The Commerce Department has once again decided to distort data and ignore research. The Economic Policy Institute released a report Wednesday, Chamber of Commerce Distorts EPI Findings and Ignores Important Research, in direct response to a recent report by Commerce, Regaining America’s Competitive Advantage: Making America’s Immigration System Work.

The Commerce’s report utilized data from the Economic Policy Institute to analyze the impact of H-1B visa temporary workers on the jobs of American citizens. The Commerce Department decided to take the EPI’s findings, which were inconclusive and prompted the need for further research, and use them to finalize a matter that should be getting a fair amount of attention.

The EPI’s report, written by economist Heidi Shierholz, attacks the Commerce for manipulating data to reach a preconceived conclusion.

The author of the Commerce’s report, Stuart Anderson, quoted Dr. Shierholz findings to support his conclusion that “H-1B holders in specific are not harming the earnings of Americans.” This is blatantly false. Shierholz’s paper explicitly states that her findings do not support such a conclusion.

The Chamber of Commerce, with the American Council on International Personnel, distorted EPI’s findings to support the Chamber and ACIP’s hypothesis that the use of H-1B visas does not negatively impact the wages of native or foreign-born U.S. workers. Their “findings” can at best be described as negligent.

Shierholz wrote in her EPI paper: “We cannot, for example, answer the question of whether the H-1B temporary visa worker program is suppressing the wages of high tech workers, or whether undocumented farm workers are suppressing wages in agriculture. What we estimate is the effect of increases in the foreign-born labor supply on the relative wages of native-born workers overall and by education level, gender, and age.”

Anderson did cite this quote in full in the report, but in the same paragraph he entirely dismisses Shierholz’s description of her findings, by writing: “This caveat may reflect a desire not to quarrel with the view held by some in the labor movement that individuals on temporary visas must harm native workers (whether or not the facts support that proposition).”

The EPI condemns Anderson’s “conclusion,” saying that Shierholz’s findings and conclusions are not biased, but a reflection of inherent limitations of her methodology. Shierholz even warns in her report that the data would be inapplicable to specific subgroups, but the Commerce neglected to mention this.

“If a foreign-born worker is not a naturalized citizen, it is impossible to determine with our data whether he or she is a permanent resident, temporary visa-holder, refugee, or undocumented worker,” Shierholz writes. “This unfortunately limits the policy-relevance of the research presented here, since we are unable to determine the effect of various subgroups of foreign-born workers on native labor market outcomes. Better data are needed to further investigate the effect of different types of foreign-born workers, in particular unauthorized immigrants and temporary visa holders.”

The Chamber and ACIP misuse Shierholz’s research to promote a viewpoint that almost all Americans reject—American workers should receive no preference over foreign workers in America. So, according to the Chamber, foreigners should have the same access to employment opportunities as U.S. citizens. Is our government’s goal to completely give away America’s sovereignty?

“Since Americans cherish a merit-based selection process for hiring in the workplace, opponents of H-1B visa holders must argue skilled foreign nationals are paid less than their native counterparts,” Anderson writes. “Such an argument makes sense for political reasons: If opponents were to concede foreign nationals are working for comparable wages, then critics would be asking for political support to deny opportunity to other people based only on the desire to block competition. The “cheap labor” argument is tinged with nationalism. It asks Americans and their elected representatives to believe individuals born outside the United States have little of value to offer prospective employers except a willingness to work for less.”

So, the Commerce is saying that the only reason American workers should get preference for American jobs is if they’re paid more? The Commerce thinks foreign workers should have the same “opportunities” in the U.S. labor market as American workers. In the Chamber and ACIP’s view, corporations should be able to replace their U.S. workers whenever they please, and not just with immigrants who will eventually become part of American society and our communities, but with anyone, at anytime and anywhere in the world.

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