George Will laments how U.S. law keeps educated immigrants out of the United States.
Two-thirds of doctoral candidates in science and engineering in U.S. universities are foreign-born. But only 140,000 employment-based green cards are available annually, and 1 million educated professionals are waiting — often five or more years — for cards. Congress could quickly add a zero to the number available, thereby boosting the U.S. economy and complicating matters for America’s competitors.
Suppose a foreign government had a policy of sending workers to America to be trained in a sophisticated and highly remunerative skill at American taxpayers’ expense, and then forced these workers to go home and compete against American companies. That is what we are doing because we are too generic in defining the immigrant pool.
riptide says:
Well, one fundamentally flawed assumption is that foreign PhD students are getting all the benefits – in fact, the labs that they work in are gaining as least as much from their PhD research.
Secondly, H1B doesn’t apply (or practically doesn’t apply, at least) at the university level. Foreign postdocs just have to convince someone to hire them, and the visa details just sort themselves out. That’s why many foreigners wind up doing their postdocs here – which eventually ends up adding a lot of value to the economy.
June 26, 2008, 6:32 amJ. Aldridge says:
I like to learn where this hidden, invisible power that says congress can authorize foreigners to enter state jurisdictions to enroll in schools or work. The supreme court once said they had the power, but refused to say where this power could be found.
The court ever heard of the alien and sedition act?
June 26, 2008, 6:50 amK. Dackson says:
After attending engineering professional society meetings for over 20 years where the vast majority of presenters were foreign grad students (regardless of what the program said), I can tell you that most of the newly minted PhDs want jobs in academia.
There are a few exceptions, but since most companies do not want the hassle/bother of sponsoring for the H1B visa, most of the American students are the ones going for the jobs in industry.
Benefits for the labs – don’t make me laugh. The main beneficiaries are the Professors who get government grants to study their own little corner of the universe they have staked out for themselves. Grad students – and to a large extent post docs – are a source of cheap indentured labor, comitted to 3 to 8 years of toiling in a lab for room, tuition, and a small stipend (taxable, of course).
June 26, 2008, 7:47 amcorneille1640 says:
Is educating foreign students so much at taxpayer expense as Mr. Will suggests? Granted, they attend public universities, but unlike, say, in-state students, they would pay higher tuition. At least, I assume such to be the case. At any rate, I’d appreciate it if someone who knows more about this than I do would enlighten me.
June 26, 2008, 7:59 amdarelf says:
IMO, this part of immigration is exactly what US citizens want. It may seem a bit counterintuitive, or whatever, but it is really the only part of the immigration program that is actually accomplishing its goals.
Now, if we could just get every other class of immigrant to simply “sign the guest book” on the way in, we would be a lot further down the road.
June 26, 2008, 7:59 amTeegraff says:
The US immigration system is completely broken. It gratifies US residents to demonize outsiders, but in the end, your xenophobic compulsions will only hurt yourselves.
Which sucks, because I love America, want to live there, and can’t.
June 26, 2008, 8:03 amcorneille1640 says:
J. Aldridge,
I don’t quite understand your point. Doesn’t congress have the prerogative to regulate immigration, that is, who may and may not enter the United States? Once someone enters the US, I suppose any given state jurisdiction might be able to state who may and may not attend its public universities, subject, I suppose, to equal protection concerns in the 14th amendment.
I also don’t quite understand your reference to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Those acts, or at least the ones dealing with citizenship and immigration (not so much the sedition act) if anything, were an exercise of Congress’s right to regulate immigration and could serve as an early precedent of Congress exercising such a right. (I am of course leaving aside the very real personal liberties concerns that those acts raise.)
June 26, 2008, 8:04 amcorneille1640 says:
Teegraff,
You are undoubtedly right that one purpose of immigration restriction is to “gratify xenophobia.” But xenophobia and demonization of outsiders is not the only reason people support immigration restriction. Restrictionists have rational reasons as well.
An example is the argument that immigrants compete with American labor. Now, there is much wrong with this argument (maybe in the long run a large labor pool is better for the economy…I really don’t know) and I don’t think I agree with this argument in toto. Still, it is rational and not motivated purely by xenophobia.
June 26, 2008, 8:10 amRichard Nieporent says:
corneille1640 you are correct. Universities love foreign students because they pay the full tuition. Usually it is the government of their home country that actually pays the bills.
June 26, 2008, 8:14 amAnonperson says:
It is true that many foreign students pay full tuition, but the ones that we really want to keep mostly get financial aid.
June 26, 2008, 8:27 amTeegraff says:
Corneille, I agree with you, and I don’t mean to argue that xenophobia is the only motivating impulse behind immigration restriction, but it certainly is the most powerful force driving policy IMHO.
The US immigration bureaucracy forces employers and applicants to go through a silly pantomime that purports to check whether a job is being taken from an American. Employers pretend to advertise for native-born applicants, and the bureaucracy pretends to verify that Americans have been given a shot. Phony delays throttle the applications, and the bureaucracy earns extra scratch by letting employers pay a fee to expedite their cases.
It’s insane. And it encourages illegal immigration. Who wants to go through such a Kafka-esque process?
June 26, 2008, 8:31 amejo says:
good idea, more educated immigrants not from third world countries that border with us. actually adding to society, not sucking up more resources from government. I think we can all handle our lawns looking a little more ratty if such rationality ruled the day.
June 26, 2008, 8:39 amBrett Bellmore says:
There’s no accident about this: The elites make these rules, and they’re bringing in as many people to work for them, and as few to compete with them, as they can get away with.
June 26, 2008, 8:41 amLarryA says:
Will makes a good point about educated workers.
OTOH it’s just as valid to wonder why we’re restricting the “immigration” of folks who are eager to enter as a temporary worker to pick fruit, wash dishes, harvest Christmas trees, and do all the other menial jobs all of us want done but few of us want to do.
Back in the 70s I had immigrants in my infantry platoon. They claimed it was easier to earn citizenship with a hitch in the Army, including a year getting shot at in Vietnam, than try to navigate the INS process.
June 26, 2008, 8:41 amSam Draper says:
Obviously, the purpose of immigration is to keep wages down for lower class whites and minorities, not to lower wages for upper class professionals. We need cheap gardners for doctors more than we need cheap doctors for gardners.
June 26, 2008, 8:45 amBlue says:
A rational US immigration system would look like Australia’s–points for youth, English ability, education, and work experience. Such a system, if put to an up or down vote of the people of this country, would easily prevail.
Unfortunately, the elite of both parties don’t want that system. The Republicans want cheap manual labor and the Democrats want future welfare recipients and voters. So we end up with a policy that is the exact opposite of what we need.
Pathetic, but what can you do?
June 26, 2008, 8:46 amJ. Aldridge says:
corneille1640:
If congress was granted the power over who can, or cannot enter the states, wouldn’t that power been spelled out instead of leaving it to be assumed? Didn’t all the states have their own immigration commissioners in Europe? Didn’t states have constitutional provisions for regulating immigration matters within the state? Was treaties always carefully crafted around the sovereignty of the States when it came to aliens, leaving the laws of the states over aliens as controlling and not the treaty itself?
Didn’t Thomas Jefferson say congress had “no power over them [aliens] has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual states.”
Madison said: “[T]he local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority is subject to them within its own sphere. In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one, since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all objects.”
June 26, 2008, 8:50 amsbron says:
Some problems with admitting more foreign national engineers and scientists.
1. This really discourages domestic students from going to graduate school, as they see the downward pressure on salaries resulting from both H1-Bs and permanent visa grantees.
2. Domestic white males in particular are already discouraged from pursuing science and engineering careers due to the preferences in scholarships and research assistantships granted to women and underrepresented groups. Unfortunately, a not insignificant portion of foreign national Ph.Ds, especially from emerging/third world nations harbor anti-white attitudes. The result is that white male domestic students would rather get a B.S. from the University of Phoenix, than deal with the hostile enviroment at say UC Berkeley.
2. Admitting skilled foreign nationals from a few Asian nations, while admitting large numbers of unskilled immigrants from Latin America sets the stage for future ethnic and class conflict. At some point, Latino politicians will realize that more than 40% of University of California public university students for example are of Asian descent, and will turn their wrath from “Anglos” towards the latter group. As Latinos perceive themselves shut out from engineering and science careers by green-carded Asian Ph.Ds, they will increase their demands for racial preferences in hiring and University admissions.
3. A significant percentage of foreign national Ph.Ds are not necessarily anti-American, but are not pro-American either. Immigrants from India for example, seem to conflate white Americans with British colonialism and sometimes bring their own caste prejudices with them. Too many immigrants just see America as a paycheck, and not a nation with borders, its own culture which should be respected, and its own set of values centered in individual rights.
4. In the worst case, highly-skilled immigrants are overtly hostile to the U.S. Sami Al-Arian, a computer engineering professor, is a good example. This does not mean Muslim immigrants should be automatically excluded, but they should be carefully vetted to exclude those who are too intolerant of other faiths and who have actual conections to terrorist groups.
June 26, 2008, 9:00 amRoger Schlafly says:
We already have a surplus of science and engineering PhDs. Why would we import more? That just depresses salaries, and deters Americans from entering those fields.
June 26, 2008, 9:00 amautolykos says:
Teegraf, you obviously weren’t around for the debate about how many foreigners would move to the US if no immigration restrictions existed. The consensus among the more rational posters was that the number would easily reach the 9 figures within just a handful of years. That level of immigration would potentially have extremely detrimental effects on the social welfare system, pollution, congestion, employment rates, crime rates, etc.
Once you’ve accepted that premise, the debate is only about how many people are let in and what the process is like. Nobody’s going to claim the US system is perfect, but to claim that it’s a result of xenophobia is baseless and unproductive.
June 26, 2008, 9:00 amFredness says:
Auto, so you’re saying 100,000,000+ foreigners (“nine figures”) would move to the USA in “just a handful of years” if immigration restrictions were removed. You’re the one sounding a little irrational, if you ask me.
The choice is not between the status quo or zero restrictions. What people are asking for is a more rational, less fear-based system that, as other posters have suggested, aligns America’s economic interests with potential applicants.
The current system is not accomplishing this goal. How many business leaders have gone before Congress to beg for reform along these lines?
And yet, the policy narrative continues to skew toward talk of invasion, of illegals vaulting fences and infiltrating America, of chaos and threats of terrorism, you name it.
You may not like accusations of xenophobia but they still stick. Let go of the fear and embrace the world, or change will pass you by and the mantle of leadership will pass to more open societies.
June 26, 2008, 9:18 amsbron says:
One more point, (sorry I misnumbered my points above.) George Will complains about the foreign-born Ph.Ds we are losing. But how many Jack Kilbys (born in Kansas) are we losing by discouraging them from even going into science or engineering due to our preferentialist and open-borders policies.
June 26, 2008, 9:43 amautolykos says:
1. I’m not going to reopen the debate about how many people would come to the US, but I think 100,000,000 is a conservative number. In the other debate it was noted that a substantial portion of the populations of Mexico and Puerto Rico (two countries that have fairly easy access to the US). Don’t remember the exact numbers, but I think it was upwards of 20%. I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t be true of India (a country where English is widespread and the standard of living is much, much lower than that of Mexico), China or Brazil.
2. I don’t know why you’re imputing the false choice of status quo or zero restrictions to me. I never said people can’t look at and improve the current system, but no matter what system you have there’s going to have to be people kept out (otherwise you’re talking about zero restrictions).
3. Illegal immigration occurs almost totally outside the system and is a red herring (at best). Frankly, elimination of illegal immigration and relaxation of immigration policy generally are not only not mutually exclusive, but go hand in hand.
4. Again, I know that people like to sling allegations of racism/xenophobia when they can’t make a rational argument, but it’s really baseless and unproductive. There are a lot of rational reasons why Americans don’t want 100,000,000+ new citizens and to impute some kind of negative purpose does nothing to address those reasons or help your argument.
