Posted on 05/15/2007 5:49:21 AM PDT by voletti
Washington, May 15: Contending that the H-1B visa programme is being abused to displace qualified American workers, two US lawmakers have asked nine foreign-based firms, including some leading Indian companies that used 20,000 of such visas, to disclose details about their workforce and their use of the special programme.
Advertisement As the US Senate gets ready to take up the comprehensive immigration reform legislation, the two top lawmakers - Republican Senator Charles Grassley and Democratic Senator Richard Durbin - said, "More and more it appears that companies are using H-1B visas to displace qualified American workers."
"As we move closer to debate on an immigration bill, I continue to hear how people want to increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to companies. Considering the high amount of fraud and abuse in the visa programme, we need to take a good, hard look at the employers who are using H-1B visas and how they are using them," Grassley said in a statement.
"Supporters claim the goal of the H-1B programme is to help the American economy by allowing companies to hire needed foreign workers. The reality is that too many H-1B visas are being used to facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries," Senator Durbin said.
The two have written letters to the firms to determine if the programme is being used for its intended purpose, which is to fill a worker shortage for a temporary time period.
The companies the senators sent letters to were Infosys Technologies, Wipro Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Patni Computer Systems, I-Flex Solutions Inc, Satyam Computer Services Ltd, Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd., Tech Mahindra Americas Inc. And Mphasis Corp.
"We have to look at the system that generates these visas and the way they are used. This legislation will help protect American workers first by stopping H-1Bs from being exploited and used as outsourcing visas," Durbin said.
He said that he expects the companies to cooperate and answer his questions to ensure accurate information is being used as Congress begins debate on new immigration policy.
Senators Grassley and Durbin recently introduced legislation that would overhaul the H-1B and L-1 visa programs to give priority to American workers and crack down on unscrupulous employers who deprive qualified Americans of high-skill jobs.
The H-1B visa programme, which was launched in 1990, allows foreign scientists, engineers and technologists to be employed for upto six years in the US, at the end of which they must obtain permanent residency or return home.
Information that is being asked of the companies are on the number of visas they hold, wages, efforts to recruit qualified American workers, outsourcing of jobs to other countries and whether any U.S. Workers have had their responsibilities outsourced.
"... We have been concerned about reported fraud and abuse of the H-1B and L visa programmes, and their impact on American workers. We are also concerned that the programme is not being used as Congress intended," the lawmakers have said in their letter to company executives.
While some members of Congress have focused on increasing the annual cap of the H-1B programme, "we believe it is important to understand how H-1B visas are being used by.
Well, duh.
H1B PROGRAM IS AND ALWAYS WAS AN ABSOLUTE SCAM!!!
H1B is to skilled workers what illegal immigrants are to the unskilled.
Its a complete FRAUD! Government should mandate a $100,000 fee per H1B approved. If these companies TRULY cannot find an american that can do the job (which is how its supposed to work) then they’ll have no issues paying to get a person who can do this highly specialized work they need done by a foreigner.
You do that, you’ll see H1B’s dry up tommorrow and all the lies that there aren’t american’s able to do the job myth go away in a heartbeat.
I just got pushed out of IT as a middle manager (and ager) as the company pursues outsourcing at the hands of a foreign VP of IT they brought in.
My wife’s former company was owned by a Dutch couple who used this as a way to bring over friends from NL. Fire the American and then say that no one could do the bookkeeping and admin except another cheese eater.
If U.S employers can’t use H-1 visas to bring qualified workers to the U.S., they will outsource the job to India. Which is better — having the job in the U.S. filled by a foreign worker, or having the job in a foreign country filled by a foreign worker. That is the choice. I would prefer the former.
They're idiots.
That's not much of a choice. If was was one of those two, I'd prefer the latter, and this is why:
Either way the American worker is out of a job. He loses in both cases. However, if the job is here, the company pays taxes and supports the decision to go with H1-B. Move that job out of country, and the state and federal government loses out on any taxes that job brings in. Lose enough of those jobs and the gov't starts looking harder at its own policies and will bring those jobs back--to American workers.
Exactly, that’s all H1B is, its a complete scam.
Point is, the future is now no longer a simple extrapolation of the past. Stable times, lifetime jobs, tech and productivity based competitiveness etc are now that much harder to find in US workers.
This was bound to happen sooner or later, lemme hasten to add. Fact is the US is a high cost economy precisely because it is a high standard-of-living economy. We can’t compete with (fairly intelligent) folk willing to work for $10 a day. We could try I guess.
