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Exhaustive San Fran Fed Study Finds That, Gasp, Immigrants Are Good For The Economy
The San Fran Fed conducts yet another mindnumbingly (and taxpayer funded) obvious study, this time uncovering what everyone with half a brain knows: namely that immigrants are good for the economy. But don't tell that to all those who want the H1-B program destroyed and to seal of the Mexico-Texas border by digging a mile deep trench filled with sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. Setting aside the fact that absent a surge in immigration, and a forced household formation impetus, the demand curve of the home price equilibrium chart will continue shrinking until homes will be worth less than half, to have to explain to other economists that immigrants are a net-net positive just makes one wonder about the inbreeding trends prevalent within the Keynesian shaman elite (how about the FRBSF do a study on that for a change?). But of course, stating the obvious would not get one too far in the citation-demanding economotenure track, so instead author Giovanni Peri, uses polysyllabic words such as: "Statistical analysis of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers." And since none of those who are convinced that immigration, and not laziness, or flawed fiscal policy, is the main reason why nobody is not only having a job, but looking for one, will actually read this paper, we once again ask politely and simply: "why the hell was this thing commissioned, and how much did the national deficit increase because of its completion?"
Either way, here is the full thing, for your single-ply amusement:
The Effect of Immigrants on U.S. Employment and Productivity
BY GIOVANNI PERI
The effects of immigration on the total output and income of the
U.S. economy can be studied by comparing output per worker and
employment in states that have had large immigrant inflows with data
from states that have few new foreign-born workers. Statistical analysis
of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy's
productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting
specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per
worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the
employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers.
Immigration in recent decades has significantly increased the
presence of foreign-born workers in the United States. The impact of
these immigrants on the U.S. economy is hotly debated. Some stories in
the popular press suggest that immigrants diminish the job
opportunities of workers born in the United States. Others portray
immigrants as filling essential jobs that are shunned by other workers.
Economists who have analyzed local labor markets have mostly failed to
find large effects of immigrants on employment and wages of U.S.-born
workers (see Borjas 2006; Card 2001, 2007, 2009; and Card and Lewis
2007).
This Economic Letter summarizes recent research by Peri (2009)
and Peri and Sparber (2009) examining the impact of immigrants on the
broader U.S. economy. These studies systematically analyze how
immigrants affect total output, income per worker, and employment in
the short and long run. Consistent with previous research, the analysis
finds no significant effect of immigration on net job growth for
U.S.-born workers in these time horizons. This suggests that the economy
absorbs immigrants by expanding job opportunities rather than by
displacing workers born in the United States. Second, at the state
level, the presence of immigrants is associated with increased output
per worker. This effect emerges in the medium to long run as businesses
adjust their physical capital, that is, equipment and structures, to
take advantage of the labor supplied by new immigrants. However, in the
short run, when businesses have not fully adjusted their productive
capacity, immigrants reduce the capital intensity of the economy.
Finally, immigration is associated with an increase in average hours
per worker and a reduction in skills per worker as measured by the share
of college-educated workers in a state. These two effects have
opposite and roughly equal effect on labor productivity.
The method
A major challenge to immigration research is the difficulty of
identifying the effects of immigration on economic variables when we do
not observe what would have happened if immigration levels had been
different, all else being equal. To get around this problem, we take
advantage of the fact that the increase in immigrants has been very
uneven across states. For example, in California, one worker in three
was foreign born in 2008, while in West Virginia the comparable
proportion was only one in 100. By exploiting variations in the inflows
of immigrants across states at 10-year intervals from 1960 to 2000,
and annually from 1994 to 2008, we are able to estimate the short-run
(one to two years), medium-run (four years), and long-run (seven to ten
years) impact of immigrants on output, income, and employment.
To ensure that we are isolating the effects of immigrants rather than
effects of other factors, we control for a range of variables that
might contribute to differences in economic outcomes. These include
sector specialization, research spending, openness to trade, technology
adoption, and others. We then compare economic outcomes in states that
experienced increases in immigrant inflows with states that did not
experience significant increases.
As a further control for isolating the specific effects of immigration,
we focus on variations in the flow of immigrants that are caused by
geographical and historical factors and are not the result of
state-specific economic conditions. For example, a state may experience
rapid growth, which attracts a lot of immigrants and also affects
output, income, and employment. In terms of geography, proximity to the
Mexican border is associated with high net immigration because border
states tend to get more immigrants. Historical migration patterns also
are a factor because immigrants are drawn to areas with established
immigrant communities. These geography and history-driven flows
increase the presence of immigrants, but do not reflect state-specific
economic conditions. Hence, economic outcomes associated with these
flows are purer measures of the impact of immigrants on economic
variables.
The short- and the long-run effects of immigrants
Figure 1
Employment and income
Immigration effects on employment, income, and productivity vary by
occupation, job, and industry. Nonetheless, it is possible to total
these effects to get an aggregate economic impact. Here we attempt to
quantify the aggregate gains and losses for the U.S. economy from
immigration. If the average impact on employment and income per worker
is positive, this implies an aggregate “surplus” from immigration. In
other words, the total gains accruing to some U.S.-born workers are
larger than the total losses suffered by others.
Figures 1 and 2 show the response of key economic variables to an
inflow of immigrants equal to 1% of employment. Figure 1 shows the
impact on employment of U.S.-born workers and on average income per
worker after one, two, four, seven, and ten years. Figure 2 shows the
impact on the components of income per worker: physical capital
intensity, as measured by capital per unit of output; skill intensity,
as measured by human capital per worker; average hours worked; and
total factor productivity, measuring productive efficiency and
technological level. Some interesting patterns emerge.
Figure 2
Capital intensity, hours per worker, and total factor productivity
First, there is no evidence that immigrants crowd out U.S.-born
workers in either the short or long run. Data on U.S.-born worker
employment imply small effects, with estimates never statistically
different from zero. The impact on hours per worker is similar. We
observe insignificant effects in the short run and a small but
significant positive effect in the long run. At the same time,
immigration reduces somewhat the skill intensity of workers in the
short and long run because immigrants have a slightly lower average
education level than U.S.-born workers.
Second, the positive long-run effect on income per U.S.-born worker
accrues over some time. In the short run, small insignificant effects
are observed. Over the long run, however, a net inflow of immigrants
equal to 1% of employment increases income per worker by 0.6% to 0.9%.
This implies that total immigration to the United States from 1990 to
2007 was associated with a 6.6% to 9.9% increase in real income per
worker. That equals an increase of about $5,100 in the yearly income of
the average U.S. worker in constant 2005 dollars. Such a gain equals
20% to 25% of the total real increase in average yearly income per
worker registered in the United States between 1990 and 2007.
The third result is that the long-run increase in income per worker
associated with immigrants is mainly due to increases in the efficiency
and productivity of state economies. This effect becomes apparent in
the medium to long run. Such a gradual response of productivity is
accompanied by a gradual response of capital intensity. While in the
short run, physical capital per unit of output is decreased by net
immigration, in the medium to long run, businesses expand their
equipment and physical plant proportionally to their increase in
production.
How can these patterns be explained?
The effects identified above can be explained by adjustments businesses
make over time that allow them to take full advantage of the new
immigrant labor supply. These adjustments, including upgrading and
expanding capital stock, provide businesses with opportunities to expand
in response to hiring immigrants.
