Media Contact: Dolores Davies, (858) 534-5994, or Anne Middleton, (858) 534-2777

MAY 12-13 CONFERENCE TO EXAMINE GROWING DEMAND FOR HIGH-SKILL FOREIGN WORKERS IN U.S. HIGH-TECH INDUSTRIES

The immigration of highly skilled foreign workers to the U.S. and Canada and the increasing demand for these professionals by America's high-tech industries will be the subject of an international conference May 12-13 at the University of California, San Diego.

The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, Development Consequences, and the Role of U.S. Universities, the Fourth Annual UCSD Social Science Research Conference, is sponsored by the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS). The two-day conference, which will be held at UCSD's Copley International Conference Center, is free and open to the public.

The conference, which will focus specifically on the immigration of foreign-born scientists, engineers and other professional high-tech workers to high-tech meccas like Silicon Valley and San Diego, will bring together the leading U.S., Canadian, German, Indian, and Mexican experts on high-skill immigration.

Among the issues to be examined are the evolution of U.S. immigration policy toward high-skilled foreign workers; economic consequences of high-skilled immigration for both labor-importing and labor-exporting countries (especially India, China, and Mexico); the role of U.S. universities in training foreign scientists, engineers, and faculty; and public policy implications for California and the U.S.

"Foreign-born scientists and engineers constitute a rapidly growing segment of the labor force of computer, software, biomedical, and telecommunications industries in San Diego, Silicon Valley and other U.S. regions with similar concentrations of high-tech industries," said Wayne Cornelius, an internationally renowned immigration scholar and the director of CCIS. "As the number of highly skilled foreign workers employed by these industries has increased, their presence - and the possible need for many more of them - has provoked heated debate in the U.S. Congress and executive branch. Recent estimates of the nationwide shortage of computer scientists, programmers, and systems analysts range from 269,000-346,000 at a time when the number of U.S.-born students embarking on high-technology-related careers is declining."

Since 1996, high-tech employers have been lobbying the Congress to secure major increases in the number of H-1b visas for temporary, highly skilled foreign workers. In 1998, Congress increased the annual cap on such visas from 65,000 to 115,000 but demand was so strong that the new quota was exhausted by June 1999. In the 2000 fiscal year, the allotment of 115,000 visas was exhausted by mid-March. Bills pending in Congress would raise the annual cap to 195,000 to 200,000 visas over a three-year period, or provide an unlimited number of H-1B visas, subject to various conditions.

Despite the fact that high-skill immigration is the only major immigration policy issue currently on the agenda for congressional action, there is a dearth of scholarly research on the subject, according to Cornelius. "Social science research on international migration has focused almost entirely on movements of low-skilled workers," said Cornelius. "Only in the last five years have any serious, book length studies of high-skill migration been published, and none of these studies has examined the phenomenon comparatively."

Special attention at the conference will be devoted to the case of Silicon Valley, in terms of the local demand foreign-born workers, the growing role of foreign-born scientists and engineers as entrepreneurs starting their own high-tech firms, and the role of low-skilled foreign labor in high-tech manufacturing. The implications of the Silicon Valley experience for the San Diego region will be discussed in detail.

The conference will also provide a forum for the perspectives of high-technology employers in San Diego who seek greater access to the worldwide pool of computer programmers, software designers, and engineers.

The full agenda for the conference is attached. The conference organizers, Cornelius and Professor Thomas Espenshade of Princeton University, will edit a volume of papers commissioned for the conference. Financial support for the conference has been provided by: the UCSD Division of Social Sciences, the UCSD Civic Collaborative, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research.

This is the inaugural conference for CCIS, established in 1999 as the West Coast's only academic center for the study of worldwide immigration patterns. CCIS, based at UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), differs from other immigration studies programs in the U.S. by pursuing a cross-regional rather than a U.S.-centered perspective. The Center's primary mission is to compare the U.S. immigration experience with that of other labor-importing countries, especially in Asia-Pacific and Western European regions.

