Walking the middle

We're having a discussion on yesterday's post about whether paying for labor is a plausible alternative to whining about it and importing people. My conclusion was that we should be rational about it, explore all options, instead of leaping to expedience. North Dakota does have other ways of getting doctors than to eliminate H-1B quotas. Rational examination might still lead us to the importation of doctors, but it might not; the challenge commands us to think more broadly than the first (and possibly cheapest) solution that comes to mind.

But I don't want to rehash that here. What I want to talk about is the tendency we all have to over-contextualize arguments people make, to focus on the back story instead of what's really being said. I've had comments on this blog (and in private e-mails) that deal, not with what I'm writing, but with the motivations of those who provide the evidence. There is enough validity to that view to make it worth considering, but it is not sufficient to allow the arguer to ignore the actual argument.

I have often cited sources that come from people who are clearly more anti-immigration than I am. I do that because the conventional media seems to ignore a lot of the evidence that conflicts with the common wisdom that Americans aren't good enough to fill certain jobs (the PR-fueled, CEO position). And if you read what I write, really read it, you will see that I'm taking a more nuanced view than, simply, we must close our borders. To lump me in with the people who do believe that is, while convenient for you who want to disagree with me, spurious and insulting.

Let's take the H-1B question, at least one aspect of it. There are people who believe that the number should be 0, and their views have become marginalized. There are other people whose self-interest drives them to believe that the number should be essentially infinite. And there is the actual number, based on historical accident more than science, of 65,000.

Where I have tried to walk is the uneasy middle, because I really want to understand what the "right" number is. Unfortunately, that stance means that I have to disagree somewhat with both sides, that I don't have the false comfort of saying, on the one hand, that abuses in the program imply that it should be abolished, or, on the other hand, that there's a (rather bogus) study that "proves" that H-1B applications create jobs. Moving in either direction would, I assure you, be far easier; I could jump in bed with one side or the other and sway along with one mantra ("H-1Bs are bad, bad, bad") or the other ("H-1Bs are good, good, good").

I'm not contending that I am unaffected by my own experience, that's asking a bit much. But I do believe I can remove myself from the midst of whatever biases I have, at least enough to ask the right questions. For example, I've worked with H-1Bs who had no business programming a computer, and certainly should not have been allowed in a position where they could undercut native talent. That's happened enough times to make me think that, more than perhaps, the quota is too high.

But that's a first-cut reaction, and I like to dig a bit deeper. So I ask myself how we actually come up with the people who receive these visas. And I look at the conventional media, which pretty much accepts the idea that H-1Bs go only to the "best and the brightest," but is weak on details. It turns out that there is no great selectivity there, that we're not necessarily skimming the cream from other countries. Additionally, the biggest H-1B users are Indian offshoring companies, who have their own motivations for bringing in their countrymen for a few years, then sending them back to the subcontinent.

If we really take the time to look at this, or any other, issue, we find that there is a complexity that doesn't quite line up with political simplicity, that, if we're trying to find truth, we can't just line up with Bill Gates or Lou Dobbs. Each may have contributions to make to the dialogue, but neither seems to capture the full difficulty of the problems inherent in immigration policy - each is quite selective in their choice of facts.

But each of them may have facts to contribute to the discussion, and it behooves the inquirer to look at both sides and try to determine what truth can be found. Sadly, our news providers seem incapable, most of the time, to appreciate this. It's easier to brand Gates an eminent statesman and assume that his wealth gives him special insight into topics that are well beyond his ken (but within his sphere of self-interest). In this way, extremes are relabeled "conventional wisdom," and any dissent becomes relegated to the fringes; you're either with Bill Gates or you're part of the radical nutjob Dobbs contingent.

That may make the job of commenting on things a lot easier, but it's also colossally lazy. Some of the people who disagree with me are guilty of that (and I am, at times, just as guilty). It's hard to question assumptions, to look skeptically at what both sides are saying, especially when you can sort people into two classes ("agree with me, disagree with me").

I'm pretty sure that the 65,000 number for H-1Bs is "wrong," because it was not determined based on much of anything that I can tell, and because it doesn't change in response to any externalities. Is it too low, or too high? Well, that depends on what our goal for the program is, and that's not something that either side spells out particularly well.

