Thread: H-1B Visas Really Are Inherently Harmful -- Here's Why

Well, well, well....who can believe that congress is willing to sell out Americans for votes? It's not just the Obamanation that has recently taken hold of the highest office in the land, but a continuation of the same old same old.

H-1B Visas Really Are Inherently Harmful -- Here's Why


By Norm Matloff, Monday, February 23, 2009, 11:35 AM
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusab ... s-why.html

Last week a New Jersey employer was indicted on charges of H-1B fraud. However, I almost never report on such incidents, as I regard them as irrelevant to the big H-1B picture. The central problems of H-1B and employment-based (EB) green cards involve fully legal abuse via loopholes in the law, as opposed to violations of the law, and the large household-name firms are just as culpable as the "bodyshops." Indeed, the industry lobbyists love it when the feds crack down on violators of H-1B law, as it gives them a chance to distract Congress and the press from the real issues (the loopholes), and to distract attention away from the big-name firms. See a prior blog for an example of this.

The Sanders/Grassley amendment to the economic stimulus bill survived conference committee. Recall that the amendment extends to recipients of TARP bailout money the H-1B hiring restrictions that normally apply only to H-1B dependent employers. As I explained in previous posts, especially this one, the restrictions are rather mild. And they too have loopholes. Nevertheless, they will have some practical impact, and much more importantly, have major symbolic impact, as they are tacit admission by Congress that the H-1B visa program is fundamentally a Bad Thing.

In the past, Congress' message--and I mean the word "message" literally, in the form of the politicians' public statements and letters to constituents--is that H-1B is basically a Good Thing, remedying tech labor shortages and enabling the import of "the best and the brightest" from around the world. Members of Congress continued to make such statements in spite of the facts that:
Congress' own study, commissioned as part of the 1998 legislation that nearly doubled the yearly H-1B cap, found that it could not confirm the industry's claim of a shortage studies. None of the other studies then and since, including that of the Dept. of Commerce (but excluding industry-sponsored studies), found a shortage either.
Two congressionally-commissioned reports, as well as various academic studies, found that use of H-1Bs as cheap labor is commonplace. The GAO report also made the point that loopholes make it fully legal to pay H-1Bs less than comparable Americans.
It has been shown quantitatively in several different ways that only a small percentage of the H-1Bs are in the "best and brightest" league.
The YouTube video, made by a prominent law firm to show its prominent clients (i.e. mainstream firms rather than bodyshops) how to circumvent the EB green card law requiring employers to recruit Americans before sponsoring a foreign worker for a green card, was widely circulated by members of Congress.
Yet, Congress has continued to ignore the mountain of information against H-1B and EB green cards, and continued to discuss those programs as Good Things. The one small concession they've made has been to demonize the bodyshops. Those firms present an easy target, especially since they tend to be owned by Indian-Americans and Indian parent companies (Congress is not above appealing to xenophobia, as Rep. Zoe Lofgren unwittingly demonstrated in a House hearing), and as I said, such demonization serves the purpose of distracting attention from the big mainstream U.S. firms that make the big campaign contributions to both major parties.

Recall that when Congress enacted another H-1B increase in 2000, Sen. Robert Bennett remarked, "Once it's clear (the visa bill) is going to get through, everybody signs up so nobody can be in the position of being accused of being against high tech. There were, in fact, a whole lot of folks against it, but because they are tapping the high-tech community for campaign contributions, they don't want to admit that in public," and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chair, Rep. Tom Davis, said, "This is not a popular bill with the public. It's popular with the CEOs...This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money."

So, in light of Congress' past refusal to acknowledge the fundamental statutory bankruptcy of H-1B and their steadfast protection of their patrons in the tech industry and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, their passage of the Sanders/Grassley amendment is quite remarkable. Again, this is not because the tangible impact will be huge, but because it implicitly acknowledges that H-1B is a Bad Thing used for Bad Purposes by mainstream firms (in this case, the big financial institutions being bailed out by TARP). It places H-1B on par with exorbitant salaries made by TARP-recipient CEOs and cheap foreign steel, both also under discussion now. Again, the CEO salary issue has never bothered me, but my point is that by approving the Grassley/Sanders amendment, Congress is finally recognizing H-1B for what it is, an awful program abused by almost everyone.

There is a BusinessWeek article on the amendment. I have comments on a couple of passages:
The amendment falls short of preventing large banks from using H-1Bs brought into the U.S. by outsourcing firms like India-based Infosys (INFY), Wipro (WIT), and Tata (TCS.NS), which are among the top recipients of petitions for the H-1B visa program. In other words, a bank could still legally force a laid-off American employee to train a replacement worker who is on an H-1B visa on an outsourcing firm's payroll.
These are some of the large bodyshops. As I mentioned last week, I am currently preparing a major study on the bodyshops. This is a bit ironic, as I believe too much of the H-1B discussion centers on them, when in fact the mainstream firms are just as culpable, but for that very reason I feel the need to go into the issue in depth.

