Voting Resources
An Open Response to "H-1B Visas Take American Jobs" by Phyllis Schlafly
The criticism by Phyllis Schlafly of the H-1B visa classification in H-1B Visas Take American Jobs is misplaced and is never put in any context so that the reader can appreciate the significance of the H-1B visa program. The H-1B visa is a temporary non-immigrant work visa restricted to professionals within a specialty occupation who are being paid at least the prevailing wage for the position as established by the United States Department of Labor. As a practical matter, the U. S. Department of Labor’s determination is always on the high side. Most employers’ reaction to the prevailing wage is that it is significantly above what is paid within their experience.
Furthermore, the H-1B classification is restricted to 65,000 numbers per year. When you consider the size of the American economy, such number is insignificant.
Most important, every American, including every American politician, will say, “We want individuals to immigrate legally,” and yet for all practical purposes, the H-1B classification is the principal way to immigrate legally except for individuals who have adult U. S. citizen children or a spouse or parents. You cannot have it both ways; you cannot say we want people to immigrate legally and yet oppose all legal options to do so. The reason we have large numbers of illegal aliens who enter the country to do non-professional work is because there is no viable legal system except for the limited number of professionals that can enter under the H-1B provision. Eliminate that and for all practical purposes, as a country we are saying we want people to come in legally, but we oppose any and all legal programs that would permit same.
Large numbers of H-1B visas are used for researchers in the Medical Center, bilingual and Special Ed teachers in public and private schools, professors with unique skill sets in universities and yes, engineers and IT professionals. It is true that in a bad economy some engineers will go unemployed, which begs the question: why are other engineers being sponsored for H-1B visas? It is not because they are willing to work cheap or at a salary less than what U. S. workers are being paid. To the contrary, the cost of employing an H-1B worker is greater than hiring locally. Employers act in their own self-interest. If in fact there are qualified engineers available employers will not go through a complex legal process that requires additional cost and often payment of a salary greater than what the employer would be paying a local U. S. worker. If one believes in the free market, you must also believe that employers acting in their own self-interest are only hiring foreign nationals where they are not able to find the same skill set available to them in the U. S. market. With the rapid changes in technology undoubtedly there are U. S.-trained engineers that are unable to find a job as readily as more recent engineering graduates, but that has nothing to do with the H-1B program. The same engineers are primarily competing with younger U. S. engineers who have graduated more recently and who have training in areas that older engineers may not have received.
There are a number of misstatements made by Ms. Schlafly. The H-1B program actually goes back to the 1970’s and was originally for individuals of distinguished merit and ability and was amended in 1990 for individual in specialty occupations requiring a minimum of a 4-year university degree. The number of H-1B visa applications was only then limited to 65,000 per year. It was never a requirement that the U. S. employer had to establish that they could not find a qualified and willing U. S. worker. That is only required if they wish to keep the H-1B worker longer than 6 years in order to qualify such individual for Lawful Permanent Residency.
Another misunderstanding was there was never a requirement to “make it illegal for an employer to replace an American with an H-1B worker.” While that may happen, as a practical matter, it happens every day with U. S. workers. U. S. workers are replaced with other U. S. workers by employers and a very small, insignificant percentage of same would be replaced by a foreign national working in H-1B status. It would be unusual for a conservative to prefer the substitution of a governmental decision for an employer’s decision as to which worker is the most qualified for any given position at any given time.
Ms. Schlafly is also wrong when she says big companies prefer H-1B workers because “they can pay them significantly less than Americans.” This is patently not true. By law, they must pay them the “prevailing wage” which is established by the U. S. Department of Labor and which tends to be much higher than what U. S. workers with similar education and experience are paid.
The statement that, “Most H-1B workers are imported for entry level jobs and trained by experienced U. S. workers who are then laid off,” is purely anecdotal. While that may occur occasionally, to say that all professional foreign workers who enter the United States who come in at entry level are trained by an individual they are replacing is a gross overstatement. In fact, most H-1B workers come in either because of a unique, highly specialized training and experience or where U. S. workers are not readily available in the job market where there is simply a shortage of sufficient U. S. workers.
Ms. Schlafly has no basis at all where she is quoted as saying, “Thousands of qualified Americans remain out of work while companies are incentivized to import foreign workers.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Companies are not incentivized in any way. In fact, the cost of employing a foreign national not only in terms of the cost for the legal representation of the company’s employees to acquire appropriate visa status, but the cost of transportation, housing, etc. causes the foreign worker in fact to be far more costly for the company. Companies act in their own self-interest. If there are available U. S. workers, it would be unusual for a U. S. company to hire a foreign worker if they could find a readily available qualified U. S. employee.
