Congress May Bear Brunt of H-1B Anger -- Grass-roots objections to visa program

Computerworld ^ | August, 19, 2002 | Patrick Thibodeau

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Congress May Bear Brunt of H-1B Anger

Grass-roots objections to visa program conflict with lobbyist efforts to raise cap

By PATRICK THIBODEAU
AUGUST 19, 2002

Washington

When IT companies announce layoffs, Rob Sanchez, an unemployed programmer who says he lost his job because of the H-1B visa program, usually sees a traffic spike from the downsizing company's domain on his Web site, Zazona.com.

Sanchez says visitors to his Web site are checking to see if their company is using H-1B workers. Using federal Freedom of Information Act requests, Sanchez has built an online database of approximately 1.1 million "labor condition applications" that list the firms using H-1B employees, the number of those employees, their job types and their pay.

Sanchez is just one of many people unhappy with the H-1B program, and he's fighting it with data. Another is Linda Evans, a woman in North Carolina who writes letters to elected federal officials. She said her husband, a longtime IT worker, was laid off because of the H-1B program. "People are mad," she said.

The power of this grass-roots anger may well be tested in the next congressional session, which begins in January, if an expected push by high-tech lobbying groups to reverse a planned lowering of the H-1B cap materializes. But so far, the economic downturn has kept H-1B applications well short of this year's 195,000 cap.

Federal immigration authorities last week reported that they had granted 60,500 H-1B visas by the end of the third quarter of the government's fiscal year on June 30, representing a 54% drop from the same period last year. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) isn't forecasting a total for this year but has approximately 18,500 pending applications. And although the cap wasn't reached last year, the number of H-1B visas issued still represented a record number for what has been a controversial program.

Under pressure from high-tech lobbying, Congress raised the cap from 115,000 to 195,000 in fiscal 2000. It will remain at 195,000 during 2003 but is slated to be cut to 65,000 in 2004.

High-tech groups are expected to begin lobbying Congress next year to increase the 65,000 cap, but the ongoing demand shortfalls could make that effort difficult, said Lynn Shotwell, director of government relations at the American Council of International Personnel Inc. in Washington.

But "I would hate to see us put ourselves in a situation where the cap goes back down to 65,000 and the economy heats up, and suddenly you can't get workers in that you need," she added.

However, IEEE-USA, a unit of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers Inc. in Washington, maintains that the H-1B program is responsible for the fates of some of the 180,000 computer scientists and electrical engineers it says are unemployed. At that level, "it seems difficult to make the case that the higher cap needs to be extended," said IEEE Vice President John Steadman.

In any case, lawmakers will continue to get an earful.

"Nobody should be blaming H-1B visa holders," said Sanchez. "Congress is the one who created this mess."

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Find Which Companies Are Hiring Foreign Replacement Workers and What Kind of Jobs They are Taking

Please note that there are two types of searches available at www.zazona.com/LCA-Data  The "advanced" search provides listings for companies which do not seem to be available in the "basic" search.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Sanchez is just one of many people unhappy with the H-1B program, and he's fighting it with data.

Why do I get the feeling Congress could care less what affected workers think about the scam H1-B program, as long as the big business donations keep rolling in?

[I_Love_My_Husband]

ping

[Political Junkie Too]

H-1B visas were big in the Bay Area until the dot-coms went bust. Then the papers were filled with sob stories about foreigners who were out of work, just bought a car, didn't want to go back, yada yada yada.

The problem is, H-1B visas were supposed to be about jobs looking for people, not people looking for jobs. When the job goes away, we are not responsible for placing those people into new jobs -- we send them home.

Supposed to, anyway.

-PJ

[Red Jones]

a lot of people don't realize that h1b people don't pay into the social security tax. Congress has approved 195,000 per year for h1b. Of course, the actuall numbers of h1b people per year is lower than that, it reached a max of 165,000 one year. This year the government has a bit of brakes on it, so it may not even get 100,000. But it is still a lot of people because it is cumulative in that every year new h1b people are added. An h1b visa lasts 5 years, so for all those h1b workers there is no social security tax collected.

If we assume the max of 195,000 were used every year, then this would mean 9,775,000 people working on h1b at any given time. These people are working at an average salary of about 50,000 a year. But if it were not for h1b these jobs would probably pay 75,000 per year. So, when you consider that social security taxes are 15%, you get the idea that congress actually approved a reduction of social security funding of over 10 billion per year through h1b.

This is grossly irresponsible for congress to do.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Then the papers were filled with sob stories about foreigners who were out of work, just bought a car, didn't want to go back, yada yada yada.

Sad isn't it? How many sob stories does the same media do on Americans being put out of work because of this bogus program? Makes me wonder sometimes where the loyalty of these newspapers lie.

[Michael Barnes]

damn...my company is on there..Didn't know it was friggen many.

[Red Jones]

Read Professor Matloff's research on this issue. It is 150 pages or so.

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html

Matloff's research shows that the labor market for high-tech is all fouled up. With h1b we as a society are making the decision to ethnically cleanse people of american source right out of this type of work. Matloff's research shows that young americans majoring in computer science now have less than a 10% chance of making a career out of it that lasts more than 8-10 years.

If we were to make similar rules for hamburger flippers, then within 10 years more than half the hamburger flippers would be non-american and the pay would be 30% lower. This is an insane program.

Matloff proposes some reforms. He says first, limit h1b to 65,000 per year. Second, let h1b people sponsor themselves. In that way after a company hired them they would be free to switch jobs. This would make them much less attractive to the companies that hire them, it would also put them on a more even footing in competition with people who are american sourced. Currently, the companies are favoring h1b because the h1b person has a very difficult time switching jobs, and will basically stick it out for 5 years no matter what in order to become a citizen and then bring his family over. With free workers the company has to reward them enough to make them stay voluntarilly.

