Anti-American H1-B visas getting a critical look
By Thomas D. Elias
» More from Thomas D. Elias
12:01 a.m. PT May 5, 2008
At long last, there now appears to be at least some chance that egregious abuse of H1-B immigration visas by large corporations might be stopped and American workers given an equal shake with foreign competitors.
The issue here is not outsourcing, with American jobs shipped overseas to countries where skilled labor is available for wages that would be unacceptable, even illegal at times, in this country.
The problem with H1-B visas and their cousins, H4 visas, comes when some companies bring in foreign workers to displace Americans already working in this country and seek to hire foreigners over Americans for jobs available here.
There is ample evidence this is a common practice, and now two U.S. senators are calling the U.S. Labor Department to answer for the anti-Ameri-can discrimination it appears to actively encourage.
For years, U.S. corporations led by California electronics kingpins like Cisco Systems and Qualcomm, have lobbied Congress to increase the number of H1-B visas issued every year beyond the current 65,000. Those visas are supposed to go only to workers with skills that can't be matched by available American citizens or legal non-citizen residents.
But groups of U.S. citizen engineers and others have maintained for years that corporations use H1-Bs to import cheap and docile labor, with a wink from the government.
A policy statement in the Labor Department's Strategic Plan for the fiscal years 2006-2011 makes it appear the H-1B protesters have it right, despite corporate denials. "H1-B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker," the policy statement said. The Labor Department also inserted into the Federal Register this declaration: "The statute does not require employers to demonstrate that there are no available U.S. workers or to test the labor market for U.S. workers..."
So the Bush administra-tion flatly contradicts and flouts the intent of the original H1-B law. It explicitly tells corporations they can discriminate against Americans on the grounds they are American - and that the government will do nothing about it.
When this column, with help from Donna Conroy of brightfuturejobs.org, publicized that language last fall, it caught the eyes of U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Charles Grassley, R-Ia.
The two then also learned of online job advertisements specifically targeted at foreign workers to the exclusion of Americans. Not surprisingly, California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both of whom receive substantial campaign contributions from Silicon Valley executives and investors whose firms employ many H1-B workers, are not seriously involved in questioning the deliberately anti-American Bush administration policy.
With the House of Representatives now considering whether to allow more H1-B workers into the country, Grassley told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an April letter that, "You have heard the squeals and hollers... to bring in an infinite number of foreign workers through the H1-B visa program. I encourage you to review the program before you make irresponsible commitments to appease those interests..."
Grassley noted that even Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a Bush appointee whose department oversees immigration, concedes "more needs to be done to reduce fraud and abuse." Grassley said, "We need to require all users of the visa program to first recruit Americans for these... high-paying jobs."
He and Durbin jointly wrote several large companies using H-1B workers that "Most companies can explicitly discriminate against American workers... Congress must close loopholes in the H1-B program that harm American workers."
This is real progress for Americans seeking to fight a reality where want ads from companies with significant California operations like Mansa Systems of Fremont and Techpoint Solutions of Milpitas can advertise to potential H1-B recipients that they are looking for "recent graduates for entry level positions..." Ads like theirs contradict the oft-heard employer mantra that H1-Bs are used only to bring in highly skilled workers.
In fact, the majority of last year's H1-B recipients had bachelor's degrees or less, meaning they do not possess the unique qualifications for which H1-Bs were intended.
There is no evidence of a shortage of entry-level American workers. Studies by the RAND Corp., Stanford University, the Urban Institute, Harvard University, UC Davis and others show American universities produce more science, technology, engineering and math workers than are needed to fill job openings in those fields.
Durbin and New Jersey's Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell have been trying for months to pass bills that would wipe out the discriminatory Labor Department language.
Of course, President Bush could fix the problem with one phone call to his Labor secretary, without waiting for congressional action. But he shows no inclination to do that, because he knows where a lot of his campaign money has always come from.
Which makes this another major area for the next president to clean up after Bush departs next January.
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Thomas D. Elias is a syndicated columnist who writes about California issues. Contact him via e-mail at tdelias@aol.com.
