First of all, this “common wisdom” is the almost universal claim of high tech industry! If virtually the entire industry claims that a shortage exists, the burden of unusual proof rests on those who claim otherwise.
As for my own, anecdotal experiences, I mention those to emphasize that they’re consistent with the industry-wide claim. Unlike Kyuzo and Matloff, I’m not taking those situations in isolation, and insisting that they’re representative of industry at large. The difference is both obvious and tremendous.
And as for the various studies, surely everyone’s aware of the Information Technology Association of America’s conclusion that about 190,000 high tech jobs need to be filled. This has been widely publicized. US universities are also producing CS graduates in record LOWS – down from 48,000 in 1984 to 26,000 in 1997. About 80% of the companies interviewed by ITAA said that they need to hire more computer experts. And so forth, and so on.
The labor shortage is widely accepted in industry, which is precisely why Matloff is one of the few known opponents of this view. If he’s going to disagree with the overwhelming majority, then he had better provide danged good proof. So far, he hasn’t.
You’re not paying attention. WE ALREADY POINTED OUT VARIOUS FALLACIES IN HIS LOGIC. Consider, for example, his claim that “what industry wants, it gets.” As ruadh said, if that were the case, then WHY ARE THERE STILL H-1B QUOTAS?
Sometimes industry gets what it wants; sometimes, it doesn’t. (It took half a year for the H-1B quota to be increased back in 1997, for example – too late for many companies, including my own.) So industry scores a victory now and then. That doesn’t mean they have Congress twisted around their little fingers – far from it.
Also consider the following piece of so-called “evidence.” While this specific quote has not been discussed, its use betrays the same logical gymnastics which we’ve repeatedly identified in Matloff’s arguments.
“This is not a popular bill with the
public. It’s popular with the CEOs…This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money.” - Rep. Tom Davis.
Matloff would have us conclude that because this bill is not popular with the public, the labor shortage must not be genuine. BALDERDASH! The general public is not the best judge of whether a genuine shortage exists. Even that comment about “giving money” is ambiguous, since the context says nothing about the purpose of such money. (Heck, even if we assume that it refers to bribery, that still doesn’t mean the shortage isn’t genuine. It only means that they’re trying to hedge their bets through unethical means.)
Ditto for Rep. Bennett’s claim that many congressmen opposed the bill. Even if he’s correct, there could be any number of reasons why they opposed that specific bill. Matloff is asking us to draw a conclusion based on insufficient information. Once again, this is another case of hasty and unwarranted conclusions – one of the fallacies which we’ve repeatedly, repeatedly pointed out!
And so on… yadda, yadda, yadda. We could go on and on, point out every single example of these fallacies, but that would be an exercise in absurdity. If you still can’t find these fallacies on your own, after we’ve shown you multiple examples thereof, then there’s nothing more we can do for you.
YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION. We repeatedly point out the fallacies in your arguments, and you repeatedly commit the self-same fallacies. This is really getting old.
letting in the techs from foreign countries pushes down wages for techs in the US, the old supply/demand thing but it sabotages the countries losing their best minds. so the rich of the rich countries win coming and going. sabotage weak countries, sabotage workers in rich countries, all in the name of FREEDOM. do the super-rich have or need national loyalties?
Yeah, we all know that some engineers don’t WANT the job demand to be met, so that they can keep their salaries high. Of course, this would have to be at the expense of industrial productivity and the national economy.
Yeah. Forget everyone else. Forget the long-term benefits of a thriving economy. After all, living for now is all that matters, no?
Jubilation, I really don’t care if the newly arrived immigrant is a techie or not. I have zero sympathy, as you should have already figured out, for companies that complain of a shortage of technical help. It is not the job of the government to vet immigrants for whether or not they qualify for some job or other. The only involvement the government should have in immigration is in enforcing quotas and deporting those who have not yet reached citizenship but have become felons or a charge to the public while here.
That’s it, no more. Anything else is improper interference in the economic and social life of the nation.
Odd, my wife is a “techie” from Great Britain who came to the States to be with me - and, oddly enough, she makes more than I do (and I’m a consultant in the Big Five, so I do ok) - she didn’t push anyone’s wages down - here in the South it seems as if techies are hard to find and my wife was a blessing for them. Her first company searched six months for someone like her - and her new company had been searching for almost two months - so to say that they are taking jobs from skilled Americans just isn’t always the case, nor is she pushing the salaries down.
I’m not sure what you mean by “vet immigrants,” so I’m puzzled by your statement. However, it seems eminently reasonable for the government to verify that immigrants ARE qualified for the jobs to which they’re recruited. This is done PRECISELY to combat the abuse that you keep complaining about.
