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So I've been thinking about the Trump visa order and of course there was the usual wailing of racism, isolationism, and other such nonsense gibberish but after thinking about it and doing some research I've come to the conclusion it is distinctly more complex and I'm still 1/n
Undecided about this specific order. Let's consider some things. First, Obama significantly tightened H1B access after the GFC. Any company taking public funds that laid off a worker could not get H1B and other similar restrictions. That is not a criticism of Obama or 2/n
Defense of Trump but I think it is important to look at how has the USG and across party lines responded to similar situations previously. Second, (and this is where it starts getting interesting) available H1B visas were significantly under used by companies due to lack of 3/n
Demand in subsequent years. This spins of into labor economics, crisis economics, and some specific issues so follow me as we get technical for a minute. Let me emphasize at the outset I don't know the answer to some of these but we can hazard guesses 4/n https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2009/11/19/how-the-recessions-affecting-immigration/
First, how fast will the economy bounce back? If we assume for instance a rapid return to normal (think a tight V) firms will probably demand those H1B visas unlike post GFC which was a long slow recovery. I think we can say it won't be a tight V. Only question now is whether 5/n
The recovery is more like GFC or something in between. I suspected something in-between but would still set at least 3 years before back to similar levels in areas like employment numbers and likely at least 5. This leads us to a second question. 6/n
Second, specialized work visas like H1B are used to supplement technical work that there are not enough Americans to do or they bring specialized knowledge or expertise. I heard from one tech person in a very specialized area that said their firm uses H1B a lot because 7/n
Of how technically narrow, specialized, and advanced their work is. So here is the question, at or near full employment, employers can credibly say they cannot find workers or these candidates bring needed expertise, but in a slack labor market except for generally highly 8/n
technical and specialized work how much will being forced to hire domestically slow potential growth? In other words, given large labor slack, what is the substititutibility in non-identical work? I suspect both firms and workers with labor market slack will find it easier 9/n
To come to agreement on career movement that remain within general technical similarity. Third, given all the talk of remote work and the H1B visa targeting labor that would be easily transferrable, I would suspect we would see the most desireable labor talent simply 10/n
Work remotely since that is what large amounts of tech labor is doing anyway. Whether you are doing that tech work from another part of California or around the world, doesn't matter a whole lot. Firms have way of making that work. Fourth and finally, firms are going to 11/n
Re-evaluate their entire productivity framework. One thing we saw post GFC was large firms realizing they could get similar output with smaller headcounts. I suspect you will see a lot of the same post-Heineken. To circle back briefly, I would not institute a complete 12/n
Cessation to the H1B program but tightened standards given the circumstances does not seem unwarranted and line with historical policy. Nor would it seem to cause significant business disruption. Done.
