High-tech hardships

Date: Sunday, May 04, 2003 3:15 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

I talked to Dr. Gene Nelson today and he is very pleased with the
accuracy of his quotes in this article. My quote is also quite
excellent. Be sure to go online while the article is there and see the
pictures of Gene Nelson and Harvinder Singh.

In this article, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio finally admitted that
he betryed the American public by supporting H-1B. Smith pushed for an
unlimited cap on visas in 2000, and then acted like the 195,000 cap was
a compromise. His political bait and switch didn't fool anyone that
follows the H-1B debate.

The following quote of Lamar Smith's is immortalized at:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Quotes.htm

"Long term, the best solution is to grow our own
technology work force, but it's going to take several
years for us to generate the number of computer
people we need ...
In the meantime, we need the H-1B program."

This article is so good that the author should be forgiven for a
factual error. He wrote that rules prohibit companies from using the
program to replace U.S. workers, when in fact, there are no such
protections. Protections against replacing Americans have been
consistently defeated in Congress.

http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=110&xlc=989638

High-tech hardships

By Sanford Nowlin
Express-News Business Writer

Web Posted : 05/04/2003 12:00 AM

Gene Nelson has been out of work since August 2001. The Dallas-based
fiber-optics engineer realizes he's not alone in being caught in the
layoffs that hit the high-tech sector.

Gene Nelson is a Dallas-based fiber-optics engineer who's not a fan of
the H-1B visa program. He said he lost his job because foreign workers
in the program at his company were younger, got paid less and owed
allegiance to the company because of their guest-worker status.
Ronald Martinez/Special to the Express-News

Harvinder Singh came to San Antonio from India four years ago on an

H-1B visa to work as a database design analyst for Karta Technologies.
Kevin Geil/Express-News

But Nelson feels a fire in his chest when he talks about the
circumstances surrounding his dismissal from Genuity Inc., a
Boston-based Internet backbone company.

Genuity eliminated his job as a cost-cutting move, but kept a number of
foreign workers on the payroll who were here on the H-1B "guest worker"
visa program.

To Nelson, 51, the reason was obvious: The foreign workers were
younger, paid less and owed complete allegiance to the company because
of their guest-worker status.

"The H-1B program allows employers to cut Americans off the payroll who
are making $90,000 or $100,000 a year and replace them with foreign
workers making $30,000 to $40,000," Nelson said. "When you think about
what happens when this is taken to their logical extreme, it's
something that will destroy our economy."

Congress expanded the H-1B program in 2000 when technology companies,
riding an unprecedented boom, warned that they couldn't find enough
qualified workers.

The program allows companies to bring in skilled foreign workers for up
to six years if they can't find U.S. citizens to fill job openings.

But with almost 100,000 computer programmers now out of work and the
economy still suffering from the protracted tech industry slump, H-1B
faces mounting criticism.

Out-of-work techies ask why they received pink slips while foreigners
occupying the cubicles next to theirs kept their jobs.

Web sites demanding the federal government scrap H-1B have
proliferated, usually run by unemployed programmers.

A lawsuit filed last month in California alleges computer giant Sun
Microsystems Inc. laid off some 2,500 U.S. workers and replaced some of
them with younger, lower-paid Indian workers on visas.

And the issue likely will be up for debate in Congress this year.

The yearly cap of 195,000 H-1B visas will expire Sept. 30, and without
congressional action the number available each year will fall to
65,000.

Workers' groups are lobbying against lifting the cap, while the tech
industry is expected to fight to bump it back up.

Supporters of H-1B said they understand worker anxiety over it, but
they add that the program isn't designed to strip U.S. workers of their
jobs or drive down wages.

Indeed, rules prohibit companies from using the program to replace U.S.
workers. Employers also must post job openings so U.S. workers know
about them and pay visa holders the prevailing U.S. wage for their
positions.

What's more, the H-1B program's use has dwindled in the down market,
its proponents point out.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service issued 79,100 H-1B
visas during the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2002 an amount well under
the present cap.

During the booming 2001 fiscal year, it gave out 163,600.

Dismantling the H-1B program, proponents argue, would cut off the tech
industry's access to talent and ultimately hinder its ability to
compete with overseas rivals.

"We find that hiring the best and brightest, regardless of their
national origin, leads to diversity in our staff and stimulates
innovation," said Walt Downing, vice president of operations at
Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, which employs 19 H-1B
workers among its staff of 2,700.

But that diversity and innovation come with a price, opponents argue.

At year-end 2002, unemployment was 5 percent for computer scientists
and 4.2 percent for electrical engineers, according to the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers USA, which is lobbying Congress
to let the H-1B cap decline.

"With that kind of unemployment level, it would be appropriate for
Congress to put the cap back down to historical levels," said John
Steadman, IEEE-USA's president-elect. "There's just no indication that
there's a shortage of qualified workers right now."

