I’ve always been uneasy about the whole immigration debate because it’s tough to figure out which side I’m on. On one hand, we are a land of immigrants and opportunity, so slamming the door on the next wave of highly-motivated laborers, professionals, and entrepreneurs that have historically done much more good than harm to our economy is a distasteful idea. On the other hand, I regularly meet highly-qualified programmers, engineers and other tech workers who have suffered severe salary erosion, or have been unable to find work in their field at all because the local tech industries have managed to staff-up with imported labor made possible by the H-1B process. From a quick glance at the situation, it would be easy to blame the problem on the immigrant engineers who are apparently soaking up American jobs but a closer look reveals that it might not be quite that simple.
What if the real villain was not the immigrant tech workers but the H-1B visa process? That’s what
Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria
asserts in his recent Editorial -- and the more I think about it the more it makes sense. Although most of Zakaria’s article focuses on how Canada’s banking system has managed to survive the recent economic troubles because it’s based on common-sense regulations and tax codes, it also discusses how the country’s more open work visa and immigration policies have actually created more opportunities for its citizens.
Zakaria’s article got me to thinking whether the limits on H-1B visas, that were supposedly protecting us from an uncontrolled invasion of skilled workers, were in actuality a kink in the free market mechanism that would do a better job of regulating the labor pool than any government bureaucrat could. From my admittedly limited experience, it seems to me that a tech worker coming in under an H-1B visa is little more than an indentured servant who is usually paid on a scale well below the industry standard and must do the bidding of their sponsor or risk premature termination of their contract and foreced deportation. Under this system H-1B employees are pretty much captive employees who are denied the use of normal market forces to negotiate their wages. As a result, some employers seem to have become addicted to the below-market wage base that our visa system has created in some job markets, driving them to lobby our government for an ever-larger quota of imported tech workers.
So what would happen if we got rid of H-1Bs and adopted an open, competitive visa policy like Canada’s? Like Canada, we could be selective about who we granted residence by using a scoring system based on education level, job skills, work experience, age and language abilities. While the first inrush of resident workers might cause a downward adjustment of some professional wages, we’d quickly hit an equilibrium point as newly-arrived workers adjusted their pay requirements to meet the cost of living they encountered – and most likely to more reasonable levels than they would be if they were kept in check by the constraints of an H-1B sponsorship.
As we dig ourselves out of this global economic crisis, America (and many other nations), will be taking a close look at our banking and finance systems and the government institutions that manage them. Perhaps we can find some guidelines in the conservatively-run Canadian economic system that will help rebuild our own economy and help prevent future disasters. Likewise, perhaps we should take a cue from our neighbor to the North and overhaul our dysfunctional immigration policies to give both our aspiring guests and our current residents the opportunity to earn a fair living.
Comments? Questions? Want to share your thoughts on immigration policy with your fellow readers? Write me at
lhg at en-genius dot net or post your comments on our blog.
