[Bret L]

Sanchez On BusinessWeek On Matloff


[Rob Sanchez]

" When I heard that Moira Herbst of Businessweek wrote an article about Norm Matloff, I read it with extreme trepidation. Herbst is a skilled writer and journalist, but she is very much a corporate globalist who supports H-1B and outsourcing. Despite her obvious bias the article wasn’t as bad as I anticipated.

There are a few things in the article that I felt should be commented
on.

To some opponents of H-1B visas, Matloff is something of a hero —
and in a sense, the intellectual backbone of their movement.[ An
Academic’s Labor Helps Fight H-1B Visas, BusinessWeek, June 28, 2009.]

That may be the most profound thing Herbst has ever written (which
probably isn’t saying very much!). As far as I know, Norm Matloff is
the first one to make the connection between H-1B and age
discrimination. I first found out about Matloff many years ago when I
was trying to figure out why I couldn’t find good engineering jobs.
For many reasons I began to suspect my 40+ age was a factor (in one
interview the manager asked me if I would have a problem riding go-
karts with “the boys” on Friday). I stumbled into Matloff’s
“Debunking” paper and much to my astonishment it read like my
autobiography. The stories in that paper have been accused of being
anecdotal, but they are the story of my ruined career. They aren’t
anecdotal to me!

My journey into the H-1B issue originated from the wealth of
information that Matloff provided on age discrimination in the
computer/IT professions.

I’m not sure why Herbst used so many quotes from Vivek Wadhwa, an
Indian supremacist who writes articles mostly for the same magazine.
Surely she could have found someone outside of BusinessWeek to take
cheap shots at Matloff! Arthur Hu was briefly mentioned but his
credibility is damaged by the fact that he is a Chinese racist who has
an obsession with hating Matloff.

Vivek Wadhwa didn’t stop his attacks there however–he complained

that Matloff’s “research doesn’t seem to have been published by
credible authorities or have received any form of peer review.”

That’s a very disingenuous thing for Wadhwa to say considering
Matloff’s 99 page report “On the Need for Reform of the H-1B
Nonimmigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations” was published
by the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.

Wadhwa’s assertion that the data Matloff uses has “no basis” is a
vindictive attack that might have been exacerbated every time Matloff
effectively debunked the corporate sponsored studies published by
Wadhwa and his politically correct cronies at Harvard and Duke
Universities. Matloff has poked so many holes in Wadhwa’s studies it’s
amusing stuff to read.

Most of the studies I have seen from Wadhwa contain data that is
tailored to coincide with predetermined conclusions, and they somehow
always seem to “prove” that we need to allow more Indians into the
U.S. to take our jobs. To Matloff’s credit he sees right through these
scurrilous studies that parade as objective academia. Wadhwa has very
little room to criticize Matloff for using faulty data.

As for peer review: Before Matloff subjected that Michigan paper to a
formal peer review he invited comment from a wide variety of people in
and out of academia. I doubt Wadhwa was on Matloff’s review list,
which makes me suspect that Wadwha’s remarks are caused by a case of
extreme narcissism. I know that Matloff had the paper reviewed by
outsiders because I was one of many that reviewed it!

Matloff deserves praise for inviting a wide variety of activists both
inside and out of academia to review his material. Vivek Wadhwa in
contrast prefers to keep his research data within a small clique of
Ivory Tower professors and corporate sponsors.

I can personally vouch for the fact that Matloff not only listened to
many of us, he incorporated changes into his study when he determined
that our critiques had merit. Wadhwa had this to say about Matloff:

Matloff routinely attacks the work of other academics by citing
statistics and data which have no basis,” says Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke
University engineering professor and fellow with the Labor & Worklife
Program at Harvard Law School. (Wadhwa is also a columnist for
BusinessWeek.com.) “He claims to have performed his own research, but
this research doesn’t seem to have been published by credible
authorities or have received any form of peer review.”

OK, I’m not an ivory tower academic, so I decided to ask Norm Matloff
the following questions, and I got the following answers which he gave
me permission to quote:

Start of Q&A

QUESTION BY ROB: Norm, has Vivek Wadhwa ever invited you to peer
review anything of his? Have you asked him to do the same?

ANSWER BY NORM: This is not how it works. Instead, one submits a
manuscript to a journal, and the associate editor chooses some
reviewers. The reviewers, whose names are typically not divulged to
the author(s) of the manuscript, critique the paper and recommend
acceptance or rejectance.

Ironically, I criticized Vivek for not having peer-reviewed work.
I pointed out serious errors in his papers, and said that peer review
would have caught them. Since he now is accusing me of not having peer-
reviewed work (he is incorrect on that, but that’s not my point here),
I assume that means that he finally has submitted something to an
academic journal.

