Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 72 posts

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#61

Post by davidw »

rayiner wrote: post #57
davidw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a repeat of the other day's conversation (and about 1343243243232 other similar conversations on the internet, which is why we ought to get rid of political articles), but like hell will I "not talk about my obligations" to other human beings that happen to be born with some other passport. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5533155 Edit: looks like someone is sinking these articles off the front page. Good…

What do you think is the basis for your obligations to humans that you don't share a government with?

I'm not much for philosophy, so something simple along the lines of believing that I should leave the world a better place than I found it, and there's no reason that should be limited by borders, ethnicity or much else. Also, the idea that I have no obligations to people who are just like me but don't have the same passport is chilling and disturbing in its implications.

Borders are pretty arbitrary things in a lot of cases. There are probably still a few very elderly people alive in the Sud Tirol region of Italy who, as infants, found themselves to be Italian citizens despite not having moved a mile, because Italy managed to beat Austria in WWI. Linguistically, and culturally, they are Austrians in that region (or, in some of the high valleys, Ladin speakers, if we want to start getting into details), and many of them don't really identify with Italy to this day.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#62

Post by rayiner »

Pwnguinz wrote: post #58
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we let someone in from a poor country, we're increasing the income of someone who might be below the 50th percentile into the 99th percentile. It's awfully hard to make a case that we should be enriching the richest people in the world at the cost of the poorest. It's not hard to make that case at all. Indians and Chinese prospective immigrants are not part of the American body politic. The American government h…

> instituted to protect American interests and American prosperity That makes intuitive sense. But in practice I'd argue it's much more nuanced than that. What we all legally and sovereignly call "The United States of America" are many distinct (and I don't just mean by State borders) populations with vastly different needs and are affected differently by global undertakings. As a thought experiments, let's say bring…

I'm not saying immigration can't be the right policy if it benefits Americans. I'm saying the extent to which it benefits non-Americans isn't part of the calculus.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#63

Post by davidw »

smm2000 wrote: post #48
yummyfajitas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Indians in US are from top 1% in India - pretty much every Indian I know had maids/gardeners/cooks at home. One guy cooked/washed clothes himself for the first time when he came to US.

> pretty much every Indian I know had maids/gardeners/cooks at home.

In poorer countries - especially those with fairly unequal societies, hiring help is cheaper - not just absolutely, but proportionally, as well, so it's much more common. I read some economics discussions of this years ago, but don't really recall the details.

In other words, an Indian is a lot more likely to have hired help than a Norwegian, even if the Norwegian is better off.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#64

Post by davidw »

unholyalliance wrote: post #56
yummyfajitas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe that Indian/Chinese doctors, lawyers and professors are not poor by US standards? You might be a "rich" corporate lawyer living in Bandra, but that doesn't mean you can afford a car, or more than 1 room/person for your family (most poor Americans have these things).

Well, what about having several house servants? Rich Americans don't have these things.

Despite having 'help', it seems that the Indians tend to migrate towards the US, rather than people from the US migrating towards India. See my other comment.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#65

Post by pigou »

patio11 wrote: post #32

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 fl…

Whenever I hear stupid questions like "Do immigrant engineers depress engineer wages?", I'm tempted to say that it's as simple as supply and demand. But supply and demand are not simple things.

On the one hand, an increased supply of engineers (or flaxseed) in the form of immigrants (or imports) will obviously decrease the market clearing price, and anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant of economics or engaging in sophistry.

But to the extent that engineers spur technological or industrial advances which benefit the entire ecosystem, the presence of additional engineers in the form of immigrants could actually increase the _demand_ for engineers. A concrete example is the marginal increase in engineering demand caused by an immigrant engineer founding a company.

(You could argue, given the example provided, that another company would have been founded in its absence, or that the company displaced an existing company. However, my intuition is that it's a positive-sum game, and that a successful company would created some marginal demand for engineers.)

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#66

Post by omonra »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we let someone in from a poor country, we're increasing the income of someone who might be below the 50th percentile into the 99th percentile. It's awfully hard to make a case that we should be enriching the richest people in the world at the cost of the poorest. It's not hard to make that case at all. Indians and Chinese prospective immigrants are not part of the American body politic. The American government h…

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?

Do you really fail to appreciate the difference between:

A) Not sharing your family/country resources with strangers (who might well be below your level of economic development).

B) Going over to invade another country/family and take away their resources?

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#67

Post by yummyfajitas »

omonra wrote: post #66
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?

Do you really fail to appreciate the difference between: A) Not sharing your family/country resources with strangers (who might well be below your level of economic development). B) Going over to invade another country/family and take away their resources?

Starting from the premise that "it's morally wrong for the American government, instituted to protect American interests and American prosperity, to make that trade off", I don't see any reason to oppose imperialism.

I don't agree with the premise, but that's a separate point.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#68

Post by omonra »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #67
omonra wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really fail to appreciate the difference between: A) Not sharing your family/country resources with strangers (who might well be below your level of economic development). B) Going over to invade another country/family and take away their resources?

Starting from the premise that "it's morally wrong for the American government, instituted to protect American interests and American prosperity, to make that trade off", I don't see any reason to oppose imperialism. I don't agree with the premise, but that's a separate point.

Right - but I am not asking whether you personally find imperialism as logical conclusion.

I am asking if you understand the difference between point A and B?

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#69

Post by jellicle »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #21
jellicle wrote: post #11

Who should we believe, the "columnist who doesn't think it's obvious" that pulling in piles of low-paid immigrants depress local wages, or the capitalists who do think it's obvious? What possible reason would there be for hiring foreign workers if they WEREN'T depressing local wages? And indeed, the studies confirm our intuition: http://hothardware.com/News/Study-H1B-Visas-Lower-US-Program...

That article is from 2009, the study they link to doesn't actually have what it says its supposed to have in the abstract and the article that claims that "Most foreign tech workers, particularly those from Asia, are in fact of only average talent. Moreover, they are hired for low-level jobs of limited responsibility, not positions that generate innovation. This is true both overall and in the key tech occupations, a…

EPI has a study - includes discussion of salary, among other things:

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp356-foreign-students-best-b...

But in all of these cases, studies are of interest only to determine the magnitude of the effect. We have observed thousands if not millions of times throughout history that in a wide variety of occupations, a labor shortage drives up wages and conversely, a labor oversupply eliminates wage increases (though it tends not to actively decrease wages by much, since wages are sticky upward). Increasing labor supply to minimize wage growth is an extraordinarily uncontroversial thing, and only nincompoop contrarian columnists or paid shills would argue differently.

Re: Do Immigrant Engineers Depress Engineer Wages?

#70

Post by rtpg »

patio11 wrote: post #35
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.

http://www.zdnet.com/in-the-shadow-of-silicon-valley-poverty... recent article on poverty in Silicon Valley
Post reply on HN