If that’s the case, then they shouldn’t be verifying that no U.S. citizens were displaced by the foreigners, or that their salaries are being massively undercut.
I am absolutely baffled by your statements. Earlier, you were complaining about abuse – about salary levels going down, and about U.S. citizens being displaced. Now you’re saying that government should only be enforcing quotas and deporting illegals. In other words, they should not be monitoring salary levels, or ensuring that U.S. citizens can fairly compete for jobs, or verifying that the foreigners’ skills genuinely match their job descriptions. You can’t have it both ways.
Both pro- and anti-immigration advocates believe that U.S. citizens should not be massively undercut in terms of salary. Both camps also believe that U.S. citizens should be allowed to compete for jobs. That is why the H-1B and green card laws do more than just enforce quotas! They also provide means for ensuring that U.S. citizens are notified of the jobs for which the foreigners are being recruited. They also demand that the foreigners be paid in accordance with the prevailing wage. One might argue that the system is flawed – and I’m sure it is – but these measures exist precisely to combat the abuse that you keep bitching about.
Precisely that you can’t have it both ways. “Vet”, in the context, btw, is a verb meaning “to screen”.
This is an example of the guv attempting to micromanage a market. Can’t be done. Usually, you’d be laughed out of DC for trying, but as there are powerful interests who want this law, it is being done.
Sure, the law is written in a way to appear to stop abuse. But in practice, it’s a perfect example of The Law of Unintended Consequences, which in this case, has turned into an intended consequence, IMO, namely that it creates an abuse where none would exist if the law wasn’t there.
Just make everyone who arrives legally on our shores permanent from day one. Simple, and very effective way of stopping abuse, because then an employer has no extraordinary power at all over the person being hired.
I know that my posts look confusing. But the logic, to make an attempt to be clear, is as follows:
There is a labor market for techies.
Left to itself, that market would resolve shortages the way any other market does, by raising the price of the commodity in shortage until the supply equals the demand.
Eventually, the worm would turn, and there would be a surplus, of course, as more people are attracted by the higher salaries than can be accomodated in the field.
As people leave the field because of the surplus condition and the inevitable falling price their labor commands, the worm would turn again, and we would end up with a shortage.
At which point, we go back to number 2.
It’s an infinite loop. The H1-B is an attempt to break into the loop. As it prevents, in part, the raising of the price to the point where the cycle turns, it has the perverse effect of keeping the cycle stuck in condition number 2, actually. But the short-sighted executives who push for its continuance and its strengthening don’t see it that way, of course. They only see that, in the immediate term, they can get someone for less than the market rate (otherwise known as “the prevailing wage”). In so doing, they push aside domestically produced graduates and older engineers in need of retraining but who have years of invaluable and irreplaceable experience. In the long run, our economy is weakened as a result.
And really, you should be very suspicious of any program that commands a 96-1 vote in the Senate. It only means that the Congress has been bought off.
Everyone? All the millions of tourists and foreign students and business(wo)men who come to the US every year are automatically made permanent residents from the moment they clear customs?
Christ almighty.
If you’ve got any evidence to back this statement up please present it. Otherwise I’m just going to dismiss it as yet another example of the fallacious reasoning that seems to define the anti-H1B argument.
Heck, even if those people come here to work, should we make them “permanent” against their will? Not all foreign workers intend to become permanent residents, mind you.
Darn right. In fact, this particular fallacy is known as affirming the consequent. (To wit: If Congress has been bought off, then a bill shall be overwhelmingly approved. Hence, if a bill is overwhelmingly approved, Congress has been bought off.)
It’s amazing how often this fallacy has materialized in the anti-H1B arguments set forth. Argh.
BTW, before anyone carelessly objects, I’m not saying that industry has no influence on Congress. Heck, I’m sure that they wield a great deal of influence. However, that’s hardly the same as saying they have Congress under their thumb, or that they bought Congress off, or that “whatever they want, they get.” That should be immediately evident, yet it’s apparently lost on some.
Are you kidding? It’s a PRIME opportunity for abuse, since the government would not be distinguishing necessary workers from the unnecessary ones.
Without any employment restrictions, the government can only admit people on a “first come, first served” basis. Your scheme is a surefire way to attract marginally qualified employees, using permanent residency as bait. These people would provide NO advantage over U.S. workers, except as cheap labor – the very abuse that you keep complaining about!
