(Full text not available on the Web.) Where Are the "Best and Brightest?" Norm Matloff Barron's, June 8, 2013 The dazzling innovative power of the tech industry is one of the few remaining American comparative advantages. Unfortunately, Congress is on the verge of squandering that precious national strength. U.S. dominance in technology has been due to our cultural flair for innovation, good old Yankee ingenuity. Yet, as currently structured, the H-1B work visa and employer-sponsored green-card programs are bringing in workers who tend to be of lesser talent than their American peers. Worse, they are indirectly displacing Americans. The result is a net reduction in the country's talent level. Yet the tech industry is lobbying Congress for an expansion of tech immigration, claiming it needs to hire the "best and the brightest" from around the world But the data show that most of the foreign tech workers are ordinary folks doing ordinary work. The industry often cites studies on patenting by immigrant engineers. But these studies focus on the number of patents, rather than the per-capita rate of patenting. One of my research projects, published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Migration Letters,compared native U.S. engineers with immigrant engineers who had first come to the U.S. as foreign students. In computer science, the natives, on average, had a significantly higher patenting rate than immigrants of the same age, education, and so on. The rate for U.S. natives with only bachelor's degrees was as high as the rate for immigrants at the master's degree level. Or consider research and development. Again, the natives win. In electrical engineering, for instance, 30-year-old natives with master's degrees are 68% more likely to be in R&D than former foreign students of the same age and education. At the doctoral level in computer science, the foreign students tend to earn their degrees at institutions of somewhat lesser selectivity and research prominence, compared with the natives. Based on US News and World Report ratings on a scale of 1 to 5, the mean program rating for the Americans is 3.71, while the figure for the foreign students is 3.44. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found similar results for U.S. doctorates in physics, biochemistry, and chemistry, noting, "Among students from China, Taiwan, and South Korea, growth has been particularly concentrated outside the most highly ranked institutions." Contrary to the claims of tech-industry lobbyists, the U.S. isn't generally getting "the best and the brightest" immigrant engineers and scientists. This is a direct consequence of the fact that our national policy moved away from promoting immigration of outstanding talents over 20 years ago. The Immigration Act of 1990 instituted H-1B to replace the old H-1 visa. The old visa, titled Aliens of Distinguished Merit and Ability, was replaced under the 1990 act by the name Specialty Occupations and Fashion Models. Inexplicably, the immigration bill currently under consideration by the Senate would further the trend away from quality. The proposal would, in essence, grant special green cards to all foreign students earning advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM for short) at U.S. schools--regardless of quality. Any foreign student, even with mediocre grades at an undistinguished state college, would qualify. The H-1B visa program reduces wages, making STEM careers unattractive to American students. This effect was anticipated: A 1989 internal National Science Foundation report forecast that the H-1B program, then in the proposal stage, would result in a flood of foreign students into U.S. doctoral programs. The report stated that this would cause wages to stagnate, driving American science, technology, engineering, and math students into finance and law--exactly what did occur. Those who do stay in STEM then have financial disincentives against pursuing graduate work. A 2007 Urban Institute study found that we are producing far more STEM graduates at the bachelor's level than the economy needs, but that too few get advanced degrees. A Ph.D. student must forego an industry-level salary for about five years, only to find at the end that the wage premium accruing to a doctorate--held down by the large foreign influx--doesn't make up for that loss in lifetime earnings. The impact of the foreign-student and H-1B programs has been to displace American students from STEM fields. Since the average quality of the foreign students is lower than that of the Americans, the result is a net loss of quality in our STEM workforce. A blanket granting of green cards to foreign science, technology, engineering, and math students would exacerbate the problem. Any member of Congress or the business community should find this alarming. No employer should be forced to hire a poorly qualified worker just because that person is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. But we should move back to an immigration policy aimed at getting the world's best and brightest. Instead of the broad proposal under consideration in the Senate, the U.S. should grant a green card to any foreign STEM worker who has a legitimate U.S. offer at or above the 90th percentile of pay in that job. The loopholes that allow employers to import cut-rate workers should be plugged, so that companies can't use H-1B visas to get underpaid workers. It has been 23 years since the last major immigration bill, and it could be a generation before the next one comes along. Congress should carefully examine the tech-worker issue before taking actions that could jeopardize our national well-being.  Norm Matloff is a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis. His Website and e-newsletter on immigration issues are at heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html Copyright Dow Jones 2013.