[jellicle]

Who should we believe, the "columnist who doesn't think it's obvious" that pulling in piles of low-paid immigrants depress local wages, or the capitalists who do think it's obvious? What possible reason would there be for hiring foreign workers if they WEREN'T depressing local wages?

And indeed, the studies confirm our intuition:

http://hothardware.com/News/Study-H1B-Visas-Lower-US-Program...

[trustfundbaby]

That article is from 2009, the study they link to doesn't actually have what it says its supposed to have in the abstract and the article that claims that

"Most foreign tech workers, particularly those from Asia, are in fact of only average talent. Moreover, they are hired for low-level jobs of limited responsibility, not positions that generate innovation. This is true both overall and in the key tech occupations, and most importantly, in the firms most stridently demanding that Congress admit more foreign workers."

is 404. I'd like to see some better data if you have it though.

[jellicle]

EPI has a study - includes discussion of salary, among other things:

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp356-foreign-students-best-b...

But in all of these cases, studies are of interest only to determine the magnitude of the effect. We have observed thousands if not millions of times throughout history that in a wide variety of occupations, a labor shortage drives up wages and conversely, a labor oversupply eliminates wage increases (though it tends not to actively decrease wages by much, since wages are sticky upward). Increasing labor supply to minimize wage growth is an extraordinarily uncontroversial thing, and only nincompoop contrarian columnists or paid shills would argue differently.

[trustfundbaby]

> Increasing labor supply to minimize wage growth is an extraordinarily uncontroversial thing

Probably not as uncontroversial as increasing labor supply to meet demand ;)