Shortage Questions

Ten questions for those who believe the H-1B is about a shortage of Americans to do the job:

• 1. If corporations get all the H-1Bs and green cards they want, can the long term consequence be anything other than total dependence on foreigners for technology?
  
• 2. Is Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, wrong? He testified to Congress: “Simply producing more engineers and scientists may not be the answer because the labor market for those workers will simply reflect lower wages or, perhaps, greater unemployment for those workers.”
  
• 3. Is Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University, a supported of more foreign workers (he is one), wrong? He says “…the problem isn't the supply, it's the demand…we have enough engineers and scientists. The problem is that the salaries aren't there.”
  
• 4. Why are law firms, like the notorious Cohen & Grigsby, holding seminars on how to legally avoid hiring qualified Americans? Lawrence Lebowitz’s famous quote explaining of the PERM application process to employers. "Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker, and that, in a sense, sounds funny, but it's what we are trying to do here."
  
• 5. Shortage at what price? My undergraduate economics professor made a big deal about it not making economic sense to claim a shortage without a price. For example, claiming there is a shortage of good five cent cigars makes sense. A claim that there is a shortage of cigars is foolish. There is no doubt that there is a shortage of college graduate programmers at $20,000 a year, is there a shortage at what the average American programmer makes? So the question is at what price?
  
• 6. If there is a shortage why are real wages going down?
  
• 7. Why is it that those employers who claim a shortage of American tech workers laying off so many of them?
  
• 8. Is Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrong? He says "What many of us have come to understand is that these H-1B visas are not being used to supplement the American workforce where we have shortages but, rather, H-1B visas are being used to replace American workers with lower cost foreign workers,"
  
• 9. Is Nobel economist Milton Friedman wrong when he says the H-1B is a subsidy? He said "There is no doubt, that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy."
  
• 10. Why not end the H-1B and other work visas and allow a free market solution? An increasing wage will attract more workers to science and engineering and solve any supply shortage that MAY exist. Free markets do not have shortages.
  

Please note that under the H-1B law:

H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker.

and

H-1B workers, due to loopholes in the law, are paid about one third less than Americans.