Posted on 03/29/2015 6:40:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
The libertarian-leaning me believes an American employer should be able to hire pretty much anyone he or she wants to hire. But the taxpaying me believes that if the federal government limits immigration yet creates a special visa program for highly skilled foreign workers with the assurance that the program will not cut into the wages or jobs of American workers, then Washington ought to keep its promise.
This month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, held a congressional hearing on the H-1B visa program that eliminated any doubt that some corporations are gaming the system to the severe disadvantage of skilled workers. Last year the Center for Investigative Reporting reported on abuses of so-called "body shops" -- labor brokers who enlist foreign workers abroad, press them into exploitative contracts and cut them undersized checks as they do contract work for established tech concerns that may want to avert the bad publicity. Howard University public policy professor Ron Hira testified that Washington "inadvertently created a highly profitable business model" to bring in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) professionals at cheaper wages.
The biggest, baddest star of the hearing turned out to be Southern California Edison. The utility plans to lay off 400 IT workers; another 100 workers are leaving voluntarily. What happens to the work? SCE has hired two labor brokers -- Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services -- to outsource most information technology work overseas, while 20 percent of the work will go to H-1B workers, according to the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper's Michael Hiltzik found that the utility paid its domestic IT specialists an average of $120,000, while Infosys and Tata pay recruits an average of $65,000 to $71,000. Infosys and Tata are, by the way, are among the largest beneficiaries of H-1B visas.
The story gets worse. In order to qualify for severance, SCE workers had to agree to train their replacements and to not criticize the utility in public. Asking to remain anonymous, former SCE employees sent Grassley letters in which they complained "they had to train their replacements -- for weeks and months -- knowing all along that they were going to lose their jobs to cheaper workers who didn't possess the skills they had," Grassley explained. "They said it was humiliating." (SCE declined Grassley's invitation to testify.)
Supporters of the H-1B program want to expand the cap on these visas at 85,000 so that Silicon Valley and other tech hot spots can attract "the best and the brightest." For his part, Hira testified that the lion's share of recipients are not the cream of the workforce, but more like "ordinary IT workers." As for the notion that there is a shortage of STEM workers, Hira added that if skilled workers were as much in demand as H-1B boosters suggest, SCE workers would have left for better jobs. Instead, they are training their replacements.
Rutgers Professor Hal Salzman has done extensive research on the STEM workforce and estimates that 10 to 15 percent of H-1B visas go to winners of a "talent search." He believes the government should accommodate such hires. But for the most part, the temporary jobs program exists to replace American workers at lower wages. He slammed the program as a "20 percent off sale" on hiring.
Bjorn Billhardt of Enspire Learning in Austin, Texas, came to America from Germany as an exchange student, qualified for an H-1B visa and now is a U.S. citizen. Speaking in favor of increasing the H-1B caps, Billhardt argued that he needs to hire the best individual possible to keep his 30-employee business competitive in a fierce international market. If Washington makes employers like him prove they cannot hire a qualified American worker, he argued, then that's a bureaucratic nightmare.
Still, Billhardt thought one reform mentioned during the hearing made great sense. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illi., proclaimed, "I want to put the H-1B factories out of business." His remedy: a rule to prohibit firms with more than 50 employees from having more than 50 percent H-1B visa workers. Billhardt thought it was a grand idea. So do I.
This truly is an issue where left and right can meet. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka testified against the system -- which puts the labor leader on the same side as Grassley and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. For years, Grassley and Durbin have sponsored bipartisan legislation to end temporary worker visa abuses. While Americans think that the H-1B visa program requires U.S. firms to make a good-faith effort to hire an American, the law includes no such mandate. Grassley and Durbin want that requirement. Billhardt isn't warm to the idea, but it would match how Washington has sold these rules to the American people. The duo also wants to raise the H-1B-wage floor to make sure it doesn't pay to oust American workers for lower-paid alternatives.
According to the Department of Labor, the Immigration and Nationality Act requires that hiring a foreign worker "not adversely affect the wages and the working conditions of U.S. workers comparably employed." That is common sense. Americans don't learn skills and refine them so that they can pay taxes to bankroll a lottery that allows some employers to lay off workers and replace them with foreign workers at below-market wages. Whom does such a system serve?
Ted Cruz supports increasing the number of HB1 visas by a factor of five.
How about if you have one H1B you can’t layoff employees. They are meant as a stop gap, not a replacement.
If anyone tells you that this is not happening is either lying, misinformed and or ignorant.
