Attention mass-immigration enthusiasts: this study from the Economic Policy Institute concludes that we already have more home-grown STEM graduates than we need. From the report’s summary:
The immigration debate is complicated and polarizing, but the implications of the data for enacting high-skill guestworker policy are clear: Immigration policies that facilitate large flows of guestworkers will supply labor at wages that are too low to induce significant increases in supply from the domestic workforce.
There should be nothing “complicated” about this: the continued emphasis on providing work visas to foreign STEM workers, who are generally willing to work cheaply, gluts the labor market and depresses wages.
As John Derbyshire remarked recently, regarding the immigration bill now oozing through Congress:
Immigration policy is a massive fraud on the American people. This country doesn’t actually need any immigrants at all, legal or otherwise. We have 300 million people here ”” all the talent we need. In 1960, when we had little more than half that number, we staffed labor-intensive industries, put men on the moon, and created a popular culture that swept the world. In 1974, when I first got a job as a computer programmer in this country, I worked in a large room filled with American-born computer programmers, except for one Filipino and one West Indian. Nowadays you can hardly find a U.S.-born programmer; not because we’ve got worse at it, only because mass immigration via the H-1B program has driven down wages to a point where no American wants to do the work.
The U.S.A. is a country, not a hotel. We are a nation, not a mere pool of labor. If this bill passes Congress, we shall have signed away our nationhood. Fight this disgraceful bill! Call your congresscritter; go to the NumbersUSA website and sign their petition; make yourself heard.