H-1B's Not So Busy After All

WASHINGTON (April 2008)– "A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies demonstrates that most H-1Bs are ordinary people doing ordinary work, not the geniuses claimed by industry lobbyists.

Those arguing for an increase in the number of H-1B visas (ostensibly temporary visas for 'specialty occupations,' many of them in the computer industry) claim that continued U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics hinges on our ability to import the world’s best engineers and scientists. But this new data analysis shows that the vast majority of H-1B workers – including those at most major tech firms – are not the innovators industry portrays them to be.

The new report, entitled 'H-1Bs: Still Not the Best and the Brightest,' is authored by Dr. Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, and is online at http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back508.html

The analysis is based on the simple fact that in a market economy, if workers are indeed outstanding talents, they will be paid accordingly. This can be determined by computing the ratio of the foreign worker’s salary to the prevailing wage figure stated by the employer (this report calls that ratio the 'Talent Measure' or TM). A TM value of 1.0 means that the worker is merely average, not of outstanding talent. The findings:

# The median TM value over all foreign workers studied was just a hair over 1.0.

# The median TM value was also essentially 1.0 in each of the tech professions studied.

# Median TM was near 1.0 for almost all prominent tech firms that were analyzed.

# Contrary to the constant hyperbole in the press that 'Johnnie can’t do math' in comparison with kids in Asia, TM values for workers from Western European countries tend to be much higher than those of their Asian counterparts.

# Most foreign workers work at or near entry level, described by the Department of Labor in terms akin to apprenticeship. This counters the industry’s claim that they hire the workers as key innovators.