Scientists' Heated Debate On Immigration Mirrors Issues Argued Throughout U.S.

The Scientist 9[23]:1, Nov. 27, 1995 News Scientists' Heated Debate On Immigration Mirrors Issues Argued Throughout U. S. By Robert Finn Sidebar:INTRA-ETHNIC COMPARISONS OF NATURAL SCIENTISTS ON SELECTED VARIABLES Several recent studies demonstrating dramatic increases in the number of scientists and engineers coming to the United States from other countries have ignited controversy that mirrors the current national debate over immigration. Critics are blaming this influx of immigrant scientists for lowered wages, declining working conditions, and an overall decrease in job opportunities for American scientists and engineers (S&Es), particularly women and minorities. They have called for drastic changes to immigration laws as well as stepped-up enforcement of existing laws. Scientists who have immigrated to the U.S., among others, strenuously object to these conclusions, citing the value of immigration to the U.S. economy and to the development of science. "[Immigrant scientists] create jobs. They don't take jobs, they create jobs," asserts Peyrets Goldmacher, a now-retired foundry engineer who emigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1979. Goldmacher is a cofounder of the New York City-based Association of Engineers and Scientists for New Americans, which assists scientists from the former Soviet Union and other countries. 'SURPRISED': Barry Chiswick is "dumbfounded" that the immigration issue has arisen in the absence of an extremely depressed scientific labor market. Some scholars also reject the notion that scientist immigration is a problem. "I'm dumbfounded by the suddenness of this issue," says Barry R. Chiswick, head of the department of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and an expert on the economics of immigration. "The American economy has been at the forefront of science and engineering in part because of immigration. The market for scientists and engineers always has its ups and downs. I don't see anything that suggests we're in a particularly depressed labor market for scientists and engineers, so I'm actually quite surprised that this issue seems to have arisen at this time." DIVERSITY? John Martin says employers may hire immigrants in lieu of U.S.-born minorities. An analysis by the Washington D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies of data from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the 1990 U.S. Census revealed that while 7.9 percent of the overall population was born outside the country, 11.7 percent of the 3.1 million S&Es enumerated in the census were foreign-born. This includes 12.3 percent of the 1.9 million engineers, 10.0 percent of the 802,329 math and computer scientists, and 12.6 percent of the 419,800 natural scientists (L.F. Bouvier, J.L. Martin, "Foreign-Born Scientists, Engineers, and Mathematicians in the United States," Washington, D.C., Center for Immigration Studies, 1995). This study, released in August, also revealed that while an annual average of 11,292 S&Es entered the U.S. between 1983 and 1991, the passage of the 1990 Immigration Act quickly led to a near doubling of this number-22,206 S&Es entered in 1993. Moreover, these numbers include only those S&Es classified as permanent residents, not the many thousands who enter the U.S. on student or temporary-worker visas. The study makes the point that while foreign-born individuals are overrepresented in science and engineering compared with their share of the general population, native-born women, Hispanics, and African Americans are underrepresented. "From these very rough estimates, only one conclusion can be arrived at," reads a portion of the study's executive summary. The "United States should be able, if it so chose as a matter of social policy, to meet its needs for scientists from within our own population, especially by harnessing the talents of under-represented minorities and women." John L. Martin, research director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a coauthor of the study, contends: "In some universities there is a tendency to consider diversity goals met by recruitment of minorities who are foreign-born, [so] there is less of an emphasis on trying to recruit native- born minorities." The National Science Foundation's Directorate of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences published another study of S&E immigration in the Aug. 21, 1995, issue of its newsletter "Data Brief." According to this report, S&E immigration increased 62 percent from 1991 to 1992, but just 3.1 percent from 1992 to 1993. The 3.1 percent increase in S&E immigration contrasts with a 7.2 percent decrease in immigration overall. A third study of S&E immigration was conducted by David S. North, an independent immigration-policy researcher who was an assistant to U.S. Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz during the Lyndon Johnson administration. North's study is reported in his book Soothing the Establishment: The Impact of Foreign- Born Scientists and Engineers on America (Lanham, Md., University Press of America, 1995). Among other things, North analyzes the influence of the large number of foreign S&E graduate students on wages and scientific employment. North found that only 48 percent of Ph.D.'s in engineering and the physical sciences in 1993 went to U.S. citizens. Civil engineering is an extreme example of this trend; only 36.5 percent of the 1991 Ph.D.'s went to U.S. citizens or permanent residents. There is, however, a much larger proportion of U.S. citizens in graduate programs in the biological sciences, in which 77.1 percent of the 1991 Ph.D.'s went to citizens or permanent residents. "Certainly one impact of large numbers of very attractive, foreign scientists and engineers is that [they] tend to flood the labor market-which seems to be flooded, anyway-therefore [causing] lower wages and working conditions for everyone involved," says North. He maintains in his book: "People with 20 to 23 years of education should make as much money as auto assembly workers, but they do not." UIC's Chiswick rejects this argument, noting that "if you look at the ratio of the earnings of scientists and engineers to the earnings of lower-skilled workers, that ratio has actually gone up in the last two decades, suggesting that the upper skill level is not experiencing greater pressure on its market than of those with lesser skills." Better and Worse Treatment North finds that foreign-born S&Es are treated better in some ways and worse in others than their native-born colleagues, beginning with graduate-school admissions. "All things being equal, if you're a very bright B.S. in engineering from Indiana, you're more likely to get into an American graduate school than an equally qualified B.S. in engineering from India," he notes. "Once they get in, however, foreign-born [S&Es] are more likely to get financing, . . .are less likely to graduate in debt, and are particularly less likely to graduate in debt than American blacks," explains North. The causes of this, however, are complex, he notes: They include the fact that foreign students are more likely to have research assistantships-which accelerate the pace to an advanced degree-while citizens are more likely to have teaching assistantships, and the fact that some federal loan programs are closed to those who are not citizens or permanent-resident aliens. "Ultimately, if they stick around and get naturalized, they tend to make a little more money than their native-born peers," North also reports. He offers several potential explanations for this observation, including the possibility that less-qualified foreigners are more likely to leave the country, and the possibility that foreign scientists simply might work harder than Americans. The typical path trod by many a foreign scientist is to come to the United States on a student visa, to obtain a temporary "H-1B" work visa following graduation, and, within a few years, to attain "resident alien" (green-card) status with the help of an employer. North refers to this as the "immigrant path." While he finds this process disturbing, because of the number of such scientists flooding the labor market, he is more concerned with those following the "nonimmigrant" path. Under this procedure, frequently used by computer software companies, large groups of foreign workers are brought in on temporary visas, often the same H-1B visas used by S&Es following the immigrant path. When these individuals complete their projects, they return to their homelands. "These are people who have not been educated in the United States, have not gone through strenuous [educational and employment] gatekeeping practices in the United States, [and] come in here with no more than journeyman skills," North contends. Because those on the immigrant path have to overcome more hurdles than those on the nonimmigrant path-including the Graduate Record Exam, the graduate admissions process, employer screening, and the U.S. immigration system-the process tends to yield higher-quality scientists and engineers, according to North. Employers, however, love the "nonimmigrant" scientists, North maintains: "They're attractive in their docility and some of their skills and their low wages. And they're also indentured to their employers. . . . If they get fired, they have to leave the country." Such workers were the subject of hearings in October by the House Judiciary Committee, which is working on the Omnibus Immigration Bill. Current law allows up to 65,000 H-1B workers to enter the U.S. each year, and to stay for up to six years. Critics of the practice say it should be cut back or eliminated entirely, especially since some employers pay these workers less than the prevailing wage, in defiance of the poorly enforced immigration laws prohibiting this. But large employers, including software