H-1B Hubbub
Immigration policy has been in the news lately, but the talk has been almost entirely about low-skill workers. Buried in the recent Senate compromise immigration bill, though, are some provisions that will affect scientists and engineers.
There hasn't been much talk about the high-skill worker side of the bill, but what little I have read has been negative. From this past Sunday's SF Chronicle: "H-1B Federal Immigration Bill... Everyone agrees it's flawed, but how to fix it?" ScienceCareers.org asks, Who Speaks for Early-Career Scientists?. The Wall Street Journal reports that even businesses dislike some of the high tech worker provisions (Business Divided As Debate Opens On Immigration).
So just how bad is it? Here's the bill, S. 1348: A bill to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and for other purposes (who names these things?). Keep in mind that this is not the final text by a long shot - there are already 108 proposed amendments - but it gives a glimpse of the kinds of changes that are being contemplated.
As best I can tell, the proposed changes will primarily affect those with bachelors-level S&E degrees. The provisions that most strongly affect those with advanced degrees were put in place years ago; the current bill expands them modestly, but for the most part leaves them qualitatively the same. There is one change, however, that could have unintended long-term consequences for S&E.
First, some background. There is a quota on H-1B visas that varies from year to year. The quotas are set when Congress tinkers with immigration legislation, which is to say infrequently, so it's easy for the levels to get out of whack with what's going on in the economy. The current number is 65,000 per year, down from 195,000 for fiscal year 2003 (notice that the reduction didn't come until about 3 years after the dot-com crash). Now that the tech sector has recovered, visa requests are up again, and the 2007 quota was reached on the first day of the year.
One thing S. 1348 does is to raise the cap from 65,000 to 115,000. It also adds a provision that the cap will automatically increase by 20% the year after the current quota is reached. (I guess this is better than the 90's approach of making up a series of numbers except for the fact that it's a one-way ratchet. Much saner would be something based on wage levels: have the cap rise and fall based on wage levels for skilled workers - that way recessions would trigger automatic reductions.)
So how much does changing the cap affect S&E PhDs? Probably not much. There are already several exemptions that apply to researchers: First, universities, government labs, and nonprofit research organizations are not subject to the cap at all, so the quota is irrelevant in these sectors. Second, as of FY2005 there have been an additional 20,000 slots for people who hold master's or higher degrees from a US university. This second quota was just reached this year (http://www.immigration.com/newsletter1/h1bmasterreach06.pdf)
S. 1348 expands the set of organizations not subject to H-1B caps: all nonprofits would be exempt, not just nonprofit research organizations, and it exempts those who have "been awarded medical specialty certification based on post-doctoral training and experience in the United States." Sure, this will increase the number of PhD H-1Bs, but because of existing exemptions, it doesn't appear that there have been any serious limits on those with PhDs in recent years anyway.
The interesting bit is that the bill broadens the advanced degree exemption to include those with degrees from non-US universities. Here's why: suppose you are a top-notch Indian or Chinese undergraduate who wants to move to the US. Getting a master's or PhD in the US is a great step toward your goal - the degree provides a stepping stone to an H-1B, which in turn can lead to a green card. Suppose you get into a really elite local university, say one of the IITs, but you fare less well in your US admissions process, perhaps because they have difficulty interpreting your credentials or because of language skills. So you have to choose between one of the best in-country universities or a second- (or third-) tier US university for graduate study. Which do you choose? Currently, if your heart is set on ending up in the US, H-1B considerations weigh pretty heavily in favor of the US university. The proposed change, however, removes that advantage and could reverse the balance. So one consequence of S. 1348 might be to strengthen the top Chinese and Indian universities at the expense of lower tier US institutions.
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on Fri, Jun 01, 01:06PM
I don't know if I agree with the logic in the Science article. Let's say you limit foreign grad students and postdocs. That increases the chances for citizens to get faculty positions, and results in an increase of citizen grad students and postdocs. Now the pyramid scheme fills out again and we're back to square one.
As with the NIH doubling, it seems like this buys you one generation time before it blows up again.
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on Fri, Jun 01, 01:06PM
Not only that, but if you turn really smart people away, it's entirely possible that they'll get jobs teaching in other countries. Next thing you know, you'll end up with much more competitive universities in China, India, etc. Once that happens (and it's already underway), you're looking at the possibility of entire sectors of the economy being underpriced by equivalents overseas. Compared to that prospect, the short-term career needs of a few native grad students and postdocs look a lot less important to me.
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on Mon, Jun 04, 04:06PM
The fundamental problem is that it is difficult to determine if importing this foreign talent is of net benefit to the nation in the long term. It strikes me that the emergence of more competitive universities in China and India is inevitable given that stay-rates for their expatriates will erode as their domestic economies improve. We've already witnessed that in the case of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Consequently, we run the very real risk of spending tax payer money to educate our future competition which will benefit from the quality of our education and as you pointed out, the labor cost structure of their countries of origin. Alternately, if foreign talent stays they end up glutting the supply of S&E labor market and eroding wages which in turn deters domestic talent from considering S&E. Obviously, my analysis overlooks many mitigating factors that may in fact be signficant such as the potential net economic gain derived from foreign talent establishing startups etc.
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on Mon, Jun 04, 05:06PM
Yes, I think you are right that stay rates will decline for China and India, with India probably sooner. One way to reduce the impact of a potential glutting of the US market is to throw resources at training people for the entire idea-to-product pipeline, not just at the idea-generation/research stage. Taking a research idea to market is a long and difficult process, and most PhDs as currently trained are probably not much good for anything but the earliest stages. Professional Science Masters' programs are one way of doing this; I'm sure there are others. These kinds of lateral training programs would not only provide other useful outlets for the talents of S&Es, but by increasing the rate at which scientific findings get commercialized, could help increase the overall demand for S&E's.
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