“Former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking at a U.S. Treasury conference on U.S. Capital Markets Competitiveness put it bluntly: “Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world. If we open up a significant window for skilled [guest] workers, that would suppress the skilled-wage level and end the concentration of income.” Greenspan, to ensure everyone got the point, added, “Significantly opening up immigration to skilled workers solves two problems. The companies could hire the educated workers they need. And those workers would compete with high-income people, driving more income equality.” [For a detailed examination of how effective this policy could be, I strongly suggest you read Eric Weinstein’s National Bureau of Economic Research draft working paper titled, “ How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers ,” on the active suppression of STEM Ph.D. salaries by way of false National Science Foundation claims of a STEM shortage coupled with aggressive changes to STEM guestworker policies in the late 1980s to early 1990s. While the NSF eventually apologized for its misrepresentations to Congress and admitted that there was in fact a surplus of STEM workers, the damage was already done with the fallout continuing into today.] (...) Anuj Srivas, the technology and business reporter of the Indian paper The Hindu, pointed out earlier this year that despite all the rhetoric, the “H-1B visa farce” as he calls it is indeed “about the profit margins of Indian and American IT companies,” something that Vivek Wadhwa, an academic and entrepreneur who advocates more H-1B visas, has acknowledged. Wadhwa candidly wrote in 2008 that, “I know from my experience as a tech CEO that H-1Bs are cheaper than domestic hires. Technically, these workers are supposed to be paid a ‘prevailing wage,’ but this mechanism is riddled with loopholes. In the tech world, salaries vary widely based on skill and competence. Yet the prevailing wage concept works on average salaries, so you can hire a superstar for the cost of an average worker. Add to this the inability of an H-1B employee to jump ship and you have a strong incentive to hire workers on these visas.””
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 07:04:19 +0000
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