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Good article. The EE Phd mentioned in the beginning sounds like a very skilled person, and it's hard to replace someone like that. Hard to see how that guy is

by geebee 17y ago

Good article. The EE Phd mentioned in the beginning sounds like a very skilled person, and it's hard to replace someone like that. Hard to see how that guy is taking a job away from anyone, and he is likely creating wealth and jobs for others. We want him here, no doubt. One factor - I was once a PhD student in engineering at Berkeley, and in my opinion, it's much a harder path than a JD or MBA, more uncertainty and lower pay. While the "100K" salary the EE PhD in the article was earning isn't bad, it's actually quite low compared to other professional degrees that can be earned in half or even a third of the time (with less rigorous undergrad preparation to boot). To me, there's little doubt that universities and employers use the desire for a green card to keep these spots filled without becoming "competitive" with other professional degree programs (the RAND institute recently did a study that supports this view). What to do? Well, maybe we should just set a minimum pay rate for a green card. Perhaps a company needs to commit to a high salary to prove the worker really is highly skilled. Given that starting salaries at top law firms exceed $150 for a three year degree, I don't think that 100K is quite enough for the company to claim that the worker is "critical" and "can't be found anywhere". So I think this salary threshold needs to be very, very high. If they were paying him 200K, I'd have no trouble granting the green card, because then the absence of americans would be easier to attribute to a "skills gap" rather than a desire to pay salaries that are not competitive with other (often easier) career choices.

chime 17y ago
> So I think this salary threshold needs to be very, very high. Anytime you link a legal requirement to salary levels, you end up with geographic cost-of-living disparities. 100K in NYC/SF is no big deal, 100K in Clearwater, Florida is. A person who can easily get a greencard in NYC can't do so in Florida. This makes the law unfair to states with lower cost-of-living because employers cannot hire and keep skilled employees even when they are willing to pay very competitive rates.
- raghus 17y ago
  A person who can easily get a greencard in NYC can't do so in Florida. This makes the law unfair to states with lower cost-of-living ... chime - why would it be easier to get a GC in NY as opposed to FL? How then is FL at a disadvantage because of the salary rules?
  - philwelch 17y ago
    Because a $100k salary in NY is easier for employers to meet (that's closer to what they're already paying) than the same salary in Florida. Florida then gets fewer immigrants this way.
- geebee 17y ago
  Well, any time the government gets into micro-managing salaries, the whole thing is fubar, guaranteed. The problem is that the government decided that there was a shortage and decided to start tinkering with employment levels, which set off the chain of events leading to this kind of discussion. Anyway, you make a good point about cost of living issues, so some sort of local indexing would be a good idea. To me, the most important thing is that we include other professions in the "market rate". As it stands, even if H1Bs pay market rate, they can still put a damper on wage growth, while other fields without extensive guest worker programs sprint ahead. So I'd say "if there's indeed a shortage, what other professional degree paths are getting these students?" So in this case, they'd need to make sure that grads of top engineering schools who get visas are not paid significantly less than grads of comparably ranked law and business schools. This would protect against the use of visas to cause wage stagnation in engineering relative to other professions.
cjbos 17y ago
I like your idea, but rather than a hard limit across the country it should be a percentage higher than the local market rates. Also if we are talking about temp working visas like the H1B, then the gov could remove the social security tax (Which employers pay 50% off). And that savings could be used to meet the additional wage cost.

by geebee 17y ago

chime 17y ago

> So I think this salary threshold needs to be very, very high. Anytime you link a legal requirement to salary levels, you end up with geographic cost-of-living disparities. 100K in NYC/SF is no big deal, 100K in Clearwater, Florida is. A person who can easily get a greencard in NYC can't do so in Florida. This makes the law unfair to states with lower cost-of-living because employers cannot hire and keep skilled employees even when they are willing to pay very competitive rates.

raghus 17y ago
A person who can easily get a greencard in NYC can't do so in Florida. This makes the law unfair to states with lower cost-of-living ... chime - why would it be easier to get a GC in NY as opposed to FL? How then is FL at a disadvantage because of the salary rules?
- philwelch 17y ago
  Because a $100k salary in NY is easier for employers to meet (that's closer to what they're already paying) than the same salary in Florida. Florida then gets fewer immigrants this way.
geebee 17y ago
Well, any time the government gets into micro-managing salaries, the whole thing is fubar, guaranteed. The problem is that the government decided that there was a shortage and decided to start tinkering with employment levels, which set off the chain of events leading to this kind of discussion. Anyway, you make a good point about cost of living issues, so some sort of local indexing would be a good idea. To me, the most important thing is that we include other professions in the "market rate". As it stands, even if H1Bs pay market rate, they can still put a damper on wage growth, while other fields without extensive guest worker programs sprint ahead. So I'd say "if there's indeed a shortage, what other professional degree paths are getting these students?" So in this case, they'd need to make sure that grads of top engineering schools who get visas are not paid significantly less than grads of comparably ranked law and business schools. This would protect against the use of visas to cause wage stagnation in engineering relative to other professions.

cjbos 17y ago

I like your idea, but rather than a hard limit across the country it should be a percentage higher than the local market rates. Also if we are talking about temp working visas like the H1B, then the gov could remove the social security tax (Which employers pay 50% off). And that savings could be used to meet the additional wage cost.