Searching for the truth: those H-1B visas and STEM employment
The subject of H-1B visas* came up during last Wednesday’s Republican debate, most particularly regarding Rubio, who advocates an expansion of the program with some restrictions. So I decided to try to find out the truth about what’s involved and whether the program is being abused.
As with most such quests, it’s easier said than done. In fact, much easier. I could spend a few days or more doing in-depth research and maybe I would find the illumination and clarity I seek (I tend to doubt it, actually). But since I don’t have that sort of time to write this post, I’ll just show you what I found—which is the usual war of statistics being used by both sides, with the truth somewhat elusive. Perhaps it’s buried in those statistics, and those of you who have the time and inclination (and the ability to be objective, which can often be the most difficult) to tease it out, please be my guests. Meanwhile, this is what I found.
The H-1B visa program—which offers temporary visas for “specialty” occupations (often including, but not limited to, STEM jobs) is just one portion of the visa system by which foreign workers come to this country legally. The other two are H-2A (the temporary agricultural worker program) and H-2B (the same for non-agricultural workers). All of these programs require, on paper at least, that the employer show that there aren’t enough American workers to fill the need, and that the hires aren’t undercutting American workers in terms of wages (you can go to the links to read the regulations that are built into each program and supposedly guarantee that they won’t be abused, and your guess is as good as mine as to how often that happens—which may be rather often). The H1-B program has similar built-in protections of no small complexity, which are alleged to also be abused but which on paper aim to protect US workers.
You can see why this would be a book.
By the way, quite a few of Donald Trump’s companies make liberal use of the H-2B visa program (for example, a resort in Florida requesting waiters and cleaning people, mostly from Latin American countries), some use of the H-2A program (vineyard workers), and use of the H-1B program for hiring foreign models.
In another aside—just as an example of how hard it is to locate the facts on this, a search to find the actual numbers of visas issued each year in each class turned up this AFL-CIO “fact” sheet, which states that “Temporary work visa laws do not have provisions to protect guest workers or American workers.” On the contrary, they all provide such provisions, and extensive ones at that. Whether or not these regulations are properly enforced, and how often they are subject to fraud, is another question. But each program does have extensive protections in place, contrary to the assertion on that website.
As to the numbers, here’s a chart for 2012, which may be outdated but it’s what I could find:
As you can see, the numbers aren’t huge. But it adds up, and to someone displaced in an industry (or someone who believes he/she has been displaced) I am sure it is infuriating.
So, what is the H-1B program doing, and what would happen if its numbers were increased, as Rubio and some others are suggesting? This US News article presents the pro-H-B1 argument:
But experts say the visa system is not damaging American salaries or their chance at getting a job in Silicon Valley. Jonathan Rothwell, a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, points out that “H1-B workers are paid at least as well as their American counterparts” and the unemployment rate for computer workers is not high relative to other occupations. Salaries for tech occupations have also increased faster than wages for other jobs during the past decade despite the use of the skilled immigrant workers, he says, citing research he completed in 2013.
“Skilled computer jobs are among the hardest to fill and the vacancies stay open for the longest period of time,” he says, adding that Rubio’s proposal for companies to wait 180 days is “an absurdly long period of time to wait to fill a skilled position.”
Indeed, a recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the U.S. is not graduating enough students with skills in science, math and technology to meet the growing demand for tech company workers ”“ a point confirmed by data from the 2015 U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index. The U.S. will need “approximately 1 million more STEM professionals than the U.S. will produce at the current rate over the next decade if the country is to retain its historical preeminence in science and technology,” according to the BLS report.
You can follow those links and take a look if you want to crunch the numbers. The article adds:
Data from MyVisaJobs shows that the top 25 companies sponsoring H1-B visa workers ”“ including Google, Apple and Microsoft ”“ offer foreign workers an average salary that is competitive with wages offered to Americans for tech occupations.
The article also states that most of these Silicon Valley H-1B workers are from China and India (we can assume that most of the H-2B and and H-2A workers are likely to come from Latin American countries).
Jeff Sessions makes the case against the H-1B program:
Microsoft even signed a letter urging passage of the I-Squared H-1B increase, asserting that “there are tens of thousands of unfilled jobs requiring highly skilled individuals. Four high-tech companies alone ”“ IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle ”“ have combined 10,000 openings in the United States.” But consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas recently noted that “employers in the computer industry saw the heaviest downsizing of the year, announcing a total of 59,528 planned layoffs. That is 69 percent more than a year ago.” Perhaps these companies, instead of lobbying for H-1B workers, should hire some of the thousands of tech workers who are being laid off?
