Debating Immigration | Dan Griswold, George Mason University | Public Forum

0:19 Hi hi everyone. My name is Maddy Howard. I am a program manager at the Villa Bryson Institute. I’m so excited that you guys are ready to learn about the H1B visa with our resident scholar Dan Griswold. So Dan Griswold, he’s a senior research fellow and he’s the co-director of the program on the American economy and globalization at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. So he is going to be a wonderful asset for us tonight as we dive into the world of immigration H1B visas. So just to orient you guys really quickly to the platform, on the top left we have our slides that our presenter has graciously provided. We also on the top right have a chat box for you guys to use just to talk amongst yourselves.

1:05 We have a little bit an article that Dan has also provided for us that he wrote regarding the H1B visa program. And on the top bottom right or on the bottom right we have the question box where you can use to ask Dan any questions that you may have regarding immigration or the H1B visas. And that’s what we’re going to be utilizing. Please use the question box for only questions. You can use the chat box to talk amongst yourselves or if you have a question for me you may use the chat box. All right, I’m going to let Dan take it away and we’ll get started. Thank you very much Maddy and I hope you can all hear me fine. Yes, as Maddy said my name is Dan Griswold. I’m with the Mercatus Center

1:52 at George Mason University. I’ve been there for about 2 years. I’ve actually been in Washington about 20 years doing trade and immigration policy before that. In the 1980s and 1990s I actually worked on a daily newspaper then I went back to graduate school and studied economics international trade. And I’ve been writing and talking about the immigration issue now for close to 20 years in Washington. A lot of work on low-skilled illegal immigration more recently on higher skilled legal immigration. And also may a free market limited government perspective uh pro-immigration. So

2:38 I don’t always agree with things say our president has said about about immigration. But what I’m asked to speak to tonight is the H1B visa program and I’m happy to talk about that. I am going to speak more generally about immigration just because I know when you’re in debates people aren’t going to just stick to the narrower question of the H1B visas but talk more generally about the impact of immigration on our society on our economy. People are concerned about jobs about wages. And I think there’s a story to tell and I’ll put my cards on the table. I think

3:25 immigration is good for America. I think the H1B program has worked reasonably well and if anything should be extended. But I will try excuse me along the way to one give you some ideas of some sources that you can dive into yourself. But also maybe some of the counter arguments and some of the things that that you’ll hear or I know in debate you’re often asked to take either side of an issue. It doesn’t matter what your personal opinion is. A good debater can argue either side of the issue, right? So I’m going to give you some ideas there. The H1B program and immigration generally has been in the news a lot. There was a controversy

4:11 in Congress in February about DACA deferred action on childhood arrivals. You’re probably all familiar with that. Those are young people who came to the United States illegally as minors. They came with their parents. There’s 1.8 million of them. About 800,000 of them have actually registered with the government. Are we going to allow them to stay or deport them? That’s an issue. The president wants to build a wall along the US-Mexican border. And then combine that with the president is also seeking deep cuts in legal immigration. And more quietly behind the scenes the Trump administration has been

4:57 I would say turning the screws on the H1B program not seeking to repeal it outright. The president talks about merit-based immigration. But actually making it more difficult for foreign workers to come into the United States and these are what we call highly skilled workers. And when I use the term highly skilled think an immigrant with a college degree. Often in the technical subjects, right? STEM science, technology engineering mathematics. Those are some of the words I’ll use highly skilled STEM just means a college educated often with skills in these particular areas. Before I plunge into the details of the

5:43 H1B program I’m going to talk more generally about immigration some of the benefits some of the counter arguments looking at the higher skilled immigration. Not so much farm workers coming in. That’s a kind of a totally separate debate. And excuse me. If you see in the screen there you not only have some of my contact information and you’re welcome to email me with any follow-up questions you might have after our webinar tonight. You can see the cover of a study I did for Mercatus last year called reforming the US immigration system to promote growth. Where I talked about a lot of these issues we’re going to be talking about tonight. How can

6:28 allowing more highly skilled immigrants into the United States raise our economic output and lift the standard of living most Americans and I try to tell that story in in the study. You know President Trump and others have talked about how we can increase the growth in our economy. We’ve been stuck at about 2% growth per year. The president and others would like to see it at the 3% or more. I would argue immigration is a part of that story an important part of that story. One of the big phenomenon going on in America today is our population as a whole and our workforce is is aging. I’m a I’m a baby

7:15 boomer. And baby boomers are retiring 10,000 of them a day. I’m retiring I’m a few years away from that. But what that means is our the growth in the American workforce. And by workforce I mean Americans that are at working age age 25 to age 55 or 65. But the American workforce as recently as the 1990s was growing at 1.2% a year. Now it’s growing at half a percent a year. And that’s because the American-born population is slowing. Our birth rates have been falling. This happens in rich countries

8:02 around the world. And if you look at our population is still growing. Our workforce is still growing. But if you look at the the population of Americans who are American-born with American-born parents. That group of Americans is actually going to shrink by 8 million over the next 20 years. So in other words without immigration both immigrants and the children of immigrants our population our workforce population would actually start shrinking within just a few years with all sorts of implications for our society. A good place to get information about immigration and population trends is a

8:50 place called the Pew Research Center. And I’d urge you to visit their website. It’s a gold mine of information about immigration and population. Another good thing about immigrants is they tend to be younger than the average population. The average American is about 38 years old. The typical immigrant coming into the United States is in their younger 30s about 32. So immigrants tend to keep our population growing. They tend to keep it younger than it would be otherwise. So just in sheer numbers there’s a story to be told about immigration. But immigrants do more than that.

9:35 One of the chief benefits of immigration from an economist’s point of view is that immigrants are are not like us. They’re not carbon copies of Americans. They tend first they tend to be overrepresented on the higher end of the skill spectrum. Higher share of immigrants have say PhDs especially in the technical subjects. uh, and they tend to be more of them on the lower skilled end, uh, coming in without high school diplomas, but again, that’s that’s a subject, uh, for uh, another day. But, they tend to complement Americans. And and another way immigrants are different is in language skills. Uh, you know, Americans have a a built-in advantage when competing against immigrants, and that is we know

10:21 the culture, we know the language. Um, and so, not that many Americans, a minority of Americans, uh, compete head-to-head with immigrants. The immigrants tend to come in and complement Americans, uh, work to And I By complement, I don’t mean say nice things about, uh, complement with an E. Uh, they they match. Uh, they they uh, accentuate uh, Americans’ uh, skills by bringing in different skills that work together with the skills, uh, that uh, Americans have. Another thing that immigrants do when they come in is they attract investment. So, uh, by investment, I mean, uh, factories machinery uh computers.

11:08 So, when there are more workers available, uh, businesses tend to invest more. And the investment grows and and the what what we economists call the capital-to-labor ratio, you know, the amount of capital and machinery per worker tends to tends to uh, be maintained as immigrants come in because uh, there’s there’s more capital. And as a result of this, and here’s an issue that comes up, uh, certainly in my job, and I’m sure, uh, when debating immigration, is the effect on wages. Now, in a very, kind of, simple point of view, you think, um, more immigrants coming in, right? Oh, good old supply and demand, supply goes up, wages have to go down. Well, they they they generally don’t, and the story is one,

11:53 they don’t compete directly with Americans. Two, the capital expands. You put these two together, and actually, uh, you can review, uh, the the literature, uh, but immigrants basically do not lower the wages of the large majority of Americans. Uh, there’s exceptions, particularly on the lower end of the wage uh, scale, uh, but for the average American, uh, and studies have shown this, and another uh, academic, a good author to become familiar with is look up work of Giovanni Peri. Uh, he’s an economist with the University of California. He’s written about, uh, the effect of immigration on jobs, uh, in and wages. And And what his studies find is that immigration actually it it has a

12:41 actually quite a small effect on the wages of Americans for the reasons I mentioned. For 90% or more of Americans, uh, immigration is a small net positive, uh, in wages. He’s done research on the effect of foreign-born immigrants in the STEM subjects, uh, and has found that that’s actually had a positive impact uh, on the wages of uh, Americans who have college uh, degrees, uh, because of uh, uh, reasons I’ll I’ll get into, uh, shortly. And so, when when immigrants come in, high-skilled immigrants come in, they create, uh, something called spillover effects.