Because of its concentrations of technology companies in Austin and
Dallas, Texas has become one of the centers of the visa issue.

With almost 71,000 H-1B workers here, it's among the top five states in
total H1-B employment, according to federal statistics.

In San Antonio, major employers including SBC Communications Inc.,
Southwest Research Institute, USAA and smaller tech companies make use
of the H-1B program.

David Spencer, CEO of the OnBoard Software Inc., said the program has
helped his company hire more U.S. workers, not fire them. Three of
Spencer's 97 employees are here on H-1B visas.

The first such worker he hired was an Oracle programmer whose skills
were instrumental in helping the company win an $800,000-a-year
government contract.

OnBoard since has hired four more U.S. employees to work on that
project.

"A lot of people think they replace American jobs, but in our case we
leveraged that one job into four additional jobs," Spencer said. "Those
jobs wouldn't have come to San Antonio if we didn't have the H-1B visa.

"It's a brain gain for the city."

Indian citizen Harvinder Singh, 32, came to San Antonio four years ago
on an H-1B visa to work as a database design analyst for fast-growing
Karta Technologies.

He said the program helped boost Karta's competitiveness and allowed
him to put his skills to use at a cutting-edge company.

"The working culture here is more open, and the management style is
more open here than in India," said Singh, who since has applied for a
green card. "There's more of a sense of independence."

Singh said he's aware that some U.S. workers look at the H-1B program
unfavorably, but added that he's not been subjected to hostility or
resentment.

"There might be some misuse of the program, but overall, companies seem
pretty fair about how they use it," he added.

Despite its provisions aimed at protecting U.S. workers, critics of the
H-1B program insist employers easily can skirt the rules.

Companies, they argue, make the job postings vague enough that they can
wiggle on pay issues.

And because the immigrants must keep their jobs to remain in the United
States, they're willing to work long hours without overtime to keep
their bosses happy.

When abuse is reported, they add, federal authorities seldom
investigate.

Immigration officials are overworked, understaffed and often
ill-equipped to look into such charges.

"The high-tech industry has always been known for age discrimination,"
said Rob Sanchez, 47, an unemployed software engineer in Phoenix who
runs the anti-H-1B Web site zazona.com. "What's new is the H-1B program
offers companies a source of fresh young blood they've never had
before."

The U.S. General Accounting Office is looking into whether U.S. tech
companies have excluded American workers in favor of hiring lower-paid
H-1Bs. It's expected to release a study in September.

But some economists, though understanding of workers' concern about the
H-1B program, said they worry that substantially dropping the program's
cap or killing it altogether could have a long-lasting harm on the U.S.
economy.

"Let's say you reduce the cap, then once the economy recovers you're
going to need to increase it again," Trinity University economics
professor Jorge Gonzalez said. "As we know, Congress moves very slowly,
so you could have a lag of two, three, four years before it acts again.
What we're trying to do here is keep our companies and our universities
among the best in the world."

Jagdish Bhagwati, a Columbia University economist who defends the H-1B
program, said he worries that tech companies will shift more jobs
offshore if they can't find qualified workers here.

Already, major employers from Bank of America to Dell Computer have
exported work to cheaper overseas IT shops, mainly in India.

Forrester Research Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., estimates that almost
473,000 computer-related jobs will head offshore between 2000 and 2015.

"It's better to bring those people here than to compete with them at
far lower wages elsewhere," Bhagwati said. "If you bring them here,
they come in and become part of the U.S. economy, earning a comparable
wage. If you don't do that, Bill Gates or whoever else will outsource
to India at one-tenth of that wage. So, what's the better choice?"

Though there might be some H-1B abuses, most workers on the visa are
working for pay comparable to what U.S. citizens get, proponents argue.

"The reality is, you can't pay these people a lot less money or they'll
find a way to move on to another job," Bhagwati said. "These aren't
sweatshop workers, after all. They're really talented guys, which is
why they're here in the first place."

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, said he expects to take an active role
crafting legislation setting a new H-1B cap. A former chairman of the
House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, Smith was a key figure in
the passage of the 2000 H-1B legislation.

Though the cap might be lowered this year, Smith said he will fight any
effort to gut the program. Current safeguards, he said, are adequately
protecting U.S. workers.

"Long term, the best solution is to grow our own technology work force,
but it's going to take several years for us to generate the number of
computer people we need," Smith said. "In the meantime, we need the
H-1B program."

H-1B opponents such as Nelson, the Dallas engineer, said they hold out
little faith that their lobbying efforts will be enough to overcome the
powerful tech industry in the pending debate.

"Big business is what's driving all this, and I have zero faith any
safeguards will stop it," Nelson said. "Employers are addicted to the
high profit margins they can get when they hire people on these visas."

snowlin@express-news.net

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