GAO report is Released
GAO report is Released
Date: Friday, October 03, 2003 12:05 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
You can view the GAO report at
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03883.pdf
You might want to download it soon because this not be a permanent
posting.
The GAO report is very important because Congress will use the results
to judge how to handle H-1B. I haven't read the report in detail so
more newsletters with detailed analysis will follow. Your comments and
analysis on the GAO report may be included - be sure to indicate if I
can use your name.
About 5 months ago, an activist contacted the GAO to get a feel for how
the GAO is doing on the report. The activist phoned me with the
conclusion that the GAO has decided that all stories by U.S. workers
that H-1B was being used to displace them and to reduce salaries were
anecdotal, while all data supplied by corporations was scientifically
valid. Until this study the GAO has been one of the few independent and
objective arms of the government but apparently that has all changed
with the Bush administration.
The GAO came up with some very weak "reforms" of H-1B. They recommend
that the Dept. of Homeland Security should track where H-1Bs are.
Tracking has been bandied about since 1990 but companies have
successfully resisted all attempts to track when H-1Bs enter and exit
the country, and exactly where they work. This no-brainer improvement
in security should have been implemented since the first visa was
issued. Tracking may enable our government to monitor potential
terrorists and spies that use these visas, and it would improve
statistics gathering, but it won't create jobs for the U.S. workers
that have been displaced by cheap foreign labor.
If tracking is the best reform the GAO can suggest to resolve H-1B/L-1
problems then we can be assured that the H-1B shills at the ITAA and
NASSCOM will have huge celebrations this Friday evening.
Prepare for the Indian media to start cranking out the "good news" -
and get used to the idea that most of the U.S. media will dismiss our
complaints as anecdotal.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031002/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/high_tech_visas
GAO Urges Stricter Tracking of Foreigners
Thu Oct 2, 6:33 PM ET Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My
Yahoo!
By JONATHAN D. SALANT, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department needs to keep a closer
eye on the high-tech workers admitted to the United States under a
special visa program, congressional investigators said Thursday.
The General Accounting Office (news - web sites), the investigative arm
of Congress, said the new department should keep track of when foreign
workers admitted with what are known as H-1B visas enter and leave the
country, and develop rules for how long workers who lose their jobs are
allowed to remain in the country.
"Much of the information needed to effectively oversee the H-1B visa
program is not available," the GAO said.
The Homeland Security Department agreed with the recommendations.
With the strong support of the high-tech industry, Congress has
authorized hundreds of thousands of skilled foreign workers to obtain
the visas and obtain jobs in the United States. They can stay for up to
six years. Unions have fought the program, saying that companies should
train U.S. workers to fill those positions.
In the last three budget years, 195,000 of these visas could be handed
out each year. In the budget year that began Wednesday, that number
dropped to 65,000 a year.
With the economic downturn, 400,000 of these foreign workers lost their
jobs in the last two years, the GAO said. The number of workers coming
to the United States dropped dramatically. And only 40 percent of those
hired in 2003 were working in the high-tech industry, as compared with
65 percent in 2000.
Homeland Security is responsible for keeping track of nonimmigrants who
enter and leave the country, including H-1B workers. But the GAO said
that the two different systems the agency uses to track the foreign
workers do not share data with each other, and the information is not
consistent, leaving an incomplete picture of the number of H-1B
workers, including which employees change their immigration status and
become permanent residents. If a person with a student visa becomes an
H-1B visa worker, for example, the department cannot track this until
that person leaves the country and then attempts to return under the
new visa. And in one-fifth of the cases, the Homeland Security
Department did not have information about when the foreign workers left
the United States.
The Homeland Security Department told the GAO that it is in the process
of changing the systems used to track the foreign workers.
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2003/10/03/legislators_seek_better_tracking_of_tech_visas/
Legislators seek better tracking of tech visas
By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 10/3/2003
Immigration officials need to improve their tracking of foreigners
working in the United States under specialized visas popular with the
high-tech industry, congressional investigators said in a report
released in Washington yesterday.
Legislators had asked the General Accounting Office, the research arm
of Congress, to investigate the impact of those visas, known as H-1B,
on American workers.
But citing inadequate records kept by the Department of Homeland
Security, the GAO said it could not tell whether importing foreign
workers has lowered wages or contributed to high unemployment in the
high-tech industry.
The GAO called on the federal immigration office to keep better
records, and recommended that Congress give the Labor Department more
authority and money to investigate complaints of H-1B visa abuses by
employers.
Immigration officials could not even tell investigators how many H-1B
visa holders were working in the United States at a given time.
"As a result, DHS is not able to provide some key information needed to
oversee the H-1B program and assess its effects on the US work force,"
the report said.
The report was released one day after Congress let the annual limit on
the number of H-1B visas approved fall to 65,000, from 195,000. The
visa cap had been raised during the height of the Internet boom in
2000, after heavy lobbying by high-tech companies.
But as the economy soured and high-tech jobs became scarce, many
unemployed workers began to complain that H-1B workers had flooded the
job market. The AFL-CIO, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers-USA, and other labor groups charged that companies were
hiring H-1B workers who were willing to work for less money than their
American counterparts.
"Those are all suppositions that haven't been proved one way or the
other," said Representative Mark Udall, a Democrat of Colorado who
supported the increase in H-1B visas in 2000 and requested the GAO
report.
The report found no conclusive evidence of depressed wages. Although
the median salary for American high-tech workers older than 30 was
higher than their counterparts on H-1B visas, H-1B workers younger than
30 made more money than their American peers, according to the report.
But the GAO cautioned that not only was the report hampered by
inadequate records kept by the Department of Homeland Security, but
Labor Department investigators also had difficulty determining whether
employers were actually paying H-1B workers the wages listed in their
visa applications.
The "extent to which violations occur is unknown and may be due in part
to Labor's limited investigative authority," the report said.
Besides losing track of when H-1B workers enter and leave the country,
the Homeland Security Department has failed to give "consistent
guidance" on whether a visa worker who loses his job can stay and look
for work, or must leave, the report said. "Allowing unemployed H-1B
workers to remain in the United States may have implications for the
labor-force competition faced by US workers," the report concluded.
In their official responses to the report, the Homeland Security and
Labor departments said they agreed with the GAO's recommendations.
Homeland Security said it was upgrading its tracking system of foreign
workers.
Chris Gaither can be reached at gaither@globe.com.
) Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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