giant Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have come to the defense of the H-1B program, claiming that they need ready access to highly skilled foreign workers to meet temporary shortages of domestic labor. Not all H-1B visas are given to S&Es, and there are several other classes of temporary visas under which S&Es come into the U.S. North's analysis of INS data indicate that 59,664 S&Es entered the country in 1993 under various nonimmigrant temporary visas, in addition to the 22,206 permanent visas awarded to S&Es that year. ACTIVIST: Gene Nelson, cofounder of the Young Scientists Network, calls the influx of scientific immigrants "a broken social contract" with U.S. researchers. Vitriolic Debate Gene Nelson thinks that's far too many. A Ph.D. in biophysics, Nelson has been unable to find work as a scientist, and is currently employed as a computer salesman for $9 an hour in a suburb near Dallas. A self-described activist and one of the founders of two Internet resources for the discussion of scientific career issues-the Young Scientists Network (YSN) and the Network of Emerging Scientists (NES)-Nelson has long railed against what he and others in YSN and NES refer to as The Myth: reports dating from the late 1980s that purported to show that the U.S. is in for a looming shortfall of scientists. The debate on scientific immigration on the YSN mailing list became so vitriolic earlier this year that the list's moderators first relegated immigration-related messages to the back end of the daily mailing, and then prohibited them altogether, except for those reporting new facts. In response, Nelson and others broke away to form NES. (YSN is on the World (YSN is on the World Wide Web at: http://snorri.chem.washington.edu/ysnarchive/index.html. NES's WWW address is: http://pegasus.uthct.edu/nes/nes.html.) "The Myth has now spread worldwide," states Nelson, who intends to run as a Democrat for Congress in 1996 in Texas's 26th Congressional District, currently represented by Republican (and House Majority Leader) Dick Armey. "We need to absolutely and completely turn off the H-1B visa. It was a law that was brought in under fraudulent pretenses," especially the pretense of The Myth, according to Nelson. Nelson believes that the number of S&E immigrants entering annually far exceeds the number of new scientific jobs that are being created. Speaking of American scientists like himself, he says, "We have made the investment. We have put our heart and souls into a field, and a number of us, especially younger scientists, are bitter that we weren't even allowed to show what we can do. There's a broken social contract here." That's not Nelson's only argument against scientific immigration. He is disturbed that under current family-reunification policies, immigrants can sponsor the immigration of spouses, parents, and siblings, some of whom, he says, transfer their assets to others, have themselves declared indigent, and begin collecting Social Security benefits. "That's not a problem with the immigration of scientists and engineers," responds Chiswick. "That's a problem of extending rights to serve as sponsors to relatives. I strongly advocate that all immigrants . . . should be held responsible for the financial support of the kinsmen they sponsor." Nelson advances economic-security arguments, as well. "They're being trained in a number of important technologies, technologies that . . . allow them to go back to their home country and eat us for lunch economically by out-competing," he warns. "If World War III is going to be an economic one, we're just training the opposition, and we're using our tax dollars to do it. . . . Higher education, even for people who are paying full tuition, is subsidized by the federal government." And Nelson worries that if immigrant scientists found themselves in financial difficulty in the U.S., they might be tempted to aid terrorist activities, or engage in espionage: "They may eventually be put in a situation where they're over a barrel and perhaps an agent for Saddam Hussein . . . says, 'Here's some money, do this stuff for us,' and there's a small percentage who will." FEAR NO EVIL: Indian-born Alok Kumar, a physicist at SUNY-Oswega. contents, "I have yet to see a single case whre a foreign scientist came to the U.S., stole secrets, and helped someone else's program. Such concerns are ludicrous, responds Alok Kumar, an associate professor of physics at the State University of New York, Oswego, who is an Indian immigrant. "I have yet to see a single case where a foreign scientist came to this country, stole secrets, and helped somebody else's program. I know there are several spy cases, but never involving a scientist." Moreover, Chiswick points out, "Most scientists and engineers are not engaged in activities which involve national-security concerns. In terms of knowledge gained in school which might in some way be a danger to the American economy, that knowledge is in books and journal