2. US workers are acknowledged to be the best, most creative, knowledgeable, and industrious in the world.

2013-08-01/2013-08-12: Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
US workers found to out-perform off-shore staff
IT World

"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."   2007-07-02

"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'.   Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues.   'Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so.   If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"   2008-01-04

"Dynamic" US engineers vs. "transactional" foreign engineers.   2005-12-13   2005-12-27   2006-01-10

While the statutes regarding H-1B visas use phrases like "specialized skills" and "distinguished merit" and "bachelor's degree" or equivalent, the wording does not actually require H-1B recipients to have any particular level of skill, nor the equivalent of a USA bachelor's degree.   Statistics from USCIS on H-1B applications approved show that lack of the equivalent of a USA high school diploma need be no barrier to obtaining an H-1B visa.

Gifted individuals account for only 5% of H-1B visa holders at most, so cutting the numbers of H-1B visas from the current 110K to 2,000 or fewer per year and auctioning them off monthly to the highest bidders on the basis of compensation would improve the likelihood that the "best and brightest", "the pre-eminent", those with "distinguished merit" would be welcomed.   Cutting them to 1,000 per year would begin to bring back the huge pool of unemployed and under-employed US citizen science and tech workers toward full employment, and thus boost the economy.   If all else fails, we should set the bar by conducting multiple IQ tests and admit those whose average scores exceeding 160 (or aggregate ACT score above 34 or aggregate SAT score above 1560 or "new" aggregate SAT score above 2100 or aggregate GRE above 1615).   2007-05-13

It's impossible to make a case that executives should continue turning their backs on some of the best science, tech, engineering and math talent in the world and instead hire lower-quality, low-skill, cheaper labor.

2005 Summer: _New Atlantis_
How We Measure Up
"As if coordinated to provoke headlines, top executives at 3 of the nation's leading technology firms recently issued bleak appraisals of the American education system, criticizing especially how American students are taught science and mathematics.   M$ Chairman Bill Gates minced no words at a summit of the nation's governors: until high schools are redesigned, he declared, 'we will keep limiting, even ruining, the lives of millions of Americans every year.' The chief executives of Intel and Cisco Systems shortly followed suit, suggesting that America's lack-luster schools will increasingly force companies to look over-seas for talent...   The United States is still pumping out tremendous numbers of new PhDs in the sciences -- more, in fact, than our economy can presently absorb, as there is a well-reported dearth of jobs for newly-minted science PhDs.   The same is true in engineering: According to a recent National Science Foundation report, the number of engineers graduating from USA schools will continue to grow into the foreseeable future, out-stripping the number of available jobs...   perhaps they are merely providing their companies with political cover and a post hoc justification for employing foreign engineers who, while not better educated than USA workers, are often significantly cheaper...   Two University of Pennsylvania researchers recently aggregated scores from a number of cross-national studies and found that white students in the United States, taken alone, consistently out-perform the predominantly white student populations of several other leading industrial nations.   'There is compelling evidence', they write, 'that the low scores of [black and Hispanic students] were major factors in reducing the comparative standing of the USA in international surveys of achievement.   If these minority students were to perform at the same level as white students, the USA... would lead the Western G5 nations in mathematics and science, though it would still trail Japan.'"

2005-12-22: Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
The stupid American? Think again
"the mean literacy test score for USA adults (272) was 2 points above the mean for all adults in the 20 country survey (270)...   Larger, statistically significant, literacy gaps between us and them unfold when you separate immigrant from native-born test takers, as is done in 17 high income countries surveyed by ETS.   USA natives scored 8 points above the average native of the 17 high income countries.   USA immigrants scored 16 points below the average immigrant in the 17 countries."

2006-03-17: "I've mentioned the TIMSS test, for instance, which showed that if [Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming] -- none of which has a substantial under-class -- had been treated as separate nations, each of them would have been out-scored only by Singapore (professor David Berliner, 'Our Schools Versus Theirs', Washington Post, 2001 January 28)...   This [both the TIMSS and PISA tests] once again shows, tragically, that the USA is not doing enough to bring up the educational performance of its under-class.   But if one takes the white score as 'main-stream', the USA would rank 7th out of 27, instead of 18th."   2006-03-17

2006-04-19: Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
Main-stream media white-washes role of immigration in drop-out rates
"Time magazine's 2006 April 17 cover story on high school drop-outs... 'an increasing number of researchers are saying that nearly 1 out of 3 public high school students won't graduate'...   drop-out rates for young whites have declined by over 50% in the past 3 decades, and are in the single digits.   The really astonishing statistic, unemphasized by Time: the large fraction of Hispanics lacking a high school degree or its equivalent.   In [Educationist] jargon, the percentage of 16- to 24-year olds who are out of school and who have not earned a high school diploma or a General Educational Development (GED) degree is called the status drop-out rate.   Status drop-out rates in 2003 were as follows: White, non-Hispanics: 6.3%; Black, non-Hispanics: 10.9%; Hispanics: 23.9%...   Consider the data presented in a recent study of [the Evolution of the Mexican-Born Work-Force in the United States of America] by Harvard economists George Borjas and Lawrence Katz.