This process can be analyzed at the state level (see Peri and Sparber
2009). The analysis begins with the well-documented phenomenon that
U.S.-born workers and immigrants tend to take different occupations.
Among less-educated workers, those born in the United States tend to
have jobs in manufacturing or mining, while immigrants tend to have
jobs in personal services and agriculture. Among more-educated workers,
those born in the United States tend to work as managers, teachers,
and nurses, while immigrants tend to work as engineers, scientists, and
doctors. Second, within industries and specific businesses, immigrants
and U.S.-born workers tend to specialize in different job tasks.
Because those born in the United States have relatively better English
language skills, they tend to specialize in communication tasks.
Immigrants tend to specialize in other tasks, such as manual labor. Just
as in the standard concept of comparative advantage, this results in
specialization and improved production efficiency.
Figure 3
Communication/manual skills among less-educated U.S.-born workers
Note: The data on average communication/manual
skills by state are from Peri and Sparber (2009), obtained from the
manual and communication intensity of occupations, weighted according to
the distributional occupation of U.S.-born workers.
If these patterns are driving the differences across states, then in
states where immigration has been heavy, U.S.-born workers with less
education should have shifted toward more communication-intensive jobs.
Figure 3 shows exactly this. The share of immigrants among the less
educated is strongly correlated with the extent of U.S.-born worker
specialization in communication tasks. Each point in the graph
represents a U.S. state in 2005. In states with a heavy concentration
of less-educated immigrants, U.S.-born workers have migrated toward
more communication-intensive occupations. Those jobs pay higher wages
than manual jobs, so such a mechanism has stimulated the productivity
of workers born in the United States and generated new employment
opportunities.
To better understand this mechanism, it is useful to consider the
following hypothetical illustration. As young immigrants with low
schooling levels take manually intensive construction jobs, the
construction companies that employ them have opportunities to expand.
This increases the demand for construction supervisors, coordinators,
designers, and so on. Those are occupations with greater communication
intensity and are typically staffed by U.S.-born workers who have moved
away from manual construction jobs. This complementary task
specialization typically pushes U.S.-born workers toward better-paying
jobs, enhances the efficiency of production, and creates jobs. This
task specialization, however, may involve adoption of different
techniques or managerial procedures and the renovation or replacement
of capital equipment. Hence, it takes some years to be fully realized.
Conclusions
The U.S. economy is dynamic, shedding and creating hundreds of
thousands of jobs every month. Businesses are in a continuous state of
flux. The most accurate way to gauge the net impact of immigration on
such an economy is to analyze the effects dynamically over time. Data
show that, on net, immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive
capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the
long run boosts productivity. Consistent with previous research, there
is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for
workers born in the United States.
References
Borjas, George J. 2006. “Native Internal Migration and the Labor Market Impact of Immigration.” Journal of Human Resources 41(2), pp. 221–258.
Card, David. 2001. “Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration.” Journal of Labor Economics 19(1), pp. 22–64.
Card, David. 2007. “How Immigration Affects U.S. Cities.” University College London, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration Discussion Paper 11/07.
Card, David. 2009. “Immigration and Inequality.” American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 99(2), pp. 1–21.
Card, David, and Ethan Lewis. 2007. “The Diffusion of Mexican Immigrants during the 1990s: Explanations and Impacts.” In Mexican Immigration to the United States, ed. George J. Borjas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Peri, Giovanni, and Chad Sparber. 2009. “Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1(3), pp. 135–169.
Peri, Giovanni. 2009. “The Effect of Immigration on Productivity: Evidence from U.S. States.” NBER Working Paper 15507.
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BY GIOVANNI PERI
2009
"But don't tell that to all those who want the H1-B program destroyed and to seal of the Mexico-Texas border by digging a mile deep trench"
Dammit Tyler D, you just cast so much of your other fine work into doubt for so many here....
I think the US should expel all the Irish and Italian inmigrants. They are lazy catholics, and threat this great WASP nation.
But you should not expel the Bulgarian inmigrants, otherwise you would never have ZeroHedge in your lives.
oh, for a triple junk button...
Anyone here illegally should GTFO.
ANYONE (Mexican, Japanese, or Martian).
People that will work for a bowl of rice, hominy and a place to sleep is exactly what the U.S. needs to be competitive. Good decision, solid leadership.
Yes, but do we seriously need to look to Mexico for that when we have 10-15% unemployment internally? The way things are going, give it a few years and Americans will gladly work for a bowl of rice, too.
So, logically, we need MORE immigration today? If it's so great today, then it'll even be better with MORE TOMORROW!
Besides, I LOVE rice!!!
Apparently, that's what the Fed would like you to believe. All we need are a few million more semi-literate, unskilled, untrained individuals from south of the border who pay no taxes and drain far more taxpayer money in social services and crime than they add to the economy, and things will magically get better.
Damn right. Immigrants wrecked this country and should all go back where they came from.
We of the Potawatami Nation would appreciate if you'd all get the hell out of here and stop destroying this one great land. And I believe the Sioux, Chenenne, Apache, Ojibway, Navajo and a few others will back me up on this.
And on your way out, please use the casinos.
Cherokee's give that 2 scalps up as well.
I don't think so. Johnny Blanket Ass likes his X box too much. And Chief Geemeemo has all his relatives on Uncle Sam's payroll. And Suzy Fry Bread has no interest in cooking over buffalo chips. Who's going to fix the air conditioner?
Like the agenda-driven media (although they surely do it on purpose), you seem to confuse immigrants with illegals.
And they tend to have pretty opposite effects...
15 million illegal immigrants, 15 million unemployed American workers.
The similarities are astounding.
Not to mention, the customer service jobs, "communication jobs" were all outsourced anyway!
I can name three construction businesses that went out of business because they didn't pay their workers 8 bucks an hour and kept losing bids to illegal immigrant companies.
One owner became an engineer, and then got laid off. The second works on an oil rig now. The third owns a medical marijuana dispensary now.
Yeah, it's good for the economy indeed.
I have an unemployed Comanche friend with a young family who is not amused that all the construction work in his own neighborhood is being done by low wage guys who don't speak a lick of English. Should we believe the FED and UC Berkeley, or our lying eyes?
Because the first thing we need in this country is more construction, and the only type of immigration is unskilled slave labor.
The economy is based on the creation of debt and using that debt to jimmy up the prices of "assets". Immigrants are just new, warm bodies that can be sold Option ARM mortgages, McMansions and credit cards and compete for food, water and energy so those prices can go up & up & up .... Thats why.
The economy is based on the creation of debt and using that debt to jimmy up the prices of "assets". Immigrants are just new, warm bodies that can be sold Option ARM mortgages, McMansions and credit cards and compete for food, water and energy so those prices can go up & up & up .... Thats why.
My kid could not find a summer job in fast food restaurants.
I know a lot of people who are in that boat.
I know what you see at Second Harvest food bank, and emergency rooms. But I don't say what I see because that would be racist or xenophobic or something.
Glad to know the SF economists were wrong about everything else, but hit the nail on the head on this one.
There is a difference between legal immigration (diverse) and illegal migration (monolithic). The latter destroys the culture of the target country.
See: History.
+1
+!
+1
What "culture"? Jersey Shore? Paris Hilton? 50% divorce rate?
culture is more than entertainment. It involves attitudes toward civic duty. Parasites versus providers, for instance.
