May 28, 1997 Arthur Hu 12422 107th Pl NE Kirkland WA 98034 206-749-2682 To Editor Asian Week: A Wolf in Chinese Immigrant's Clothing Today, there is a new war on immigrant rights, much like the one a century ago that lead to total exclusion of Chinese immigration. Most of the fight has been directed at blatant "white" nativists like Pat Buchanan, David Duke, or even Republican governor Pete Wilson. But a key voice in opposing immigration has strangely escaped any organized criticism. His prolific research reports and articles consistently target the Chinese and other immigrant communities as a threat to other Americans. He has been widely cited on the internet, published in the notorious National Review, The Public Interest, major newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, and even Asian Week. Yet this man is a respected computer science professor, a registered Democrat of Jewish descent married to a Chinese immigrant wife who prides himself on his Chinese language ability and his commitment to diversity. Professor Norman Matloff of the University of California at Davis has lead the way to blame immigrants by painting an elaborate illusion of a grim career picture for software engineers. He says that immigrants like the Chinese don't create jobs, they only hire other ethnic immigrants. He claims almost none of Silicon Valley's innovations were made by immigrants, and that they lower wages. He makes the incredible claim that no matter how disproportionate, immigrants and the companies they founded or helped build, whether Yahoo, Cirrus, Microsoft or Intel have harmed, not advanced the industry. Yet the bottom line is that all available data show that immigrants have made things better, not worse for everybody else. Although many argue that immigrants reduce jobs, the entire US economy has created two jobs for each immigrant since the 1970s, enough to cover them, new births, and a labor participation rate that is at a new high with increasing numbers of women and minorities entering the labor force. Some. 19.7 million jobs were created in the decade from 1983-93 alone, over twice the 8,948,475 immigrants who arrived during 1983-92 No career field has grown faster than the 50% hiring growth every 5 years in software. Software and computer engineer salaries are higher and rising faster than any other comparable degree in every survey, and unemployment for programmers is less than 1 percent. Innovations of companies like Intel, Microsoft, and Yahoo have created a new era of American high tech dominance, and ushered in a new information age dominated by personal and network computing for all Chinese immigrants founded Computer Associates, the 2nd largest software company in the world, and Kingston, which gave out $75,000 bonuses. These companies create jobs for all races. Most immigrant groups told the Electrical Engineering Times survey that they earned from $65,000 to $80,000, more than average of $63,000. The National Science Foundation found that foreign born engineers with an MS were paid $41,400, $1,100 more than natives. The Center for Immigration Studies found that foreign-born Chinese earned $39,691, 8% more than native-born whites. Matloff's' survey is flawed when it equalizes for education, but immigrants are more educated. No metro area has higher pay than San Jose when natives are more likely to be working in lower paying cities. The computer industry pays the highest salaries. Washington leads states in high tech pay, even though 30%-40% of Microsoft's newest engineers are immigrants, and average pay runs from $60,000 up to $135,00 with stock. No career field generates more secondary jobs than the 3 to 5 jobs created by software hires. Matloff's report says the Chinese and other immigrants are more harmful than innovative. He says they are "under- represented" with respect to "significant innovations", and awards from professional societies like ACM. His study claims rote-based Asian educational values render them culturally incapable of innovation. Yet among all ethnic cultures, only the Jews can rival the Asians in college degrees, engineering and science participation rates, high math test scores, and science awards. No other body of anti-immigration thought makes direct attacks on the talents and credentials of Chinese by laboriously shooting down the validity of any of the many statistics or companies where Chinese and other immigrants clearly lead other groups as a measure of ability and accomplishment. Matloff blames immigrants as the reason his mid-career friend "Cindy" can't find a programming job. But after Cindy got downsized from the defence industry, Matloff readily concedes her resume lacks any of the experience or skills demanded by employers. Matloff says employers are too specific in job requirements. But in order to prove that people with no marketable skills are better than immigrants with killer resumes and greater advanced degrees, he sets out to prove that NO job requirements are valid. Matloff boldly claims that any programmer can be productive in any technology in days if not weeks with no formal education, degrees or specific experience. Any job requirements like bachelor's or masters degrees, C++ or Java, Win95 or UNIX, graphics, internet, routing or database skills can be filled by any programmer without any of these "over" qualifications. Stopping immigration would "force" people like Cindy to be hired instead. Yet every hiring manager knows this is complete nonsense. Even if every immigrant were deported tomorrow, the jobs would (and most did) go to natives with a better skills match, not Cindy. In an industry that adds jobs at ten times the rate of population increase, it is a lack of skills, not jobs that is hurting Cindy. Matloff's "Easy Money, Lost Traditions" (National Review Feb 1994 ) was the original source of the widely cited 50% Chinese immigrant elderly on welfare figure, and the basis for his testimony to Congress. Matloff shouts "welfare fraud" when many had sponsors who had "pledged" financial support. But the "pledge" was never an enforceable ban on welfare use, and eligibility loopholes large enough to drive a busload of elderly Chinese through made most if not all of these cases perfectly legal. Ironically, Matloff is angered that naturalized citizens escaped the cut due to constitutional limitations. He has privately admitted that stopping all elderly immigration might be the only final solution. But the real welfare fraud hinges on the fact that most immigrants are young adults. Asians and Hispanics have relatively few elderly, but many workers, with 3 times the ratio of working age persons to elderly retirees compared with the Euro-American population. The result is that immigrant populations are disproportionately paying into Social Security, but not collecting. If we count Social Security with other public assistance, the average non- Hispanic White household collected $2,486 in 1989 compared with only $1,500 for Asian or Hispanics. Economists like MIT's Lester Thurow recognize that Social Security is really a welfare program where today's workers are paying for retirees more than they ever put in, and immigrants are a key to the economic growth needed to keep the system solvent. Equity would be to allow immigrants with working sponsors to collect Social Security, not kick them off a miserly income-tested SSI payment. Prof Matloff `s vigorous efforts are harming not only the Chinese, but other immigrants, and cynically raises racial tensions by pitting immigrants against American Blacks. His opposition to hiring more software engineers endangers the future of high tech as the new engine of jobs and wealth. Such a man should be not be allowed to hide in the shadows when he cloaks himself as an advocate for high tech, the American Chinese and other minorities. My immigration database site: (which links to matloff's site) Arthur Hu arthurhu@halcyon.com Kirkland WA