Thread: H-1B, L-1 used to send jobs offshore

From Business Week Online
August 6, 2007
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Skilled Workers Deserve True Visa Reform
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnf ... 656366.htm
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Skilled Workers Deserve True Visa Reform
The programs for bringing foreign workers to the U.S. are deeply flawed. They're driving down wages and discouraging Americans from pursuing high-tech careers

by Kim Berry

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) legislation that died in the Senate was no friend to American workers. One proposal for a new Z visa would have bestowed millions of U.S. construction, service, and manufacturing jobs to illegal immigrants without first offering these jobs to Americans. The CIR also would have opened the floodgates for employer-sponsored tech workers on temporary work visas, known as H-1Bs, and green cards.

A common myth is that "American competitiveness" and "technological innovation" depend on employer-sponsored green cards. It's an argument heard from many U.S. executives, particularly those at tech companies such as Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Motorola (MOT), and Oracle (ORCL).
Most Visas Go to Low-Skill Workers

In fact, in 2006 about one-third of green cards went to hourly workers with a median wage under $18 per hour, including thousands of low-skill workers earning $6 to $10 per hour. Green-card holders with salaries above $120,000 tend to be managers, attorneys, and medical professionals rather than tech workers. Only a small fraction of the 140,000 green cards go to workers engaged in technical innovations or are related to Americas global competitiveness—and even in those rare instances, American workers are generally available for the jobs.

By law, the Labor Secretary may approve green cards only when no qualified Americans are available. But as a notorious video from a seminar by law firm Cohen & Grigsby revealed this summer, some immigration attorneys try to stack the deck to disqualify every American applicant (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/21/07, "Outsourcing: How to Skirt the Law")

A fundamental flaw is that employers first fill positions with H-1B workers—with no requirement to consider qualified Americans—and then later run bogus ads to demonstrate that they can't fill permanent jobs with qualified Americans so they can secure green cards for foreign workers. Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) successfully amended the CIR to require companies to attempt to hire an American before a foreign worker with an H-1B could be hired. But industry lobbyists blocked their efforts to get a true prevailing wage requirement into the H-1B and L-1 visas.
Driving Down "Prevailing Wages"

H-1B proponents argue that H-1B workers are paid a "prevailing wage." However, most H-1B applications are at Level One, which is the median of the bottom 25% of American workers. The result is a "prevailing wage" $10,000 to $20,000 below what average Americans earn.

Tata Consultancy Services Vice-President Phiroz Vandrevala explained how bringing foreign workers into the U.S. on H-1B and L-1 visas gives them a competitive advantage. "Our wage per employee is 20% to 25% less than U.S. wages for a similar employee." These workers then return to India, taking U.S. jobs and technology with them.

If Congress intended to drive U.S. employers offshore, then the L-1 visa was a success. By setting up shop in low-wage countries—rather than hiring Americans—employers can rotate in an unlimited number of foreign workers to their U.S. facilities for up to one year while still paying them their foreign wage, which can be $20,000 or less. TCS alone has thousands of L-1 workers in the U.S. and has broken ground on a 5,000-person facility in Guadalajara, Mexico, which allows them to be closer to U.S. clients and to be in the same time zone. IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), Microsoft, and Oracle all rotate in hundreds of L-1 workers as well.
No Reason to Increase Cap

The downside of the failure of CIR is that industry lobbyists might slip in an increase in the cap on H-1B visas (currently at 85,000, including those with graduate degrees) through Congress without the protections that Durbin, Grassley, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had fought to get into CIR. For example, they could make the provision an amendment to an unrelated bill.

Bill Gates pleaded with Congress for "unlimited H-1B visas," with Oracle's Robert Hoffman and Google also asking for more. Microsoft, Oracle, and Google receive about 1000 résumés per day. All have their pick of top U.S. tech professionals, and they can easily meet their hiring objectives without asking for a single foreign worker visa.

While industry bemoans the H-1B "artificial cap" of 85,000, we deem H-1B to be an artificial market interference that drives down wages, displaces qualified Americans, facilitates offshoring, and removes the incentive for the next generation to enter the profession—as is evidenced by recent drops in computer science enrollment. India does not have an H-1B program. Instead, Indian companies set up intensive programs that train even liberal arts graduates and place them on U.S. software projects within a matter of months.

American tech workers ask Congress for true reform of the H-1B and L-1 visa programs: Give preference to exceptional, highest-skill foreign candidates, pay a true prevailing wage, end the use of these visa programs by both foreign and domestic outsourcing job shops, and restrict their use to those cases where the employer has demonstrated that no qualified Americans are available.

Kim Berry is the president of Programmers Guild, which advocates for the interests of U.S. technical and professional workers in the information-technology industry.


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It is outrageous how brazen the US and foreign companies are about displacing American workers and technology.

Spread the commentary!!!!

This effects me every day of my life!!! Being a high skilled tech worker here in America! I can't get a "good" job because of them!!! Cheap labor H-1B bastards and the companies that prefer them over Americas!!! And our country that supports and rewards them too!!!!