13:28 They have positive effects. So, So, think of a uh, computer scientist from India or an engineer from China, uh, coming into the United States, joining an American company, perhaps, uh, researching at American University, uh, or uh, a company, or uh, starting a company. Uh, so, immigrants bring not only innovation, but entrepreneurship. Here’s a couple of uh, in- interesting facts. Immigrants make up about 17% of the workforce. They are immigrants make up a third of workers with PhDs in the STEM uh, subjects. Immigrants file 1/3 of the patents, uh,

14:14 in the United States. Patents for new products, right? Um, registering new products. And here’s another source, and this is probably uh, one of the most important sources of information on immigration. I’ll I’ll hold it up here. Um, this is a major study that was published by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This came out only a couple of years ago. Uh, you can see there the economics and fiscal The economic and fiscal consequences of immigration. Some of it’s a little technical, even for me. Um, but you’ll find a lot of good data in here. You’ll find a lot of stuff. There’s summaries of them online. Uh, there’s articles written about it. You can’t get a better source than the

15:01 National Academy of Sciences for immigration. Uh, some of the information I’ll be be presenting to you, uh, is in here, including what I just shared about uh, the patents, uh, and workers with with STEM. Uh, here’s here’s a quote from the study. They said, "Immigrants are more innovative than natives." Uh, more specifically, high-skilled immigrants raise patenting per capita, which is likely to boost productivity and per capita economic growth. Per capita economic growth means, uh, the wealth that’s available on average for each person in the United States. That’s kind of the object of economic policy is to raise our per capita income.

15:47 Also, there’s a lot of interesting data out there about immigrants and entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship means, right? Starting companies, uh, taking ideas, not just patenting an idea, but turning it into real products that get sold in the marketplace. Um, immigrants, uh, were founders or co-founders of 40% of the Fortune 500 companies in America. Those are the biggest, uh, companies in America. Uh, companies like Intel and others had immigrants as their co-founders. If you look at newer, uh, high-tech startups, there are about, uh, 100 companies in America that are worth a billion dollars

16:32 or more now. They They haven’t issued stock yet. Um, but often in, uh, tech high technology, uh, making high-technology products and services, half of them, uh, were founded or co-founded uh, by uh, immigrants. And of course, uh, companies such as Google uh, have immigrant co-founders. So, uh, this this is huge for our economy, right? Uh, the founders of Google did not take an American’s job. They created a product, and now they’re employing, uh, tens of thousands, uh, of of Americans. So, there’s a great story uh, to be told there. Uh, another good source for you. When I mentioned uh these uh smaller companies of a billion dollars or more, they’re called unicorns, uh, that comes

17:17 from a study by the National Foundation for American Policy. There’s a scholar there named Stuart Anderson. Uh, and if you find his stuff on, uh, H-1B visas, high-skilled immigration, uh, that’ll be a great uh, source for you as well. Oh, we’ve got a We’ve got a question. Let me, uh, why why don’t If I see a question down there, I’ll take a look, and if it, uh, fits in. So, the question is, "Are immigrants more innovative due to their need to hustle uh, to survive, or is it because of cultural differences?" I think there’s an important truth there. Um, just the very act of immigrating, of

18:05 picking up from one country and moving to another, takes, uh, what you might call gumption, right? Um, you know, you can have a degree from a university, and that says something uh, significant about you, but um, sociologists might might call these non-cognitive factors, things you can’t necessarily uh, test for, but are but are very real, and immigrants do have that. Uh, the very fact that they have moved from one country to another shows that they have initiative, get up and go, an ability to take risks. And we do see that here among immigrants. Immigrants are more likely than natives uh, to start businesses, whether it’s a big technology company in Silicon

