Is there actually a STEM shortage that requires foreign workers? If so why are Americans lacking in these fields?
- EDIT: please also read Kathryn Berck's answer to Why does the US have an H1-B Visa program when we have great universities and a well educated population? to find that some of the statements I make below are misleading.
- This is kind of an addendum to Ernest W. Adams' excellent answer to Is there actually a STEM shortage that requires foreign workers? If so why are Americans lacking in these fields?
- Consumer warning: I am in the middle of reading Why Nations Fail so I reflect some of its thesis.
Many excellent Americans, including a girlfriend of mine, a crush of mine, and others I’ve known, have gone into the legal and medical professions even though they mostly had the brains to go into STEM. Why? Those two professions have high barriers to entry, reinforced in the USA by government-mandated licencing that gives foreign credentials much less weight than domestic. This boosts the incomes of Americans in those professions artificially, for which they express their gratitude to their lawmakers every election season in the customary manner $$$.
The only STEM field I know well, software, has no such barriers or licences that matter, and will accept anyone who can demonstrate the needed ability. I’ve worked alongside engineers from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lebanon, Mexico, … Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, but nobody from Western Sahara, Yemen, nor Zimbabwe. (I myself am from England.) Do I need to spell it out? Oh: I just did.
I expect even the Canadian would have found it tough to qualify as an attorney in most states of the US. Almost for sure, the others would have found it very tough. So my ex-girlfriend and others command famine prices for their talent, and the famine is caused, just like real famines where people starve to death, by government policy. Does anyone care to suggest that the USA spends too little on medical care and lawsuits?
Now, if you think Google or Amazon or Apple or Facebook are charging famine prices for the software they provide, or that American software is less good than what other countries build, please shout it from the rooftops. The only criticism I hear (living in Silicon Valley) is that these giants pay their engineers too much and thereby drive house prices up, causing gentrification etc. Certainly house prices have climbed. Don’t tell me that people who buy a three bedroom house for a million bucks are underpaid. But these foreigners are paying such prices, out of their income from work.
Footnote: if you want to shout from the rooftops about privacy on the Web, you have every right to do so, but the aforementioned companies would not offer you any better privacy if they were forced to hire fewer engineers at higher pay.
