This little tidbit in Noah Smith’s recent post at Bloomberg got my Irish up:
What can be done to make America great again? That’s the slogan of Trump’s campaign, but his mix of grandstanding, self-promotion, media provocation and unworkable policy plans is highly unlikely to have any sort of positive effect. Instead, more serious leaders need to think about more serious policies.
One of the simplest and most obvious steps would be more high-skilled immigration. Switching to a Canada-style points-based immigration system, increasing the total number of immigrants, and giving out green cards instead of H-1B visas would do a lot to boost the skills of the U.S. workforce.
I know of no evidence for that. I do know of lots of testimony from billionaires who are eager to bring in foreign workers so they can chaffer wages down. Testimony is not evidence. Over time that will decrease the skills of the U. S. population if anything.
That employers want to import workers is not necessarily evidence of a deficit in skills. Concentrate on the tech sector and show me the evidence.
After reading the article and some of Noah Smith’s other work, it does not appear he is a crazed Trump hater, but it is rather interesting using Trump in an article promoting increased immigration.
Andrew Hacker has a new book on the subject. From the Slate review:
“Hacker attacks not only algebra but the entire push for more rigorous STEM education—science, technology, engineering, and math—in K-12 schools, including the demand for high school classes in computer programming. He is skeptical of one of the foundational tenets of the standards-and-accountability education reform movement, that there is a quantitative “skills gap†between Americans and the 21st-century job market. He notes that between 2010 and 2012, 38 percent of computer science and math majors were unable to find a job in their field. During that same period, corporations like Microsoft were pushing for more H-1B visas for Indian programmers and more coding classes. Why? Hacker hypothesizes that tech companies want an over-supply of entry-level coders in order to drive wages down.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2016/03/algebra_ii_has_to_go.single.html
(I peaked at the book’s content on Amazon: “hypothesizes” is not a good word choice here. His conclusion in that section is that “shortage” is a fiction and H1-B visas are a corporate strategy to keep wages low. It’s like reading a review of an Al Gore book and being told that Gore “hypothesizes” that climate change is real and man-made.)
OTOH, Trump just said we need more immigrants, what do I know? Silicon Valley needs more workers and that’s important for our economy, we are in trouble. It’ll be so great, it will make your head spin.
A big problem with US adoption of Canada-, New Zealand- or Australian-style immigration rules that assign points to candidates based upon their qualifications is that those rules are set up to deliberately discriminate on the basis of age, with the result that few highly qualified older applicants for permanent residence are allowed in. Such discrimination is contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of ADEA laws.
Trump has the best words. We should listen to him.
Steve