H-1B Visas Take American Jobs

Townhall.com ^ | March 20, 2012 | Phyllis Schlafly

[Kaslin]

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."

Grassley said "thousands of qualified Americans remain out of work while companies are incentivized to import foreign workers." Grassley criticized the Obama administration for proposing new rules to "attract and retain highly skilled immigrants" to replace Americans, to expand eligibility for foreign students to remain in the U.S., to eliminate protections for U.S. workers, to allow employers to pay lower wages to alien workers and to give work authorizations to spouses of H-1B workers, thereby increasing competition for Americans looking for all kinds of jobs.

Obama has made expanding H-1Bs a feature of his re-election campaign, trying to broaden the program that already allows the importation of 65,000 H-1B visa aliens annually. Some people are even pushing the ridiculous notion of stapling a green card to college diplomas, so that foreigners would automatically be allowed to stay and work in our country.

Will that include the 57,000 Chinese undergraduates now in U.S. universities, most of whom were admitted on the basis of fake transcripts and recommendation letters, and are awarded college degrees for which they did not qualify? That's another racket that should be cleaned up.

Dickinson State University in North Dakota awarded degrees to 584 foreign students who did not earn them. On the day of an all-campus student meeting concerning this matter, Education Dean Douglas LaPlante was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot.

Media coverage of Obama's colloquy with Wedel focused on inviting her to send her husband's resume, but the real news should have been jobs. Is Obama ignorant of the unemployment reality facing U.S. engineers or is he disingenuously reciting the self-serving lies of his high-tech donors?

A good example of how the H-1B visa system works was described in a lawsuit filed against Molina Healthcare Inc., which handles Medicaid and Medicare paperwork for the government, and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., which recruits H-1B workers in India. On Jan. 14, 2010, one day after the Department of Labor approved Molina's application for 40 H-1B workers, Molina fired approximately 40 competent U.S. programmers, managers and analysts and hired 40 H-1B replacements imported by Cognizant from India.

That is how H-1B visas work in the real world to take jobs away from Americans.

[khelus]

I am looking forward to the day when most media jobs along with law firm positions are outsourced or H1-B’ed.

I like the way you think. How about we add congress?

[khelus]

. . . Never let your children become an engineer. To be really good you must not only have a great foundation in lets say electronics and software but you MUST continually keep abreast of the ever changing technology which comes much faster than the latest MBA scam for improving the bottom line by avoiding taxes, suppressing wages, tracking the age of the staff (see note 1 at end), stealing rebates from your customers (see note 2 at end) etc. . .

I'm a soft ware engineer, and do not know anyone in the field who would allow their child to enter the field.

Thank for posting some of the shenanigans corporate bean counters use to avoid hiring americans in engineering and IT.

Ain't globalism global communism grand?

[Vigilanteman]

Yes, Japan was expensive particularly on certain things such as most food. On other things such as eyeglasses and dental work, it was a bargain. Particularly when you compared value for the money and quality.

We loved it there. I'd go back in a heartbeat for the right opportunity.

[servantboy777]

Follow the money. At my corp, we have crap loads of Chinese and Indians.

The more the company lays off, the more foreigners they bring.

This has been going on for the last decade, particularly within the last 5 years.

[impimp]

I have an H1-B and I can tell you right now - NO American can do what I do. H1-Bs need to be granted off of salary as opposed to a lottery. A person’s value to the economy can be objectively judged by that. That would eliminate the “low tech” people getting 20k/yr on an H1-B.

[servantboy777]

At current immigration levels (approx. 1 million yr) we will overwhelm our infrastructure.

Check out the following lecture. It will blow the legal immigration crowd outta the water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE

[proxy_user]

The two simple reforms that would fix the system:

1. We let in the top 68,000 based on the highest salaries, not the first to apply.

2. After 3 months in the US, each H1B is free to take a job with another employer at a higher salary.

[jboot]

H1-Bs reduce both the number of job offerings and wages. They do something else, too. They stack our engineer pool with poor-quality employees. I've been in IT for almost 20 years, including management and hiring, and I could write several books full of anecdotes about H1-B workers. There are several very common issues associated with H1-B workers:

1. Fraudulent credentials masking a lack of education and skills. Most H1-B workers have stellar credentials, usually including multiple technical degrees and certifications. These are often made up out of whole cloth. Always do the footwork to contact the university or certification organization. In several (10+ and counting) cases, I discovered that the issuing authority did not exist.