[I thought of trying to hash some of the two sides out here, but this isn't the post for that, because I'm using the H-1B question to illustrate the thought process.]

Hey, facts are tough, but that doesn't make truth something we should ignore. Since I don't have the ability to run an experiment on the H-1B question, my guess is that there are gains and losses whichever path we select. If we dropped visas to 0, some people would be better off, some would be worse. If we expanded them to 200,000, same thing. If I can acknowledge that, try to figure out who falls into each category and determine the magnitude of the life change, then so can everyone else. Of course, that wouldn't be as much fun as the shouting off the top of the head that most people seem content to do, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Where have all the doctors gone?

Rob Sanchez, in his most recent Job Destruction Newsletter, writes about a new Senate bill that would effectively lift the H-1B caps on the importation of foreign doctors. As Rob points out:

In conclusion, the Conrad "improvement" program is a backdoor attempt to raise the H-1B cap. That's because if more foreign medical students can get a Conrad waiver there will be more H-1B visas left over for programmers and engineers. We can expect more bills like this that whittle away at the H-1B cap without having to actually raise it.

This is likely true, and brings up a larger point that I'll probably get around to writing about tomorrow, but I wanted to pick up on one statement in the press release from the senator who's sponsoring this change:

The physician shortage in America is a growing crisis. By 2020, some projections show the nation may fall short by as many as 200,000 doctors. This shortage will be felt hardest in rural areas in North Dakota -- and across the nation.

The Conrad State 30 Program has brought more than 100 doctors to North Dakota communities that otherwise would have experienced a lack of physician coverage.

Need I talk about this again? I guess so. This is the same argument that we hear about the need to increase H-1B visas, that we simply cannot find all the qualified people we require to do...whatever it is the speaker thinks needs to be done.

Let me help the rural areas of North Dakota -- and across the nation -- with their problem. Fill a briefcase with cash, let's say a million dollars worth. Go to the Minot International Airport, catch a flight to Minneapolis, then on to Milwaukee, and finish in Boston, it takes less than a day. Go walk around a medical center, offering the briefcase to any doctor who's willing to commit to two years. I bet you'll find someone who will come.

[Actually, to go up even earlier in the quote, I'm not sure what it means to have a shortage of 200,000 doctors. We could make more simply by letting more into our medical schools, and immigration policy wouldn't have to enter into it at all.]

This is yet another in a long list of assertions that ignore how markets work. Any such statement should be followed by, "at the price we're willing to pay." You can get doctors to North Dakota or anywhere else, just as you can attract students into certain fields of study, just as you can compete with the industry leader in a certain technology - if you're willing to pay for it.

Now I'm not contending that that isn't hard sometimes. Finding a million dollars for two years of a doctor may seem like an intractable problem, just as wresting someone away from Google's search team might present a real challenge to Microsoft's recruiters.

But those are options, and they shouldn't be removed from the discussion just because someone sees a more expedient route if they can just push (lobby? pay?) to have laws changed. Immigration has increasingly become the solution of first resort, when it should only be part of the mix as one possibility. I've written before that there may be times when certain markets have a short-term shortage that requires importation of labor, but, if that happens, any relaxation of visa quotas should be accompanied by a longer-term strategy to alleviate that shortage. Clearly, that second part never actually happens; instead, we change our policies yet again to make the relaxation permanent.

I'm all for attracting the "best and the brightest" to our shores, but I know too many talented developers who are unemployed or underemployed or underpaid to believe that magical people from overseas are going to upgrade the profession, especially when a large number of companies aren't seeking out the best and the brightest, just the cheapest and most easily exploited. Sure, it's easy just to churn out the visas and give American companies and governments what they want, and it's a lot harder to look at the long-term implications of our decisions and be rational about it. But being hard shouldn't serve as a dterrent to doing what is right.

