Rep. Tancredo's House Testimony

Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 12:25 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Rep. Tancredo recently testified before Congress about H-1B and L-1
visas. Here is a quote that says it all:

These companies are circumventing the congressionally-mandated
safeguards and rules imposed under the H-1b program. And our
government knows it. This is not news to anybody inside the
Department of Labor or inside the administration.
They just do not care.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To listen to Tom Tancredo testifying on the house floor listen to this
31 minute audio file. I recommend listening to his testimony because
his speech is very captivating.
pnm://ra.pixelgate.net/ap/TancredoJobs061803audio.rm

The transcript of his testimony is below. I deleted the 1st half where
he is talking about illegal aliens but it's worthwhile to read and/or
listen to if you have the time.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2003_record&docid=cr18jn03-107

There are several programs that the Federal Government runs, visa
programs, that are designed to bring more people in, to do jobs that
again we are told cannot be done by Americans, by American citizens.
Would my colleagues believe that we are told that there are millions of
jobs going begging in the high-tech industry?

Who would believe that, Mr. Speaker? I ask my colleagues, who knows of
a job available in the high-tech industry that is going begging?
Because again, if my colleagues know about jobs that are available, let
me know. I have a lot of people in my district who are unemployed and
have been unemployed for over a year, and they ended up being a victim
of that bubble that burst in the high-tech industry, and they are
looking for jobs, and they would love to get reemployed into that
industry. But most of them are doing something else now entirely, if
they are working at all.

My friend and neighbor, it has been almost 2 years for him. He is doing
some data entry for us and he is driving a limousine at night. And that
is what is happening all over, of course, because people are trying to
keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. And they would love
to get a job back in that industry. But, Mr. Speaker, we are
encouraging people to come from other countries to the United States
for the purpose of taking jobs in the high-tech industry. These are
called H-1b visa recipients.

Now, these are folks who are not coming over here to take a job that
``no one else would take,'' although we are told that, and that is
supposed to be the scheme; that is supposed to be the idea behind H-1b
and something else called L-1 visa programs, but it is not true. It is
not true. These people are taking jobs, they are displacing American
workers, by the hundreds of thousands. There are literally millions of
folks in this country today holding these kinds of visas.

Now, we asked the INS, how many are here? No one knows how many people
in this country have even come here through the H-1b visa program. The
new Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service does not know. The
Department of Labor does not know. No one in government anywhere can
give me an accurate number, and the reason they cannot is because they
do not keep those numbers. All they know is how many they hand out,
about 195,000 a year we have handed out for several years now, and that
is just the H-1b, and these folks do not go home when they lose their
job, although they are supposed to. They stay.

So I am saying that it is now approaching a million people, if not
more, that are here under an H-1b program that are taking jobs in
``that high-tech industry that no other American would take.'' Does
anybody really buy that?

What we know is that they are being given these visas because they will
work for less. It is a cheap labor program.

Now, let us just say it. If that is the program we want to run, let us
tell Americans that is the program. Let us not even hide it under visa
titles like H-1b and things nobody has the slightest idea what H-1b
means or L-1 visas. I will tell my colleagues what it means, anybody
who is listening: it is a cheap labor program. People want to pay less
for labor. They know there are people outside the country who are
willing to work for less, so let us get them in here.

The Organization for the Rights of American Workers, the acronym TORAW,
states that in the year 2000, there were 355,000 H-1b visas issued,
just in the year 2000. The cap for H-1b visas in that year was 115,000.
That means that 240,000 received H-1b visas through loopholes and
extensions. In 2001, 384,191 H-1b visas were issued. The cap was
107,500. That means that 276,691 people received H-1b visas through
loopholes and extensions. Thus, the total amount of people who came
here using H-1b visas in 2000 and 2001 totaled 739,796.

This is a program they told us would be short-lived, that it only was
going to be there in order to take up the slack because we had this
booming economy, we had so many jobs going begging. Has anybody heard
that lately, something about a booming economy, something about jobs
going begging? But 739,000 people were brought in here on H-1b visas in
2000 and 2001.

There is plenty of evidence that major American companies like Bank of
America, Texas Instruments, Intel, General Electric, and Microsoft are
actively recruiting today H-1b visa holders instead of American
high-tech workers. Does anybody believe there are people who are not
capable of these jobs; that Americans, the highest skilled, the
greatest educational system in the world, touted constantly for our
ability to produce the best engineers; the best people in this
high-tech environment, that we are not capable, Americans cannot do the
job, we have to go to India or someplace else to get the folks over
here to take those jobs from us.

The San Francisco Business Times reported in November of 2002 that the
Bank of America was eliminating 900 jobs by year end in its information
technology operation. To add insult to injury, some of the laid-off
workers were reportedly required to train their Indian counterparts in
order to receive their severance packages. This is a common practice
throughout the country.

According to a survey by the Denver Business Journal, 66.5 percent of
American high-tech workers who responded said they took salary
reductions in 2002, and more than 71.5 percent of them expect pay cuts
in 2003. According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, or IEEE, a company can replace an American engineer who gets
paid $70,000 annually with a Hungarian who would earn $25,690 in
Hungary or a Russian who gets paid $14,000 for that job in Russia. This
puts companies in the position to orchestrate and control salaries. The
overall effect is to decrease the salaries of all high-tech positions.

Now, we say, well, is that not appropriate? Should they not do that?
Well, again, that is a policy decision that this government needs to
make and needs to tell the American citizens what we are doing. Again,
all I am asking is for truth in advertising. These are not special visa
programs; these are not designed just to bring people in here who are
in great need because the jobs are jobs our people will not do.[[Page
H5540]]These are cheap labor, cheap labor policies. That is what they
are, and that is what we should call them.

Now, these people are succeeding, these companies, according to the
Alumni Consulting Group, because in the last 3 years, the average
high-tech professional salary has dropped radically, in some cases, up
to 50 percent. An online search today of the three most popular
high-tech job search sites, hotjobs.com, monster.com, and dice.com,
showed that they were full of jobs being offered to H-1b holders.

Now there is a new problem that is emerging, the L-1 visa. The L-1 visa
program allows intracompany transfers of foreign nationals who are
company executives or managers or employees with specialized knowledge
of the company's products or services. It was never intended to allow
companies to replace American professional employees with lower-wage
foreign nationals, but guess what? That is, of course, exactly what is
happening, and on a massive scale.

NBC news reported on May 8 of this year that white collar computer
consultants are losing out to cheaper foreign competition. These
companies are outsourcing much of their technology and customer service
work to foreign companies with the goal of reducing costs and
increasing profits. I would suspect that these foreign companies are
using L-1 visas to bring their manpower here to the United States.

As I said before, the L-1 visa program was intended to permit
multinational companies to transfer foreign nationals who were company
executives and managers or employees with specialized knowledge in the
company's products and operations. Instead, it is being used to allow
U.S. companies with offshore subsidiaries to bring in lower-wage IT
workers. These companies are circumventing the congressionally-mandated
safeguards and rules imposed under the H-1b program. And our government
knows it. This is not news to anybody inside the Department of Labor or
inside the administration. They just do not care.

In 2001, 328,480 L-1 visas were issued, which is an increase of 11
percent. Thus, the total amount of people who came here under L-1 visas
in 2000 and 2001 was 623,138.

Business Week reported on March 10 of this year that L-1 visas were
being used instead of H-1b visas by India's top two IT consulting
firms. Half of Tata Consultancy Services' American-based workforce are
here on L-1 visas, some 5,000 foreign IT professionals. Infosys has
3,000 IT professionals here on L-1 visas, 3,000.

Now, remember, these are supposed to be people with specialized skills,
so specialized, and they are overseas, they are in the company
headquarters in Bombay, but there is something so special about their
ability that they have to bring them over here to work in their
subsidiary. That is an L-1 visa. But of course, it is not that. It is
anybody and everybody who they can get into the country, get over here
to replace Americans who are now driving limousines at night.

Siemens in Florida contracted to have 20 of its American IT
professionals replaced by foreign nationals brought in by Tata
Consultancy Services. Tata used L-1 visas to import Indians at
one-third of the salary of Americans laid off.

