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nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Nicole Donawho
@nicoledonawho.bsky.social
1.6K followers 840 following 610 posts
Historian. #trekkie. 🐶❤️ Leroy & Moose. Posts do not represent my employer.
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nicoledonawho.bsky.social
So many thanks to @phdrachel.bsky.social for taking care of our doggos and bringing me new clothes while I was in the hospital this weekend ❤️ Discharged this afternoon and heading home!
November 23, 2025 at 8:01 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Hit one of my 2025 Bingo items!
21. Surprise Kendrick Lamar/Michael Buble Christmas album 22. NASA lets Pluto back in as a planet because we deserve it 23. Jack Schlossberg announces he’s running for office 24. The floor really becomes lava
November 12, 2025 at 10:53 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Got a hat for that
November 5, 2025 at 1:00 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Never been to Congo, but the Kenyan hills were absolutely stunning when we were there #hatm
November 3, 2025 at 1:09 AM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
@phdrachel.bsky.social it’s not just you. A screenshot from 12 years ago between me and the husband. Maybe 6months into dating? #hatm
October 27, 2025 at 1:10 AM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Introducing our newest short-term foster, Piper. 🥰🐶
White Westie terrier with brown rusted hair on her back half. Standing in a field of grass
October 19, 2025 at 8:07 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Y’all - I am begging you to stop reposting this kind of obvious rage bait that makes you look like my mother on Facebook.

If it doesn’t have a citation, find one. If there isn’t one, block it or call it out.
October 13, 2025 at 2:55 AM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
I know it's easy to get headline fatigue, so I wanted to give us all a little bit of context about where we are.

I pulled headlines from Bush Jr. and Obama's second terms for roughly the same week in October that we just had and placed them next to ours.
October 11, 2025 at 7:57 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Woman, I need you to be just so serious for once like omg
October 10, 2025 at 1:55 AM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
“foundational American principles (eg. support for law enforcement…)”
Sons of Liberty pouring tea down the throat of a harbor tax collector
October 4, 2025 at 11:38 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Time to go back to basics
Ask Jeeves circa 2003
September 30, 2025 at 11:31 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
Also having my favorite cookies for dessert because I found them at Costco for a STEAL #hatm
Tim tam cookies
September 28, 2025 at 11:53 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
I really need someone to write a book on evangelical material culture.
Evangecube showing probably someone exposed to a radioactive spider, maybe someone missing SPF - exposed to what is likely the unfiltered rays of the sun after global warming kills the remaining atmosphere. Or man separated by god.
September 28, 2025 at 12:13 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
I am DYING at Trump trying to say acetaminophen 🤣
September 22, 2025 at 10:44 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
6b:
Or even the conclusion, which clearly states "Our model is far too simple to allow for policy evaluations of alternatives to our current system of high-skill immigration."
Our model is far too simple to allow for policy evaluations of alternatives to our current system of high-skill immigration. However, we note that our model (and simple economic reasoning) suggests that high-skill immigration does tend to crowd out US workers to some extent. We suspect that allowing essentially unlimited immigration of high-skill workers by, for instance, awarding green cards to all foreign students attending US colleges and universities would have dramatic effects on the US labor market. Not all of these would be positive. In the end we want to emphasize the limitations of our work. While our focus is on how the influx of foreign workers affect the US, we recognize that US policy on high-skill immigration has profound effects on both labor-sending countries and on other countries that produce in the IT sector. Also, our analysis is constrained to the 1990s, whereas in the long run, US immigration policy is likely to affect the position of the US in the world economy. We leave exploration of these issues to future research.
September 20, 2025 at 9:55 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
6a:
If the WH had bothered to read past the first page of the 2017 article (Understanding the Economic Impact of the H-1B Program on the U.S.), they would have read this:
Overall, our results suggest that high-skill foreign workers contribute to the well-being of the typical US consumer, mainly through the assumption that these workers contribute to innova- tion at the same rate as US high-skill workers. Indeed, under our calibrations, accounting for foreign workers’ effect on innovation, the gains to consumers are an order of magnitude larger than gains excluding this effect. At some level, this is hardly surprising. While simple models of the impact of immigration on native welfare suggests the immigrant surplus is second order (Borjas, 1999), if the immigrants shift out the production possibility frontier, their effect will be first order. In our model, immigration also raises profits in the IT sector. While the magnitude of these gains depends on the markup in the IT sector, as long as there is a markup, which we consider safe to assume, high-skill immigrant labor raises IT sector profits. It is then no surprise that Bill Gates and other IT executives lobby in favor of increasing quotas for high-skill immigrants.