Red Oak's Five Things

In an earlier post, I followed a fascinating comment thread to a post of Citizen Carrie's that went through some of the current immigration issues. As the discussion wended its way along, with a hapless anonymous poster who brought very little game being taken to the hole by Carrie and Red Oak, Oak made an excellent point about certain types of arguers:

Description: He "knows" five things, those five things constitute the entire universe of things to be known (outside of the things he needs to know for his own profession, one hopes), he will repeat, all at once or in rotating order, those five things in response to anything you write, and while an occasional new factoid may penetrate, such that the List of Five becomes the List of Six or Seven, no new information is capable of modifying or transforming the original opinion.

If this attitude were confined just to bloggers or commenters, there would be very little to say about it. The wonderful world of Web 2.0 have brought some positives, but it's also given a forum to people who would normally only have the bartender to listen.

But there are serious professionals with major credentials who have the same attitude. It's fairly clear that large segments of our lawmakers are concerned only with adhering to either: strict party orthodoxy, or self-aggrandizement in preparation for the next election. (Oh, wait, I said serious professionals.)

So let's talk about economists, and let's talk about the subject of the original Carrie post: immigration policy. Economists "know" a few things: free trade is always good, the labor market is just like any other, an increase in supply (with constant demand) leads to lower prices (I could probably find two more to bring us to five, but these will suffice).

Where do those three things lead us? First of all, globalization is an unalloyed good. To believe that requires us to take a two-nation, two-good model that everyone accepts and extend it to a couple of hundred countries, multinational entities, government, and citizens with differing priorities and needs, but, no matter, the conclusion still applies.

Therefore, since labor is just like any other good, it makes sense to move it overseas or to bring lower-priced workers to this country. Either way, this action increases the labor supply.

So, since the supply of labor has increased, and, presumably, demand is roughly constant, the price of labor must go down, whether it's for manufacturing that has moved to Shenzhen or computer programming being done by H-1Bs in Phoenix.

Now is where we run into a pretty big problem. It's going to be very hard to make up for the loss of a career by saving a few bucks on a sweater, and most people can see that pretty clearly. But free trade is always good. Paradox!! (And we're leaving out the part where economists are actually embedded in the world of politics, so they can't admit that there will be losses to major parts of our population through their policies.)

This is just one example how clinging to Five (or Three) Things leads one astray. At some point, to make sense of it all, an honest economist would have to question the basic assumptions. But too few of them are willing to do that, so everything that impinges on free trade in goods, services, or jobs is labelled with the dirty word, "protectionism." The clear result, that letting the market have its way will make quite a few people substantally poorer, disproportionate shares of them on the "wealthy" side of the trade, is impossible to fathom, so the "experts" just elide over it, or attack those who ask questions about it.

We can conclude that Anonymous may well not just be some random shouter on the Web, he or she may be a respected, tenured economist at a major university.

Foolish simplicity

Having had some other business this week, I have been light on blogging, and even more behind on keeping up with my feeds, even for some of my favorite blogs. So I'm a week late commenting on this post by Citizen Carrie. It provides links to stories about some current wrangling over proposals to support American workers with American bailout money, a link to an entertaining reaction to Jowl-Boy's (I'm sorry, I mean respected New York Times Pulitzer-winning columnist Tom Friedman) suggestion that we can save the housing market by importing more of those always-fab H-1B holders, and a "study" that purports that people with funny names (all of whom are, presumably, visa-holding non-citizens) file a whole bunch of patents.

What I found most notable about this post, other than how impressed I am that Carrie always manages to dig out these things, is that it received 22 comments. For me, the interesting part comes when someone named "Anonymous" weighs in by trying to create a false dichotomy:

H1B visas fill up jobs that require "special" skill set that is not available or in scare in US.

Why don't government do something to the "illegal" immigrants? Don't you think those millions of illegal immigrants are taking away millions of American jobs? Do they pay taxes? I guess not.

See the logic here? "You guys are doubly wrong, you're ignoring the mad magical skills of H-1B visa holders, and missing the real problem, the illegals." But Red Oak does a better job than I could of pulling this apart:

Anonymous - you should not infer that people are unaware of other issues in immigration because they happen to be focusing on a particular aspect. Both legal and illegal immigration present problems and both should be discussed and debated. If you are particularly passionate about the problem of illegal immigration, there are any number of blogs and fora covering it. You're free to jump right in. But you have no basis whatever for your inference that people discussing H-1Bs aren't "seeing the big picture".

