media blitz for more h-1bs continues
media blitz for more h-1bs continues
Date: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 7:06 PM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1685 -- 5/02/2007 >>>>>
The onslaught of corporate propaganda to promote an H-1B increase continues
in the mainstream media. Most of the articles contain the typical shortage
shouting, sob stories from employers and foreign workers, and of course the
education button is pushed every chance they can get.
One of the few opposing opinions was written by Phyllis Schlafly (#6). Her
op-ed was great but probably was only read by a fraction of the people who
read the others. One of the most interesting on this list has to be
USAToday (#9) because it discusses how Congress circumvents visa caps by
inventing new categories of visas and exemptions.
Article 1:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/stories/MYSA041207.1O.visas2ed.27e322c.html
Editorial: Rush to fill H-1B quotas shows U.S. lags in race
If corporate America can't fill its need for skilled workers here in the
United States, it will outsource those jobs to other countries.
Article 2:
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/04/25/71721
Java programmers go home
Companies are desperate for high-tech workers, so Congress kicks them out
of the country.
The message industry consortiums are desperately trying to communicate over
such protectionist demagoguery is this: America has a labor shortage. And
it is one that is sure to get more severe as the baby-boomers' retirement
cuts into big sections of companies' labor forces. The solution is not more
strict visa requirements, nor is it European-like free-for-all immigration
policies.
Article 3:
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/opinion/49251.php
Our Opinion: Businesses can't compete with low cap on H-1B visas
The largely irrational fears that have characterized the immigration debate
may make it increasingly difficult for American companies to effectively
compete in today's global economy.
Article 4:
http://www.my-esm.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199200097
Electronics industry backs more H-1B visas
"American companies need more hands and more minds to succeed in the global
marketplace," Storme Street, EIA's vice president of government relations,
said in a prepared statement. "These visa programs have a proven track
record of enabling businesses to innovate, contribute to the economy and,
ultimately, create more U.S. jobs."
Article 5:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html?ex=1177819200&en=3d0bf6073627c459&ei=5070
Parsing the Truths About Visas for Tech Workers
THE United States has benefited immensely from its role as a magnet for the
best and brightest workers from around the world, especially in innovative
fields like high technology. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, sounded
precisely that theme in Senate testimony last month when asked about the
visa program for skilled workers, the H-1B.
Article 6:
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2007/apr07/07-04-18.html
New Awakening About Free Trade
Contrary to corporate propaganda, H-1Bs are not an alternative to
outsourcing skilled jobs but a vehicle to promote outsourcing. H-1Bs enable
corporations to bring in foreigners, train them in American ways, and then
send them back to guide outsourced plants in Asia.
Article 7:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=041707A
April Fools for Highly Skilled Workers
I just hope I get married -- absurdly, the only route to permanent
residence open to people like me -- before I have to leave the country.
Article 8:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-30-visa-lottery_N.htm?POE=click-refer
Foreigners seeking high-skilled worker visas hope to beat the odds
Congress over the years has quietly created new categories and crafted
exemptions to get around limits on some of the work visas most in demand.
The lawmakers have raised the limit on students with graduate degrees from
U.S. universities and eliminated the cap on foreigners at non-profit
research institutions and professionals from U.S. free trade partners.
Article 9:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-30-immigration-side_N.htm
Legislators open loopholes in immigration law
Up until last year, teams that wanted to try out foreign players in their
minor league system had to apply for immigration visas under the
increasingly oversubscribed H-2B category, used for seasonal workers in
occupations ranging from landscaping to fisheries to hotel housekeeping.
Those visas are capped at 66,000 a year.
Article 10:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07095/775377-28.stm
Crush of applicants for visas has firms fearing staff losses
The problem: A crush of visa applications for skilled foreign workers might
make it impossible for Medrad -- and other area companies -- to hire the
workers the Indiana Township medical device maker says it needs.
Article 11:
http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=3888
Misconceptions dominate the immigration debate
Another misconception is that the H-1B program is a shortsighted quick fix
to a long-term problem. The problem, one that apparently we all agree on,
is that the U.S. is not producing enough homegrown talent in the areas of
math, computer science, and engineering. Foreign students represent half of
all U.S. graduate enrollments in those fields, but Congress addressed this
by adding a $1,500 scholarship fee to most H-1B petitions.
1. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/stories/MYSA041207.1O.visas2ed.27e322c.html
Editorial: Rush to fill H-1B quotas shows U.S. lags in race
Web Posted: 04/11/2007 07:46 PM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services established a record last
week. The record was set in the H-1B visa competition, and it's a good
indicator of how badly the nation's immigration laws are out of whack.
H-1B visas are for skilled professionals who come to the United States to
fill a temporary need -- three years with the possibility to extend for an
additional three years. Typical H-1B applicants are research scientists,
doctors, engineers and information technology professionals who take jobs
in a growing economy that American citizens cannot fill.
Visit any of San Antonio's premier research centers and institutes and
you'll encounter plenty of foreign citizens who are working, paying taxes
and contributing to the local economy as H-1B visa holders.
In 2004, Congress reimposed a basic annual quota of 65,000 H-1B visas. In
each successive year, the time needed to fill that quota has grown
progressively shorter. For the current fiscal year, that quota was reached
in eight weeks.
Fiscal year 2008 doesn't begin until Oct. 1. But the quota for next year
was filled in only one day. In fact, Citizenship and Immigration Services
received 150,000 applications on opening day -- April 2 -- alone.