18:50 Valley, or a corner grocery store in an inner inner city, uh, neighborhood. So, uh, yes, uh, that is uh, part of what immigrants bring to America. Let me back up a little bit and talk more broadly about the impact of immigrants on the American economy. And a lot of this stuff is taken from that National Academy of Sciences study, which I, uh, footnote and reference uh, in my study for the Mercatus Center. Uh, im- immigrants do benefit the economy overall. Uh, it’s not a huge benefit in the sense of being, you know, 10, 20% of the economy, but it’s a few percentage points, uh, of of our economy. The

19:36 economists estimate, uh, anywhere from 20 to 75 billion dollars a year in extra economic benefit to American natives uh, from immigration. This is called the immigrant surplus. Um, an international organization called the International Monetary Fund did a major study on the benefits of immigration to richer countries like the United States. And they determined that a 1 percentage point increase in immigrants in the population, so let’s say the share of immigrants goes from 14% to 15%. Uh they determined that over the long run that translates into a 2% increase

20:22 in per capita GDP, what I mentioned before, the overall living standards uh of people in that society. Uh another issue that comes up when you’re talking about immigration and I’m sure will come up uh when you talk about high-skilled immigration and the H-1B program is is the effect on taxpayers, right? A very good, perfectly legitimate uh question. Uh what studies have found, including the National Academy of Sciences study, is that immigrants, high-skilled immigrants, are pure gravy for the government. They are the best thing uh that could happen to the US government. Why? Uh because they’re well-educated, they earn good salaries here, they start paying taxes, and they don’t tend to ask

21:08 a lot of the government in terms of services like welfare and things like that. Here’s kind of a a take-home number for you. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that every high-skilled immigrant who comes into the United States, so an immigrant who comes to the United States at age 25 with a college degree will over their lifetime pay half a million dollars more to the government in taxes than they consume in services. 514,000 to be exact. If they have an advanced degree, it’s almost a million dollars uh over their lifetime. And their children who typically do well, the children of

21:54 immigrants typically do as well as their parents and uh uh do well relative to to other Americans as well, they pay more over over their lifetime. So, this is very very significant. Another way that immigration helps us fiscally, getting back to all those baby boomers uh that are retiring, uh immigrants help us fund retirement programs. So, uh there’s there’s something called the the Well, I forget the the technical name, but it’s the ratio of uh retired Americans to Americans in the at working age. And that has been rising uh pretty significantly in recent years because of

22:40 all the baby boomers retiring. Uh immigration helps that number rise more slowly. So, in other words, with the immigration, especially high-skilled immigration, there are more people in the United States working and paying taxes uh compared to those who are retired uh than there would be otherwise. In other words, there’s more people working to kind of spread the burden around in supporting retired Americans. And this is prolonging uh the the useful the the fiscal um solvency of these retirement programs. And that means uh uh young people like all of you, uh your

23:26 taxes won’t have to go up so much uh and that’s going to have to happen in the next 20 or 30 years to help finance these programs and people like me who will be retired by then, our benefits will be cut uh less than they would be otherwise because of uh immigration. And just to just to summarize uh this comes from the National Academy of Sciences. They said the prospect for long-run economic growth in the United States would be considerably dimmed without the contributions of high-skilled immigrants. We need them. Um I’m coming up to the H-1B program, but the H-1B program’s between the lines of a lot of what I said cuz that’s what it’s all about.

