Im-Politic: Free the Mercury News H1B Debate Video!

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H1B, H1B visas, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, media bias, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, technology companies, technology workers, Voice of America, wages

There’s been no shortage of controversy stirred up by the H1B visa program that brings immigrants to the United States to take jobs allegedly requiring special talents – mostly in technology companies. So when what could well have been the first public debate ever that centers on this subject is held that included a researcher on the visas (who has charged that they overwhelmingly go to foreign workers who simply lower wages for companies who want to replace more expensive Americans) and a politician who’s been strongly in favor, you’d think a major newspaper would find that pretty newsworthy.

In the case of the Mercury News, however, you’d be wrong. And much worse, it looks like the San Francisco Bay area daily is keeping a video of the event under wraps because it makes the politician – whose views closely mirror the paper’s pro-H1B editorial stance – look absolutely terrible.

Here’s the skinny on the event. Precisely because there’s no recording available, I’m relying on this account from participant Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, a leading national authority on immigration issues and the H1B program in particular, and a strong critic of the latter. Joining Matloff on a panel convened at the newly opened offices of the Voice of America’s Silicon Valley bureau were freshman Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna and Kamran Elahian, who Matloff describes as “an immigrant tech entrepreneur.”

According to Matloff, most of the H1B exchanges took place between him and Khanna, who has been characterized in the press as “the favorite of the tech industry since he tried to first overtake incumbent Mike Honda in the 2014 election” in large part because of his defense of the domestic tech industry’s H1B practices.

As Matloff describes it, Khanna – who has also been described in the national media as a rising Democratic party star and champion of pragmatic fixes for economically besieged middle class Americans – was stunningly ignorant about recent H1B-related news developments. More troubling: Khanna sunk to thinly disguised personal (and completely unjustified) attacks on Matloff and several times seem to have flown off the handle when presented with evidence that clashed with his preconceived ideas.

I’d say “Don’t take my (or Matloff’s) word for it; see for yourself” – but I can’t. The debate was filmed by the Mercury News, but in response to a query from Matloff about whether the video would be posted, a reporter he knew at the paper told him that

“it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this, but I know videos of such events are often just used in bits and pieces…”

As Matloff noted in an email to me, “Certainly it would have cost the Merc nothing to put the video on the Web, quite easily and simply.” And it’s hard to disagree with his judgment that the paper “would be performing a major public service by placing the video online (in full, of course).”

So it’s necessary to take seriously Matloff when he speculated, in that same email to me: “I can certainly see the Merc wanting to protect Rep. Khanna. They had endorsed Khanna, and generally feel their loyalty is to the tech industry. Their coverage of H-1B has been fair, but their editorial position has always been pro-H-1B.”

Matloff’s views are hardly dispositive – though I have always found him to be scrupulously honest. What could not be clearer, however, is that the Mercury News could reenforce its claims to objectivity by posting the video. With every passing day that it fails, the case for questioning its motives can only grow.

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Im-Politic: Establishment Answers Voter Anger with…Immigration Hikes

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2016 election, Barbara Mikulski, Cheap Labor Lobby, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, H-1B visa, H-2B visa, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, L-1 visa, Obama, OPT, Optional Practical Training, productivity, technology companies, technology workers, Thom Tillis, visas, wages

Several times recently I’ve reminded America’s political establishment (and its journalistic enablers) that if they were really serious about eliminating the Trump-ist threat to their hold on power, they’d respond seriously to the legitimate security and economic grievances animating his growing legions of supporters. And just as often I’ve noted that the establishment keeps ignoring this advice.

This week, the situation changed fundamentally. Republicans and Democrats in Washington have decided to change their approach. Unfortunately, the new strategy apparently is to squeeze the struggling middle class and working class harder by bringing in more job- and wage-killing legal immigrants.

Keep in mind that the moves I’ll be describing have nothing to do with the debate over stronger curbs on illegal immigration, or over the fate of the country’s current illegal immigrant population (currently estimated at roughly 11 or 12 million). Instead, they concern measures to pump up the supply of workers available to domestic employers still higher at a time when wages for the typical household have stagnated for decade, meaning that business still occupies the labor market’s commanding heights. Moreover, the new legal immigrants won’t simply be coming into the worst-paying industries and occupations. A higher labor supply seems in order for “industries of the future” as well.

