H-1B debate flares as EE jobless rate hits 7 percent

The Work Circuit ^ | April 15, 2003 | Margaret Quan

[mabelkitty]

MANHASSET, N.Y. — Unemployment among electronic engineers soared to 7 percent in the first quarter, the U.S. Department of Labor said last week, surpassing the national jobless rate of 5.8 percent recorded in March.

At the same time, some industry groups are considering lobbying for legislation to raise the annual quota for H-1B visas and allow more foreign technical workers into the United States.

[mabelkitty]

Not sure where this goes, but I know many Freepers are interested in this particular problem. Looks like we need to lobby.

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[StolarStorm]

Is their a PAC set up?

[SauronOfMordor]

If they're admitting to 7%, it's probably a lot more. A lot of my friends in the tech field are out of work, and the ones that are working are stressed or working at job under their quals.

[meadsjn]

Great article -- definitely worth posting the whole thing.

---

H-1B debate flares as EE jobless rate hits 7 percent

By Margaret Quan
EE Times
April 15, 2003 (11:52 a.m. EST)

MANHASSET, N.Y. — Unemployment among electronic engineers soared to 7 percent in the first quarter, the U.S. Department of Labor said last week, surpassing the national jobless rate of 5.8 percent recorded in March.

At the same time, some industry groups are considering lobbying for legislation to raise the annual quota for H-1B visas and allow more foreign technical workers into the United States.

A law that will expire on Sept. 30 raised the number of temporary visa holders to 195,000 a year. Unless Congress ups the level again, visa numbers will drop back to 1999 levels of 65,000, a cutback that some advocates call too steep.

In its regular quarterly report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also said that unemployment among computer scientists and systems analysts held relatively steady at 4.9 percent in Q1.

But there is a caveat. BLS narrowed the definitions of both categories in January in a revamping of its occupational-classification system, adding new job categories in an attempt to create more detail in the employment numbers. In addition, a BLS labor analyst said the bureau corrected some past coding errors, resulting in a further reshuffling of numbers.

Some types of engineers were removed from the EE category and placed in a new one for "computer hardware engineers." The jobless rate for that group was only a touch better than for EEs, at 6.5 percent for the quarter.

Despite whatever skew may have entered into the numbers because of the category changes, the 7 percent figure for EE unemployment marked a distinct surge. The annual average EE unemployment rate last year was 4.2 percent, and the final quarter of 2002 saw a decline in joblessness, with EEs recording 3.9 percent unemployment, according to the BLS report for that quarter.

IEEE-USA president John Steadman said he has "never heard" of unemployment among EEs being so high, but is not totally shocked given the number of engineering layoffs he has seen in his area-near Fort Collins, Colo.-in the last several months.

Given that the statistic holds up after being careful about how the new categories impact the numbers, it would reinforce the concern we have that the very wide-open importation of guest workers under H-1B has substantially contributed to the hardship and unemployment of U.S. engineers and computer scientists," Steadman said.

The result, he said, is "a very substantial and negative effect on the economic conditions of the United States." Not only are the unemployed "not contributing to economic growth," but "their unemployment benefits are draining corporate and government resources at the state and federal level. This should be viewed with grave concern by Congress and policy-makers."

The numbers can only add fuel to the fire in the visa debate. IEEE-USA believes the H-1B cap should stay put at the 1999 level of 65,000 a year.

But a vocal critic of H-1B policy says that won't happen. "The industry simply won't stand for a reversion to 65,000," said Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. Matloff believes lobbyists will work to set an annual H-1B cap above 65,000, or create a new visa category that does not specify a quota.

High-tech employers have become "addicted" to H-1B visas because the program has been "so beneficial" for them, said Jessica Vaughan, senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS; Washington). "It's allowed them to find cheaper employees and has become almost like a government subsidy to these employers."

Employers have also used L-1 temporary visas. Intended for multinationals transferring executives, managers and employees with specialized skills from a foreign office to a U.S. location or affiliate, the L-1 visas carry fewer stipulations than H-1Bs and are easy to abuse, said Vaughan. Recruiting firms have used them to move large numbers of employees from India to the United States, where they will work for cheaper rates than native labor, she said. The Department of Justice is rumored to be investigating abuses of the L-1 program by so-called "body shop" recruiters of IT workers from India. The department neither confirms nor comments on ongoing investigations.

Not every high-tech sector has been hit equally hard by the downturn. The U.S. software industry added 5,300 jobs between January 2001 and December 2002 and uses "many H-1Bs," said Thom Stohler, vice president of work force policy for the American Electronics Association (Washington). Conversely, "a lot of the jobs lost [in the electronics industry] were in manufacturing, which is not generally where H-1Bs are used."

Latest U.S. figures show lower demand for EEs, other tech workers.

If the visa number drops to 65,000 a year, Stohler said, the cap would be reached in late summer or fall of 2004.

