Half of America’s mega-tech companies were founded by first or second-generation Americans. They have enabled or created millions of jobs. The United States has had the unprecedented and long-standing policy of bringing the brightest young minds on earth, sometimes welcoming them to our greatest universities. China and India have been the greatest source of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) of such students, many already carrying undergraduate STEM degrees, seeking advanced education. And so many of them simply elected to stay in the United States, where their education and brain power have combined to create some of the highest levels of job creation on earth.
Lots of other highly educated, skilled and experienced workers have been brought to the United States under our H1B visa program to fill the hundreds of thousands of tech jobs that have gone begging for years – American universities just are not pumping out enough qualified graduates and haven’t for years –, where expertise is the key to admission. 85% of H1B requests come from that tech sector. Without accessing the body of experts, the United States opens up the high ground to India and China, where the majority these tech experts come from, and to countries willing to let them immigrate to the West. Particularly Canada.
Canada, actively recruiting in China and India, has gone out of its way to let these highly-trained experts know that if the cannot find admission to the United States, Canada will do everything in its power to admit STEM-qualified candidates – and their families – to its tech-centric regions. So when Donald Trump, on June 22nd, declared an end to new H1B visas until at least the end of 2020 – ostensibly to open up job opportunities for the 20 million plus of Americans who lost their jobs during this pandemic – India freaked out, China smiled and Canada began cheering loudly.
Indeed, China was elated that some of its best minds were being excluded from arch-rival America, and India was wondering why, with improving relations with the US, their citizens were being denied access to what had been a long-term mutually beneficial relationship based on this currency of technological excellence. From Google to Amazon to Facebook to Apple to Microsoft and from the US Chamber of Commerce came powerful objections and threats to the Trump administration that his latest immigration policy would force them to move research operations to other nations, particularly Canada.
While to an undereducated constituency, the notion of shifting those Silicon Valley jobs to the newly unemployed masses might sound good during an election year, the fact is that virtually none of those who lost their jobs by the millions are qualified to take those open positions. Lots of those tech companies were still hiring by the thousands during the pandemic-induced job decline… but only those with the necessary education and experience were being hired. These tech giants couldn’t find enough qualified US-based applicants before the pandemic, and that reality has not changed. If you are tech-qualified and living in the US, you can find a solid-paying job right now!
Did the President miss the point? Did he mix apples and oranges? “US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend H-1B visas till the end of the year seems to be based on a misreading of economic data, according to Cato Institute, a Washington DC based think-tank… The presidential proclamation said that over 20 million US workers lost their jobs in key industries where employers are where employers are currently requesting H-1B… workers to fill positions. However, it does not look at specific occupations, which would have been a better approach…
“‘[E]mployers can’t hire just any worker from an entire industry. They can only hire someone seeking to work in a specific type of job. This confusion between industries and occupations is exceptionally common, but it’s a huge mistake,’ said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity…
“‘It turns out that from January 2020 to May 2020, total employment increased by about 185,000 in the top 20 H-1B occupations, which account for 85% of all H-1B requests, according to the Current Population Survey,’ said Bier. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed during the same period increased by 94,000, making the difference between the two 9,000… This is substantially different from the 20 million cited by the president. Moreover, unemployment in H-1B occupations was already falling in May to April.” The Economic Times, June 24th. Oh. Could keeping those experts out of the United States actually hurt our post-COVID-19 economic recovery? Obviously, yes!
But wait, there’s more. Trump “short-sighted, no compromise and I will do whatever it takes to force my way” is obsessed with totally reopening the economy and every aspect of normal life, denying that the novel coronavirus is a serious threat. On July 4th, Trump told the American people that U.S. was testing too much and falsely asserted that “by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless.” The head of the FDA immediately contradicted him. But Trump was ready to take down foreign college students with visas to study in the United States as leverage if he did not get everyone to reopen everything.
Ignoring reality and perhaps making future enemies out of clear American friends, “[The] Trump administration issued an order that could force tens of thousands of foreign students to leave the country if their schools hold all classes online.” Remarkably, Trump was able to combine his xenophobic immigration policy, his disdain for higher education and his mythological insistence, completely ignoring statistical reality, that COVID-19 is little more than an inconvenience.
“Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have asked a federal court to temporarily block a Trump administration rule that would bar foreign students from remaining in the United States if their universities are not holding in-person classes this fall, Harvard's president said on [July 8th].” Chicago Tribune, July 8th. Wow! Shortsighted, cruel, medically idiotic and completely lacking a shred of empathy. Which other nations are going to attract those exceptional students instead… if courts allow this rule to stand? And who is going to replace the massive infusion of tuition revenues (most of these students are paying full rates) that will vaporize if they leave?
So Donald Trump, by excluding foreign mega-brains from coming to the United States, is slamming our most productive, job creating tech sector, helping China keep their best and their brightest to compete with us and is literally shifting a large part of the North American technology research and patent creation out of the United States and into Canada with no discernible gain in US-based jobs? Smaaart! But very Trumpian. Do what looks good to your base, ignore reality and lie with zealous misinterpretation of statistics. Optics not substance. Got it!
I’m Peter Dekom, and I am trying to imagine what four more years of Donald Trump decision-making will do to this country… if it can even stay together.
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