Furthermore, if you'd bothered to look around your hostess's site, you would have noticed that she has covered in great detail your claim that "H1B visas fill up jobs that require 'special' skill set that is not available or in scare in US". So much so, in fact, that "special skills" is a running in-joke here.

And please refrain from the tiresome "your ancestors immigrated here at some point in the past, too". In the first place, this is not news to anybody. I know this might surprise you, Anonymous, but most Americans are perfectly well aware of where their ancestors came from, and you aren't exactly shaking their world-view to its foundations by pointing out that they're probably not the descendants of the Mohicans. Second, immigration policy, like every other government function, should be based on "promoting the general welfare" of the nation and its citizens. There is no more mindless and irresponsible argument in public policy today than the which asserts that "we had lots of immigration in the past therefore we have to allow lots of immigration now and in the future."

Guys, I am not defending H1B people.

Sure you are - what do you think your "special skills" argument is? And nothing wrong with that, but it's programs, not people that are being criticized here. You're welcome to defend those programs, too, if you think they're a good idea - you just need to up your game a bit. Remember, it's a good bet that someone who has dedicated a whole blog, or a fair chunk of a blog, to any topic, is way past the "sound bite" level of debate you're operating at here.

Anonymous shows a certain amount of persistence, if not logic, as he/she comes back with:

Again, you got to understand the bigger picture. Do you know where most of the H1B visa goes? It goes to the Medical (docs), and I.T. and Engineering professionals.

Who gets the H1B? 90% goes to Asians and Indian. What do they contribute to the country? They provide support to already struggling industries.

Now, does US have many people available to fill up jobs in these industries (both in terms of qualification and numbers)? I don't thinks so.

Another think, if you stop H1B, who would do research on brain cancer or breast cancer in US?

Do you know half of the NASA employees are foreign workers? Do you know the R&D of Motorola, Microsoft, IBM and Intel is foreign workers who provide US corps advantage to compete on world level.

Carrie does a good job of taking care of these "arguments," but Red Oak comes back with something even more useful, an elucidation of those who tend to reason like Anonymous and spend way too much time on message boards:

Description: He "knows" five things, those five things constitute the entire universe of things to be known (outside of the things he needs to know for his own profession, one hopes), he will repeat, all at once or in rotating order, those five things in response to anything you write, and while an occasional new factoid may penetrate, such that the List of Five becomes the List of Six or Seven, no new information is capable of modifying or transforming the original opinion.

He also "knows" that you do not know these Five Things, no matter how firmly embedded in the category of No Shit Sherlock some of them that are not outright falsehoods may be, because surely no one who knew The Five Things could possibly disagree with him, and thus he is compelled to keep repeating The Five Things, because obviously if you keep disagreeing with him, you weren't listening the last 500 times he tried to enlighten you with the knowledge of The Only Five Things.

Actually, putting the number at 5 is most kind on Red Oak's part, as we have certainly seen people who top out at One Thing. My favorite is the guy who insisted that there was no recession because it hadn't been officially called, then, when it was (and most of us had been right all along), insisted that it still really wasn't.

Anyway, back to the main thread, "Anonymous" seems to return as someone named "Dev" (identity is pretty much meaningless on the Internet, isn't it?), contending that "whoever is efficient wins" and takes up that "special skills" argument again, and is again shot down by Carrie and Red Oak.

I have a larger point about Red Oak's Five Things, but I'll leave my ruminations on that to a later post (I promise).

Journey to the West

As I said upon returning, I will now offer up some observations on California after my short sojourn last week. These may not be incredibly profound, but they're all I have.

1) I spent some time with people who came to this country in the 1970s from the Republic of China (which I will now call Taiwan since that's how we in the U.S. see it). Some of these folks have been remarkably successful, others less so, but right down the line their children are doing well.

[This is probably a good place to stop and point out that I understand the dangers of generalization, something I will be doing throughout this essay. I believe my observations have some validity, but I know that is a far cry from universality. Nevertheless....]

What struck me was that the degrees of separation hypothesis (that almost everyone on Earth is connected to everyone else by no more than six steps) needs a smaller number among this population. The people at the table seemed to have no more than two degrees to the new president, Ma Ying-Jeou, which seems surprising until you realize that there were a very small number of top schools that generated most of the immigrants at that time, and the ones who went back after studying here are part of that group.

