I think a solid, politically realistic solution for high-skilled immigration is just to have a fixed number of visas that are sorted by worker salary. This way companies can compete & pay workers what they value them at, rather than having the government try to set wage minimums by category (which they do now with the H1-B program). If there are say 100,000 annual visas, the very first visa is awarded to the worker with the highest salary offer- say some FAANG AI developer making a couple million a year. The 100k visas are then distributed to correspondingly lower salary offers, until they're all used up.
This ensures the visa holders are fairly compensated, and preserves the idea that we're only offering visas for very skilled, highly-compensated workers. Which hopefully should make the idea more palatable for voters. It also makes sure that we're getting the best & brightest from other countries. And, that the market is determining who's smart and who isn't- not the government. Right now the H1-B visa is run by a lottery (literally!), so some brilliant people get in, some brilliant people don't, and some not super-bright folks get in and then work for consulting shops. Completely random and a terrible system
I'm all for getting as much of the labor we need in the good full employment environment we have in this nation via immigration. My ideal is not to pick and choose sectors that should get the benefit, but if the politics demand something short of that, well that's politics and I won't let perfect be the enemy of good.
This piece dovetails nicely in to yesterday's piece. The Democrats have a dilemma. They want to be the party of clean energy, and also the party of a robust manufacturing economy, BUT also still have ingrained protectionist impulses. Example: when the bridge fell in Baltimore, Joe Biden said something to the effect of "we're going to rebuild this bridge fast and with unionized American labor!" Ok Joe, you probably have to pick one of those two things. Biden is also a fan of the "buy American" provisions that randomly get thrown in to bills. This stuff is popular with voters on paper, but I think we run in to a problem with deliverables. Like if you ask the average voter if they support "buy American" provisions in some random infrastructure bill, they'll say yes, but it's not like that's going to change their vote in November, nor will they be likely to notice that provision unless they're one of the lucky few who gets a job through it. They WILL notice if it takes forever to re-open the bridge in Baltimore and they WILL notice the overall level of prices and employment in the economy.
So, as with yesterday, Matt asks "are we building critical resources or creating jobs," I say focus on building the stuff. It's just that Democrats have some soil searching to do on this question, because I don't think they've made their minds up what they want to do.
I’m very pro-immigration in general, but when discussing labor market tightness, I would probably note that current male prime age labor force participation is way below historical levels.
If we had male prime age lfpr like we did in the 60s, that’d be about 5 million additional men in the workforce.
Maybe don’t specifically target your immigration proposal at blue collar workers in the trades?
EDIT: I’d also note what’s going on with real wages for electricians. Per FRED, they haven’t gone up for at least the last 20 years.
Ben, kudos for *addressing* the political side of the political economy:
"His preferred solution isn’t to just attract foreign workers; it’s to expand job training programs and widen the base of workers that are employed in the manufacturing and construction sector. For example, he said “we’ve got millions of women in this country who we could potentially reach out to and say, you know what, there's actually a pathway for you in the construction industry.” ...
If we do that, Walsh admits that he’s open to a conversation about expanding foreign skilled based immigration in the clean energy sector — as long as the jobs offered under the visa program don’t exploit foreign workers or undermine the rights and wages of American workers."
Progress, but you're not there yet! The next step is to *center* the politics. Walsh is not dumb—he knows he is talking to someone more excited about immigration that upskilling, and his base *hates* immigration. So "open to a conversation" should tell you how far you have to go, not that you've arrived. The good policy ideas are trivial: what's hard is moving the political system out of its current anti-immigrant equilibrium despite all the veto points resisting such movement. Providing constructive hypotheses of how change will happen is the work to do, not sketching how beautiful that unreachable world would be.
So long as businesses require you to apply online and write cover letters in a most hellacious process only to never get called back, the labor market is not “tight”
I had a weird/funny idea pitched to me the other day by a single friend who is heading into the passport bro world to find a life partner. He thinks we should increase immigration of “passport gals” from other countries that would be willing to marry lower status American males who are having a hard time in the dating pool. This would probably be unpopular with…lots of people? But my guess is the average guy would just be like “oh cool”.
A Canada-style points based system would be a good starting point. The H1-B visa is problematic insofar as it ties the skilled immigrant worker to a specific employee, thereby minimizing wage negotiation power. Furthermore, it cuts across the intent of the recent FTC decision to ban non-compete provisions in employee contracts.
Let's just offer green cards in those areas where we are suffering from skilled domestic labour shortages.
My general philosophy regarding immigration is to incentivize low-skill immigration to work lower-skill, lower-pay jobs, while training Americans to do higher-skill, higher-pay jobs. But to the extent that there is a shortage of Americans to do said higher-skill jobs, we should absolutely allow immigrants who will perform that work
I’m just not sure the politics will actually work in your favor on this one.
It likely won’t take much of “massive public expenditure goes to foreign workers” to turn people against immigration even more. If we show we try to reskill people here first, it may be more workable.
Not saying it’s a bad idea. It may just need a bit more time and other things tried first.
Blue collar wages have been increasing for less than a decade after four decades of stagnation. Talk about labor shortages is premature and should be deferred until capital gets a far smaller share of the pie.
I love the idea but the politics seem really hard. The premise of the column seems to implicitly assume that Biden will be reelected, otherwise we’re probably not expecting Trump to take up the banner here. So for Biden to take a step that would surely be opposed by organized labor (electrical workers unions) seems way out of character. I could see this as part of a bigger immigration deal with lots of get-tough on the Southern border aspects, but in that case why not just go for the bigger win and expand legal skilled immigration across the entire economy rather than just one sector? Narrowly, for the purpose of clean energy, why not something to allow rapid retraining of laid-off workers (maybe throw something in about workers displaced by AI?) in clean energy, perhaps with a more restrictive certification that would allow them to do clean energy work but not other electrician work, which might appease organized labor to a degree and make the training simpler.
I think the politics of this could be tricky in selling it to the American public. My suggestion around that would be to have immigrants pay higher taxes. Say bump them up one tax bracket and require companies to pay a surcharge of (3%-5%) more on their SS/Medicare taxes with no cap.
For immigrants coming to the US its likely still a great opportunity, it incentivizes companies to find US workers when possible. When they can't, US workers will know that immigrants are helping to fund the US government more so they don't have to...
If/once they become a citizen (say after 10 years), this would drop off and wouldn't apply to their children who are US citizens by birth.
It would be really ironic if we simultaneously banned TikTok, for national security reasons, while also importing a million Chinese workers to build the new energy infrastructure.
I think a solid, politically realistic solution for high-skilled immigration is just to have a fixed number of visas that are sorted by worker salary. This way companies can compete & pay workers what they value them at, rather than having the government try to set wage minimums by category (which they do now with the H1-B program). If there are say 100,000 annual visas, the very first visa is awarded to the worker with the highest salary offer- say some FAANG AI developer making a couple million a year. The 100k visas are then distributed to correspondingly lower salary offers, until they're all used up.
This ensures the visa holders are fairly compensated, and preserves the idea that we're only offering visas for very skilled, highly-compensated workers. Which hopefully should make the idea more palatable for voters. It also makes sure that we're getting the best & brightest from other countries. And, that the market is determining who's smart and who isn't- not the government. Right now the H1-B visa is run by a lottery (literally!), so some brilliant people get in, some brilliant people don't, and some not super-bright folks get in and then work for consulting shops. Completely random and a terrible system
I'm all for getting as much of the labor we need in the good full employment environment we have in this nation via immigration. My ideal is not to pick and choose sectors that should get the benefit, but if the politics demand something short of that, well that's politics and I won't let perfect be the enemy of good.
This piece dovetails nicely in to yesterday's piece. The Democrats have a dilemma. They want to be the party of clean energy, and also the party of a robust manufacturing economy, BUT also still have ingrained protectionist impulses. Example: when the bridge fell in Baltimore, Joe Biden said something to the effect of "we're going to rebuild this bridge fast and with unionized American labor!" Ok Joe, you probably have to pick one of those two things. Biden is also a fan of the "buy American" provisions that randomly get thrown in to bills. This stuff is popular with voters on paper, but I think we run in to a problem with deliverables. Like if you ask the average voter if they support "buy American" provisions in some random infrastructure bill, they'll say yes, but it's not like that's going to change their vote in November, nor will they be likely to notice that provision unless they're one of the lucky few who gets a job through it. They WILL notice if it takes forever to re-open the bridge in Baltimore and they WILL notice the overall level of prices and employment in the economy.
So, as with yesterday, Matt asks "are we building critical resources or creating jobs," I say focus on building the stuff. It's just that Democrats have some soil searching to do on this question, because I don't think they've made their minds up what they want to do.
I’m very pro-immigration in general, but when discussing labor market tightness, I would probably note that current male prime age labor force participation is way below historical levels.
If we had male prime age lfpr like we did in the 60s, that’d be about 5 million additional men in the workforce.
Maybe don’t specifically target your immigration proposal at blue collar workers in the trades?
EDIT: I’d also note what’s going on with real wages for electricians. Per FRED, they haven’t gone up for at least the last 20 years.
Ben, kudos for *addressing* the political side of the political economy:
"His preferred solution isn’t to just attract foreign workers; it’s to expand job training programs and widen the base of workers that are employed in the manufacturing and construction sector. For example, he said “we’ve got millions of women in this country who we could potentially reach out to and say, you know what, there's actually a pathway for you in the construction industry.” ...
If we do that, Walsh admits that he’s open to a conversation about expanding foreign skilled based immigration in the clean energy sector — as long as the jobs offered under the visa program don’t exploit foreign workers or undermine the rights and wages of American workers."
Progress, but you're not there yet! The next step is to *center* the politics. Walsh is not dumb—he knows he is talking to someone more excited about immigration that upskilling, and his base *hates* immigration. So "open to a conversation" should tell you how far you have to go, not that you've arrived. The good policy ideas are trivial: what's hard is moving the political system out of its current anti-immigrant equilibrium despite all the veto points resisting such movement. Providing constructive hypotheses of how change will happen is the work to do, not sketching how beautiful that unreachable world would be.
Solution to all public problems: MOAR IMMIGRATION!!!
Immigration for Left neoliberal crowd is beginning to occupy the space in mental universe that tax cuts do on the right.
So long as businesses require you to apply online and write cover letters in a most hellacious process only to never get called back, the labor market is not “tight”
I had a weird/funny idea pitched to me the other day by a single friend who is heading into the passport bro world to find a life partner. He thinks we should increase immigration of “passport gals” from other countries that would be willing to marry lower status American males who are having a hard time in the dating pool. This would probably be unpopular with…lots of people? But my guess is the average guy would just be like “oh cool”.
A Canada-style points based system would be a good starting point. The H1-B visa is problematic insofar as it ties the skilled immigrant worker to a specific employee, thereby minimizing wage negotiation power. Furthermore, it cuts across the intent of the recent FTC decision to ban non-compete provisions in employee contracts.
Let's just offer green cards in those areas where we are suffering from skilled domestic labour shortages.
My general philosophy regarding immigration is to incentivize low-skill immigration to work lower-skill, lower-pay jobs, while training Americans to do higher-skill, higher-pay jobs. But to the extent that there is a shortage of Americans to do said higher-skill jobs, we should absolutely allow immigrants who will perform that work
I’m just not sure the politics will actually work in your favor on this one.
It likely won’t take much of “massive public expenditure goes to foreign workers” to turn people against immigration even more. If we show we try to reskill people here first, it may be more workable.
Not saying it’s a bad idea. It may just need a bit more time and other things tried first.
I take exception to your "tighter than a rotton clamshell". A rotton clamshell would actually be loose and slightly ajar... 😀
Blue collar wages have been increasing for less than a decade after four decades of stagnation. Talk about labor shortages is premature and should be deferred until capital gets a far smaller share of the pie.
I love the idea but the politics seem really hard. The premise of the column seems to implicitly assume that Biden will be reelected, otherwise we’re probably not expecting Trump to take up the banner here. So for Biden to take a step that would surely be opposed by organized labor (electrical workers unions) seems way out of character. I could see this as part of a bigger immigration deal with lots of get-tough on the Southern border aspects, but in that case why not just go for the bigger win and expand legal skilled immigration across the entire economy rather than just one sector? Narrowly, for the purpose of clean energy, why not something to allow rapid retraining of laid-off workers (maybe throw something in about workers displaced by AI?) in clean energy, perhaps with a more restrictive certification that would allow them to do clean energy work but not other electrician work, which might appease organized labor to a degree and make the training simpler.
I think the politics of this could be tricky in selling it to the American public. My suggestion around that would be to have immigrants pay higher taxes. Say bump them up one tax bracket and require companies to pay a surcharge of (3%-5%) more on their SS/Medicare taxes with no cap.
For immigrants coming to the US its likely still a great opportunity, it incentivizes companies to find US workers when possible. When they can't, US workers will know that immigrants are helping to fund the US government more so they don't have to...
If/once they become a citizen (say after 10 years), this would drop off and wouldn't apply to their children who are US citizens by birth.
It would be really ironic if we simultaneously banned TikTok, for national security reasons, while also importing a million Chinese workers to build the new energy infrastructure.