As Microsoft’s layoffs show, there is a surplus””not a shortage””of skilled, talented, and qualified Americans seeking STEM employment. Each year, universities graduate twice as many students with STEM degrees as find STEM jobs. According to the Census Bureau, more than 11 million Americans with STEM degrees are not employed in STEM jobs””or 3 in 4 STEM degree holders. Among recent graduates, about 35 percent of science students, 55 percent of technology students, 20 percent of engineering students, and 30 percent of math students are now working in jobs that don’t require any four-year college degree””let alone their area of specialty.
The truth is that, as Professor Ron Hira testified, “the H-1B visa has become a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans”¦ Most of the H-1B program is now being used to import cheaper foreign guestworkers, replacing American workers, and undercutting their wages.”
So, which is it: same salaries, or lower for the guest workers in the tech industries? Just try to find Ron Hira’s actual testimony and the context in which he said that, by the way; I couldn’t, at least not in a quick Googling. What I did find for Hira was this sort of thing:
There are two reasons these firms hire H-1Bs instead of Americans: 1) an H-1B worker can legally be paid less than a U.S. worker in the same occupation and locality…
Confusing, to say the least. At least on paper, the program contains protections against that sort of thing:
By signing the LCA, the employer attests that:
The employer pays H-1B non-immigrants the same wage level paid to all other individuals with similar experience and qualifications for that specific employment, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of employment, whichever is higher.
The employment of H-1B non-immigrants does not adversely affect working conditions of workers similarly employed…
That’s the sort of maze one enters when trying to get at the truth. And the truth as alleged by Sessions or Rubio or Trump or Hira or as written into the law is probably something quite different from the truth as it is actually practiced. Good luck with finding statistics that can tease that out, though.
This, however, was of interest to me. It’s a summary of the report Sessions cited (or at least, it’s very similar to the report Sessions cited; Sessions did not provide a link, of course) which found that most STEM graduates aren’t employed in STEM industries.
Certain things about it leaped out at me when I took a look. The first is that it’s not limited to recent graduates; it appears to include everyone between the ages of 25 and 64 who has a degree in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) discipline. The second thing that struck me is that unemployment in general in this group is low. So we can conclude that they’re employed, maybe even happily employed (the study doesn’t seem to ask that question), although not necessarily in a STEM field. The study sheds no light on what I would consider the all-important question of whether these people wanted to be in a STEM field, were looking for work in a STEM field and were denied it, once worked in a STEM field and had made a switch (for example, those older employees), or what’s actually going on with their job situations. We also don’t know from that Sessions quote whether the downsizing in the tech industry (Microsoft) involved the same or similar jobs that the H-1B workers filled, or whether there was little or no connection between the two.
You may be shocked (as I was) to learn that the STEM designation includes social sciences such as psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Although I can’t find a list of what STEM occupations the census research that Sessions quoted used, it is likely that these social sciences were included (they are on the NSF lists of STEM subjects, and they are also included in the list used by immigration, for example).
To be even remotely meaningful for the purposes of evaluating the H-1B program and how it actually works in real life, and its impact on companies and the American worker, we’d need to know a great deal more than I’ve been able to uncover by reading what Sessions wrote or that report on the census research. But the fact that a 50-year old who graduated years ago with a degree in psychology (which is a very popular degree for those who have no idea what they want to do when they get out of school, or at least it used to be) is not necessarily employed in a psychology or tech field is hardly a surprise, and hardly relevant to the subject at hand.
I was thinking of titling this post “Finding the truth: those H-1B visas and STEM employment.” But I decided to change it to “Searching for the truth: those H-1B visas and STEM employment.” I could go on and on and on with this, but I think you get the idea.
[ *NOTE: The program keeps being referred to in the media and by many politicians as H1-B, but my research indicates that all these programs follow the same form, and that it’s actually H-1B.]
even if we need foreign STEM workers (likely not true), we don’t need their grandparents, parents uncles and cousins with family reunification laws
Why not ask one of the recently laid off* Disney IT workers?
* Apparently Disney reversed their decision after the bad publicity.
snopercod:
That’s exactly what I’m not looking to do.
I don’t want anecdotal evidence. I don’t want reports by laid off workers. I’m sure I could find plenty of them, and in fact I’ve seen them. I have no way of evaluating what’s actually going on there, and I certainly don’t assume there’s a lack of bias there.
I also assume that in some cases (as I mentioned in the post) the program is being abused. I want to know know whether the program is necessary, what is actually happening to most people, what it’s actually doing to most workers, and if there are abuses how to reduce or eliminate them.
