To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Wed Apr 17 16:36:26 PDT 2013 I've now had a chance to read through most of the H-1B and green card related sections of the bill's text. I still haven't fully digested it, but here are some comments. I've stated many times that if the issues of wage requirements and "handcuffing" of green card sponsorees were properly addressed, then the actual levels of the caps would be of less importance. So, are those conditions met? 1. Wage requirements: The H-1B wage floor in the bill would be (at least) 80% of the overall mean wage for the occupation, region and level of education. This is short of the Grassley/Brown proposal, which specifies the mean itself as the criterion, thus weaker. On the other hand, the inclusion of education level is new (with exceptions), but the wording doesn't make clear whether that applies to the worker or to the job. In current law, wage requirements apply to the job, thus creating a major loophole; if the employer says that the job requires just a bachelor's degree, then he can hire an H-1B who has a master's degree for the price of a bachelor's-level worker. In addition, there are several glaring omissions: (a) The bill doesn't state whether the new wage requirements for H-1B would also apply to green cards, as is the case currently. (b) The bill allows dependents (not just spouses) of H-1Bs to work, but sets no wage requirements. (Thanks to an alert reader for spotting this.) (c) The bill sets no wage requirements for OPT. Since the STEM extension of OPT a couple of years ago was predicated only a dearth of H-1B visas, it's time to roll that back--and especially time to impose wage requirements. (d) The bill is vague (and maybe its authors are vague) as to whether the bill would set up a special STEM visa. If it did, and if the proposed H-1B wage floor did not apply to it, that would be yet another gaping loophole. Finally, though the wage reforms in Grassley/Brown would have indirectly helped solve the age discrimination problem, this bill does nothing like that. The reformed wage requirement is definitely better than nothing, but keep in mind that it will likely to be the first thing to be eliminated or emasculated once the industry lobbyists get their hands on Congress' throats. Some of the lobbyists' public statements have already implied this. 2. Handcuffing: There is nothing in the bill whatsoever that directly deals with this. Arguably the speeded-up green card process would ameliorate the handcuffing issue for some workers, it would definitely still be a big problem. There still would be the delay associated with labor cert, and employers could still drag their feet before even starting the sponsorship process. As I said yesterday, there is NO EXCUSE for not dealing with this issue. Failure to do so can be due only to PANDERING TO THE INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS. What could be clearer? And, as expected, the bill blames the Indians in umpteen different ways. Funny story on that: Yesterday I was interviewed by Carolyn Lochhead of the San Francisco Chronicle, a libertarian writer who has covered H-1B off and on for a number of years. When she asked my opinion of the bill (whose outline I had just read a few minutes earlier), I mentioned that I was greatly disappointed that the bill engaged in bashing the Indian firms. Ms. Lochhead replied, "I amazed to hear that, as I was sure you would like that aspect of the bill." I said no, I've been consistenly OPPOSING such a thing in my writings for many years. I think that Lochhead's shock at my statements shows just how powerful the industry lobbyists' PR is; they've got the press just taking it as a given that the Infosyses abuse H-1B while the Intels use it responsibly. And not surprisingly, Lochhead didn't quote me in her article. :-) The bill, of course, reflects the other aspect of the industry lobbyists' PR, which is that the foreign students are the "good" H-1Bs. The effectiveness of that image was seen in an interesting comment by John Kerry the other day. He said that the violence in the U.S. is scaring away the foreign students! I don't mean to diminish the issue of violence at all, but one can tell that Kerry takes it for granted that we "need" the foreign students, the "Jophnny can't program" kind of thing. At any rate, the bill has some good in it, but even that part is full of loopholes, and will likely be removed during the legislative process. Meanwhile, the bill would set massive increases in various caps, some of them infinite. In other words, a disaster for U.S. STEM workers, and as I've said, a disaster ultimately for the American economy. Norm Archived at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SecondCommentsOnCIR.txt