Is Immigration a Middle Class Issue?
These days, it is hard to avoid seeing CNN and now CBS commentator Lou Dobbs campaigning as the self-appointed champion of the middle class. (And you thought it was us here at Warren Reports?) In recent months, Dobbs has tilted more and more away from issues like the decline of real wages and health care reform, and towards illegal immigration. This week, David Leonhardt of the New York Times called Dobbs on his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his habbit of playing fast and loose with the facts. Turns out that, contrary to Dobbs's wild-eyed rants ("that's incredible"), immigrants aren't bringing a new wave of leprosy to the USA, or filling our prisons.
But lets assume we can get the rhetoric and facts straight, as Dobbs tries to do here. The bigger question is whether the middle class has any real stake in this debate? ...
David Leonhardt, author of the NYT peice, says no.
There is no denying that this country’s immigration system is broken. But it defies belief — and a whole lot of economic research — to suggest that the problems of the middle class stem from illegal immigrants. Those immigrants, remember, are largely non-English speakers without a high school diploma. They have probably hurt the wages of native-born high school dropouts and made everyone else better off.
That sounds about right to me. I don't hear many middle class people complaining when their houses are being bricked, their lawns are being mowed, and their hotel rooms are being cleaned by immigrants.
In my view, there is a real middle class immigration issue, but it has nothing to do with Mexicans sneaking across the Texas border. Instead, we ought to be worried about the tens of thousands of immigrants that come to the USA as skilled workers, filling America's shortages of engineers, scientists, nurses and doctors. (By the way, there seems to be more controversy about the former two than the latter two.) This trend is neither good for the USA nor good for the countries that these people come from, since it fills our best jobs and steals their best and brightest, creating a third world 'brain drain'. (You think you have trouble getting a doctor's appointment here, try getting health care in Africa.)
The developing world's brain drain also has security implications for America, which also impacts our middle class, who has to pay for these wars. We need countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to become stable democracies. But, its hard to create a stable democracy out of street vendors and soliders; they need a robust middle class of skilled professionals, to provide critical services, economic development, and role models for the otherwise desperate youth. If we are exporting all the skilled professionals to provide botox treatments and video game technologies here in the USA, who is left in Iraq and Afghanistan?
So if skilled immigrants are the real immigration problem for the middle class, then what is the solution? The solution is obviously not to slam the doors to these high-tech immigrants -- we all like having high-tech companies based here in the USA and I like receiving health care by skilled professionals, thank you very much.
I hate to be a broken record around here, but the solution is: EDUCATION. We need to better prepare students in secondary and higher education to fill these high tech jobs. And there is no way to do that without serious investment in both increasing the quality of our educational systems and enhancing access to those programs, for populations that have traditionally been excluded, such as women, those from rural areas, and the poor. In short, we need more upwards mobility in America.
See this Brookings pdf: OPPORTUNITY IN AMERICA:DOES EDUCATION PROMOTE SOCIAL MOBILITY?.
(You might also be interested in Jason Spitalnick's post on Dobbs from December 2006.)
Aside from quoting one article as refutation to the argument that the middle class is hurt by illegal immigration--an article which only briefly touches on economics and ignores work by other economists (Borjas at Harvard)--shouldn't we be concerned about low wage workers being harmed? What harms one segment will harm us all at some point, even if it's true that the burdens placed on the public sector by illegals somehow do not harm the middle class.
There is also plenty of concern about importing high wage workers, especially among computer scientists and engineers. There seems to be plenty of evidence of companies like Microsoft importing high tech workers from other countries because they're cheaper and displacing those highly educated citizens who are in such "short supply".
May 30, 2007 7:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
1. The problem is not immigration per se. The problem is unplanned, uncontrolled numbers of people coming in - not knowing who and how many are going to "show up for dinner." It's largely a local issue. Most of the country does not experience the kind of community chaos that can accompany uncontrolled immigration.
Imagine you are a city planner trying to anticipate the infrastructure needs for a community. Same for school officials, police, fire, housing, health care. All that goes along with the orderly growth and maintenance of a healthy community.
When your town is flooded with undocumented arrivals, the quality of life for everybody suffers. I taught high school in such a community and there were a lot of problems. Problems that would have been ameliorated, I think, if the in-migration was more gradual, managed, etc.
2. Out-migration is not the solution to Mexico's or any other country's poverty. Why can't Mexico build a large, prosperous middle class of its own? It is a big country with a lot natural resources.
3. The newly elected president of Mexico, Calderon, can probably thank out-migration for his narrow win. Poor people (who left Mexico) would have likely supported the leftist candidate.
