Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages? • Hacker News Board

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#31

Post by altcognito » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:35 PM UTC

edderly wrote: post #13

pekk wrote: post #5

Very basic economics says that a greater supply of people willing to work at a lower wage (as many H1Bs) will reduce the market wage. "Somewhere along the line, the H-1B program got side-tracked. The program was never meant to replace qualified American workers, but it was instead intended as a means to fill gaps in highly specialized areas of employment. When times are tough, like they are now, it's especially impor…

It's a rather naïve conclusion. If the job is relocatable the supply of workers who remain abroad will also reduce wages too.

> If the job is relocatable

I've seen many, many, many corporations come to the conclusion that they are simply not able to manage resources abroad. They can barely handle them locally, let alone when there is many thousands of miles and a language barrier between them.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#32

Post by patio11 » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:36 PM UTC

If foreign-produced flaxseed oil costs 20% of US-produced flaxseed oil, and is imported in quantity, "What happens to the market clearing price of US-produced flaxseed oil?" is not a very difficult question. We do not need to adopt the counterfactual "Consider what would happen to flaxseed oil prices in an American city which banned foreign flaxseed oil. Why, they'd be a laughingstock! Flaxseed oil consumers would flee to other jurisdictions!"

That's an interesting speculative conclusion to a hypothetical policy that is not on the table nor will ever be considered in the United States. Back to the question: what happens when you import cheap flaxseed oil? Market prices go down, with very high confidence. Claims to the contrary would generally require fairly persuasive proof since they invert our understanding of how the world works.

(n.b. I don't particularly think my political opinions are relevant, in much the same way a physicist doesn't feel the need to mumble "Sorry to be a gravitationist" prior to suggesting that a banana pushed off a table will tend to accelerate towards the ground rather than hovering in midair, but to the extent I have them they're "Let the flaxseed oil flow" and to the extent I have economic interests in US-produced flaxseed oil I'd prefer it to be as cheap as possible since I'm a buyer more than I'm a seller.)

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#33

Post by eurleif » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:39 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #27

yummyfajitas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using that same logic, it's not hard to make the case for imperialism. If the sole goal is to benefit Americans at the expense of others, why not steal everyone's natural resources and use them for our own benefit?

One bit of conventional wisdom that I find interesting is the belief that what was responsible for American prosperity post-WWII was the fact that Europe was devastated and the U.S. was the undisputed industrial superpower. To the extent that theory is true (and I'm not saying it is or not, I don't have enough of a grounding in economics to say)--doesn't that suggest that the rational course of American policy should…

So, just to be perfectly clear: you don't believe that people have any moral obligation not to murder each other. But they do have a moral obligation to follow contracts (the government's contract to do what the people want).

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#34

Post by mistercow » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:41 PM UTC

>Suppose the city of San Francisco deported 10 percent of its computer programmers tomorrow and adopted a law saying that in the future no engineers born in other counties were allowed to move here. Would that lead to skyrocketing earnings for the remaining engineers? I seriously doubt it. I think it would destroy the San Francisco tech industry with some unfortunate knock-on effects a bit south in Silicon Valley.

I wonder if there is a name for this fallacy, because I see it all the time. A common example is "Well imagine what would happen to the economy if everyone became a vegan tomorrow!"

As a malicious device for derailing a discussion, it's pretty clever. It pivots the argument from "how would the world be different if Y instead of X?" to "how would the world be different if we instantly tried to switch from X to Y?"

Suppose you propose going to the grocery store. I say, no that's a terrible idea. Imagine if, in the next second, you were suddenly whisked away to the grocery store — the acceleration forces would liquify you! Obviously that would be a dumb thing to say, but you still see these "what if X overnight‽" arguments all over the place.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#35

Post by patio11 » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:49 PM UTC

pbiggar wrote: post #19

Immigrant engineer here. Do immigrant engineers depress wages? Of course. Trivial supply and demand (and I'm surprised to see a supposed economics blog make unintuitive assertions without providing any evidence). You can already see wages rising rapidly as a result of the already low supply of engineers. Kids coming out of Stanford are getting 6-figure offers at Google. If there were less engineers, lots of companies…

The downside of living in SF with a good salary is that everybody has a good salary.

n.b. While this is true about many people in our social circles, this is not broadly true of San Franciscans. About 15% or so of households are below the poverty line. Another 35% or so have household incomes which are meaningfully less than what AmaGooBookSoft pay for college interns.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#36

Post by rayiner » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:53 PM UTC

eurleif wrote: post #33

rayiner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One bit of conventional wisdom that I find interesting is the belief that what was responsible for American prosperity post-WWII was the fact that Europe was devastated and the U.S. was the undisputed industrial superpower. To the extent that theory is true (and I'm not saying it is or not, I don't have enough of a grounding in economics to say)--doesn't that suggest that the rational course of American policy should…

So, just to be perfectly clear: you don't believe that people have any moral obligation not to murder each other. But they do have a moral obligation to follow contracts (the government's contract to do what the people want).