Not outsourcing and forcing jobs back in the US would, in the medium term, cause US firms to lose the global mkt to Chinese and Indian firms, over say 10-20 yrs.
Anyway, India’s currency rose something like 10% against the dollar in the past month alone. Their competitiveness is going down as their exports etc rise. But China’s currency manipulation despite enormous trade surpluses is a pain to watch.
Just my $0.02. Have a nice day.
We did hire a number of engineers who were in the country on H1B visas, but reasonable efforts were made to hire US citizens first.
When the business opportunities didn't work out as planned, and we had to lay off engineers, they laid off all of those on H1B visas first, just like they were supposed to do. We actually lost a very talented engineer that had skills that no one else had, but my boss asked if someone else could learn to do her job. When we gave him an answer of probably, he said that meant he had no choice.
None of the people we laid off were out of work for more than a few weeks, including those on H1B visas.
There was a genuine need for H1B visas, and it wasn't just a scam.
The need is obviously considerably less now, though considering that I have several head hunters that keep contacting me, it appears that the job market is still pretty tight around here, at least for the kind of work that I do.
I'm sure there are other less technical jobs which are getting flooded with H1B visa applicants to an excessive degree, and salaries are being deflated to the point where they cannot find a US citizen willing to work at that job.
However, with the unemployment rates as low as they are, it would seem that except in relatively rare circumstances the main problem is wage deflation rather than not enough jobs being left for US citizens.
Government should mandate a $100,000 fee per H1B approved. If these companies TRULY cannot find an american that can do the job (which is how its supposed to work) then they’ll have no issues paying to get a person who can do this highly specialized work they need done by a foreigner.
That would result in there being a huge tax that would destroy startup companies. It would put us back in the situation where we simply don't have close to enough technical people to fill the opportunities available. It would seriously hurt our economy.
I'm not opposed to a fee for H1B visas, but $100,000 is far to much. Make it more along the lines of 15% - 20% of the salary for the job, and it would make it far less appealing to hire someone on a H1B visa, but not be completely prohibitive.
However, the problem with having such a fee is that H1B visas then become a source of revenue for the government, and the government has even less incentive to investigate abuses.
The best solution is to actually investigate abuses of the system.
You do that, you’ll see H1B’s dry up tommorrow and all the lies that there aren’t american’s able to do the job myth go away in a heartbeat.
Look at the unemployment rates versus the number of current H1B visas. The numbers contradict what you are saying.
Outsourcing is likely a far larger cause for lower wages in technical jobs than H1B visas, at least for jobs that can be outsourced reasonably easily.
I would be opposed to increasing the number of H1B visas, and I support enforcing the laws regarding them, however doing away with them completely would be extremely harmful for our economy.
If you create to much of a shortage of technical workers you also end up making outsourcing much more cost effective, and you make it so that it is much cheaper to do a lot of development efforts elsewhere. You literally risk harming the United State's technical edge by driving technical work away.
We need to make better efforts at preventing abuses, but if we just go heavy handed on the protectionism, we will inevitably hurt ourselves.
Look, if you can’t find an american to do the job you will have no issue paying a premium fee to bring in a foreigner.
Sorry, but H1B is an abject scam, at best 5% of those in this country are here out of true need, the rest are just companies effectively getting slave labor and depressing wages.
You can’t look me in the eye and tell me Bayer Corp, or Sony can’t find a Java Developer that’s a citizen... yet they have H1Bs doing those jobs, along with tons of other companies.
H1B is a SCAM, and ABSOLUTE SCAM.. sure I am sure you can find an individual case or two that actually meet the original critieria of the program, but they are the VAST exception.
Sorry 10-20% is not remotely enough of a fee, because the minimum wage portions of H1B are generally 20-25% or even more under the going market rate for the work they are doing. So, no, 100k fee for an H1B worker per year would NOT kill a start up company. What is a start up company doing that requires such skill that no native born american can be found to do the work???????? Be serious. I worked in start ups for more than a decade, even had a few go public, and yes the ones I was with that went public are still around, unlike all the scam ones. If a company needs someone to do that work so badly and absolutely no american can be found to do it, then 100k fee for the H1B worker you must import, period.
