From: Kyle Carlson
Columbus
The Wednesday article “Visa sticker shock: Adding a $100,000 fee to H-1B petitions could be dire for Columbus” underestimates the American — particularly Hoosier — capacity to meet our own workforce needs.
Its premise is that Americans lack the “specialized knowledge” or “diverse skills” to fill jobs held by H-1B visa workers. Contributors to the article, from Cummins to Mayor Mary Ferdon, assume this without explaining why.
Back in 2006, Sen. John McCain quipped to a union group that Americans “won’t pick lettuce.” That notion has metastasized into a belief that Americans will not do “any” job, even high-skill STEM work, so we must import talent.
Cummins admits as much, warning that President Trump’s decision to increase the H-1B petition fee to $100,000 could jeopardize their “reliable access to global talent.” Evidently, the top-10 ranked Purdue University engineering school cannot provide reliable access to “American” talent. Congressman Justin Morrill—author of the 1862 Morrill Land Grant College Act, meant to spread agricultural and engineering education to working-class Americans—would be surprised.
Professor Steven Mohler argues in the article without steady immigration, “we don’t have workers” and “we need workers to grow GDP.” But GDP growth “alone” is not the measure of a healthy economy. Median household income, home-ownership rates for young families, and job opportunities for recent graduates matter more to most Hoosiers.
If we legalized fentanyl sales tomorrow, we could assuredly grow GDP. However, that strikes the average Hoosier as absurd. Similarly, if we admitted 20 million foreigners tomorrow, we could surely increase our GDP. More immigration may boost “tax revenue for local governments” and “foot traffic at local businesses,” but it also suppresses wages and job prospects for the Columbus native who became a Purdue engineer or an Indiana University medical graduate.
This issue need not be partisan. On Wednesday, Senators Dick Durbin (D) and Chuck Grassley (R) sent a letter to Amazon, the top beneficiary of H-1B visas, positing that “(w)ith all of the homegrown American talent relegated to the sidelines, we find it hard to believe that Amazon cannot find qualified American tech workers to fill these positions.”
Data bears this out. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports that unemployment among recent college graduates has climbed to 5.3%, above the overall 4% rate. Additionally, recent computer science and computer engineering majors have some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5%, respectively. A century ago, President Calvin Coolidge faced similar pressures and told Congress that restrictive immigration laws “shield our wage earners from the disastrous competition of a great influx of foreign peoples,” preserving “the American job for the American workman.”
President Trump’s proposal recognizes that the current H-1B system functions as a subsidy for big business that prefers cheaper foreign labor. President Trump’s approach echoes Coolidge’s principle: “As a nation, our first duty must be to those who are already our inhabitants, whether native or immigrant.”