24:12 Uh bringing in high-skilled workers here temporarily uh uh at first under the program. Let me just touch on a a couple of other uh directly related issues. You will hear a pushback. Um this is one of the arguments on the other side. We already have a lot of immigrants coming in, a flood of immigrants, mass immigration. You hear those terms. Let me just uh queue up a chart here which uh is is in my study. Uh okay. This shows the immigration rate to America since we started counting immigrants in in 1820. And it’s an immigration rate, it’s basically how many immigrants come into the United States each year per thousand US

24:58 population. And I think this is the right way to talk about immigration because we talk about everything else as as a rate, right? The crime rate, the unemployment rate. Um it puts it in perspective. Uh yes, uh we have a lot of immigrants today, but we’re a lot bigger country. We’re, you know, three times bigger than we were uh in in 1900. And what this shows you is uh actually if you go back to oh basically from 1840 until about uh 1910, the rate of immigration in this country was much greater than it is today. Uh it was close to 10 in some of those years, uh 7 8 9 10 immigrants per thousand population.

25:44 Uh today it’s about 3.3 immigrants per thousand population. And so uh we we let in about uh 1,075,000 legal immigrants a year. We give them permanent status in the United States. That seems like a lot. It’s the biggest number in the world in terms of absolute number, but we’re a nation of 325 million people. So, our ability to absorb those immigrants uh is is greater because of our larger population. And by the way, uh there are a lot of uh other countries, advanced countries, that let in more immigrants than we do relative to their population. I’m going

26:31 to talk about a couple of them uh uh in just a moment, but you can find them. The uh Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, the OECD, uh produces uh figures on immigrants to various countries and they calculate the rate of immigration. You could find that and point out that other countries are more open to immigration as a share of their population than even the United States. But let me let me focus on two countries uh in particular. Um and that is Canada and Australia. Uh we get compared uh to Canada and Australia a lot. Uh our president says we need to be more

27:16 like them in in focusing on employment-based high-skilled immigration rather than family uh immigration. But the thing is with both those countries, uh this shows uh again, immigrants uh per 1,000 population. You see the United States total is about three three and change there, but look at Canada. They let in almost eight immigrants per year per thousand population. Australia, it’s uh nine. Uh and about the same family, but much more employment-based uh immigration. So, that’s one of the points I make in my paper. And if you look at uh the foreign-born immigrants as a

28:01 percent of the total population, uh they’re much higher. And it and they continue to increase. We’re increasing, but they’re increasing uh and staying uh ahead of us. And so uh we wouldn’t be alone if we continued uh to keep ourselves open to high-skilled uh immigration. So, you’re probably wondering, when is Mr. Griswold going to talk about the H-1B program? Well, again, a lot of what I’ve said is relevant to it, but let me talk specifically now in the last few minutes uh about the H-1B visa uh program. Uh this is the main path for high-skilled workers from around the world to come into the United States and go to work in our economy, filing their

28:49 patents, uh working uh for US companies. It was established in 1990. Uh we currently issue 85,000 visas a year uh for for-profit companies, right? They want to go to work for Google or Apple, uh Facebook. Uh we have a cap of 85,000. If it’s a nonprofit like the Mercatus Center, a university professor, or something like that, uh there there is no cap. And that’s another 100,000 or so. So, I think the total that comes in each year is 185,000. Maybe 600,000 H-1B workers here uh at at any one time. I would check that figure. I just I’m going on on memory here.

29:36 Uh they tend to be well represented in fields like um software development, um all the computer uh, systems analysts, um, medical scientists, uh, even, uh, accountants. Um, H-1B and high-skilled workers are well represented in those professions. Uh, it’s considered a dual intent visa, and that means you can be working on your H-1B uh, visa uh, and applying for permanent, what’s called green card, uh, status. And we we have, uh, about 140,000 employment-based visas available each year. As you saw,

30:21 that’s a lot less than Canada and Australia, uh, as a share of our population, but still, uh, they’re they’re available. So, some of the issues that come up with the H-1B, um, I’ll just give you a few thoughts. Uh, some of them are in that article, uh, that is is listed there. Um, these workers are overwhelmingly in the STEM fields. They are not undercutting the wages of Americans. They get paid actually quite well, 80,000 to 100,000 a year. There’s very low unemployment, uh, in uh, those fields. You know, American em- employers have an incentive to hire, you know, the president talks about hire American. Well, US companies have a a powerful incentive to hire American. Uh,

