As a professor at Berkeley, I see the impact of H-1B visas and artificial intelligence on student employment opportunities

The purpose of the H-1B visa program is to bring in professional talents from abroad, but it has become a tool for employers to hire low-cost labor to perform ordinary jobs.

The result is a distorted job market in which high-skilled workers are squeezed out of the H-1B visa program by spam applications from ordinary workers, who then fill entry-level positions that are already in short supply. This abuse of H-1B visas, which negatively synergizes with the growing impact of artificial intelligence on the job market, is part of a larger problem that urgently needs attention.

This visa problem disproportionately affects young people and recent college graduates, who face a bleak job market despite modest overall unemployment rates. According to government data, the unemployment rate among college graduates under 25 and over 25 has reached a record high of more than four to one. This means that entry-level jobs are already four times more scarce than jobs that require experience or advanced expertise.

I’ve seen firsthand the symptoms of declining demand for entry-level tech jobs. These symptoms include fewer job announcements from recruiters targeting fresh computer science graduates, fewer companies attending career fairs, fewer job offers received by relevant consultants, lower salaries, or in some cases no offers at all Chance. Granting H-1B visas to low-wage non-skilled workers only exacerbates this scarcity and does little to meet the actual demand for workers with specialized skills.

H-1B visas harm one kind of worker and exploit another. This mess must be resolved

The issue here is not the number of visas issued, but how they are used. Program applicants should clearly be people with specialized skills, and these specialized skills should not be Existing resident workers. However, bureaucratic review processes allow employers to inflate claims and hire averagely skilled workers at low wages. There’s an entire sub-profession of HR people and lawyers who specialize in dressing up pigeons as peacocks.

This abuse of the application process creates a lottery system in which workers with the specific skills needed often lose out to those without any specialized skills. As a result, new graduates are finding it more difficult to get entry-level jobs, while companies that truly need specific specialized skills are unable to obtain visas for these workers. Imagine a person suffering from both malnutrition and diabetes because instead of taking vitamins, they take sugar pills.

I want to emphasize that I am not advocating for an isolated limit on the number of H-1B visas. The problem is ensuring that the H-1B program welcomes people with real specialized skills that are actually needed. If used correctly, H-1B visas can bring in talent with needed skills and expertise to supplement the workforce, which could benefit the entire country. Whether it’s retaining graduating international students or bringing in students from abroad, the United States has historically benefited greatly from immigrants with in-demand skills.

Many people who invest in visa agriculture incredibly insist that H-1B visas have been issued to professional workers as intended, but statistics on H-1B visa recipients disagree.

Trump says his decision on H-1B visas has not changed as debate rages within MAGA alliance

According to the annual report of the U.S. government’s Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services, nearly 63,000 H-1B visa recipients in 2023 are engaged in “computer-related occupations”. The median annual salary of this group is $99,000, with 25% earning less than $85,000. Dollar. $99,000 or $85,000 a year is certainly a good income, but it’s pretty low for someone who I would expect to have rare expertise in this field.

One might think that people with hard-to-find specialized skills would earn very high salaries, but these data show the opposite. In fact, the more I dug into the data from the agency’s annual report, the more I discovered that the approved applications were for outstanding people in professional jobs. It looks more like a few specialized skilled workers mixed in with a lot of regular workers who are paid less than I expected.

These observations are consistent with my own experience in hiring technical staff and advising computer science students, the experience of others with whom I have direct relevance, and with many recently published analyses. I think the only clear explanation for these inconsistencies is that employers are submitting for entry-level positions rather than positions that require specific rare skills. Even entry-level positions pay very little, and applications that don’t meet the requirements are not considered. reject.

Looking at the bigger picture, H-1B visa abuse is not the only obstacle facing American job seekers, as AI automation is also eliminating jobs and exacerbating scarcity. Artificial intelligence currently has a disproportionate impact on entry-level jobs, exacerbating the problems caused by abuse of the H-1B program. However, AI will continue to improve in both capabilities and ease of use, and as the range of tasks it can complete expands, its impact on the job market will also grow.

MAGA’s H-1B “civil war” is exactly how politics should work

While AI and H-1B visa abuse may appear to be separate issues, they interact in ways that most people don’t understand. Even if AI cannot completely replace human workers, it can help shift work from permanent employees to contractors or remote workers.

The explanation is that AI often eliminates the need for high-level specialized skills or knowledge, replacing it with lower requirements that only require the ability to review work for correctness. The result is that tasks that were previously too complex to be offloaded to contractors or remote workers are now simpler thanks to AI and more suitable for externalization.

As AI technology continues to improve, employers will find that more and more jobs can be performed by low-skilled workers, and the incentive to use H-1B visas to hire these low-skilled workers at low cost will increase.

The H-1B visa program’s review process needs reform to prioritize applicants with genuine expertise and ensure recipients do not compete unfairly with workers already in the United States. A growing threat to growth.

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About 90% of U.S. tax revenue comes from taxes on workers’ income, so if unemployment continues to expand, tax revenue will shrink sharply. At the same time, the number of unemployed people with public assistance needs will surge. This combination just doesn’t work mathematically and would obviously lead to disaster.

This situation needs to change drastically to avoid a dystopian future. The overall unemployment numbers may look strong, but higher levels of primary unemployment and overall underemployment suggest larger problems are emerging.

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Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author as an individual. Nothing in this article should be construed as a statement regarding the author’s professional position at any institution.