How H-1B Visas Are Hurting America (and how to fix it)
According to Wikipedia the number of H-1B Visas the US grants each year are decreasing. An H-1B visa permits educated non-citizens the right to work in our country. The concept is that these visas are necessary for the
The H-1B is essentially a reverse brain drain system. Since everyone agrees a brain drain is bad for a country, isn’t the reverse good? Maybe. If the foreign nationals move to our country to work, pay taxes, and live here permanently, it’s probably a good idea. If they come for a few years to work, pay taxes, get educated, and leave, it’s bad. Unfortunately the latter description seems to be true. While nearly 90 percent of undergrads in top schools are Americans, at the grad level only 50 percent are. The key problem is:
If foreign nationals crowd out American students from top schools but eventually return home, they are actually reducing the long term pool of educated workers. This is exactly what the program is intended to avoid.
What we need are more educated (and smart) Americans, not less. Why? People who produce more than they extract are increasing the average wealth of our country. The current program does this in the short run, but not in the long run. How do we fix this problem?
- H-1B Visas need to be contain a path to citizenship. We want smart foreigners to stay in
- There should be more H-1B visas to garner more of the worlds best and brightest.
- Universities should be required a maximum amount of foreign students. E.G. 20 percent. This way we give an incentive for foreigners to use their own education systems before coming to
N.B. The problem is that it takes a while for an H-1B visa holder to repay the cost he imposes on Americans. E.G. they consume subsidized education (many schools claim the cost of an education is below there full bill charge), they crowd out places in univerities, they out-compete Americans for jobs, etc. In the long run these policies work because unlike gardening, ’smart’ jobs tend not to be zero-sum, so wages of Americans ought not to be depressed.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
If foreigners are stupid enough to pay $160,000 tuition for an expensive American education and then go back to their home countries, that’s a transaction that’s pure benefit to the United States. Our schools aren’t teaching them anything practical that they can use to compete against us, they aren’t staying here and stealing jobs from American workers, and best of all, we keep their $160,000.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Half Sigma
You noted in your comment about IQ and Income that education mattered and IQ did not. This partially contradicts your post that the 160,000 dollar tuition is beneficial to America. Note that many colleges are considering financial aid to foreigners, and that they are still crowding out the spot of an American. If the education is actually worth 160,000 dollars than by simply taking that spot and leaving they are hurting our country.
The real problem is that these foreigners tend to be educated in the areas that are actually useful, so they do bring a skill back to there country they can use to compete against Americans(like knowledge in Computer Science).
About IQ -
It is possible that IQ is only important for determining educational attainment, but the data I looked at showed no such trend. Do you have a study that suggests this (while taking into effect the downward bias that regressing education and IQ together has). Holding education constant we still find the same effect and it is still very strong.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I also wanted to include the theory that a college education costs more than 160,000 dollars to produce, so it is always subsidized.
June 8th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Really? Apart from medical schools, where the professors make reasonable amounts of money (albeit much less than private practice), I can’t think of anywhere it costs 160,000 dollars to produce a college graduate.
Personally I’d argue the H-1B visas are good in the short term at least for everyone who’s not an engineer (cheap labor), just as Wal-Mart is good for everyone who isn’t in a business that’s competing with them. The problem is that after a while, ‘everyone’ becomes rather small.
You do have a point that if we outsource engineering and make it a low-wage job, Americans won’t want to do it and we will cripple ourselves technologically. However, this has already happened and I see no way to reverse it.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
$40,000/year is what NYU is charging me, so I assume that’s standard tuition these days.
And yes, education is what allows high IQ people to get into better career tracks, but that’s sort of a zero sum game. The number of slots open for a particular career track won’t change just becuase 20% of the class at HarvardPrincetonYale is foreigners. The organizations that can’t recruit enough HarvardPrincetonYale students will just go do the next tier of schools to fill their additional slots.
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:22 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Interesting post, but doesn’t point 3 contradict point 1 and 2?
Here’s just a something to consider about the process from a current H1B holder:
1. I somewhat understand the issue of “stealing jobs”. It’s the classic argument against the H1B process in the first place. But consider this: a LOT of jobs simply do NOT offer H1Bs period. The pool of jobs that do is quite small. It doesn’t really matter how good you are of how many job offers you get, only a selected few are eligible.
2. Not every country is blessed enough to have facilities for higher education. Where I’m from, it’s a reality that you need to leave to learn more.
3. Some countries are so small, that the job pool for jobs that require higher education just simply isn’t that big. I’m all for going back and contributing, but how does one contribute if you end up at a job that you are over qualified for with a huge student loan to boot?
Just wanted to shed new light on the subject it isn’t (always) about the evil foreigners coming to steal American jobs.