Ms. Schlafly is also wrong when she infers that the spouses of U. S. workers are authorized to work or there is any proposal to allow them to do so. President Obama has supported expanding the H-1B’s and it has been supported by the leading Republican candidates for the presidency and a number of leading U. S. entrepreneurs, including Bill Gates who testified before Congress saying that it was impossible to qualify sufficient highy skilled IT professionals and that if Congress could not expand the H-1B quota, he would have no choice but to move Microsoft’s research center to Canada. When Congress failed to expand the numbers of H-1B workers, in fact Microsoft did set up a research center across the Washington State line in Canada where there were fewer restrictions on hiring the most qualified individuals. Microsoft was paying the highest salaries at that time, but still could not fill all available positions.
Ms. Schlafly also says, “Some people are even pushing the ridiculous notion of stapling a green card to college diplomas where foreigners would automatically be allowed to stay and work in our country.” In fact, such statement has been widely attributed to columnist Thomas Friedman and has been quoted favorably by Governor Mitt Romney along with Speaker Newt Gingrich, but to paraphrase the real quote, it was, “When highly qualified individuals come to the United States, are trained in the United States and get advanced degrees, we should encourage them to remain in the United States rather than taking their knowledge back to their home country.” There are many studies that show that every professional that is fully employed in the U. S. pays substantially more sums into the U. S. government than they receive. So, it’s a net benefit for our country.
The most ridiculous statement is the reference to the 57,000 Chinese undergraduates now in U. S. universities when she says, “Most of whom were admitted on the basis of fake transcripts and recommendation letters and awarded college degrees for which they did not qualify.” That would surprise major Ivy League and other great state universities where foreign students, particularly Chinese students, make up a very high percentage of graduate students in Master and PhD programs and who graduate at the top of their class.
In short, Ms. Schlafly is more concerned with rhetoric than facts.
Comments
h-1 visas
Here is Ms. Shafly's article:
http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/2012/03/20/h1b_visas_take_american_jobs
When President Obama was participating in a live video chat, Jennifer Wedel asked him, "Why does the government continue to issue and extend H-1B visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?" Her husband is a semiconductor engineer who was laid off three years ago and is still unable to find an engineering job.
We all would like the answer to that question.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that, counting only U.S.-born individuals, there are 101,000 with an engineering degree who are unemployed, another 244,000 who are not working or not looking for work and therefore not counted in unemployment statistics, and an additional 1.47 million who have an engineering degree but are not working as an engineer.
Obama's answer to Wedel sounded like he had been well briefed by the big corporation lobbyists. He even expressed bewilderment that any U.S. high-tech engineer could be out of work because industry executives tell him there is an unfilled "huge demand" for engineers.
Obama said, "H-1Bs should be reserved only for those companies who say they cannot find somebody in that particular field." Yes, indeed, they should. But in fact, they are not.
Created in 1990, the H-1B program was designed for employers to import foreign H-1B workers to fill various high-tech jobs only when Americans could not be found, and the law was supposed to make it illegal for an employer to replace an American with an H-1B worker. However, the big corporation lobbyists succeeded in fuzzying up the law so there is now no effective rule to prevent employers from firing American jobholders and replacing them with H-1B aliens.
Big companies prefer H-1B workers because they can pay them significantly less than Americans, never have to give them a raise or promotion, and have the unilateral power to deport them. H-1B workers don't dare to complain about working conditions or unpaid long hours, and they can't quit to take a better job.
Most H-1B workers are imported for entry-level jobs and trained by experienced U.S. workers who are then laid off. This process has introduced a new expression and acronym into the English language -- DYOG: Dig Your Own Grave.
One senator understands this problem: Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. In a letter to the president last month, he pointed out how Obama's response to Jennifer Wedel shows he is only regurgitating the corporation lobbyists' sales talk with their phony mantra that "there are better and brighter people abroad."\
Here is another interesting article:
http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-h-b-visas-be-easier-to-get/h-1b-workers-are-in-a-state-of-indentured-servitude
H-1B Workers Are in a State of Indentured Servitude 1363 1244By Ron Hira
, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Rochester Institute of Technology and Research Associate with the Economic Policy InstituteDecember 28, 2011
About Ron Hira:
Ron Hira is an associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology and a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute. He is co-author of Outsourcing America (AMACOM 2008) and in 2011 testified twice before Congress on high-skilled immigration.
