Rick Nelson

More on Bill Gates, H-1B visas, and green cards

In my earlier posts on Bill Gates’ call in Sunday's Washington Post for more H-1B visas, I cited a post at MyDD.com elaborating on the starting salaries for H-1B visa holders at Microsoft. The MyDD post was cross-posted at DailyKos, and it generated some controversy in the comments section on why MyDD provided green-card salary information instead of H-1B visa salary information.

NetworkWorld has posted elaboration on this from Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis, and Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy (on leave) at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

In a nutshell, the professors contend that most if not all green-card applicants sponsored by companies like Microsoft already have an H-1B visa. In addition, green-card salary information tends to be more accurate because each application corresponds to a specific individual already working for a specific salary. In contrast, companies may not immediately act on approved H-1B visa requests.

In addition, since green-card applicants have generally worked in the US for several years and on receiving a green card could seek employment at US companies other than their sponsor’s, I would expect them to have higher salaries. (That green-card salaries are considerably below what Gates’ claims for H-1B starting salaries further weakens his case.)

By the way, if you want to download the salary data yourself and have a lot of bandwidth, you can go here.

Finally, let me respond to this comment left on MyDD: “The whole issue that's missing from this debate is that immigration of intelligent people actually creates more jobs than it consumes.”

I agree, that’s often the case. But the proponents of expanding the visa program need to be much more upfront and accurate with their arguments.

Posted by Rick Nelson on February 27, 2007 | Comments (1)