Giant immigration bill seeks to double H1-B visas

US Congress is likely to take up a giant immigration bill this month, which recommends nearly doubling the number of H-1B skilled-worker temporary visas to 115,000.

The measures include not just increasing the number of visas but also add an option of raising the cap 20 per cent more each year.

If passed, the provisions buried in the Senate's giant immigration bill, would open the country's doors to highly skilled immigrants for science, math, technology and engineering jobs.

The provisions were sought by Silicon Valley tech companies and enjoy significant bipartisan support amid concern that the United States might lose its lead in technology.

They would broaden avenues to legal immigration for foreign tech workers and would put those with advanced degrees on an automatic path to permanent residence should they want it, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

H-1B visas were highly controversial in the Bay Area when their numbers reached a peak of 195,000 in 2003.

The new skilled immigration measures are part of a controversial 300-page bill by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa, now being rewritten by the committee with the goal of reaching the Senate floor by the end of the month.

Other provisions include a new F-4 visa category for students pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

These students would be granted permanent residence if they find a job in their field and pay a $1,000 fee toward scholarships and training of US workers.

Congress had increased the visas during the late 1990s dot-com boom, when Silicon Valley complained of tech-worker shortages, although native-born engineers complained that their wages were undermined by cheap labour from India and China.

With the tech crash and the revelation that some of the September 11, 2001, hijackers had entered the country on student visas, the political climate for foreign workers darkened, and Congress quietly allowed the number of H-1B visas to plummet back to 65,000 a year.

The cap was reached in August -- in effect turning off the tap of the visas for 14 months. A special exemption of 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees was reached in January.

"We're in a bad crunch right now," said Laura Reiff, head of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, a business umbrella group backing more immigration. "We are totally jammed on immigrant visas, the green card category, and totally jammed on H-1B visas. You can't bring in tech workers right now."

The provisions for highly skilled workers enjoy support in both parties in the Senate and in the Bush administration after a raft of high-profile studies have warned that the United States is not producing enough math and science students and is in danger of losing its global edge in innovation to India and China.

However, opponents of broadening immigration for skilled workers said doing so would defeat efforts to get more Americans interested in science, math, engineering and other technological fields.

"Frankly, IT and engineering jobs are overrated and overpaid. ... And yes, I'm an electronic engineer."

I don't know what you do that your own job is overrated in your eyes.

My job requires a ---- of a lot more than knowing how to spell C. It requires a critical and inquisitive mind, a strong knowledge of all the background concepts that underlie IT, a top-notch memory, and a command of the English language.

Maybe your job or someone else's job is overrated because a mistake means someone's cell phone blinks three times instead of two when powering up. If I mess up very large quantities of money get sent in strange directions and people don't pay their bills or eat. If the materials engineer down the road messes up a bridge collapses and people die. Somewhere else, someone makes a tiny error in programming and a guided missile drops in the wrong place making the whole U.S. look bad, or a several billion dollar space mission is wasted.

Now, compare that to the management goof whose job primarily consists of fiddling with MS Project or finding ways to figure out what makes him look good or isn't his fault any more and attending 6 meetings a day. Which one is overrated and overpaid?

It isn't the engineer ... or the plumber. By the by, I have time to write this because not only is my own work done, but I've finished another project that a ... can you guess it? ... H1-B couldn't do.

The real payoff for companies and H1Bs is in consulting. There, the host company hires a bunch of these guys at 60% 'prevailing' wage, bills them at full rate, and works them all hours to partially compensate for the fact that they're 10x slower than a regular employee.

I have no problem with legal immigration. Unless you are a native american indian, we are all descendants of aliens, legal or illegal, and I think that is what a lot of people forget. Now, where I have a problem is bringing in people from Iran, Syria, Iraq, UAE, etc. for obvious reasons. But like you, my biggest problem are the illegals streaming across both northern and southern borders. And I want to say something here that I've been saying everywhere else - the illegal Iranians, Syrians, Pakistanis, et. al. are not coming in through Mexico. They are coming in through Canada. Many have obtained landed immigrant status in Canada, which is similar to a green card here. They walk across and no one knows they are here until they seek out immigration counsel and immigration law firms are bound to "secrecy". Until immigration attorneys are made to give up their lists of illegal aliens that they are "aiding and abetting" to stay in the U.S. through poorly written immigration laws and loopholes, we will never get a handle on this situation. All it would take is mandatory reporting of names and last known addresses. The attorneys would also have to report employers who are violating the regulations by hiring illegals. We'd find more than 50% of all illegals, which is manageble for deportation. It might put a lot of attorneys out of business but then again, it just might make some of them honest and patriotic.

no one is paying "market" price for any services since 9/11, dude.