Our current high-skill immigration policy does more harm than good. To meet the needs of both the U.S. economy and American workers, the H-1B and L-1 guest worker programs require immediate and substantial overhaul. These programs are very large, accounting for about 1 million workers, and have a significant impact on U.S. labor markets. These impacts are especially significant in computer occupations, where they account for more than 10 percent of the workforce and are distorting the normal functioning of the labor, educational, and workforce development markets.
[Mort Zuckerman: 5 Sure-Fire Ways to Create More Jobs.]
The goal of these guest worker programs is to bring in foreign workers who complement the American workforce. Indeed, many highly skilled and highly paid workers are brought in by employers to do so. However, loopholes have made it too easy to bring in cheaper foreign workers, with ordinary skills, who directly substitute for rather than complement American workers. The use of the programs for cheaper labor is substantial and growing, and they are clearly displacing and denying opportunities to American workers.
The problems in the programs stem from three serious design flaws that only legislation can fix. Administrative changes alone, such as stepped-up enforcement, while necessary, are not sufficient to correct the problems.
The first flaw allows employers to legally bring in foreign workers at below-market wages. How do we know that employers exploit this loophole? Employers have told the U.S. Government Accountability Office that they use the H-1B program because they are able to pay H-1Bs less than an Americans. The practice of exploiting the H-1B program for cheaper labor appears to be widespread. The GAO found that 54 percent of the H-1B visa applications were for the lowest wage level, approximately the 17th percentile. The wage differentials can be very significant, providing up to a 60 percent discount over American workers in some cases. The L-1 program has no wage floor, so workers are often paid home country wages. By far the largest sending country is India, where typical wages for engineers is a mere $10,000 per year. With this kind wage arbitrage, it's no wonder that the firms exploiting this loophole are extraordinarily profitable and lobbying to expand the programs.
[Tech Companies Want More Foreign STEM Workers.]
Second, employers do not have to search for American workers before hiring an H-1B or L-1 and can even replace American workers with H-1Bs and L-1s. News reports indicate that American workers are being replaced by H-1Bs at companies such as Wachovia, A.C. Nielsen, and Pfizer. In a well-known case that captured Congress's attention, Siemens forced its American workers to train their L-1 replacements.
The third flaw is that the employer, rather than the worker, holds the visa, and as a result H-1B and L-1 workers are in a state of indentured servitude. Should they be terminated, H-1B or L-1 workers would have to leave the country immediately. As a result, H-1B or L-1 workers' bargaining power is severely limited, and they can easily be exploited by employers.
Unsurprisingly, many firms exploit these loopholes for competitive advantage and profit, at the expense of American workers and the American economy. Some of these practices require a keen eye to observe, such as enabling age-biased hiring or using guest workers as a substitute for investing in workforce development. But others are more obvious, such as the use of the programs to facilitate the offshoring of high-wage high-tech jobs.
For the past five years, the top H-1B and L-1 employers are using the program to offshore tens of thousands of high-wage, high-skilled American jobs. The list is a who's who in the offshore outsourcing business. Using the H-1B to offshore is so common it has been dubbed the "outsourcing visa" by India's former commerce minister.
[Chamber of Commerce, Bloomberg Push Immigration Reform.]
An even more disturbing outcome of these loopholes is that the programs have lost legitimacy among American high-tech workers who rightly believe their careers are purposely being undercut by government policy. This is especially worrisome since these workers are telling American students to avoid STEM professions, which threatens our future capacity to innovate and create jobs for the economy.
Another widespread misconception in the public discussion about employer-based immigration is that the H-1B is often mistakenly equated with permanent residence. But the employer has complete discretion over whether it chooses to sponsor its guest worker for permanent residency, and most of the largest H-1B employers sponsor very few of their H-1Bs for permanent residency. Just to provide one example: Between 2007 and 2009, Accenture hired nearly 1,400 H-1Bs, yet during that same time it sponsored a mere 28 (2 percent) of its H-1Bs for permanent residence. Clearly, many employers choose the H-1B program for cheaper temporary labor rather than permanent immigration. This practice may increase corporate profits, but it harms American workers and the American economy.
We can fix the flaws in the guest worker programs. Bipartisan legislation introduced in the last Congress by Senators Durbin and Grassley addresses the major flaws in the H-1B and L-1 programs. Passing it would create and retain hundreds of thousands of high-wage high-technology jobs with no cost to the taxpayer.
Pages