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The NYT Mischaractizes Immigration
The NYT seriously misrepresented the restrictions on immigration facing more and less educated workers in the United States and elsewhere in an article today. At one point the article quotes a demographer asserting that "governments give a green light to high-skilled migrants, but put speed bumps in front of others, ...there’s a stark contrast.” It presents no contrasting views.
In fact, the United States much more severely restricts the flows of highly educated immigrants than less-educated immigrants, it just uses different mechanisms. In the case of highly educated immigrants, the government at least partially enforces laws that prohibit employers from hiring immigrants at wages that are lower than what citizens would be willing to work for. There are no newspapers, hospitals, universities, or law firms that bring in large numbers of undocuments professionals and pay them half of the prevailing wage in their occupation. Such an institution would almost certainly be shut down, with the employers facing prosecution.
By contrast, restaurants, hotels, construction firms and other employers of less-educated workers generally have little to fear from the government, even if their entire workforce consists of undocumented workers employed at salaries far below what native born workers would demand to do the same jobs. While enforcement of employer restrictions against hiring immigrant workers limits the number of high-skilled workers who enter the country, the number of less-skilled workers is limited by harassment and insecurity. These workers know that they risk deportation at any time.
The insecurity and harassment make the prospect of working in the United States far less attractive to less-skilled immigrants than it would otherwise be. However, it is wrong to say that more skilled workers are welcomed with open arms. The numbers that are allowed to work in the United States are treated far better than less-skilled immigrants (they would not come here otherwise), but the absolute number of less-skilled immigrants is far larger than the number of highly-skilled immigrants. This is the result of a conscious policy to protect highly educated workers even as less-educated workers are subjected to the full force of international competition.
--Dean Baker
COMMENTS (4)
Dean, you are distorting the picture as well, for you completely ignore the targeting of a certain class of worker, software developers in particular, through the use of the H1-b visa. Many of the software developers working here under this visa are paid less than there US citizen counterparts. The great influx of these developers has put downward pressure on the US worker and raised employment instability. Too, many of these workers are brought here falsely, corporations are meeting the requirements, but only meeting the letter of the law not the spirit, and receive a great amount of guidance from consulting firms regarding how to intentionally bypass hiring the US worker.
I agree with you that there is much improvement to be had in the visa programs, and agree that we should make it easier to bring in doctors and lawyers and such, just don't agree that only the lowest paid workers are the only targets of the present system. The H1-b program is deeply flawed as it stands.
Posted by: Bill | August 20, 2007 9:31 AM
Your argument about programmers also applies to engineers and nurses, where the H1b/L1 visa holders are consistently paid below market wages and serve to depress the market wage.
This is about how professionals (and nurses, programmers, and engineers are not, they do not get secretaries) are protected while workers are given the shaft.
My solution, raise the fees to H1b/L1 to sufficient levels that it will always cost more for a visa importer worker.
I also blogged on this, but trackback between prospect and Haloscan seems to be screwed up.
Posted by: Matthew Saroff | August 20, 2007 10:47 AM
Being a lawyer doing transnational work and having been VP Law of the US sub of an Italian firm which brought a lot of its executives to the US to run the sub, and having a wife who is a nurse, and having had a mother-in-law in a nursing home, I for one think Dean hit it right on the head.
Our society uses different systems depending on the status of the worker, but gets the results it wants: lots of protection for the executive/professional, a little bit of protection for the educated/skilled worker, and no protection at all for the low skilled worker.
Posted by: Ethan | August 20, 2007 3:35 PM
I just want to point out that all of you guys that criticized Dean's post missed that he did properly qualify it. He said 'some' protections, and he pointed out that if the levels reached what they do in other areas of the job market there would be consequences.
None of your posts negate what Dean stated as the premise of his post. They are merely nuances for how and why the protections on white collar workers aren't 100% - which is something Dean already stated.
Posted by: ThinkProgressExile | August 21, 2007 8:19 PM