To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter

Fri May 24 10:58:59 PDT 2013


I want to discuss a couple of media debates yesterday.  I mention both
of these not because of their entertainment value :-) but because a
couple of important points came up.

Vivek Wadhwa and Ron Hira had Round III of their continuing TV debates,
this time on the PBS Newshour,

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june13/immigration_05-23.html

Madeline Zavodny and I "debated" (paired but separate interviews) on a
radio show called Due Diligence,

http://voicerussia.com/radio_broadcast/58461461/114127853.html

This is an odd venue, Voice of Russia.  Not sure what that is, and I
wonder if Zavodny and I were chosen due to our Slavic names. :-)

Vivek's latest theme has been "Silicon Valley is different."  In the
past, he has acknowledged, even volunteered, the fact that H-1B is
widely abused, including by himself in his CEO days, but his position is
that the Silicon Valley firms don't abuse the visa.

Zavodny claimed that no study has ever shown that the foreign tech
workers are underpaid, which shows a surprising lack of awareness of the
research literature on her part.  Granted, she is at a nonresearch
college, so she has limited time to do research, but since she agrees to
be quoted often by the press, she has a responsibility to do her
homework on these issues.  She did know about the Lofgren work that
found H-1Bs are not underpaid, but apparently she was unaware of the
fact that it has been criticized as flawed.

I was also very disappointed that she dodged the interviewer's question,
concerning my point that the flat wage growth counters the industry
lobbyists' claim of a STEM labor shortage.  She simply changed the
subject.

Nevertheless, when the interviewer asked Zavodny about my point that the
H-1Bs, at least those sponsored for a green card, are immobile (for
various reasons, this is also the case to some extent for some H-1Bs),
Zavodny heartily agreed.  And I wish to focus on this.

Many pro-H-1B researchers agree with me on the immobility issue, as I
recall: Zavodny, Gordon Hanson, Stuart Anderson, Vivek and so on.

The point is then the following.  I've mentioned this before, but e-mail
correspondence with some of my readers shows that it has not sunk in
with many people:

THE ISSUE OF UNDERPAYMENT OF H-1BS HAS BEEN SETTLED.  ON AVERAGE, THEY
ARE UNDERPAID RELATIVE TO COMPARABLE AMERICANS.


start with the main premise, the already-settled point, and only mention
the debates later; thought experiment plus the Mukhyopaday research, and
NRC/GAO

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