LOU DOBBS TONIGHT

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Aired May 30, 2007 - 18:00   ET

Much of the talk surrounding the Senate's illegal immigration bill is centering on low-skill jobs, but high-skill jobs are also at stake. As Bill Tucker now reports, that legislation could discourage college students from pursuing degrees in both mathematics and science.

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BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When it comes to science and math, the president and his administration like to talk a tough game.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We make sure our children are prepared for the jobs of the future and our country is more competitive by strengthening math and science skills.

TUCKER: But the president's talk doesn't match his walk. He's endorsed the grand immigration compromise in the Senate, a compromise that puts industry first, not students, by exploding the size of the H1-B visa program from 65,000 to 180,000.

Worker activists and organized labor call the move shameless.

DAVID COHEN, AFL-CIO: There is absolute inconsistency, a complete 180-degree contradiction, between the notion that we want to encourage our kids to go into these fields, and the notion that we're going to depress wages in these fields, and then ensure that the jobs are offshore.

TUCKER: Our colleges and universities are graduating more than 300,000 students a year with bachelors, masters or Ph.D.'s in computer or information science, math and engineering, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the Computing Research Association.

Three hundred thousand a year, yet the Department of Labor projects the average yearly job creation in those fields will only be 120,000 jobs.

There's no shortage of workers. There are a string of reports from the GAO and from independent studies showing that H1-B workers are paid less than American workers.

And researchers at the Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering surveyed 68 companies and found they weren't going offshore because of any shortages of engineers or deficiencies in American workers. It was, and is, all about cost savings.

TODD TOLLEFSON, WASHTECH: If the higher-paying wage jobs are either leaving the country or beginning -- being given to workers coming in from another country, how are we going to continue to fund our tax base?

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TUCKER: Leading to another very simple question: why would our children even consider the fields of math and science or engineering if their government is so committed to giving those jobs away, Lou, or even worse, suppressing the wages of those jobs that stay here?

DOBBS: Yes. It's frightening that we have provided so few incentives. I'm not talking about really direct incentives, not just the labor market, the job market, but direct incentives to encourage our young people to study mathematics and science, a critical national need.

Bill, thank you very much. Bill Tucker.