The H-1B controversy

Date: Monday, February 24, 2003 6:41 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

In case you didnt' know, citizens have to have 10 out of 10 skills to
get hired:

Heres the rub. Companies want people that can meet
their deadlines for getting a product to market. They
dont want people that need time to be retrained.
They are looking for people with 10 out of 10 skills.
If you dont have 10, they dont want to talk to you,
McKim said.

Notice the standards are quite different for H-1Bs - they can be 9 out
of 10:

Employers find it difficult to find people with the
skills they want for a price they are willing to pay,
so they look for H-1B visa applicants.

Maybe they just have nine out of the 10 skills they
require, but they are cheaper, McKim said.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/main.asp?SectionID=27&SubSectionID=357&ArticleID=74389

Glenn Connell demonstrates the use of his bandsaw at his workshop in
New Ipswich on Monday. Connell began doing commercial carpentry work
about two years ago when he could no longer get enough work through his
independent software development company. There were places Id go
and say Ill cut my rate in half, and I still couldnt get
work, he said. Luckily, I had skills in doing carpentry.

The H-1B controversy

Sunday, February 23, 2003
By BRAD LEIGHTON, Telegraph Staff, leightonb@telegraph-nh.com

Glenn Connell of New Ipswich has advanced degrees in both computer
science and physics and has several years of experience in computer
programming.

Now he is working as a carpenter.

Im one of the lucky ones. At least I have carpentry skills. There
are many other programmers that are unemployed and dont have any
other way to make a decent living, Connell said.

In Amherst, Dmitry Kolomyitsev, in the United States on an H-1B visa,
pounds away at a keyboard writing software code for Auriga Inc.

During the high-technology boom, finding an available software
programmer sometimes sparked bidding wars between companies. But even
then, the issue of bringing temporary high-technology workers into the
United States was a controversial subject.

Now, with hundreds of programmers out of work, the H-1B visa debate has
taken on an even more emotional tone.

Dwayne Jeffrey, the president of Sardus Software Inc. and a longtime
critic of the H-1B program, said that no one should blame the H-1B
recipients themselves, but there are fundamental flaws with the idea of
bringing in high-technology workers only to send them home six years
later.

Ninety-five percent of the people with H-1B visas are honest,
hardworking people who just want an opportunity to support their
families so they can go home to a better life, Jeffrey said.

They arent to blame. These are people that are willing to slave at
the computer screen for 16 hours a day for six years. The fault lies
with the politicians for allowing this thing to get out of hand. It is
just wrong-headed logic.

The problems with the system are numerous, well-documented and amount
to an indentured servitude program for foreign software engineers,
Jeffrey said.

And the program costs highly skilled domestic high-technology workers
both wages and jobs, he added.

The Government Accounting Office and the federal Department of Labor
have both issued reports critical of the program, and there have been
several news articles outlining specific instances of H-1B program
abuse.

Critics say that despite legislation that is supposed to ensure H-1B
workers are paid the prevailing wage, in reality they are paid less.
The H-1B recipients are often put in an exploitable position because if
they lose their job, they are then deported back to their country of
origin.

Worse, the critics say, is when the H-1B recipients return to their
native country they take American technology with them.

Most arent directly stealing something, but we are educating the
foreign work force through our visa program and we are doing it at the
expense of U.S. engineers and our taxpayer dollars, Jeffrey said.

The same employers who are importing temporary workers are cutting back
on their training programs for domestic workers, he added.

It isnt immigration Im opposed to, he added. I think one of the
solutions would be to bring these high-technology workers in under
green cards. The process for green cards is a lot more stringent and
those people are here to stay and have long-term investment in this
country. They also have the ability to change jobs. H-1Bs dont have
that luxury.

But Alexis Sukharev, the president of Auriga, denies that H-1B visa
workers are paid less than domestic engineers, and that the H-1B
program is just a drop in the bucket of American unemployment now.

According to the GAO, H-1B visa holders rarely complain that they are
being mistreated or underpaid, but in the instances they did complain
investigators found labor violations in 83 percent of the cases.

Still, Sukharev said, there arent that many H-1B visas being issued
now.

There were 79,100 H-1B visas issued last fiscal year, but how many
actually came? The last H-1B visa applicant we actually got was in
January 2001. We put in 12 to 15 H-1B applications and most were
approved last fiscal year. We paid $1,000 for each application, but
none of those we applied for are actually here, Sukharev said.

In the three to six months it took each application to be processed,
the economy changed, so none of the applicants was brought over, he
added.

The thing is that even though there is a lot of interest in the H-1B
issue, we arent talking about a lot of people. Even though there
were 79,000 visas issued last year, there are much less than that many
people actually here.

The cap on the number of H-1B visas issued was 195,000 last year, but
reverts to the original 65,000 this year. The federal Immigration and
Naturalization Service has no way of accounting for exactly how many
H-1B visa workers are now in the United States. There could be as many
as 5,000 H-1B visa holders working in New Hampshire, but officials with
the state Department of Employment Security say that is just an
educated guess.

In addition, U.S. law is more relaxed when domestic firms transfer
workers from foreign branches. So companies can skirt the H-1B limits
and expenses by using an L-1 worker transfer visa.

Do we still need the H-1B program? I think so. I think it is very good
for this country, Sukharev said. Its a free market program.

Sukharev argues that, despite short-term pain, in the global economy
U.S. firms must be allowed to compete for resources, including
inexpensive labor. His company specializes in outsourcing the writing
of software code to software engineers in Russia. As long as companies
are careful whom they partner with, they shouldnt be concerned about
sending work and information overseas, he said.

Kolomyitsev, who was born in Ukraine and lived in Turkistan, was
brought to the United States because he has a highly specific list of
skills and is able to interact with software engineers in Russia,
Sukharev said.

James McKim, a member of the Software Association of New Hampshires
H-1B Task Force, agrees with Sukharev that there is a place for H-1B
visas, but he also said companies should do more to give domestic
software engineers upgraded skills.

Heres the rub. Companies want people that can meet their deadlines
for getting a product to market. They dont want people that need
time to be retrained. They are looking for people with 10 out of 10
skills. If you dont have 10, they dont want to talk to you, McKim
said.

Employers find it difficult to find people with the skills they want
for a price they are willing to pay, so they look for H-1B visa
applicants.

Maybe they just have nine out of the 10 skills they require, but they
are cheaper, McKim said.

Employers will list skills typical of a seasoned software engineer, but
advertise the job as junior level, said Caroline Bogart of Litchfield,
a software consultant. They then use the fact that they cant fill
the job as an excuse to bring in an H-1B visa holder.

People brought in under the H-1B visa are treated like slaves, Bogart
said. They make half of what I make and they arent allowed to quit
their job or they are deported.

In the long term, the United States is killing its own competitiveness
on the world market, Bogart said.

Companies should be investing in their domestic workers, not bringing
in cheaper workers, training them and then sending them back overseas
where they can compete against us, Bogart said.

Right now we have thousands of very smart people that are unemployed.
These are people ready and willing to learn.

However, 90 percent of the H-1B applicants also apply for permanent
resident status, Sukharev said.

Kolomyitsev is in the last stages of receiving his green card. I was
born in the Ukraine, but lived in Turkistan; so I dont really have
any country at all. Living in the United States means stability for me,
my wife and my daughter.

After a pause he continues, I love this country.

Brad Leighton can be reached at 594-6446.

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