May 30, 2007 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry pal, but education (in capital letters or otherwise) is NOT the answer. Those of use who have advanced technical or scientific degrees and have spent years building careers in those fields and who are now being displaced by offshoring, the H1-B program and age discrimination know better and don't need some law student to tell us that our careers and lives are not being adversely affected by importation of skilled workers. This practice is not being driven by a labor shortage - it's being driven by empoyers' insatiable desire for cheap, exploitable labor to which they owe no long-term commitment.
The H1-B program is not being used to bring in workers with unique skills that can't be found in America. On the whole, it's being used to import workers with ordinary skills who can legally be hired in preference to and paid less than American technical workers and who have less freedom to change employers or demand better working conditions (see the many links at: Programmer's Guild Blog).
For information on how easily the H1-B program can be gamed by employers see
Abuse of H1-B program documented by the Portland Herald
See also:
Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage
Outsourcing America's technology and knowledge jobs
Yes, I do think Americans should be well educated and knowledgable about scientific and technical subjects. However, I also think it's important to get a reality check on the career prospects these fields offer. Ask any mid-career tech worker or any Ph.D. toiling in their second or third post-doc rotation if you're not convinced.
May 30, 2007 9:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. NYT journalists (and law students) don't have to worry about overseas competition, so they can sneer, call Americans uneducated, and be above it all.
Until their kid gets TB (convenient how the NYT ignored that), can't find a job as an engineer, or ends up in an overcrowded classroom due to the negative effects of mass migration, they can only look at one side of the evidence. I would love to see a survey of how many writers here live in neighborhoods affected by massive illegal migration.
May 30, 2007 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't count on JOC's assertion that journalists and lawyers are somehow immune from global competition. Grass is always greener in the other professions.
Consider Harvard Law School's graduation next month. Of the 700 or so graduates, 45 of the JDs will be from other countries and 150 will be LLM students from 60 countries, many of whom will take the bar in New York or other states, and some of whom will practice here. Many others will go back home and do work that would otherwise go to American law firms with offices there. You might also note that legal work, especially document review, is being outsourced to India.
Same for journalists -- quite a few prominent American journalists are foreign-born, and reporting is even being out sourced to India.
See e.g., www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pasadena11may11,1,7515978.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
May 30, 2007 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Looks like I struck a nerve with paceliner. As someone who spent 5.5 years studying for a PhD in philosophy, I sure understand the reality that some fields may have a glut of workers, rather than a shortage.
Apparently paceliner and I agree that skilled worker immigration is the problem for the middle class. Great.
My read of paceliner's comment (aside from the sneers) is that he a) denies there is really a shortage of workers in his field, and therefore b) thinks the solution is not education, but instead prefers closing the H1B program.
OK -- I acknowledged that there is controversy about whether there is really a shortage of scientists and engineers and provided a WSJ link to that effect. If there is no shortage here, then I'll agree that we don't need to import for that purpose or even train any more for that purpose right here. But neither paceliner or anyone else seems to deny the point about doctors and nurses. Thus, I think my fundamental argument stands.
May 30, 2007 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am neither an engineer or a computer scientist, but I have a bit of experience with law schools. I know few LLM students who stayed in the U.S., except maybe one or two who wanted to be professors here. The ones from Japan were generally paid to be there for business and went home and the Europeans were often there looking to go back and work for non-profits in human rights or something.
As for that whopping 45 out of 700, a) some will go back home, and b) that's nothing compared to the foreign born percents being imported for tech work. Surely you are familiar with law firms; what percent are foreign born? Very few, as you are bound to know. The big complaint against these firms (and law schools in general) is how white they are, etc. Unless you think they're all Europeans... And anecdotes for a "few" foreign journalists isn't comparable to the tech fields (and we can't open the LA article).
You were clearly talking about the "need" to educated in the tech fields. Given that you only mentioned those (and medical fields) I will guess you don't really think there is that much competition in yours.
Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because it really is greener.
Why no concern for the lower classes?
May 30, 2007 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sneering? I could take lessons from you pal.
Listen, last time I checked there was no guest worker program for philosophers or lawyers so I doubt you have much insight into the situation with tech workers. I didn't deny your assertions about doctors or nurses because I don't work in those fields and am not familiar with the data. That does not represent an endorsement of or agreement with your arguments with respect to those professions.
Just to be clear, I didn't merely assert that there is no shortage of workers in my field, I provided, you know, links to some actual data. They do teach you about data in philosophy and law don't they (sneer, sneer)?
