The SKIL Bill and Your Local Elementary School

The Republican lame duck Congress is toying with passing the SKIL (Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership) Bill, a top priority for the tech industry and its lobbyists that would raise caps on H-1B Visas by 20 % and exempt highly skilled workers (Master’s Degree or higher from a U.S. institution) from the cap altogether. While tech executives may be keen on the law, many, many U.S. born IT workers are none too keen about this law, which they see as a backdoor way to keep wages low in the U.S. by importing cheap labor from India, China, Eastern Europe, or any other low wage country with a surfeit of engineers.

Nobody knows this better than my colleague Ephraim Schwartz, who had the temerity to raise the issue of the SKIL Bill’s future in a TechWatch blog post last week.

Ephraim, who has covered the H-1B and outsourcing issues as closely as anyone over the years wasn’t taking a stand on SKIL, but he got an earful from you folks, especially after a heartfelt post by Toni Chester, who described herself as “a 42 year old female American technical worker with one son who I have raised alone” and “over 17 years of technical industry experience… a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics (and) Statistics.”

Toni talked about her experiences with the H-1B program: training what she considered under skilled workers from India who could barely speak English, required lots of oversight and hand holding, but made 30 percent less than she did.

“Many times, I was put in a position to mentor or train my H-1B peers. At the time, I had no idea that they were in my country to be my replacements. Nor did I realize that the program afforded corporations a means to rapidly escalate the off-shore outsourcing process.“

Other comments were more visceral:

“I want you to know that the H-1B program has devastated my life and my career. The government should NOT meddle in the Engineering business and just let natural ‘supply and demand’ take effect,” wrote a contributor using the handle “Displaced American Engineer.”

“Let’s just change our name to: The United Corporations of America,” wrote “Ex-Engineer.”

Some were tough on Toni. James wrote: “I’m in the software industry and I hardly believe the story that you portray. Get a grip and move somewhere that has jobs. In Orlando my company can’t get enough people to submit resumes and spends mucho bucks running ads in the paper to attract candidates.“

Still others pointed to GAO reports about corruption in the H-1B program.

Of course, the debate over H-1B is a multi-factor problem. Sure, technology companies are interested in keeping wages low. But that doesn’t mean that claims of an insufficient supply of domestic IT workers aren’t also true. Let’s face it: given an ample supply of U.S. born tech workers coming out of the country’s many colleges and universities, companies could still keep wages low enough to be competitive and not have to pay for the cost of immigration lawyers and other middlemen who help them bring H-1B workers to the country and keep them legal while they’re here. And there’s certainly evidence that at least part of the blame lies with the moribund U.S. education system, not (just) rapacious corporations.

The National Science Foundation’s Science and Engineering Indicators report for 2006 raises a number of red flags on issues that indirectly contribute to the problems addressed by SKIL. The NSF reported that most 4th, 8th, and 12th graders did not demonstrate proficiency in math and science knowledge and skills taught at their grade level. And… “Despite showing some improvement in mathematics and science performance in recent years, U.S. students continued to lag behind their peers in many other developed countries.”

That problem filters up to higher grade levels. As NSF points out, while students on temporary visas in the United States earned a small share (4%) of Science and Engineering degrees at the bachelor’s level they earned double that number (8%) of bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences in 2002 and 7% of those engineering.

Go higher up and the trend is even more pronounced:

Science and Engineering master’s degrees awarded to students on temporary visas more than doubled in between 1983 and 2002, to 27,600 and are now 28% of all such degrees awarded. “Foreign students make up a much higher proportion of S&E master’s degree recipients than they do of bachelor’s or associate’s degree recipients,” with degrees are “heavily concentrated in computer sciences and engineering, where they earned 46% and 41%, respectively, of master’s degrees in 2002.”

Ph.Ds? Fuhgedaboudit. NSF reports that in 2003 foreign students on temporary visas earned 43% to 44% of doctoral degrees awarded in mathematics, computer sciences, and agricultural sciences, along with 55% of those awarded in engineering. To quote the Estimate “Noncitizens, primarily those with temporary visas, account for the bulk of the growth in S&E doctorates awarded by U.S. universities from 1983 through 2003…“

More data points: in the 20 years between 1983 and 2003, the number of S&E doctorates earned by U.S. citizens fluctuated from approximately 14,000 to about 17,000, and the number earned by temporary residents rose from 3,500 to a peak of 8,700 in 2003. The share of S&E doctorates going to temporary visa holders rose from 18% in 1983 to 32% in 2003, as S&E doctorates earned by U.S. permanent residents decreased from a peak of 3,614 in 1995 to about 1,200 in 2003 (appendix table 2-32 Excel table.) Yes, dear readers, only 1/3 as many U.S. citizens earned doctorates in Science and Engineering in 2003 compared with 1995. And nobody had a gun to their head forcing them to take a business or marketing/communications major instead of something demanding like CS.

Sadly, the real figures may be even darker. NSF notes that “in the mid-1990s, the number of doctorates awarded to U.S. permanent residents showed a steep increase when a large number of Chinese doctoral degree students on temporary visas shifted to permanent resident status under the 1992 Chinese Student Protection Act.”

In other words, we can thank the Tiananamen Square Massacre in 1989 for that spike in U.S. S&E doctorates in the mid 90s. GO USA!!!

Hey, these are just the facts, folks.

Let’s fess up to it: the U.S. has to change the way it educates its kids: improving science and math education, erasing the gross inequalities between schools in rich and poor communities and eliminating the poverty and violence that curtails the dreams of many future U.S. Nobel winners who happen to be born into the wrong neighborhoods. Most of all, our society has to start honoring educators and celebrating the accomplishments of scientists, mathematicians and computer scientists at least as much as it celebrates the accomplishments of athletes and obsesses over the misadventures of crass celebrities. There is, sadly, no ESPN or Entertainment Tonight for science and engineering.

These were thoughts that came home to me the other day when I was dropping my daughter off in kindergarten. Room 207, the third grade class next door has been working on graphing and, as an exercise, the teacher took a poll of the kids career aspirations, then made a bar graph of the results. I’ll attach it below for your consideration. That big bar on the left, that’s “Athlete.” Roughly 35 percent of the class picked that as their career of choice. Next is the grab-bag “Other” with around 25 percent of the class. Third? “Actor/Actress” with around 20 percent. Teacher/Doctor is next with around 10 percent. Fireman, Policeman and Veterinarian (my first choice at that age) didn’t register. Something to think about as the debate over SKIL, H-1B and immigration heat up.