Visas, immigrants, and adversarial politics in the USA

 

The fuss over H1B and other worker visas is ongoing, and doesn't look like being resolved anytime soon.  That's a pity for our country, because there are good arguments to be made on both sides of the issue.  Certainly, we have too many immigrants at present (and I say that as an immigrant myself!);  but at the same time, our education system is churning out a truly vast proportion of our young people who can't read, can't write, and can't handle basic numeracy.  Even worse, when the best of our youngsters get to university or college, they're wasting time (in some cases, years) on "remedial education" to fix those earlier problems, then studying a lot of courses that have nothing whatsoever to do with the specialization they've chosen.  As noted in our earlier article today:

The rot at the heart of universities in the West goes beyond expecting very little of students. It also shows up in the politicised nature of what they are asked to do. Engineering students ... complained after they were set the task of creating ‘a product for LGBTQ+ people focussed on providing education or safe spaces’. Students, not unreasonably, questioned what relevance this task had to engineering, and why it was worth 70 per cent of their module grade. Previous cohorts of engineering students apparently got to build a Mars rover.

The "woke" establishment is basically treating education as a tool to indoctrinate students in a particular political and philosophical perspective, a world view that's based almost entirely on dubious, flimsy theories that collapse in the face of the reality in which we live.

This is directly affecting the debate over work visas to the USA.  For decades I've watched the quality of graduates from US universities, both from the perspective of a businessman who had to select applicants for jobs in the information technology industry, and as a pastor looking at how such applicants were coping with life, the universe and everything.  In so many words, you could say (and I do) that US universities are failing to produce graduates who understand reality.  Everything is theoretical to them;  and if the issue of reality raises its ugly head, they prefer to try to ignore or change that reality rather than adjust their views.  It's astonishing to see, but I daresay many of my readers have encountered it, and understand what I'm talking about.

Foreign graduates seldom exhibit the same cocooned approach to reality.  Many of them have had to struggle and sacrifice to graduate, after competing against vast numbers of applicants to get into university in the first place.  They want to come to America because it offers an environment in which success brings worldly reward and upward mobility - something often conspicuous by its absence in their home countries.  If you're a good engineer in, say, Mumbai in India, or Jakarta in Indonesia, you'll earn more than those around you, to be sure;  but that income will still be circumscribed by the fact that there are a dozen graduates eager to take your place.  They have nowhere else to go, because the doors of emigration to the West are all too often closed and locked against them.  Therefore, they'll compete with you and each other, thus driving down income and upward mobility in society.  Under those circumstances, why wouldn't they strive with might and main to get a work visa to come to a society that offers them so much more?

Compare and contrast the average US tertiary education graduate, as described above, with the average Third World tertiary graduate.  Who's hungrier for success?  Who's going to work harder to achieve it?  Who's going to accept that in order to succeed, they have to start with low expectations and look to rise by proving their ability, their worth, to the satisfaction of those who pay them?  The answer to those questions reveals the impetus from corporations to keep the H1B and work visa stream flowing.  If it wasn't profitable to employers, they wouldn't support it.  They certainly don't want the administrative and financial overhead of bringing such employees over here:  it's costly, inconvenient and carries with it a bureaucratic tangle that makes compliance difficult.  Nevertheless, despite those obstacles, it's still cheaper for them than hiring local graduates who want a lot more money to produce a lot less work, and who are less driven to succeed.  That's the blunt reality of the situation.

I agree with many critics that foreign graduates are often of lower intelligence (as measured by IQ) than local graduates.  That's not nearly as important as many people think.  A worker with an IQ of 120 may be bored silly by more repetitive tasks, or try to "coast" by using his intelligence instead of working harder.  A foreign worker with the same qualification and an IQ of, say, 100, may produce more and better work than his local, "more intelligent" rival simply because he's used to working harder, with greater application, than those around him.  He's had to do so in order to get where he is.  Nobody checked his IQ score, and did more for him on the basis that "he's smart".  Instead, they checked whether he was working harder, and producing more and better results, than his competitors in the university and/or workplace.  That's how he got where he is:  and he isn't going to sit back and relax because he's now in a job, a company, an environment, that doesn't drive him as hard - not if he wants to stay there.

There are all sorts of arguments that such foreign "imports" produce a lower quality of work, or abuse the system by "gaming" it, or try to hire more like themselves in order to drive Americans out of the workplace.  All those complaints are probably true, as far as I can judge from my limited knowledge of the field.  Yet, despite all that, corporations continue to hire them.  Why would they do that if it wasn't to their advantage to do so?

That's the question none of the opponents of workplace immigration will answer.  If you locally supply the demand, that will automatically shut down most of the inflow of foreign skilled workers . . . but if you don't shut down the demand, that won't happen.  Corporations won't shut down the demand, because it's to their advantage to continue with the present system.  You won't be able to reform the system unless you first reform the conditions that gave rise to its growth - and that means tackling the US education system, just as much as business and immigration law.  Do you hear H1B opponents saying anything about that?  No, you don't.

Visa reform is only one element - and probably not the most important element - in a structural reform that will impact many areas of US society.  Unless and until we recognize that, and begin to address it, the abuse of work visas at the expense of US employees will continue.

That's the bottom line.

Peter