So your claim is that the Wall Street crowd is a bunch of illegal aliens?
Hey, it doesn't matter if you've got everyone's money. Deep down, all those hating people really wish they were you, with all that money you leeched. Don't think for a second that a fraction of these people on ZH would preach their righteousness in posts if they were in on the action of the Wall Street fleecers.
deleted so as not to feed the trolls
Reading, its fundamental...
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-We-Challenges-Americas/dp/0684870541/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283224648&sr=8-3
I'm confused; I did as you say, I looked up the term "History", but there was nothing whatsoever about immigration...just some footnotes pertaining to a civilization which burned fossil fuels into peak decline with no regard to the environment, but which ultimately collapsed under enormous greed related economic strain...name was U.A.S. or something like that.
*Sarcams OFF...Eject, Eject Eject!!!*
Any truly free individual should be able to live anywhere in the world as long as their survival doesn't require other individuals to forego theirs.
The problem isn't with the people wanting to move here. The problem is the Welfare state policies encourage some of the worst types of people to move here. Additional bad policies encourage people to get by without assimilating into the population like our ancestors had to.
No. Countries have the right to decide who to admit and who to keep out. It is not a fundamental right of individuals to move wherever they please -- never has been, never will be. To believe such requires one to ignore basic economics and the sovereign right of nations to make their own laws.
holy hypocrites batman.. anyone else want to take this one??
I guess Germany DID have the right to boot out the Jews, huh Link?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Trying being an illegal immigrant in Mexico.
First offense, two years prison, followed by deportation.
Second offense, ten years prison, followed by deportation.
That's IF the corrupt police don't shake you down, etc.
And we should try to be more like Mexico why?
The point is that we're importing all of their trash because the Party of Government wants to create a voting block of dependents to keep them from ever having to run for reelection.
False. Economics is extremely clear. If an individual is able to survive it is because he generates enough value to pay for his upkeep (unless he is subsidized like children, crippled and the chronic socialist state abusers). it is extremely simple and logical.
Seeing that people will only migrate to places where they can get a job, keeping people out of a country is clearly detrimental to the economy.
As to the State. It is a construct of special interest groups. Borders are man made.
As to whether you can let anybody in... that is a different question. If these individuals possess values that are compatible with yours, then why not?
Latino immigration into the USA cannot even remotely be compared to Muslim immigration into Europe. Latino's have compatible value systems. Lack of education can be remedied over time. Language barriers equally (not to mention that when the US was founded, German was spoken by some 30% of the population, so English was not always the sole language)
So what do you say to the woman who comes to the US, has six babies, who are all citizens, and then lives on welfare, section 8 housing, and food stamps, while her husband can work for 6 dollars an hour because his wife and family are taken care of by the US government?
Don't you think that this has an impact on wages?
We are subsidizing the death of wages in this country.
The study isn't even relevant, because it uses data from a time of unprecedented economic growth.
I notice that they don't use post financial crisis data. It's all from the late 90s.
Correlation doesn't imply cause. Just because wages went up when the economy was roaring does NOT mean it was BECAUSE of illegal immigration.
What a crock of shit article, and what a crock of shit premise in your post.
http://www.zazzle.com/honk_if_youre_paying_my_mortgage_bumper_sticker-12...
You racist biggot. The academic evidence (and simple logic) is completely solid. Immigrants are good for the economy.
Unemployment in the US is a direct result of subsidies. And yes, that does include Medicare for unemployed. Eliminate the subsidies and absolutely EVERYBODY will have to work.
Is that too hard for you to understand?
Immigrants in aggregate may be, but illegals certainly aren't.
I come home from my 12-15 hour days to see people who work 0-4 living double the lifestyle I do. That's coming out of my paycheck, and it's a good part of why we're bankrupt.
These are not people who came here to work hard, get ahead, achieve the American dream, etc. They live in little insular communities with zero connection to the rest of the country, and create the same shithole conditions they fled to come here--the only change is the free ride.
I feel like living at your place...
heh.
that pretty much covers it
Those people agitating for amnesty for illegals have no clue what is going on along the southern border.
No clue whatsoever.
Watch Drug war sends bullets whizzing across the border
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOHOHKBEqE&feature=fvw
On Location: Mexico City (watch video clip Journalism Under Fire: The Perils of Covering Mexico’s Drug War)
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/mexico/100630/full-frame-mexicos-drug-war
Check out Juarez Drug War Photos: http://www.google.com/images?q=drug+war+juarez&hl=en&prmd=niv&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=ElR8TMy3M8OC8gaRzvz5Cg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=6&ved=0CEsQsAQwBQ&biw=1579&bih=668
We are at War all along our southern border.
This is what illegal immigration does – creates massive social unrest as societies on both sides of the border are corrupted by the drug trade.
Drugs flowing North. Guns flowing South. Illegals functioning as "mules" both coming and going. Pervasive crime and corruption everywhere.
That’s why we need a strong secure border and why we must ruthlessly attack drug cartel members and their support systems.
We lose this war and we have a permanent criminal narco-state to our south and a no man’s land of lawlessness in the states that border Mexico. Arizona knows this because they are living it. That is why they are trying to get Barry Soetoro to do his job -- protect our sovereign borders from illegal invaders.
or this one:
http://www.blogdelnarco.com/
Pretty ignorant and illogical arguments. Just because Mexico is in an upheaval NOW, it does not mean that it will continue to be so in 10 years. It much less means that allowing immigrants will cause the violence to spill over.
Violence in the US is product of inner-city ghetto life, which is very, very much linked to government subsidies to the chronically unemployed. Immigrants in the US are necessary because because crack addicts in the inner city would rather collect a government pension than get a job picking apples.
If the US government wasn't subsidizing the apple picker's families, they wouldn't be able to work for jack shit.
Mexico has ALWAYS been corrupt and in upheaval. If Mexico was so damn great, why do people flee in the millions?
And there you are talking about government subsidies for Americans.
What about the lady with six anchor babies who gets everything for free, while her husband can live off of her benefits and make 4 dollars an hour doing day labor?
Do you even have any basis in reality? Are you retarded?
What part of eliminate all subsidies do you not understand?
Anchor babies ocurr because you subsidize them genius.
Who can blame them? Really, who would not rather sit on their ass and be subsidized. Have you ever picked apples, or beans, or dug potatoes paid in pennies by the pound? I did when I was a kid. Uh, just a minute, let me think here. On the one hand, free money, on the other physically hard, hot, dirty work for peanuts. If you're stuck being poor one way or the other, I'd take the free money. Its nice work when you can get it. Ask any banker.
"Those people agitating for amnesty for illegals have no clue what is going on along the southern border."
No shit. Or even far away from the border, as other states adopt idiotic policies about illegals. I'm an hour from Canada, for crying out loud, and the two main sources of crime are methheads and Mexicans.
To their credit, unlike the methheads, the Mexicans want to work, and most are not criminals past the whole illegal entry and tax thing.
People used to bitch about the Irish and Chinese. Now, we all wear green on St Patty's day and every workplace in the nation has a Chinese takeout flyer pinned up somewhere.
Things are simply not going to play out the same way with our neighbors from the south as long as there are so many here who are not citizens or taxpayers.
Immigration, legal vs illegal, isn't even the fatal problem.
