Two good H-1B commentaries
Two good H-1B commentaries
Date: Friday, April 20, 2007 1:44 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1676 -- 4/20/2007 >>>>>
It's refreshing to see two good commentaries published about H-1B. The
first one in the Seattle Times is very similar to the one featured in the
recent newsletter titled "The Outsourcing Visa."
The second one by James Carlini makes some good points, but it's marred by
a bad error:
There is finally a Senate bill that says an American worker can
apply for these jobs. The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Grassley
in Iowa and Sen. Durbin in Illinois. While this will hopefully
be a starting point for IT job reform, I think its too late.
Carlini seems to think that H-1B prevents Americans from applying for jobs.
That's simply false. There is nothing in the H-1B regulations that affects
the rights of Americans to apply for jobs. Of course there are laws against
certain types of discrimination such as age, race, or gender, but H-1B has
no effect on those either. When you get down to it, Americans don't have a
right to any job, regardless of whether an H-1B is competing for it or not.
Carlini's errors are compounded when he states that the Durbin/Grassley
bill gives Americans new rights to apply for jobs. You can't fix a problem
that doesn't exist! The bill says that employers should make a "good faith"
effort to look for American workers but doesn't change the fact that
employers can toss employment applications into the wastebasket.
Think of it this way -- have you ever seen a job advertisement that says
"Americans need not apply"?
The Durbin/Grassley bill requires employers who want to accept applications
from H-1Bs to post the job on a government website for 30 days, ostensibly
in order to show their "good faith" efforts on behalf of Americans who seek
jobs. It's important to understand that nothing in the bill requires
employers to hire Americans that apply for these jobs even if they meet all
or most of the qualifications.
One of the major problems with H-1B is that it decreases the probability of
getting good jobs simply because increasing the size of the labor pool
causes more competition and arbitrage. Unfortunately Durbin/Grassley
doesn't control the number of H-1B visas issued, so the odds for American
job seekers will be no better or worse if Congress passes the bill.
Carlini always likes to end his commentaries with a Carlinism -- this time
it says: "When you replace people, you also replace or reduce their buying
power.:
Here is my first ever Sanchezism: Just because someone applies for a job
doesn't mean he/she will get it.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003668844_harrop17.html
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - 12:00 AM
Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist
New threat to skilled U.S. workers
The master plan, it seems, is to move perhaps 40 million high-skill
American jobs to other countries. U.S. workers have not been consulted.
Princeton economist Alan Blinder predicts that these choice jobs could be
lost in a mere decade or two. We speak of computer programming,
bookkeeping, graphic design and other careers once thought firmly planted
in American soil. For perspective, 40 million is more than twice the total
number of people now employed in manufacturing.
Blinder was taken aback when, sitting in at the business summit in Davos,
Switzerland, he heard U.S. executives talk enthusiastically about all the
professional jobs they could outsource to lower-wage countries. And he's a
free trader.
What America can do to stop this is unclear, but it certainly doesn't have
to speed up the process through a government program. We refer to the H-1B
visa program, which allows educated foreigners to work in the United
States, usually for three years. Many in Congress want to nearly double the
number of H-1B visas, to 115,000 a year.
To the extent that the program helps talented foreign graduates of U.S.
universities stay in this country while they await their green cards, it
performs a useful service. But for many companies, the visa has become just
a tool for transferring American jobs offshore.
Ron Hira has studied the dark side of the H-1B program. A professor of
public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he notes that the
top applicants for visas are outsourcing companies, such as Wipro
Technologies of India and Bermuda-based Accenture.
The companies bring recruits in from, say, India to learn about American
business. After three years here, the workers go home better able to
interact with their U.S. customers.
In other cases, companies ask their U.S. employees to train H-1B workers
who then replace them at lower pay. "This is euphemistically called,
'knowledge transfer,' " Hira says. "I call it, 'knowledge extraction.' "
Another rap against the program is that it's used to depress the wages of
American workers. The program's defenders argue that the law requires
companies to pay "the prevailing wage."
But "prevailing wage" is a legalism, Hira says. It does not translate into
"market wage."
The median pay for H-1B computing professionals in fiscal 2005 was $50,000,
which means half earn less than that. An American information-technology
worker with a bachelor's degree makes more than $50,000 in an entry-level
job.
Businesses bemoan the alleged shortage of Americans trained to do the work.
But wait a second -- the law of supply and demand states that a shortage of
something causes its price to rise. Wages in information technology have
been flat.
The companies fret that not enough young Americans are studying science and
technology. Well, cutting the pay in those fields isn't much of an
incentive, is it?
The threat that they will outsource if they can't bring in foreign temps is
a hollow one. "There's nothing stopping those companies from working
offshore anyway," Hira says. "They're not patriotic."
This vision for a competitive America seems to be a few rich U.S.
executives commandeering armies of foreign workers. They don't have to
train their domestic workforce. They don't have to raise pay to American
standards.
A provision for revving up the H-1B program is contained in the immigration
bill that last year passed the Senate. The co-sponsors, Democrat Ted
Kennedy of Massachusetts and Republican John McCain of Arizona, have
contended that their legislation requires employers to search for U.S.
workers first. It does not.
Skilled U.S. workers had better start looking out for their interests. No
one else is.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.midwestbusiness.com/news/viewnews.asp?newsletterID=16969
H-1B Jobs: Wheres the Real Shortage of Skilled Workers?
Published on 4/11/2007
Carlinis Comments, MidwestBusiness.coms oldest column, runs every
Wednesday. Its mission is to offer the common mans view on business and
technology issues while questioning the leadership and visions of "pseudo"
experts.
CHICAGO - While H-1B job quotas are being talked about again, do we really
need to look outside our borders for workers? Are H-1B workers better
educated and better workers or are they just cheaper to pay?
"133,000 H-1B Visa Applications Submitted in Two Days" was the cover story
of this weeks Information Week. Its interesting how so many people
lost jobs in the last couple years and could never get anything close to
what they were earning while many companies claimed they couldnt find
anyone. Many people in the Midwest were cut from good jobs and never had a
chance to return
This is from an AP article last week:
To the dismay of technology companies that rely on the visas to hire
skilled foreign workers, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services says it
reached its limit for 2008 H-1B visa petitions in a single day and will not
accept any more.
The agency began accepting petitions [on April 2] for the fiscal year
starting Oct. 1 and said it received about 150,000 applications by
mid-afternoon.
There is finally a Senate bill that says an American worker can apply for
these jobs. The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Grassley in Iowa and Sen.
Durbin in Illinois. While this will hopefully be a starting point for IT
job reform, I think its too late.
While there were people in the job market for several years, many companies
didnt want to pay their market rate. Instead, they artificially created
a new fractional rate by introducing many H-1B jobs. Salaries for database
administrators in some cases went from $80,000 to $90,000 a year to $40,000
by the introduction of H-1B workers eager to work in the U.S.
Where was the mainstream media spotlight on this issue? I wrote columns
about this dating back to 2002.
Wake Up, Chicago Executive Says
Discussing this with others in the Chicago area, here is what the president
of a Chicago company said who disagrees with the perspective of Oracles
Hoffman.
The real problem in the U.S. is our lack of focus and attention on our
grade school and high school children in terms of their lack of discipline
in math and the sciences. The U.S. will continue to get its head handed to
it due to our laziness in the education systems. Our main support structure
-- the parents of these children -- need to start demanding excellence from
their kids.
How competitive the U.S. is in the future is not a function of the
threshold of H-1B visas. This is an absolute scapegoat of an excuse.
Certainly increasing this threshold further exacerbates our laziness. We
need to wake up.
I couldnt disagree more with Oracles Hoffman stating: "Our broken
visa policies for highly educated foreign professionals are not only
counterproductive [but] they are anti-competitive and detrimental to
Americas long-term economic competitiveness." This is utter lunacy and
is somewhat the root cause of our problem.
We have captains of industry running high-tech companies like Oracle who
are hinging our competitiveness on the number of H-1B visas we allow in the
U.S. These companies should be fueling our educational systems with the
right support structure in math and the sciences and offering programs,
scholarships and seminars within our schools.
Our high-tech companies are looking to the H-1B programs as a quick fix to
solve todays problems. Similar to the desperation tactics of a junkie,
theyre just grabbing H-1B employees when needing their next fix. This is
not a Band-Aid covering a superficial wound. This is more like taking two
aspirin for someone with blunt head trauma. Again, we need to wake up.
Our ability to compete in the future is a function of many things (how
visionary we are, how innovative and entrepreneurial we are, etc.). If we
dont set our children in the right direction today in terms of needing
sound math and science skills, we are in for a rude awakening.
I am coaching my grade school and high school kids to have a firm grip in
these areas. As a safety net, I also want them to learn Mandarin just in
case.
The education programs in this country are way off kilter. This topic could
fill a whole book. When you have administrators focused on political
correctness instead of global competitiveness, its time to make radical
changes.
H-1B Process is Easy, But Not For U.S. Workers
Everything in finding and streamlining the H-1B job process is out there
(from general questions to streamlining the process).
If only there was something this good for U.S. citizens who have been
spinning around in menial jobs for the last six years maybe more people
would have found better jobs.
Dont kid yourself. The overall economy has suffered because of this. The
media and all the economic pundits dont seem to see the correlation that
many white-collar and technical jobs have evaporated. With that, the buying
power from those jobs has also evaporated.
If you dont think so, ask yourself this question: How many H-1Bs are
buying new Fords, GMs and Chryslers? How many are buying houses? They send
their money home, stimulate the economy back there and dont buy into
what used to be the American dream of buying a house and a new car.
Check out this graph along with this graph (both courtesy of Gene Nelson)
showing more than 25 million jobs transferred to non-U.S. citizens.
Thats a huge amount of purchasing power. It doesnt take someone with
a doctorate to see the effects on our economy.
Many IT people who used to buy new cars have changed their consumer habits
drastically. A friend laid off from a $90,000 project manager job at
Motorola in 2001 is looking at trying to keep his 2000 Japanese luxury car
working as he tries to juggle a mortgage and other expenses in a job that
pays significantly less.
If he ever buys anything else, it will be a used Japanese car and he swears
he will never buy a Motorola product again. Is he and thousands of other
people still bitter about Motorolas job-slashing strategy?
Its funny how the backlash of not buying a former employers products
or services after a bitter layoff is never factored in when looking at
slumping sales. How many former Motorola employees go out of their way to
buy Samsung, LG and Nokia cell phones today?
More important, how many of their friends are also influenced by them? That
would be an interesting study and also something for HR experts to look at
when they caution individuals about "not burning their bridges" and giving
two weeks notice when leaving a company.
The same goes for a friend formerly with United Airlines who recently
bought a used Lexus and has no intention of ever buying an American car
again. If money isnt coming in as it used to, the common concern I have
heard from many people seems to be that they cant take a chance on
buying an inferior product that wont last as long.
The longer the mainstream media dont put an objective spotlight on these
issues and the real impact on the American economy, the more people will
turn to other media outlets to get their news. They dont trust someone
saying the economy is great while they are trying to figure out how they
dont lose their home.
Carlinism: When you replace people, you also replace or reduce their buying
power.
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