To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Tue Apr 16 20:52:12 PDT 2013 Just when you think you've heard everything on the H-1B front, here is the latest outrage, in an article titled, "Facebook Flexes Political Muscle with Provision in Immigration Bill": http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebook-flexes-political-muscle-with-carve-out-in-immigration-bill/2013/04/16/138f718e-a5e7-11e2-8302-3c7e0ea97057_story.html Seems that Facebook has now become an H-1B-dependent employer, with more than 15% of its workforce holding H-1B visas. So, Facebook pushed behind the scenes to get a loophole inserted into the bill, effectively exempting them. The loophole is an accounting trick, as I'll explain later. Recall that recently Joe Green, leader of Mark Zuckerberg's new immigration lobbying group, was caught saying, "[We in tech] control massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals...We have individuals with a lot of money. If deployed properly this can have huge influence in the current campaign finance environment." This exemption seems to be a case in point, exemplifying that "influence." Note too that the blog states that a number of tech firms have recently become H-1B dependent, crossing that 15% threshhold. Congress set that 15% threshhold in 1998. The number was a legalistic euphemism for "Indian firms." As I've been writing for years, a key part of the (mainstream) industry's PR campaign regarding H-1B has been to distance themselves from the Indian firms. In fact, the Washington Post article over the weekend titled, "Tech Industry Poised to Win in Immigration Debate," at http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-12/business/38492236_1_qualified-american-workers-h-1b-visa-holders-firms explicitly reported this: *********************************** Armed with more lobbying firepower than in past fights, the mainstream tech firms have made headway by drawing a bright line between themselves and the mostly India-based firms that have built IT outsourcing empires and transformed the tech industry. “We’re encouraged by our conversations in making sure those distinctions are made,” said Scott Corley, executive director of Compete America, an industry coalition representing firms including Cisco, Microsoft and Google. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a new political group this week called Fwd.us that’s also pushing immigration and education issues related to tech hiring. The U.S. firms say they’re nothing like the outsourcing companies that rely heavily on workers with H-1Bs in order to save money. Instead, Silicon Valley executives and lobbyists say they need more H-1Bs so they can hire the best possible talent, arguing that there’s a shortage of qualified American workers. *********************************** (The blog is slightly wrong, because the Indian-scapegoating by the industry is nothing new, as I said, but you get the point.) In other words, now that many of these firms themselves are inching into the H-1B dependent category, they're blowing their cover. Lo and behold, they are just as bad as those same Indian firms they've been trying to scapegoat all this time! They've entered the Evil Fifteen Percent territory! Hence the need for a loophole. And the one they wound up concocting is brilliant. They point out that without the long green card backlog, they wouldn't have so many H-1Bs; the former H-1Bs would have transitioned to green card status. I'm sure that sells in Congress. (Or buys, as Joe Green puts it.) No one in Congress would stop and realize the sleight-of-hand involved. Let's say for example that company X has 10% of its workers as H-1Bs and 15% who are fresh green card holders, having held H-1B visas until recently. That makes 25% of X's workforce consisting of recent foreign hires, directly contrary to the spirit of the law, which is that 15% foreign workers is too high. In other words, the "Facebook loophole" is just an accounting trick. Mind you, I've always said that U.S. permanent residents deserve the same protection as citizens. So the new green card holders are now in that category. But again, this accounting trick is antithetical to the spirit of that protection. Of course, the 15% threshhold never made sense in the first place, because it includes ALL of a company's workers--marketers, accountants, secretaries, etc. A company could have, say, 50% of its ENGINEERS as H-1Bs, yet still be under that 15% threshhold. So now, the mainstream industry's efforts to make the Indians a bogeyman has backfired. But a little campain contribution money here, some creative accounting there, and voila!, the mainstream firms are no longer in the "bogeyman" danger zone. Norm Archived at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/BuyingLaws.txt