The theory behind keeping the unrealistically low quota is that it is
somehow protecting American jobs. The reality is that it is hindering the
U.S. economy and encouraging the elimination of jobs. If corporate America
can't fill its need for skilled workers here in the United States, it will
outsource those jobs to other countries.
The H-1B sprint is only one misguided event in the U.S. immigration games.
Congress and the White House need to get back to work on comprehensive
immigration reform that addresses the H-1B problem and other issues before
other nations detract from the American medal count.
2. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/04/25/71721
April 26, 2007
Visa system
Java programmers go home
Companies are desperate for high-tech workers, so Congress kicks them out
of the country.
By Darren Bernard
he U.S. Congress has on display a glimpse of an odd and eerie future: Two
newly printed bills, both introduced by both a Republican and a Democrat,
with polar proposals for overhauling U.S. high-tech visa caps and
requirements.
U.S. Reps. Luis Gutierrez and Jeff Flake have endorsed a bill that would
create much-needed flexibility for foreign-born workers and immediately
raise the current H1-B ("high tech") visa cap from 65,000 to 115,000. Their
Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act would
also exempt foreign-born U.S. university graduates with certain degrees
from the caps altogether.
U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin introduced contrasting
legislation that would "give priority to American workers" by requiring,
among other things, "all employers seeking to hire an H-1B visa holder to
pledge that they have made a good-faith effort to hire American workers
first and that the H-1B visa holder will not displace an American worker."
It would be difficult to draft bills that more neatly fit into the pockets
of card-carrying ideologues. It is impossible to expect anything less from
the Grassley-Durbin team, at least; their standard brand of protectionism
leaves little to speculation.
There is a lot to be said for what the Gutierrez and Flake STRIVE Act could
do for visa reform, but the Democratic-led Congress probably isn't in the
mood for that kind of reform. A little
more likely is that the Senate will go for something a little more
bureaucratic, like forcing expanded audits of companies using the H1-B visa
program, slowing the application process, making companies pinky-swear to
giving U.S. workers preference, and creating absurd new hurdles for
employers using foreign-born workers.
Sens. Grassley and Durbin claim to be pushing their legislation as much for
eliminating visa abuse and fraud as for protecting
U.S. workers. In fact, their bill is a usual turn of their protectionist
wheel, and it only does one thing: It makes it harder for U.S. companies to
recruit the talent they need to compete.
The fiction that stricter high-tech visa requirements would benefit
American workers is based on two false beliefs. One is that U.S. firms are
hiring foreign workers solely for cost benefits - in other words, as a
low-cost alternative to U.S. employees. Microsoft is one of many companies
that employ hundreds of research and development staff overseas, but - like
many others - not solely for cost reasons. Bill Gates has publicly
complimented his Chinese workers for being some of Microsoft's most
innovative and productive.
Myth two is that while tech industries might be relying more on Chinese and
Indian brainpower, it does not necessarily follow that skilled foreign
workers are competing with U.S. workers for jobs. America's unemployment
rate for science and math jobs is 2 percent; the unemployment rate for
engineering jobs is a shrinking 1.7 percent. If "unscrupulous employers"
are really trying to "deprive qualified Americans of high-skill jobs," as
Senators Durbin and Grassley say, they really stink at it.
The message industry consortiums are desperately trying to communicate over
such protectionist demagoguery is this: America has a labor shortage. And
it is one that is sure to get more severe as the baby-boomers' retirement
cuts into big sections of companies' labor forces. The solution is not more
strict visa requirements, nor is it European-like free-for-all immigration
policies. What companies need is more control and more flexibility in
building their United States-based workforce.
There's reason to believe what's good for companies should also be good for
U.S. workers. As much as protectionist camps love to blame offshoring for
the limited median real wage growth in the United States over recent years,
they will never admit that more visas mean more foreign-born workers mean
less offshoring. What causes more downward wage pressure: Bringing highly
skilled workers to the United States or sending tech jobs to China and
India where market wages are a fraction of those in western nations?
The truth is the likes of Durbin and Grassley want to have their cake and
eat it too. Their apparent goal is to ultimately prevent companies from
either offshoring work or drawing overseas labor here. How the results of
such a policy - extreme wage and price inflation, labor shortages,
declining competitiveness - would ultimately benefit the U.S. economy and
its workers is less obvious.
Gutierrez and Flake's STRIVE Act is far from ideal legislation, but it does
at least acknowledge and seek to fix a few of the hypocrisies of the
dreaded U.S. visa system - hypocrisies, what's more, that the Durbin and
Grassley bill would make worse. As just one example, STRIVE would amend
current law so visa caps would no longer cause thousands of foreign-born
U.S. university students with much-needed skills to be sent home upon
graduation. Companies are desperate for these workers, so Congress kicks
them out of the country.
Expanding visa rolls, then - not restricting them - is the response that
would do the U.S. economy, and maybe even the Democratic Party, some good.
But most likely, Capitol Hill Democrats (and some rogue Republicans) will
prove yet again they are neither willing to truly compromise nor see past
their own union-supplied campaign troughs.
3. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/opinion/49251.php
Our Opinion: Businesses can't compete with low cap on H-1B visas
Tucson Citizen
Published: 04.24.2007
Americans' anger and fears about illegal immigration are spilling over into
a debate about visas for high-tech workers.
The visa matter is only a peripheral part of the immigration reform
contretemps. But the largely irrational fears that have characterized the
immigration debate may make it increasingly difficult for American
companies to effectively compete in today's global economy.