Fact is simple, if their need is that specific that no one in america can do the job, they’ll gladly pay the fee.. reality is, this is RARELY the case. H1B mimium wage settings are at least 20% below market rate, in many cases and many markets (because it isn’t adjusted for higher dollar markets) it can be 50% below the market rate, so a 10-20% fee would do NOTHING to stop abuse.
H1B is a scam, and it conintues to be a scam, its nothing more than a wage depressor funded and sanctioned by our own government on the middle class, and upper middle classes. It is to skilled work what illegals are for unskilled, pure and simple.
I have no problem with a small premium. However, a large premium has the same effect as a high tax on the technology industry. It makes it considerably more expensive to be in the technology business in the US. It causes your economy to shrink or at least slow. It drives business elsewhere outside the country.
Businesses can't charge unlimited amounts for their products and therefore don't have unlimited funds to pay employees. If you force up their costs artificially, you will drive some businesses will simply fail, and others will simply go elsewhere.
Even during the technology boom of the late 90s, there were lots of startups that simply ran out of capital before they could bring their product to market.
H1B is a SCAM, and ABSOLUTE SCAM.. sure I am sure you can find an individual case or two that actually meet the original critieria of the program, but they are the VAST exception.
Our unemployment rate is at about 4.5%. Even during the technology boom it didn't really drop below 3%, and at that point employers were in many places scrapping bottom to find even unskilled workers.
You never have 100% employment. A rate of 4.5% is low, but in some local areas, the rate is obviously higher and in other areas it is obviously lower. But on average there is about 1.5% of our 152.6 million person work force that would likely have jobs if jobs were available, or about 2.3 million.
So what percentage of those 2.3 million do you think have the technical skills to replace the H1B VISA workers if we just threw them all out? I haven't found a good source for how many people are currently here on H1B visas, but on a rough average they have approved about 100k a year and they last for 6 years. Maybe about 500k people, assuming that some leave before the 6 years is up.
Unless you really think that more than 1 in 5 of the people on unemployment that are looking for work are being displaced by people with H1B visas, it would seem obvious that there are more jobs that US citizens with the technical skills to fill them.
When there have been big layoffs at large companies, I've seen some technical people struggle to find new jobs right away in that area, but in general, people with technical skills aren't having trouble finding jobs.
They may not get the particular job they want. In some cases they may even lose their jobs to outsourcing outside the US. However, decreasing the number of H1B visas will increase domestic labor costs which will increase the amount of outsourcing. The amount of outsourcing going on is actually an indication that our labor market isn't flooded with cheap immigrant labor.
Your assertion that H1B visas are an unnecessary scam simply aren't backed up by the numbers. Your claim that H1B visas are only used properly in very rare circumstances doesn't seem to be supported by unemployment numbers, or my own personal experience. So tell me why you believe it to be so. I'm simply asking you to back up your assertions.
Sorry 10-20% is not remotely enough of a fee, because the minimum wage portions of H1B are generally 20-25% or even more under the going market rate for the work they are doing.
Going market rate? You mean the average salary for someone doing that job? Do you really think it is unusual for the minimum salary to be 20% less than the average? If you add a 20% fee, then they would end up paying basically the average salary to someone with an H1B visa at a minimum.
So what would be the incentive to deal with the government bureaucracy to hire a H1B visa applicant, knowing that you would lose them in 6 years at the longest. It obviously wouldn't be cost savings?
So, no, 100k fee for an H1B worker per year would NOT kill a start up company.
So you're saying that most startup companies have a few extra hundred thousand dollars just laying around they really don't need. Is that why the majority of startup companies go under in the first couple years, and what forces them under is that they run out of money to pay salaries?
Where do you work that you think that coming up with a couple or few hundred thousand dollars wouldn't break a large percentage of the startups that do make it.
What is a start up company doing that requires such skill that no native born american can be found to do the work????????
The labor market is like any other market. When a particular portion is booming, people with those skills become in short supply.
If you have time to train people, and have the expertise to train people, you can usually make due.
However, if you are looking for someone with experience in a tight labor market, you are going to have to try and hire them away from someone else. Nothing wrong with that as long as the shortage of such skilled people isn't too great, because larger companies with several such people can usually utilize the people they still have to train others.
However, in an expanding market, to be competitive you can't spend six months or a year training someone, especially in a small company that doesn't already have someone with those skills. You need to hire someone that has the skills now.
Startup companies are generally also the least likely to abuse H1B visas. In general people create a startup because they have an ideal on how innovate and do something differently than it is currently being done. They tend to be made up of smaller groups of technical people who work long hours trying to develop a product before the opportunity passes them by or they run out of money or both.