September 20, 2025 at 9:55 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
#6:
Their quote is from the abstract. It also leaves out "On the other hand, complements in production benefited substantially from immigration, and immigration also lowered prices and raised the output of IT goods by between 1.9% and 2.5%, thus benefiting consumers."
September 20, 2025 at 9:55 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
#5:
I'm not sure why they're being shy about the companies like this was not insanely public. Unless there are other companies running around doing the exact same thing, these are: Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, and (most likely) Salesforce (but could be Blue Origin).
Reports also indicate that many American tech companies have laid off their qualified and highly skilled American workers and simultaneously hired thousands of H-1B workers. One software company was approved for over 5,000 H-1B workers in FY 2025; around the same time, it announced a series of layoffs totaling more than 15,000 employees. Another IT firm was approved for nearly 1,700 H-1B workers in FY 2025; it announced it was laying off 2,400 American workers in Oregon in July. A third company has reduced its workforce by approximately 27,000 American workers since 2022, while being approved for over 25,000 H-1B workers since FY 2022. A fourth company reportedly eliminated 1,000 jobs in February; it was approved for over 1,100 H-1B workers for FY 2025. American IT workers have reported they were forced to train the foreign workers who were taking their jobs and to sign nondisclosure agreements about this indignity as a condition of receiving any form of severance. This suggests H-1B visas are not being used to fill occupational shortages or obtain highly skilled workers who are unavailable in the United States.
September 20, 2025 at 9:27 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
4a:
On its face though - we need to seriously criticize the claim that unemployment for *essentially* the same group of people is simultaneously at 6.1 to 7.5% and 3.02%.
Information technology (IT) firms in particular have prominently manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields. The share of IT workers in the H-1B program grew from 32 percent in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to an average of over 65 percent in the last 5 fiscal years. In addition, some of the most prolific H-1B employers are now consistently IT outsourcing companies. Using these H 1B-reliant IT outsourcing companies provides significant savings for employers: one study of tech workers showed a 36 percent discount for H-1B “entry-level” positions as compared to full-time, traditional workers. To take advantage of artificially low labor costs incentivized by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers. Further, the abuse of the H-1B visa program has made it even more challenging for college graduates trying to find IT jobs, allowing employers to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers. These effects of abuse of H-1B visas have coincided with increasing challenges in the labor market in which H-1B workers serve. According to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively — more than double the unemployment rates of recent biology and art history graduates. Recent data reveals that unemployment rates among workers in computer occupations jumped from an average of 1.98 percent in 2019 to 3.02 percent in 2025.
September 20, 2025 at 9:00 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
#4:
Shockingly, we know where the information in this claim comes from. A post from the Economic Innovation Group suggests that the data within the Federal Reserve Bank of NY's study could use some additional context:
agglomerations.substack.com/p/a-viral-ch...
Information technology (IT) firms in particular have prominently manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields. The share of IT workers in the H-1B program grew from 32 percent in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to an average of over 65 percent in the last 5 fiscal years. In addition, some of the most prolific H-1B employers are now consistently IT outsourcing companies. Using these H 1B-reliant IT outsourcing companies provides significant savings for employers: one study of tech workers showed a 36 percent discount for H-1B “entry-level” positions as compared to full-time, traditional workers. To take advantage of artificially low labor costs incentivized by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers. Further, the abuse of the H-1B visa program has made it even more challenging for college graduates trying to find IT jobs, allowing employers to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers. These effects of abuse of H-1B visas have coincided with increasing challenges in the labor market in which H-1B workers serve. According to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively — more than double the unemployment rates of recent biology and art history graduates. Recent data reveals that unemployment rates among workers in computer occupations jumped from an average of 1.98 percent in 2019 to 3.02 percent in 2025.
September 20, 2025 at 9:00 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
3a:
The American Immigration Council has a chart that can assist us here.

EPI's main argument is that employers are choosing Level 2 to undercut wages on H-1B jobs. However, the biggest jump between L2 and L3 is management. If the job doesn't supervise others, they are limited in moving beyond L2.
For each occupation, there are four possible wage levels: Level 1: entry level workers who perform routine tasks and receive close supervision. Level 2: qualified workers who perform moderately complex tasks and exercise limited independent judgement. Level 3: experienced workers who exercise judgement and have coordination and supervisory authority. Level 4: fully competent workers who perform independent evaluation, selection, modification, application of standard procedures and techniques, and generally have management or supervisory responsibilities. The four wage levels are created by taking the difference between the two levels available through OES results, dividing by three, taking that dividend and then adding it to the first (lowest) level to create level two, and taking that same dividend and then subtracting it from the fourth (highest) level to create level three. In other words: Level 1: the lowest approximately 20% of all wages for that occupation. Level 2: the difference between Level 1 and Level 4 divided by three plus Level 1. Level 3: the difference between Level 1 and Level 4 divided by three and subtracted from Level 4; or the mean wage for the occupation, based on all of the wage information collected from wage surveys. Level 4: the highest approximately 20% of all wages for that occupation.
September 20, 2025 at 8:50 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
#3: takes us to the Economic Policy Institute (linked below), where the argument is that the DOL is purposefully allowing employers to undercut the market wage using wage levels.
www.epi.org/publication/...

That's not how wage levels work.
Information technology (IT) firms in particular have prominently manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields. The share of IT workers in the H-1B program grew from 32 percent in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to an average of over 65 percent in the last 5 fiscal years. In addition, some of the most prolific H-1B employers are now consistently IT outsourcing companies. Using these H 1B-reliant IT outsourcing companies provides significant savings for employers: one study of tech workers showed a 36 percent discount for H-1B “entry-level” positions as compared to full-time, traditional workers. To take advantage of artificially low labor costs incentivized by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers. Further, the abuse of the H-1B visa program has made it even more challenging for college graduates trying to find IT jobs, allowing employers to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers. These effects of abuse of H-1B visas have coincided with increasing challenges in the labor market in which H-1B workers serve. According to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively — more than double the unemployment rates of recent biology and art history graduates. Recent data reveals that unemployment rates among workers in computer occupations jumped from an average of 1.98 percent in 2019 to 3.02 percent in 2025.
September 20, 2025 at 8:50 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
#2:
This information comes from the annual Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Workers reports (available from USCIS). In the FY04 report, we see the 32% number in the WH proclamation. If they'd read past the first page, they'd have found that the number for computer-related occupations was over 38%.
Information technology (IT) firms in particular have prominently manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields. The share of IT workers in the H-1B program grew from 32 percent in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to an average of over 65 percent in the last 5 fiscal years. In addition, some of the most prolific H-1B employers are now consistently IT outsourcing companies. Using these H 1B-reliant IT outsourcing companies provides significant savings for employers: one study of tech workers showed a 36 percent discount for H-1B “entry-level” positions as compared to full-time, traditional workers. To take advantage of artificially low labor costs incentivized by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers. Highlights • The number of petitions filed increased 35% from 231,030 in fiscal year 2003 to 312,200 in fiscal year 2004. • The number of petitions approved increased 32% from 217,340 in fiscal year 2003 to 287,418 in fiscal year 2004. • Approximately 43 percent of all petitions approved in fiscal year 2004 were for workers born in India. • Sixty-six percent of petitions approved in fiscal year 2004 were for workers between the ages of 25 and 34. • Forty-nine percent of petitions approved in fiscal year 2004 were for workers with a bachelor’s degree. Thirty-four percent had a master’s degree, eleven percent had a doctorate and five percent were for workers with a professional degree. • Forty-four percent of petitions approved in fiscal year 2004 were for workers in computer-related occupations. • The median salary rose slightly from $52,000 in fiscal year 2003 to $53,000 in fiscal year 2004. Chart showing that Computer related occupations had a growth of H1B Petition approvals from 38.5% in FY 2003 to 44.5% in 2004
September 20, 2025 at 8:46 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
1d -
"Because immigrant STEM workers tend to possess skills that complement those of their U.S.-born co-workers, the presence of immigrants in the workplace increases the productivity (and therefore the wages) of all workers. Moreover, innovation by immigrant workers increases the revenue of the firms in which they work, which enables employers to hire more workers."
September 20, 2025 at 8:21 PM
nicoledonawho.bsky.social
1c -
According to projections made in 2022 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States will need approximately one million more STEM workers in 2030 than it did in 2020. This does not include the number of STEM workers that will be needed to replace retiring workers or workers who leave the field for other reasons. To meet this growing demand, the United States will need to increase the number of students who receive undergraduate and graduate STEM degrees. But while increasing the number of U.S.-born workers in STEM fields is critical, demographic trends indicate that foreign-born STEM students and workers are likely to be needed if the United States is to be prepared for future labor demands and continue to excel globally.
September 20, 2025 at 8:21 PM