And don't put words in my mouth. I did not call for closing the H1-B program. There is a legitimate need for allowing immigration of foreigners with unique skills on a limited basis. What I said is that the program is being misused to undercut American tech workers and is so poorly designed and regulated that employers do not even have to break the law to abuse the intent of the program. These programs need much more oversight and perhaps need to be reworked extensively to ensure that they do not undercut qualified American workers in order to provide cheap labor for Intel, Microsoft and Oracle, let alone the Indian-owned outsourcing firms that are among the largest users of the program.
Your fundamental points seem to be that high-tech immigrants are essential if we want high-tech industries in the US and that more education is necessary for Americans to compete for tech jobs. You said so explicitly in your original post. Both arguments are falsified, with respect to tech workers, by the information in the links I provided.
Educating more tech workers and scientists is useless unless people can build careers in those fields, be paid fairly and have job security. No one is going to go through the work and sacrifice necessary to become an engineer, scientist or software developer if they are going to have compete in a race to the bottom in salary, benefits, working conditions and job security. Your points are not valid because you've misstated the problem. It's not a matter of Americans lacking enough education or training to compete for technical and scientific jobs. The problem is that employers are not interested in employing them, particularly if they're over 40 and earn a salary commensurate with their skills and experience, when they can import all-but-indentured servants at a lower price with the full cooperation of the United States government.
May 30, 2007 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right - if they want to work here they'll have to take the bar exam. Law firms can't simply import them by the boatload as they can with tech workers (who don't have to pass anything equivalent to the bar exam).
May 30, 2007 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have no degrees; I am just another American worker trying to put food on the table. Trying to instill in my children the importance of education.
I can relate with certainty, about my experience with hordes of undocumented workers who flooded across the southern Border States.
As a young entrepreneur, I enjoyed landscaping, designs and projects. When I started my own business, I was thrilled at doing what I liked and could expect to be rewarded for all my hard work.
I quickly found out, that my competitors would resort to unfair labor practices.
Someone many years ago opened my eyes to the relationship of Time and money.
The question that made me aware, that I was in a losing battle, as a startup company.
Question? Would you rather have 1 man (myself) giving 100% of the effort, working the business. Or 100 people giving 1%?
I learned how unscrupulous businesses could hire undocumented workers by the hundreds, could undercut my bids for contracts, even at a loss, to drive me out of business, because I wouldn’t hire slaves.
A Government who ignored, an economic system based on slavery.
Reflecting on how Christians could turn a blind eye to the slave traders, who allowed Africans to come to America and do jobs Americans wouldn’t do, Pick the cotton, toil in the fields, sub par living standards, definitely low wages. Rationalizing that the poor slave was better off in America, despite his captivity.
And today how these poor Undocumented are coming to America, for a better life.
A President and followers who preach, Loudly, They do jobs, American workers won’t do. Sound Familiar? Will slaves do the jobs, Americans won’t do?
If Americans refuse to do a particular job, because of the low wage, or possible health effects. Are proponents saying, if Americans won't do the job, give it to some immigrant? He knows no better? They can be exploited?
How could America have allowed slavery to exist in the first place? Easily, look at how it is returning, Economic exploitation.
Our leaders, Political and economic, see one thing only. Bottom line. Oh, they believe in the Golden Rule alright. He that controls the gold, Rules.
May 31, 2007 3:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Glad to know that we can be pals, pacliner! Such a friendly guy!
Thanks for sending those links about the alleged non-shortage amongst techie workers. As far as I can tell, they basically cover the same territory that I acknowledged when I provided the link to the WSJ article in the first place.
As for all your irrelevant comments about lawyers -- you might pause to consider that the H1B visa covers them too. Moreover, while immigrants have to pass the bar, so do locals. So, I don't see how that somehow makes it more difficult for foreign lawyers to compete here than foreign techies. Whether techies and lawyers have different barriers to entry is irrelevant, since techies and lawyers aren't competing with each other.
Glad to see that you'd rather not close the H1B visa program but would rather "rework it extensively" whatever that means. What do you have in mind here, in terms of practical enforcement?
When you say, that my "fundamental points seem to be that high-tech immigrants are essential if we want high-tech industries in the US", you missed it. My fundamental point is that if we want to keep high tech industries in the US, we have to high tech WORKERS, regardless of whether they are home grown or immigrants. (One of the reasons is that such companies create jobs at all levels, not just for the middle class.) That's why I recommend that we train more Americans to fill those jobs. If that leads to a general levelling of wages globally, then I think that is a necessary consequence of the information age. I haven't figured out how to prevent it. Have you?