31:08 one, we we speak the language. Um, we’re acculturated. Uh, we’re here. Um, and also, there’s some expense in hiring H-1B workers, right? Uh, you pay a fee, I forget what it is exactly, it’s a few thousand dollars. You typically have to hire lawyers and go through a process. Um, I think typically, you’re talking five to ten thousand dollars kind of a premium, uh, to hire uh, an an H-1B worker. You have competition in the marketplace, and I think, uh, when you’re an H-1B worker, you are somewhat tied to your employer, although you can leave one employer and go to work at another. You aren’t quite as free as an American. Um, but on the whole, uh, wages paid to H-1B

31:55 workers, uh, tend to be comparable to those paid to American workers. And if they’re not, it can often be because the H-1B workers are younger. They may not have the same skill set, you know, going back to, uh, uh, immigrants complementing American workers rather than competing uh, head-to-head with them. And uh, I think evidence that we don’t issue enough H-1B visas is that the visas, uh, the H-1B program operates on a fiscal year, uh, which starts October 1st for the government. They make the visas available for the coming fiscal year on April 1st. Uh, often, when they put those 85,000 visas up for, I think it’s kind of a

32:42 lottery uh, process, um, they’re gone in like a week. They’re claimed. Um, that’s a sign that we should issue more of them. We need, for all the reasons I’ve talked about um, in the last half hour, we need more H-1B workers uh not uh fewer. If we if we either leave that cap in place or turn the screws and reduce it, we’ll miss out uh, on all those benefits, uh, that we’ve talked about. There are abuses, uh, this will come up. Uh, I believe they’re uh, not typical. They’re not widespread. Uh, they can be controlled by, uh, selectively

33:30 tightening the rules. Um, I’d like to have uh, clearer rules, uh, but more visas. Uh, I think that would be the right approach. But just to conclude, and then I’m happy to entertain any questions you have. Without adequate H-1B visas, uh, America will cut itself off from the best and brightest talent around the world that still very much wants to come to America and help us build a stronger economy. Uh, they benefit, of course, immigrants benefit, but we benefit. When they come in, uh, they work beside Americans, they make us more productive. They innovate and file patents that create new products. Uh, they found companies that

34:17 go on to make cool stuff and cool ser- services for us as consumers, but also create uh, employment opportunities, uh, for Americans. So, uh, why don’t uh, Maddie, why don’t I stop there? And I’m happy to entertain any questions you all, uh, might have.

35:07 So, so, Maddie, did you have, uh, well, here we go. Okay. Do you think the economy would begin to fail if we stopped accepting all immigrants on the H-1B visa? Well, uh, it’s it’s pretty clear to me anyway, and I tried to present, uh, all the evidence I’ve I’ve come across, that uh, it would be, on the whole, a negative for the US economy. Uh, some people would benefit if we cut off, uh, H-1B, uh, workers. There would be uh, wages probably would go up in certain, uh, fairly narrow, uh, sectors. Um,

35:52 and keep in mind, these are workers who are already getting paid, uh, pretty well. Um, but what you’d see is while a small group of workers would be better off, uh, companies, uh, that paid those higher wages would hire fewer workers. Um, they might look, instead of opening up a research laboratory here in the United States, they might look to open one up in Canada or Australia or, uh, India or Europe. Uh, and so, what I think you’d see is maybe not an immediate um, dip in in a noticeable dip in economic activity, but gradually over time, you’d see America start to lose

36:38 its edge uh, in technology. You know, I don’t know how many of you have visited uh, Silicon Valley, but what I’ve read is that something, and you can nail this figure down, something like a quarter to a third of the technical people out there, right? The STEM researchers, the high-skilled immigrants are foreign-born. What would America be and our economy be without Silicon Valley? And what would Silicon Valley be like without access to foreign uh, born workers? So, yes, I think uh, it would uh, have a negative effect on the economy, maybe not immediately visible, but it would certainly start showing, uh, pretty soon as innovation and economic activity,