I worked in the IT industry for many years - doing guess what - immigration. We brought in people from India on H's. Their wages were higher than the American workers doing the same job because of the prevailing wage issue. The salaries for the US workers were already depressed B-4 the H-1B's were involved. Trust me, the only reason the H's were getting paid what they were was because the law required that they be paid a certain amount. There is no law requiring that American workers be paid the higher of the prevailing wage or actual wages. That never set right with me.

I know "engineers" that do nothing but give presentations a few times a week, and the expect 70-90 large a year...

This trivializes it, but often a lot of $$ hangs on those presentations. And yes, once you get to a certain level, a lot of "engineering" is attending meetings trying to convince management why something needs to get done or working out issues in groups. When I was younger, I thought this was a total waste of time and the "real work" was coding. As I've matured (and worked on larger projects), I've come to appreciate how important communication is to getting things done right. What good is being a Java wizard if you're designing to the wrong specs? Yes, it may seem like a waste of time to be paying those guys big $$, but often you are buying experience. After is certain point, what people know is more valuable than what they can do.

And yes, I'm a computer scientist. I also teach part time. And I can tell you that many academic disciplines do NOT teach kids how to think or solve problems--even at the most elementary level. [You haven't seen it all until you see some English major trying to use a doing calculations BY HAND to insert the right values into a spreadsheet.] Computer science and engineering do.

if you don't know...just say so...its cool!

I'll certainly do so if this is indeed the case. But what does your remark have to do with mine?

Nothing works better than capitalism in providing and distributing private goods. This does not mean that public goods -- such as national safety, culture, etc --- are to be provided by the markets. Markets are actually terrible in providing public goods, and government intervention is both warranted and unavoidable.

It follows that I am against data bases with our citizens' data being off-shored to India and other such things, including the recent attempt to monopolize our ports by a very unstable, if not untrustworthy, country. Now, job protection is something else altogether. When one argue for socialist measures such as that, one actually favors a small group of Americans over the rest. This is neither fair nor smart.

Even more specifically, H1 visas have nothing to do with the issues, and I wish people would stop whining about it. It allows universities, for instance, to hire the best people in the world to teach our kids. Yes, you can find some third-rate American with a Ph.D. from some third-rate school who would take that job, but why do that? why not let our kids be taught be the absolute best we can find?

Most people on this board, in contrast, whine about programming jobs. They want us, Americans, to continue paying them 150,000/year and up they were making in 1990s. Now, what is that you were saying about capitalism?

While you make an interesting academic point, the REALITY is that our quality of life is already going down from over population. I have to commute 1+ hours each way, when the drive should take no more than .5 hours under ideal condition. Yes, I live in the DC area. And even here, in the National Capital Region, we are flush with illegals. Just drop by the nearest 7/11 or school. Even at the VA DMZ, where they are supposed to be checking for ID, the place is full of foreigners (sporting that tell tale backwards baseball cap). I can't image that all those people are here legally. At some point you also wonder if they will being the ills of their home countries with them. Certainly, the Muslims are doing this.

My point is that if you have LESS people to serve, you NEED fewer people to serve them. But, I think you quality of life will go up. I don't want to have to spend 2 hours each way to work in my car, just so some developer can make $10M this year instead of $7M. Of course, I accept that current trends likely won't change in my lifetime. I expect more of the same--including ever longer commutes. (:<

I do not claim to have sufficient data to answer these questions well. I do have a couple of comments, however. Recall that comparative advantage is an equilibrium concept: if you have such and such advantage, then here is what you should do. But how did that advantage come about, and why should one expect it to be permanent.

In reality, therefore, all countries, communities and individuals constantly seek and create the advantages on which to capitalize. As a consequence, none of them is permanent: in the very least, I can eventually mimic whatever you do if you are successful.

My personal view is that the main differential advantage we had and still have to a considerable extent is our... values and culture. It is the values we shared that led to the adoption of this particular Constitution and other laws. It is the values that allow us, unlike other countries to change presidents peacefully, without intervention by generals. And it is our values that allow each of us to maintain his or her identity and reach full individual potential. This all translates, in particular, into high productivity of labor and high stability of financial markets: the stability of our culture and institutions makes the country safe heaven for investments. If so, there is no more cost to multi-culturalsm than this: by loosing pride in and focus on our core, traditional values, we are also losing our competitive advantage.

Think about this: values is the only thing China, Ireland or Russia cannot duplicate. And we are loosing them rapidly. As for China, their competitive advantage is highly motivated and productive labor. The problem for us in not that labor is cheap, as some people erroneously think, but that it is slightly cheaper than ours.

