As Tech Giant Calls For More Foreign Workers, Senate Hears of Displaced Americans

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, believes passionately that the United States needs more skilled foreign workers. He has long advocated increasing the number of so-called H-1B visas, which allow those workers to come to the U.S. for several years and, in many cases, work for lower wages than current employees. Schmidt is frustrated that Congress hasn't done as he and other tech moguls want.

"In the long list of stupid policies of the U.S. government, I think our attitude toward immigration has got to be near the top," Schmidt said during a recent appearance at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "Everyone actually agrees that there should be more H-1B visas in order to create more tech, more science, more analytical jobs. Everyone agrees, in both parties."

The Eric Schmidt pleading for more foreign workers is the same Eric Schmidt who boasts of turning away thousands upon thousands of job seekers who apply for a few prized positions at Google. For example, at an appearance in Cleveland last October to promote his book, "How Google Works," Schmidt explained that his company receives at least 1,000 applications for every job opening. "The good news is that we have computers to do the initial vetting," Schmidt explained, according to an account in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Other tech leaders join Schmidt in calling for more foreign workers. Some companies are actually lobbying for more H-1Bs and laying off American staff at the same time. For example, last year Microsoft announced the layoff of 18,000 people at the very moment it was pushing Congress for more guest worker visas.

Given all that, there's not quite the unanimous agreement on the need for more foreign workers that Schmidt claims. At a recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a number of experts testified that the H-1B program, so sought-after by CEOs, is being abused to harm American workers.

Ron Hira, a Howard University professor and author of the book "Outsourcing America," told the story of Southern California Edison, which recently got rid of 500 IT employees and replaced them with a smaller force of lower-paid workers brought in from overseas through the H-1B program. The original employees were making an average of about $110,000 a year, Hira testified; the replacements were brought to Southern California Edison by outsourcing firms that pay an average of between $65,000 and $75,000.

"To add insult to injury," Hira said, "SCE forced its American workers to train their H-1B replacements as a condition of receiving their severance packages."

Hira testified that such situations are not unusual. And on the larger issue of whether there is, as many tech executives claim, a critical shortage of labor in what are called the STEM fields -- science, technology, engineering and math -- another professor, Hal Salzman of Rutgers, testified that the shortage simply does not exist.

"The U.S. supply of top-performing graduates is large and far exceeds the hiring needs of the STEM industries, with only one of every two STEM graduates finding a STEM job," Salzman testified. "The guest worker supply is very large (and) it is highly concentrated in the IT industry, leading to both stagnant wages and job insecurity."

The hearing also featured Jay Palmer, a former Infosys project manager who blew the whistle on a case in which the big outsourcing firm paid $34 million in fines for worker visa violations. "I watched this on a daily basis," Palmer told the Judiciary Committee. "I sat in the offices in meetings with companies that displaced American workers only because the Americans who had been there 15 or 20 years were being paid too much money."

So not everyone agrees with Schmidt on the need for more H-1B workers. Certainly not the laid-off IT employees at Southern California Edison. And not the workers reportedly displaced by similar practices at Disney, Harley Davidson, Cargill, Pfizer and other companies. Who knows? Maybe some of those workers have been among the 1,000-plus who apply for every Google opening.

To hear the witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee tell it, Congress needs to act -- not to increase the number of H-1Bs but to close the loopholes that allow them to be so badly abused at such a cost to American workers. "Congress and multiple administrations have inadvertently created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans," Hira told the committee. "Simply put, the H-1B program has become a cheap labor program."

Let me see if I understand this ridiculous and out-of-control HB situation correctly: We import highly-skilled technical workers mainly from such Asian countries like India, China, Taiwan, Pakistan. and South Korea so that we can compete in the world market with highly-skilled scientists and technicians in Asian countries like India, China,Taiwan, Pakistan and South Korea. it makes no sense.

My question is this: If the best and the brightest scientists and technical workers in India,China, Taiwan, Pakistan, and South Korea remain in their countries, then what level of workers is the United States importing from those Asian countries?

Such distorted logic and reasoning on the part of American technical firms like Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook makes no sense.

Have these greedy technical companies forgotten that America was made great by such programs like apprentice programs and internships? How do these technical companies think that American plumbers,electricians, and air-conditioning technicians learned their skills: Through apprentice programs.

We should encourage, maybe even demand, that technical companies like Microsoft, Apple, and FaceBooke develop strong apprentice and intern programs so that they wouldn't have to depend so much on HB technical workers from India, China, Taiwan, Pakistan, and South Korea.