The dynamics of the H-1B visa debate have changed since the height of the tech boom, when warm bodies were in short supply and unemployment at historic lows. The sluggish economy has congressional supporters of H-1Bs "taking a second look at the program," said Vaughan of CIS, and "rethinking whether the cap has to be as high."

A spokesman said the House Judiciary Committee will look at H-1B visa caps before the current legislation expires this fall. But aides for one committee member who backed the visa hike in 2000 declined to state the representative's position now.

Demand for H-1B visas "has dropped considerably since 2000," said AEA's Stohler. AEA member companies are now more selective, he said, and "only use the program to bring in advanced-degree recipients who have graduated from U.S. schools." Only about 80,000 H-1Bs were used in 2002, Stohler said. Even so, the AEA hasn't ruled out lobbying to increase the cap this year, he said.

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

At the same time, some industry groups are considering lobbying for legislation to raise the annual quota for H-1B visas and allow more foreign technical workers into the United States.

The pointy headed people in IEEE were lobbying for more imigrant EE workers back in the 80's... when EE's couldn't find work either. I dropped my IEEE membership as soon as I found out that they were working against me.

[Billy_bob_bob]

"The industry simply won't stand for a reversion to 65,000,"

So us citizens are supposed to stand for hundreds of thousands of H1 and L1 workers being brought in to drive down our wages?

Not bloody likely. I'm really starting to think that EE's need to unionize.

[Nataku X]

It's all their fault. American EEs are lazy no-good uneducated whiners. They should get their $18,000 and work 80 hours a week, be grateful for it, and stop whining. Or they should start their own business.

After all, when you have a bunch of people competing for third-world wages and slave hours in a professional area, it's a sign of a healthy American economy and proof that globalism works. Bless the H1-B program!

[Spyder]

My son is considering an engineering or computer programming career - still at the "I want to program video games" stage. What careers in engineering do have good job potential? (obviously computer programming and electronic engineering aren't in high demand).

Any suggestions, freepers?

[lodwick]

Tell him to invent his own killer game and go directly to wealthy.

Cheers.

[meadsjn]

Not every high-tech sector has been hit equally hard by the downturn. The U.S. software industry added 5,300 jobs between January 2001 and December 2002 and uses "many H-1Bs," said Thom Stohler, vice president of work force policy for the American Electronics Association (Washington). Conversely, "a lot of the jobs lost [in the electronics industry] were in manufacturing, which is not generally where H-1Bs are used."

So how do we read this? 5,300 jobs were added in a category which has 7.5% unemployment (current official number includes only those canned in the past six months), or 2.5 million people. Most of the 5,300 new jobs went to immigrants, as well as 2.3 million of those previously held by Americans.

The way they fuzzy up their numbers and statements, it is obvious that the truth is too blatantly ugly for them to clearly state.

My interpretation may be inaccurate, but if the government and industry wanted the truth to be known, it would be delivered as clear as a bell.

There is good reason to cut H-1B and L-1 visas to ZERO until unemployment in high tech categories is well below the national average.

[lelio]

obviously computer programming and electronic engineering aren't in high demand
Slight correction to your post: there's a high demand for software people. Except its in India. Mind if he takes a field trip and works for $5/hr?
The latest buzzword in software is calling yourself an "architect" and designing the system, to be done by people in foreign countries whose programming quality greatly varies. Except you have to be in the industry for a long time to get to that stage.
What could remain high in demand for American workers are software auditing skills to check for security issues. Except you can't really study for something like that.

[EdReform]

H-1B Hall of Shame - Get the Facts on Foreign Worker Visas

[dfwgator]

Phase I: Write Killer Game.
Phase II: ?
Phase III: Profit.

[Nataku X]

Being in the video game industry is thankless: low-paying compared to other computer fields, too many hours, and very low job security (companies come and go). Also, it's very hard to get in. Even assuming he does land a position, it'll be an unsatisficatory "grunt" programming position where he will not be able to show off his creativity at all.

Your son's better off learning C/C++ on his own, then taking a computer graphics course or two (OpenGL is -very- easy) and then trying to shareware his games in his spare time.

I'm a fairly recent computer science graduate working for that MS; if I had to do it all over again, I'd go into engineering.

If your son really wants to get a job in the computer industry, community college, TopCoder, certification classes, and the like are MUCH more practical than going to a "good" CS program and learning how to doodle discrete finite state automatae.

However, most jobs require that 4-year-degree, so... dunno. Just don't let him go into computer science solely, let him pick some other area to broaden his horizons. *shrugs* Only a luck of the draw that enabled me to go into the academic/research side of CS rather than the professional side has saved me from unemployment.

[G Larry]

The American public had better wake up and demand a public education system that can produce the skills we need.

In the mean time we can insist that existing law is enforced and that the current number of H-1 visa holders are "needed" do to lack of domestic shortage.

That aspect of enforcement doesn't pass the laugh test today.

[Nataku X]

Sorry, that should be deterministic finite state automatae. My profile says I'm not so bright, after all. ;)