June 26, 2008, 9:47 amJohn Armstrong says:
sbron: have you been to Berkeley? Or any other major math/science/tech research university? The foreign graduate students you find are far more friendly towards America than their home countries might lead you to believe.
I know it’s just anecdotal evidence, but in my Ph.D. program just among the Iranian students were:
- one guy who was relieved to be able to play chess out in the open (he learned illicitly back home)
- a Zoroastrian who enjoyed the freedom of religion he found here
- one who took to America strongly enough he could drink me under the table
All of these students lived in Iran up until coming to grad school here.
It’s probably different over in the humanities, but the marker of value in a math, science, or technical field is who does good work. We don’t care where they came from as long as they do good work, and they by and large don’t care about our backgrounds either.
autolykos: Puerto Rico is part of the US…
June 26, 2008, 9:59 amDave Ruddell says:
As a former foriegn PhD student in the sciences (Materials Science), I can assure you that I did not pay full-tuition at the state school I attended (UNC Chapel Hill). In fact, I paid no tuition at all, just fees. And when I was done, I returned to my homeland, where I still am. I generally figured that I would return anyway though; the immigration process never really entered in to my decision.
(Funny story; a friend of mine from Little Rock was disturbed to hear that I had a shorter drive home for Christmas break than she did; 15 hours for her vs. 13 hours for me to Toronto).
June 26, 2008, 9:59 amDave Ruddell says:
As a former foriegn PhD student in the sciences (Materials Science), I can assure you that I did not pay full-tuition at the state school I attended (UNC Chapel Hill). In fact, I paid no tuition at all, just fees. And when I was done, I returned to my homeland, where I still am. I generally figured that I would return anyway though; the immigration process never really entered in to my decision.
(Funny story; a friend of mine from Little Rock was disturbed to hear that I had a shorter drive home for Christmas break than she did, given that I lived in a different country; 15 hours for her vs. 13 hours for me to Toronto).
June 26, 2008, 10:01 amMnZ says:
autolykos, not to nitpick, but there are no legal barriers to Puerto Ricans entering the United States. (Puerto Ricans already have U.S. citizenship.)
June 26, 2008, 10:01 amwillyg says:
Just a little FYI from a biomedical engineering grad student who was raised in San Diego:
There is no real in-state/ out-of-state tuition issue. In science and engineering, most students have their tuition paid, as well as a stipend. This is paid through grants which largely come from government or the university (i.e. from the government after a layer of processing). So, yes, we are funding students who will return to other countries.
But keep in mind that being a grad student kinda sucks. You’re vastly underpaid for your expertise (I treat it as an investment in my future earnings) and they have an incentive to delay your graduation to keep the talented and low-paid workers around. So, we basically have a highly-skilled guest-worker program, but the government picks up a large portion of the tab.
On the immigration front, we basically have millions (at least) people who want to come here. Instead of picking the smartest engineers, best artists, savviest businessmen, we just take whoever can fit in the trunk of a Camry heading across the San Ysidro crossing.
June 26, 2008, 10:01 amWhatever says:
This list of comments shows two things. First, there are strong feelings on immigration and immigration policy. Second, people who have little or no understanding of graduate education in the sciences will share their misinformed views and arguments.
A few commenters assert that graduate preferences for increasing women and minorities and increased competition from foreign students discourages white American males from going into the sciences. What exactly is your evidence of this discouragement? And what field do these white American males go into that is not touched by foreign competition? It can’t be that they become factory workers or accountants or lawyers, those professions are feeling the heat from overseas competition. All my white male friends who are in corporate engineering jobs are feeling pressure from India, Korea, Taiwan, Ireland, Isreal and other countries with strong technology centers. What facts, anecdotes or stats support your assertions? I thought the increase in competition at the graduate level improved the market for engineering and science talent at the output end. Are you saying we don’t want competition at the graduate level?
June 26, 2008, 10:31 amlibarbarian says:
You are obviously not familiar with anything you just talked about.