May 31, 2007 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I feel no obligation to be friendly or deferential to anyone who is reinforcing a false and damaging mythology about employment practices in my profession. This is particularly so when the individual HAS NO EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER in that field, uses sloppy reasoning and passes off reading newspapers as primary research.
To a dilletante like you, this is just an academic exercise. To me, it's my livlihood.
From your original post:
In that statement you clearly linked importation of foreign tech workers to the viability of high-tech companies in the US.
You also said with respect to labor shortages:
Yes, you provideed a link to Sharon Begley's WSJ article (which I had previously read and commended Ms. Begley on when it was originally published), but you only admit to a "controversy" over labor shortages when Dr. Matloff's work (which I cited in my initial reply) documents that the claim of labor shortages in the tech industry is a fraud.
You further state that:
which clearly implies that you agree with the notion that there is a current shortage of qualified American workers for these jobs and that the importation of foreign workers is justified until we can produce more of them.
Trying to claim after the fact that these implications do not follow from the words in your original post is weak.
In your most recent reply you say:
Well, which is it? You either agree think that there's a tech labor shortage or you don't. You can't pat yourself on the back for citing Ms. Begley's article, which echoes Dr. Matloff's points about the increases in computer science an engineering graduates in American universities and the small percentages of those who are actually even interviewed, let alone hired, by companies like Microsoft, and still argue that we aren't educating enough of them. Clearly, if employers can be as finicky as Ms. Begley and Dr. Matloff have documented, then there's no shortage.
As for wages being leveled, that's exactly what employers want, to reduce high-tech skills to commodity labor which is what happens when an oversupply of labor in a particular field is produced. If there's a genuine shortage, sure then more of that type of worker needs to be produced. However, when there's no shortage then it's irresponsible for government, universities and business to encourage students to prepare for careers in an already overcrowded field. And it's highly unethical to be running a flawed guest worker program to provide indentured labor in that field under conditions of an oversupply.
With respect to reforming the H1-B program what needs to be done is to ensure that the jobs preferentially go to qualified American citizens, that any foreign workers that do come here are actually paid equivalent wages (which the existing prevailing wage fiction does not) and have the same freedom to change employers as American workers do (and without prejudicing or impeding their progress towards obtaining a green card). I don't think that it would be difficult to implement these goals, the problem is not one of feasibility but one of an incestuous relationship between the tech industry and politicians of both parties. As long as pols are disposed to treat tech executives like rock stars and are busier mining them for campaign donations than they are with protecting the interests of workers then I doubt the situation will change.
Finally, you didn't understand my point about the bar exam. Obviously lawyers and tech workers are not in competition for the same jobs. The point is that the legal profession has established a licensing procedure involving a lenghty exam that anyone wishing to work in the profession must pass. There is nothing comparable to that in the tech industry. If every H1-B programmer had to pass the equivalent of the bar exam before being allowed to work in the US then Wipro, Tata and Infosys wouldn't be able to import them in large numbers and tech companies wouldn't be interested in hiring them. The logistics and economics just wouldn't work. That you have trouble seeing this point is a reflection of your poor understanding of the issues and industry that you're commenting on.
May 31, 2007 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Further than that, students do not want to enter math and science majors because of the importation of foreign workers in these fields. The additional foreign workers in these fields increases the competition for jobs, lowers the wages in these fields, and thereby pushes the incentive down for US students to enter these fields.
As a nation, we can not have it both ways. Promoting education in math and science among US students will NEVER work while we are promoting the increase of imported, skilled, foreign labor. Those two goals are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
June 4, 2007 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Paceliner, excellent comments. I agree with you completely. As much as Chris Robertson likes to toot his own horn, he obviously has no first-hand experience with this topic and merely parrots the media talking points on this issue.
As a software engineer, I have followed this H1B skilled immigration issue closely for the last seven years is it decimated domestic IT workers. I'm sure you have as well. I'm sure both of us, as well as most software engineers, have become veritable experts on the H1-B program, skilled immigration, and their effects. Please excuse relative newcomers like Mr Robertson - he knows not of what he speaks.
With respect to H1-B reform, one of the more attractive suggestions I've seen, besides eliminating the program altogether, would be to auction off the positions available each year so that companies are truly bringing in the "best and the brightest" as the program assumes. This would eliminate a lot of the gaming that goes on with the current lottery system. Further, this would guarantee that American workers were not always more expensive than cheap, imported, foreign labor.
