HIRING HUBBUB
HIRING HUBBUB
Date: Monday, February 10, 2003 2:25 PM
H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
This is such a good article I hope you don't mind reading this detailed
commentary....
Harris Miller's strategy for 2003 is becoming increasingly obvious
because this article isn't the first time he has used it. First he says
that employment of H-1Bs fell at the same time that Americans were
losing their jobs. He then gets a corporate shill like Muldoon from
Motorola or someone from Microsoft to confirm his contention that
Americans are being treated with the same disdain as H-1Bs (as if that
justified the exploitation of anyone). Then, when asked for a
breakdown of how many H-1Bs and Americans lost their jobs, Miller and
his cohorts refuse to say. They don't want to allow the public to have
these statistics because it would become obvious that they are using
H-1B to replace American workers with the cheap young blood of
immigrant workers.
Harris Miller has said several times in the past few months that
lawmakers are unlikely to "go on a suicide mission" in favor of raising
the ceiling. Congress and President Bush will however agree to keep the
limit at its current high level and that's what Miller is really
lobbying for. He is hoping that these types of statements will lull us
into complacency while he wines and dines our representatives in
Washington. Harris Miller has complained many times that the 2000
increase costed him a lot of time and money to get passed so he hopes
that by blunting the opposition he will save money. I doubt that Miller
will have to sell one of his Mercedes Benz limos in order to lobby
Congress this year because his corporate benefactors shower money on
him.
Sometimes corporate spokespersons accidentally admit the truth, and
Muldoon of Motorola let out a Texas sized Freudian sliperoo of the ol'
forked tongue! He explained that Motorola hires foreign students on J-1
visas and then converts the visas to H-1B once the students are working
at Motorola. Muldoon effectively admitted that American students and
unemployed techies never have a chance for these jobs because Motorola
hires foreign students directly from our own universities. This gaffe
from Muldoon is quite extraordinary and explains why Americans are
often applying for jobs that are already taken. (his gaffe is archived
at http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Quotes.htm) Don't think Motorola is
the only one that uses this method to bypass American workers because
because it's an industry standard method to hire cheap labor by using
the J-1 visa.
Don't be swayed by Murali Krishna Devarakonda either. Murali is
president of the Immigrants Support Network, a militant group of H-1Bs
that hope to dump H-1B in favor of an instant Green Card system. They
argue that the abuses that H-1Bs endure will only end when immigrants
can get instant Green Cards to work in the US. Abuse and exploitation
of H-1Bs will end when H-1B is abolished.
Dr. Gene Nelson did a masterful job of shooting down the specious
arguments in favor of H-1B. Gene explained that this displacement of
Americans workers is simply a matter of saving money by using cheap
indentured workers, and the loss of jobs is permanent.
The newspaper took a picture of Gene standing by his 20 year old Toyota
Tercel although I don't know yet if the picture was published.
Here is Dr. Gene Nelson's picture:
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/images/Photos/GeneNelson.jpg
Here is Harris Miller at his plush Arlington, VA office:
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/images/Photos/miller.jpg
*** Protest Against H-1B In Dallas ***
Gene Nelson is going to hold a protest against H-1B Wednesday in
Dallas. He hopes others will join him to picket with out-of-work
engineers to hand out leaflets that oppose the H-1B visa program. Gene
will be joined by LeEarl Bryant, the former president of IEEE-USA.
LeEarl, as most of you know has opposed H-1B while serving as
president. LeEarl is seeking employment in this glutted job market so
she shares the pain and disappointment that American's unemployed
engineers are experiencing.
Although this protest will be held at an IEEE meeting, Gene is
receiving no support for his efforts. Gene and LeEarl came up with this
idea - it wasn't organized by IEEE. Gene has spent at least $100 of his
own money to make picket signs and could use some financial help if any
of you care to donate to his effort.
Let's make sure he can afford the gas to get his Toyota to the protest!
