Is it the Lack of Brains or the Price of Brains?
Alexander E. Braun, Associate Editor -- Semiconductor International, 11/1/1998
rged by high-tech
companies' assertions that professionals cannot be found in sufficient numbers
among Americans, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill raising the cap
on H-1B visas, which allow foreign professionals to work temporarily at U.S.
jobs. Senate approval seems inevitable, and by the time you read this, the
President already may have signed it.
The bill increases the current annual H-1B cap from 65,000 to 115,000 in 1999 and 2000, then drops it to 107,500 in 2001, returning it to 65,000 in 2002, for a total of almost half a million foreign workers for that five-year period enough to populate a city the size of Austin, Texas.
This measure's implementation should be stopped dead on its tracks pending an impartial and thorough evaluation of the facts.
For one, it lacks sufficient job safeguards for American professionals. Employers need no longer attest that American workers have not been not laid off to hire in the H-1B program. Instead, safeguards target 'job shops,' which sponsor H-1B workers and hire them out to companies, while companies with at least 15% H-1B personnel must promise not to lay off American employees nor recruit less-qualified foreigners.
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'This measure's implementation should be stopped dead in its tracks.'
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Proponents of the bill deny this is a bottom-line matter, arguing foreign workers are paid the same. Even if an H-1B worker receives equal pay, the fact he becomes practically an indentured servant would seem to make him a more desirable and docile employee. Once sponsored by a company, he cannot change jobs without a new H-1B visa. If eager to remain in the United States, he needs the employer's sponsorship to begin the process of becoming a permanent resident. This takes three to four years during which the worker is unwilling to antagonize the employer and is prepared to labor long hours, with small raises and poor or no promotions. Many former H-1B workers, shortly after obtaining green cards, leave for other companies.
Too many American engineers face subtle pressures in the workplace today, where they often find themselves training a foreign colleague, only to be moved to less desirable projects (or laid off) afterward. Too many engineers in their dangerous mid-40s are being told they are 'overqualified' for a job they desperately need, only to see a less experienced and less expensive foreign worker hired. As an engineer put it, 'Why should I get a Ph.D.? I'm already considered too expensive and too old. Another degree would make me even more unemployable.' This state of affairs degrades the very thing we are urged to preserve: our ability to compete.
Before it is implemented, we must know whether this determination to increase
H-1B caps is prompted by the lack or the price of brains. 