But that demonstrates, I think, the two fallacies we have about immigrants and, now, foreigners. For we believe, based on what we've seen, that the Chinese and Indians and others who come here are the best and brightest (which they tend to be based on selection), then we extend that to (1st myth) believing that any further immigrants would be equally talented or entrepreneurial, then, in a huge stretch, (2nd myth) that the people who remain in their countries are also equally talented, that it's something genetic.

Here's the deal. The people who have come here to go to school tend to already be the best and the brightest, from good disciplined families - they simply are not reflective of the overall population of those countries (any more than the graduating class of Harvard is reflective of America's 22-year-olds). Even then, many of that first generation don't do as well as they would like (or, possibly, as well as if they had gone back). So when we set immigration and offshoring policies based on the "magical" qualities of Indians or Chinese or Koreans, we need to understand that we're looking for evidence from an already-select group.

2) A lot is made of the laid-back quality of Californians. When I left Chicago, it was below zero. When I got to San Jose, it was over 70 degrees.

My sense is that Californians have the luxury of being more experiential than the rest of us; that is, every day is something of a reward and they know it. If you live in other areas of the country, many days do not contain that intrinsic satisfaction, so we end up being more goal-oriented. For us, it's getting to something or somewhere else, because we don't get 365 days a year to enjoy the world. We have a grimmer focus on hitting the high points because our day-to-day lives offer less of the simple sensory enjoyment that is a near-daily occurrence to the Californian.

[Note: in reading this point over, it seems a bit pretentious, bordering on the David Brooks. Nonetheless, I'll leave it, because it was a thought I had out there, and that's what I promised to my readers.]

3) The economic news from California is pretty grim, with the unemployment rate hitting 9.3%. There is speculation, at least from one writer in the San Jose Mercury News, that California may be a "rust-belt-to-be":

Defense spending in the 1980s, high-tech startups in the 1990s and housing-fueled consumer spending in the 1990s — all were California economic bubbles that burst spectacularly, leaving recession and government deficits in their wake.

What, if anything, will come next to pull us out of recession and return California to prosperity? Some think it will be biotechnology, services to baby boomer retirees or solving global warming.

Lurking in the background, however, is a nagging worry that there won't be anything, that the state's endemically high costs, political dysfunction and long list of unresolved dilemmas, from transportation to water to education, have made us uncompetitive in a global economy. Just last week, a new federal survey found that California has the nation's highest adult illiteracy rate.

We have tended to take the future for granted. No matter how moribund the economy may be at the moment, we think, we have the weather, the entrepreneurial spirit and the strategic location to regroup and prosper.

We may have. But then again, maybe we aren't so special. Maybe we're not immune to the societal afflictions that have beset other states. Maybe we are a rust-belt-to-be on the left coast, a Michigan with winter sunshine.

I'm no expert on what's going on out there, but it seems clear that there are major problems ahead for our most populous state. What does this do to the theory that all we have to do is accumulate enough good minds in one place and wonderful things will happen? Because that's the prevailing theory that we're applying to educational policy, that we can just educate all the youngsters and our needs will be met, innovation will happen, and the streets will run with milk and honey.

There are some remarkable conditions in the Golden State, including some of the best institutions of higher learning and an environment which attracts the best from all over the world, but that isn't proving sufficient to overcome all the many things that seem to be getting in the way. There are so many things that contribute to the success of an area, a state, a nation, a world, and, while I would never deny that rising levels of education is desirable, it doesn't seem that assembling a critical mass of bright people is quite enough.

Catching up with comments

I don't get too many comments here, and some of the ones I have received, particularly since I criticized the non-newspaper called Triblocal (see here and here), have been pretty scurrilous. Others have just been dim-witted. Most, however, have been interesting or thought-provoking, and I always like getting those (my post last week on libertarianism generated some very good comments; I shifted my view a bit, but still think libertarianism has some serious image problems that will continue to interfere with its viability as a major political force...as a party).

