To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter 179

The enclosed op-ed by MIT president Susan Hockfield is basically a
recycling of arguments used by the industry lobbyists in support of
expansive policies for the H-1B work visa and employer-sponsored green
cards.  As such I would ordinarily not comment, but there is an
new example Hockfield brings up that I will relate to an important issue
I've discussed in the past.

I just recently commented on a similar op-ed that highlighted the
immigrant background of some of this year's American Nobel laureates;
see http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/NobelImms.txt  There I detail
themes I've stressed over the years:

1.  I strongly support facilitating the immigration of "the best and the
brightest."

2.  However, the vast majority of H-1Bs are not in the "best and
brightest" league.

3.  The presence of the foreign workers is causing an internal brain
drain in the U.S., by making careers in science and engineering
financially unattractive.

4.  Our National Science Foundation, whose job it is to fund university
research, explicitly called for bring in a lot of foreign scientists and
engineers in order to hold down PhD salaries.  Why would they do this?
Simple--the NSF, being in the research business, wants to get the most
bang for its buck, and thus benefits from low PhD salaries (and low PhD
student stipends, again kept low by the swelling of the labor market).
Most importantly, the NSF forecast, correctly, that the resulting
stagnant salaries would discourage Americans from pursuing PhDs.

I should note that several subscribers of this e-newsletter are MIT
graduates, now in mid-career age but have had trouble finding tech
employment in the last 10 years.  My guess is that President Hockfield
is unaware of this situation, and of the fact that a core reason that
employers want to hire H-1Bs is that they are younger, thus cheaper, so
that the H-1B program gives employers a means of avoiding hiring older
Americans.

The new example Hockfield uses is Technology Review's list of Top
Innovators Under 35 for 2009 (http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35).
She writes

   Of the 35 young innovators recognized this year by Technology Review
   magazine for their exceptional new ideas, only six went to high
   school in the United States.

Needless to say, one should be cautious in taking a magazine list so
seriously, but let's accept it and discuss some of its implications.

First of all, there is my internal brain drain point above.  The H-1B
program caused it--and remember, the NSF knowingly promoted this--and
thus one should not conclude that H-1B has increased net innovation
in the U.S.  It has brought in some innovators, but also pushed some
innovators out of tech.

Second, the surnames of those 35, there are only five Indians and three
Chinese.  That's in contrast to the fact that among H-1Bs, and indeed
among foreign engineering grad students, the vast majority are Indians
and Chinese.  This underrepresentation in the awards of the Indians and
Chinese illustrates my point that the H-1B and employer-sponsored green
card programs are NOT generally bringing in the best and the brightest.

Note carefully that I am not saying that there are no innovative Indians
or Chinese.  I have my own list of brilliant immigrants from those
countries.  Instead, I'm simply saying that the nationality data show
that these foreign-worker programs are generally not about hiring the
best and the brightest.

This disconnect between TR's innovator data and the H-1B demographics
meshes with what David Hart of George Mason University found recently
(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/DavidHart.txt), as well as one
aspect of a study by McGill University's Jennifer Hunt
(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/JenniferHunt.txt) and my
CIS article (http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back508.html).

Again, I very strongly support bringing in the best and the brightest,
whether they be Chinese or Indian or Russian or Nigerian.  But a key
point is that current immigration policy already has a separate
mechansim for doing this that works well, a specialized version of
employer-sponsored green cards called EB-1, Foreign Nationals of
Extraordinary Ability.  Processing is very quick, in contrast to the
five years or more wait for ordinary green cards.  Yes, you really have
to be good to get EB-1, but then isn't that the point?

Speaking of policy, Hockfield is incorrect in claiming,

   Our immigration laws specifically require that students return to
   their home countries after earning their degrees and then apply for a
   visa if they want to return and work in the U.S.

This is false, as MIT's International Students Office could have
explained to Hockfield in detail.