2007-03-27: "...while our average test scores are mediocre, the U.S.A. is a leader with respect to the gap between our best and worst performers.   Our best and brightest are equal to, or better than, those of other advanced countries.   Our worst rank, well, among the worst anywhere.   For several reasons, immigrants exert more of a downward test score drag here than in other advanced countries.   First, they account for a larger share of the population.   Only 7 of the 27 OECD countries have larger foreign born population shares than the U.S.A.   Second -- and more importantly -- our immigrants do poorly on standardized tests compared to the immigrant populations of other advanced countries.   The U.S.A. ranked 18th out of the 20 high income countries surveyed by the International Adult Literacy Survey.   Our immigrants scored 25% below the mean scores of the top 2 countries (Ireland and Denmark), and statistically out-performed their counterparts in only 1 country -- France.   Immigration is not the only factor in US under-performance.   The test score gap between U.S.A.-born whites and Asians and their Black and Hispanic counterparts range from 19% to 25%.   Take out immigrants along with native-born Blacks and Hispanics, and our international rankings soar -- to second highest in verbal, and fifth highest in math, on a test administered in 17 high income countries.

2007-08-03
_numen notes_
"You Americans are too honest"
"A few months ago there were 90 of us contract programmers and analysts here in one room, and now there are only 10, and we will all soon be gone.   The guest-workers from India are all calling around looking for new jobs.   My friend Slim was helping 'Rajiv', the guy who sits in the row in front of us, when Raj got a call from a recruiter, and Raj was claiming all sorts of skill-sets that Slim knew he couldn't do.   So Slim asked Raj, 'Why are you telling them that?'.   And Raj said, 'You Americans are too honest.   We lie to get the job, and when we get there, we help each other out.   And if none of us there know how to do it, then we just move on to the next job.'   When I got to this gig, 90 of us came here in the course of a few weeks, and only two of us were Americans.   Now, of the few who are left, most are Americans, because we didn't lie about what we could do.   But the 'Powers That Be' had to try to hire at least 2 guest-workers who couldn't do the job before they would break down and hire an American who could.   And that's how the game works."
2007-03-27: Edwin S. Rubenstein: V Dare: Bill Gates and the tech skill shortage lie

"The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones.   They are an order of magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability." --- Randall E. Stross (quoted by Robert K. Weatherall "A Booming Market for New Graduates" _Engineers_ vol3 #2 1997 April pg 11; quoted in Richard Ellis & B. Lindsay Lowell 1999 January "Core Occupations of the US Information Technolgy Work-Force")

"The computer field has [in the past] honored competence, content and creativity more than credentials." --- Clifford Adelman _Leading, Concurrent, or Lagging: The Knowledge Content of Computer Science in Higher Education and the Labor market_ 1997 pg 40 (quoted in Richard Ellis & B. Lindsay Lowell 1999 January "Core Occupations of the US Information Technolgy Work-Force")

"One top-notch engineer is worth '300 times or more than the average', explains Alan Eustace, a Google vice president of engineering."   2005-11-23

"The best programmers on the team may be so much better than the rest that just a few of [them] can put out more than all the rest combined." --- Alistair Cockburn 2002 _Agile Software Development_ pg 61

"The cost advantage for off-shoring [from the USA] to India used to be at least 1:6.   Today, it is at best 1:3.   Attrition is scary...   As the 1:3 cost structure becomes 1:1.5, it will soon become inefficient to use Indian labor.   Why not Oklahoma or British Columbia?   For many Europeans, Eastern Europe has already become more compelling than India.   The pure labor arbitrage equation will no longer balance."   2008-02-29

87% of the job openings that were filled under the H-1B program were for entry-level positions that require only a 'good understanding of the occupation'.   Employers who used the Department of Labor's skill-based prevailing wage system classified most workers (56%) as being at the lowest skill level as did most State Employment Security Agency (SESA) wage determinations (57%), according to the Department of Labor these represent "internships" or "workers in training".   Either "these workers aren't contributing substantially to America's ability to innovate and compete, or... employers are deliberately under-stating workers' skills in order to justify paying them less.", wrote Computer Science professor Norm Matloff of UC Davis.   CIS backgrounder 407   eWeek   2007-05-23   Matloff IWK   Matloff h1b   2007-08-06   Prospect   2007-10-06

2019-04-09 (5779 Nisan 04)
John Miano _Center for Immigration Studies_
another study shows USA 🇺🇸 is not falling behind in STEM education; still no signs of STEM talent shortage
Prashant Loyalka, Ou Lydia Liu, Guirong Li, Igor Chirikov, Elena Kardanova, Lin Gu, Guangming Ling, Ningning Yu, Fei Guo, Liping Ma, Shangfent Hu, Angela Sun Johnson, Ashutosh Bhuradia, Saurabh Khanna, Isak Froumin, Jinghuan Shi, Pradeep Kumar Choudhury, Tara Beteille, Francisco Marmolejo, Namratta Tognatta, & Kenneth W. Wachter: Proceedings of the National Academies of Science: computer science skills of college seniors across Red China, India, Russia, and the USA
2017 January: Stella Fayer, Alan Lacey & Audrey Watson: BLS: STEM occupations: past, present, and future

There was no shortage of talented USA citizen STEM workers.

There is no shortage of talented USA citizen STEM workers.

No credible evidence of impending shortage of talented US citizen STEM workers has been produced.