And also keep in mind: With a single exception I’ve found, none of these decisions appears to have been covered by the Establishment Media.

So I’m sure none of you read that when President Obama just signed Congress’ big omnibus spending bill into law, thereby ensuring no government shutdown for the medium-term future, he enacted into law a potentially huge increase in the numbers of unskilled immigrants sought on a seasonal basis by parts of the economy ranging from manufacturing to tourism. Visas for these foreign workers (called H-2Bs) had been capped at 66,000 annually, but evidently the Cheap Labor Lobby convinced legislators from both major parties that they faced crippling shortages of such employees, and persuaded (outgoing) Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and a Republican counterpart, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, to introduce a measure that felt their pain, and that was stuck into the spending bill at the last minute. According to their Alabama Republican colleague Jeff Sessions, the Senate’s leading immigration policy critic, and the AFL-CIO, the changes could triple or quadruple admissions.

As I’ve explained before, the labor shortage claim is patent nonsense, if only because the kinds of wage increases basic that economic tells us result from real labor shortages are nowhere in sight. Moreover, it seems that no one else on Capitol Hill or in the Obama administration thought to suggest to these employers that often in American history, business has responded to labor shortages perceived and real by improving their management acts to boost efficiency or to develop or invest in new machinery and technologies that could substitute for increasingly expensive labor. The latter approach, incidentally, was so common that it largely explains why the United States so quickly grew into a global science, technology, and manufacturing leader. Further, the productivity improvements that resulted keyed the nation’s longstanding world-beating performance on this score.

Nor did the Cheap Labor Lobby hear the equally obvious counter-argument that an industry or company that can’t raise productivity enough to offset higher wages simply doesn’t have a viable business model, and doesn’t deserve an immigration subsidy from Washington.

Another provision in the spending bill seems to limit the use of cheap immigrant labor by high tech companies by doubling the fees charged for using one category of foreign workers with supposedly special skills (the H-1B category), and more than doubling it for another category (L-1s). But there’s much less to these requirements than meets the eye, mainly because firms don’t have to pay the fees if they have fewer than 50 employees, or if they’re larger but fewer than half their workers already hold these visas. As a result, the fees will be highly concentrated in Indian-owned tech firms who make unusually heavy use of H-1Bs and L-1s. But their big American-owned counterparts, like Intel and Google and Microsoft, which also employ many of these foreign workers, will continue getting off scott-free.

In addition, the Obama administration has in the works a stealth increase in the supply of foreign tech workers. The Optional Practical Training (OPT) program has long permitted foreign students to work in the United States for twelve months after graduation. Since employers who use them don’t have to pay payroll taxes on them and since the program includes no minimum wage requirements, many technology firms have found these employees cheaper and therefore more attractive than American workers. At least as important, OPT workers can substitute for H-1Bs, whose use is capped at 65,000 annually.

In 2008, President George W. Bush extended the time-frame to 17 months for graduates with science and technology degrees (Congress’ approval wasn’t needed), but last year, a federal court overturned this policy on the grounds that the Bush decision taken without adequate public notice and comment. Nonetheless, the court also gave the government itself a six-month extension for the 17-month policy, and the same amount of time (until February) to seek the longer OPT period the right way. The Obama administration has not only decided to do so, but has submitted a draft proposal to extend the total time-frame to three years.

Some members of Congress have pushed back, but given the views not only of Trump supporters, but the public at large, it’s amazing (or not?) that such steps are even being contemplated. After all, polls consistently show that when it comes to levels of immigration (again, this has nothing to do with illegal immigration), Americans want them stabilized, or lowered – not increased.

So expect the current Election 2016 dynamic to continue. Growing numbers of voters will become angrier and angrier about their diminished economic prospects and threatened security, establishment politicians in both parties will ignore or actively reject the messages they’re sending, and both they and the equally establishment-oriented media will even more self-righteously condemn the rise of demagoguery in America.