Washington, D.C. (July 11, 2024) - In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Dr. Ron Hira, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Howard University, joins guest host Steve Camarota, the Center’s Director of Research, to discuss the flaws in the U.S. guest worker programs and the myths of a STEM labor shortage.

Hira refutes the idea that guest worker programs are justified under the assumption that there is a shortage of STEM workers. He states, “There is no evidence to support that there is a generalized shortage of STEM workers.” Both Hira and Camarota highlight that wages in STEM fields have been stagnant or declining, indicating no shortage.

The discussion then moves to the exploitation within guest worker programs. Hira explains, “Guest workers are underpaid, exploited, and threatened, which harms U.S. workers competing with them.” He points out that the Department of Labor sets lower minimum wages for H-1B workers and that the OPT program makes foreign workers cheaper by exempting them from payroll taxes, distorting the labor market.

Hira concludes, “There is clarity on what should be done, the question is whether you get an executive branch that will do anything about it.”

Highlights:

• Skills-based immigration is tilted towards temporary workers, not permanent workers.
• Many of these visa programs, H-1B in particular, are justified under the pretense that there is a shortage of STEM workers in the U.S. However, no evidence supports this claim.
• One of the long-term trends across the American economy has been that an ever-larger share of productivity gains has gone to firms – or to those who own capital – rather than workers.
• Guest-workers have fewer rights than American citizens and are thus subject to exploitation.
• The foreign-worker program called Optional Practical Training (OPT) exempts participants (recent graduates still here on student visas) and their employers from the payroll tax, making them 15.3 percent cheaper to hire than U.S. born students and laborers.
• H-1B is often sold as being for the “best and brightest” foreign nationals. However, applicants are selected randomly via a lottery, ensuring the selection of a large number of the mediocre and ordinary.