articles which are readily available throughout the world, so it's not clear that keeping scientists and engineers from other countries outside the borders of the United States has a material effect on reducing their access to the latest information." Chiswick tends to be much less concerned than Nelson about the possibility that immigrant and nonimmigrant scientists are taking American jobs. "The American economy benefits from having a larger pool of high-skilled manpower," he says. "If there were a large number of economists coming into the labor market, that would surely have a depressing effect on the earnings of economists, at least in the short run; but it would have a beneficial effect on providing a larger supply of this high-skilled manpower to the economy as a whole. "There are many ways that adjustments will take place. Some of the adjustments will take place in the form of young people who might have been contemplating careers in [science and engineering] will now seek careers in other professional areas. So if there's more foreign scientists and engineers, you'll see more natives going into law and business, for example." Other critics of Nelson's ideas, which he expresses vehemently on YSN and NES, regard his attacks on scientific immigration as a racist or reactionary response to a difficult employment situation. But Nelson asserts: "I think there's a big difference between being nationalist and being racist. I am first and foremost an American. And as an American I think my government should be first and foremost for all Americans." Immigration's Legacy Peyrets Goldmacher maintains that the U.S. has benefited greatly from scientific immigration for some time. "America is a country of immigrants," he asserts. "Einstein and a lot of others helped to develop American science. . . . You can't develop science without people who have new ideas. New people come with new ideas, and that is a big success for America." BENEFIT: Peyrets Goldmacher. an emigré from the former Soviet Union, maintains that "new people come with new ideas" and create jobs. But Nelson says he's not trying to keep out the Einsteins. "What's happening," he declares, "is that we're bringing in lots of just ho-hum, routine scientists. [The U.S. should] only allow the truly talented scientists to come in. . . . There's not many of them, but we certainly should welcome those people. And the number we need to bring in [is], I would project, on the order of 15,000 per year from the entire world." Goldmacher contends that, rather than costing jobs, immigrants often create jobs. He notes that when he came to the U.S. he worked at a company that had only 25 employees. As chief engineer, he helped build that company to the point where it now employs 200. Wei Ji, a Chinese immigrant who works as a geographer with the Southern Science Center of the National Biological Service in Lafayette, La., says of critics of immigration, "They believe if you're a foreigner, you're going to spend the taxpayers' dollars and use our facilities. They forget another side. When [immigrant scientists] come here, the other country has already invested a lot of money in their education." Ji came to the U.S. for his Ph.D., but he had first earned a master's degree from Beijing University and had worked for three years at the Chinese Institute of Oceanography. "You couldn't find too many students in [the U.S.] with such experience," he notes. "When I was doing my Ph.D. dissertation, actually, my skill and knowledge in my specialized field probably exceeded my major adviser's. . . . I'm conducting research here, so definitely this country will benefit from my work." But SUNY-Oswego's Kumar notes that perhaps the best argument for scientific immigration is that it has occurred throughout history and has been indispensable in the development of scientific knowledge. "Science is international in character, and scientists have always migrated from one culture to another," continues Kumar. "Science evolved out of human necessity, so it flourishes everywhere in the world. Through scientific immigration, the United States is able to attract the best people in the world." One thing that's clear is that if scientific immigration is a problem, the solutions won't be simple. "This is one of the more complex issues I've dealt with in 25 years of immigration-policy research," says North. "There are lots of pluses. There are probably a few more minuses than pluses. [But] it's not something that we can take care of by the kind of crude techniques that national legislation often includes." Sidebar:INTRA-ETHNIC COMPARISONS OF NATURAL SCIENTISTS ON SELECTED VARIABLES Robert Finn, a freelance science writer based in Long Beach, Calif., is online at finn@earthlink.net.

Scientists' Heated Debate On Immigration Mirrors Issues Argued Throughout U.S.

Scientists' Heated Debate On Immigration Mirrors Issues Argued Throughout U. S.

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of