Department of Labor Misuses Older Economic Research to Justify New H-1B Regulations. Here Is the Newest Research

ConclusionThe DoL justified its IFR to increase the minimum wages for H-1B migrants by arguing that they 1) reduce the wages of native ‐​born Americans and 2) H-1B migrants displace native‐​born American workers. The only peer‐​reviewed economics articles where they cited hard estimates of the effect of immigrants on the wages and hours worked by native‐​born American workers is a 2003 article by George J. Borjas.Using Borjas ’ methods from his 2003 paper, his later 2014 book, and changing the period analyzed to when the H-1B visa was created to the present day, we find that the relative wages and relative hours worked by native‐​born American workers with a college or above degree were barely affected in the long runandthat there is no evidence of an absolute decline in wages. In fact, the relative number of hours worked by Americans slightly increased in response to immigration.The DoL is not charged with protecting therelativewages of skilled workers or their relative number of hours worked – it is only theoretically charged with protecting theirabsolutewages. DoL ’s citation in the IFR does not provide evidence that skilled immigrants lowered the wages of skilled Americans nor does our update of the evidence.Since the DoL has such confidence in Borjas ’ 2003 paper, we assume that they will be very interested in this analysis that uses Borjas’ methods to examine how native wages and hours worked have been affected by skilled immigrants like ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs