Business leaders asked a congressional subcommittee on Thursday to clear some of the red tape required to get H-1B visas. This request was countered by testimony from an academic saying the H-1B visa program encourages employers to hire cheaper foreign labor with ordinary skills who take away jobs from Americans.
Most agreed the program needs immediate reform. In addition, statements issued in anticipation of the hearing before a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee showed some unusual progress in closing the gap between the traditional pro-business side that wants access to more foreign workers and the pro-labor side that says rampant abuse of the visa system has unfairly lowered wages.
Specifically, the IEEE-USA sent in their lobbyist, Bruce Morrison, to argue for easier access to green cards. Morrison said that something needs to be done to stop the exodus of foreign-born students after they earn degrees at U.S. universities in the fields of science, technology, engineering or math (STEM). He argued that Congress needs to roll out the "welcome mat" to STEM students with both visas and green cards, making it easier for U.S. companies to hire them.
"American technology firms need their skills for the research and product development that they are doing in the U.S. They need to draw from the full pool of U.S.-educated graduates, not just the minority that are already Americans. If this talent pool is not available here, American firms will move jobs to where they can access the talent they need. When they do that, it is not just the foreign born who leave. Along with them go multiples of jobs now held by Americans," Morrison testified.
That's unusual rhetoric coming from the pro-labor organization. The IEEE-USA supports the careers of more than 210,000 engineering, computing and technology professionals and students. Morrison is a past chairman of this subcommittee and co-author of the Immigration Act of 1990 that created the H-1B program. He has been outspoken against its use to displace American workers.
An IEEE-USA spokesperson told Network World that despite lobbying for green cards for STEM students, the organization has not changed its position on the H1-B visa program.
"Bruce Morrison, speaking on behalf of IEEE-USA, called for an increase in the amount of employment-based visas (green cards) available to advanced-degree STEM graduates. But in no way did he advocate for an increase in the H-1B cap. We think the H-1B program is badly flawed and in many cases is harmful to both foreign and domestic workers. We believe it would be better for U.S. workers, foreign workers and the U.S. economy to grant foreign nationals with advanced STEM degrees a path to permanent residence through green cards," IEEE-USA spokesperson Chris McManes told Network World.
This week the IEEE-USA teamed up with the pro-business Semiconductor Industry Association to issue a statement on the areas of foreign worker program where they do agree. The presidents of these associations laid out their plan in an open letter to the Judiciary Committee.
"As you may know, SIA and IEEE-USA have for some time been at odds over portions of the H-1B program and its administration," the letter said. "Currently 50 percent of master's and 70 percent of Ph.D. graduates in electrical and electronic engineering from U.S. universities are foreign nationals. These highly talented individuals should be able to get permanent resident status (green cards) in an expedited manner, rather than having to wait from 5-10 years as many do under the current system. ... SIA and IEEE-USA support immediate action by the Congress to retain these graduates as legal permanent residents."
Some pro-business organizations want to go further in making it easier to hire foreign labor by creating a Trusted Employer designation. Such a designation would ease a company's application process for obtaining worker visas. Although not a new idea, the pro-business American Council on International Personnel (ACIP) is once again shopping the Trusted Employer idea around, hoping that a member of Congress will draft legislation based on it.
The idea is to identify companies that are known to be compliant with all immigration laws and cut out two of the three steps involved in obtaining H-1B visas for each prospective employee, says Rebecca Peters, director and counsel for legislative affairs for ACIP. Trusted Employer would allow limited resources to be diverted to other priorities around visa enforcement and fraud prevention and detection.
"We would be streamlining the adjudication of petitions and applications of employers," she explains. A Trusted Employer would, for instance, not need to prove it was a valid business each time it requested a visa. This program would save money and effort that the immigration agency can use in other ways, such as to attend to the backlog of fraud investigations and green card requests.
Sounds good, until you consider that the issue of outright fraud isn't what has pro-labor groups all hot and bothered (although fraud is a hot button for members of Congress). Immigration officials say H-1B visa fraud has dropped since 2008. For the past two years, the agency has been using a new fraud detection method and has conducted 14,433 H-1B surprise site inspections to verify the legitimacy of visa workers.
"As compared to the nearly 21 percent fraud and noncompliance rate in 2008, the 14 percent 'not verified' rate suggests a reduced level of fraud in the H-1B program," testified Donald Neufeld, associate director, Service Center Operations Directorate, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Others say that an employer can be following the law and still be abusing its intent.
"I have concluded that the H-1B program, as currently designed and administered, does more harm than good," testified Ronil Hira, associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "The principal goal of the H-1B visa program is to bring in foreign workers who complement the U.S. workforce. Instead, loopholes in the program have made it too easy to bring in cheaper foreign workers, with ordinary skills, who directly substitute for, rather than complement, workers already in America. They are clearly displacing and denying opportunities to U.S. workers."
Hira says that the flaws of the current H-1B visa program include: Employers are not required to show that qualified American workers are unavailable; wage requirements are too low "and as a result the program is extensively used for wage arbitrage"; work permits are held by the employer giving enormous power over the worker to the employer; and the visa period -- three years with a three-year extension -- is too long.
To be sure, a subcommittee meeting does not an H-1B visa reform make. However, those leading it do appear to recognize that changes need to be made before the economy heats up again. In a statement today, Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said that in 2009, only 35% of all initial H-1B approvals went to workers in computer-related fields. "Foreign workers are receiving H-1B visas to work as fashion models, dancers, and as chefs, photographers, and social workers. There is nothing wrong with those occupations, but I'm not sure that foreign fashion models and pastry chefs are as crucial to our success in the global economy as are computer scientists."
Because of this, the 65,000 base annual quota of H-1B visas has been under increasing demand that will escalate when the economy improves. Smith concluded: "If Congress doesn't act to increase the H-1B cap, then we may need to examine what sort of workers qualify for H-1B visas."