Finally, the big news on the MIT campus is that President Obama will
visit this Friday, to give an address on energy.  I wonder if he will
talk about "innovation" and maybe allude to foreign workers.  Another
thing he might do is increase the stipend in the NSF traineeships, which
would help a bit to stem the internal STEM brain drain.

It's always hard for the person at the top, be it Hockfield or Obama, to
know what's going on in real life, sad to say.

Norm

The Wall Street Journal

OCTOBER 19, 2009, 7:01 P.M. ET

Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels

It's crazy to drive away talented young scholars.

By SUSAN HOCKFIELD

Of the nine people who shared this year's Nobel Prizes in chemistry,
physics and medicine, eight are American citizens, a testament to this
country's support for pioneering research. But those numbers disguise a
more important story. Four of the American winners were born outside of
the United States and only came here as graduate or post-doctoral
students or as scientists. They came because our system of higher
education and advanced research has been a magnet for creative talent.

Unfortunately, we cannot count on that magnetism to last. Culturally,
we remain a very open society. But that openness stands in sharp
contrast to arcane U.S. immigration policies that discourage young
scholars from settling in the U.S.

Those policies come at a high price. Graduate and postgraduate student
immigrants are essential to creating new, well-paid jobs in our
economy. Of the 35 young innovators recognized this year by Technology
Review magazine for their exceptional new ideas, only six went to high
school in the United States. From MIT alone, foreign graduates have
founded an estimated 2,340 active U.S. companies that employ over
100,000 people.

Amazingly, if as incoming students they had told U.S. immigration
authorities that they hoped to stay on as entrepreneurs after
graduation, they would have been turned back at the border. Our
immigration laws specifically require that students return to their
home countries after earning their degrees and then apply for a visa if
they want to return and work in the U.S. It would be hard to invent a
policy more counterproductive to our national interest.

If the U.S. was the only country in the world that offered scholars
scientific freedom, a cumbersome immigration process might not be that
harmful. But the world today is teeming with well-funded opportunities
to do first-class science. To be competitive, the U.S. needs to send
the unmistakable message that we want scholars to stay.

To do that we need the kind of broad new immigration policy that would
allow foreign students who earn advanced degrees in science,
technology, engineering and math to easily become legal permanent
residents. President Barack Obama and many others are already calling
for such a policy.

We also need to aggressively develop more homegrown talent. A recent
report from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) shows that we have lost our lead in education. In the 1960s, the
U.S. had the highest high-school completion rate in the developed
world; by 2005, we ranked 21st. In college completion, as recently as
1995 we ranked second. In 2005, we ranked 15th.

The OECD's report explains that we slipped in the rankings "not because
U.S. college graduation rates declined, but because they rose so much
faster" elsewhere. The U.S. now trails more than 16 nations in Europe
and Asia in the proportion of 24-year-olds with bachelor's degrees in
the natural sciences and engineering.

What we need is not just college graduates. We also need Ph.D.s in the
sciences. Unfortunately, in the fields that spawn world-changing
research and innovation, American graduate output has stagnated. From
1989 to 2003, despite a growing population, the number of American
science and engineering Ph.D.s remained constant: an average of 26,600
a year. Over the same period and in the same fields, Ph.D.s awarded in
China shot up to 12,000 from just 1,000.

In education, the world is accelerating while we are standing still,
which is why Mr. Obama is pressing to revive our Sputnik-era commitment
to science and math education.

Today, discovery and innovation increasingly spring from a creative
network of the finest talent everywhere across the globe. From new
advances in medicine to scientific breakthroughs that spawn new
industries and sustainable jobs, the work of science and engineering is
being done by individuals who can live almost anywhere.

To be part of that global creative network we must inspire more young
Americans to pursue scientific careers, and we must rapidly reform U.S.
immigration policies that drive away talented young scholars who would
otherwise decide to live, work and innovate here. We should be proud of
our Nobel Prize winners. But we should also craft policies that make it
more likely that future Nobel laureates will do their work inside the
U.S.

Ms. Hockfield is president of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.