I don't believe in any super natural bases for morality,[1] so I believe that morality arises out of the social contract. Given that, it makes sense to talk about the moral obligations of individuals within a society to each other, but not to talk about one society's obligation to another.

[1] Not just religion, but things like "natural rights" are really supernatural conceptually.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#37

Post by unholyalliance » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:55 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #17

colmvp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) What is the percentage of students who get admitted into U.S. schools from foreign countries poor? Are most actually middle/upper class and just prefer to study overseas? I saw the latter as a pretty common scenario in Australia and Canada. 2) If they are poor, why are Chinese/Indians more likely to get into engineering/compsci than other demographics that are more local, such as poor African Americans / Hispanic…

If they are poor, why are Chinese/Indians more likely to get into engineering/compsci than other demographics that are more local, such as poor African Americans / Hispanic Americans? Both the Indians and Chinese are almost certainly poor. At least 95% of India is poorer than the bottom 5% of America, and about 80-85% of China is. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t... Granted, they might be…

Most of the Indians and Chinese that I went to school with were the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, and professors.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#38

Post by trustfundbaby » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:56 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #23

trustfundbaby wrote: post #18

This really is a no brainer, if you have the best and brightest coming here to work, then its only going to make everybody in the industry better as everybody has to raise their game to compete, as long as these workers don't flood the market (which the h1-b quota does a good job of keeping in check) The problem is with some of the foibles of the h1-b visa. H1-b workers cannot compete in the job market the way an Ame…

[deleted]

> A no brainer to me would be that as the supply of something increases, the price goes down

Sure, that is true, but this is a special case in which there is unmet demand and strict assessment and checks (the h1-b quota) to ensure that it doesn't adversely affect wages. If demand drops to zero then you adjust the quota accordingly that year (to use an extreme example)

> you'd be increasing the supply of technology workers by 65,000 per year. You don't think this would do anything to depress technology worker wages?

a. you're assuming that all 65,000 go to work in tech, thats not correct. h1-b is used to hire doctors, researchers and folks in the sciences and other highly skilled areas.

b. But you don't take into consideration how many of those people would go off and start their own company and contribute to increasing demand for technology workers

I think this fear of depressed wages is a bit irrational. Engineer wages have gone up and the h1-b program has been in place for many years, but we're still worried about this.

What about the 14 Million illegal immigrants that may get amnesty under the new law? if only 1% of them are engineers (I bet its higher than that). thats still 140,000 folks that get added to the engineering supply overnight!

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#39

Post by Pwnguinz » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:56 PM UTC

eurleif wrote: post #33

rayiner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One bit of conventional wisdom that I find interesting is the belief that what was responsible for American prosperity post-WWII was the fact that Europe was devastated and the U.S. was the undisputed industrial superpower. To the extent that theory is true (and I'm not saying it is or not, I don't have enough of a grounding in economics to say)--doesn't that suggest that the rational course of American policy should…

So, just to be perfectly clear: you don't believe that people have any moral obligation not to murder each other. But they do have a moral obligation to follow contracts (the government's contract to do what the people want).

Did you mean contRact? Or did you actually mean "contact"? You did type it twice, but I'm just making sure... The word "contact" in this context doesn't make sense to me, so please elaborate, if that's the case.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#40

Post by eurleif » Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 7:59 PM UTC

Pwnguinz wrote: post #39

eurleif wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just to be perfectly clear: you don't believe that people have any moral obligation not to murder each other. But they do have a moral obligation to follow contracts (the government's contract to do what the people want).

Did you mean contRact? Or did you actually mean "contact"? You did type it twice, but I'm just making sure... The word "contact" in this context doesn't make sense to me, so please elaborate, if that's the case.

Thanks, yeah, I meant contracts. I'm on my phone.