Comments on EconWeekly: Alien arguments

A very good write. Keep it up.

2008-04-21T13:18:31.788-05:00

A very good write. Keep it up.

You still got it, EW. I love the honest economics!...

2008-04-03T17:34:44.299-05:00

You still got it, EW. I love the honest economics!
-UF

I can agree with everything said here. I'd also ma...

2008-04-02T01:20:46.412-05:00

I can agree with everything said here. I'd also make the following 2 changes to the H-1B program:

1. Only end employers may apply, and 1 petition per employee is a no-brainer. (Sounds like the latter is currently the case, but not the former.) No consulting companies, body shops, outsourcers allowed - period. The company has to produce something.

2. Only companies with headquarters or substantial amounts of revenue generation (> 30% maybe, this is presently an open number in my mind) in the US may petition. US firms with large overseas revenue generation should be sourcing large numbers of their employees locally anyway, for support, sales, marketing and other such positions. Foreign firms with such operations shouldn't have to worry about it anyway because they are foreign and are largely subject to different laws.

"lord":I only wrote about the supply of visas, but...

2008-04-01T09:44:58.331-05:00

"lord":
I only wrote about the supply of visas, but one could write an entire post about their allocation. The post was too long already, so I decided not to. Of course I agree that a lottery is not an efficient allocation mechanism.
You probably know: Gary Becker has written several times on his blog about allocating visas using market prices.

Overall, it might be better to replace these progr...

2008-03-31T18:41:18.968-05:00

Overall, it might be better to replace these programs with green cards. While employers might fear not getting the employees they would prefer, it would remove them as a biasing force. Auctioning the slots would bring even more sense to the procedure.

Chris:I stand corrected. Believe it or not, I was ...

2008-03-30T09:25:11.869-05:00

Chris:

I stand corrected. Believe it or not, I was planning on writing "some workers," not "workers." I am aware that the protectionist feeling is not generalized. I'll change it now.
Thanks,
Francisco

In your 3rd paragraph, you state:"...workers in th...

2008-03-30T05:00:45.692-05:00

In your 3rd paragraph, you state:

"...workers in the IT industry... would like to restrict the hiring of foreigners..."

As a blanket statement, that is not true. Some special interest groups within the IT community hold this opinion, but a great number of people in the IT community have difficulty filling jobs, and understand the need to let skilled workers in, the advantages to our economy of doing so, and the risks involved in playing the protectionist game.

I have written an article on my blog concerning the issue of H-1B visas and would like to invite you to join the conversation there as well:

GigantiCo

Best regards,
Chris