How to combat this disadvantage? Well, back to values: Americans should start seeing once again the value of speaking and writing well, of knowing a foreign language and basic mathematics. A course in a community college costs only a few hundred dollars, but most prefer to spend thousands on TV sets and video games. That is fine. But then they should not whine that a Chineser an Indian is willing to do what it takes and becomes more productive.

Poland is rather similar in that its people are invigorated by the recently acquired freedom. I do not know enough specifics to have an opinion on how this will play out within the EU: it well may be that the Poles have thrown out one yoke for another.

I have no faith whatever in the long-term viability of EU as either economic power or a single polity. Its deterioration is delayed primarily because we, Americans, pay for the defense and innovation.

That's my one-and-a-half cents.

I say that is the fault of the colleges and universities.

Yours is a common error: taking the world as given. Assume that you are correct, but then ask, what makes those colleges they way they are? Are they not filled and run by American people? Do they not exist on Americans' tuition?

If you think alone these lines you will invariably discover that the enemy is... we ourselves. As I wrote in the previous post, we prefer TV sets to education, we think it is OK to cuss and aware in public and at the dinner table, it's OK to get a divorce on a whim or have no commitment at all. You too look elsewhere for a party at fault --- by G-d, it's certainly not you!

What is the connection? Merely that such people cannot be competitive.

"It allows universities, for instance, to hire the best people in the world to teach our kids. Yes, you can find some third-rate American with a Ph.D. from some third-rate school who would take that job, but why do that?"

This is not really an issue in the primary areas of college / graduate study that American's are wisely willing to invest their money-in; i.e. very few courses in Constitutional Law, Legal Writing, Civil Litigation, and other courses in Law School are taught by professors over here on an H1B visa.

As for courses where your argument might apply...in the long run you will basically have H1B professors teaching H1B-bound students.

This is not really an issue in the primary areas of college / graduate study that American's are wisely willing to invest their money-in; i.e. very few courses in Constitutional Law, Legal Writing, Civil Litigation, and other courses in Law School are taught by professors over here on an H1B visa.

Forgive me, but this is a silly argument: you could also point to courses in English literature or American history, which are very culture-speicif and pose high entry barriers to foreigners.

Just go and look how many Americans even apply to doctoral programs in mathematics, physics, engineering or business. After that, compare their quality to that of foreign students. At the next stage, see how many survive the program. But, if you want to skip all that, just look at the composition of faculty in any of the above or similar programs in any major university. In some cases, you will not find a single American teaching... marketing, for instance.

for courses where your argument might apply...in the long run you will basically have H1B professors teaching H1B-bound students.

And, this is supposed to prove... what, exactly?

I made a simple point. If I pay tuition, I'd like to be educated by the best faculty. If I pay for a symphony concert, I'd like to be entertained by the best musicians -- and they, too, are here on H1-B visas.

You counter this with a confirmation that I am in a minority: we no longer value education properly, and nobody but foreigners are willing to study "tough" areas. How is abandoning H1-B program going to remedy THAT?

"Forgive me, but this is a silly argument: you could also point to courses in English literature or American history, which are very culture-speicif and pose high entry barriers to foreigners"

Thank you for completing and agreeing with the argument. The argument is exactly about barriers to entry, whether it be imposed by culture, arbitrary rules about professional licensing (law, medicine), or immigration laws. And the reason barriers to entry are important is because in the U.S., its about the money.

There are plenty of Americans who have the cognitive horsepower to blow away the cargo-container loads of foreign students we import to take mathematics, physics, or engineering courses (mainly so the departments don't go belly-up). But they're also smart enough to realize that if somebody from India of equivalent intelligence is willing to do a demanding job for 30-cents on the dollar (or even 80-cents on the dollar), it's bad economics to pursue that line of work.

Upon completion of their college careers, these intelligent and wise Americans and called Attorneys and Physicians.

"........nobody but foreigners are willing to study 'tough' areas"

Believe me, a law degree from a top tier U.S. university is no cake walk. But it is worth the time and energy required from a ROI standpoint when compared to a PhD in molecular biology, theoretical physics, or any other science.

Every H1-B visa is an opportunity for an American business to bring a product to service to market at a lower cost with a better chance of success.

Really? Well I can tell you that many companies are making a very good profit hiring only Americans and yet are still deciding to start outsourcing? Why? They want even more profit. Greed will kill America, just as it killed Rome. And if you think this will lower prices for the consumer then you do not understand the kind of greed these CEO’s have. If they are willing to backstab the people who helped make them wealthy to start with, what makes you think they want to offer you a lower price product? I can tell you it is not happening at most companies. So the spin of lower cost for consumers is just that, spin.

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