Absolutely not true.Some markets react this way. Others respond by stagnating, or by underperforming, or by dying out altogether. Only the most elastic markets are guaranteed to respond by raising commodity prices. This difference should be covered quite thoroughly in any Economics 101 course.
Besides which, the US market does not exist in isolation. It is part of a global market for technology and employment. The global market may respond as you describe, depending on the situation, but the local market won’t necessarily do so. There are many factors to consider, such as foreign competition, cultural norms and the resources available (such as capital, competency levels and the number of people willing to participate in a market).
That is only an assertion. In all likelihood, more people would be attracted to the field; however, that doesn’t mean that equilibrium would be established. It also says nothing about how long it would take (months? years? decades?) or what the equilibrium level would be (i.e. how prosperous would the market be at that point)?
As we’ve said all along, you are oversimplifying tremendously.
The high tech market is rapid and volatile. Being first to market is of paramount importance, as evidenced by the tremendous interest in agile manufacturing, flexible manufacturing and concurrent engineering techniques.
Scientists, engineers and programmers aren’t born overnight, and they don’t acquire competency overnight. Heck, it takes at least four years for most people to get an engineering degree, and that’s PLENTY of time to fall behind in the market. We could wait until enough techies are produced, and then wait longer for them to acquire proficiency – but no competent businessman would be willing to wait that long.
Unfortunately, ridiculous arguments like that pervade both anti-immigration and anti-H1B rhetoric. I am both astonished and dismayed at the sight.
May I beg to differ? (and hope aynrandlover doesn’t see this. (S)he may think (s)he dropped onto a different planet after reading my replies in this thread.)
Let us take, as an example of another allegedly inelastic market, oil.
Now, the price of oil was controlled until the late Seventies, when Carter began a gradual process of decontrol that was completed under Reagan. The same argument was made by those opposed to the decontrol back then: that the market for oil was inelastic - after all, it takes a major effort, if you heat your home or business with oil, to convert to natural gas, for instance. You couldn’t, and still can’t, run a car on anything but refined oil - gasoline. That’s on the demand side. On the supply side, it takes a few years to explore for more oil and set up drilling (longer than the four years it takes to produce a comp sci grad, I think). So on both sides of the market, you had what appeared to be inelastic conditions.
So the price gets decontrolled, and what happened? The price of oil declined all through the Eighties and the Nineties. Natural gas was substituted for oil in many places for heating. Cars became more efficient. Drilling, responding to the elevated price of oil at the time, exploded. Surplus resulted, and the price, inevitably, fell. Nowadays, in response to a long period of low prices, demand has increased and drilling has fallen off. Recently, prices have increased in response.
Now to relate this to the market for techies: when I started back in the early Eighties, conditions of surplus, as far as I could tell anyway, existed, at least in my local market, NYC. It was tough to break in, and salary increases were relatively slow. Starting around 1990 or so this began to change, and around 1995 you could see shortage conditions appearing. With the dot-coms, the shortage probably became acute for a short time.
Left to its own devices, I’m sure this market would correct itself. With a supply intervention like the H1-B in place, that correction is going to take a lot longer than normal, because college kids are not going to be attracted to comp sci when they’re not sure if they’re going to have to face competition from people whose status is that of a vassal to their employer, and when the supply of these people is controlled by legislative fiat. Who can blame them for this?
Your whole argument fails on that point. Nobody is saying that the high-tech job market is INelastic. Rather, there are degrees of elasticity, and the equilibrium point of these markets can vary tremendously.
Your claim was that “Left to itself, [the job market] would resolve shortages the way any other market does, by raising the price of the commodity in shortage until the supply equals the demand.” As we’ve seen, this statement is patently false.
Furthermore, it assumes that the market would respond by increasing the supply of workers. All too often, they respond by decreasing the demand for employees. That’s what happens when a country faces stiff competition from foreign lands. Supply may eventually equal demand, but only because the demand drops down.
Besides which, even if the supply does increase (which is by no means guaranteed), it can take decades to do so. It takes many, many years to produce a topnotch engineer – and that’s if conditions are suitably conducive. As I’ve already pointed out, that is plenty of time for a company or country to fall behind in the market.
The problem is that you’re treating economics as though it was just a simple equation : supply = demand. It isn’t. There are a multitude of factors to consider, especially when you factor in human limitations, foreign competition and the self-fueling, self-propagating nature of high-tech research. That last factor alone negates the whole “supply = demand, so we don’t need foreigners” tenet.
In other words, your argument betrays more of the absurdly simplistic reasoning that we have pointed out, time and again, in your anti-H1B claims.
ruadh: missed that little reductio ad absurdum you had posted up there. Funny, but of course you know that wasn’t what I meant.
