graduate students and then as postdoctoral researchers earning a "trainee" wage comparable to what a new liberal arts BA graduate makes.[3] Their search for the faculty post essential to starting their own academic research careers overwhelmingly ends in frustration, as they futilely compete for every advertised faculty opening against hundreds of other qualified applicants--all of whom sport good degrees and lists of publications from their graduate and postdoc years. The odds that a young PhD will ever land a faculty job at any four-year institution are now less than 25 percent, and at the kind of research university where big-deal science is done, well under 15 percent.[4] Across the United States, therefore, professors are bemoaning the choice by many of their brightest undergraduates to eschew science graduate study in favor of medical, law, or business school. These students don't reject science because they're bad at math, but because they're good at it. Anyone bright enough to get a science PhD is bright enough to run the numbers showing that an average of seven years of graduate school, followed by five or more postdoc years, followed by long odds against getting the job one was ostensibly preparing for, add up to a lousy investment. For foreigners, however, especially those from developing countries, grad school or a postdoc in America is exceedingly enticing. Why? Because the virtually unlimited visas that universities can supply make such training an otherwise largely unobtainable ticket into the country. Built-in Perversity Labor economists including Paula Stephan of Georgia State University and Richard Freeman of Harvard University believe this excess of young American scientists unable to start their academic careers results from "the perverse funding structure of science graduate education," as fellow labor economist Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation put it in congressional testimony last November.[5]^ Stephan adds that we "staff our labs primarily with graduate students and postdocs" who as a condition of participating in their educational programs, do the overwhelming bulk of the labor needed for the academic research that the federal government funds to the tune of more than $70 billion a year.[6] Research grants to individual professors from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and other agencies finance the great bulk of graduate students and postdocs. To get the grants and renewals needed to keep their labs going, professors must produce steady streams of journal articles. That, in turn, encourages them to have as many grad students and postdocs as they can possibly afford to do the bench work. This highly skilled cheap labor makes American research very economical, but produces as a byproduct "so much pressure on the system to absorb the continual new cohort" into mostly nonexistent jobs, Stephan says. "We haven't had much luck in absorbing it." Shortage proponents counter that low unemployment among early career scientists proves there is no glut. But in fact the postdoc pool, now numbering possibly 90,000, is more than half foreign-born (the actual numbers are unknown),[7] and functions as disguised unemployment, holding "trainees" off the market. The United States, meanwhile, annually produces 30,000 new science and engineering PhDs, about 18,000 of them American-born, although faculty openings at research universities in the most glutted fields number probably in the hundreds (again, the number is unknown). The tiny minority who do land research-based faculty jobs have spent so much time "training" that, in biomedical science, for example, they average 42 years of age when they finally launch their independent research careers by winning their first competitive federal grant.[8] At that age, scientists of previous generations--Albert Einstein, Marshall Nirenberg, Thomas Cech--were collecting Nobel Prizes for discoveries made in their 20s. "I try to keep my best undergraduates away from my postdocs," one professor confided, because meeting them would reveal what really lies ahead on the grad school track. But talented young Americans would flock to science study if it offered them the kind of career opportunities that previous generations enjoyed. Instead of a needless general overhaul of K -12 education, or an increase in graduate fellowships, which would only make things worse, the United States needs to overhaul what Brown University biochemistry chair Susan Gerbi calls the "pyramid paradigm." Instead of paying universities to use grad students and postdocs as very smart migrant laborers, the U.S. government needs a funding structure that provides large numbers of them a solid career ladder into the life that so many were implicitly promised. The jobs on that ladder need not compete financially with corporate law, medical specialization, or investment banking, because science offers intellectual riches so much more dazzling than money that they long enticed the ablest young Americans to accept more modest remuneration in exchange for the chance to do great research. But the futures we provide to the young people we ask to devote their lives and talents to learning and doing science must match those other careers in providing at least a reasonable likelihood that hard work and devotion can attain their goal. At present, the United States does not give them that opportunity. One way to start doing so could be to structure funding to encourage universities and lab chiefs to create jobs for permanent staff scientists who receive professional-level salaries, benefits, and status within the university and employ them rather than grad students and postdocs. Another could be requiring universities to limit the graduate student and postdoc positions they create to the number of people who could reasonably be expected to find career-level employment after they leave their professors' labs. Another could be requiring universities and lab chiefs to track their grad school and postdoc alumni and report on their employment experience to new applicants, as professional and business schools routinely do. When the nation once again provides its young scientists a decent shot at the life they hope for, our best youth will race to answer science's call. Washington, D.C. science journalist Beryl Lieff Benderly contributes the monthly "Taken for Granted" column on labor force and early career issues to the website of Science magazine and articles to other major magazines and websites. Notes [1] National Science Board, "Science Indicators 2008" (Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, 2008). [2]H. Salzman and L. Lowell, "Making the Grade," Nature 543 (2008): 28-30. [3] G. Davis, "Doctors without orders," American Scientist 93 (2005) (3, supplement), available at http://postdoc.sigmaxi.org/results/. [4] National Science Board. [5] Michael Teitelbaum, Testimony before the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, Committee, November 6, 2007, available at http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2007/te ch/06nov/Teitelbaum_testimony.pdf. [6] Intersociety Working Group, American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS Report XXXIII: Research and Development FY 2009 (Washington, D.C., 2008). [7] National Science Board. [8] Committee on Bridges to Independence: Identifying Opportunities for and Challenges to Fostering the Independence of Young Investigators in the Life Sciences, Board on Life Sciences, National Research Council of the National Academies, Bridges to Independence: Fostering the Independence of New Investigators in Biomedical Research (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005).