It's the cost to the welfare state of supporting these new mouths.
School. Emergency care. Social Security. Fire. Multi-lingual legal forms.
Increased crime. Dropping scholastic standards.
It has destroyed us already. Now it is going to continue to smash our shards into dust.
Almost all studies conducted have shown immigrants to the USA pay more taxes (indirectly) than the value of the services they get from the state.
As you stated the problem is the "cost to the welfare state of supporting these new mouths". The answer is get rid of the welfare state, not the hard working immigrants who provide value to the economy.
Almost all "studies" are total nonsense and this article is crap. I live in an area having major problems with criminal invaders (they aren't immigrants if they are illegal) and the cost for additional law enforcement, strain on hospitals, schools, etc. is quite high. I had to drive some of these wonderful people off of my property at shotgun point at 2 am a month or so ago for prowling around and looking in my car looking for something to steal. Screw them.
I live in SC where our Bill 4400 (which nails employers for hiring illegals and is auditing every business in my county) is starting to bite, and it is helping. My local school system has been able to reduce an ESOL teacher at each level and one Special Ed teacher (their kids are disproportionately stupid, sorry) at the middle school after the last school year ended. This helps our schools use resources for kids who actually deserve it instead of subsidizing cheap lawn care and maid service for people too lazy to do it themselves.
The grounds crew for the complex I live in went from 6-8 illegals to an old white guy with three 20ish helpers, two white one black and all three are born US citizens. I talked to them- all were quite happy for the work and while $12/hour isnt huge money for the young guys they were content enough. Local businesses now have to hire menial help in the 10-12/hr range instead of paying illegals, and its not hurting anyone at all besides the invaders. Ask black folks in SC what they think of illegals- the answer would make a Klansman blush. They know darn well who illegals hurt, and driving them out of the area I live in is a good thing for all concerned. There is no shortage of undereducated unskilled people in this country and we hardly need to import more.
Drive em out and put troops on the border with orders to defend the country. Those of us living in areas being destroyed by this horde have had enough. You folks in the big liberal states want 'em, you can have 'em, but dont expect everyone else to stand around while our communities are destroyed.
You describe your 2am trespassers and your former grounds crew as "illegals".
How do you know this"?
Well, I talked to the President of the Homeowners Association regarding the former crew and he confirmed that none had papers, they gave the previous contract to the lowest bidder and it was an illegal crew. However, as of July 1 of this year the law now allows county officials to go after companies with less than 100 employees, and in June the change began.
Regarding the guys in my driveway, well I suppose its not 100%, but since nobody seems to know any Mexicans around here that are actually legal the odds are greatly against them being here through proper channels. A relative who teaches ESOL locally tells me that their students are almost universally the children of illegals. I called the sheriffs department afterwards and the officer who came out said there is a known gang of illegals working my neighborhood who do smash and grabs on cars and sometimes take the car altogether. So while I don't have 100% proof, the likelihood is very close to that level based on knowledge of local demographics and the words of the officer. I seriously doubt they were admiring my car's interior at that time of night.
Bill 4400 is starting to help some, with a little luck this is the start of an exodus from my area. Any state looking to crack down should take a look at this SC law, it isnt perfect but is definitely starting to get some traction.
Thanks for responding.
You are relying on hearsay to reinforce your prejudices.
"Nobody seems to know any Mexicans around here that are actually legal." Perhaps if you treated them as worth getting to know you might be more successful!
well said Led
"Almost all studies conducted have shown immigrants to the USA pay more taxes (indirectly) than the value of the services they get from the state."
GOD you're a fucking liar.
It costs 11000 a year to put a child in public school, roughly.
Are you telling me that illegal immigrant families are paying 11000 a year in taxes?
How about 66000 in taxes? Yeah, I'm sure picking apples pays that many taxes, indirectly or otherwise.
God, you're the biggest liar/moron on the entire planet!
Continue showing your ignorance. Fact is that you also don't pay taxes. Not only because you are a student, but also because most Americans effectively receive more tax deductions from the IRS than what they pay out (or don't report at all)
The top 5% of wage earners paid 50% of all taxes in the US! The rest were corporate taxes.
You claim that paying gives you the right to decide about services? Then I think that top 5% has a right to bring in the cheap labor they want and that corporations can hire whoever they please. Because, THEY and not YOU are paying for that schooling the child receives.
See issues are usually much harder to argue when you debate using facts and not just insults.
I'm curious to hear where my 5-figure tax bill went last year. I'm nowhere near being the eeeeevil rich, unless that definition has expanded to anyone with a real job, but I'm trying to find what possible "services" I'm getting for the 10s of thousands stolen from me.
I'm pretty sure it went to Ponzi schemes, handouts, and other vote-buying dependency programs.
You're either lying or you're stupid. Which is it?
While I've been under the impression that this site is full of 6/7-figure financial wizards, let me tell you, people in the middle of the 5-figure range pay alot of taxes too. So I get a mortgage deduction in April, big deal. I pay that and then some back in property taxes alone. Then there's the rest of my income/FICA taxes and the 6% sales tax on damned near everything I buy.
Christ, even when I worked part-time over summer breaks for a couple thousand I paid more in than I got back at the end of the year. So just where the hell are all of these working Americans supposedly getting a windfall from the government?
Exactly this. Its the malfare state that is the problem.
OK, I admit that I'm a complete dope when it comes to these things. So could someone please explain to me, in English, with words that even a moron like me could understand, how, in an era of nearly 17% U-6 unemployment, this conclusion...
"At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers."
... makes any logical sense.
Is this the "jobs Americans won't do" thing?
Counting and analyzing immigration date creates or saves at least a billionty jobs a month .
data ^
HA. Comment of the day!
Immigrants do what's called "marginal" labor, or labor that's below the minimum wage. So they aren't stealing jobs, insofar as our own government is stealing the jobs from us.
The money businesses and consumers save due to lower expenses as a result of immigrants working below minimum wage is then reinvested or spent, which has the potential to create jobs for those demanding higher-than-minimum wages.
Right - it's the "jobs Americans won't do" thing. Which I think is solved by cutting-off the flow of Other Peoples' Money to the never-employed, but that's a different debate.
So perhaps because I wasn't clear let me try again, with a little more emphasis this time...
"At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers."
Until and unless every able-bodied American is employed (U-6 goes to practically 0.0%), how can this not diminish the employment opportunities of the US born?
The quote you reference is a negative one, not positivistic.
"Evidence is scant" means that it is difficult to *demonstrate* the truth of the thesis.
It does not mean that the antithesis is true.
If I say, "Evidence is scant that Joe killed Bob," I am not making the claim: "Joe didn't kill Bob."
Kinda weaselly. If the author had a strong point to make, he might've tried a bit harder.
OK, I get your point. But I'm still not understanding why there needs to be evidence provided.
Look, if you import workers into the country - either controlled (legal) or uncontrolled (illegal) - and those people take existing jobs how can you not diminish the employment opportunities of those already here?
It's because you're actually right, docj. You stated a simple and blindingly obvious truth. That's why no one here is able to refute it.
+++ to both
"you can't teach some folks with a two-by-four"
I'm not inclined to disagree with your view, just a stickler for the logic.
I suppose there's some question as to what comprises "opportunity." I have never met anyone who wanted to work in fields picking fruit, although I've known a few folks who've done it.
