Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 22:47:54 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: shortage of (cheap) labor The pattern is quite familiar by now, in the following steps: 1. Industry lobbyists send a lavish press kit, and/or meet with the editorial board, of a newspaper, urging an increase in the H-1B visa cap. 2. A reporter for the newspaper, needing a quote from an employer, interviews an employer suggested by the industry lobbyists. 3. The employer tells the reporter that he needs to hire H-1Bs because he cannot find qualified Americans for the job. 4. The reporter then dutifully puts that quote in the article. 5. Either Rob Sanchez in his e-newsletter, or I in mine, look up that employer in the Dept. of Labor H-1B database, and lo and behold, find that the employer is paying his H-1Bs below-market wages. Sure enough, in the first article enclosed below, we again see an employer pulling the wool over the reporters' eyes. Here is the relevant passage: * Vikas Yalamanchili, president of Irving, Texas-based technology * consulting firm Vensiti, said he would prefer not to use H-1B visas. * But not enough Americans have science and engineering degrees, he * noted, making it necessary for Vensiti to rely on H-1B visa holders * for nearly half its 50-member work force. Well, had if the reporters had checked on the DOL H-1B Web page (www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx) they would have found that Vensiti is hiring H-1Bs as computer systems analysts in the $40K range. The highest rate they list is for a SENIOR systems analyst, at $58K. Yet even a new graduate in computer science makes over $50K per year. In other words, $40K is well below what experienced people make. Note once again that Vensiti's underpayment of its H-1Bs is almost certainly legal, due to huge loopholes in the law and regulations. But again, my main point is that the Dallas Morning News is using Vensiti as an example of the industry lobbyists' claimed labor shortage, when in fact what Vensiti wants is cheap, below-market labor. I've also enclosed an op-ed (curiously labeled as "Advice") in Computerworld by an employer, who again says he "needs" H-1Bs due to a "shortage" of qualified Americans. But of course it turns out that he's doing the same thing as Vensiti. The DOL Web page shows Global Consulting as hiring a bunch of computer programmers in the $40K range. Norm Legal immigration may jump http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002905251_immiglegal02.html Michelle Mittelstadt and Sudeep Reddy The Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON -- From Capitol Hill to cities across the nation, people are debating immigration passionately, at least the illegal part. Almost entirely unnoticed is that the Senate may be poised to increase legal immigration substantially. Some estimate bills pending in the Senate could double the nearly 1 million green cards handed out yearly, granting legal permanent residence. The United States, which welcomes more legal immigrants than any other country, would see major increases in green cards under both immigration proposals being debated in the Senate. The bills also would add tens of thousands of temporary visas for workers, from the high-tech industry to medically underserved areas. Advocates say it's time Congress expanded a green-card quota that keeps some would-be residents trapped overseas up to 22 years before they are reunited with relatives in the United States. Some, such as the parents of Cher Musico, are taking extraordinary steps to cope with limited green-card numbers. The design student at the Art Institute of Dallas said her parents, who live near Oklahoma City, decided in 2003 to adopt two of her cousins from the Philippines because it was the only way to bring them to the United States. The children, now 7 and 12, have been waiting overseas for three years for their paperwork to go through. "To me, it's awful," Musico said of the wait. But others question the drive to increase legal immigration, particularly as the Senate is considering offering a path to legalization to the nation's up to 12 million illegal immigrants and creating a guest-worker program to bring in 400,000 more foreigners every year. "There has never been a public-opinion poll that indicates [a majority of] Americans want more immigration," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes higher immigration. Only 17 percent of Americans favor increasing legal immigration, while 40 percent say it should be decreased, according to a Pew Hispanic Center poll released Thursday. Thirty-seven percent think the current level is appropriate, pollsters found. But tackling illegal immigration without increasing legal immigration would be a recipe for future trouble, said Doris Meissner, a Migration Policy Institute senior fellow who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Clinton. "You really have to expand legal immigration, otherwise you're just creating a whole other bottleneck," she said. In part because newly legal immigrants in many cases would seek to bring relatives from abroad, and if legal pathways don't exist, illegal immigration will begin anew. Congress accused Krikorian and others critical of increased immigration quotas accuse congressional leaders of masking their efforts to boost legal immigration. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who has crafted one of the two immigration bills on the Senate floor, has stressed the border-control and enforcement aspects of his bill, not his proposed increase in legal immigration. Likewise, there's been little focus on the virtually identical legal-immigration changes in a competing bill the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Monday. The way the bills are worded, it's impossible to determine how much they would increase legal immigration. Judiciary Committee Republican aides said the legislation would add 500,000 to 550,000 green cards each year. That estimate is too low, said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for Numbers USA, which is lobbying against what she said would "by far" represent the biggest increase in legal immigration in U.S. history. "I'm estimating it would double legal immigration." In 2004, 946,142 green cards were issued, two-thirds for family reunification. The Senate bills would significantly increase family sponsored green cards, now capped at 480,000 annually, by exempting spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens from the total. That effectively would add about 260,000 green cards annually. The bills also would boost employment-based green cards from 140,000 annually to 290,000, and would exempt applicants' spouses and children from the cap. Foreign students would be placed on a faster track for green cards. And the Judiciary Committee bill, for the next seven years, would permit an unlimited number of green cards for nurses, physical therapists and others in occupations where the Labor Department says workers are in short supply. Students, workers The Senate bills also would increase the number of students and workers who could come into the United States temporarily with a range of nonimmigrant visa categories. Heeding the pleas of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and other high-tech leaders, the legislation would increase the cap on H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000. Vikas Yalamanchili, president of Irving, Texas-based technology consulting firm Vensiti, said he would prefer not to use H-1B visas. But not enough Americans have science and engineering degrees, he noted, making it necessary for Vensiti to rely on H-1B visa holders for nearly half its 50-member work force. Because the H-1B allotment runs out so quickly and his company is unable to get enough visas, Yalamanchili said he sometimes must enlist subcontractors in India. Others, tired of the H-1B red tape, leave the United States to work overseas, Yalamanchili said. "If this goes on for a long period of time, we're going to lose our innovators, our scientists, our business leaders." Thousands of immigrants and their supporters chanted, blew whistles and waved flags from dozens of Latin American countries Saturday as they marched across New York's Brooklyn Bridge in support of immigrant rights. A festive crowd of more than 10,000 people shouted "We are all Americans," and carried banners in Spanish and English saying "We are not criminals" and "Immigrant rights are human rights" in their trek from Brooklyn across the East River to Manhattan. The New York protest was the largest of several across the country in the Los Angeles area and other cities. Most of the demonstrations in the past week have targeted legislation approved in the U.S. House, which would, among other things, make it a felony to be in the United States without the proper immigration paperwork. In Arizona, meanwhile, volunteer members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps concerned about the continued flow of illegal immigrants across the border from Mexico gathered Saturday with lawn chairs, binoculars and cellphones for a new monthlong campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the issue. At a rally kicking off the effort at a remote southern Arizona ranch, politicians and activists opposing illegal immigration called for more border control. Don Goldwater, a Republican candidate for Arizona governor, said he had a message for President Bush. "Build us that wall now," Goldwater said, referring to a measure that would add 700 miles of fences along the border. He promised that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall. Goldwater is a nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater. www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/story/0,10801,109997,00.html The H-1B Visa Program Counteracts Offshoring, Helps U.S. Keep Its Competitive Edge It's a vital solution to IT talent crunch Advice by Dominic Shelzi, Global Consulting APRIL 03, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - In an ideal world, all highly skilled jobs in the U.S. would be filled by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Today, that's not possible. As of the Oct. 1, 2005, deadline, all slots for H-1B visas for the fiscal year that began that day had already been filled. This was the first time this had ever happened. Unprecedented demand shows that U.S. businesses today can't hire enough skilled American workers -- particularly IT professionals -- to keep growing, innovating and competing globally. Given the strong economy and resulting labor crunch, selectively bringing in well-credentialed foreigners to work here is the only realistic solution. The H-1B visa program does that, and nurturing it is vital to our businesses, economy and competitiveness in the world economy. Companies investing in software development need programmers who are highly skilled in core Microsoft and Java technologies and can handle most of the technically demanding work. But there aren't enough Americans with the right qualifications, and this situation isn't likely to improve. Fewer college students are attracted to programming and other highly technical fields, which seem to have lost the glamour that attached to them before the dot-com crash. I see this every day as head of an IT staffing firm placing contract consultants. Our clients have a constant demand for more help. We'd love to hire more U.S. programmers who meet client requirements, but they're rarely available. It's even difficult to hire enough programmers from abroad because of the limit of 65,000 H-1B visas a year (which covers most skilled worker areas, not just computer programmers) -- a pretty small number for a country of 298 million people. When demand exceeds the supply of programmers, companies send more software development offshore. Unlike H-1B employees in the U.S., programmers in India and Singapore don't pay U.S. taxes or spend money on goods and services here. Offshoring is a drain on the economy, while the H-1B program contributes to the U.S. economy. Since many companies do not feel that their development can be offshored, the labor shortage reduces the ability to produce new products, which may be delayed or canceled. Quality declines too. The cost of labor skyrockets, making our products less competitive worldwide. Back in the late-'90s boom, we had a hypercritical IT labor shortage that spurred fundamentally unsound practices, where the cost of products exceeded their economic value. The current situation is not yet hypercritical -- but it is heading in that direction. Meanwhile, foreign competitors are taking our concept of H-1B style visas and making it their own. Singapore, for example, has become a center for offshore development for Fortune 500 companies, importing Filipinos and others to do the work. The government of Singapore supports this process, recognizing the benefits that accrue to the economy by building infrastructure in the software development industry. Despite its achievements, the H-1B program is still controversial, and some political leaders would like to cut it back instead of expanding it. There are a lot of misperceptions about this program. People think that the economy is still hurting and remember stories of experienced people who couldn't get jobs in the latest recession. But the economy is actually strong, and the unemployment rate of 4.7% is the lowest it's been in years. (Even during the economic nadir, top-end programmers had little trouble finding employment.) So the idea that the H-1B program takes jobs away from Americans is a red herring. These are jobs that would otherwise go unfilled or, increasingly, be offshored. As a safety measure, each H-1B visa application carries with it a cost of $1,500, which is earmarked for educating affected U.S. workers. This measure is intended to ensure that any potentially adverse effect is minimized. Security is another red herring. We absolutely need to make sure that aliens working in the U.S. aren't plotting against us. But programmers, doctors, nurses, scientists and engineers who apply for H-1B visas are not the people who should concern us. They're exactly the kind of people who we should be welcoming to our shores as we always have. They're the ones who advance the American dream. The answer is not xenophobia; the answer is to continue to thoroughly check the backgrounds of applicants and to take all necessary and prudent precautions in securing our borders. When we impede the flow of critically needed, qualified workers into the U.S., we're in effect accommodating terrorists and inadvertently helping them achieve their goal of disrupting our economy. We also need to continually expose the myths of security risk and job displacement by educating our political leaders and the public about the realities U.S. employers face in today's tight job market. The IT talent crisis creates real limitations to our economy and future prosperity. The H-1B program is an irreplaceable part of solution. Dominic Shelzi is president of Global Consulting Group Inc. in Taunton, Mass., an IT staffing firm that recruits senior programmers from Eastern Europe and Asia to work in the U.S. under H-1B visas. He can be reached at dshelzi@bestusajobs.com.