Government Hires Foreign Workers

Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 1:47 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

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http://www.manews.org/0403lutton.htm

States, Federal Government Hire Foreign Workers

By Wayne Lutton

State and federal government agencies from coast to coast are hiring
foreign workers for good-paying jobs at the expense of American
citizens. Despite the availability of tens of thousands of
highly-trained recent college graduates and high national unemployment
rate pegged by the Labor Department at 8.9 percent for white-collar
workers, American governments are using the federal H-1B
foreigner-employment program to import foreign workers, shutting out
unemployed Americans.

The hiring of foreigners with taxpayer dollars flies in the face of new
reports of U.S. workers hit by layoffs. In February American businesses
cut over 308,000 jobs, adding to the more than 380,000 private-sector
positions and half-million manufacturing jobs that were lost last year.

"The labor market situation has deteriorated dramatically and is
weighing heavily on consumer confidence and spending," said Richard
Yamarone, an economist with Argus Research Corp.

Federal agencies that have hired H-1B non-citizen workers include the
Argonne National Laboratory, U. S. Department of Defense, Department of
the Air Force, Department of the Navy, Department of Veterans Affairs,
U. S. Department of Agriculture, U. S. Naval Academy, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratories.

State governments using public money to retain foreign nationals at a
time when large numbers of qualified Americans are seeking employment
include the Arizona Department of Transportation, Arizona Department of
Environmental Quality, California Department of Transportation,
Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety, Indiana Department of
Transportation, Louisiana Department of Public Safety, Massachusetts
Department of Public Health, Massachusetts Department of Revenue,
Minnesota Department of Transportation, New Jersey Department of
Transportation, New York Public Library, Tennessee Department of
Transportation, and the Virginia Department of Corrections.

The state of Florida under Republican Gov. Jeb Bush has been an
especially prominent employer of H-1B visa holders. The Florida
Department of Corrections, Florida Department of Environmental
Protection, Florida Department of Health, and Florida Department of
Transportation are among the state agencies that have hired foreign
professionals.

The state of Ohio, led by Republican Governor Bob Taft, presents a case
study of the types of good jobs going to foreigners instead of
Americans. At least eight Ohio state agencies have hired H-1B workers,
most of them citizens of India and the Pacific Rim countries of China,
Korea, and Taiwan. The Ohio Department of Job & Family Services has
hired a number of foreign computer programmers and analysts at starting
salaries ranging from $50,336 to over $64,000.

When asked why his department hires foreign citizens for well-paying
jobs, the Director of Job & Family Services, Tom Hayes, replied, "We
here believe in the American dreambut we can't say that we have to
hire people who are American citizens."

Sample of Ohio State Jobs Filled by Foreign Citizens
Agency Job Title Annual Salary
Administrative Services Computer Programmer/Analyst $52,873
Administrative Services Systems Analyst $52,873
Agriculture Pest Control Specialist $31,990
Health Epidemiology Investigator $50,336
Health Computer Programmer/Analyst $45,801
Health Research $41,600
Job & Family Services Programmer/Analyst $55,411
Job & Family Services Programmer/Analyst $58,156
Job & Family Services Programmer/Analyst $50,336
Job & Family Services Programmer/Analyst $52,873
Job & Family Services Programmer/Analyst $64,043
Mental Health Programmer/Analyst $48,027
Mental Health Psychiatrist $114,920
Mental Health Psychiatrist $133,036
Mental Health Psychiatrist $136,323
Mental Retardation Systems Analyst $52,873
Rehabilitation & Corrections Psychiatrist $131,580
Rehabilitation Services Claims Adjudicator $31,990
Source: Ohio State Agencies

The H-1B visa program, a provision of the 1990 Immigration Act, was
created to allow American companies to hire foreign professionals at a
time when the high-tech industry complained that a huge labor shortage
was looming. Although the shortage never materialized, Congress
expanded the program from an initial 65,000 temporary visas, good for
up to six years, to 115,000 visas in 1999, to 195,000 foreign workers
admitted annually through this year.

Under the H-1B program, employers are not required to document a
shortage of qualified Americans for a particular job opening. They
simply pay an application fee of $1,000 per employee, which is written
off as a cost of doing business. In the case of government agencies,
American tax dollars pay the fees used to hire foreign workers and keep
Americans out.

Corporations and government agencies like to hire foreigners because
they help satisfy the elites' demands for diversity and
multiculturalism. At the same time, private companies can pay them
lower wages and fewer benefits than Americans would expect for similar
work. The pay-off for foreign workers is that they receive higher pay
in the United States than they would at home, and employers often
sponsor them for permanent residence. For hundreds of thousands of
non-citizens, the H-1B program has become a backdoor entry into
America.

The H-1B program is not the only way that non-citizens can work legally
in the United States. Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst with the
Center for Immigration Studies, discovered that more than 715,000
foreigners were issued employment visas in 2001 (the most recent
figures available). Another 110,000 non-immigrants received permission
to work after they arrived in the United States.

Congress has the authority to end these practices. The various
non-immigrant work visa programs can simply be terminated. But the
general public has yet to make this a pressing issue.

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