For now, though, I wish to point out that most bodyshops are officially deemed to be H-1B dependent, and one of the restrictions on such employers is that they are not allowed to displace U.S. workers even at client firms, i.e. firms to which the bodyshops rent out their "bodies." As usual, there are a number of loopholes here, but the situation is not quite as stark as the reporter writes above.

Also, the article notes:
Rising unemployment is leading to more scrutiny of the H-1B visa program and its effects...
True, but I wish to point out again that unemployment rates do not tell the real story in the tech field, for two reasons. First, those rates don't count the people who have been driven out of the field by H-1Bs; as Gene Nelson famously put it, the former software engineer now working as a security guard counts in BLS data as an employed security guard, not as an unemployed software engineer." Second, a very substantial fraction of techies work as independent contractors; H-1Bs cause their business to go down, yet they (the contractors) don't count as unemployed either.

Norm Matloff is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Davis. He writes an e-newsletter on the H-1B work visa, offshoring and related issues. We repost his writings here with his permission. To directly subscribe to his e-newsletter, contact him at matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu.

June 28, 2009, 8:25PM EST

An Academic's Labor Helps Fight H-1B Visas

Norm Matloff, a computer science professor with a Chinese-born wife, says the U.S. skilled-immigrant visa system exploits workers everywhere

By Moira Herbst

Not many computer science professors are activists on immigration policy. But Norm Matloff of the University of California, Davis wears both hats. He has been a vocal critic of the H-1B visa program for skilled immigrants since the mid-1990s, and now maintains a Web page and e-mail listserv discussing offshoring and the H-1B visa program, which he calls a "sham." He says his motivation is to protect and preserve tech job opportunities for the students he teaches.

"I have no personal stake in any of this," says Matloff, who is 60. "If the H-1B program were disbanded tomorrow, my personal well-being would not improve one iota. [But] when I see something that is not right and about which I know something, I tend to speak out. On this issue, I know where the bodies are buried."

The H-1B visa program inspires heated debate, especially online. The program is controversial for a number of reasons. Some critics say the program allows U.S. companies to import cheaper labor, dampening wages and displacing U.S. workers. Others say it facilitates outsourcing, as it allows Indian-born tech workers to train in the U.S. and then return home and perform the work there. Still others point to mounting evidence of fraud in the program and a lack of government oversight.

"De Facto Indentured Servants"
Matloff stresses that the problem is not fraud or crime but the H-1B visa law itself. He says that the law as currently written allows H-1B visa holders to receive below-market wages. The policy also allows for age discrimination as older U.S. tech workers are displaced by a younger workforce from abroad. "Though the industry lobbyists portray it as a remedy for labor shortages and as a means of hiring 'the best and the brightest' from around the world, the visa is used to access workers that cost less and are de facto indentured servants," Matloff writes on his blog.

Matloff has written extensively about the effects of globalization and offshoring on U.S. IT workers and has been quoted on the issue in most major media outlets. He has also testified before Congress as an expert on the work visa law. Some of his most influential academic work includes a fall 2003 article in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform on the H-1B work visa called "On the Need for Reform of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations." A 2006 article that linked H-1B visas to age discrimination in the computer industry was published by the California Labor & Employment Law Review.

As are most advocates on immigration issues, Matloff is a controversial figure. He's admired by supporters—including activists on H-1B visa issues—but criticized by other academics who don't share his views and who chafe at his often-abrasive rhetorical style. Critics also suggest there could be a xenophobic undertone implicit in his critique of the H-1B visa program. Matloff posts opinionated blog entries on the Web site of Numbers USA, a group calling for lower levels of immigration. His writing prompted one tech worker, Arthur Hu of Bothell, Wash., to create a Web page criticizing Matloff, whom he calls the "Hatchet Man of Asian Immigration."

Matloff: Job Loss Is the Only Issue
Matloff firmly denies that he is prejudiced. He says that to the contrary, he is active in the Chinese community and has served as an expert witness in litigation on age and racial discrimination in the software industry. He points out that he is the son of an immigrant who grew up in a working-class, ethnically mixed part of Los Angeles. His wife was born in China and he speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin with her and their daughter at home. "I hope that absolves me of all suspicion," he says.

Matloff also disputes the idea that those who oppose the H-1B visa program are xenophobic. "To make the claim that somehow the [anti-H-1B visa] movement is motivated by race is flat-out wrong," says Matloff. "People can get really emotional in listservs, some of them to the point of getting paranoid.…But even then I don't see racial or xenophobic language [emerge], except on occasion." He adds that the issue is about the loss of jobs and not ethnicity. "The implication [of the racial argument] would be that an activist wouldn't mind if some Canadian or someone of European ancestry took his or her job," he says. "If you lose your job, you lose your job."

Matloff has influence on the H-1B visa debate beyond his Web page and e-mail newsletter. He has worked with Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) on a bill introduced in April that would add restrictions to the H-1B visa program.

Drawing Criticism from Both Sides
To some opponents of H-1B visas, Matloff is something of a hero—and in a sense, the intellectual backbone of their movement. "Matloff was the first person to raise attention to this issue and provide a detailed analysis of the impact of the H-1B visa program," says John Miano, founder of U.S. tech advocacy group the Programmers Guild and a labor attorney in Summit, N.J. "I and others knew what was going on anecdotally, but he got the data together to shine the light on the big picture. He provides most of the leadership from an academic point of view."

