#Adulting101: Why should I care about high-skill immigration?
Contributed by: Kristi Morgan-Turner, communication major
You there. Raise your hand if you were not born in this country… if your parent was not born in this country… if your grandparent was not born in this country. Now: the roughly 30 percent of you who are reading this with your phone in one hand and the other in the air… you can put your hand down. People are looking.
Recent research shows that about 30 percent of us are less than two generations away from someone who immigrated to this country. The fabric of America is made up of immigrants who brought their skills and diversity here. This is no less true in 2018 when our ever-evolving STEM workforce is dependent on the skills and diversity of high-skilled innovators from other countries.
Do you like your phone? Your computer? Your internet? By 2023, the demand for tech jobs will be greater than the number of qualified U.S. graduates and the limited number of H1-B visas combined. If tech companies can’t hire the qualified employees they need to produce their products and services, they will relocate to countries that have more efficient immigration systems that allow #STEMigrants to enter the country and the workforce.
Do you like going to the doctor or hospital when you are sick or hurt? Did you know that over 30 percent of healthcare providers are foreign graduates? The United States’ healthcare system depends on high-skilled innovators bringing their skills and diversity here. With an aging population and increasing demand for healthcare goods and services, we will soon have a public health crisis.
Do you believe that foreign graduates are taking our jobs? As recently as 2015, more than 50 percent of Americans still believed that their jobs were threatened by foreigners. In fact, for every job created for a foreign STEM graduate, 1.83 jobs are created and usually filled by domestic workers.
Keep US Innovative is an organization that is devoted to raising awareness and understanding of the impact of high-skill immigration on the United States’ economy and culture. They need your engagement on social media to help get the truths about high-skill immigration heard, particularly when there is so much misinformation. They need your likes, shares, retweets, and comments.
As a current student, you and your friends are the future leaders of this country, so your understanding and support of the benefits of high-skill immigration are vital. This is your responsibility. This is #Adulting101.
Also published on Medium.
“By 2023, the demand for tech jobs will be greater than the number of qualified U.S. graduates and the limited number of H1-B visas combined.”
If that were true wages would be going up rapidly. They are not. The high number of foreign workers have kept wages down. In the history of this country no forecast of a tech labor shortage has ever happened. The H-1B was passed in 1990 based on a forecast of a tech labor shortage. When that date came not only was there no shortage there were widespread layoffs of tech workers. STEM worker shortage forecasts are made to bamboozle Congress into supplying more cheap foreign labor not because they are real.
“…for every job created for a foreign STEM graduate, 1.83 jobs are created…”
The same job multiplier would apply if the job taken by a foreign worker was filled by an American.
In 1957 IBM introduced the first computer language instantly creating a shortage of computer programmers. With each new technology created after that a similar shortage was created. Before the H-1B was created in 1990 those shortages were fixed by free market capitalism. The same way office space shortages are fixed today. Free markets work. If we ended the H-1B and all other options to replace Americans with foreigners the employer with the greatest need would bid up the wages for those Americans with the needed skill set. Those higher wages would draw addition people to acquire that skill set. You only have to go back to the dot com era of the 1990s to see this in action. STEM wages were going up rapidly and STEM enrollment was high. The H-1B has stopped wage growth and job opportunity. The result is few Americans are studying STEM and about have the STEM graduates each year fail to acquire jobs in STEM. Employers hire foreigners instead. They are cheaper.
When a STEM worker shortage actually happens there will be students complaining that they can not get into STEM classes because they are full. Before that consider shortage claims to be propaganda.