If you're like me, you've already heard enough of the performance mythology surrounding the alleged inability of US school systems to produce competitive Math and Science students, and the inevitable follow-up: US tech workers can't cut it in technical jobs.
But as you know, US and foreign employers legally bypass local talent for their US job opeinings via the employer visa programs. The programs employers use most are E-3, H-1B, L-1, OPT, J-1, and TN. This explicit discrimination, created by US law, is responsible for an overabundance of technical talent.
Let's put them to work by requiring employers to open their eyes, embrace the spirit of EEO, and consider local talent for jobs in 2009.
There is a proliferation of performance mythology, mass-produced by tech lobbyists who do nothing but fabricate their lies from dawn to dusk. But the Urban Institute confronted they mythology head on with their 2007 report, "Into the Eye of the Storm". It reports that between 1985 and 2000, the US w produced 3 times the number of tech and science grads than jobs they were trained to do.
According to the study, Americans and green card holders received 435,000 Bachelors, Masters, and PhD.'s in science, engineering and computer science yearly from 1985 to 2000. However, the economy could only produce 150,000 jobs annually for these graduates during the same period.
That's a defict of 280,000 jobs annually. High-tech employers couldn't produce enough jobs for 4.2 million STEM graduates, with two-thirds of these graduates never able to practice their craft.
Separate studies by Harvard University, Duke University, the Rand Corp, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation also report an oversupply of STEM graduates. Here's a video that covered 2007 Congressional hearings on US STEM graduates.