Engineer shortage in the USA

Rules and laws are made for a reason by democratic elected government (in the USA at least) and advising anybody to ignore laws of your country can never be a good idea.

What would you do when the plan backfires?

Importing cheap labour from somewhere usually take away from locals and cannot be seen as fair to the immigrant either.

The decisions should only be overruled in a lawful manner.

It would also be advisable to compare educational standards first.

What do you say to the non-American people waiting to get into this country legally when you shove someone else to the front of the line?

I do not see or feel that it is wrong for any foreign national to come to the USA to seek work no matter what the employment. I do though think it should be done legally. Ignoring the law just because these people are highly educated is discrimination. I do not think that it is very hard for any company to hire and sponsor a foreign national to fill a position with in their company. I does sadden me to think that these people would come to the USA illegally leaving behind people that need their specialized fields mostly likely more than we do. These are people that contributed to their education.

when will it stop,

And why stop at engineers, migrant farm help actually has always played a key role in this country's economy, When I was growing up back in the sixty's. Why had an orchard and had over 100 migrant help for harvesting. When the sheriff would stop in, there would only be about 6 migrants in the orchard the rest high tailed it out only to return a few minutes after the sheriff left. We all knew it, us, the sheriff, the migrant workers, county and state officials. but they did not press it.

That was then, and today things are different. working or making a living is not the only reason that some people want to come over illegally.

Due to security, things are set up to control imigrations.

Hi phoenix911

Why stop engineers? The current valid law of the country says it is not permissible.

The only only way is if the law changes. Therefore it should be challenged.

No law is supposed to be absurd or unfairly restrictive to its subjects.

I was actually making a rhetorical statement with an example, the law was bent, broke, overlooked in the sixties by all, because the migrates was a variable input the the areas economy.

If they were caught, they would be sent back, but they where not pursued.

it's one of those rather hypocritical situations having laws and enforcing it when it does not effect reelections to the officials. (or a burden to the orchid grower to find help else where) which we went through.

Don't even think about it.

Osama bin Laden is a civil engineer by training, remember?

Hendrick and others: Immigration laws are largely ignored in the USA today. Many other laws are also ignored. Pornography and obscenity in the entertainment industry is foisted off on Americans as "artistic expression." Marijuana and cocaine have become recreational items and are cheaply and easily available everywhere in the USA. The rules and laws made by past generations apparently do not apply to today's USA population.

The Mexico government is dumping poor people into the USA so they will send large sums of money back to Mexico. If Mexico began losing engineers and other educated persons to the USA, they would build a wall on the border to keep their people in Mexico, just as the East Germans did at Berlin and Cuba tries to do in their country.

The USA gets cheap slave labor from illegal Mexican immigrants, but it may take years for a Mexican engineer to get permission to enter the USA for employment. I sponsored an engineer from Europe. He got a job two days after he arrived making more money than I was. A qualified Mexican engineer could do the same.

The purpose of my proposal is to get more from Mexico than cheaper farm products. I'd like to see engineers from Mexico and other countries receive expedited entry into the USA.

Hi wlhaynes

If law is ignored by every one it is absurd and it should be removed. Somebody must start. How to do it in the USA I would not know.

In SA a comment, included in another action, against a badly worded section in an act instigated an investigation and eventually a change. (Maybe being 3rd world is better than a know it all 1st world government)

As for the fairness. (Maybe I should not accuse the USA of fairness) Mexico (the poor) spent money on the education of engineers which they desperately needs. Only to have them lured away by the (rich, greedy, stingy) USA.

About illegal farm workers: In SA farmers on the border also employ illegal immigrants. It makes good economical sense (even with paying the occasional fine). But the same farmers complain the hardest when their security is at stake.

About American trained engineers: We have at least one here with an American degree which we cannot use. Don't you want him back?

I think the coming erections is the ideal opportunity of electing the right leaders. Make it an political issue.

1469 posts and 7 good answers, some guru. The fact that a law is ignored is not the deciding factor in determining its value to the individual. Lets get something straight Democratic Law is supposed to protect the individual citizens rights. Not society as a whole, that's called Socialism. The Magna Carta was enacted to limit the power of the King not the power of the individual citizen. Napoleonic law is about limiting the governments ability to usurp the rights of the citizens. And since when is South Afrika a third world country? Please note the use of the word 'citizen' this does not include illegal aliens who are criminals and should be treated as such.

If there is a conflict of rights between citizens fixed rules or law known to all citizens are required.

A person exceeding the speed limit in a vehicle without brakes may claim that it is his right to ignore the law, but he endangers the right to life of other citizens and therefore must be stopped.

Society is a collection of individuals therefore the right of a individual are always subject to the rights of society.

Maybe the SA model of doing things can serve as an example.

New law is published as a draft with an invitation for any citizen to comment on it. All the comments received are the considered and a second draft is published for comments. (I received a second draft today which do include some of my proposals) The second set of comments are then considered and you may be asked to put your case before a portfolio committee of parliament. This makes for better law.