Do you just make this stuff up or are you just regurgitating nonsense told to you by someone else?
June 26, 2008, 10:44 amRandy R. says:
“There are a lot of rational reasons why Americans don’t want 100,000,000+ new citizens and to impute some kind of negative purpose does nothing to address those reasons or help your argument.”
Well, seeing as how many of the cities of America are being DE-populated, like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Syracuse and other rust belt cities, perhaps adding more people might actually be a good thing.
June 26, 2008, 11:00 am12345 says:
Dey took ‘er jobs!!
It astonishes me how afraid people in this country are of competition. If foreign-born people are somehow besting us, the solution is to step up OUR game, not create all kinds of artifical barriers that never really work anyways and continuing to suck compared to everyone else. Everyone benefits from some healthy competition, even if there are some minor growing pains that must be overcome. I’d rather have a bright, foreign doctor operating on me, rather than a less competent American. Wouldn’t all of you? And even if YOU wouldn’t, shouldn’t I at least have the option to choose?
June 26, 2008, 11:02 amautolykos says:
Correct, I sloppily described it as a country when I should have described it as a territory. Don’t think it affects the point, but good catch nonetheless.
Yes, which is why we have an immigration policy that lets people come into this country (though it’s not like current immigrants are flocking to rust belt towns either). Again, it’s not a choice between no immigration and immigration without resctriction.
June 26, 2008, 11:05 amJ. F. Thomas says:
George Will, of course is completely wrong. The problem is not that we do not let technical students stay in the country it is that this country is hostile to technological innovation.
Industry in this country has been taken over by bean-counters who care only about maximizing short term profits at the expense of long term stability and innovation. There is no shortage of technical workers in this country because corporations would rather off-shore technical work than pay engineering and science graduates what they are worth. The H1B and temporary visa programs are abused to suppress wages and facilitate wholesale transfer of technical expertise overseas.
June 26, 2008, 11:42 amautolykos says:
There’s truth to that, but it’s not necessarily germane to the US. I think to some extent it’s true in all countries (it’s certainly true in Mexico and Brazil, to a considerably larger extent than the US). My reaction is the same as yours (I’d rather have more talented people coming here and producing the types of products and services talented people produce), but then that’s easy for me. I’m in a profession (law) that has little to no risk of foreign competition. I’d probably feel different if I was a computer programmer.
June 26, 2008, 11:42 amA. Zarkov says:
Does George Will seriously think the we produce 140,000 science and engineering PhDs per year? The number in 2000 was 29,951 according to NBER. We would we even need that many?
The one million “educated professionals” are not PhDs; they are Bachelors level in the EB-3 category. The PhDs are in the EB-1 and EB-2 categories and there the wait is short, zero in fact for EB-1 as of September 2007.
Another important fact to remember is the vast majority of foreign tech workers are nothing special, just ordinary workers getting ordinary salaries– they are far from the “best and the brightest.” Those are in EB-1 where there is no wait.
George Will’s article is astonishingly ignorant, and I’m surprised that Adler would give it any credibility at all.
Credit for the above facts should go to Norm Matloff, professor of computer science at UC Davis who has published extensively on this matter.
June 26, 2008, 7:14 pmRyan Waxx says:
Unwise. Restrictions on immigration will not help programmers much – their job can simply be moved overseas with a minimum of effort, compared to many other industries.
People may disagree weather the jobs that have to be done here might see some benefit from protectionism, but the ones that can be done just as well overseas will not benefit in any significant way.
June 26, 2008, 7:41 pmA. Zarkov says:
“Unwise. Restrictions on immigration will not help programmers much – their job can simply be moved overseas with a minimum of effort,…”
This is another myth as the effort is far from minimal. Many programming jobs have to be done here because the project requires face-to-face contact, supervision and coordination. Many employers found the savings they hoped for never materialized. If it were really true that virtually all programming work were easily outsourced you would not have Bill Gates and others lobbying Congress hard to get the H1-B visa caps raised. They would simply have outsourced the work already. Immigrants and H1-Bs do compete with Americans for this kind of work. They do lower American programming salaries.