A while ago, I got into something of a dust-up on another site with someone named mcfnord (I'll assume for convenience that mcfnord is male - my apologies if I assume too much). While not a major contretemps, we did have a disagreement that, in my opinion, came from a too-idiosyncratic way of looking at the issues we were discussing, the danger of generalizing from one's own particulars.

I'm pleased to be able to moderate my views based on a comment received from mcfnord on my post of last week, Yes, you get it. Without getting into a lengthy rehash of what was said there, I contended that our future as a nation is going to be compromised by current trends and our failure to do anything about them, and how "we need to reconcile ourselves to a somewhat lesser life than we anticipated." If I had known that mcfnord was going to comment, I would have expected something other than his actual comment:

We've been living beyond our means throughout the last decade (or two), culminating in a negative savings rate and huge federal spending deficits, so yeah, like economists like to say: the unsustainable ends eventually. Factoring out the new advances in medical care, mostly in pharma, lowers both costs and quality of life, but there will be a massive nursing shortage. Time for skilled labor immigration? Don't tell Carrie!

I am probably in a minority saying things are going well for me as compared to my parents. I do believe there's a "dual income trap" that didn't exist in my parents' era, but my response is to live far below my means. Communities that require a lot of gasoline are suffering, and there will be changes. I don't understand her statements such as "as we fill up our gas tasks each day..." but I know vast swaths of this nation built their civilization on the stuff, and they are suffering. I ride a bicycle. I live in an environment where that's viable. So I fill my gas tank each month or so. I'm not sure what people expected from home prices when the historical trend is 1% since the Great Depression. We all rode a bubble, and of course that's not sustainable. But I'm not convinced things are so different in this era. In the end, how useful and accurate an indicator is "gloom"? Mondale asked in his campaign, "So we'll all flip burgers?" and it didn't turn out that way. A willingness to adjust to market conditions, work hard, retrain, and save liberally for the future will probably continue to result in sustainable first-world standards of living.

Let's put it another way: Monofuel dependency, deficit spending, credit card abuse, home equity reliance, a meat-heavy diet, and a hope that nothing will ever change: WAS IT EVER A GREAT IDEA?

My response:

And so we begin to see a kind of convergence in our thinking, mcfnord. For all that some might accuse me of peddling gloom, my primary contention is not that we are in a "malaise," but in a state of denial. We're refusing to accept the reality of our future, and, in our belief that the way we live is the acme of progress, we'll be very disappointed.

mcfnord, we should absolutely do all the things you're talking about, though I continue to believe there are structural problems with some of your remedies (retraining is too easily passed off as just another economic transaction, whereas I believe it to be a major relationship change - far more wrenching - but probably necessary).

And those things you correctly point out as weaknesses in our way of living are, unfortunately, perceived by many as among our strengths. When a president tells us to spend our way out of our national trauma surrounding 9/11, it is no wonder we see
spending psychosis. Stability has become the goal for many, rather than the flexibility to ride and enjoy change (but I do think we as a nation are rather glib about the potential negative effects of change).

You say that we can continue "in sustainable first-world standards of living." I'm not sure exactly what that will mean, especially if the trends toward income and wealth inequality increase, but I do know that that will represent a major shock to a country that expects excessive, luxurious first-world standards of living. It is true that not everyone needs a big-screen TV, but everyone thinks they do, and the change in mental frame that is needed will be wrenching in a nation that sees those things, things that are unfathomable to the vast majority of the world's population, as absolute necessities.

One quibble: we're talking about vast long-term trends here, and, while I'm no apologist for Walter Mondale, that we aren't all flipping burgers yet does not entirely invalidate the statement (not that I believe that we all will be, either, just that we haven't played it out long enough to determine anything).

**********
By the way, I recently received a comment from Anonymous asking my opinion of HR 5924. Since this was also alluded to, if indirectly, by mcfnord, I will give a somewhat abbreviated response. (For those without an encyclopedic knowledge of House bills, this provides for more visas for nurses.)

It's certainly possible that this comment is an attempt to find some inconsistency in my thinking. After all, I have expressed doubt about the attempts to increase the number of H-1B visas, most of which would be used to give software development jobs to foreign nationals. So, if I were to come out in favor of HR 5924, one could easily posit a "Gotcha" response (perhaps in tribute to the late Tim Russert).