I am from a minority group and do not support the majority party but cannot condemn all their efforts and policy's either.

I am in favour of the rule of law and still think the current law must apply with lawful exceptions where applicable.

I've been reading articles, journals and surveys and a lot of them are saying that the present crop of experienced engineers are nearing retirement age. It also says that there are either not enough replacements for them or the replacements are not good enough. These are U.S. publications, mind you.

So what is a company to do? His veteran engineers will be leaving in a few years and there are not enough competent people to take over. He'll be forced to either get them from somewhere else or transfer the factory to another country. Either way, the U.S. loses.

One article says that there are more college age kids queuing up to audition for American Idol than enrolling in engineering courses. Hey, getting up in front of thousands of screaming fans is better than getting your hands dirty in a noisy boiler room, right?

It's different in the Philippines. There are too many engineers here! It's sad to find an engineering graduate packing products into cartons on an eight hour shift, using not one iota of his schooling in performing his job. It's no wonder that hundreds of thousands of engineers are working overseas instead of here in their own country.

Anyone for the importation of engineers or other upper professionals into the country whether legally or illegally is an idiot. In one hospital that my mother works at there are several foreign doctors. Every one of them are legal residents of their respective countries and do not pay taxes to our country. We figured up that each one of the doctors is holding back about 250000 per year from our tax system, and that is just for the ones here legally. There are so many other reasons not to have imported workers here in the US.

1. Lowering the wages of professionals in the US

2. Withholding taxes from federal and local governments.

3. Lowering the standards of our US professionals

If American engineers are paid their worth you may not have this problem Because outsourced labour is cheap American establishments are hiring them left right and center and killing a large reservoir of American engineers.&de motivating them The only answer is American employers should think of their own country instead of focusing on their stack value and their personal profits.

crm

There is no shortage of engineers in the US.

What part of ILLEGAL don't you get? When it comes to the border it should be Our Ball, Our Rules!

I think that a long term approach is needed to address the growing shortage of engineers in this country. Why not improve the education system in the US so that more students who graduate have high math and science skills and then encourage them to go into the engineering fields? Over the past several decades our education system has been cranking out students who are being less and less educated (the term educated was chosen intentionaly). Anyone remember when we put someone on the moon and all of a sudden more kids wanted to become an aeronautical engineer? We as a country need to inspire kids to pursue engineering - otherwise our heavy industries will suffer (as they are now).

We should not have to be importing engineers let alone encouraging illegal ones.

I have never understood why some people think that the United States is obligated to have porous borders. Look at the way Mexico controls its Southern border.

The better answer to the illegal imigration problem is to improve opportunity and the standard of living in Mexico so they will no longer need to come here and drag our standard of living down. The argument used that they are doing jobs Americans won't do is specous. The correct statement would be that they are doing jobs Americans won't do AT THAT PRICE.

We need to be able to control our borders both in terms of who and how many people enter our country. During the early days when Ellis Island saw thousands and thousands of people entering the country, not everyone was allowed into the country. People with respritory and other diseases were turned away.

Travis

I have seen the shortage of engineers and especially qualified engineers first hand. The education system has failed miserably. If we do not get QUALITY technical people out of the education system soon we will be a third world nation. The "No Child Left Behind " idea does not work. It has dropped the bar down so low that there is no incentive for achievement in academics. I believe we should aware those who excel in acedemics. Those who do not excel pass out McDonald's name tags and get on with it. Because that's the life they are choosing.

I know this may sound obsurd to many of you but why not start hiring black and native american engineers. I am a graduate of Annapolis Naval Academy, when I returned to civilian life I was told by a very prominant builder here in my city "they don't hire blacks to do a white mans job".

maybe they need to rethink that. My primary goal was to work for General Motors as an engineer, simply because I kept seeing so many things wrong with thier products however again I was told "we don't hire blacks".

I went into law and belive me when the people see me comming down at the courthouse they know sombody is going to loose ther azz because of discrimination.

Hello everyone,

I've been working large EPC Canadian engineering firms (which certainly follow their US counterparts in any way) for over 12 years and I think I could bring a few interesting observations:

1. Many local engineering graduates (that supposedly are to replace the retiring 'baby-boomer' generation of engineers) find their first work assignments so awfully boring that they go back to school for Project Management Programs. Nowadays, if you what to see more young and ambitious non-immigrant engineers, go to sales, marketing, public relations, procurement, project management and project controls but not to design engineering.

2. Immigrant-engineers (when they are coming to a project one by one and when they originated from many different countries) perfectly blend into the project organization and work well on all positions from junior to senior, from middle to top management. However, when one particular nationality (doesn't matter which one) becomes an overwhelming majority at all levels of the organization, the working environment may worsen and the quality of work drop significantly or no actual work may be done for a year until the clients get really upset.

