Guest workers

“In the past year we’ve seen the chasm between evidence and policy grow ever wider and deeper; the U.S. STEM workforce is being weakened through policies and guestworker programs that are increasingly exploited by shortsighted firms and industry groups. Despite rigorous and independent research by my colleagues and by me, of over a decade of research showing the U.S. educates an ample supply of qualified STEM workers, we see the continued expansion of policies that shift work to offshore labor. Instead of developing a globally competitive and internationally integrated workforce, all evidence and events from the past year suggest we are heading down a very different path consisting of legislation, policies, and programs to substitute guestworkers for U.S. STEM workers and graduates. These are programs that allow firms to subvert the free market in setting wage rates; these are policies that deny U.S. workers–whether native or immigrant, whether citizen or permanent resident—the career and compensation their education and skills should bring them if not for the huge, congressionally-created labor pool of guestworkers that industry has available to staff the vast majority of new IT openings.”