Others seem less enamored. "While I do admire Matloff and find his work to be substantial, his contribution to our cause has been academic and largely ignored by the I.T. industry," says "Kevin," who publishes a blog that routinely refers to Indian tech workers as "slumdogs". "THAT IS ONE ARTICULATE [expletive]", wrote Kevin in a post in April referring to Matloff. (Matloff distances himself from "Kevin" and his Web site and says his views are "unrepresentative.")

Matloff has his share of supporters and critics in the academic world, too. "Matloff routinely attacks the work of other academics by citing statistics and data which have no basis," says Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke University engineering professor and fellow with the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. (Wadhwa is also a columnist for BusinessWeek.com.) "He claims to have performed his own research, but this research doesn't seem to have been published by credible authorities or have received any form of peer review."

Policymaking vs. Research
But other academics say they respect his work. "Matloff understands the guts of the issue in a way many academics don't," says B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration. "He brings a lot of passion to the subject, which has its upsides and downsides. At times it can detract from his message." Lowell adds that "as a professor, I believe he may take the career options of his students seriously and believes, to some extent, that an oversupply of highly skilled immigrants—H-1Bs in particular—is not in the interest of the domestic supply line." But Lowell says that like many researchers in this area, Matloff lacks definitive data on, for example, the proportion of older workers who are laid off and replaced by younger workers or H-1B visa holders.

Anti-H-1B activists say they're worried less about academic research and more about shaping policy. "The thing that's missing in Norm Matloff's strategy is fighting for a seat at the table," says Donna Conroy, executive director of Bright Future Jobs, a lobbying group that advocates restricting the H-1B visa program. "We need a political movement that allows us to help craft legislation. All the numbers [Matloff] crunches won't have nearly the impact as American technical professionals standing up for themselves."

Still, Matloff says he's ready to roll up his sleeves and get to work on H-1B visa reform: "If and when Congress wants to clean up this mess, I can tell them how to do it."

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek in New York.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdai ... 585028.htm

Matloff also disputes the idea that those who oppose the H-1B visa program are xenophobic. "To make the claim that somehow the [anti-H-1B visa] movement is motivated by race is flat-out wrong," says Matloff. "People can get really emotional in listservs, some of them to the point of getting paranoid.…But even then I don't see racial or xenophobic language [emerge], except on occasion." He adds that the issue is about the loss of jobs and not ethnicity. "The implication [of the racial argument] would be that an activist wouldn't mind if some

I love how the traitors ruining our economy and therefore crippling the citizens always cry racist. My husband was fired when he was diagnosed with cancer, and was replaced by two German mechanical engineers. Yes, it took two to replace him, and he was sick at the time.

It is a bias on their part that all jobs are tech and all immigrants are brown. And that bias is racist. Trust me, the only color we were interested in was green, the color of the money we needed to pay for treatment for an unemployed American.

We have to Unite and make sure that s.887 Durbin Bill passes and moves in the senate. This bill will allow Americans and Permanent Residents a chance to compete. This bill will also fix the small consulting companies that make it difficult for Americans to get hired in STEM fields.

Welcome, debug!
And you are right. Americans need a chance to compete in every job in this country, whether it is well-paying or minimum wage. With the visa holders and the illegals and absolutely no stipulations that Americans must be considered first, the whole job market has gone to foreigners with specialized skills while American workers cost too much.
GaPatriot, have you gone to a lawyer to see if there is any legal recourse about your husband getting fired because of illness?

Right to work state. They just fired him but didn't give a reason. Another worker was fired and they made the mistake of telling him he was too old and expensive. He too was replaced with foreign labor, but they told him in front of a witness so he sued and won.

Just to show what has happened to us, my husband finally got another job two years later. At less than half the salary.

Second, a very substantial fraction of techies work as independent contractors; H-1Bs cause their business to go down, yet they (the contractors) don't count as unemployed either.

This is actually my exact situation. I don’t get unemployment as I am employed. I just happen to work for a company with no income. So the money that I’ve put into unemployment, as both employer and employee, isn’t available to me. I hate the idea of shutting down the company as I’m always hoping to find a client tomorrow. I want to be as flexible as possible to find a job.

I’m also not adding to the unemployment percentages. This means that the government thinks the unemployment problem is better than it actually is.

Adding insult to injury is that the few companies that are hiring seem leery of hiring independents as employees. I think they figure when the market gets better that we’ll bail for more money. Actually in my case it’s completely not true.

The idea that these H1B’s are taking jobs away from us is just maddening. It’s bad enough that so much has been outsourced to other countries, but we’re importing people to take jobs right here. They’re also able to work cheaper. When will the government get it?

Finally, I’m sure some think that us switching to be self employed was a gamble and shouldn’t complain. The fact of the matter is that if I had stayed at my last real job, I’d have been outsourced to India years ago anyway.