A Tucson Citizen story explained the problem with H-1B visas, which allow
U.S. businesses to hire employees from foreign countries when they are
unable to find a citizen for the job.
The program requires employers to pay the prevailing wage - the wage paid
to the majority of workers doing similar work. It often is used by
high-tech companies to bring in employees with skills that cannot be found
here.
There is a cap of 65,000 visas per year. Applications for fiscal 2008 could
be filed beginning April 1, but they were closed April 2 after 150,000
applications were filed in one day.
Clearly, the limit for H-1B visas is too low.
Robert Breault, president and founder of the Breault Research Organization
of Tucson, called the cap on applications "a catastrophe." Breault said his
firm and others in Tucson's "Optics Valley" depend on foreign workers,
often with advanced degrees earned at the University of Arizona, because
the United States doesn't produce enough highly skilled workers.
Yukika Amma is on the other end of the dilemma. She came from Japan to
study at UA and, while a student, worked as an intern at Breault. She
wanted to work for Breault after graduation but was unable to do so because
of the visa shortage.
"It decreased my potential growth," Breault said of the visa limitations.
"We're an $8 million company and growing, but we're trying to compete with
handcuffs on."
As Congress debates comprehensive immigration reform this summer, it would
be easy to overlook the H-1B visa problem while discussing more
controversial and high-profile matters. But a major increase in the number
of H-1B visas must be part of the immigration discussion.
Tucson high-tech companies and those around the United States no longer see
other U.S. companies as their competition. They are competing in a global
market, and to do that, they must compete for the best available employees.
But with the current unrealistically low limits on H-1B visas, that is
impossible. The limit must be increased.
4. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.my-esm.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199200097
Electronics industry backs more H-1B visas
By K.C. Jones
Electronics Supply & Manufacturing
04/20/2007 9:57 AM EST
URL: http://www.my-esm.com/showArticle?articleID=199200097
The Electronic Industries Alliance said Thursday it is backing a U.S.
congressional resurgence in H-1B and employment visa reform.
The EIA issued a statement that it is backing an attempt by U.S. Rep. John
Shadegg, (R-Ariz.) to raise the visa cap. Shadegg introduced his bill a day
earlier. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, (R-Texas), introduced a matching bill last
week. The alliance described the legislation as "crucial" for U.S.
information and communications technology companies, which rely on foreign
professionals.
"American companies need more hands and more minds to succeed in the global
marketplace," Storme Street, EIA's vice president of government relations,
said in a prepared statement. "These visa programs have a proven track
record of enabling businesses to innovate, contribute to the economy and,
ultimately, create more U.S. jobs."
The "Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership," or SKIL bill, would
raise the limits on H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000 and allow for an
increase of 20 percent after the cap is reached.
It provides an exemption for professionals with master's or higher degrees
from U.S. universities and those with certification in medical specialties.
It would apply the 20,000 cap exemption to those with a master's degree or
higher from foreign institutions, not just those in the United States.
The legislation would raise the ceiling on employment-based visas from
140,000 to 290,000 allow U.S. companies to "recapture" and carry forward
unused visas from 2001 to 2005, the EIA noted.
It would exempt several groups from the employment-based cap, including
those with advanced science, technology, engineering or math degrees who
have worked in the U.S. for three years. It would exempt people in
"shortage occupations" identified by the Secretary of Labor, as well as
children and spouses of professionals holding employment-based visas.
The EIA said the SKIL bill would also help the U.S. IT industry by
extending employment for professionals in training, eliminating the need
for H-1B visas in many cases. The bill also creates a new visa category
(F-1) for students of science, technology, engineering and math, streamline
the petitioning process for compliant visiting professionals, and allow
domestic renewal.
EIA is also backing U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who introduced a bill to
make more visas available this year. Hagel introduced the bill last week
when the United States reached its 65,000 limit on the same day the H-1B
visa program opened.
5. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html?ex=1177819200&en=3d0bf6073627c459&ei=5070
April 15, 2007
Economic View
Parsing the Truths About Visas for Tech Workers
By STEVE LOHR
THE United States has benefited immensely from its role as a magnet for the
best and brightest workers from around the world, especially in innovative
fields like high technology. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, sounded
precisely that theme in Senate testimony last month when asked about the
visa program for skilled workers, the H-1B.
Mr. Gates said that these workers are "uniquely talented" and highly paid
-- "taking jobs that pay over $100,000 a year" -- and that America should
"welcome as many of those people as we can get."
But that is not how the H-1B visa program as a whole is working these days,
according to an analysis by Ronil Hira, an assistant professor of public
policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The median salary for new
H-1B holders in the information technology industry is actually about
$50,000, based on the most recent data filed by companies with the United
States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. That wage level, Mr.
Hira says, is the same as starting salaries for graduating computer science
majors with bachelors degrees.
Yet salaries, according to Mr. Hira, are only part of the story. He says
that while Microsoft may be paying its H-1B visa holders well and
recruiting people with hard-to-find talents, other companies have a
different agenda. The H-1B visa program, Mr. Hira asserts, has become a
vehicle for accelerating the pace of offshore outsourcing of computing
work, sending more jobs abroad. Holders of H-1B visas, he says, do the
on-site work of understanding a clients needs and specifications -- and
then most of the software coding is done back in India.
"Information technology offshore outsourcing has just swamped the H-1B
program in recent years," he said. The list of the top 10 companies
requesting H-1B visas in fiscal 2006, the most recent government data
available, was dominated by Indian-based technology outsourcing companies
like Infosys Technologies, Wipro Technologies and Tata Consultancy
Services, and a few other companies that offer outsourced services and have
sizable operations in India like Cognizant Technology Solutions, Accenture
and Deloitte & Touche, according to a paper last month by Mr. Hira, which
was published by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group.