It's also not completely clear to me that the jobs performed by truly low-wage workers would *ever* be performed at minimum wage rates. Not that this is an argument against your point--I just think we're seeing symptoms of a structural problem.
If it were the case that all agricultural labor were somehow magically forced to become "legal," paid minimum wage with less than 40-hr weeks or benefits or however it would have to work, I'm not certain that the work would still be done in the US. What could happen (and no I'm not near well-informed enough to make a claim about this) is that our food imports increased and our produce prices rose.
Is that "better for America"? Perhaps it's a waste of our arable land to be using it to grow apples--I truly wouldn't know. Perhaps buying strawberries that are imported from who-the-fuck-knows-where at double the current price is a step in the right direction. Perhaps apples at $4.00/lb is a good thing.
But hey--I'm a bit dubious about the whole post-agrarian vision in the first place, and even more dubious about the legitimacy of any conception of post-industrialism. If "capitalism" as an economic system is so obviously the best approach to everything, why does it depend absolutely on the ability for the holder of wealth to siphon profit from the work of the people who hold none?
When labor was more mobile than capital, things were very very different than they are today. Capital is vastly more mobile than labor in today's system.
Equalization appears to me to be a NECESSARY outcome of the existing paradigm. There's nothing about an American that makes him worth ten times a Bangladeshi. And I don't see us dominating *any* industries with such a tiny population relative to the world.
One quick disagreement. A few years back Australia had a large low skilled inmigrant population working their farms. The Australian gov decided no more and got rid of them. The farmers were screaming that it would destroy the economy if they couldnt have cheap labor to pick fruit. Lo and behold the farmers used technology to replace the cheap manual labor with even cheaper machine labor.
Then again, I seem to have read somewhere that the tobacco and cotton farms would be destroyed unless we continued the practice of importing cheap labor...sometime around 1850's if I remember right.....
Republican v. Democrat, legal v. illegal, black v. white are distractions and redirects for the people. Do not turn your attention to the fights being staged for you, but pay attention to those who stage the fights for you. TPTB tell government to keep the borders open, to print documents in 20 languages, to give free education to children of illegal immigrants, to allow children of illegal immigrants to be become citizens for being born here because it furthers their agenda. The illegal immigrants need to realize they are being lured her for their slave labor, that the border is open for them, that the social programs are there to entice them, and the amnesty programs are to ensure they stay.
Where ever you see somthing that obviously does not make sense, follow the money, it will always lead you to the companies that benefit generously from these types of policies. Look at the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on terror, the war on education (no child left behind) - all very profitable.
I don't think we're disagreeing. I'm saying forcing the cheap-ass immigrant labor out of agriculture MAY NOT add jobs for citizens.
Your example of Australia is in accordance with my view--sure, replace the cheap labor with machines and you still haven't created another job for the American citizenry.
i think HS' point was way above this particular issue.
we're being "played" in this media game. careful out there.
(My reply was to goldsaver.)
indeed. pardon.
i do hope folks listen to Homeland, as *that* is probably the make/break of our era. issues lost in distraction. these guys are good at what they are doing.
re: your actual point, i believe whether machines or lazy americans replace the illegal immigrants is academic. they are illegal. kick them back out and welcome them in the right way. until then, let in the ones who are honoring our laws and patiently waiting in line.
sure, replace the cheap labor with machines and you still haven't created another job for the American citizenry.
Ah - But: Someone would have to invent, design, build and sell the machines. Those tasks are on a much higher level than the dead-end job of picking fruits - there may even be spinoffs and side effects from building those robots that are vastly more profitable than an army of fruit-picking peons.
If it was not so, the numerous countries with unlimited supply of cheap labor would dominate the world. Instead all of them are maybe not The arsehole of the world, but well within farting distance of it!
For low pay unskilled jobs I don't see how anybody could disagree with you. When the argument goes around breaking the law (less than minimum wage, avoiding taxes, etc), so food can be cheaper for example, the real problem is the unreasonable tax and employment code and more. Why nobody points that out is beyond me.
Skilled work for a higher pay is a completely different story. You can't educate and give experience to someone in a month. H1 visas are a necessity but requesting/issuing should be spread out over the year instead of the one time event in a year like it is today. Sometimes you may have to delay a project or start it in another country, because there isn't enough good people available at reasonable market prices.
Well, I'm torn. Having spent most of my life in the defense industry I never really had to deal much with the H1-B issue and therefore don't have much personal experience upon which to draw.
I now work for a software company and am completely surrounded by H1-B (and/or green card - I'm not really sure) folks. Most of whom are working (as fast as they can, I might add) toward citizenship. Still, I wonder, are all of these folks so highly specialized that there simply were no Americans able (and willing) to do those jobs? Really? Kinda hard to believe - then again, I was just about the only English-speaking (nominally) American in my graduate PhD program in computational mechanics.
Dicey.
Your suspicions are correct. Their foremost purpose in being brought here is to undercut US workers wages. Some attorneys and placement agencies on the East Coast even boldly advertise the fact.
As far as I know issuing h1b's is still going strong today when nobody can remotely claim there is a shortage of qualified American engineers (see the 20%+ unemployment rate using pre-Clinton methodology).
It all points to the deliberate destruction of the middle class.
Yes, depending on your location and/or competition acquiring 5 good experienced people for a new project will be very difficult. And no, 10 lesser ones won't make the deadline, it's better to relocate the project (don't mean outsourcing, that's even worse).
Not all software are created equal though... depending on your requirements and time line anyone will do.
Your views and mine may differ, that's ok.
Yes? YES??!!
Are you kidding me? The reason there aren't Americans to fill the jobs of H1B workers is that the wages aren't high enough to attract American workers.
H1-B is self reinforcing too. The more H1-B (Indian and Chinese engineers used to a 3rd world standard of living) workers that come here the lower wages go. And the lower wages stay the fewer Americans want to take those jobs and the more Americans leave Science and Engineering to chase more money in other fields. I'm just biding my time until I switch professions. I'm done. The H1-B visa program has driven me out. I can make more money in an industry that can't import 3rd world labor.
I could quit my job and work for my father-in-law driving a dump truck and make roughly the same amount of money. It's a fucking joke. Meanwhile my college friends went into Law and Finance and make 10 times what I make doing engineering. The ONLY reason is that we don't have an H1-B Law program or an H1-B portfolio management program. If we imported third world labor into those fields those salaries would go down too. It's simple supply and demand.
The H1-B program is like a virus slowly sucking the blood out of it's victim. Half the H1-B visa holders I know just go back to India or China after they work here for a while to gain the experience. I worked with a great guy from India who "retired" in 2000 and went back to India with about $200,000 in saving when he turned 40. He told me he could live like a king and have a big house, a chauffeur and personal chef. Good for him, I don't have that option, I've got to work 40 years to save enough to retire. We can't expect an H1-B worker to compete for a higher wage if they can just leave anytime they want and drop back to third world lifestyle.
In the end we're misallocating resources and dumbing down native workers. The irony is that these mis-allocated workers have virtually zero value if the economy crashes and we have to start pulling our weight as a Nation without taking in a dollar of debt for each dollar to taxes.
The fact that the FRBSF "economist" don't recognize this is just proof of their utter incompetence. But then again they didn't recognize the Real Estate bubble which was obvious how do we expect them to get this?
+1, great post. US citizens would absolutely love to study science, math, and engineering, but there's no money in it. Top grads from top STEM schools in the US and Canada haven't even been getting interviews for much of the past decade from the tech firms who routinely send their representatives to deliver perjurous claims before Congress that they 'need H1-B's'.
Since scientists and engineers create the value, they should be the highest paid people in society. Not bankers and lawyers, who at best, just redistribute value.
Agree. I got an engineering degree and the main jobs available are working for Uncle Sam either directly or indirectly. Unfortunately, the bankers and lawyers get to use all of the technology created by engineers.
Engineering is not as popular as it once was. I graduated from a top 25 program in 1999, and back then we represented the largest percentage of undergraduates on campus. Now, the top two majors are english and pre-med (in that order).
Let's make a distinction between skilled workers and H1'Bs, ok?
The visa program was supposed to bring in skilled workers, but when two Indian companies gobble up half of the available visas just because they can and fill up the positions with anybody who can type (or barely, I've seen it) it does no good to anybody. The unqualified lowers the average wage and the companies that *really* need skilled workers are left empty handed.
I hope that is clear. The system is broken we all know it.
Want to correct this and I cannot edit it. Turns out there are probably little to no H1-B's at my company - lots of O-1's. As I admit below I'm rather ignorant as to the distinctions which I gather are pretty important.
Mea culpa for any confusion.
because there isn't enough good people available at reasonable market prices.
But what's a 'reasonable market price'? That's a contradiction of terms. The market is the market, the market determines what is reasonable for a skill, not the other way around.
For instance, the 'market' price of Gold, tonight, is $1240. That's the bottom line price. Now, applying the same logic of the H1-B slave traders who don't think the price is 'reasonable', they would run to Congress and demand a law that forces owners of gold to sell at $800. Can you imagine the absurdity of such a situation? Yet this is precisely what happens when people think that they know better than the markets, as to what a 'reasonable' price is for a skill.
If you leave out the key to the thought, good people, then it is your fault to reach that conclusion.
If you hire slaves because they are cheaper instead of the more expensive but required set of skills needed for the job you will fail. Many projects fail... penny wise, pound foolish.
[if you care, you need to read this in the context of my comments above, I'll not repeat them here]
If you hire slaves because they are cheaper instead of the more expensive but required set of skills needed for the job you will fail.
And Why Not: The bigger, more epic the failure, the bigger the golden parachute and the cushier the next job will be!
I know managers who's real job it must be to run entire departments into the ground so the higher-ups can get the justification for closing them. And they are in demand, whatever happens, they just collect the bonus and move on to destroy the next business.
Actually, great comments, I would just state I believe it is at least 22% to 28% real unemployment, only those percentages actually correlate to all the other numbers.
Thanks Sarge - and yes, if we take the U-6 and add-in the able-bodied but never-employeed and others who don't make it into the stats provided by the Bureau of Making Shit up we're probably much closer to the high end of your range.
I can make it even simpler. Tyler's posting this trash, in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary, just cost him some money.
Two parts:
a) Yes it is the "jobs Americans won't do" thing. Very simple and logical. If Americans would be willing to do the job for the going rate, immigrants would not be needed. For your info also. Some of those illegal immigrant jobs actually pay above minimum wage. Farmers simply cannot get Americans to go pick apples for 12 hours a day, as the job requires. They can't get them because even though they earn a bit less, wellfare is more attractive than 12 hours of hard labor.
b) The existence of immigrants creates new business. Everything from housing, to restaurants, to cars. Immigrants add to GDP thus increasing the total wealth of the nation.
Do immigrants make it harder for lower class Americans to live a confy life? Yes, absolutely. But it is those $150k union jobs at GM that killed US competitiveness
If Americans aren't willing to do jobs for the 'going rate', then the 'going rate' is too low, and needs to be adjusted upwards, such that, the 'going rate' attracts enough Americans into the field.
Likewise, if Americans are too willing to do jobs for the 'going rate', then the going rate is too high, and Goldman Sachs needs to adjust their salaries downwards, such that, the 'going rate' facilitates maximum corporate profits.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/08/doing-jobs-americans-wont-do.html
I don't know how to live link this system. Copy and paste.
72 people dead is hardly major news in the grand scheme of things. Second, he clearly doesn't know his history - that part of the US used to be Mexico, prior to being invaded by white settlers. Third, it really isn't a huge deal to me if the existing government fails at its task of protecting the citizens - after all, why continue an inefficient system indefinitely? Or is the US government "too big to fail", too?
That part of the U.S. was actually settled by White Spaniards when "Mexico" ruled it. Mestizos were not really living in that part of New Spain.
Check out who used to live, for example, in missions around San Antonio. You will find that they were not white Spaniards. They also got deeds for land when missions were dissolved. Similar situation in many parts of NM.
You should be embarrassed for posting this drivel.
Sorry old chum, you need to get past revised history you were thought in college. Texas was settled by Americans that were invited by the Mexican government to an area of Mexico so hostile that no Mexican wanted to live there. Texians, as they were called, had to give up their US citizenship and swear allegiance to Mexico. Only after the new and improved Mexican government reneged on the conditions of the deal by violating their own constitution, did the Texians rebelled. Even then, it took 3 years of Texians trying to negotiate peacefully with the Mexican overlords before they finally declared their independence. The Mexican government promptly issued arrest warrants for those who signed the declaration of independence from Mexico and sent Santa Ana to arrest them at the mission in El Alamo. Look at the flag flown over the Alamo. It was a Mexican flag with the word 1824 emblazoned in gold letters. The Texians were demanding a return to the 1824 constitution they have agreed to and swore allegiance to.
BTW, Texas was an independent Republic before joining the union. The rest of the formerly Mexican lands were sold to the US by Mexico as payment for their outstanding debt incurred during their revolution.
So, we didn't steal the South West, we bought it fair and square like Louisiana and Alaska.
tx for that. excellent missing links on the big picture.
btw, Mexico officially owned California for all of 26 years...So much for the great "Latino" homeland BS
I did not study this in college. But you need to get past propaganda posted in Alamo. There were people living in TX before it was Mexico, TX, and US. These people were killed and driven off in most places. THEY are the only ones who can talk about damn immigrants since it was their land until it was taken from them by either force or cunning. In a few places like around San Antonio they actually remained for one or another reason which was the point of my post. I did not argue for or against what belongs to Mexico or US. And I know all about TX being independent before joining US (I live in TX). Should have stayed that way, and stupid Washington would be out of our business.
Inmigración perras!!!!
I have been living as an alien around the world. So far I have not ruined any economies. But I will try harder!
ALIENS AND THE ECONOMY http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/08/tea-party-round-up_5199.html
Come on! No one is AGAINST immigration. Most are against ILLEGAL immigration. There is a difference and, frankly, given the economy I bet more Americans would take those crappy jobs now than ever before.
given the economy I bet more Americans would take those crappy jobs now than ever before
Until such time as Uncle Sugar cuts-off the flow of Other Peoples' Money to the perpetually never-employed, I'll take the other side of that bet.
+156 weeks!
Precisely the point. Immigrants come to the US to fill a need for labor. The need is real because native born Americans would simply rather collect unemployment checks than work in agriculture.
