Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 19:06:03 +0000 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: Gen. Clark's evolution on H-1B/offshoring? To: age discrimination/H-1B/L-1 e-newsletter After making two outrageous statements on H-1B/offshoring, Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark has been reconsidering his stance recently. If you recall, on October 1, I reported her that Clark's Web page included the following item on his stance on immigration: http://www.meetclark.com/faq/index.asp?faqid=34 What is Clark's position on... Subject Domestic Issues Question: Immigration We're a nation of immigrants. We should be encouraging every person from the Indian Institute of Technology that comes to this country to stay in this country. Become an American citizen. Join with us. Make a great company. Let's all be wealthy and prosperous and happy together. Immigration has a vital part to play in that process. Why wouldn't we want to bring in the best and brightest people from all around the world, and say "come and take your chance in the 21st century on America"? Become Americans. Do what people have done for centuries when they sought a new frontier, a new environment, a new opportunity. Come here. I think that we should be looking for the best and the brightest from the Indian Institute of Technology, or the great universities in China, or elsewhere. They should stay here with us, and they should start universities or start their companies here, and help us create jobs and intellectual capital in America. So I am very pro-immigration. (That part of the Web site no longer exists.) Apart from my amazement at Clark's reducing the entire issue of immigration down to a policy on graduates of foreign universities, it was clear that Clark had already bought into the industry party line on H-1B, e.g. using party language like "start their companies here." It's clear that he had been talking to someone; more on this point below. No accident that he mentioned IIT, which had been the subject of a big PR campaign by the Indians. Here is an excerpt from my H-1B/L-1 summary, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Summary.pdf: The PR hype on the quality of the H-1Bs was epitomized by a 60 Minutes television broadcast on January 12, 2003, amidst a PR campaign by Indians and Indian-Americans called "Brand IIT." (See Big Guns Come Together to Promote Brand IIT, Harihar Narayanswamy, Times of India, December 26, 2002.) The goal was to publicize the Indian Institute of Technology university system. The 60 Minutes piece called IIT the best engineering school in the world, and portrayed all the IIT graduates as geniuses. All of this was puff-piece journalism, not a serious look at what actually is a genuine success story. India should indeed take pride in IIT, and there have indeed been many top IIT students who come to U.S. graduate schools (some later becoming top university faculty). But it is certainly not the case that most, or even many, IIT students are geniuses. And the institution itself is merely good, not world-class. Its faculty have not produced the seminal research papers, the patents, the standard-setting textbooks and so on which are needed for world-class status. It suffices to point out that it is the IIT graduates who come to the U.S. for advanced study, rather than American students going to IIT. I've always stated that we should facilitate the immigration of the "geniuses" of the world (Rep. Lofgren's word), but very few of the H-1Bs, including very few of the IITers, fit that description. Next, Clark made his notorious remark, "Let them do the software in India; we'll do other things in this country" remark. This absolutely stunned people. Clark might as well have put up billboards saying, "Clark to Programmers: Drop Dead." (If you are my age, you may recall when Pres. Gerald Ford refused to give federal aid to a fiscally struggling New York City, the New York Daily News ran a headline, "Ford to New York: Drop Dead.") Here are the details (the quote is at the end, emphasis added): Democratic Candidates for President Debate in Iowa NYT, November 24, 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/politics/campaigns/24TEXT-DEBATE.html The following is the text of the Democratic candidates' debate in Iowa sponsored by MSNBC and the Democratic National Committee, as transcribed by FDCH e-Media, Inc. ... BROKAW: If you canceled NAFTA and WTO, I don't think it'll address a concern that Andy Grove, who is one of the founding geniuses that Silicon Valley, has, which is that he says by the year 2010, General Clark, in India, they'll have more people working in software and software services than we will have in this country. And he sees no evidence in either party of a public policy to address that critical component of our economic future. CLARK: Well, I'm very concerned about exactly what Andy Grove has said, and canceling NAFTA and WTO will not solve the problem. We have to have the right policies to create jobs in America, and to have companies that are hiring in this country stay in this country and not outsource. So here is what I'll do: When I am president, the first thing I will have is $100 billion job creation program. Then we'll go and look at the tax code. We'll take away any incentives for companies that want to outsource or leave the country. And we'll have incentives for companies to create jobs in here. But we need to go beyond all of that. We really need a national goals program. Software was great, the technology and the information revolution was great, but there are a lot of technologies out there. We've got great scientists in this country. We need to set some national goals. We have the mechanisms to do it, put the research money in to basic and applied research and let those inventions and discoveries come out in intellectual property that we can use in this country to create employment. Energy and environmental engineering are two very fertile areas for the growth of American jobs. CLARK: We want to be ahead of the software revolution. LET THEM DO THE SOFTWARE IN INDIA; WE'LL DO OTHER THINGS IN THIS COUNTRY. ... Now, you can see that the infamous quote was made in a somewhat softer context, but the bottom line is that Clark was quite ready to cede the software field to India, an absolutely incredible thing for him to say. Soon afterward, a programmer had an e-mail exchange with Cristina Posa, Clark's New Hampshire Policy Director (cposa@clark04.com), whom I'm quoting here with permission. The programmer had cc-ed me in his message to Ms. Posa, so I chimed in too, asking her: 1. Does General Clark believe that the roughly 100,000 students now majoring in computer science at America's universities and colleges should change their majors? 2. If those 100,000 computer science students should indeed change their majors, what majors would General Clark suggest? He mentioned "energy and environmental engineering" as examples in the debate. Please explain why he doesn't think this work can be done in India. I'm an engineer, and let me tell you--it CAN be done in India. Ms. Posa replied: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I can assure you that Gen. Clark is extremely proud of our software industry and believes it is one of the driving engines of America's economy. Far from wanting Americans to stop studying software, he has advocated spending more on education in that and other high-tech fields. He is also on record as saying that the H-1B/L-1 visa program should only be used as a LAST RESORT, and every possible effort should be made to hire Americans first. In fact, he recently said, "My goal is to ensure that American workers who have the skills have the opportunity to get those jobs. H-1B and L-1 visa programs should be a last resort, not a first. Second, we should continue to charge a fee that is dedicated to upgrading the skills of more of our workers. At the same time, I support vigorous enforcement of provisions in H-1B and L-1 visa programs that forbid employers to pay visa holders less than their American counterparts. Finally, our long-run goal must be to have the type of education and training system in this nation that allows more and more of our people to be able to perform the high-wage, high-skills jobs of the future." In my reply, I made two main points: * Why spend more money on educating computer science students if we are going to "Let them do the software in India"? * The underpayment of H-1Bs is NOT an enforcement problem. The underpayment is 100% legal, due to gaping loopholes in the law. I also asked if Gen. Clark endorses any of the bills currently in Congress to reform H-1B/L-1. Ms. Posa could not promise that, but she did say that Clark would be making further announcements on this issue. Well, an announcement in fact appeared today: http://www.nhprimary.com/stories/12-2003/120503-clarktrust.htm NHPrimary.com Friday, December 05, 2003 Clark says U.S. allies dont trust Bush By KEVIN LANDRIGAN Telegraph Staff landrigank@telegraph-nh.com EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the sixth in an occasional series of articles based on interviews with the presidential candidates by The Telegraph's editorial board. ... If elected, Clark wants the U.S. government to encourage companies to hire American citizens for high-technology jobs and end incentives to lure foreign citizens into this country on so-called H-1B visas. "Companies should not be able to go to someone in India and say, 'I'm going to triple your pay to $20,000 a year if you come here,' " he said. "How you work that out I would leave to the policy wonks." ... That last comment is disappointing, to say the least. I can't find any other issue on his Web page that he would "leave to the policy wonks"; why THIS one? I try to keep an open mind, and I must say Clark's more recent comments form a good trend after his awful earlier gaffes. But I have to ask again, with some reluctance and an apology to Ms. Posa (who is extremely dedicated, which reflects well on Clark)--who is Clark listening to on the H-1B issue? It is very disturbing to me that Clark is said to be "Hillary's candidate." As many of you know, Sen. Clinton (D., Tata) has quite actively promoted the establishment of the Indian software firms in the state of New York. It thus seems to be no accident that Clark has been making remarks like "Let them do the software in India" and "Encourage every IIT graduate to stay here." So, again, while his more recent remarks have been better, one must wonder just who those policy wonks are that Clark would leave H-1B policy to--people in Tata Consultancy Services? Norm