Over the years, the H-1B visa, which allows a person to work in the United
States for three years and can be renewed for an additional three, has been
used by many people as a steppingstone to becoming a permanent resident.
Traditionally, about half of all H-1B holders eventually get green cards,
immigration experts say.
Yet the major outsourcing companies, while seeking thousands of H-1B visas,
are asking for relative handfuls of green cards, according to government
figures.
The statistics marshaled by Mr. Hira are not absolutely conclusive. The
reported company-by-company numbers are for H-1B visas requested, not
granted, but that is because the government does not publish visa counts by
company. Since the visas are granted on a first-come-first-served basis, it
seems reasonable that the companies seeking the most visas would,
proportionately, get the most.
It is not just critics like Mr. Hira who point to the crucial role that the
H-1B visa program plays in the fast-growing global outsourcing industry.
"It has become the outsourcing visa," said Kamal Nath, the commerce
minister of India.
But is that a bad thing? Many economists say that paving the way for more
efficient global trade in technology services should be a policy goal, and
that the American economy will be more competitive and create more jobs as
a result. Technology services like software programming and maintenance,
they say, are an "input," in economic terms, in industries from banking to
manufacturing.
It used to be that all the parts in a car or a computer were made in a
single country; now they are manufactured wherever it is most efficient.
The same thing is happening in technology services. "Were seeing this
growing international division of labor in services just as we saw in
manufacturing decades ago," said Aaditya Mattoo, an economist at the World
Bank.
Still, the issue behind the H-1B controversy is how a nation devises a
policy to benefit from global trade in technology services while treating
its own workers fairly. The proposals before Congress range from
significantly expanding the visa quota to tightening rules to protect
American workers.
This month, the government announced that it had received more petitions
for H-1B visas in one day than it could grant in the entire fiscal year
that begins in October. It received 150,000 petitions; the current visa cap
is 65,000. Technology lobbying groups declared that the immediate overflow
demand for H-1B visas was proof of the skills shortage in the United States
and the need for a sharply higher visa limit. But some immigration policy
experts and economists say that this argument fails a simple test of
economics. It is not surprising, they say, that global companies --
including I.B.M., Microsoft and Oracle -- that benefit from the H-1B
program would like to see it enlarged. "There is no labor market test,
using technically sound criteria, to determine whether or not there is a
shortage," said David M. Hart, an associate professor of public policy at
George Mason University. The measures, Mr. Hart suggests, would include
recent wage trends and unemployment rates in specific professions.
Other suggested changes include phasing out caps but holding auctions for
H-1B visas in, say, lots of 30,000. After the first auction, the bidding
for the next batch would begin at the high end of the initial sales
prices. In 1994, a commission appointed by Congress recommended letting
companies hire skilled foreign workers easily if the employers paid a
$10,000-a-person fee that would go into a fund to train domestic workers.
And there might be a limit on the number of visas that any one company can
get.
"How to match policies to people in this emerging global labor market is
something we really havent thought through yet," said B. Lindsay Lowell,
director of policy studies at the Institute for the Study of International
Migration at Georgetown University. The current system, he said, tends to
depend too much on the companies and how they use the complicated work-visa
program.
Microsoft, it seems, is paying its H-1B holders quite well -- a median
salary of $82,500 for new visa applicants, whose wages over the subsequent
three to six years could well rise to about the $100,000 Mr. Gates
mentioned. And in fiscal 2006, Microsoft applied for 1,181 green cards and
4,471 H-1Bs, a ratio of more than 26 percent. For the leading Indian
outsourcing companies, the ratio was less than 1 percent.
"Microsoft may well be using the program to bring in the best and the
brightest," Mr. Hira said. "But its definitely not representative of how
the H-1B program is being used today."
Anand Giridharadas contributed reporting from Mumbai, India.
6. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2007/apr07/07-04-18.html
New Awakening About Free Trade
by Phyllis Schlafly, April 18, 2007
On the first day that H-1B visas became available, the corporations snapped
up all that are allowed. Our government received 150,000 applications for
the 85,000 slots set aside to bring in foreign skilled workers.
The corporations whine that H-1Bs are needed because of a shortage of
Americans with skills, but major studies at UC-Davis and Duke universities
conclusively prove we have thousands of unemployed or underemployed
Americans with all needed technical skills. Nobel economist Milton Friedman
accurately labeled H-1Bs a government "subsidy" to enable employers to get
workers at a lower wage.
The best way to deal with the demand for a limited number of H-1Bs would be
to auction them off, so then we would find out if they are really needed
and how much they are worth. An auction would enable the taxpayers to get
some return on the H-1B subsidy instead of the current system which allows
corporations to influence Congressmen with campaign contributions and pay
high-priced lobbyists to get legislation to increase the number.
Contrary to corporate propaganda, H-1Bs are not an alternative to
outsourcing skilled jobs but a vehicle to promote outsourcing. H-1Bs enable
corporations to bring in foreigners, train them in American ways, and then
send them back to guide outsourced plants in Asia.
For years we've been told that it's OK for our manufacturing jobs to be
outsourced overseas because the United States will always keep the
technology, engineering, innovative, service-industry and white-collar
jobs. Even when service-industry jobs began to be outsourced, we were told,
those are just low-skill tasks like answering customer inquiries.
