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Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non
by scdoshi 10y ago
Okay, so obviously, an employment based visa program does create conflicts of interest and in general, is not good for the immigrant employee, compared to a non employment based visa.
However, the claim that immigrant employees are somehow not as good as their American counterparts is based on shoddy logic.
The criteria he uses in his paper to measure this:
- high salary
- high rate of patent production
- Ph.D. dissertation awards
- doctorate earned at a top-ranked university
- employment in R&D
Because of issues with the employment based visa, he himself argues earlier in the article that immigrant employees end up with a lower salary.
Top ranked universities don't always admit people based on merit. Being in the country when applying to school and speaking the language have huge advantages. A lot of graduate admissions are on a case by case basis, and getting an in person meeting with the professor can make all the difference. Also, top graduate schools tend to be a lot more expensive.
Employment is R&D is also hampered by the fact that immigrants don't have comparatively fewer choices when looking for a job, again because of issues with employment based visas. This is especially true is you want to do research in aerospace or materials because of security clearances.
Overall, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his other analyses.
Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant, so I'm not without my biases here.
- jordanb 10y agoThe argument isn't that they're not as good as their American peers. The argument is that they're not exceptionally better than their American peers. The stated purpose of the visa program is to bring people in who can do work nobody else can do. But what happens is that companies bring in tons of perfectly ordinary people to do perfectly ordinary work because they want people who are cheaper, younger, and easier to abuse.
- scdoshi 10y agoOkay, but he's basing this argument on his paper, where he sets out to show that immigrants are in fact, not exceptional. However, if you believe my reasoning, then he isn't really measuring anything. So, we don't know if immigrants are exceptional or ordinary or worse. Or at least not based on his paper.
- lazaroclapp 10y agoBut is the H1-B really for "exceptionally better than"? Isn't that what O-1 is for? H1-B is for "highly skilled workers in an area in which there is strong demand for highly skilled workers". Where, at the time the program was created, highly skilled probably meant anyone with a college degree on the same area as their work.