The companies that are more likely to abuse H1B visas are large companies with large workforces, especially those that contract out their services to others. Such companies have a much greater tendency to treat employees, even technical ones, as easily replaceable lines on the budget rather than difficult to replace assets.
Few people are truly irreplaceable, but if your employer really can just lay you off and grab someone else and have them doing your job just as well in a short period of time, you'd better find yourself a new job where your skills add real value. If you can be easily replaced, it isn't unlikely that you will be at some point in time. It may be a layoff after which they slowly replace high paid workers with entry level people that can do the same job. It may be that your job gets outsourced to a smaller, leaner company, or even one in a different country.
If a company needs someone to do that work so badly and absolutely no american can be found to do it, then 100k fee for the H1B worker you must import, period.
So what you are saying is that if the economy is booming, any company trying to enter into a booming market needs to have such a good concept and business plan that they can afford to pay an extra 100k more than existing companies to hire key employees.
That's an artificial barrier that will hamper innovation.
Innovation is what has kept America the most prosperous country on earth. Investing in innovation is also why China and India are starting to make huge improvements in their own economies. However, they are still far behind.
Driving up the costs of innovating in the US will not prevent them from chipping away at our lead, it will do the opposite. It will drive investment capital away from the US. It will take us down the same path the Europe is on that allowed us to surpass them.
What do you think will happen if technology jobs flee the US at a higher rate? What do you think will happen if you drive up the cost of doing business in the US?
Our economy will slow. Inflation will increase. Unemployment will increase. Our standard of living will get chipped away at by inflation, while our wages won't be going up, because unemployment will be driving them down.
You can't just simply force American wages to remain high through heavy handed protectionism, because if you do more and more of the work will be done elsewhere in the world.
There was a time where that wasn't the case because Americans were simply far more productive that people in other countries because of our free market policies and our spirit of innovation.
However, that spirit of innovation and use of free market policies are being used more and more by others, and they are starting to bridge the gap.
At lease when we have skilled people come here on H1B visas we can often attract many of the exceptional ones to seek permanent residency and even citizenship, while letting those that are less skilled return to their own country after having them work for 6 years helping to expand our economy while making money for themselves as well.
Having some H1B workers working here in the US along side us is far better than having companies shift all the jobs to another country, or be put out of business by a company in another country because they can't compete.
Free markets produce great growth and innovation, but they don't allow people to sit back and say we deserve things like a high standard of living. You have to keep proving that you deserve it as much if not more than the others out there that want it as well.
H1B is a scam, and it conintues to be a scam, its nothing more than a wage depressor funded and sanctioned by our own government on the middle class, and upper middle classes. It is to skilled work what illegals are for unskilled, pure and simple.
If so, where are all the unemployed technical workers in the US? Also, if so, why are so many jobs being lost to outsourcing outside the US? H1B visas are hardly the only factor keeping salaries for technical jobs from shooting up like they did in the late 90s.
Its obviously clear you haven’t actually been in a start up, if you are going to make the arguments you have. If you have an idea you are confident in, and the only thing standing in your way is an employee you CANNOT find domestically... you will find the funding for that fee, or your idea/business ability is not worth the time of day anyway.
If you need to find 100k to make your dream come true, you find that 100k, that’s what you do when you start a company.
THere absolutely should be a very high premium on importing labor. That is the only way to assure the end of the abuse that has plagued this program for ages.
Labor is work, not product, and if you are going to stand up and tell the US government you cannot possibly find a US Employee to do the job, and must bring in someone from another country to do it, you should be paying an abjectly high premium.
Look, here is EXACTLY how H1B works the vast majority of the time, and I know this because I’ve been in the meetings where the decisions were being made to do it!
List for a job posting offering 50-80% of the market rate for the skill set you need... of course you can’t find anyone with decent skills to take the job.. so you then hire someone H1B and pay them 50-80% of what you should be paying. You weren’t in a situation where you couldn’t find an american to do the job, you set up a situation where you couldn’t find an american to do the job for WHAT YOU WANTED TO PAY... not that there was no american who could do it... so instead of the company being forced to simply adjust to market situations, you give them a trump card to avoid the market forces, using government interference.
That’s all you have going on with H1B... its a COMPLETE and total scam, its a short circuit of the market, and to argue its “free market” is repugnant.
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