On a related matter, recall that I said in my e-newsletter the
other day that almost all my analyses are an open book, based on
public data such as PUMS, PERM, NCSG and so on. Anyone can verify my
results. By contrast, Vivek’s data is all private. I have asked him to
share it with me, and he has declined my request.

QUESTION BY ROB: So, one more question — was your Michigan Reform
study peer reviewed, and if not, why?

ANSWER BY NORM: Yes, I said so in my critique of the BusinessWeek
article. By the way, the archived copy of my critique (with a couple
of typos corrected) is here [VDARE.com version here]:

End of Q&A

There are a few other things in the article that are cause for concern–
of course we should keep in mind that the quotes might not be accurate
or they are taken out of context (Herbst does that sometimes). I have
great respect for Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at
Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International
Migration, but he was quoted as saying something that makes me scratch
my head in bewilderment:

Matloff lacks definitive data on, for example, the proportion of
older workers who are laid off and replaced by younger workers or H-1B
visa holders.

Lindsay Lowell is a researcher and a darn good one, and as such he
will never have enough data (do a Google search to find his excellent
studies on the many facets of immigration including H-1B). Gathering
and analyzing data is what he does. Matloff and many other researchers
have been gathering facts about H-1B for a very long time. Matloff has
adequately proved the connection between H-1B and age discrimination
but I have no doubt that academics like Lowell could study statistics
for another 10 years before they came to a definitive conclusion. In
the meantime our entire computer/IT industry is being given away to
YOUNG foreign nationals.

By now all of you have read something by ITGrunt. Allow me to come out
of the closet and admit that sometimes I go to his website. I find his
material entertaining and yet provocative. Sometimes he even reminds
me of myself in the early days of my rage against the machine. Some
people have speculated that ITgrunt is just a ghost name that I use. I
assure all of you that I am not the ITgrunt, so let’s put an end to
that bit of internet mythology.

ITgrunt’s stories from the work world seem to have a kernel of truth
to them, but sometimes his specifics on H-1B are weak on the facts. I
was rather stunned that BusinessWeek asked his opinion on Matloff:

“While I do admire Matloff and find his work to be substantial,
his contribution to our cause has been academic and largely ignored by
the I.T. industry,” says “Kevin,” who publishes a blog that routinely
refers to Indian tech workers as “slumdogs” (itgrunt.com).

Kevin, or ITgrunt, or whomever your name is: I got news for you–the IT
industry and everyone else who employs H-1Bs routinely ignores Matloff
and anyone else that criticizes H-1B–that includes you and I. The
corporatocrats and their toadies in government will continue to
marginalize us until we either vote the traitors out of office or pay
them off. Forget the latter option because the cheap labor lobby will
always outbid us, and they control the bully pulpit of the mainstream
media so they also control public opinion.

Donna Conroy was quoted, but I have no idea what she is talking about
he

“The thing that’s missing in Norm Matloff’s strategy is fighting
for a seat at the table,” says Donna Conroy, executive director of
Bright Future Jobs.

I’m not sure what seat at the table Donna is talking about, but she is
right about fighting–we need a lot more of that and a lot less apathy
and cowardice. Conroy’s next statement is excellent except for one
thing:

“We need a political movement that allows us to help craft
legislation. All the numbers [Matloff] crunches won’t have nearly the
impact as American technical professionals standing up for
themselves.”

I just don’t agree with the characterization of Matloff as being
merely a number cruncher. In addition to his heroic efforts to educate
clueless Americans about H-1B he has testified before Congress and has
been on innumerable panels, discussions, news shows, radio talk shows,
etc. At times all of us out there have wished Matloff would do more,
but realistically just how much is a working university professor
expected to do? Techies need to learn to fight their own battles if
they expect to get their jobs back.

Conroy is totally right-on about the need for techies to do something
for themselves. Until they organize and do something politically, the
best result we can expect is for more academic studies to be authored
that will explain or deny the obvious harms that H-1B has wrought on
the U.S. work force — and the debate will go on and on.

MUST READ STUDIES:

“On the Need for Reform of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Work Visa in Computer-
Related Occupations”, by Norm Matloff, University of Michigan Journal
of Law Reform, Fall 2003 PDF

“Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage“, Testimony
to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, Dr.
Norman Matloff, Presented April 21, 1998

“H-1B Temporary Workers: Estimating the Population”, By B. Lindsay
Lowell, 2000 PDF

America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Part I, by Vivek Wadhwa and
others, January 4, 2007"

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2009/...ek-on-matloff/