To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Mon Jan 28 21:08:55 PST 2013 As many of you know, today a bipartisan group of eight senators announced that they have drawn up a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes provisions regarding high-skilled immigration. The group gave the press an "outline" of the proposal, and it is extremely short on details. Matt O'Brien of the San Jose Mercury News asked me about my thoughts on the matter, which I gave him. You can read his article at http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_22468344/immigration-reform-moves-cheered-bay-area-business-immigrant (possibly at a different URL for those of you who read this tomorrow). I spent quite a lot of time explaining to Matt that we don't have a tech labor shortage, and that instead, the H-1B and employer-sponsored green card programs have been causing surpluses that have been resulting in an Internal Brain Drain, in which we are losing our own best and brightest. However, Matt also asked me about the bill recently announced by Hatch, Rubio and others. I characterized this as the most extreme, most one-sidedly pro-industry bill I'd ever seen on this topic. I blurted out, "This is the best bill the industry could buy," and then said jokingly, "Hey, there's your quote!" He laughed, but I knew that in fact it WAS his quote, and sure enough, it is in Matt's article. :-) I do stand by what I said. Many of you will recall public statements in the past made by former Sen. Bennett of Utah and former Rep. Davis of Virginia, in which they explicitly said that much of the impetus for these bills comes from the tech industry's campaign contributions. Matt asked me about the vague statement in the eight-senator bill that employers would only be able to "hire immigrants if it can be demonstrated that they were unsuccessful in recruiting an American to fill an open position and the hiring of an immigrant will not displace American workers." My answer was that I was skeptical. Under current law, there is no American recruitment requirement in hiring H-1Bs, but there is one for green cards. I told Matt that I suspect there was a misunderstanding somewhere, and that the senators mistakenly thought that H-1B already has an American recruitment requirement. (Rob Sanchez used to have a collection of letters from senators to constituents, in which they showed exactly this misunderstanding.) I did say that I would welcome such a requirement if it were added to H-1B, even though the corresponding green card requirement is already riddled with loopholes. But I would add the following point: The outline given to the press says something about giving green cards to foreign STEM students at U.S. universities "upon graduation," an immediate action implementing the "staple a green card to their diplomas" notion. That is almost certainly false, if other similar bills are any guide. Instead of getting a green card, I believe the bill would only give the students a "coupon" for a future green card. What the bill will likely set up is A NEW KIND OF H-1B VISA. The new visa would lead to a green card eventually, but the period of de facto indentured servitude would still be lengthy. As I've said, this "handcuffed" nature of the foreign workers is, to many employers, even more attractive than the cheap-labor aspect. (And thus the foreign job applicant would be more attractive to the employer than similarly-qualified Americans.) For that reason, I don't believe the industry lobbyists would go along with a genuine "staple a green card to their diplomas" bill. But the bill will probably be pitched as such, hiding the fact that its real purpose is a backdoor increase in the H-1B cap. Norm