H-1B debate flares

Date: Monday, April 14, 2003 2:48 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

This article is a good one, but the print version has the usual error:

"H-1B visas allow employers to sponsor skilled foreign
workers for six years, if they cannot find qualified U.S.
candidates for the jobs in question."

Margaret Quan was asked if she understood that there is no requirement
to find qualified U.S. candidates. Here is her answer:

Thanks for the note, but that error was introduced by the
copy editor. I pointed it out before the paper was printed
and It was corrected elsewhere in the same issue of EE Times
(The Week in Review) section.

I feel terrible that it appeared in print. I never wrote that
statement. It came from someone who assumed that was the case.

Thom Stohler, vice president of work force policy for the American
Electronics Association, will not be as obdurate as Margaret Quan.
There should be no doubt that he is quoted correctly in this article
because he is a steadfast supporter of H-1B. Here are a few of his
blockheaded statements that were in the article, followed by my
counter-arguments:

Thom: "Demand for H-1B visas "has dropped considerably since 2000,"

Counter: So what. Demand for all workers has dropped. H-1B cannot be
justified as long as there are people that need jobs.

Thom: AEA member companies are now more selective, he said, and "only
use the program to bring in advanced-degree recipients who have
graduated from U.S. schools."

Counter: AEA members such as Intel, Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and
Hewlett-Packard are the most notorious abusers of H-1B. Sun even admits
they hire H-1Bs that don't have college degrees! If these companies are
selective it's only when it comes to hiring compliant workers at low
wages. To see just how "selective" his members are, use the LCA
Database at www.ZaZona.com/LCA-Data and see for yourself how many low
paid and low skilled jobs there are.

Thom: The AeA hasn't ruled out lobbying to increase the cap this year,
he said.

Counter: Since the AeA represents corporations that want the bottom to
fall out of wages to technical workers, it's not surprising that they
will join the ITAA to lobby for higher H-1B limits. Go to this webpage
if you feel the need to explain to the toadies at AeA why we don't need
to increase the H-1B cap:
http://www.aeanet.org/AboutAeA/AeAContactInfo.asp

Thoms Stohler is a hard-line H-1B shill and has made similar statements
in the past. Go to this webpage to read more about Stohler and the AeA:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Skunks.htm#AeA

http://www.theworkcircuit.com/story/OEG20030414S0055

H-1B debate flares as EE jobless rate hits 7 percent
By Margaret Quan, EE Times
April 14, 2003 (11:42 a.m. EST)

MANHASSET, N.Y. Unemployment among electronic engineers soared to 7
percent in the first quarter, the U.S. Department of Labor said last
week, surpassing the national jobless rate of 5.8 percent recorded in
March.

At the same time, some industry groups are considering lobbying for
legislation to raise the annual quota for H-1B visas and allow more
foreign technical workers into the United States.

A law that will expire on Sept. 30 raised the number of temporary visa
holders to 195,000 a year. Unless Congress ups the level again, visa
numbers will drop back to 1999 levels of 65,000, a cutback that some
advocates call too steep.

In its regular quarterly report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also
said that unemployment among computer scientists and systems analysts
held relatively steady at 4.9 percent in Q1.

But there is a caveat. BLS narrowed the definitions of both categories
in January in a revamping of its occupational-classification system,
adding new job categories in an attempt to create more detail in the
employment numbers. In addition, a BLS labor analyst said the bureau
corrected some past coding errors, resulting in a further reshuffling
of numbers.

Some types of engineers were removed from the EE category and placed in
a new one for "computer hardware engineers." The jobless rate for that
group was only a touch better than for EEs, at 6.5 percent for the
quarter.

Despite whatever skew may have entered into the numbers because of the
category changes, the 7 percent figure for EE unemployment marked a
distinct surge. The annual average EE unemployment rate last year was
4.2 percent, and the final quarter of 2002 saw a decline in
joblessness, with EEs recording 3.9 percent unemployment, according to
the BLS report for that quarter.

IEEE-USA president John Steadman said he has "never heard" of
unemployment among EEs being so high, but is not totally shocked given
the number of engineering layoffs he has seen in his area-near Fort
Collins, Colo.-in the last several months.

Given that the statistic holds up after being careful about how the new
categories impact the numbers, it would reinforce the concern we have
that the very wide-open importation of guest workers under H-1B has
substantially contributed to the hardship and unemployment of U.S.
engineers and computer scientists," Steadman said.

The result, he said, is "a very substantial and negative effect on the
economic conditions of the United States." Not only are the unemployed
"not contributing to economic growth," but "their unemployment benefits
are draining corporate and government resources at the state and
federal level. This should be viewed with grave concern by Congress and
policy-makers."

The numbers can only add fuel to the fire in the visa debate. IEEE-USA
believes the H-1B cap should stay put at the 1999 level of 65,000 a
year.

But a vocal critic of H-1B policy says that won't happen. "The industry
simply won't stand for a reversion to 65,000," said Norm Matloff, a
professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis.
Matloff believes lobbyists will work to set an annual H-1B cap above
65,000, or create a new visa category that does not specify a quota.

High-tech employers have become "addicted" to H-1B visas because the
program has been "so beneficial" for them, said Jessica Vaughan, senior
policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS; Washington).
"It's allowed them to find cheaper employees and has become almost like
a government subsidy to these employers."

Employers have also used L-1 temporary visas. Intended for
multinationals transferring executives, managers and employees with
specialized skills from a foreign office to a U.S. location or
affiliate, the L-1 visas carry fewer stipulations than H-1Bs and are
easy to abuse, said Vaughan. Recruiting firms have used them to move
large numbers of employees from India to the United States, where they
will work for cheaper rates than native labor, she said. The Department
of Justice is rumored to be investigating abuses of the L-1 program by
so-called "body shop" recruiters of IT workers from India. The
department neither confirms nor comments on ongoing investigations.

Not every high-tech sector has been hit equally hard by the downturn.
The U.S. software industry added 5,300 jobs between January 2001 and
December 2002 and uses "many H-1Bs," said Thom Stohler, vice president
of work force policy for the American Electronics Association
(Washington). Conversely, "a lot of the jobs lost [in the electronics
industry] were in manufacturing, which is not generally where H-1Bs are
used."

Latest U.S. figures show lower demand for EEs, other tech workers.

If the visa number drops to 65,000 a year, Stohler said, the cap would
be reached in late summer or fall of 2004.

The dynamics of the H-1B visa debate have changed since the height of
the tech boom, when warm bodies were in short supply and unemployment
at historic lows. The sluggish economy has congressional supporters of
H-1Bs "taking a second look at the program," said Vaughan of CIS, and
"rethinking whether the cap has to be as high."

A spokesman said the House Judiciary Committee will look at H-1B visa
caps before the current legislation expires this fall. But aides for
one committee member who backed the visa hike in 2000 declined to state
the representative's position now.

Demand for H-1B visas "has dropped considerably since 2000," said AEA's
Stohler. AEA member companies are now more selective, he said, and
"only use the program to bring in advanced-degree recipients who have
graduated from U.S. schools." Only about 80,000 H-1Bs were used in
2002, Stohler said. Even so, the AEA hasn't ruled out lobbying to
increase the cap this year, he said.

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