At the Wall Street Journal Jeremy Neufeld provides what strikes me as prudent advice. Don’t eliminate H-1B visas and don’t leave them as-is. Reform them.
A civil war has erupted among Donald Trump’s supporters over the H-1B program, America’s primary visa for skilled workers. Does putting “America First” mean ending the program, as Steve Bannon believes, or supporting it, as Elon Musk and Mr. Trump argue?
The debate stems from a fundamental flaw in the H-1B program: A randomized lottery is used to select which applications are reviewed. In effect this means the lottery determines who gets a visa.
Awarding visas by chance means that while the program can bring in world-class talent, including Mr. Musk, it also brings in thousands of middling workers. They compete with citizens for jobs and contribute less meaningfully to productivity and innovation. As constructed, then, the lottery doesn’t serve American interests and needs to be replaced.
The H-1B program is supposed to be reserved for workers in occupations requiring specialized knowledge, but that can include anything from biochemists earning hundreds of thousands to acupuncturists making less than the median household. This means that the country’s flagship skilled immigration program is seriously underdelivering, wasting scarce slots on low-paying jobs. Many are going to basic information-technology workers.
The problem isn’t the pool of talent; it’s how we choose from it. There are nearly four times as many H-1B applications every year as available slots. This disparity is worsened by companies that flood the system with applications for candidates meeting the bare minimum requirements for an H-1B. Companies that need top talent get crowded out. In 2022, 35% of all new H-1Bs went to companies dependent on them.
Here’s his proposal:
A more straightforward ranking by salary regardless of occupation would allow us to prioritize the sectors most likely to contribute to innovation. These rankings could also be adjusted by age to ensure we are retaining bright professionals at the beginning of their careers. A 24-year-old making $150,000 is generally preferable to a 63-year-old making $160,000.
These reforms would increase the average H-1B wage by 41%. This would translate into a $1.1 trillion boost to America’s gross domestic product over 10 years—nearly twice the effect of the 2020 plan. In other words, without increasing the number of slots, we could nearly double the value of the H-1B program.
I would add that IMO the biggest gap in the H-1B visa system is enforcement. Disney’s abuse of the system ten years ago was far from the only example of enormous abuse of the system.
The H-1B visa system was not intended to provide entry-level employees for big IT and financial firms but all to frequently that is what is happening. As Mr. Neufeld notes it is for “occupations requiring specialized knowledge”.
I dont have an answer but it seems like using salary as a criteria could have issues. That would mean you would choose every doctor and most of those arent going to contribute to innovation if that is your concern. I think it somehow has to include need.
Also, it would be nice to pick the people who are going to be successful. How do we know that ahead of time? Enforcement would mean more regulation. This admin wont do that.
Steve
I’m not sure I understand the age condition, or at least it just messes up a pretty straight-forward reliance on the market to decide which jobs are valuable. Here is list of reforms I’ve seen linked in a few places:
1. For both H-1B and green cards, replace the current prevailing wage requirement by a policy in which applications are approved in order of offered salary. This addresses the cheap, mediocre-quality labor issue in a clean (if broad-stroked) manner. It also to a large extent attains our goal of targeting “the best and the brightest.” For example, Stanford computer-science graduates enjoyed starting salaries that were 37 percent higher than average in 2009-2010, according to the school. A more refined version of this policy could rank on the ratio of offered salary to the occupational/regional median, so as to attain quality among less expensive occupations and regions.
2. Make green card issuance immediate after approval, instead of waiting in a queue for years. This addresses the de facto indentured servitude issue, and also solves the problem of queues based on country caps.
3. Establish an open, national online registry for jobs that employers propose to fill with H-1Bs or green card applicants. Use would be advisory for H-1B, mandatory for green cards and H-1B-dependent employers. Placing newspaper ads as a way of giving public notice is downright silly in today’s Internet Age. An online registry is the efficient, effective way to handle the recruitment requirement.
4. Liberalize the National Interest Waiver, under which outstanding talents can apply for a green card without employer sponsorship. Do the same for the O-1 work visa, which again involves exceptionally talented workers. The industry lobbyists greatly exaggerate the number of foreign workers who are “the best and the brightest,” but some are indeed top-flight. Our nation benefits enormously from them, so targeted measures are vital.
5. Require that an employer justify a job requirement of an advanced degree. Very few tech jobs truly require a master’s or doctoral degree. Just look at all the major notables in the field who lack such a degree, such as Larry Ellison and Jensen Huang, or who have no degree at all, such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Since international students who work in tech largely have a master’s, setting a requirement of that degree is a common method of rejecting US workers.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/no-there-arent-good-h-1b-visas/