A member of my staff is a trained IT professional. Before he started
working for me, he was a victim of the very problem I was talking
about. When he asked his former company why he and the rest of his IT
team had been laid off, they stated they were moving their project to
India. They are doing this because the average Indian software engineer
makes 88 percent less than the U.S. software engineer.

Companies are not the only ones guilty of this transgression. The State
of New Mexico paid a firm in India $6 million to develop an online
unemployment claim system. The State of New Jersey called a call center
in India to handle calls from their welfare recipients. In New Jersey,
calls go to India. The State of Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
utilized an offshore company to develop its mission critical systems.

All of this shifting of jobs offshore has significantly slowed the
recovery of our own economy, and it is something that we should tell
our people about. This is something we should be truthful about. And
these are all high-tech jobs I have been talking about recently. But
remember, go back to the original discussion here about the people
coming in here with low-skill, low-wage backgrounds and how much we
need them.

Mr. Speaker, I remember distinctly, this may be now 6 or 8 months ago,
but I remember an article that I read in the Rocky Mountain Newspaper
in Denver, and there was an article, it was not an ad, it was an
article about a job that had been posted by a restaurant by the name
of, it was called Luna Restaurant. I know it, I have been there many
times; a great Mexican restaurant in north Denver.
{time}

1700

The reason why the posting of a job became a story rather than just an
ad in the paper is because it was a job for a $3-an-hour waiter; and
that one job posting, that one ad produced 600 applicants the first
day. That is why it turned into a story, a news story, 600 applicants
for a $3-an-hour job.

Mr. Speaker, it is possible, I suppose, that every one of the 600
applicants that day were illegal aliens, but I do not think so. Maybe a
large number were, but I think a lot of the people who applied for that
job were American citizens who needed the work.

So this old canard about they only come into the jobs no American will
take is just that, it is a falsehood. We employ these falsehoods in
order to maintain open borders. Both parties support the concept. The
Democrats support it because it adds to their potential pool of voters
for the Democratic Party. The Republicans support it because it
supports cheap labor.

I will tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, if that is the policy that our
government is undertaking, then it is simply the policy we should tell
our constituents about. We should explain it to them. When my
colleagues get a letter like this, handwritten, three pages long,
talking about what happened to them, how they were displaced by foreign
workers, we should write back and say it is the policy of this
government to displace you, to move you into a lower economic income
category because we believe in cheap labor and we believe that the
politics of open borders helps our party, in this case the Democrats,
as I say. The Republicans, it is the cheap labor side of things.

That is what we tell people. That is what we should do. That is how we
should respond because that is the truth of the matter; and I hope that
when we have people bring bills to the floor designed to do something
about jobs, which we hear over and over again, do something about jobs,
I just hope that they will think about one thing they could do. There
is something that we could do tomorrow to improve the quality of life
for millions and millions of American citizens. There is something that
we could do tomorrow that could actually add maybe 10 million jobs for
American citizens, and that is to enforce our immigration laws. Stop
people from coming in here illegally, deport the people who are here
illegally today, and we would automatically create 10 million jobs for
American citizens.

So I want that discussed every single time there is a ``jobs'' bill
brought in front of this Congress, because there is an easy way to do
it. There is a moral way to do it. It is immoral for us to, in fact,
displace American workers with cheap labor from outside our country. It
is immoral for us to tell Americans that we do not have an open borders
policy because we do, and there are ramifications to it, deep, serious
ramifications to open borders.

If that is what the country wants, if 50 percent plus one of this body
and the other body and the President of the United States signs it,
that is what we will get; but that is what we are going to get. Even
that does not happen that way. We are going to get it in a de facto
way. We are going to get it without ever bringing it to the attention
of the American public. We are all just going to look around one day
and say, gosh, what happened to our economy? What happened to the
country with the highest standard of living in the world? What happened
to my job? At that point, it is, of course, too late.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will be more truthful in the discussion of
this issue, and I hope that for all of our constituents' sake that we
will begin to[[Page H5541]]uphold our law, begin to defend our borders
and begin to, in fact, enforce immigration law.

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