It turns out that was all a lie. The high-skill and technical jobs are also
rapidly moving overseas, especially to India.
Boeing now employs hundreds of Indians for aircraft engineering, writing
software for next-generation cockpits and systems to prevent aircraft
collisions. Investment banks like Morgan Stanley are hiring Indians to
analyze American stocks and to write reports for institutional investors,
jobs formerly done by Americans earning six-figure salaries on Wall Street.
Eli Lilly is doing major pharmaceutical research in India. Cisco Systems,
the leading maker of communications equipment, will have 20 percent of its
top talent in India within five years, and global-consulting giant
Accenture will have more employees in India than in the United States by
the end of this year.
I.B.M. reduced its American work force by 31,000 while increasing its
Indian staff to 52,000. Citigroup, which already has 22,000 employees in
India, plans to eliminate 26,000 jobs in the U.S. and increase its Asian
work force by another 10,000 where the pay is lower.
Follow the money, of course, explains this massive shift in jobs. It's
cheaper to hire and produce in India than in the United States.
The unhappy results of these policies are now apparent; they richly benefit
the corporations but are devastating to the American middle class.
Outsourcing reduces good American jobs, our standard of living, our
national security, and our world leadership.
This massive change in our economy should be front-page news, but you have
to look on the lower half of the inside pages of pro-globalism newspapers
like the New York Times to find the facts. It was a real surprise when the
Wall Street Journal (always a big supporter of free trade, globalism, and
open borders) published a front-page article called "Pain from Free Trade
Spurs Second Thoughts."
This article reported that one of the most prominent advocates of free
trade, Professor Alan Blinder, now says that free trade can put 30 to 40
million American jobs at risk, mostly from outsourcing.
Blinder is one of America's most influential economists. A professor at
Princeton University with a Ph.D. from MIT, he is a former Federal Reserve
vice chairman and adviser to several presidents. For years, he has been
peddling the notion that free trade enriches the United States.
Professor Blinder just got around to looking at the facts, and the facts
changed his views. He ranked 817 occupations to identify how likely each
one is to go overseas.
The most vulnerable jobs are bookkeepers, accountants, computer
programmers, data entry keyers, medical transcriptionists, graphic
designers, and financial analysts. Blinder now says that the millions of
American jobs that have already gone to Asia are "only the tip of a very
big iceberg."
Dr. Blinder is not the only prestigious economist who is having second
thoughts. Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson, who wrote the principal textbook
used in university economics classes, is also now criticizing globalization
and admitting that rich countries aren't always winners from free trade.
Most of the Democrats who won in November 2006 talked a lot about the issue
of jobs, while the Republicans who lost kept mouthing the tired old mantra
that globalism is both good and inevitable. Republicans can't win the White
House in 2008 without Pennsylvania, Ohio or Wisconsin, all of which have
lost thousands of jobs to outsourcing.
7. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=041707A
April Fools for Highly Skilled Workers
By Ilya Shapiro : 17 Apr 2007
Because April 1 was a Sunday, the day exposing the foolishness that is U.S.
immigration policy fell on April 2 this year. This is the day when
employers are allowed to begin filing petitions with the U.S. Citizen and
Immigration Services (USCIS, formerly the INS) for highly skilled workers
to be given what are known as H-1B visas.
H-1B visas allow employers to hire foreign workers in certain professional
occupations. They are good for three years and can be renewed for another
three. Though an H-1B cannot lead to a green card -- so the foreign
professional is tied to one employer and has to leave the country after a
maximum of six years of being a productive member of society -- it's still
a pretty good deal.
The problem is that there aren't enough of these visas: Congress limits the
number of H-1Bs that can be granted each year, and that magic number has
been set at 65,000 for four years now. Before that, and in response to the
technology boom of the late '90s, Congress temporarily raised the H-1B cap
to 195,000. But that expansion expired in 2004, and the cap has been
reached earlier and earlier each year since.
In 2005, that meant August. Last year, it was May 26. This year, the cap
was reached on... April 2 -- the very first day you could file. Yes, by
that Monday afternoon, USCIS had received over 150,000 H-1B applications.
Officials quickly announced that it would randomly select 65,000 petitions
from all those it had received April 2 and April 3.
As for the vast majority of employers and employees who were out of luck,
the immigration laws said, like so many Cubs fans on what was also
baseball's opening day, "wait till next year."
Except, in this case, next year means putting your business or career on
hold until October 1, 2008 -- the day that people who secure H-1Bs for
fiscal year 2009 can start work.
Now, why do I care about this issue so much? Because I myself am a foreign
professional. No, not an engineer or scientist -- haven't taken math since
high school. I'm actually a lawyer, and I do quite a bit of political law
right here in Washington, DC.
What helps me is that I come from Canada -- my parents took a wrong turn at
the St. Lawrence when we immigrated from the Soviet Union -- which gets a
special provision of un-capped visas under NAFTA. Still, these NAFTA visas
are only good for one year at a time, and I have to maintain the legal
fiction that after getting my education in the US and living my entire
adult life here, I have no intention of staying permanently.
But at least I get to be here, tenuous as my grasp on the American dream
may be. As the H-1B petition statistics demonstrate, there are hundreds of
thousands of qualified people with job offers in America who cannot realize
their dreams in their home countries. These are people who, like my
engineer parents, want a better life for their children and see the United
States as a bastion of freedom and rule of law in an unruly time. They aim
to leave places that, while not always oppressing them, have sclerotic
economic systems less conducive to entrepreneurship and growth than America
(India, France, most of the world).
Yet neither the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act the Senate passed last
year nor the STRIVE Act, a bill now pending before the House that combines
increased border security with a guest-worker program, contemplates the
doctors, scientists, and software developers (forget lawyers and pundits!)
the country needs. And, as I said before, even those in that category who
make it here have to leave just as they've planted roots and become
increasingly assimilated.
Thus America continues to maintain an incomprehensible and
counter-productive immigration policy, damaging both pocketbooks and
heartstrings from Silicon Valley to the Bay of Bengal. And unless Congress
and the White House do something to fundamentally reshape immigration rules
with respect to skilled workers (let alone the hard-working gardeners and
construction workers who get all the news coverage) things will only get
worse.
I just hope I get married -- absurdly, the only route to permanent
residence open to people like me -- before I have to leave the country.
If only this were all a bad April Fools' joke.
8. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-30-visa-lottery_N.htm?POE=click-refer
Foreigners seeking high-skilled worker visas hope to beat the odds
By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- From high-heeled fashion models to high-skilled techies,
foreign workers are waiting this month to hear whether they've won an
unprecedented lottery for temporary U.S. work visas.
The lottery is in response to an overwhelming demand for 65,000
high-skilled worker visas. More than 123,000 applications arrived at U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services in the first 48 hours after the April
1 filing date.
CONGRESS' PLAN: Legislators open loopholes in immigration law
For minor league baseball and hockey players, however, the wait is over: A
lame-duck Congress late last year exempted them from a cap on work visas.
Congress over the years has quietly created new categories and crafted
exemptions to get around limits on some of the work visas most in demand.
The lawmakers have raised the limit on students with graduate degrees from
U.S. universities and eliminated the cap on foreigners at non-profit
research institutions and professionals from U.S. free trade partners.
The result is what Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., calls a "Rube Goldberg, ad
hoc system" that can be daunting for both immigrants and would-be
employers.
The demand for work visas underscores one of the issues confronting
Congress as it prepares to resume a contentious debate over proposed
immigration legislation this month: Should the USA permit more foreigners
to work here?
"I'd like to see America bring in the smartest people from everywhere and
let them stay as long as they want," says Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a
leading advocate of immigration reform.
Others express caution. "The more people there are for those jobs, the
worse off American workers will be," says Harvard University economist
George Borjas.
It's not easy for foreigners to come to the USA to work. More than 1
million people become permanent legal residents each year, most sponsored
by family members. The number that can be sponsored by employers is limited
to 140,000 a year.
That has created a demand for more temporary worker visas. Last year,
immigration officials were able to accept H-1B applications until May 26
and award the popular visas for high-skilled workers on a first-come,
first-serve basis. This year, so many applications arrived that U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services stopped taking applications after 48
hours and let a computer pick the winners.
Spokesman Chris Bentley said notifications should be made within the next
few weeks.
Katie Ford, head of Ford Models, the prestigious New York agency, said she
has lost business because H-1B visas weren't available for models. The
industry is lobbying to get out from under the cap.
"This is a huge issue for us," Ford said. "It's easier for a client to find
a model internationally and shoot somewhere else."
9. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-30-immigration-side_N.htm
Legislators open loopholes in immigration law
By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - Late last year, with little fanfare and no roll call votes,
Congress and President Bush reached agreement on an immigration bill.
Not the long-awaited legislation that would determine the fate of as many
as 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA, create a border security and
employment verification system, and alleviate backlogs that have kept some
relatives of U.S. citizens waiting decades. Lawmakers will reopen the
debate on that measure this month after failing to reach an agreement last
year.
DEMAND FOR VISAS: Foreigners hope to beat the odds
The last Congress was able to act with dispatch, however, to alleviate one
pressing immigration problem one vexing baseball and hockey teams.
Thanks to the COMPETE Act, signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 22,
Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League will be able to fill
their farm teams with as many promising prospects as they can find in Latin
America, the Caribbean, Canada and elsewhere across the globe.
Up until last year, teams that wanted to try out foreign players in their
minor league system had to apply for immigration visas under the
increasingly oversubscribed H-2B category, used for seasonal workers in
occupations ranging from landscaping to fisheries to hotel housekeeping.
Those visas are capped at 66,000 a year.
The visa crunch that brought professional sports leagues to Washington for
help and the way Congress handled the problem demonstrates the complexity
of the nation's immigration system and the political difficulties of fixing
it.
Rather than tackling the big question of whether the U.S. economy needs
foreign workers and how many should be permitted into the country each
year, the nation's lawmakers have created loopholes and exemptions that
circumvent caps on some work visas. Buried in larger, unrelated pieces of
legislation, most have sailed through Congress with little or no debate.
Recent examples:
-A measure that annually adds 20,000 H-1B visas to the 65,000-a-year limit
for foreigners who have earned graduate degrees from U.S. universities was
tucked into the 2004 omnibus appropriations bill that provided funding for
more than 10 federal agencies. The H-1B category was designed for
college-educated foreign workers. The same bill contained a provision
allowing each state to request up to 30 foreign doctors a year if they are
willing to work in an underserved area.
-A 2005 bill providing emergency funding for the Gulf Coast, Iraq and
Afghanistan contained a provision for a one-year exemption from the H-2B
visa cap for seasonal workers, such as nursery and hotel employees, who
held a job in the USA sometime during the previous three years. The same
measure provided 50,000 green cards for foreign nurses.
-The one-year exemption for returning seasonal workers was made permanent
in the 2006 defense appropriations bill.
Congress also has shifted groups of workers from one visa category to
another, in particular to ease pressure on the two work visas that are
capped: H-1B and H-2B.
In 2006, the State Department issued more than 32,000 visas in a category
created especially for Australians who have job offers in the USA. Congress
created a work visa for citizens of Chile and Singapore under international
trade agreements.
There are so many types of visas that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Service is running out of letters of the alphabet to name them. A proposed
immigration bill the Bush administration is discussing with Congress would
create Y and Z visas to admit more temporary workers and grant legal status
to those in the country illegally.
The system is "enormously complex," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who
chairs the House immigration subcommittee. "It's very easy for people to
fall afoul of the laws inadvertently."
The complexity also creates opportunities. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.,
took advantage of one when she introduced the COMPETE Act last year to help
two teams in her home state: the Lewiston MAINEiacs, a junior hockey league
team that had to delay its home opener because of problems gaining H-2B
visas for players, and the Portland Sea Dogs, a member of the Boston Red
Sox baseball farm system.
Since the enactment of Collins' bill, minor league hockey and baseball
players have been able to take advantage of the unlimited number of P-1
visas, which were formerly reserved for major leaguers.
"We saw a big difference this year," Peter Greenberg, a New York agent who
represents some of baseball's biggest Latin stars, told USA TODAY. "Now, I
think you'll see the number of foreign players go up dramatically."
Immigration lawyers say their clients want the same chance to hire the
world's best.
William Stock, a Philadelphia immigration lawyer, said a pharmaceutical
company he represents will outsource an entire department to Great Britain
if one prospective employee misses out in this year's H-1B visa lottery.
"There's a global war for talent," Stock said. "We're fighting with one
hand tied behind our back."
Contributing: Bob Nightengale
10. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07095/775377-28.stm
Crush of applicants for visas has firms fearing staff losses
Thursday, April 05, 2007
By Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The news came to Medrad Tuesday night in an e-mail from the company's law
firm. By 8:30 yesterday morning, managers had already convened an emergency
meeting.
The problem: A crush of visa applications for skilled foreign workers might
make it impossible for Medrad -- and other area companies -- to hire the
workers the Indiana Township medical device maker says it needs.
Every year, the U.S. government allocates a certain number of temporary
H-1B visas for companies to hire skilled foreign workers. The number of
available visas, used on behalf of engineers, computer programmers and
other highly skilled workers, is capped at 65,000 for the 2008 fiscal year
beginning Oct. 1, and the government started accepting applications Monday
morning.
By Monday afternoon, 150,000 applications had already been submitted. To
narrow those applications down to the 65,000 limit, applications will be
chosen at random.
"We're scrambling around to figure out exactly who is on that level of a
visa and who it may affect," said Andrew Ferraro, Medrad's manager of
staffing and recruiting. "We view this as a serious problem."
Medrad currently has about 15 or 20 of its 1,250 Pittsburgh area workers
using H1-B visas, and those who already have visas will not be affected by
the cap on new visas. But employees working at Medrad under a one-year F-1
student visa would likely have to go back to their home countries if Medrad
cannot secure visas in the random drawing, said Mr. Ferraro.
Furthermore, if the company can't reliably get those visas, he said, the
company might think twice about hiring recent college graduates who might
require one.
Every year since 2004, when the U.S. government slashed the cap on H1-B
visas from 195,000 to 65,000, companies have hit the upper limit. Last
year, though, it took two months for visa applications to reach 65,000 --
meaning that those who had prepared in advance were able to secure them.
The limit was lowered in part because all the visas were not being used in
2004, and in part to answer criticism that the visas enable companies to
pay workers less than they would Americans, replace American workers with
foreign workers and discourage U.S. citizens from pursuing careers in
technology.
As the economy has picked up in recent years, technology company executives
have unsuccessfully lobbied Congress to raise the cap.
Companies that are not selected in the upcoming random lottery for H1-B
visas this year will have to wait until April of next year to reapply --
and those workers will then not be able to start working until October of
2009.
"We had been warning our clients for some time that it was a real
possibility, but everybody was shocked to see that it actually did happen,"
said Matthew T. Phillips, an employment lawyer with Downtown-based Cohen &
Grigsby who filed visa applications on behalf of many of his clients this
year. "We're talking about a year and a half of being locked out."
The H1-B visas are thought of as being used predominantly by technology and
engineering companies, but are also used by area hospitals, banks and
manufacturing companies.
The visas are so essential, they say, because there just aren't qualified
Americans to fill the jobs.
"If the numbers were available in the economy, no one would pay us to do
this," said Mr. Phillips, noting that in addition to legal costs, companies
pay thousands of dollars to the government for each visa application.
"The alternative is they leave and use that education and knowledge
someplace else."
In Pittsburgh, Mr. Ferraro worries that the lack of visas might stunt
growth at Medrad and other companies.
"There is a serious shortage of Americans going into engineering majors,"
he said.
"To find the top talent to grow our company, we want to hire the best, and
we want to be able to get them visas."
11. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=3888
Misconceptions dominate the immigration debate
By Grant Sovern - 05/01/07
The immigration debate is squarely in front of the nation again, and
myriads of opinions are being voiced. If we look closely at many of these
opinions, we see they are driven by an almost equal number of
misconceptions and confusion about the issues, facts, and terms used in
this debate.
