Variables ignored by the Gathering Storm Report: Impact of Immigration on Wages and Career Opportunities

Here is an article about a NBER report that came out last year. This link is hot off the press, it mentions Geoff's work at several points and even this blog is referenced.

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/

Huddled Masses

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/careerdevelopment/previousissues/articles/200704_13/caredita0700050/(parent)/68

"Reduced economic opportunities in some fields relative to others may be an important factor driving native students to enter particular occupations and avoid others." --George Borjas

Beryl Lieff Benderly United States 13 April 2007

The debate about immigration, perhaps today's hottest domestic issue, usually focuses on the impact of unlettered illegals who sneak across the border for the chance to mow lawns or clean offices. But, according to a body of recent research, low-skill job categories are not the only ones profoundly affected by foreign job seekers. The countless contributions of immigrant researchers to American life--from nuclear power to the TV remote--need no repetition here. But, the data show, the economic forces that depress wages in such immigrant-heavy occupations as off-the-books babysitting and washing restaurant dishes also apply to the incomes of those far higher up the education ladder, such as molecular biologists and computer engineers.

Many people appear to believe that extensive schooling insulates workers from the iron law of supply and demand. A recent paper by Harvard economist George J. Borjas shows, however, that even for doctorate-level researchers, "the supply-demand textbook model is correct after all." Unlike most economic analysts, Borjas focused not on what foreign-born scientists add to the scientific enterprise or society as a whole but on what their presence costs individual American scientists. For postdocs and other early-career Ph.D.s in a number of fields, unfortunately, the picture he paints isn't pretty. . .

Follow the links above for the entire article.

Bob