Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 13:46:18 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: not just 5% To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter One of the standard lines of the industry lobbyists is "Only 5% of our workforce hold H-1B visas." I've always countered that this figure is very misleading. First, these figures are for a firm's workforce in general, including the secretaries, marketing people, accountants, etc. If the firm were to disclose the number of H-1Bs in their engineering workforce, the percentage would be quite a bit higher. Second, the usual 5% figure doesn't include workers who hold H-1B but are "rented" from other companies. Finally--and this is my reason for posting the article below--historically most H-1Bs in the tech area have ultimately gotten green cards. They then become permanent fixtures in the workforce, thus swelling the labor pool. This reduces wages, and most importantly, fuels the rampant age discrimination in the industry. In light of that third point, the following passage in the enclosed article is of interest: # Employers seek H-1B visas on behalf of scientists, engineers, computer # programmers and other workers with theoretical or technical expertise. In # Microsoft Corp.'s case, about one-third of its 46,000 U.S.-based employees # have work visas or are legal permanent residents with green cards, said # Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman for the company. Get that? One-third! So you can see that it's not 5% after all. And once you add in the naturalized citizens, you get even more than 1/3. Of course, some of these came to the U.S. as family immigrants rather than H-1B, but you can see that the impact of H-1B is way more than 5%. I must hasten to add that when an H-1B gets a green card, that worker becomes my fellow American and I fully support his/her right to work here. But my point, again, is that there are permanent effects here that must be taken into account. True, once a worker obtains a green card, he/she is no longer exploitable. But that is still young, and thus H-1B provides a continuing supply of young workers even after they get green cards, and thus facilitates the ability of employers to avoid hiring older (age 40+ or even 35+) Americans. Again, this is the dirty little secret about H-1B. That's why the "instant green card" proposals, such as the F-4 visa in the SKIL bill, are NOT the solution to the H-1B problem but instead exacerbate that problem. IEEE-USA et al are making a huge mistake by making common cause with the industry lobbyists on this. Norm http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070403/high_tech_visas.html?.v=3 AP U.S. Hits Limit for Skilled-Worker Visas Tuesday April 3, 10:47 pm ET By Jessica Mintz, AP Business Writer U.S. Reaches Cap for 2008 Skilled-Worker Visa Petitions in 1 Day SEATTLE (AP) -- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Tuesday it reached its limit for 2008 skilled-worker visa petitions in a single day and will not accept any more, to the dismay of technology companies that rely on the visas to hire foreign employees. The agency began accepting petitions Monday for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 and said it received about 150,000 applications by mid-afternoon. The temporary H-1B visas are for foreign workers with high-tech skills or in specialty occupations. Congress has mandated that the immigration agency limit the visas granted to 65,000, although the cap does not apply to petitions made on behalf of current H-1B holders, and an additional 20,000 visas can be granted to applicants who hold advanced degrees from U.S. academic institutions. The agency said it will use computers to randomly pick visa recipients from the applications received Monday and Tuesday. It will reject the rest of the applications and return the filing fees. Employers seek H-1B visas on behalf of scientists, engineers, computer programmers and other workers with theoretical or technical expertise. In Microsoft Corp.'s case, about one-third of its 46,000 U.S.-based employees have work visas or are legal permanent residents with green cards, said Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman for the company. "We are trying to work with Congress to get the cap increased," Terzano said. "Our real preference here is that there not be a cap at all." Compete America, a coalition that includes Microsoft, chip maker Intel Corp., business software company Oracle Corp. and others, voiced its opposition to the visa cap in a statement Tuesday. "Our broken visa policies for highly educated foreign professionals are not only counterproductive, they are anticompetitive and detrimental to America's long-term economic competitiveness," said Robert Hoffman, an Oracle vice president and co-chairman of Compete America. Opponents say increasing the visa limit will bring down wages and discourage American youngsters from pursuing tech careers.