2. Absenteeism. "But they work so hard and pull such long hours!" you say. But do you factor in the annual 3-6 week leave of absence, usually applied for on short or no notice, without regard for project schedules?

3. Cultural fallout. If you want to see some serious fireworks, hire a Dalit lead engineer and put a Brahman developer under him. Oh, that's right...they won't tell you what caste they are when you hire them. Lucky you. You won't find out that there is an issue until a deadline is missed or someone resigns at a key moment. I'm watching a software team unravel right now because it is composed of two cultural groups that can't even be seen together in public in their home country. Needless to say they don't work well together. The simple social graces that we are accustomed to as Westerners (such as not spitting or shouting) should not be taken for granted.

One cultural anecdote: we once hired an honest-to-God Princess to be a software tester. She didn't TELL us that she was a damned Princess, of course. We found out when she only appeared for work occasionally, insisted on vanishing early on the days that she did deign to appear, and-this is the kicker-tried to outsource her tasks to her personal assistants. She fought tooth-and-nail to keep the job, too. Apparently it was either a rite-of-passage or some sort of religious labor for her. I'm told she still applies for every single job posting.

[kabar]

Both parties have been equally complicit in flooding the country with 'guest workers' to replace those pesky well-paid middle class Americans. The H-1B began in 1990 under Bush I.

Technically correct, but the program actually goes back much further than that including the the H-1 visa program in 1952 and the L-1 and L-2 visa program in 1970. Check out this link for the history of the H-1B visa program.

[240B]

Count me in.

Worked in a software shop for a Major U.S. corporation. Of about 100 software engineers, less than 50% were American. The rest were all H1B.

The reason American engineers cannot compete with many H1B workers is not because of the Liberal “Americans are greedy” meme, it is because people of foreign birth have a different view of money and success. A person in India or China may think 30,000 is an unbelievable amount of money. And it is in their culture.

So, an employer can offer an extremely well qualified candidate 45,000 a year AND, they get to come to America. The guy's eyes will pop out of his head and he will jump on it. The H1B is working for more than just salary. He is working for his visa as well. This tends to keep him highly motivated. H1Bs have had a huge negative impact on the American technical jobs market in keeping jobs scarce and salaries low.

By the way, this erosion and destruction of American technical dominance was fully supported by all administrations Republican and Democrat over the last 40 years, the same way they supported the destruction of any form of American manufacturing. All it takes is for one employer to give a few congressmen a briefcase full of money and 'voila', suddenly you can outsource anything you want and import as many foreign workers as you want and, wink, wink, sure we'll keep that border open. Don't worry about it. (wink)

Anything Americans invent or build, politicians tear it down and distribute it globally in the name of 'fairness' or something. It is the stupidest thing on Earth, but what can you do? I really do believe that many politicians would sell their own mother into slavery for a few bucks. But never mind.

If you are going into the tech field today, it would serve you well to speak Urdu and some Chinese. That is where all the action is now. A software guy named Ted or Bill or Paul is a rare breed these days. Oh, and get used to pronouncing names with 56 characters in them. It is pretty common out there.

[jennychase]

Reuters and Yahoo writers are sitting in Bangalore.
Check any breaking news, and then check footnote.

[khelus]

... Technically correct, but the program actually goes back much further than that including the H-1 visa program in 1952 and the L-1 and L-2 visa program in 1970. Check out this link for the history of the H-1B visa program.

This is an excellent link. Rob Sanchez has done very thorough research on 'guest workers'. In fact this is an excellent site.

As in many other areas there has been a major degeneration in the way NIV [non-immigrantion visas] are handled in the US.

There is a huge difference between the H-1 and H-1B:
the H-1B is embedded in 'Free Trade Agreements', administered by the inelected bureaucracy at the WTO, overrides US immigration law, gives no consideration to the current job market, and applications have been proven to be rubber stamped.