37:26 uh, of of the high-technology sort, started migrating, uh, to other other countries. We’d start losing our technological edge. All right, so, if there are no more questions, um, we’ll go ahead and conclude a little bit early. Um, you guys, thank you. Oh, here’s a question. I’ll pop back off. Do you think, uh, that H-1B workers contribute to depress the salaries of nationals? You know, um, if by nationals you mean

38:13 average American workers across the country, I think the evidence, uh, really could not be more clear, and you’ll find an abundance of it. People like Giovanni Perry, uh, the National Academy of Sciences studies, there’s another academic named David Card and others, uh, you’ll find that for the large majority of Americans, uh, it doesn’t depress the wage. In fact, it actually raises our wages uh, by a a modest uh, amount. There’s another economist that I should mention, uh, because I think you’ll hear his name, uh, George Borjas, of, uh, Harvard University. Respected economist, he’s done important work on immigration. He tends to be more than most economists,

38:59 more skeptical of immigration. I think it’s a little ironic because he, uh, he immigrated here when he was young with his mother from Cuba. But, uh, he tends even even a skeptic like George Borjas, his work tends to show that most Americans are, uh, at worst, unaffected, uh, by immigration, uh, uh, or see a modest increase. He’s found in his work that the one group of Americans who do tend to be negatively impacted by immigration are low-skilled Americans, particularly adult Americans without a high school diploma, uh, which is getting to be a a smaller and smaller share

39:45 uh, of the workforce, uh, under 10%. Uh, they may be negatively They are negatively impacted by immigration. Not all that much, uh, one or one or two percent, but of course, uh, that is uh, very far removed from the H-1B workers. So, uh, to to to answer your question, uh, for the large majority of Americans, no. H-1B workers do not depress their wages. Uh, if anything, they they moderately increase them. There are uh, specialized workers in specialized fields, you know, specialized mathematicians, uh, who may uh, perhaps not see their wages go down, but

40:31 maybe not get as big an increase because the immigrants are uh, uh, present. So, I won’t say everybody is uh, better off uh, in an unqualified way because of immigration but the benefits far outweigh uh, the the negatives if you look at uh, the the the best research out there. Um, another question. Uh, what arguments have you heard from others in your field to keep the quota where it currently is? Well, uh, I think if if you have the view that our economy is better off with high-skilled immigrants, uh, at the very least you want to keep

41:16 the quota where it is. You don’t want to reduce it. Um, there there are ways I mentioned the Trump administration is uh, what I what I characterize as turning the screws. I can’t give you all the details. They’re kind of regulatory things that are that are small and yet they’re basically um, uh, increasing the paperwork. Uh, the forms that have to be filed. Uh, on an H-1B visa, I should have mentioned uh, it it goes for 3 years and it’s renewable for another 3 years. So, 6 years maximum. Um, typically when you renew for the second 3-year period, uh, they accept your application as it was already given. The Trump administration is raising the

42:03 paperwork requirements, basically requiring people to uh, reapply. Uh, and that adds to to the uh, expense. So, uh, I’d say at the very least, uh, let’s not reduce it for all the reasons I’ve said. Uh, and I and then the high-technology industry would very much like to see the H-1B visas expanded. Unfortunately, that uh, doesn’t seem to be uh, in the cards right now. We did uh, you you were all probably too young to remember the 1990s, but that was a kind of a dot-com bubble in hindsight. I mean, a lot of exciting things were going on, right? The the founding of uh, uh, Amazon and lots of other high-tech companies.