June 26, 2008, 9:30 pmA. Zarkov says:
“Everyone benefits from some healthy competition, even if there are some minor growing pains that must be overcome. I’d rather have a bright, foreign doctor operating on me, rather than a less competent American.”
The standards at most foreign medical schools are lower than the US, especially south of the border. While anyone would rather have a better doctor, flooding America with less competent doctors is certainly not going to raise the quality of medicine. It would if we only admitted the super competent ones, but we those are already covered by special immigrant category.
June 26, 2008, 10:04 pmDan Weber says:
Domestic white males in particular are already discouraged from pursuing science and engineering careers due to the preferences in scholarships and research assistantships granted to women and underrepresented groups.
Oh, c’mon. Science fields are still male-dominated. Probably because women aren’t dumb enough to try for a career in academia.
As a member of the professional class who would have to “compete” with these educated foreigners, I say bring ‘em on.
June 27, 2008, 9:25 amDick King says:
First, the demand for engineers is highly elastic, and will expand to occupy just about any reasonably foreseeable amount of talent.
More importantly [since the elasticity point could reasonably be disputed], the work product of engineers is highly transportable. If you believe that foreign-born but American-trained engineers will depress wages, they will do so whether they go back to their home countries or not … so for the mercantilists in the audience it behooves us to have the profits from their work product available in this country.
The limiting resource is no doubt the capacity of top-flight universities, many of which are located in the US. Short of burning this up by admitting unqualified people, that means that the supply of engineering talent is pretty much determined by the supply of universities, and cannot be altered by immigration policies, unless of course a highly qualified foreign-born candidate is rejected for a marginally qualified American.
-dk
June 27, 2008, 2:30 pmCareless says:
<blockquote>
Well, seeing as how many of the cities of America are being DE-populated, like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Syracuse and other rust belt cities, perhaps adding more people might actually be a good thing.
</blockquote>
Why? Let those cities die. Even if you can provide some compelling interest in maintaining population levels in them, We don’t have a population shortage, we have a population distribution issue. Immigrants are famous for moving to big, thriving cities. You’re proposing a non-solution to fix a non-problem.
June 27, 2008, 2:34 pmA. Zarkov says:
“First, the demand for engineers is highly elastic,…”
Not true. If it were salaries would not be flat to decreasing. Do you understand what inelastic demand means?
“… foreign-born but American-trained engineers will depress wages, they will do so whether they go back to their home countries or not …”
Also not true. Engineering even more than programming often requires face-to-face contact, supervision and coordination. Many companies learned this the hard way thinking the lower wages abroad would be great only to find costs increased. Other countries also have a different work ethic.
“… that means that the supply of engineering talent is pretty much determined by the supply of universities,…”
Wrong yet again. Foreign universities produce a lot of workers that find jobs here with the H1-B program. Remember most of these jobs use fairly ordinary engineers doing ordinary work for ordinary wages. The super special people who are by definition rare have always been able to immigrate here. Moreover the US has a tremendous surplus of engineers who could work at an engineering jobs, and can’t because they have been replaced by a low wage H1-B. BTW industry would rather have an H1-B because he is captive and can’t switch jobs without resetting the green card clock.
Wrong on all counts– you’re batting a thousand.
June 27, 2008, 4:45 pmPuerto Rico says:
Someone should go back and study the history of when Puerto Ricans obtained US citizenship and the ability to immigrate freely to the US. It could serve as a guide to what would happen if or when other countries with similar economic situation where to find themselves in a similar situation.
June 28, 2008, 5:47 pmCornellian says:
I’d be inclined to let in pretty much anyone with a Ph.D. in a hard science, on 3 conditions:
1) It’s a real Ph.D., not the foreign equivalent of something you get for $20 over the Internet
2) It’s real science, so I’m talking physics, chemistry, engineering, microbiology etc., not sociology; and 3
3) The person is otherwise clean, i.e. no serious criminal record or anything like that.
June 29, 2008, 8:28 pm