The Urban Institute is a DC think tank, regularly producing reports on various social topics, including immigration. Like almost any DC think tank, it has a political orientation, generally aligning with the views of the Democratic Party, but over the years I’ve found their research to be fair and of high quality. They just announced a panel discussion on immigration, to be held on September 23. I urge those in the DC area to attend.
The e-mail version of the above announcement begins with “Elevate The Debate,” an Urban Institute tagline. This is reflected in the presence of two excellent researchers on the panel, Jennifer Hunt of Rutgers, who writes on tech immigration, and Dowell Myers of USC, who does research on unauthorized immigration. On the other hand, the panel also includes Cecilia Muñoz, who clearly is an advocate, counter to the Elevate The Debate philosophy. The panel also includes Audrey Singer, recently of the Brookings Institution, an entity that I would describe as engaging in covert advocacy; I seem to recall that she is very pro-H-1B, by the way.
As the announcement states, this panel discussion will follow the release of a major NAS study on immigration. The one in 1997 was quite good, and widely cited, though I must add that the political climate was quite different then. It will be interesting to see what this one says. Concerning H-1B, I suspect it will have an “Intels good, Infosyses bad” theme. We’ll see.
Upon Closer inspection 
Do you suppose they will discuss this article?
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/06/caterpillar-hires-h-1b-foreign-graduates-fires-300-american-professionals/
I suspect every time a major corporation gets a little headwind from Wall Street, they obediently replace U.S. citizens and Wall Street applauds at their groveling.
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“Concerning H-1B, I suspect it will have an “Intels good, Infosyses bad” theme.”
Norm, out of curiosity, what leads you to think this? Just the pro-H-1B types on the panel, or is there more to that observation?
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The sad fact is that even among critics of H-1B, the “Intels good, Infosyses bad” viewpoint is very common. This stems from ignorance or a desire for political cover. The tech industry and its allies, e.g. the NYT, have really pushed this notion, so much that many researchers just take it for granted. Researchers internalize these neverending claims, and take them as fact. See http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/does-the-h1-b-visa-program-hurt-american-workers for a recent example.
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