Gene would also like to invite you to join the rally because this might
be a chance to get more publicity for the H-1B issue. Gene's making the
signs, it's now up to some concerned Texans to carry them.
Contact Gene Nelson at: c0030180@airmail.net
cell phone: (214) 455-8065
Place: Fairmont Hotel, Dallas, TX
Event: IEEE Quarterly Meeting
Time: 11 am to 1 pm Feb. 12th
I have included an article that Gene Nelson published on the NASA
problems. His statement that you get what you pay for is all too true.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/5146710.htm
Posted on Mon, Feb. 10, 2003
HIRING HUBBUB
As technology layoffs increase, criticism of H-1B visas mounts
By Maria M. Perotin
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Since losing his technology job more than a year ago, Gene Nelson has
landed a handful of contracts but nothing with a steady paycheck.
He has applied for countless positions, touting his doctoral degree and
his varied work experience. But with the tech sector in an economic
free fall, the Carrollton resident has found corporate layoff
announcements far easier to come by than job openings.
Yet at the same time, U.S. employers have been filling jobs with
thousands of skilled foreign-born workers on temporary visas --
sometimes hiring in one department while workers are being laid off in
others.
The international employees hold H-1B visas, permits that allow
foreign-born workers with special skills to work in the United States
for up to six years. Businesses contend that the foreign employees are
vital to the work force because universities aren't graduating enough
U.S.-born, tech-savvy students to fill their needs.
But critics such as Nelson insist that no such worker shortage exists,
particularly now that ailing tech companies have eliminated positions
in wave after wave of mass layoffs.
To stress that point, Nelson intends to hold a rally Wednesday in
Dallas, picketing with other out-of-work engineers and handing out
leaflets opposing the visa program.
"The H-1B visa program is a program designed by employers to basically
take foreign nationals and, in most cases, treat them as indentured
servants," Nelson says. "They are permanently displacing American
citizens from those positions."
Industry leaders dismiss such complaints, noting that their foreign
hiring has declined during the recession.
U.S. employers added 79,100 new H-1B visa holders to their payrolls
during the 2002 fiscal year that ended in September, a 52 percent drop
from 2001, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service. That's well below the 195,000 H-1B workers now permitted
annually under a federal cap that limits most new H-1B visas.
The INS received 215,000 H-1B petitions for initial and renewing
applicants during the 2002 fiscal year, down 37 percent from 2001.
The Information Technology Association of America, a trade group, says
the recent drop in H-1B hiring is evidence that the visa program works
properly.
As the need for employees fell, recruiting of foreign-born workers
fell, too, says Harris Miller, the association's president.
"There's been a dramatic drop-off in terms of the usage of H-1Bs, as
you would expect," Miller says. "That's exactly what's supposed to
happen."
The hiring decline wasn't enough to appease members of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a technical professional society
that has pushed to reduce the available visas. Instead of relying on
H-1B employees, the group advocates greater hiring of an estimated
120,000 engineers, computer programmers and systems analysts who are
unemployed nationwide.
"We're not against any U.S. company who truly, truly cannot find
somebody to fill a job to go overseas and get somebody," IEEE-USA
spokesman Chris McManes says. "But we think, for the most part, they
could find somebody here."
Miller notes that many H-1B candidates are indeed here in the United
States -- as students on college campuses.
American graduate schools are full of students from overseas pursuing
science, math and computer-related degrees. So employers in search of
top grads each semester would be foolish to overlook foreign-born
applicants, he says.
For example, in 1999, the most recent year for which figures are
available, 49 percent of the students earning doctorates in engineering
at U.S. universities were non-U.S. citizens on a student or other visa.
International students also accounted for 47 percent of the math
doctorates that year and 41 percent of doctorates in the overall
physical sciences, according to the National Center for Education
Statistics.
Belkis Muldoon, director of global immigration services for Motorola,
says many of its H-1B employees are recruited out of U.S. colleges,
then brought on staff with a kind of temporary visa that must be
converted to an H-1B.
In 2000, Motorola was the nation's largest employer of H-1B workers,
with more than 600 visas approved during a five-month period. The INS
hasn't released statistics on H-1B employers since then.
Muldoon says that both hiring of H-1B workers and recruiting of new
employees have dropped at Motorola, which has laid off roughly 50,000
workers since 2000. She wouldn't specify how many visa holders the
company has signed up during that time.
Nelson says businesses' liking for students -- who are usually
inexperienced and a bargain to hire -- stacks the deck in favor of
foreign-born workers.
At 51, Nelson has years of experience in an array of positions. But he
says that too many employers favor young, foreign-born workers over
older -- and seasoned -- American employees.
"This is one of many tools being utilized by employers to facilitate
illegal age discrimination," Nelson says. "We're just treated like
yesterday's newspaper and thrown away."
Some H-1B employers are expanding their staffs this year.
Microsoft, which ranked No. 6 on the INS' list of employers in 2000,
expects to add 5,000 workers to its roster during the current fiscal
year, spokeswoman Nicole Miller says. Among them will be H-1B holders,
albeit a smaller percentage than in previous years.
Miller wouldn't disclose how many H-1B workers Microsoft employs, but
she says the company has filled vacancies in recent months both with
immigrants and with U.S. workers who had been laid off by other
employers.
"We're looking for the skills wherever we can get them," she says.
To Nelson, a longtime activist opposing visas for tech workers,
employers should look no further than the U.S. labor force. He
complains that the H-1B program creates a glut of "cheap labor,"
providing jobs to foreign-born workers instead of more experienced U.S.
competitors.
It's an age-old argument against foreign-born workers, with a notable
distinction: Unlike other immigrants, holders of H-1B visas are tied to
individual employers who must sponsor their visa applications. So if
they lose their jobs, they give up their right to remain in the United
States.
That relationship can put H-1B workers at the mercy of their employers,
says Murali Krishna Devarakonda, president of the Immigrants Support
Network, which represents foreign-born workers.
"It doesn't matter that my employer [has not been] paying me," said
Devarakonda, who obtained a green card in 2001 after years as an H-1B
holder. "If I just raise one word, he can fire me. When you have a
system that can be exploited, there will be people who will exploit it.
It's completely loaded in favor of the employer."
Not so, says ITAA's Miller.
Federal regulations require employers to pay H-1B workers a prevailing
wage, he says. And the pay offered to specific visa candidates is
available to the public.
"If it were just cheap labor, then the usage of H-1Bs would never go
down," Miller says. "We all know there's a lot of pressure on companies
to cut costs in these particularly tough times. But in fact, we've seen
-- as the economy has slowed down -- a dramatic drop-off in the usage
of H-1Bs."
Julia Stommes, a Dallas immigration lawyer who helps employers navigate
the H-1B process, says wage regulations prevent rampant abuse of
foreign-born workers.
Still, the weak economy has given businesses more leverage over all
employees' salaries, Stommes says, and immigrants often may be willing
to work for less money.
"If you want to be here badly enough, you'll do whatever you can," she
says, "whereas U.S. citizens don't have that worry."
Although companies must ensure foreign-born employees a prevailing wage
and acceptable working conditions, federal rules don't address when
businesses are permitted to hire H-1B workers in the first place.
Neither the Labor Department nor the INS requires businesses to show
they've searched for American employees before they can fill jobs with
H-1B holders.
H-1Bs allow employers to hire workers with less red tape than if they
had to submit applications for permanent green cards, Devarakonda says.
But the quicker process does little to ensure that U.S. residents get
first dibs on jobs.
"You're not proving -- nor are you required to prove, as an employer --
that with this job you did try to hire an American citizen or a green
card holder," he says. "It doesn't protect the American workers, and it
doesn't protect the foreign workers."
Just a few years ago, tech companies were so hungry for skilled workers
that they pressured the federal government to raise limits on H-1B
visas, increasing the cap several times from 65,000 to its current
annual limit of 195,000 new applications.
The yearly limit is slated to fall back to 65,000 visas in October, but
it's unclear whether businesses will lobby for a higher cap before
then.
Miller was reticent about disclosing his association's plans.
Nonetheless, he says, unless the economy improves noticeably this year,
lawmakers are unlikely to "go on a suicide mission" in favor of raising
the ceiling.
"We're dealing with the same reality everybody else is, which is an
uncertain economic future," Miller says. "Members of Congress -- when
unemployment is 6 percent or more -- are not about to start admitting
more foreign workers."
Dubious H-1B opponents already are bracing for a fight.
McManes says IEEE-USA is watching Capitol Hill closely for unexpected
legislation. And locally, Nelson is organizing his rally, aimed at
getting the attention of IEEE-USA members who will be meeting in Dallas
this week. He wants the group to urge Congress to stick with next
year's limit of 65,000 H-1B visas and to tighten rules dictating which
workers fall under that cap.
What is an H-1B visa?
H-1B is a classification used by foreign-born workers for temporary
work in specialty occupations such as engineering or architecture or as
fashion models. The status requires sponsorship from a U.S. employer,
and can be used for a maximum of six years at a time. During that time,
workers are allowed to apply for a permanent green card.
Initial H-1B visas approved annually*
2000 115,000 visas
2001 163,600 visas
2002 79,100 visas
*Statistics include only H-1B visas that apply toward the federal
government's limit, not visas that are excluded from that cap.
SOURCE: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
Out of work
Average unemployment rates for electrical engineers and computer
scientists have jumped in the past three years. The number of
unemployed workers in those fields has grown from 36,000 in 1999 to
98,000 in 2002, according to an association of technology employees.
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 1999 2000 2002
Electrical Engineer Unemployment Rate 3.4% 4% 4.3% 2.4% 1.3% 0.9% 2.1%
1.4% 1.3% 2% 4.2% Number of workers 9,000 9,000 29,000
Computer Science Unemployment Rate 2.7% 3.1% 1.8% 1.8% 1.3% 1.1% 1.3%
1.7% 2% 3.4% 5% Number of workers 27,000 36,000 89,000
SOURCE: IEEE-USA
http://www.vdare.org/letters/tl_020703.htm
TODAYS LETTER: One Week After Shuttle Tragedy, A Reader Ponders The
H-1B Angle
At 8:00 AM on Saturday, February 1, while working outside near
Gainesville, I heard no rumbles, nor did I glance upward while the
Columbia was disintegrating. An hour later, I was called in to view the
footage on with disbelief.
As a NASA employee from 1973 to 1975, I have pondered the harm of the
management push to do more with less. One area of concern is NASA's use
of "fresh [i.e. inexpensive] young blood" - mostly from overseas.
http://www.ZaZona.com tells us that NASA contractors such as Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC) have applied for over
1,000 H-1B visas. Lockheed has at least 240 visa applications. That
means that thousands of experienced American citizen scientists,
engineers, and programmers have been displaced - with considerable
specialized knowledge lost.
When the postmortem analysis is complete, it will be likely that a
systemic problem will be revealed, similar to Lockheed's September,
1999 erroneous transmission of non-metric units of force to NASA-JPL
that resulted in the Mars Polar Orbiter burning up while entering the
Mars atmosphere. (See Simple Error Doomed Mars Polar Orbiter, by
David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle, October 1, 1999).
It is indeed tragic that the future of manned space exploration is
imperiled when management ignores the basic economic law that "you get
what you pay for."
[Gene Nelson has testified before Congress on the H-1B program. His
upcoming book is An American Scam - How Special Interests Undermine
American Security with Endless "Techie" Gluts. E-mail him for a 22 -
page special Congressional Summary.]
Help to Keep ZaZona.com Online
Donate to the Cause at
http://www.zazona.com/Donations.htm
To Subscribe or Unsubcribe send an email to
Back to archives