I know people in IT who came in under the old H-1 visa. In order to qualify they had to prove their educational and work history, under go health and security screening like one once did to get a green card. The number of H-1's were limited by the job market; they had to wait for an opening in the US. "Foreign workers were required to go back to their home countries if they lost their job, or if the visa expired. The H-1 program was mandated to be TEMPORARY."

The L-1 visa was originally used on to bring executives and their families for intra company transfers. In practice the L-1 visa has also morphed into a way to bring in foreign workers and suppress the job market and salaries for Americans. IIRC, the numbers of L-1 visas now surpass the numbers of H-1B's.

Rob has an excellent article detailing the alphabet soup of guest workers here: The Most Generous Nation in the World... at Giving Jobs Away

Here's a chart of the number of persons given authorization to work in the US in 2008:

[khelus]

... By the way, this erosion and destruction of American technical dominance was fully supported by all administrations Republican and Democrat over the last 40 years, the same way they supported the destruction of any form of American manufacturing. All it takes is for one employer to give a few congressmen a briefcase full of money and 'voila', suddenly you can outsource anything you want and import as many foreign workers as you want and, wink, wink, sure we'll keep that border open. Don't worry about it. (wink)
Anything Americans invent or build, politicians tear it down and distribute it globally in the name of 'fairness' or something. ...

Great post! This is why globalism = global communism, gotta spread the wealth of the American middle class! When politicians pander on about harmonization of living standards, they don't tell you that they mean bring ours down to that of the third world.

[servantboy777]

I also had a conversation with an Indian (nice enough fella), and he indicated in the conversation that he has amassed thousands of dollars in credit card debt for education, living expenses and so forth.

He said and I paraphrase,”If the federal government screws with him and his visa, he'll just say screw it and go home, leaving the C/Crd company to eat the debt.”

I thought to myself.....oh great, leave us with the tab.

[kabar]

Right. The chart from CIS provides the basis for Roy Beck's assertion that we are bringing in 125,000 LEGAL FOREIGN WORKERS A MONTH right now while 22 million Americans are looking for fulltime employment. It makes no sense at all. And we are bringing in the wrong kind of immigrants, i.e., they are poor, uneducated, and unskilled. We don't need more high school dropouts. 57% of all immigrant headed households with children are on at least one major welfare program.

[240B]

People from many nations do that all the time. Back in the 90s, when the blizzard of free approved credit cards were flooding America, I knew people from overseas who would apply for every single one of them knowing they were going to leave the country in a few months.

Each time they were approved, they would immediately max-out the card, send the stuff home to where ever they were from, and apply for a new credit limit. In some cases they were able to amass hundreds of thousands of dollars this way with no intention whatsoever of even attempting to pay it back. They called it ‘free money from America’ and it was.

In some cases, they could return home, bribe the right guy for a new name and a new passport, apply for a new visa with the new name, come back to the U.S. and do it all over again.

They were obviously wrong in a moral sense for doing this, but the credit companies have to bear some of the blame for their idiotic idea of giving anyone who fills out an application, credit. That was a crazy time in America.

[combat_boots]

This is an accurate representation of the H1B sham. Companies only have to ‘say’ that qualified Americans ‘can’t be found.’ In no way is this verified or attested to legally.

[lentulusgracchus]

Thanks for posting the Pew data.

We are frequently told that Texas bears a moral burden w/r/t the high dropout rate among "minority" students.

A revision appears in the form of background study work which has shown that high dropout rates are tied closely to parental involvement and parental attitudes toward the value of education.

You supplied the missing piece. The feckless parents are feckless because they are your illegal aliens who never graduated from high school themselves and have passed that attitude to their kids.

Nice of the earlier social workers, though, to omit the fact of parental fecklessness and its organic, tight tie to illegal status, while maintaining the liberal fiction that this situation creates a moral call on, and burden of cracker guilt for, Texas voters and politicians.

[rmlew]

Urdu or Chinese? What do the Pakistanis have to do with anything? India is ahead of Pakistan and in both countries, educated people should speak English. If you try to deal with India using a native language, you better pick teh right one. Bengalis don’t like being addressed in Hindi.

[dmartin]

I have an H1-B and I can tell you right now - NO American can do what I do.

Hilarious. Not only are you talented and indispensable, but you are quite the comedian.