You see the deal is when you get hired as h1b, that you have to work for that 1 company for 5 years straight, then you get green card and can work elsewhere if you like. If you quit before the 5 year time clock is done, then you have to start the 5 years over even if you do find a replacement corporate sponsor. This program is exactly how the king of england created the original indentured servitude in 1650 in order to get workers for companies.

Congress did an ivestigation about h1b. They found that a large portion of the resumes coming from India to feed people into this program are totally falsified. They are dishonest about credentials in a big way. It doesn't matter though. As long as they get a warm body that is willing to work like a slave for 5 years in order to become a citizen, then that is all that matters.

[Red Jones]

you might like that web site mentioned in the article, 'zazona.com'

[Crispy]

"9,775,000"

Did you mean 975,000?

[Political Junkie Too]

The original argument was that there weren't any qualified workers so we needed H-1B workers. This was a faulty argument, since they were mostly talking about network and web programmers. We had qualified domestic workers, but they might have needed a few months of retooling before they would reach maximum productivity. Businesses said they didn't want to pay for retraining, they wanted experts ready to go on Day 1. These were the dot-com wonders who were impatient, afraid the market would change before they were ready, and distrusted the skills of workers over the age of 40. Countries like India heavily invested in training their people on emerging technologies while American companies were downsizing their workers and then wondering where there talent went when they needed them a few years later.

Now that trained workers are being laid off (H-1B and domestic), the argument for needing more H-1B visas is weakened. Now we have qualified workers who were laid off for cheaper H-1B workers. If businesses need to increase H-1B visas, how about rehiring the qualified domestic workers first?

-PJ

[snarkpup]

Currently, the companies are favoring h1b because the h1b person has a very difficult time switching jobs, and will basically stick it out for 5 years no matter what in order to become a citizen and then bring his family over.

A problem I have witnessed personally is that there is no limit to the bad management that H-1B workers will put up with. When management makes disastrous technical decisions that would cause American engineers to mutiny or change jobs, the H-1B people lay low and keep their mouths shut to avoid being sent back to their third-world homelands. This permits the worst managers to flourish unchallenged.

[blueriver]

Thanks for the info, I have been receiving Rob Sanchez's email news letter for awhile now. There is a yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/htwprotest/ that is also actively involved in the H-1B issue.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

If businesses need to increase H-1B visas, how about rehiring the qualified domestic workers first?

As well as encouraging young Americans to take up high-tech engineering.

Corporations are purposely pushing the H1-B program in order to discourage natives in the computer sciences so then they can argue to Congress they need foreigners because there aren't enough locals. I find it hard to believe Congressmen are too stupid or uninformed to see what's going on.

[swarthyguy]

Good clear analysis of the h1 issue.

DotCommie companies were notorious about asking people for "high energy" people would could fit into their wired "culture" and not come with too much experience.
The amount of seniorish guys turned away because they did not have experience in the "internet space" was noticeable.

A guy who wrote Fortran and Assembler for guidance systems couldn't figure out some multitasking Java/oracle combo -- or a traditional MIS guy for instance. Ridiculous.

[Political Junkie Too]

The dot-coms wanted twenty-somethings who would work for 18 hours a day and then sleep on a cot in the office. Experienced workers have families, children, in-laws, parents, holidays, vacations (many in the 4-week range), sick days (mainly for sick children, not themselves), etc.

See the conundrum? Congress passes the Family Leave Act, Clinton lauds it as a major victory of his, and then companies lay off workers with families for H-1B workers who spend all day for the company and mail their salaries home to their families.

-PJ

[SR71A]

How many sob stories does the same media do on Americans being put out of work because of this bogus program? Makes me wonder sometimes where the loyalty of these newspapers lie.

The loyalty of the newspapers lie in the same place as the loyalty of Congress: $$$$.

Don't forget who places the bogus advertisements for computer hiring -- the same companies that bribe Congress to get the H1-B program in the first place, and then get the quotas raised. When the quota issue was under consideration, you would see 30-40 pages of job vacancy advertisements in the paper. Now that the industry has their allocation of indentured technical servants, those job vacancies have suddenly evaporated to 1 or 2 pages...isn't it funny how that works? The "high" number of job advertisement was actually cited by one ignoramous of a Senator (from Utah) to "justify" why the quota must be raised. Those "advertisements" were probably 80% fake.

[Maximum Leader]

You nailed it. I've done legal work for wireless companies and its kind of sad how the American employees (or to be precise citzens and green card holders) feel free to bitch about the boss but the H1-B engineers would always keep their mouth shut. One engineer from Pakistan I became friends with told me, "If the boss finds out about people complaining, and he fires people, the other guys can get another job, and if I get fired I have to leave the country."
Now if you were an H1-B holder, how comfortable would you be asking your boss for a raise? As a consequence everyone's pay scale is driven down.

I support the free market, but labor deserves a free market as well. If people didn't have such a bias against "blue collar" unions, the high-tech industry would have organized years ago.

[Lee_Atwater]

You can easily spot the fake ads that ask for a laundry list of technolgies/software packages. People in the industry know they are bogus - the ads are there to prove to some bureaucrat that the employer tried to hire a domestic coder.

[TruthNtegrity]

Late last year, I read about a group attempting to start a union for programmers. Don't know what came of it, but as far as these H1-B programs are concerned, they sure are needed.