Read our DAILY
reports and links
to labor-related
news.
MAY 2007
H-1B
visa program: Let's fix it before we expand it
by Rick S. Bender, President of
the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
My
local newspaper recently published a story assessing Microsoft Chairman
Bill Gates’ record as a seer of the future. Among his predictions was
this 2004 gem: “Two years from now, spam will be solved.”
I’ve received several prescription drug offers, award notifications and stock market tips since you began reading this column that say otherwise. Clearly, Gates has gotten a few things right in his business career, but his prognostications deserve a little skepticism.
In
March, Gates
testified before a U.S. Senate committee and said that the United States should
welcome an "infinite" number of high-skilled foreign workers to
fill engineering and computer programming jobs here, jobs he said would
otherwise go unfilled.
Gates
wants to expand the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled foreign guest
workers to enter our country for up to six years to fill spot labor
shortages. They
are mostly programmers, engineers, architects and other
professionals. Currently,
65,000 new H-1B guest workers are allowed per year, with exemptions that
can raise that number to 120,000.
This
H-1B program is highly controversial and is one of the biggest divides
between business and labor in the technology sector.
Gates’
testimony echoed the principal argument of business associations -- also
used to justify the offshore outsourcing of high-tech jobs -- that
America’s deficient education system is not producing enough qualified
workers. They
like to point out that so many H-1B applications were submitted this year
that the 2008 allotment of visas was expended after just one day.
That
tells me the program’s popular, not that its expansion is justified.
In
fact, a Duke University study published in the National Academy of
Sciences magazine last month found no shortage of American engineers, and
asserted that that offshore outsourcing of high-tech jobs is all about
cutting labor costs.
Organized
labor argues that expanding the H-1B visa program is also about padding
the bottom line for American corporations.
It creates a labor market where too many workers compete for too
few jobs, which depresses salaries for these professionals.
Former
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan inadvertently agreed with labor on
this point. He
supports lifting H-1B visa limits, but his purported goal is to address
our growing income gap.
“Our
skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world,'' Greenspan said this
year at a Washington, D.C. conference on maintaining U.S. competitiveness.
“If we open up a significant window for skilled workers, that would
suppress the skilled-wage level and end the concentration of income.”
Without
getting into the extreme irony of this man’s sudden concern over
The
H-1B program wasn’t supposed to do this. The law includes protections
intended to ensure that H-1B workers don’t replace qualified American
workers and that they
are paid the prevailing wages in their labor markets.
But
as is often the case, the law has no teeth. Employers who hire foreign
workers simply must "attest" there are no domestic workers who
could fill the positions, but no proof of any kind is required. Wage
enforcement is equally arbitrary because it’s the employer, not the
government, that establishes what the prevailing wage is.
The
Center for Immigration Studies analyzed H-1B workers’ wage data in 2005
and found that they are not paid comparably to U.S. workers.
Moreover, the data suggest that, rather than helping employers meet labor
shortages, the H-1B program is more often used by employers to import
cheaper labor.
Sen.
Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has co-sponsored a bill to increase the H-1B visa
cap to 115,000 in 2007, and perhaps as high as 180,000.
It also includes language intended to address employer abuse of the
system and protect American workers.
I
say, let’s fix the program before we expand it.
Different
legislation sponsored
by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), The
H-1B
and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007, would enhance
protections both for skilled U.S. and foreign workers, and give the
federal government more authority to enforce program requirements.
In the meantime, I’d like to see the Alan Greenspans of our economic elite continue their yeoman’s work addressing this country’s income gap. But rather than suppressing the wages of American engineers and computer programmers, let’s concentrate on lifting the incomes at the low end of that gap.
Rick Bender is President of the
Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
the largest labor organization in the state.
Return to index of President's Columns
Copyright © 2007 Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO