Following up on the president’s response that “industry tells me” there aren’t enough American engineers, so the government has to import more: My colleague Steven Camarota has calculated that there are 1.8 million working-age, native-born Americans with degrees in engineering who aren’t working as engineers, either because they’re unemployed, dropped out of the labor force, or are working but in other jobs. So when businessmen complain that excessive taxes and regulations are harming them, leftists scoff, but when they want special rights to import foreigners, suddenly they’re so authoritative that their claims are beyond question?
I can attest to this. At my last employer, I worked with no less than five people who had degrees or a background in engineering. These people was working in customer service. However, when people think that some jobs can't simply be offshored, there is an odd reality: Many jobs that require degrees can easily be offshored because we now live in age of information technology and the internet. It's unfortunate for the guy who has an underutilized brain wasting his time speaking to fools about getting a technician to repair their appliances.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnfortunate, but in the end, no different than a factory worker who also can't get paid 5 times as much as his foreign competitor for the same work.
Honestly from my own personal perspective, I don't think Krikorian has all that much to worry about, so long as business confines itself to asking for more H1-Bs. The process of going from that status to a green card status is such a nightmare of bureaucro-blather that multiple people I've known have chosen to go back to India rather than continue with it.
But if H1-Bs are denied, it's not going to help those 1.8 million - instead of bringing Indians to America, people will hire Indians in India.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAre engineers really working other jobs because they can't get the top engineer pay? It doesn't sound like the jobs they are currently working pay any better than engineering.
Also, engineering should be fairly easy to offshore. Most of it can be done on the computer up to the prototyping stage. So why aren't they offshoring it more instead of dealing with the immigration red tape?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey (we) are. That was my point.
"Customer support" in many cases involves a fair amount of technical knowledge, but, moreso than product development, it also is a major plus if they are a native speaker of American English, understand some basic things about America, etc etc. So a qualified programmer might not be able to get the $80,000 developer gig because of competition from India et al, but he could still get paid 50K to do "support".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI know a lot of people with degrees in engineering who work in high finance. Unless Honeywell can start paying hedge fund type salaries, they'll stay in high finance.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen some clever fella figures out a way to either off-shore legal work or import Hindu attorneys, you can be sure the walls will go up the next day. That's the main issue with all of this. Our rulers are so disconnected from the consequences of their policies, they don't care. Obama says, “industry tells me” because he has never worked. Of course someone has to tell him what goes on with the hoi polloi. That's what happens when the president is from another planet.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLegal work is already being offshored to India, primarily document review formerly done by recent LS graduates in the US. Believe me, the major firms will offshore whatever can reasonably and cheaply be handled by Indian lawyers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI propose offshoring judges and congressmen. A judge in India can definitely hear an uncomplicated case and decide based on the American law; it actually ensures some kind of impartiality. An off-shored congressmen - don't even start me here...
captcha: "easy as cake"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI teach engineers mathematics. If you look at the bottom third of the people getting degrees in engineering every year it will not come as a surprise that there are a lot of people with engineering degrees who have pursued other careers. Might even come as a relief.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAre there other forms of protectionism you people are in favor of? It never fails to astonish me that anyone believes the country is worse off by importing smart, hard-working people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFirst off, buy a dictionary and have someone explain to you what "protectionism" means. It's not what you think.
Second, no one would care about immigration if not for the massive welfare state and onerous tax system. That's not reality today. Therefore, the cost of immigration is magnified.As a taxpayer, we get a say in all matters that cost us money.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou people want to protect labor from importation of competitors. Therefore, protectionism.
What is this about "the massive welfare state and onerous tax system"? This is the same thing the widget industry says: if you let imports of widgets from Country X in, you ruin the domestic widget industry and blah blah blah. By importing smart, hard-working people (not anyone and everyone who wants to come on over), we make the country wealthier and reduce the average tax burden.
"As a taxpayer, we get a say in all matters that cost us money."
True. That doesn't mean what you say makes sense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou people? Leave my race out of this pal.
If you're so fond of importing "smart hard working people" why not export the dumb not so hard working people? How about we ship some of your relatives off to the Congo or Sri Lanka?
You seem to think government is divorced from the people. That's the problem. Our rulers feel the same way. They think the purpose of government is to arrange things in a way that is pleasing to the ruling class. It is not.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMore foreigners are the "Best & Brightest" cr*p from management that does wholesale H-1B for American Worker swap outs, (that conveniently stops at their level.)BTW, Why isn't Ostap aggressively searching for a Better & Brighter immigrant to take his job at a lower salary?