Jubilation: Ok, let me put it this way: the market for techies is actually a lot closer in its way to the market for silver. How so? Well, if you raise the price of silver high enough, all of a sudden all kinds of stuff starts falling out of people’s closets & attics, and soon the market is saturated with silver that no one had any idea was anywhere around, because no official inventory is ever taken of stuff like your grandma’s old tea service.
Now, raise the price of a techie high enough and they’ll start crawling out of the woodwork, all kinds of “old” guys, ready to tackle whatever problem you throw at them. As for entry-level people for software writing, you don’t need just comp-sci grads or engineering grads, you can get a physics or math or chemistry or meteorology (I’ve met programmmers who come from all of these fields) or even, if you’re talking strictly business apps, a mere liberal-arts major, and train them for whatever it is you need.
I know of a business-app software company that hires lots of liberal-arts grads and trains them, and writes perfectly good business software this way. Microsoft may not be able to write Windows with these people, nor would you want them to write the stuff you need to test the latest composite material you’re coming up with, but obviously if you get the simpler apps written by smart but non-engineering people, you can free up the engineering types to go to work at the stuff where they’re really needed.
Your argument has been made in market after market after market. In NYC, apartments are rent-controlled and the citizens truly believe that if they aren’t the prices will go through the roof in perpetuity. Why? Well, they say, there are factors to consider: like capital (doesn’t just appear out of thin air, you know), competency levels (you need a builder able to meet all those building codes) and the number of people willing to participate in a market (artificially depressed, of course, because who wants to build in a market where the price can’t be set to what the market will bear?). Any of this sound familiar?
In this market, you truly believe that you have to artificially pump up the supply in order to meet your demand, when doing so only artificially lowers the price to below what the market would otherwise bear, and therefore has the perverse effect of lowering the supply and perpetuating the shortage. In a way, it’s like rent control, since I’m sure you guys truly believe that the price will rise beyond what you’re willing and able to pay forever if you don’t have an H1-B or something similar in place. Well, it won’t. If it were ended tomorrow and salaries shot up in the next six months, within a year you’d see: international agreements to write software in India or Russia (already happening now, as we both know), retired engineers or guys who changed careers coming back, and the training of smart people from other fields to get the job done. We’re talking about people, and nothing motivates a person more to learn something and learn something well than the prospect of a reward that ups his status in life. The labor market is in fact the most elastic market you can think of, especially for techies, because it involves that most changeable and improveable of human characteristics, the thing that sets us apart as a species: our minds. To argue that you need all this stuff in place to meet the demand for what amounts to nothing more than good minds trained well is to come to a conclusion whose foundation is laid in quicksand, and could and would be proved wrong tomorrow if the program were to end tomorrow.
Finally (this sets the record for my longest post ever, I think) if the market responds by decreasing the demand for employees, that can only mean one of two things: that production has moved abroad, and in the case of software this would have to mean that the demand has largely moved abroad as well, since even today most software is written locally at the site where it will be used, or that productivity has taken a sharp upward turn, either of which would be perfectly legit market responses to the stimulus of either increased prices at home or increased demand elsewhere. I, for one, would have no problem at all with that.
It occurs to me that the above is going to go into my personal Hall of Fame for the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever seen, since we’re on that subject.
Give me one single example of a market that took that long to correct a supply imbalance, whose base cause was not government interference. Do that, and I promise you absolutely and unequivocally that I will concede the argument and shut up forever. Else, I want a public retraction of this piece of nonsense.
Give it a rest, bud. I, for one, can EASILY see it taking decades for supply to increase sufficiently – if at all. Once you lose a market advantage, you might NEVER regain it.
Pantom, give it a rest. It is obvious that your grasp of economics is as lousy as your knowledge of immigration laws. (“Just make everyone who arrives legally on our shores permanent from day one.” What an incredibly ridiculous idea.)
High tech is vastly different from the silver market. High tech requires massive amounts of research and innovation; silver production does not. High tech involves innovation and massive competition with other nations. Silver does not. High tech products spur on further high tech development, as evidenced by the unprecedented, exponential growth of the computer industry. Silver does not.
Since your analogy to the oil market failed, you are now likening high tech to the silver industry. A moment’s reflection shows that the high tech industry has several key characteristics which the silver industry does not have. Your analogy is absolutely ridiculous, and I’m astonished that anyone would propose such a thing.
You neglected to provide an example, JThunder. pantom specifically asked for an example. Once again, are you even reading any of this? Maybe you should give it a rest until you read things clearly.
