Gaming the Zero-Sum Game

I am in China currently, and the other day I gave a talk at a Chinese university. The hospitality was wonderful, and we had a great exchange on the topic of my talk (neural networks, and why I believe these modern things are actually equivalent to some very old-fashioned ones).

We were joined at a delicious lunch by a pleasant young professor who is the local Party Secretary. Though that may sound ominous to some in the U.S., it is basically analogous to the role of a shop steward in a unionized U.S. company. But yes, she is representing the government, and when the topic of politics came up, she politely expressed concern about Trump administration policies. Were they worried about tariffs? Of course not. No, their fear was that Trump would reduce the number of foreign students from China allowed to come to the U.S. for study.

Knowing from past experience not to get into politics in these situations, I replied, “Well, this is a highly complex issue,” and left it at that. I could have stated (as they may have already known) that I have my own concerns about the foreign student program. Policy really should be tightened up, though of course not specific to China and possibly not directly involving the F-1 student visa. Reducing the H-1B and employer-based green card programs would reduce the number of foreign students, though not necessarily surgically.

One of the problems to be fixed is the “two fer” regulation set by the Obama administration that granted work rights to certain H-1B spouses, which the Trump administration is now considering reversing. A former H-1B spouse, who became a U.S. citizen years ago, recently wrote a New York Times op-ed in which she describes the Trump people as being misinformed if not downright xenophobic demagogues.

The author of course brings in the obligatory “It’s not a zero-sum game” argument.

Restrictionists assume a zero-sum math for workers: A job gain for a foreigner  is a job loss for an American. By that logic every college graduate who enters the job market would be cause for mourning. But that’s backward, given that skilled individuals create, not take away, jobs, and no economy succeeds by shackling qualified people.      

The fact is that if a profession has a labor surplus, producing lots of new graduates in that profession IS a problem. In fact, occasionally a responsible university will indeed reduce the size of such a program.

And if that profession suffers from rampant age discrimination, as in the computer fields, it is especially not a zero-sum game situation, Young new graduates are hired in lieu of older (35+) professionals. In fact, the author’s statement,

[The H-1B spouses] also happen to be between the ages of 26 and 35 — peak productive years

actually is the root of the PROBLEM, rather than the virtue she views it as. Sadly, the REASON those are now viewed as “peak productive years” — which wasn’t the case in pre-H-1B times — is in fact the overproduction of new graduates. That excess is largely due to the foreign student program. And granting work permission to some H-1B spouses makes that even worse.

My stance is yes, one can sympathize with the forced unemployment of those spouses, so they SHOULD be allowed to work. But, for the reasons given above, they should count toward the H-1B cap. Otherwise it is indeed gaming the system.

Note carefully that China really does have a “Best and Brightest only” technical immigration policy. They welcome (only) those who are prominent in their field to come work in China, and pay them a pretty penny, quite a contrast to America’s discount-rate policy.