A recent article run on WTN by James Carlini highlights this, and also
gives us a good example to use to examine one small part of the immigration
debate and its determinable parameters, historical facts, and terms. If we
understood the details of these complicated issues, we might find that the
vast majority of people in the U.S. share the same opinion. Taking on one
sliver of the immigration debate, I believe we would all agree that the
H-1B specialty worker program is good for the country.
H-1B misconceptions
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (or CIS, formerly known as the
INS) grants 65,000 H-1Bs to U.S. employers on behalf of professional
workers not born in the U.S. (plus 20,000 more for workers with master's
degrees from U.S. universities). An approved H-1B lasts three years and can
be extended for a total of six years. At the end of that time, most H-1Bs
apply for permanent resident status (green card).
To be eligible, a worker must have at least a bachelor's degree in a
specialty field related to the position. H-1B professionals include
teachers, medical professionals, researchers, economists, engineers,
physical therapists, and computer professionals, and they make up less than
one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. workforce.
The goal most all share is that we all want the U.S. economy to be strong
and therefore we want U.S. companies to remain competitive. In order to be
competitive, U.S. employers must be able to hire an adequate quantity of
specialized employees. Utilizing a program that allows non-citizen
professionals the opportunity to work temporarily in the U.S. in
specialized fields furthers this goal.
Carlini's article and the comments that followed it provide a roadmap to
examine common misconceptions and confusion about H-1Bs. The most widely
held misconception is that H-1B workers drive down U.S. salaries. However,
in order to get an H-1B, employers must show the Department of Labor they
are paying H-1B workers either the prevailing wage or the actual wage (the
same as other employees at the same company).
The prevailing wage is the weighted average wage for a specific position in
a specific geographic area. A study by Madeline Zavodny, a research
economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, found that the entry of
H-1B professionals neither lowers the contemporaneous earnings of natives,
nor has "an adverse impact on contemporaneous unemployment rates."
Research by Paul Harrington, associate director of the Center for Labor
Market Studies at Northeastern University, shows foreign-born and native
professionals earn virtually identical salaries in math and science fields.
The H-1B program has other built-in safeguards. Employers who use a lot of
H-1Bs first must try to find U.S. workers before they can hire an H-1B.
They also must attest that they are not using an H-1B if they have laid-off
or displaced a similarly situated U.S. worker.
Another misconception is that the H-1B program is a shortsighted quick fix
to a long-term problem. The problem, one that apparently we all agree on,
is that the U.S. is not producing enough homegrown talent in the areas of
math, computer science, and engineering. Foreign students represent half of
all U.S. graduate enrollments in those fields, but Congress addressed this
by adding a $1,500 scholarship fee to most H-1B petitions.
Because employers usually file multiple H-1B petitions for each worker,
U.S. employers are contributing in the neighborhood of $250 to $300 million
annually to help educate U.S. students in those areas. Between 1998 and
2003, the fund supported training programs for more than 55,600 U.S.
workers and scholarships for more than 12,500 U.S. students.
The extra scholarship brings up an additional issue that runs against the
misconception that U.S. employers hire H-1B workers because they are
cheaper. Aside from the prevailing wage requirement, employers must
generally pay at least $3,500 to $5,500 each time they file an H-1B
petition. What employer would decide to pay this fee if it could find a
U.S. worker?
Where will the workers come from?
This leads us to the issue of "there are enough talented people in the U.S.
already." As a general matter, this may be true - although the Bureau of
Labor Statistics projects an 82 percent increase in computer positions and
a 47 percent increase in engineering positions. Where does the U.S. supply
come from with only half of the graduate student population coming from the
U.S.?
The employment market is not fluid. An employer in Madison is not always
able to hire that U.S. worker living in Chapel Hill because they don't
connect or because the worker doesn't want to move. Specialization also
adds to the problem - an employer may need Java, but folks with Java
training might not be available. The H-1B program helps fill specialized
holes in companies that allow them to remain competitive.
Some suggest H-1B workers don't add to the U.S. economy but only drain. (It
is important not to get confused here with the undocumented alien issue -
H-1B workers are not undocumented.) H-1B workers pay all taxes U.S.
citizens pay. They also spend here in the U.S. They all buy or rent a place
to live, buy a car, and purchase everything U.S. citizens do. That's
probably the main reason they moved here - to enjoy the U.S. standard of
living.
Sure, they have family at home, but if they have made it to the U.S. with
at least a bachelor's degree, they probably come from families who are at
the top of the socio-economic ladder at home. The previous article confuses
the issue with undocumented aliens, who are often driven by abject poverty
to risk living in the shadows or even detention by sneaking into the U.S.
The H-1B program helps to keep America competitive. It brings highly
skilled temporary workers to fill a few gaps in our workforce with legal
provisions that protect U.S. workers. It raises significant funds to help
educate American kids so that hopefully someday we won't need the H-1B
program. But the fact that this year U.S. employers paid to file more than
60,000 H-1B petitions than are available is reason enough to increase the
cap.
Congress is in the process of discussing an increase in the H-1B cap and
many other immigration provisions that affect business in the U.S. If you
have an opinion, contact your Congressional representative - but stay away
from rhetoric and misleading suggestions so we can get to a solution that
we all support - a strong U.S. economy.
Related article
- James Carlini: H-1B jobs: Where is the shortage of skilled workers?
Grant Sovern is an attorney with the law firm Quarles & Brady. He practices
in the area of immigration law with a concentration of employment
immigration for employers and employees, specifically non-immigrant visas
such as the H-1B.
The opinions expressed herein or statements made in the above column are
solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Wisconsin Technology Network, LLC.
WTN accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any claims made or
opinions expressed herein.
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