\doc\web\97\04\mattrept.txt From: dchiang@juno.com [ Well, Matloff is back again. Unfortunately, Mark Kirkorian of the CIS only distributes the one-sided views of self proclaimed xenophobes like Norm Matloff. At least Pat Buchannan known for his anti-immigration views on CNN is fair enough to invite guests from both sides of the issue for a debate. It is an injustice that Mark Kirkorian publishes Norm Matloff's slanted and biased editorials as if it came from a reputable media publication reporting on the Immigration Conference. - Dave Chiang ] From: msk@us.net (Mark Krikorian) To: CISNEWS@cis.org Subject: Immigration of scientists and engineers Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 07:29:48 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <199705301129.HAA12769@us.net> [For CISNEWS subscribers: Below is a concise account of a recent workshop on the immigration of scientists and engineers by one of the participants, Norman Matloff. Norm is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis and an active proponent of immigration reform. The address for his very extensive and useful Web site is: ftp://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/Index.html My apologies to those who have already received Norm's report. -- Mark Krikorian] Boston University workshop summary On May 21 Professor Bob Lucas of Boston University hosted a Workshop on the Migration of Foreign Scientists and Engineers, funded by the Sloan Foundation. About 20 people participated. Following is a summary of what were, from my personal point of view, some of the most interesting points in the conference. I have run this by a couple of other participants for accuracy, but again it is mainly my own assessment, incorporating my own biases. So again, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list by any means. Of the speakers I've chosen to summarize here, I am listing them in alphabetical order. Avron Barr of the Stanford Computer Industry Project gave his usual presentation, claiming a huge software labor shortage. (SCIP's Shirley Tessler was also present but said virtually nothing, for some reason.) Nothing new, except for an interesting personal item Avron shared at the beginning of his talk: he spoke in the afternoon, following excellent, actually rather moving, presentations by the two young scientists (see below) who said that the influx of foreign nationals was exacerbating awful job markets in science. Avron surprised me by saying that those presentations reminded him of a very dark period in his own life, when he was pursuing a doctorate in physics in the 1970s and couldn't find a job. My (silent) reaction was, "Well, so now Avron sees that there are human costs here after all." Richard Freeman of Harvard touched on a number of points in a very interesting talk. Among them was the charge (sometimes explicit, often implicit) that reform of policy on skilled immigration amounts to protectionism. My own answer to that has always been that immigration policy as a whole is protectionist, though most people don't realize it; we screen out applicants for immigration who have TB, for instance, to *protect* those who are already here. Freeman noted that even the most conservative, free-marketeer of his fellow economists rush to join a union when their own jobs are threatened, as in the recent case of the University of Minnesota's move toward abolishing (or at least greatly weakening) tenure. So much for free-marketism! Freeman presented data on rates of increase in professional salaries over a 20-year time span. He found that the rates of increase were higher in professions in which there were fewer immigrants. As usual, this must be taken with a grain of salt, since lots of factors could be at work, but it certainly is thought-provoking. Richard Lester of MIT noted that he had served for six years on a committee at MIT on the role of foreign students. Though the committee had recognized the need for MIT to reach out internationally, in the end they decided that MIT's primary responsibility should be to the U.S. Apparently this was meant to imply a somewhat lesser role for foreign students, though this wasn't really clear. I discussed my usual points: we are overproducing holders of MS and Ph.D. degrees in computer science; that universities want graduate students in order to maintain money and power, rather than for societal or industrial benefit; that there is no software labor shortage, just an artificial shortage produced by employers overdefining jobrequirements; that many (but not all) employers in Silicon Valley pay foreign nationals lower salaries. I also expressed my frustration at the focus given in such workshops on the salary issue. It is a "sexy" issue which people love to debate, but in my view it is obscuring the larger issue, which is an unwarranted employer insistence on hiring people with specific software skills (which causes more foreign nationals to be hired, since the number of domestic workers having the specified laundry list of skills is bound to be small). It is my position that if one looks carefully at the data, takes into account the salient variables and so on, it is very clear statistically that on average the foreign nationals in Silicon Valley are paid less. I urged participants to read my long report on my Web site for details. But at the same time, I said that in a way I regret ever bringing up the salary issue, because, again, it distracts attention from the main issue of the artificial labor "shortage." By the way, concerning the latter, I distributed copies of programming job ads from the San Jose Mercury News, each one of which had a long (and in my view very unreasonable) list of requirements. Michael Teitelbaum presented a lot of interesting data, and also caused something of a stir by displaying Baghwati's quote that a glut in science and engineering was desirable. I say a "stir," because although most people present seemed to find Baghwati's remark preposterous, Charles Keely did speak up in favor of gluts! He said that the glut of scientists allows "podunk" universities (his word) to get top research professors. Actually, this is a point I had predicted privately someone would bring up. My view on this is that we have to ask just who is benefitting from the presence of good researchers are such schools. Such schools are generally nonresearch anyway, and one has to ask whether the costs (such as driving young domestic talent out of the science field) is worth it. Keely, by the way, was quite combative at lunch, dismissing out of hand alleged abuses of the H-1B process by DEC. Larry Richards recounted some of his own experiences as a computer programmer which inspired him to seek reform of H-1B laws. He also noted, as an ironic contrast to the mathematician present, Eric (see below), that he (Larry) had gone into computer science as a way of avoiding math. :-) This was a great (though unintended) answer to Avron Barr, Harris Miller of ITAA, Stuart Anderson, etc. who keep saying that we hve a software labor shortage because Americans can't do math! (I have found that claim to be particularly irritating. One does not use math in writing software (unless writing software for math applications), and Miller et al are simply preying on American guilt that Korean sixth-graders do better on math tests than their American counterparts. There may well be cause for concern there, but it has nothing to do with software.) Among other things, Larry suggested that a good research project would be to investigate how long H-1B people stay with their sponsoring employers after they get their green cards (not long, presumably, further illustrating the "indentured servant" nature of the H-1B visa). Eric Weinstein gave a presentation which was both humorous and quite effective. He is a young Ph.D. in math who is currently at MIT but has no permanent job. He is doing research which is important enough to attract government funding, and this is supporting him for the time being, but his long-term prospects are uncertain at best. Though the job market for math Ph.D.'s has been poor for quite some time, clearly the influx of foreign mathematicians, made quite easy by a loophole in the law, is greatly exacerbating the problems. Eric's case shows just how little our society cares about encouraging its youth to pursue careers in science, and warns of an increasingly ruthless, bottom-line attitude on the part of academia toward its employees. Bob Zacher's situation in physics is not too different from Eric's in math. Bob emphasized that 50% of Ph.D.'s in physics wind up in nonphysics careers within just a few years, 25% of them in nontechnical careers. (Mark Regets of NSF gave figures far lower than these, once again showing that immigration statistics are treacherous at best.) Bob noted that in the 10 years that a physicist spends as a student and post-doc, he/she is foregoing (conservatively) $300,000-$400,000 in income, only to wind up not getting a job in physics anyway. Bob (and Eric) also noted that they are afraid to speak out about the immigration problem in their fields, and that science can hardly thrive in an atmosphere of fear. Norm -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Krikorian, executive director Center for Immigration Studies 1522 K St. N.W., Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005-1202 (202) 466-8185 (phone); (202) 466-8076 (fax) msk@cis.org http://www.cis.org/cis -------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- End forwarded message ----------