You cannot address illegal immigration without eliminating government subsidies for the unemployed. You will simply bankrupt the American agricultural industry because there is no way to pay the salaries necessary to convince Jamal to pick apples.
People are unemployed because there are no jobs!
People used to make 15 bucks an hour to work construction. Now, those companies are out of business because an illegal immigrant, whose entire family is subsidized by welfare benefits to anchor babies, can do the job for six dollars an hour.
It's really easy to work for less when your family is taken care of by the government!
Well, there are plenty of sane and rational people who are dead set against runaway immigration to bring in as many people of all kinds as possible (to keep real wages as low as possible) while offshoring as many American jobs as possible, to foreign facilities and production centers built using tax payers' monies (through USAID, Millennium Challange Accounts, OPIC, etc.) for those jobs to be offshored to.
Along with illegal immigration, and slave workers criminally brought in by Human Trafficking networks.
no border = no country
Sorry, nonthinker, but you evidently haven't yet figured out -- no sovereignty = no country.
Which is why they continue with those quasi-borders, which they can charge and monitor for, while allowing in undocumented workers.
Follow the money, douchebag.
The illegal alien lovers do all they can to fuzzy up that distinction.
yeah, it works on the monster farms in California and the horse farms of Lexington Kentucky, but the blue haired set of Arizona on a fixed income doesn't want to pay for the education and healthcare of Mexicans who like the weather better on the north side of the Rio Grande.
This finding required a study?
"But don't tell that to all those who want the H1-B program destroyed and to seal of the Mexico-Texas border"
That's about as far as I needed to go. There is night & day difference between H1-B's and illegals.
The illegals aren't really a problem, compared to the H1-B's. The illegals mostly end up as gardeners or other low-end labour. The H1-Bs come to America to facilitate theft of America's intellectual property, destabilization of its industry, and disrupt the domestic capability insofar as R&D is concerned.
H1-B has also led to almost an entire decades worth of Electrical/Computer Engineering graduates being unemployed.
F**king A, my brother, f**king A....
If you came here illegally, you are a problem. You became a criminal the minute your back got wet. Why is that so fucking hard to understand??
H1-B's are not a problem...they are needed because parents thought it would better to send their kids to college to study art or media or some other dumbass thing.
Harvesting the labor of illegals for profit or cost savings is getting damn close to slavery my friend.
I've seen it. An illegal falls off a roof, they dump him at the emergency room and speed off. They plug another one in.
It's cruel & heartless...and I want a ten story wall angling south at the top with a moat filled with alligators fitted with heat seeking missiles on their backs to stop it.
Giovanni Peri and the SF Fed can take a long walk off a short pier built over the moat.
H1-B's not a problem? Why do top CS grads, including some from MIT, have trouble finding jobs? Why is most of my Electrical Engineering/Computer Science class from 2002, from a top NA university, chronically unemployed or underemployed? There's no shortage of talent, really, its just that the H1-B's are so much cheaper and can be forced to work under conditions of slavery, with little recourse other than to pack up and go back to India.
It's not quite so cut-and-dry, pitz. Have to tell you talking to a bunch of recent grads (B.S. level - no graduate school) has been a real eye-opener. They seem to be laboring under the delusion that because they can write a little Python they, who are in their early-20's and have precisely ZERO job experience to speak of, should command a nearly 6-figure salary.
I laughed in the face of the poor slob (literally - kid didn't even know how to tie a tie - at 24) who spoke as much to me during an interview (I wasn't the hiring manager - merely filling in for someone else). I'm a little more interview-hardened now and can keep my reactions better under control, but it's really stunning how deluded are these kids.
In the Silicon Valley, a low 6-figure salary is what's needed to get into entry-level home ownership. This salary level has been, until around 2000, typical for engineering graduates.
What do you expect a 24-year-old with a 5 or 6 year investment in their education to work for? $60k/year? LMAO.
The sense of entitlement goes both ways, and the grad's are far more capable than just Python. Now, if employers can't run businesses that are able to pay professional-level salaries, then maybe they should just close up shop until demand returns in their industry. Instead of whining like crybabies that they can't hire people at slave wages.
My office is nowhere near SV. If your entire experience is dealing with SV then I respectfully suggest that's greatly skewing your view here.
My first job out of college (1988) paid me about $27K - which, depending on how you measure it, is somewhere between 50-60K now. Given that, for most of what I've seen in the way of qualifications and skills I think $60K is actually pretty generous.
We all have to start somewhere in the overall skills hierarchy, and your $27k was likely chronically undervaluing you in 1988, if, indeed, you are a smart CFD guy as your other posts indicate. So this isn't exactly a new problem.
And if you these 24-year old new grads aren't getting hired, where does the next generation of experts come from?
Heh. CFD == VOODOO!!
Only kidding - but I'm actually a structural mechanics geek.
My $27K job was when I had a BS (actually a BEng) and little technical work experience. I thought that was actually pretty reasonable at the time but then again I didn't saddle myself with anything close to 6-figures in student loans getting my Bachelor's.
Lots of facets to this, eh?
There aren't ten dollar an hour jobs now!
Don't you get it?
I know unemployed engineers that were working for 60k before.
I know people with law degrees working at Starbucks.
Sure, recent graduates don't get a lot of money, etc, but they aren't even getting offers at any price.
You can't expect somebody with 50k invested in a bachelor's degree, or more than that for a masters, to work for 8 dollars an hour. It just doesn't work man..
There are so many people right now that would work for ANYthing. That "college kids want 100k" BS is just that- BS!
There aren't even 27k jobs for college grads right now. There aren't any jobs.
Exactamundo, Johnny B, Sir!
My last job, a production job which took years to get (regardless of my highly technical background, experience and having created the technology EVERYBODY on this site is presently using), and that $10 per hour job was offshored to India.
As an update - spoke "off the record" to someone I know in HR with my company. Most of our non-citizen employees are of the O-1 variety. She didn't know of a single H1-B in our ranks.
Anecdode not necesarily being the singluar of data, of course.
Pitz, you are right on target and docj is full of bullsh*t and like to parse everything down to the simpleton level (I've long suspect docj is a Punjabi, and will continue to do so until contrary proof be offered.)
The offshoring and importing foreign scab workers argument has long been over.
Anyone who isn't a complete illiterate is familiar with the BLS study, released in summer of 2009, which details the jobs creation stats between July 1999 and July 2009.
While the public sector created over one million jobs, there were effectively no new jobs created by the private sector --- at least not in America.
The critical mass point has long been reached with regard to jobs offshoring.
Anyone with functioning synapses realizes that the American-based multinationals, working in conjunction with USAID, Millennium Challenge Accounts, OPIC, and a host of other governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, have used tax payer funds over the past three decades to build factories, production facilities, training centers, R&D labs, IT centers, etc., etc., in foreign countries, where they then offshore those American jobs to.
Hence: minus tax from the American tax base for the multinationals' use of foreign aid funds;
minus tax from the American tax base for those jobs offshored;
minus tax from the American tax base for those tax breaks the multinationals receive for offshoring said jobs; and,
minus tax from the American tax base as 70%, or greater, of those American-based multinationals and corporations refuse to pay federal taxes by means of all the profit laundering, transfer pricing, profit shifting, hiding of capital and debt, and hundreds of other schemes, at those 95 offshore finance centers.
And Ameritards wonder what's become of the American tax base.
