Debate on H-1B visas highlights the shortages of American technological workers

A heated debate recently broke out between two groups of supporters of President Donald Trump. The dispute concerns the VISA H-1B system, the program which allows American employers to hire qualified foreign workers in specialized professions mainly in the technology industry.

On the one hand, there are people like Donald Trumps the former strategist Steve Bannon, who qualified the H-1B program to be a total and complete Ark. On the other hand, there are technology magnates like Elon Musk who think that qualified foreign workers are crucial for the American technological sector.

The H-1B visa program is subject to an annual limit of new visas that it can issue, which is 65,000 per year. There is also an additional annual quota of 20,000 H-1B visas for highly qualified international students who have a proven capacity to succeed academically in the United States.

The H-1B program is the main vehicle of international graduate students from American universities to stay and work in the United States after graduation. At Rice University, where I work, a large part of STEM research is carried out by international graduate students. The same goes for most American universities with high research intensity.

As a teacher of computer science and immigrant who studies the interaction between IT and society, I believe that the debate on the H-1B neglects certain important questions: why do the United States so strongly count on foreign workers for the technology industry, and why cannot a local technological technological workforce develop?

The United States as a loving of global talents

The United States has been a magnet for global scientific talents since the Second World War.

Many scientists who helped develop the atomic bomb were European refugees. After the Second World War, American policies such as the Fulbright program extended opportunities for international educational exchange.

Attracting international students in the United States has had positive results.

Among the Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Medicine or Physics since 2000, 40% have been immigrants.

In 2023, Louis Brus, born in the United States, on the left, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with American immigrants Alexei Ekimov, born in the former USSR, and Moungi Bawendi, born in France. Photo AP

The Giants of the Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google technological industry were all founded by first or second generation immigrants. In addition, immigrants have founded more than half of the $ 1 billion startups since 2018.

Building the influx of students

The restriction of foreign graduate students is a way to use in the United States, as some supporters of the eminent Trump have requested it, could considerably reduce the number of international graduate students in American universities.

About 80% of students graduated from American IT and American engineering programs around 18,000 students in 2023 are international students.

The loss of international doctoral students would considerably decrease the research capacity of higher education and engineering programs. After all, doctoral students, supervised by the main researchers, implement most of research in science and engineering in American universities.

It should be noted that international students make a significant contribution to American research production. For example, scientists born outside the United States played a key role in the development of PFIZER and MOVERNA COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, making the United States less attractive to international graduate students in science and engineering would harm the competitiveness of American research.

PH.D. Graduates are in great demand. The economy needs it, so the absence of an adequate interior pipeline seems confusing.

Where did we leave?

So why is there such dependence on foreign students for American sciences and engineering? And why did America not create an adequate pipeline of students born in the United States for its technical workforce?

After discussions with many colleagues, I found that there are simply not enough qualified domestic doctoral students to meet the needs of their doctoral programs.

In 2023, for example, the doctoral programs in American computer science admitted around 3,400 new students, 63% of which were foreign.

It seems that the doctoral career track is simply not attractive enough for many undergraduate computer students in the United States. But why?

The first annual salary in Silicon Valley for new IT graduates can reach US $ 115,000. IT baccalaureate holders of Rice University told me that until recently, before economic uncertainty shakes the industry, they obtained annual wages at $ 150,000 in Silicon Valley.

Doctoral students in research universities, on the other hand, receive no salary. Instead, they get an allowance. These vary slightly from one school to another, but they generally pay less than $ 40,000 per year. The opportunity cost of the pursuit of a doctorate is therefore up to $ 100,000 per year. And obtaining a doctorate generally takes six years.

Thus, continuing a doctorate is not an economically viable decision for many Americans. The reality is that a doctorate opens up new career options to its holder, but most of the baccalaureate holders do not see beyond the economy. However, academic computer research is crucial for the success of Silicon Valley.

A 2016 analysis of information technology sectors with a significant economic impact shows that university research plays an instrumental role in their development.

Why so little?

The United States is locked in a cold war with China focused mainly on technological domination. Maintaining its research and development advantage is therefore in the national interest.

However, the United States has refused to make the required investment in research. For example, the annual budget for national science foundations for computer science and information and engineering is about $ 1 billion. On the other hand, annual research and development costs for Alphabet, Google Parent Company, have experienced nearly $ 50 billion in the last decade.

Universities pay doctoral students so little because they cannot afford to pay more.

The CEO of Alphabet Sundar Pichai speaks during an event of E / S Google in Mountain View, California, May 14, 2024. AP Photo / Jeff Chiu

But instead of recognizing the existence of this problem and trying to respond to it, the United States has found a way to meet its academic research needs by recruiting and admitting international students. The constant flow of highly qualified international candidates has allowed the United States to ignore the insufficiency of the national doctoral pipeline.

The current debate on the H-1B visa system offers the United States an opportunity for introspection.

However, the news of Washington, DC, on massive budget cuts coming to the National Science Foundation seems to suggest that the federal government is about to take an acute problem and transform it into a crisis.

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