Feinstein seeking changes

Date: Thursday, July 31, 2003 6:42 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been one of the staunchest supporters of H-1B
over the years. Feinstein worked with Sen. Spencer Abraham and the
Senate Judiciary Committee on S. 1723 to double the H-1B cap in 1998.
She voted with the 12-6 majority to send the bill to the floor of the
Senate without safeguards for American workers. Even worse, Feinstein
co-sponsored the 2000 H-1B bill in the Senate in 2000 that increased
the yearly cap to 195,000.

With her past history in mind, she surprised everyone when she voted
against the Chile and Singapore FTA in the Senate Judiciary committee.
Unfortunately it still passed by 11-4 but she had a chance to speak out
against the visa aspects of the bill.

Now Feinstein is speaking out against H-1B and L-1 visa! In a Senate
hearing on Tuesday Feinstein said that she had been deceived by the
industry lobbyists on H-1B. That statement is a stunning turnabout in
her attitude even though it's a real stretch to believe that she didn't
know exactly what she was doing.

Feinstein probably sees a political change in California and wants to
jump aboard before it's too late. She may be changing her mind on
nonimmigrant visas so she should be encouraged to stay on the right
track.

Since Feinstein is now an advocate for American workers, she should be
encouraged to sponsor DeLauro's L-1 reform bill HR2702 in the Senate.

Feinstein's contact information:
(202) 224-3841
http://feinstein.senate.gov/
email webform: http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/30/BU1006.DTL

Feinstein seeking changes in skilled-worker visas

Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
)2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/30/BU1006.DTL

Washington -- Congress appears inclined to clamp down on at least one
category of visa for skilled workers, the L-1, that many complain is
being used to displace U.S. workers, particularly in the high-tech
industry.

It is a sharp turnabout from just three years ago when, at Silicon
Valley's behest, Congress nearly doubled a related and much larger
worker visa category,

the H-1B.

Former supporters of increasing the number of visas for foreign
high-tech workers -- including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- are
now calling for a halt to what they call abuses of the L-1 visa, which
is intended to allow a company's foreign managers, executives and
workers with "specialized knowledge" to transfer to that company's U.S.
operations.

"Four years ago . . . I had CEOs come to me and tell me they need more
H-1B visas, and I bought the argument," Feinstein said in a hearing
Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border
Security.

But at the hearing, Feinstein expressed outrage over the case, clearly
widely circulated in Congress, of Patricia Fluno, a $98,000-a-year
computer programmer from Orlando, Fla., who was laid off by Siemens
Technologies, which transferred her job and others to an Indian company
called Tata Consulting Services.

Fluno, who testified at the hearing, said she and 15 co-workers were
forced to train the incoming Tata workers, whom she said were paid
roughly a third of her salary.

"This was the most humiliating experience of my life," Fluno said. "Our
visa holders are sitting at our old desks, answering our old phones,
and working on the same systems and programs we did, but for one-third
the cost."

Other witnesses at the hearing, including industry representatives,
agreed that Fluno's case would constitute a clear abuse of L-1B visas,
which are to be used for intra-company transfers of workers (and their
immediate family) who have specific company skills, not for
transferring generic software work.

The witnesses generally agreed that the largest problem was with the
L-1B, not the L-1A, which is used to allow foreign company managers and
executives to transfer to the United States.

Feinstein called the L-1B program "stealth immigration," and
temporarily held up Senate consideration of free-trade agreements with
Chile and Singapore because they contain provisions to expand various
employment visa categories for workers from those countries.

News reports of L-1 abuses, coming as skilled U.S. workers -- many in
the high-tech industry -- continue to lose jobs to low-wage countries
such as India and China, have spawned several bills in the House and
Senate to set new limits on the L-1 program. The various bills would do
such things as limit the number of visas that can be issued, require
employers to first seek U.S. workers and require payment of prevailing
U.S. wages to visa holders. These requirements apply to the H-1B
category.

But several witnesses for the industry, while acknowledging that abuses
occur, warned against a wholesale overhaul of the L-1 program.

"This requires a surgical instrument, not a sledgehammer," said Daryl
Buffenstein, general counsel for Global Personnel Alliance, who warned
that many of the changes contemplated would defeat the purpose of the
L-1 category and make legitimate transfers difficult, harming the
competitiveness of U.S. companies.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration expert at Cornell Law School, also
said the media have greatly inflated the number of L-1 visas said to be
issued each year, citing estimates as high as 300,000, when in fact
L-1's peaked in 2001 at 59,000.

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.

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Rob Sanchez is board member of NAEA - www.NAEA.US

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