Posted on 03/24/2015 12:18:36 PM PDT by C19fan
It's going to be hard for the Republicans to field a presidential candidate as enthusiastic about the H-1B visa as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Cruz, who announced his presidential bid this morning, once proposed an immediate increase in the base H-1B cap from 65,000 to 325,000. Cruz offered the H-1B increase as an amendment in 2013 to the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
It’s a slash-fest, gorier than any Friday the 13th movie, the day the Republic candidates died. Let’s all beat up on Cruz and Walker until they are so damaged they have no hope. Then we can accept “The Bush Supremacy” and hope for a Hillary win so she gets blamed for the collapse.
Buy ammo people, this ones headed south.
I agree with you on that. Look how well it worked in 2012
And Cruz and Walker are a hell of a lot better than those losers were,
No no, I heard Jeff Sessions once shook a democrat’s hand and was seen eating a taco, clearly it’s just a matter of time before he’s just as bad as Jeb.
Zombie Jesse Helms or bust!!
I went Constitution party last election up to the very end. It was a terrible disappointment. They say the right things but they don’t really try. They announced a big campaign here in Ohio, so I made plans to attend. We’re talking a month to go in the election. It was a dinner for us members to sit down with Virgil Goode. I didn’t go. No media, no advertising, no nothing. One can say that they were poor, and they were. But I know the difference between trying and not trying, and they didn’t try.
I think you're right - but unless an election is very close, my vote is most significant as a statement of what I believe: America for Americans.
The claim that "for every additional 100 H-1B workers, 183 jobs are created for U.S. citizens" is from a single working paper paid for by lobbyists. You can see an analysis that shows how flawed the number is at http://econdataus.com/amerjobs.htm. Also, you can see a list of many of the people who are mindlessly parroting those numbers at http://econdataus.com/claim262.htm. To counter those South Park cartoons of "They Took Err Jerbs!" that some find so funny, someone should come up with a cartoon that reads "Dey Couldn't Print It if it Wernt Troo!".
Without looking at the controls on the H1B program no one really knows what Cruz was proposing. We do know that what Cruz proposed was instantly hated by Harry Reid who killed it immediately.
All sides of this complex issue are paid. Econdatus.com didn't do all that gratis. Who are they and in whose pay are they?
Good analysis (not light reading) - that the numbers vary so widely depending on what range of years is chosen indicates that linear regression is the wrong tool to determine the relationship (if there is one).
Not to mention that even if the correlation was correct, there are obvious explanations other than 'H-1Bs cause more jobs' - for instance that both are signs and consequences of general economic health.
Such a study would make us think that bringing in job seekers at a time of high unemployment would be a good thing. Not.
Even if it were true, there would not be an immediate turn around. It would probably take years and years.
So, the time to bring in immigrant job seekers is in a thime of high EMPLOYMENT. They would threaten no one’s job, and they could possibly extend a rising market.
Putting an American out of work in a time of high unemployment doesn’t make sense. Nor does bringing in an unemployed immigrant.
The study claimed every job in the whole economy that got created in that time was because of foreign h1b visas.
Actually, Econdataus.com did do all of that gratis. I know because I am the sole owner and poster to the site. That's not to say that I don't have my motivations. I'm a math major and software developer and have seen a number of co-workers lose their jobs because of our H-1B policies. I'm still working in the industry but the working conditions are getting to be more and more like that of a sweatshop. I enjoyed learning the language R that I used for the analysis and I hope that I might be able to work it into a better job. Finally, as a math major, it just bothers me to see statistics so misused. I do very much think that our H-1B system is being abused and needs to be reformed. But I also think that our entire system of academic research could use reform. As I describe at this link, I think that all studies that are used to set public policy should be required to release their data and calculations so that they can be replicated. Otherwise, they should be ignored or treated as "thought experiments". On that topic, I have posted all of the R programs with which I did my analysise at http://econdataus.com/amerjobs.htm.
So far I'm sitting 2016 out.
Not to mention that even if the correlation was correct, there are obvious explanations other than 'H-1Bs cause more jobs' - for instance that both are signs and consequences of general economic health.
Good reading! You sound like a math major or someone familiar with this kind of analysis. I agree that the wide variance of results depending on the range of years suggest that it's a very poor model. It's funny how the study just happened to pick the range of years with the best result!
Also, you're very much right that "correlation does not imply causation". When I communicated with Zavodny, she even said that she did "prefer to not use strong causal language" although her study did in places and the parroters of her numbers definitely do. I wrote a section on the correlation issue at this link. As I quote at the end of that section, "[correlation] is also one of the most abused types of evidence, because it is easy and even tempting to come to premature conclusions based upon the preliminary appearance of a correlation".
Good link - thanks! Now I know about 2SLS regression. :-)
I think a big problem with the AEI analysis is the questionable choice of instrumental variable; from the paper: "The standard method of controlling for this endogeneity bias is to use a variable that is well correlated with the endoge- nous variable (the immigrant share) but not related to shocks to the outcome variable (the native employment rate) as an instrumental variable for the endogenous variable. [...] This paper uses the number of immigrants in the population as an instrument for the number of immigrants in the workforce".
Who says number of immigrants in the population is not related to shocks to the native employment rate? Immigrants come here in no small part for economic opportunity, and changes to the native employment rate can very well affect immigrants' perception of economic opportunity - particularly the better educated (and thus better aware of such factors) immigrants with whom the paper is primarily concerned.
The truth be told, I didn't know about 2SLS regressions either before I started trying to replicate these studies. In fact, I find it disturbing that nobody appears to be peer-reviewing, much less replicating, these studies. As you can see at this link, even papers on the White House web site are quoting these numbers. Yet, in all the research that I've done on the Zavodny paper, I have found no evidence that anyone has reviewed it, much less replicated it. All of those quoting it just seem to be following the principle that "dey couldn't print it if it wernt troo!"
I think a big problem with the AEI analysis is the questionable choice of instrumental variable;
Agreed. I can't help but think that some of these instrumental variables are chosen through trial and error. That is, the researchers tries a variable and, if it helps make their case, they include it. Zavodny did look at 2000-2007 and 2000-2010 in her study. The former better makes her case and, by no surprise, she came up with a rationale for why that is a better span to study. That is why I think that researchers need to provide the environment or program by which they created their results. It's not enough to just verify that their calculations are mathematically correct. One needs to look at the other equally good (or arguably better) choices that could have been made in the research. I included all of my R programs at this link to replicate my analysis. The 262 number can be replicated with numbers posted on the internet and the 183 requires Zavodny's data file which she or I can provide upon request. I'm hoping that many more mathematically-inclined people will see how powerful the language R is and use it to replicate these studies. Just think of it as a useful adventure game!
We are in a war with bombs bursting in air, and someone won’t pull because the K rations do not contain caviar.
Ain’t that some kind of special.
This sounds like a case of bad data. Well guess what. Not even Ted Cruz is omniscient. Neither is Scott Walker. Sometimes wisdom is learned below, not always piped in supermagically from above.
But somehow, coming to him on a cavalry of high horses with machine guns drawn seems quite the overkill.
In cases such as this, the question is whether having a number is legitimate, not what the number should be.
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