First, I don't know and don't profess to know much of anything about the market for nurses. When I comment on the profession of software development, it comes from better than 20 years of experience in that profession, and it would be pointless of me to think that knowledge qualifies me to have an opinion on nursing.

Second, it seems almost trivial to point out that every market is different. I don't contend the market for CEOs should have the same rules as those for software developers any more than I see equivalence between, say, baseball players and teachers. There would be no necessary inconsistency if anyone saw the need for different policies and practices in the market for nurses than for software developers.

Third, what I do know tells me that there are differences. Nurses have seen a major upswing in their market power of late (as far as I know), commanding bigger salaries and better terms of employment; software developers and most other engineers have not (by the way, I'm not contending that nurses even now get what they merit; it's an incredibly difficult job and I have the utmost respect for them). If, after the upgrades to the compensation, we still don't have enough nurses to fill real needs, then it might be necessary to do something different.

Have we, however, exhausted other possibilities before we leap on the expedient of importing more nurses? Or is this just taking the easy, cheap way? Are hospitals and medical corporations funding scholarships for potential nurses to go to school? Is the well-known nursing instructor shortage being dealt with in some way?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, because I am not plugged into the nurse labor market. One thing I do know: we should ask some very serious questions about the specific numbers in HR 5924, because we don't know where they came from. One of my biggest objections to the various H-1B visa "adjustment" bills floating around is that the numbers seem plucked out of nowhere - 130,000, 180,000, 195,000. I don't think anyone knows what the "right" number is, and I'd be very surprised if the nursing market yields any greater precision.

Sometimes...

there is nothing much I can add. So go to Carrie's Nation, read this, and decide if we are even close to understanding what our needs are when we talk about immigration policy. The H-1B question has been so misreported by the media; the press has just acted as a pass-through for monied interests.

There is a lot to discuss here: the real need for foreign talent in certain professions, the extent to which we're working to identify that talent, the possible long-term effects of segmenting off certain professions to immigrant labor (allowing those professions to move when the visas run out), the effects to this country on ceding certain job categories, the effects on our education system, and so forth. I don't like to have a knee-jerk reaction to issues like these, because that very emotionalism leads to poor policy choices, but when I see the forces arrayed on one side, forces that have powerful incentives to take the positions they're taking (I'm talking to you, Bill Gates), it's natural to leap in the other direction.

I don't know the right number of H-1B visas to offer - but neither does Congress, Bill Gates, Infosys, Wipro, or anyone else. I do know that much of the common rhetoric that's reported makes no sense, that shortages should lead to higher wages and a dream environment for people with skills, and that's not happening. I know that fine reporting from Citizen Carrie and others demonstrates that Indians themselves get quite the chuckle at how our policies are helping them.

Sure, I have incentives, too. As a software guy, I want an array of possible jobs at desirable locations with great perks and big bucks. I want to be able to write my own ticket. I want people to look at me for what I can bring to their table, and not what year I was born.

But everyone can see my biases. Why can't we equally see that Mr. Gates has similar biases, that Microsoft and he make more money if they can get more visas? It doesn't mean that his point of view should be ignored, it does mean it shouldn't be the only one considered. Why is this so hard to see?

And for someone who had nothing to add, I sure wrote a lot.

Oh, the Horror!

On Sunday's Meet the Press, Tim Russert (back in 1961, you said you wanted to be a jet pilot; now you want to be president; what happened?) was talking to Mike Huckabee about immigration, and the issue of sending back legal citizens arose.

The legal citizens are, of course, children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents. Whether that automatic legality is a good idea or not (though how we grant legal status to someone who has no independent rights and no ability to take civic responsibility is beyond me), what runs through seemingly everyone's commentary on this subject is abject horror that a child would be forced back to a country like, say, Mexico.

What does this say about us that we even try to determine this issue based on this idea? There is an amazing arrogance in our willingness to create immigration policy around the concept that, once here and a citizen, a child forced to return, with his or her parents, to another country is, somehow, being cast into a Dante-esque inferno of perdition.

People can grow up just fine in Mexico or Poland or wherever, and it is not unduly harsh to require them to stay with their parents, no matter what their legal status may be.