42:49 Um, the tech sector was growing very rapidly. Congress actually increased uh, the H-1B visas. They roughly tripled them. Uh, just as the dot-com bubble burst. So, for a a few years there, we actually had a lot of unclaimed uh, visas. So, I I would like Congress just to raise the cap and leave it up there and let uh, the marketplace determine uh, how how many of these workers uh, come come in. Uh, one one other question that’s come in, um, what sort of effect do the H-1B visas have on the education system and promoting more Americans to go into the STEM fields? That that’s actually uh, a very

43:34 interesting question and and kind kind of nuanced. Let me un- unpack it for a moment. Uh, first off, to the extent that uh, high-skilled immigrants and H-1B workers can go to work in the educational system as professors and that, of course, we benefit. Um, more professors means we can gain uh, from their knowledge. Universities can expand their uh, technology departments, their math departments, their engineering uh, departments. Uh, this is what helps make America uh, the most attractive place in the world uh, to to go to university. Uh, we have I don’t know what it is, 18 of the top 20 universities in the world and the ability to bring in high-skilled

44:21 immigrants uh, is an important part of that. Here’s where it gets gets more nuanced. There is some evidence uh, and I think I’ve seen it in the National Academy of Sciences study and elsewhere is that uh, as immigrants come in and and get employment in the STEM field, STEM fields, there may be fewer Americans who go into those fields than would otherwise. Now, uh, that can have a plus and a negative. The negative can mean they get discouraged and they go off and, you know, major in French literature or something. I shouldn’t say that. Fine subject. But something maybe less uh, rewarding in in the marketplace.

45:08 Um, but there’s also evidence that it may be because Americans uh, move into actually better paying jobs in terms of management, jobs that uh, require more communication skills. You know, uh, the thing about the STEM fields is it it transfers easily from one country to another, right? The laws of physics and math are the same wherever you go. But language, culture, law, uh, those are specific uh, to to individual countries and we Americans have an advantage in being being more employable in those uh, areas. So, that that’s that’s actually a very uh, good

45:53 uh, detailed question because the the effects go uh, uh, different ways and you could argue uh, what one other point, important fact, uh, as more immigrants come in in the STEM fields and and there is some evidence that fewer Americans go in, but we still end up having more total workers uh, in the STEM fields. And that has ripple effects throughout the the economy. So, if you kept the H-1B workers out, uh, you’d you’d keep out the number of Americans who would then go into the STEM field would be significantly less than the foreign-born STEM workers that we kept out. So, if you think America would better off with fewer STEM workers

46:40 uh, overall, fewer high-tech, high-skilled uh, high technology workers, uh, then uh, that would would might be an appealing policy option. Sorry, I’m I’m very pro-immigrant. I can’t help myself. I know you have to argue both sides, uh, but I I hopefully have given you uh, a well-rounded uh, familiarity with the issue and and different uh, sources. There’s a there there’s a group called the Center for Immigration Studies and I don’t generally recommend their work. I have some issues with it, but they they tend to take the more skeptical view. So, if you go to their website, at least you’ll know uh,

47:26 I bet uh, when you debate uh, people who have the skeptical side will be citing uh, Center for Immigration uh, uh, Studies. Them and George Borjas are probably the leading sources of had a more scholarly uh, arguments in the more skeptical direction of immigration. All right. Thank you everyone for asking questions. Thank you, Dan, for being our speaker. This has been so enlightening. Uh, we really appreciate it. So, for every for all the students, uh, this recording is going to go up on YouTube sometime next week. Um, also, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to

48:12 email me. I’ll put my email in as well. Um, and I can connect you with the right resources or with any articles um, that we may have at the Bill of Rights Institute. Um, and then also, as Dan said, he put up his contact information. If you have any other specific questions, um, please feel free to utilize these resources that you have in front of you. Um, we’re more than like we’re more than happy to help you out as much as we possibly can. All right. So, I have my email in that questions box. Um, you can use that, like I said, to contact me and uh, let me know if you guys um, have any questions or um, if you would like to get more involved in our debate program. We have AP prep webinars coming up. Um,

48:58 those are going to be at the end of April, beginning of May if you’re studying for the AP US History exam. Uh, we also have scholarship opportunities. Um, we’ve got uh, debate questions on our Think the Vote website. I’ll also put that email or all that website up in the question box. Um, we actually have multiple questions about immigration. If you would like to hone in in your debate skills and kind of begin to sketch out your arguments, you can you’re more than welcome to do that there. So, all right. Thank you again, guys, and let me know if you have any questions. Bye.

50:01 Mhm.