Trump Lied His Way to the Truth on Foreign Techies
Foreign STEM workers don't threaten American jobs or wages or apple pie
The Wednesday night Republican debate exposed Donald Trump as a bald-faced liar – yet again. Without blinking an
eye-lid, he declared – twice – that he had no idea – NO IDEA WHATSOEVER—where CNBC moderator Becky Quick had heard that he had accused Sen. Rubio of being the personal senator of Mark Zuckerberg for pushing more high-tech visas. "I never said that. I never said that," he insisted.
As it turned out he did, in so many words – right there on page four of his white paper on immigration under the section: "Put American Workers First." Not just that, his paper also noted: "We graduate two times more Americans with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) degrees each year than can find jobs" – implying that America had no need for more foreign techies.
Although Trump lied, I note in my column at The Week, at least this time he lied himself out of restrictionist nonsense and into the right position.
Restrictionists have long claimed that Zuckerberg and the Silicon Valley crowd, who lobby for more tech workers to be let into the U.S., are doing so not to alleviate any "shortage" of technical talent, but to shore up profits by driving down native wages. But the notion that without foreign techies native wages would rise is a complete fantasy based on rather crude notions of supply and demand. The truth, actually, is the opposite.
Read the whole thing here.