The mantra that there are not enough software, electrical, mechanical, process engineers in the U.S. is poppycock.
Look to the 93 million out of the labor force. 40-50 year old engineers that struggle for employment. While on the ol band wagon. If anyone tells you that age discrimination is not a big problem in corporate America is again...being deceptive.
Corporate America talks a good game, but covertly skirts it's own policy. Pretty damn shameful.
bump
But from an IT perspective -- everything in the purview is "tech".
If they don't, they simply are axed. I've seen it, and it is insult on top of injury. And the funny part is that the replacement employees are usually crap, even after the training. However, when the company's IT department falls apart and the stockholders come looking for those responsible, those responsible have taken their kickbacks and moved on, leaving their former company in smoking ruins, just like a 3rd world country...
Any replacement I train will finish by hating the company more than me. Poison the well when management is poisonous.
Here is what I have noticed at three different companies across three differing lines of business.
The first few H1B’s show up and generally speaking things are fine. They integrate well and are productive.
Next up, less American’s are being hired and more H1B’s are streaming in and before you know it there is a small enclave where they all managed to get themselves seated.
Yet more H1B’s come in, this round is usually from the enclaves recommendations about “good” workers from their home country and before long if you take a walk through said enclave English is no longer being spoken and you quickly find out the latest round of H1B imports actually can’t do the job and productivity goes down dragging the rest of the department with it. Still, American’s are no longer being hired equally to the H1B’s, the bean counters are now hooked on how many foreigners they can get per an American at less $$$ but can’t see the productivity drop. It’s a spiral from there.
It’s an awful business plan but then “awful” was the word of the day in American business for a couple of generations.
The San Diego area has a group of industries supplying the ethnic needs of the H1-B workers in Qualcomm.
And while we are at it, how about CEOs and CFOs being H1B hired by the board of directors. Isn't there a shortage of [cheap] top management?
The mantra that there are not enough software, electrical, mechanical, process engineers in the U.S. is poppycock....
Check
If anyone tells you that age discrimination is not a big problem in corporate America is again...being deceptive....
Check
Corporate America talks a good game, but covertly skirts it's own policy...
Check
Well that deserves a quadruple bump.
That’s okay....I just had about 35 people working for me and a lot of technicians. Several PhDs, lots of MS’s and fewer BS’s.... We did research and a lot of idea development that put theory into reality....
I finally came to realize the ones that gave me the least trouble were the technicians. Did what I wanted and kept working. Some of the others? I never saw a bigger bunch of coddled babies in my life. :0)
>>A much better solution would be to base H1B visas on salary. The highest salaries would get priority for visas...<<
Better yet, but along the same lines, why not require U.S. companies to pay at least the going rate for a U.S. employee doing the same job? After all, the argument is that there aren’t enough qualified people in this country. That would argue that wages should go up, not down. So requiring that the companies pay the going rate would at least keep wages level, rather than driving them down as now appears to be occurring.
And a company looking at a temporary worker for $100,000 vs. an American who could become a permanent employee for the same $100,000 would likely lean toward the American unless the skill set was obviously different between the two.
The example given of qualified people training their own replacement H-1B employees wouldn’t occur then either. Why replace your qualified work force with an untrained one at the same price? And if the employer argues that wages have gotten too high, simply require them to first offer the lower wage to the existing employee and if he refuses, then he can only be replaced by a U.S. citizen, not a H-1B employee.
I’m not generally in favor of more rules, but right now it would appear that the rules governing H-1B’s need to at least be reconsidered.
For those who think Ted Cruz is a Conservative on immigration please remember:
(1) 2012 - Campaigned in Texas to increase the number of legal “guest workers” for ranchers and farmers.
(2) 2013 - Introduced an amendment to the Gang of Eight Amnesty that would have increased the number of H-1B Visas by 5 times.
(3) 2013 - Introduced a second amendment to increase Green Cards by 650,000 per year - in other words, 650,000 new permanent work visas every year.
The “non-disclosure” agreement is why so few American engineers will criticize the H-1B program.
Almost all large corporations hand out a pretty decent severance package when the H-1B’s walk in the door.
The Americans have only two choices:
(1) Train the H-1B’s and don't complain - then get a good reference (”eligible for rehire”), up to 18 months of pay, maybe educational benefits, and free professional job placement services.
(2) Refuse to train or publicly complain - no reference, minimal severance pay, no educational or placement services.
*rme*
I don't know what that means.
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