Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:51:13 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: Plotkin on Sen. Ted Kennedy To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Let me first make my usual disclaimer that I am a lifelong Democrat. I'll add that whatever errors Ted Kennedy may have committed in his earlier life, he did evolve into someone who had a deep, genuine desire for social justice. Having said that, the op-ed enclosed below confirms my longheld suspicions that even Kennedy felt that the "greater good" demanded that he cave in to the moneyed, powerful special interests on the H-1B work visa--the tech industry lobbyists, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the universities and so on. To many of us, H-1B serves as an exemplar of the loss of our democracy. I've mentioned before, for instance, public statements by Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Tom Davis explicitly stating that Congress enacted expansions to the H-1B program because of industry campaign money. Joyce Plotkin, the author of the enclosed opinion piece, is certainly in a position to know about the politics of H-1B. She served with a Massachusetts tech industry trade group for 22 years, according to one article I read, before she retired this year. I recall being on a panel with her in 1995. Ms. Plotkin portrays the situation as one in which Sen. Kennedy formulated fair comprises between industry and labor on the H-1B issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, one AFL-CIO official told me in 2004 that Kennedy's aides literally laughed in her face, saying (I'm paraphrasing), "You [unions] don't count." Soon afterward, this labor official was so discouraged that she decided to seek another job. And note that this occurred during the dot-com bust, a time when Kennedy should have been even more concerned about the impact of H-1B on U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Instead, Congress enacted a 20,000-visa increase to H-1B, by creating a special new category for foreign students at U.S. universities, and even more significantly, expanded the loopholes which enable employers to legally pay H-1Bs below-market wages. Over the years, Kennedy would from time to time pay lip service to the fact that H-1B is used by employers as a vehicle for cheap labor, etc. But he always supported H-1B expansion when it came to authoring and voting for legislation. He played a key role in the bill expanding H-1B in 2000, in spite of the release of a GAO report that was highly critical of the visa, a month before the legislation was passed. And of course he co-authored the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill in 2007 that would have been devastating to U.S. citizen and permanent resident programmers and engineers. Plotkin makes a big point of the retraining funds in the 1998 bill, ostensibly designed to reduce H-1B usage. But as we critics pointed out at the time, this was a purely cosmetic action that would not--and could not--impact H-1B usage. This was confirmed by a Department of Commerce report a few years later, and most tellingly, by a public admission by Sun Microsystems that the training funds were never intended to reduce H-1B usage. Sun, of course, had been one of the leading lobbyists pushing that 1998 bill. Plotkin's remarks below don't match the blunt remarks of Bennett and Davis I cited above--Davis said, "This is not a popular bill with the public. It's popular with the CEOs...This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money"--but they give us yet another look at the role of money politics in H-1B, very sad. Norm http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2009/08/31/daily5-Plotkin-Kennedy-championed-the-tech-community.html Mass High Tech Monday, August 31, 2009 Plotkin: Kennedy championed the tech community Although most people will remember U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy for his championship of important social issues, I will also remember him for his support of the technology community. I was president of the Massachusetts Software Council in the mid-90s when I received a call from a reporter about the H-1B visa issue. The reporter asked for my comments regarding Sen. Kennedy's opposition to increasing the number of H-1B visas, a position which put him at odds with the technology industry. I replied that we were in discussions with the senator's staff and, beyond that, I had no comment. At the beginning of the next workday, I received a call from one of the senator's senior staffers. The next day I received a call from the senator himself, and that began a dialogue with the senator that lasted 14 years. Over that 14-year period, I brought in groups of technology executives to talk with him about visas, class-action suits brought against technology companies whose stock fell, taxes on the Internet and patent reform. It was the visa issue, once again, that provided another seminal Kennedy moment for me, enabling me to learn very specifically about his ability to listen, reach out and find compromises that benefit all sides. Three years after the reporter called me about H-1B visas, I was in Captain Marden's fish market when my cell phone rang. The senator -- who, because of his recognizable voice, never identified himself when he called -- said, "I have just left the White House and we have agreed on a compromise that will allow an increase in the number of H-1B visas issued." He added that the compromise he had struck with the unions was that a $500 fee would be assessed for the visas and that part of the money would go into a fund the unions could tap to train their members for technology jobs. We went from that one victory to a few years later when one of the national technology associations gave the senator a 100 percent ranking for his votes on key technology issues. Trust me, no one was more surprised than he was about that particular ranking. Another outstanding memory I have of Sen. Kennedy's commitment to the technology community has to do with Net Day, a late-90s effort to get computers and Internet access into Massachusetts schools. I had the honor and pleasure of chairing the organizing committee for him. When the press got wind of the effort, they wrote us off saying the effort was bound to become "mired in profits and politics." In the usual Kennedy fashion, the day after that column appeared, I got a call from another senior Kennedy staffer. He said that the senator wanted all of us to know that the work we were doing for the children of Massachusetts was too important to let comments like that get in the way. Net Day, under the leadership of and with the full support of the senator, went on to bring computers and Internet access into half of the public schools in Massachusetts. More than $30 million in private donations was raised and more than 15,000 volunteers were mobilized and deployed to help over 1,000 schools move into the Internet Age. In addition, the senator met with union leaders who emerged from that meeting and declared that they, too, would volunteer their help. The school custodians, who originally were going to charge the schools time and a half for working on Saturdays, donated their time. And in a truly magnanimous gesture, the IBEW Local 103 blew us all away with their commitment to wire every one of the Boston Public Schools for free. One meeting with Sen. Kennedy was all it took. The immediate benefit to the children of Massachusetts was huge -- the longer-term benefit to the technology community was immense. We had been working together on patent reform when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. I know that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy will be remembered for many things. My belief is that technology should be one of them. I know I will remain "linked in" to the senator through my wonderful memories of him. Joyce L. Plotkin, President Emerita, Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (formerly Massachusetts Software Council)