Incredibly shrinking American tax base = debt-financed billionaires
Sorry, nmewn is full of crap as well!
Pitz,
In a word, "yes."
Not to be flip, but I am a 32 year-old with a BSEE from a top-10 school and an MSEE. I have a broad range of electrical engineering skills and 9 years of experience in my field. I currently work in an extremely toxic position with limited opportunity for advancement.
As a result of my work situation I have taken it upon myself to explore other opportunities. This summer I have run through a gauntlet of 5 onsite interviews. So far I've received one $77k (+9%) offer from a startup that I passed on because I do not believe I have the sales or new business development skills to make that work over the long term.
Three other firms appear to have balked at my request for a +5% increase to $75k, which Salary.com reports as the national average for an Electrical Engineer 2, even though my experience and skills place me closer to the Electrical Engineer 3 level. My favorite excuse was that my skillset was, "not an exact fit." This for a position billed as one where the applicant would essentially have a year long honeymoon to learn the particulars from their soon-to-retire guru. I'd like to thank their HR department's poor reading skills for wasting the time and money involved in my onsite visit. I'm pretty sure it's a money issue because I saw the position reposted and my salary request was at the top of their range.
I could care less about the fifth and final firm because the product bores me and it's half an hour south of Chicago among grassfields, parking lots, and six lanes, making for a hellish living and/or commuting situation.
Yes, this entire experience has been a rude awakening for me, and the current reality is that employers seem to expect engineers similar to myself to work for $60-$65k. If they can't find a replacement guru or technical lead at those salaries they seem perfectly content to sit on their hands and wait. On the other hand, the typical corporation's utter refusal to negotiate is infuriating. I always state my salary number as a "request," not a "requirement." Doesn't seem to make any difference to those on the other side of the table.
Such is the reality of our time. Not saying I'm happy about it, just trying to relate my experience to the board.
Yup. Your story is very common, and shows the complete sense of entitlement that businesses have towards the very type of labour that will, over the long term, drive their bottom line.
I know, amongst my friends, who are roughly the same age as you, the ones who are working, as engineers (BSEE, BSCS, sometimes a MSEE or MSCS), are often paid less than the tradesmen who work for the same company, and invested not a dime in their education or personal development.
H1-B facilitates this nonsense, and is yet one more tool of oppression by the banking/lawyer/politician class of society.
docj, my son is a Physics major - but is going in to education. My daughter, junior in HS, is a genuine math and science whiz. I didn't mind my son chosing Physics (because his preference, as a HS teacher, was History - and "mom and dad" weren't going to pay for that "education") but my daughter chose engineering on her PSAT as a soph (just missed Nat'l Merit Semi as a soph) and when saw that I said "no way."
My wife's sister is EE and I have CE friends. They are all universal in saying "are you sure you want to pursue this?"
Therefore, what you and others might be "interviewing" are the semi-clueless (but still brighter than most) ENG grads - because many of the truly gifted are being steered away because of the HB-1 and other foreign students in the US programs.
My daughter is being "steered" to get her CPA and then be able to live a balanced life - away from the asian automations.
In a way, this is similar to housing choices made every day. People wish to live where they are culturally comfortable and that is reflected in where they chose to live (and chose NOT to live). Call me whatever name that you wish, but I don't wish to invest in a college choice for my blonde-haired/blue-eyed daughter that sees her surrounded by automations for 4 years - and then working in a similar environment. Sure, being a CPA ain't like being a rock star, but she'll be able to relate and socialize with most of her classmates and co-workers, etc.
Same logic with illegal aliens in certain occupations. I have friends who own landscaping businesses and they all had white/black employees until the Mexicans came to town. Then the landscapers started hiring the Mexicans, paid them in cash and thus under-cut the legit businesses. Those that tried to be an integrated company found it difficult - the whites and blacks they hired couldn't speak Spanish and the Mexicans, etc. couldn't speak English. Didn't make for a very efficient work environment.
We are being overwhelmed with immigration (1 in 3 in California - our most populous state?!?) and it's hard for assimilation to take place when the satellite dish brings the native programs and more and more of their uneducated friends and relatives join them.
Well, it's interesting. And I have to say I've really very much enjoyed the give/take in this thread. Lots of comments upthread that I'm sympathetic with, even if I may not agree entirely.
FWIW, I'm seriously talking with me HS-aged kids - who are almost certainly "college material" - about skipping college entirely except for perhaps a year or so at trade school (doing something they like, of course) unless they get a full ride somewhere (possible, but not entirely likely). They're bright kids, but entirely unmotivated academically (my best efforts notwithstanding) and I believe have skills and talents that could lead them in very successful paths that don't require paying 5-years of homage to the Ivy Mafia.
I'm still rather cloudy on the O-1 vs. H1-B distinction - apologies for the ignorance on my part there. Guess that's my homework assignment for tonight.
It's actually nice to have a semi-intelligent and civil discussion on this issue. I'd also like to add that another reason why people are telling me "stay away" from certain type of engineering - outsourcing!!!
One poster above did mention the squeeze from the HB-1 and outsourcing. Rightly or wrongly, I know a lot of people who are seeing this and "steering" their kids toward another path. One less trod and where "everyone knows your name" - just like from "Cheers." Few are happy with the balkanization of America.
Full ride?
HAHAHAHA!!!!
Dude, I have a 4.0, always have. Wanna know what my scholarship was this year?
1000 bucks.
I was happy to get that.
Full ride... oh my god... don't make me laugh...
By the quality of your posts all we can conclude from this is that:
a) The academic requirements for your college are low
b) You are receiving way too high a scholarship for the academic merit you are showing
If you want respect. Next time try debating with facts and not insults. Until then, good luck at Surf U
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double post
Johnny B, so many posters to the popular sites over the past few months are actually either bots with natural-language-interfaces, or clowns from the callout centers run by the US Chamber of Commerce, or subsidiaries like National Association of Manufacturers, etc.
This docj, and some of the ones following your comments, definitely don't fall into the category of adult, educated and sophisticated Americans (although some do sound like those typical legacy idiots from Princeton, Yale and Harvard).
mnevins2,
Just wanted to say you're doing the right thing steering your daughter away from engineering. It's a dead field unless she wants to spend her life working 50 to 60 hour weeks in the defense industry. I also want to state that even that business sector is trying to find ways to outsource or insource as many aspects of their engineering operations as possible.
Trade school may also be another solid option, but I have been seeing some horror stories where firms have begun insourcing electricians and plumbers in certain situations.
First off, it's much better to spend the extra year to get an MENG than to just leave university with a BS in CS/CE/EE. Second, H1-Bs are much less of a problem than you think. We would never hire anyone who can't speak clearly and write well. That puts H1-Bs at a huge disadvantage. If you are having that much trouble finding a job, then I would suggest you go to grad school. I have a PhD in EE and I've gotten job offers without even having to write a resume.
And I know guys who, graduating in 2002,2003, etc., went the MSEE and/or PhD route, and they, similarily, don't get the time of day.
Why, rationally, would a student invest in a MSEE or PhD, when the BSEE/BSCS doesn't even get them an interview? Talk about throwing good money after bad.
Your organization may very well not hire anyone without communications skills, but there are plenty that do. In fact, many R&D organizations are so full of the H1-B's that having good Chinese/Indian communications skills is now more important than being able to speak English.