Using LinkedIn, I checked the employment status of a bunch of Medicinal Chemists I worked with years. Few are still in the lab. They are somehow so less competent, even though they got their Ph.D.'s and Post Docs at schools like Yale and Princeton. Now they are now working as school teachers or patent examiners. One ex-Pfizer guy (Yale Post Doc) is a yoga instructor.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Following up on the president’s response that “industry tells me” there aren’t enough American engineers ... Steven Camarota has calculated that there are 1.8 million working-age, native-born Americans with degrees in engineering who aren’t working as engineers ..."
OK, fine, I'm a protectionist, spawn of the underworld with a soul cloned from that of Hannibal Lecter.
Now that we've got that out of the way, whether you're proctectionist or not, is it too much to ask for government and industry to be honest about things before they open up the immigration gates even further?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGreetings from Silicon Valley! Out here, every software engineer worth his salt is making $100,000. The unemployment rate for engineers out here is some negative number, because the demand for engineers is so high that many of them can supplement their income with high paying side gigs on the weekends.
My company employees about 25 Americans and 2 foreigners on work visas. They are great workers and will make our company as a whole more successful. It is so hard to hire American engineers, even at high salaries, that I am grateful that we have access to the H1-B and E-3 to continue to hire engineers from abroad.
Meanwhile, many companies started by foreigners with American investors want to stay in country to grow and hire, but it is hard for them to navigate the immigration system. From a software industry perspective, immigration law is way too strict and is currently choking off the supply of labor.
Silicon Valley needs a break that makes it easier for entrepreneurs to found and grow companies in the US.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen 'industry' says there aren't enough Americans willing to do a job so they have to import someone, what that really means is "there aren't enough willing to do the job at the wages I want to pay." For example, I guarantee there are lots of jobs Americans are eager to take in the Oil Patch that are much worse than picking veggies in the sun all day (underwater welder in confined spaces for example). Why? Because a man without a college degree can earn a good living for his family by doing this dangerous, uncomfortable work. If businesses paid what the market will bear then they'd make less profit themselves so they cry that they have to do it. Unfortunately by turning a blind eye to illegal immigration of unskilled labor we have made it so that if one lawn company in a sanctuary city tries to only hire legal residents or Americans then they can't compete with the rest of the lawn companies that the corrupt gov't allows to break the law.
As an engineer, however, I must say I am not intimidated by the idea of bringing in a bunch of foreign toolies to 'compete' with me. Firstly, I know 1st hand that most foreign engineers are not the same as an American one. It's not quite like an other-than-American medical degree, but almost. I'd rather have 1 American engineer than half a dozen Chinese ones. (Of course I'd also rather than 1 Chinese engineer than 6 of them but that's another story.) Secondly, if you bring over enough of the innovative and talented engineers from overseas it is like the 3rd gas station opening up on the same corner. It makes America an even better place to do industrial and technological projects and so it helps us all. I really doubt we are going to run out of work in the world for engineers, and if we do then I'm sure there will be plenty of new problems that need solving on our new Lunar state. What does need to happen is to change the business culture to get them to pay for and listen to good engineers instead of another army of diversity workers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAgree with everything you wrote, though want to be individualistic about it, and note that "some of my best friends" are Chinese/Indian engineers - but then the ones who have been in the US the longest are often better..anyway..
"What does need to happen is to change the business culture to get them to pay for and listen to good engineers instead of another army of diversity workers."
Agreed, and for that to happen, maybe we should change the governent culture so that armies of diversity workers are not required to protect against idiot federal lawsuits.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm curious what percentage of those 1.8M non-engineers with engineering degrees are women who decided they'd rather have a more people-oriented career (service professions, home raising a family, etc).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTwo points: first, that there aren't enough American engineers, this is true, but importing foreigners is no solution: the shortage is felt specifically in defense and related industries that require security clearances. My discussions with professors indicate that the problem spills over to them as well; they have plenty of opportunities for grants that they cannot pursue for lack of US citizen grad students to work them.
Second, though: bring them (the foreigners) anyway. America is better off with more people who are technically talented. Entrepreneurs will find ways to put them to work making things that increase everyone's prosperity.
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