Training Fund Fiasco

Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 11:19 AM

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In June 1998, $7.5 million was allocated by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to a national network of career training centers. These funds were to be used to train workers that were replaced by H-1Bs. The theory was that these Americans were being displaced because they didn't have the skills that the "new economy" demanded. This money was increased to $9.57 million in 1999 and $15.1 million in 2000.

While all this was going on the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA) authorized the use of over half of the employer H-1B application fee of $1000 to finance a training program. The training was supposedly designed to help American workers acquire the skills they needed to compete with the H-1Bs that were displacing them. By the year 2000 a total of $185 million was allocated to this re-education effort. About $65 million of that is given to the National Science Foundation (NSF) - the same organization that did a psuedo-scientific study saying that there is a vast shortage of Americans that have the skills to hold a job. The NSF doesn't consider the money received to be a conflict of interest.

So why are these training funds were necessary in the first place since Section SEC. 412 of ACWIA is titled "Protection Against Displacement of United States Workers"? If American employers are prohibited from replacing American workers with H-1Bs then there is no need to train anybody.

It didn't take me long to find a clever loophole in ACWIA that allowed employers to get away with replacing workers. Section 412 says that the employer must offer the job to any United States worker "who applies and is equally or better qualified for the job for which the nonimmigrant or nonimmigrants is or are sought." So there it is: If employers say that American workers don't have the skills then they can hire H-1Bs anytime they want. A rough translation of this law says that unless American workers can "walk on water" they can be replaced.

This pretense at providing training for American workers was a very clever ruse by industry lobbyists to make their demand for a higher H-1B quota look more palatable. Skills weren't the real issue because it's never been proven that H-1Bs have better skills than American workers. Industry wants to hire H-1Bs because they like the cheap young blood of these indentured laborers.

When I lost my job to an H-1B I decided find out where I could get some of this training. I figured that if skills were an issue, then I would get the skills. I called up the Arizona Dept. of Economic Security because they handle unemployment and job placement. After hours of being shuttled from one bureaucrat after another, I never found a single person that knew what I was talking about.

I decided to call the Dept. of Labor in Washington D.C. and I received similar treatment until I finally talked to someone at DOL ETA (Employment Training Administration). I was told that individuals like me can't get any of that money. It is sent out to universities and other training schools. When I explained that nobody in the state of Arizona knew where I could get the training all she could suggest is that I call my state government (sigh.....)

I recently learned that the reason I can't get training is because I lived in the wrong county when I lost my job. I live in Maricopa county, the most populated county in Arizona that includes the entire Phoenix metro area. Little did I know that if I lived in the much smaller Pima county that includes Tucson, I could have been trained at The Southern Arizona Institute of Advanced Technology http://www.saiat.org/. They boast that their "High Tech High Wage Program" will put people on the fast track to fame and fortune by learning to be TECHNICIANS! Somehow I don't think that's a great move for someone like me with an engineering degree.

Some of these displaced workers were being trained at New Horizons Computer Learning Centers in Tucson. http://www.nhtucson.com/. For political reasons that I don't yet understand, SAIAT managed to grab all of the training funds. That meant that New Horizons lost their funds and their students. Where there is money involved you can count on fights to grab it all.

I was recently contacted by someone at New Horizons. She was doing research on what happened to their "H-1B Training Funds". She didn't know what H-1B was and assumed it was just some kind of government program to train high tech workers. I think she was in a state of shock when I explained to her what H-1B was all about.

H-1B training funds are a fiasco, no doubt about it. Now Bush wants to make things even worse. The Whitehouse admits the funds wind up in training workers for low-tech jobs such as cable installers, technicians, nurses etc.

Bush's proposed solution is to use these funds to expedite the issuing of Green Cards for the H-1Bs so they can become permanent residents. In other words, the White House wants to use those fees to help the H-1Bs! This of course comes while there are huge layoffs in the IT industry coupled with American workers being replaced with H-1Bs. Bush doesn't seem very interested in issuing an Executive Order that these user fees be used for their expressed purpose of reducing H-1B usage by retraining older programmers in new skills.

Why is Bush proposing that Congress help H-1Bs instead of Americans that are losing their jobs?

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If your eyes aren't glazed over after reading this newsletter, here is more

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The President's Proposal http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2003/bud19.html

http://www.numbersusa.com/text?ID=1013 Professor Matloff Daily Analysis H-1B training funds

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/3067228.htm Tech job training risks getting sacked

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/technology/article/0,1299,DRMN_49_ 1078 340,00.html Bush seeks to cancel job-training program

http://www.ZaZona.com/shameh1b/Library/Matloff/TrainingIssue.htm The "Training Issue"

USDOL SKILLS SHORTAGE INITIATIVES AND THE THE H-1B TECHNICAL SKILL TRAINING PROGRAM http://www.doleta.gov/skill/2wkbk1.pdf

http://www.doleta.gov/h-1b/summaries/round/pccsd.pdf H-1B Technical Skills Training Grants First Round, Region 6

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