3. Outsourcing parts of the project or detailed engineering within 'low-tech' disciplines (piping, civil/structural or electrical) indeed saves tonnes of money on the fist glance but may lead to disastrous consequences: engineering leads and checkers here cannot control every step of engineering design done at the East-Indian offices and any mishap due to inadequate communication, misunderstanding or shear negligence may be overlooked. So far, there was no structural collapses or electrical failures because traditionally designs are overly conservative (Equipment is the main cost so EPC clients don't mind it).

I'm sorry to draw such a gloomy picture, but apparently North-American engineering is at the brink of a significant shift; it is hard to foresee negative and positive trends and even harder to foresee the outcome in a decade or two.

Len, Calgary, AB

OK, since you asked:

1. If there is a need for the immigration laws to be changed, then change them - legally - but do not become a scofflaw merely because it is convenient for you. What if I decided you should be shot? Would you support my right to not obey the laws that prohibit that?

2. If there is a shortage of engineers (or scientists, educators, etc.) then train more of them. Our education system has gotten short shrift of late by the 'all children left behind' crowd in the current administration, such that this may be nearly impossible to correct in the next generation of graduates, but here's the cold, hard truth: our kids will one day be responsible for running things around here, and we OWE it to them (and ourselves) to ensure they are capable of doing the job.

3. We have done ourselves a great disservice by thinking we do not need to have self-sufficiency in the industrial sector. Part of the reason we lack engineers is because we lack the kinds of industry that need them. I do not say this from a jingoistic perspective - I consider myself a citizen of the planet - but so long as we have political subdivisions that drive competitiveness, we need to protect our vested interests, whatever they may be.

4. The above statements should apply (with the exception of certain specific time-coordinated details) to any country in all of the world. Next speaker, please...

As someone with two MS degrees (chemistry and physics) I find it interesting to hear about the terrible shortage of trained people we have. This seems to last until I have to look for a job, suddenly I am not much of a hot prospect after all. Where are all the job openings we are so short of people to fill? Maybe we need more technical people but the employers just won't pay them.

I can understand the delima.

Kind of how the state of the economy is defined.

When your neighbor is unemployed, we have a down turn in the economy. But when I'm unemployed we have a depression.

With you having (2) advanced degrees, I had a freind that had one in biology and one in chemistry. He looked for quite some time.............even willing to work at half the salary. The response was he was over qualified.

Getting a degree can actually be the easy part....landing a job to use those skills can be difficult.

I find it interesting to hear about the terrible shortage of trained people we have. This seems to last until I have to look for a job ...

Good point. Judging from my experiences while trying to find an industrial chemistry job (with my organic chemistry M.S. degree), we certainly don't seem to have a shortage of chemists in the U.S.!

Well, Illegal is just what it says. Having been in the military, I know firsthand that there are foreign nationals in the military that don't pay taxes. They stay in long enough to retire then return to their native land and live like the rich on that kind of money (roughly $1500 a month). Do they contribute? Yes and no. They perform a service and serve this country but at the same time exploit it. I also have firsthand knowledge of the border as my brother is a border patrol agent. The politicians play party to the lobbyists who get them to vote against things that are for the good of the people/country and that the greedy executives want (read cheap labor). I agree the current crop of candidates, in my opinion, aren't any better than the previous 2 or 3 crops. I guess we vote for who we think is the lesser of evils during elections. I feel very strongly against ILLEGAL immigration and giving them amnesty. I do think the government needs to update the immigration laws to take care of the needs of our society, but until then, ILLEGAL is ILLEGAL. I don't see upper executives taking a pay cut. They make millions and run the companies bankrupt or near that, then get the government to bail them out. The education system? How can the average American afford to send their kids to college? How about a revamp of the way grants or education benefits are doled out? First hand experience, one of my old bosses wife was getting $28K a year from the government to go to school and work on her masters degree while he's pulling in $60K plus a year, not to mention her dad is a doctor pulling in over $600K a year. Is that fair to a poorer individual that wants to but can't afford to further his education but "doesn't know how to work the system"? Not to mention the cost of education. Half of what you take in school has no bearing on the degree you are pursuing. Why have to take humanities when pursuing engineering? Until we get politicians in Washington that have the interests of this country and the people instead of those with special interests and "friends" in high places in industry, I doubt much will change.

"...Half of what you take in school has no bearing on the degree you are pursuing. Why have to take humanities when pursuing engineering?..."

I can concur with everything you say except this one brief statement. Why? Because it makes you a more well-rounded person. Because you learn things that you do not know you need to know until much later on in your life/career. And then you find that it is extremely beneficial to have that tool in your toolbox, even though it sat unused for years. Hopefully it will not have grown too rusty to use. Some of the things you can gain from outside your field of interest include critical thinking, tolerance, and a multi-disciplinary approach to your field of interest. And finally, because no knowledge is totally useless. Maybe it will lead to enhanced self-worth, personal happiness, a hobby, or an enjoyment of opera you never elsewise would have known you could appreciate. Don't limit yourself needlessly! And enjoy life to its fullest extent...

Good point, sediments also.

I would like to add ethics that list, and being more well rounded you have more of an open mind to solve problems