# # #

CCIS

THE CENTER FOR

COMPARATIVE IMMIGRATION STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

La Jolla, California                  ______________________________________________________
presents

THE FOURTH ANNUAL UCSD SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH CONFERENCE

The International Migration of the Highly Skilled:
Demand, Supply, Development Consequences,
and the Role of U.S. Universities

Principal Organizers: Wayne A. Cornelius (University of California-San Diego) and Thomas J. Espenshade (Princeton University)

Site: Copley International Conference Center, University of California-San Diego

Date: May 12-13, 2000

With financial support from: The Division of Social Sciences, UCSD; the Pew Charitable Trusts, through the UCSD Civic Collaborative; the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD; and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research, UCSD.

Continental breakfast and welcome, 8:30-9:00 a.m.
(foyer of the Copley International Conference Center)
________________________________________________________________________________

Session I: Immigration Experiences and Policies of Receiving Countries (9:00-11:00 a.m.)

Chair: Wayne A. Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

Margaret L. Usdansky (Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, Princeton University) and Thomas J. Espenshade (Chair, Department of Sociology, Princeton University): "The H-1B Visa Debate in Historical Perspective: The Evolution of U.S. Policy Toward High-Skilled Foreign Workers"

B. Lindsay Lowell (Director of Research, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University): "Specialty Temporary Workers and the U.S. Labor Force"

Magnus Lofstrom (Economist, Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany): "Self-Employment and Earnings among High-Skilled Immigrants in the United States"

Monica Boyd (Mildred and Claude Pepper Professor of Sociology, Florida State University):
"Matching Workers to Work: The Case of Asian Immigrant Engineers in Canada"

Commentator: Demetrios G. Papademetriou (Senior Associate and Co-Director, International Migration Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
________________________________________________________________________________

Chair: Thomas J. Espenshade (Professor of Sociology, Princeton University)

AnnaLee Saxenian (Professor of Regional Development, University of California-Berkeley): "Silicon Valley’s New Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs"

Rafael G. Alarcón (Professor of Social Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico): "Migrants of the Information Age: Indian and Mexican Engineers and Scientists and Regional Development in Silicon Valley"

____________________________________________________________________________

Lunch, 12:00-1:00 p.m. (patio of the Copley International Conference Center)
________________________________________________________________________________

Chair: Wayne Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

A. Aneesh (Ph.D. candidate in sociology, Rutgers University): "Rethinking Migration: High-Skilled Labor Flows from India to the United States"

Paula Chakravartty (Assistant Professor of Communication, UCSD): "The Emigration of High-skilled Indian Workers to the United States: Impacts on the Indian Economy"

Mahmood Iqbal (Principal Research Associate, The Conference Board of Canada): "The Migration of High-Skilled Workers from Canada to the United States"

Christián Zlolniski (Professor of Social Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico): "Mexico as a Source of Low and High-Skill Labor for California’s High-Tech Industries"

Commentator:
Barry Naughton (Economist; Professor, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, UCSD), commenting with special reference to China as a sending country.
________________________________________________________________________________

DAY TWO (Saturday, May 13)

Session III: The Role of U.S. Universities in the Training of Foreign Scientists, Engineers, and University Faculty (9:00-10:00 a.m.)

Chair: Wayne Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

Robert Dynes (Chancellor, and Professor of Physics, UCSD)

Mark Thiemens (Dean, Division of Natural Sciences, and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSD)

*Michael Teitelbaum (Program Officer, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation)

_______________________________________________________________________________

Chair: Wayne Cornelius (Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD)

*Irwin Jacobs (Chairman, Qualcomm Inc.)

Kevin Carroll (Executive Director, American Electronics Association/San Diego Council)

Jonathan Quinn (Attorney at Law, La Jolla, Calif.)

________________________________________________________________________________

Chair: Thomas J. Espenshade (Professor of Sociology, Princeton University)

Rapporteur’s report on preceding sessions by
Marc Rosenblum (Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of New Orleans)

Responses by

Representative *David Dreier (R-Calif.) and Representative *Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), members of Congress who have introduced pending legislation on high-skilled immigration.
________________________________________________________________________________

Adjournment and lunch, 12:00 p.m. (patio of the Copley International Conference Center)
________________________________________________________________________________

*invited; to be confirmed

Wayne Cornelius, Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD              Tel. (858) 534-7852; fax: (858) 259-1728; e-mail: wcorneli@ucsd.edu

Marc Rosenblum, Acting Assistant Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies Tel. (858) 822-0526; e-mail: mrosenbl@weber.ucsd.edu