I believe that the HB program should be immediately and drastically reduced or abolished completely.

My point is this: The HB program has done more harm than good in developing of technical skills among future American young people. The HB program is slowly destroying rather than helping America's ability to compete in the global market.

The severe problem of getting American young people to pursue technical skills goes something like this:

1. Schools throughout the country are working hard to encourage young people to enter the technical fields like working with computers.

2. Many young Americans are enthusiastic about entering the good-paying technical field.

3. But these same students look around and see that they have to compete not only with their fellow Americans but with technical workers imported from foreign countries, mostly Asian countries---for instance, you don't see a flood of HB workers coming from,say, Spain and England.

4. So what do these bright students end up doing? They become discouraged. They give up on their dreams to entire the fast growing and good-paying technical field, and so they decide to go into some line of easier work where they don't have to compete with foreign technical workers.

5. Then what happens? What happens is that the United States demand for technical workers ends up caught in a vicious circle.

6. The vicious circle goes something like this: Now that more and more smart American students are discouraged from pursuing studies in the scientific and technical fields by such horrible self-defeating programs like the HB program, American companies claim that they can't find enough skilled American workers to meet their increasing demand for skilled technical workers.

7. So, argue American companies, they have no choice but to beg Congress to allow them to import more and more foreign technical workers from such Asian countries as India, China, Taiwan,Pakistan and South Korea so that they can compete on the global market with the highly skilled technical workers in Asian countries like India, China, Taiwan, Pakistan, and South Korea. Huh? Am I missing something here?

8. And round-and-round we go with no end in sight to this terrible, self-defeating HB foreign workers problem.

9. Meanwhile, executives at technical and rich companies like Microsoft , Apple, and FaceBook run all the way to the bank to deposit all the money they saved by bypassing highly-qualified American technical workers for foreign HB workers.

10. Yes. Let's drastically reduce or abolish the HB foreign workers program so that we can give American youths the chance to develop the technical skills that America will need for a long, long time.

11. HB needs to be repealed, or a new law is needed, something like this:

a. "If you have a mass layoff or a mass firing of American technical workers, you must be ready to have a good explanation why you did so. IT is obscene and morally for Microsoft to layoff 18,000 American workers and then go before Congress and beg for more HB workers. Immoral, I say.

Boycott Microsoft products? Maybe we should think very hard about boycotting Microsoft products and holding demonstration at Microsoft headquarters if Microsoft does not change its hiring practices. Again, it is morally wrong for giant Microsoft to layoff 18,000 workers, while, at the same time, it goes before Congress and begs and cries for more HB workers, mostly from Asia.

What I say above holds true for other giants like Apple and Google.

b. "If your explanation is weak as to why you had such a mass layoff, you are not eligible for the HB program. Laying off American technical workers, while, at the same time, you hire HB workers is an illegal, greedy abuse of the HB program.

c. "A company or private enterprise like California Edison and Microsoft can only hire HB workers every 5 years if it has a mass layoff of American technical workers, if even then.

d. "If you have a mass layoff or fire workers because you say your business is not doing very well, you can't turn around and beg for HB workers because you need such workers to help your business recover.

e."You must pay HB foreign workers the same that you would pay American workers.

f. "Your HB workers must not all come from the same country or the same continent like Asia. Only one third (1/3) can come from one continent like Asia.

g.IMPORTANT: We need to fix this abusive loophole that I call "Cheating on resume": A company or foreign worker cannot hire a lawyer to help the company write a job description so limited that only the foreign worker who hired the lawyer can fill the job.

Americans should get off their dead asses and make sure they’re BETTER QUALIFIED than the Indians who are displacing them.

Sorry, did you read the article? The whole article? From what you say in this post and another, I’m wondering. With all due respect, it seems to me that you are making some gross generalizations and stereotyping “Americans” without much to back them up...

Can you provide any statistics that refute those presented in article, or even personal anecdotal observations?

I can get you stats if no one else provides them as this issue has been a hot button with me and my family for several years.

My kids (as well as many other American students) are not sitting on their “dead asses” and they are indeed better qualified than the Indians attempting to displace Americans.

I have 3 adult children in science/technology—1 with PhD, 1 with M.S. (works in IT in San Jose) and one finishing BS with a national qualifying exam required for employment.

They are all bright, and did well in college, yet competition has been fierce. The H-1B visa problem has been brewing for years—only coing to head because the economy is so “soft” and the number of foreign students has increased substantially.

I rather resent your remark as my family and children all “Americans,” are all well educated.

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