Further, limiting the applicants to those who have graduated with a PhD in math or science from an American University would also fix a great number of problems. At this current point in time, it is impossible for companies to verify college degrees from all their applicants in foreign countries, nor correctly judge the quality of the programs from which they supposedly graduated. Further, most of the applicants come from countries well-known for corruption and who have every incentive to falsify their qualifications. This reform would guarantee that the qualifications of the labor is as high as the applicants claim.
June 4, 2007 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Paceliner and Xopher seem to be really excited about whether I have "experience" with this topic or field. OK. Do you think that being an engineer or other techie somehow makes someone extra-qualified as an expert on immigration policy with respect to skilled workers in those fields? I don't really see the connection.
I appreciate your personal experiences in this area, but the idea that only such people are qualified to talk about immigration is a bit wacky. After all, you guys obviously have axes to grind, and a little disinitrested objectivity might be a good thing. All Americans have a stake in this debate, if not as workers then as consumers and citizens.
Secondly, Paceliner's assertion that I "pass off" newspaper articles as "primary research" is unfounded. While I do provide links to handy articles for the convenience of readers, I never claimed that these constitute primary research. I think you would have liked to see a blogpost that said "is there a shortage in high tech workers in America?" Then we could argue about that, looking at various sources of data. But that's not the post I made. As I have said, I'm happy to concede, for the sake of argument, that there's no shortage in some fields.
I would just pause to note that even if these sorts of ad hominems were accurate, they distract from the real issues, decrease the quality of the debate, and bore a lot of people.
June 5, 2007 4:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
They don't just point out their personal experience. Paceliner linked to plenty of articles and XopherMV had arguments of his own besides personal experience, which makes it ad hominem on your part to then attack them as "having an ax to grind".
June 5, 2007 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
No. Here's is what I actually wrote:
As a software engineer, I have followed this H1B skilled immigration issue closely for the last seven years is it decimated domestic IT workers. I'm sure you [Paceliner] have as well. I'm sure both of us, as well as most software engineers, have become veritable experts on the H1-B program, skilled immigration, and their effects.
It is my experience in following, dealing, and arguing about this topic in-depth for seven years that guides my thinking. I certainly do not think I am an expert in the H1-B program, but I am certainly educated in it and its effects, as are most Americans working in IT today.
We are certainly more experienced in this topic than someone obviously writing widely-copied talking points regarding this topic. You wrote, "I hate to be a broken record around here, but the solution is: EDUCATION". That sentence is one example of what we are talking about. Education is not the solution when the people losing their jobs are already highly educated. If you had any kind of experience talking about this subject, you would not have brought up that point. So, please excuse Paceliner and I for agreeing with you about sounding like a broken record.
Wow, what a red herring. I certainly did not write nor imply that. What I wrote was this:
As much as Chris Robertson likes to toot his own horn, he obviously has no first-hand experience with this topic and merely parrots the media talking points on this issue... Please excuse relative newcomers like Mr Robertson - he knows not of what he speaks.
This is the internet. In any discussion, a lack of knowledge is assumed from a certain percentage of the participants. Blog authors are not immune from this criticism regarding lack of knowledge. Just because you wrote this article parroting widely-known economic talking points does NOT make you an expert or even educated on the topic.
That said, this is still the internet. The First Amendment applies here and you are certainly "qualified" to talk about whatever you want. However, that certainly won't stop me or anyone else who actually knows about the topic from calling bullshit whenever you make a stupid comment.
Wow, another widely-known talking point. Consumers and citizens are also workers. Yes, giving away the jobs makes the goods lower priced. But then, how exactly are workers to earn their money when their jobs are constantly given away to the lowest bidder? Let me guess, more education. Sorry, as I pointed out earlier, that's not a real solution.
Those goods may be cheap now, but they won't be after Factor-Price Equalization occurs. That's the concept which says that wages will "equalize" with your free trading partners. In other words, our wages will at some point come in line with those we're trading with. Or, to put it more bluntly, since Americans have higher wages than workers in China, the market will push American wages down until Chinese wages catch up.
As an American, I'd rather see our wages go up just like all Americans have seen since the start of our country. And yes, wages have been going down in America. In fact, they've been going down since 1969, which was about the time all this "free trade" talk started happening. Real wages peaked in 1969 and have slowly declined since then. Men in their 30s make less than their fathers at the same age.
So, please excuse me when I call your point complete bullshit. If you care about Americans, then you're arguing on the wrong side.
Wow, how gracious of you. You know, you don't have to concede for the "sake of argument" since Paceliner already provided links which disprove that myth. You could concede for the "actual facts, as supplied by evidence".
June 5, 2007 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink