The International Migration of the Highly Skilled:
Demand, Supply, Development Consequences,
and the Role of U.S. Universities

THE FOURTH ANNUAL UCSD SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH CONFERENCE

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Agenda        Session two        Session three
Session four      Session five      Session six

Rationale     Topics     Funders     To attend

Principal Organizers: Wayne A. Cornelius (University of California-San Diego) and Thomas J. Espenshade (Princeton University)

Site: Copley International Conference Center, University of California-San Diego

Date: May 12-13, 2000

With financial support from: The Division of Social Sciences, UCSD; the Pew Charitable Trusts, through the UCSD Civic Collaborative; the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD; and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research, UCSD.

AGENDA

DAY ONE (Friday, May 12)

Continental breakfast and welcome, 8:30-9:00 a.m.
(foyer of the Copley International Conference Center)

Session I: Immigration Experiences and Policies of Receiving Countries (9:00-11:00 a.m.)

Chair: Wayne A. Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

Margaret L. Usdansky (Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, Princeton University) and Thomas J. Espenshade (Chair, Department of Sociology, Princeton University): The H-1B Visa Debate in Historical Perspective: The Evolution of U.S. Policy Toward High-Skilled Foreign Workers

B. Lindsay Lowell (Director of Research, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University): "Specialty Temporary Workers and the U.S. Labor Force"

Magnus Lofstrom (Economist, Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany): Self-Employment and Earnings among High-Skilled Immigrants in the United States

Monica Boyd (Mildred and Claude Pepper Professor of Sociology, Florida State University): Matching Workers to Work: The Case of Asian Immigrant Engineers in Canada

Commentator: Demetrios G. Papademetriou (Senior Associate and Co-Director, International Migration Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

 

Session II: High-Skilled Immigration and Regional Development in Receiving Countries:
The Case of California's Silicon Valley (11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.)

Chair: Thomas J. Espenshade (Professor of Sociology, Princeton University)

AnnaLee Saxenian (Professor of Regional Development, University of California-Berkeley): Silicon Valley's New Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Rafael G. Alarcón (Professor of Social Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico): Migrants of the Information Age: Indian and Mexican Engineers and Scientists and Regional Development in Silicon Valley

Session III: Emigration Trends, Consequences, and Policies of Key Sending Countries
(1:00-4:00 p.m.)

Chair: Wayne Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

A. Aneesh (Ph.D. candidate in sociology, Rutgers University): Rethinking Migration: High-Skilled Labor Flows from India to the United States

Paula Chakravartty (Assistant Professor of Communication, UCSD): The Emigration of High-skilled Indian Workers to the United States: Impacts on the Indian Economy

Mahmood Iqbal (Principal Research Associate, The Conference Board of Canada): The Migration of High-Skilled Workers from Canada to the United States

Christián Zlolniski (Professor of Social Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico): Mexico as a Source of Low and High-Skill Labor for California's High-Tech Industries

Commentator: Barry Naughton (Economist; Professor, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, UCSD), commenting with special reference to China as a sending country.

DAY TWO (Saturday, May 13)

Session IV: The Role of U.S. Universities in the Training of Foreign Scientists, Engineers, and University Faculty (9:00-10:00 a.m.)

Chair: Wayne Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

Robert Dynes (Chancellor, and Professor of Physics, UCSD)

Mark Thiemens (Dean, Division of Natural Sciences, and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSD)

*Michael Teitelbaum (Program Officer, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation)

Session V: High-skilled/Professional Immigrants in San Diego: The Employer's Perspective (10:00-11:00 a.m)

Chair: Wayne Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

*Irwin Jacobs (Chairman, Qualcomm Inc.)

Kevin Carroll (Executive Director, American Electronics Association/San Diego Council)

Jonathan Quinn (Attorney at Law, La Jolla, Calif.)

Session VI: Implications for Public Policy in California and the United States (11:00-12:00)

Chair: Thomas J. Espenshade (Professor of Sociology, Princeton University)

Rapporteur's report on preceding sessions: Marc Rosenblum (Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of New Orleans)

Responses by:
Representative *David Dreier (R-Calif.) and Representative *Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), members of Congress who have introduced pending legislation on high-skilled immigration.

*invited; to be confirmed.

SPECIFIC topics to be addressed by the conference

• The magnitude, character, and causes of demand for high-skill/professional foreign workers in major countries of immigration, particularly the United States and Canada.
• Determinants of supply of native-born high-skill/professional workers in major countries of immigration: To what extent is the current shortfall in high-skill labor for U.S. high-tech industries a function of K-12 educational trends, tendency of U.S. high school students to spurn "high-tech" careers, employer preferences for young, recently trained scientists and engineers over older native-born workers, wage and benefit structures in high-tech industries?
• The role of the U.S. research university in the training (and employment) of foreign scientists, engineers, and university faculty, in all disciplines.
• Linkages between high-skilled and low-skilled labor markets for immigrants in the U.S. (to what extent does the immigration of high-skilled workers help to stimulate demand for low-skilled immigrant workers in services and other labor-intensive industries?)
• Consequences of high-skill/professional migration for economic development in sending countries.
• Implications for U.S. public policy (including immigration, educational, labor, national security and science policies) and for development and emigration policies in sending countries.

 

RATIONALE for this conference

Foreign-born scientists and engineers constitute a rapidly-growing segment of the labor force of computer, software, biomedical, and telecommunications industries in San Diego, as in other U.S. regions with similar concentrations of high-tech industries (the San Francisco Bay Area's Silicon Valley; Boston's "Route 128" beltway). As the number of highly skilled foreign workers employed by these industries has increased, their presence - and the possible need for many more of them - has provoked heated debate in the U.S. Congress and executive branch. Recent estimates by high-tech "trade" organizations of the nationwide shortage of computer programmers, systems analysts, and computer scientists range from 269,000-346,000, at a time when the number of U.S.-born students embarking on high-technology-related careers is declining.

Since 1996, high-tech employers have been lobbying the Congress intensively to secure major increases in the number of H-1B visas (for temporary, highly skilled foreign workers). In 1998, the annual cap on such visas was increased by Congress from 65,000 to 115,000, but demand was so strong that the new quota was exhausted by June 1999. In the 2000 fiscal year, the allotment of 115,000 visas was exhausted by mid-March. Bills pending in Congress would raise the annual cap to 195,000-200,000 visas over a three-year period, or provide an unlimited number of H-1B visas, subject to various conditions.

High-tech employers insist that present and foreseeable supplies of native-born workers with the necessary skills and experience are totally inadequate to meet their needs, and that they must have greater access to the global pool of high-tech workers to prevent crippling labor shortages. They note that other labor-importing countries around the world - from Germany to South Africa to Malaysia - have recently announced plans to liberalize their immigration laws to attract larger numbers of highly skilled workers, intensifying the global competition for this type of labor. Some Congressional critics and interest groups favoring lower levels of immigration dispute the need for further increases in visas for foreign high-skilled workers and blame labor shortages, if any, on employers' preferences for younger, lower-paid, more "flexible" workers. Meanwhile, the governments of key source countries for high-skill international migrants, such as Mexico, India, and China, no longer complain about "brain-drain" emigration; indeed, Mexico has joined the lobbying in the U.S. for a major increase in H-1B visas. However, both positive and negative impacts of high-skilled emigration upon the economies of sending countries require closer scrutiny.

Our conference will explore all of these issues. The experiences of the United States and Canada as major receiving countries for high-skill/professional foreign workers, will be compared, as will the experiences of three key source countries for such workers: India, Mexico, and China. Within the U.S., special attention will be devoted to the case of California's Silicon Valley, in terms of the demand of local firms for foreign-born workers; the growing role of foreign-born scientists and engineers as entrepreneurs, starting their own high-tech firms and generating jobs for both foreign and native-born workers (Chinese and Indian engineers were running one-quarter of Silicon Valley's high-technology businesses in 1998); and the role of low-skilled foreign labor (mainly Mexican) in high-tech manufacturing production as well as in service and retail industries catering to high-skilled workers. The implications of the Silicon Valley experience for the San Diego region will be discussed in detail. The conference will also provide a forum for the perspectives of high-technology employers in San Diego on high-skill immigration.

Despite the fact that high-skill immigration is the only major immigration policy issue currently on the agenda for Congressional action, there is a dearth of scholarly research on the subject. The conference organizers will edit a volume of papers commissioned for the proposed conference and secure timely publication. This conference is the inaugural conference of UCSD's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, established in 1999, whose research agenda includes both low-skilled and high-skilled international migrant workers. The conference is open to the public.

TO ATTEND this conference

Attendance is free and open to the public, but space is limited. To be guaranteed admission, please RSVP to Marc Rosenblum by e-mail or at 858-822-0526.

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