I am going to be in the minority here on good old FR on this issue. It’s simple math for me.
75% Foreign born engineers and those with technical skills.
3%-5% unemployment for those groups.
My interpretation of these facts: We are not generating enough scientists, engineers and technical types to meet the demand of the high tech industries. So industry imports the help they need.
Although I don’t have the facts at my finger-tips the last time I looked engineers still wet behind the ears and just out college were being offered $70-$85K. Not bad.
Bottom line: Tell your kids that we don’t need any more psychology majors and actors. Study something where there is a real demand: STEM.
That means you have to study too hard and can't connect with your friends on your iPhone all day.
Don't they all get a trophy?
Let me help you with your grossly incomplete information:
http://cis.org/more-us-stem-grads-than-jobs
And that is from 2013.
“75% Foreign born engineers and those with technical skills.
3%-5% unemployment for those groups.”
“My interpretation of these facts: We are not generating enough scientists, engineers and technical types to meet the demand of the high tech industries. So industry imports the help they need.”
Unfortunately, I agree with your post. “hard” science is...well...hard. And it takes long hours of study and work. I’m not seeing a lot of US-born students doing those things.
People think that Chinese and Indian kids with math contests and spelling bees because they are “just smart”. Bull. Behind what seems effortless was a lot of hard work by those kids AND their parents.
I watched the U.S. born workforce go from around 65% to 25% in four years at my company.
My daughter works in tech in San Francisco. We have the workers.
The reason the tech people want the HB-1 visas has more to do with “job hopping”. Regular US workers particularly, software engineers can move from business to business. The HB-1 visa folks are controlled by their “sponsor employer”. They cannot leave employment without filing a petition from their employer from Cisco to go to Facebook. The HB-1 slot belongs to the sponsor employer.
“if an H-1B visa holder wishes to change jobs, they must have a petition filed for them by the new employer; however, the H-1B visa holder can transfer their H-1B visa without waiting for a new visa to become available.”
This has the effect of keeping down wages because it makes it more difficult for the visa worker to compete for other jobs.
http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1-visa-holder-rights.html
https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupation/understanding-h-1b-requirements
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/umar-akbar-ahmed/us-businesses-take-advant_b_5057014.html
All that really means is the American engineers are working at jobs flipping burgers while big business opts for cheap H1B labor...
Careful when thinking engineer means what you think it mans. In the world of IT where we are losing American jobs to foreign born H1B holders programmers and developers are now called system engineers. The IT field is where we are being pushed out of and it is NOT for lack of skills by American born workers, nor is it because of supposed lower wages for H1bs.
The US government made sure of that years ago when they set minimums for their wages. IT “students” who just received their country’s version of a degree are coming in at a minimum of $45k and up. Now they bring their similarly skilled wife with them and double their starting income, have kids who become citizens at birth and voila, once we train them we’re gone.
Just as troublesome is offshoring IT work. I work for one of the big three and their unashamed goal is to reach 70% of the workforce at what they call “best shore”. America has no bestshore.
If you aren’t in IT then you probably have no idea how American workers are being eliminated.