An enormous number of things going on these days remind me of the old wisecrack I’ve heard attributed to Lincoln (which I doubt). It’s about the guy on trial for murdering his parents who appeals for mercy on the grounds that he’s an orphan. Right now that’s a pretty good description of bringing people into the country on H1-B visas because there aren’t enough engineers. To produce enough engineers here in the U. S. there needs to be a career path for engineers in the U. S. That has been narrowing year by year for decades. For EEs there hasn’t been much of a career path for 40 years—since companies like Zenith and Motorola laid off all of their senior engineers in favor of engineers in Japan, South Korea, and now India.
I’m actually in favor of expanding the number of H1-B visas issued but I’m also in favor of strict enforcement and severe punishments for companies that break the rules and hiring foreign workers at wages less than the prevailing wage is against the rules. It’s something that companies like Microsoft and Facebook have been doing for years.
The other thing that I wanted to mention is that things are unfolding much as I have predicted. I’m starting to see demands for a complete suspension of immigration. I think that would be a mistake but it was predictable after our failure to control our southern border. I doubt that President Trump will have the votes to impose something as restrictive as the Immigration Act of 1924.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposed reform of the H1-B visas is to remove numerical caps on immigrants allowed per year. This was from a speech five months ago and he referenced it last week as his position while giving a meme-worth rant against American childrearing culture. This sounds a lot like an open-borders position for the college educated, so this certainly contributes to polarization. It also makes reform less likely because changes will be scrutinized in light of stated intentions, and they’re Congressional caps anyway.
I can’t speak to EEs, but I can metallurgists on the extraction side. (Turning rocks into usable engineering materials) its been largely chased away due to environmental considerations. Not visa issues.
Today my school, Purdue, has transformed itself into materials science. This is where you get into magnetic, electrical, composite, optical etc issues. You could also choose Northwestern, which has always been more materials science.
Anyway, I don’t know that much about the H1b wage issue. But my impression is that, depending upon the line of engineering, we are in deficit. Bob S probably knows better. I suspect Elon Musk knows.
So why not allow them in? We aren’t talking tomato packers or maids.
By the way. There is a career path for engineers. They become private equity guys. ?
This is another test comment.