Evidently not, as foreign doctors aren't allowed to immigrate to the US and practice medicine without first going through a costly and onerous relicensing program. As it stands, all foreign doctors, even from first-world nations with statistically better health outcomes than the US like Germany or Japan are all deemed unqualified to practice medicine in the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog...
The real question is why programmers should be singled out for this kind of treatment when US doctors are the highest paid in the world, price-per-procedure is the highest in the world, and medical bills remain the number one cause of bankruptcy.
Further, a global workforce is only one component of free trade. What about a global retail market? Did you know that there is presently a federal law barring the re-importation of prescription drugs from nations where they're sold for pennies on the dollar? That form of free trade is bad for the bottom line of big corporations, so it is illegal.
However, it is quite evident that professionals are _against_ immigration of other professionals because that directly threatens their professional stability.
So, we know immigration, on the whole is good. We know that immigration from poor countries allows those people to better their lives -at the expense of undereducated (blue collar) locals. But professionals don't quite care, actually, we prefer this since it makes products and services cheaper for us. But once the immigration threatens our lifestyles, then on, no, immigration is bad it drives down wages, it threatens quality of work, it allows exploitation and so on. When push comes to shove, we're all protectionists of varying degrees.
You don't have any justification for making programming a license-based profession. You wouldn't want that even if you are an American citizen. It makes things significantly harder and more arbitrary when you have licensing requirements (just look at how hard each of USMLE, CPA, bar, CFA, etc. are, even for US citizens). Engineers, for example, can be licensed, but apart from public contracts in civil, mechanical, or electrical engineering, few employers care if you are a 'P.E.'
The last few years, I've lived and worked in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Wilmington. All are shadows of their former shells, hollowed out by deindustrialization. What little remains is threatened by automation. Proponents of technology, and of globalization in capital and labor tell me that it will lead to greater prosperity for everyone. New, better jobs will replace the ones that are lost. We're waiting.
We can argue if we think there should be 7 billion people who consume goods at the same rate as Americans, Japanese and Europeans, but so long as we accept an integrated world where we want emigration and immigration and further neo liberal economics, this is the progression we are looking at.
When people bemoan the hollowing out of industries while at the same time saying they support peoples in the third world, something is not right. They are lamenting the loss of their jobs but those jobs are being transferred to second and third world economies helping to build them.
What do we do about the people who aren't able to retool for more skilled jobs? It's an open question. Some day something will have to give. Either we figure out a way to manage that or society will suffer the consequences of inattention.
Tell that to the national governments that make it difficult for me, as an American, to move to their countries. We've got tons of treaties that require free movement of goods and capital but, very interestingly, I think, few that deal with the movement of people (labor) and almost none that make it an easy process (I realize there are zones where this is possible, such as in the EU, I'm speaking as an American).
> Is the implicit argument we should have a different system to allow a greater supply of tech immigrants but with a more flexible visa, maybe even grant residency status thus eliminating this kind of soft exploitation?
I, personally, would prefer a system of multi-lateral "free labor" agreements. If the US wants to let in workers from country A, then those workers should be 100% free to come to the US and work, no strings attached, no industry preferences, nothing. BUT, the same should also be true for US workers who wish to go to country A, otherwise, no deal.
This would create a truly more fluid workforce and, unlike with H1B, would benefit everyone instead of a few big companies and the handful of workers they bring in each year (while hurting everyone else).
I would love it if the US could reciprocate :(
You can, however, become a freelancer. Not the same, but close enough. If this were not just US->NL but US<->NL, that would be swell.
Did you read the article? Here are the subtitles from the article and the first line of the referenced article: - Lower wages - H-1B is not a bridge to permanent immigration - H-1B is not about skills or skills gap
"Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India."
In other words, would we care if Bangladeshis or Siberian Russians displaced Walmart, or farm workers? Probably not. We'd say, yay, more and cheaper products... but as soon as that workforce threatens tech --uh-oh, no, we can't have that. Immigration bad.
Is that suspect? I'm neither for nor against immigration in principle: I'm just seeking to optimize outcomes for me and my in-group.
We have a bias against people acting in their own interests when they have a public trust to act for the good of all. An ethical governor would ignore the fact that his family lives in a certain town when trying to decide where to put the new state prison.
But citizens of a country are under no such trust. It may not make Mexicans particularly happy that we have a giant fence down south, but this is not a betrayal. Foreign nationals are fellow human beings and it's great if I can help them, but I'm not under obligation to do so at the cost of my own or my neighbor's economic well-being.
Lots of people also don't buy the cheapest meat, cheapest coffee, cheapest clothing, etc.
The process for an internal, expedited H1b transfer is significantly simpler than an H1b from scratch.
So open the borders and let anyone who wants to come in come in and work any job they want - let them vote as well.
Until that happens, I have a problem with this.
You either immigration for every profession or non at all. Not screwing one profession in particular.
People seem to have a problem with H1Bs, but people are happy to enjoy the benefits of cheap fruit and vegetables possible with labor of (illegal) immigrants --farmers, even descendants of immigrants oppose amnesty because that would result in the help actually getting legal jobs which pay more. But here, in the case of H1Bs, people seem to have a strong dislike for them. They are just people looking for jobs like anyone else.
Is the implicit argument we should have a different system to allow a greater supply of tech immigrants but with a more flexible visa, maybe even grant residency status thus eliminating this kind of soft exploitation?