I want facts. I want decent research that actually tries to tease out trends and reality.
avi:
I think our entire legal immigration system needs to be revamped, and the emphasis on family unification needs to go way way down.
I believe that ALL of the leading candidates (maybe not Jeb, but the rest of the major candidates) have mentioned this in their platforms.
But you are confusing the temporary worker program with the permanent legal immigration program, I believe. For the H-1B workers, here are the rules for family members: only spouse and minor children, and only for the term of the work.
Again, whether this is abused, I really don’t know. I also don’t know whether the H-1B workers typically have families or whether they tend to be unmarried young people.
So you want to learn “what it’s actually doing to most workers” without talking to any workers?
Is it a leap of the imagination to assume companies agitating for more H-1B visas do so for the very same reasons that meat packing plants, roofing contractors, etc. are happy to employ illegal aliens?
I work in IT for a corporation that just did the same thing as Disney. They fired 100+ skilled US IT workers and replaced them with workers from India and many offshore working in India. They make significantly less than my co-workers did and we were told their benefits are minimal.
Even worse than Disney, as we’re in health care we process sensitive patient data (Protected Health Information). And most of our income comes from Medicaid and Medicare, so the government is sending money straight to India.
We were told our new Indian counterparts would be smarter, better, and faster than US workers, none of which has turned out to be true. Our user base is irate because they can’t get anything done. Those of us who weren’t let go are quitting in droves. All so that a handful of executives could perform some accounting tricks, make the company look better on paper, and sell. They left with millions in bonuses, and it’s almost enough for me to think there should have been some kind of government intervention in the free market to prevent this. Almost.
snopercod:
Do you understand how quantitative research works as opposed to anecdotal stories?
To draw conclusions about a program in general, you do the former. The latter is good for a newspaper story, or for partisan advocacy, and/or as part of research on what a particular firm has done (and make sure you add the qualitative date, too, and interviews with the other side).
I will repeat one more time: I am assuming that abuses of the program occur. I want an overview of how often, and why, and what the program does overall. That requires a lot more than interviewing workers and getting their perceptions of what happened to them. And for the purposes of this post—getting the truth about the program in general—anecdotal stories from certain workers in one company are not what’s needed, especially since I’ve already noted that some abuses of course have occurred and will occur (they will occur, actually, with any program, no matter what safeguards you put into it).
The maze, the labyrinthian design that dares a search is a feature not a fault. I believe anyone intent on getting to the truth in it is meant to get flustered and give up, or, end up like Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson — The Shining).
One of my sons is a highly paid software engineer who recently left Silicon Valley for New York. He’s in no danger of being replaced by H-1B workers. I’ve discussed this with him and he and other engineers in similar positions are convinced the program is a scam by the large software companies, Google and Facebook especially, to lower their labor costs at the expense of US workers.
Paul in Boston:
Same response as to snopercod. I’m not interested in opinions here, or anecdotes.
Those can be very misleading and even wrong, which is not an accusation towards those who hold them. We all form opinions on things. I’m trying to test out those opinions with data, good data and good research.
This article Are STEM Graduates Really Having Trouble Finding Jobs? looks at a 2007-2008 analysis done by the National Center for Education Statistics that asked employed graduates one year after graduation whether they considered their current job related to their undergraduate major and found this:
Neo wrote:
At the risk of further pissing you off, where do you think you might find such data? The government? The same government that is pushing this plan? Good luck with that. The companies that are busily replacing older workers with foreigners? They’re certainly not going to admit that they’re breaking the law. The Chamber of Commerce? We all know where they stand. Unless you can think of another source, that pretty much leaves only the workers who were dumped, doesn’t it?
For what it’s worth, this is a footnote from one of the Census tables:
“STEM workers are those employed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics occupations. To enhance comparability of data across statistical agencies and organizations studying the STEM workforce, the Standard Occupational Classification Policy Committee, consisting of representatives from 9 federal agencies, convened throughout 2011 at the request of the Office of Management and Budget to create guidelines for the classification of STEM workers. The final recommendations are available online at http://www.bls.gov/soc/#crosswalks. Based on this classification, STEM includes computer and mathematical occupations, engineers, engineering technicians, life scientists, physical scientists, social scientists, science technicians, and STEM managers. STEM-related occupations consist of architects, health care practitioners, health care managers, and health care technicians. Non-STEM occupations are all other occupations not classified in STEM or STEM-related occupations.”
Someone in my family lives in Silicon Valley it is FULL of foreign tech workers. Why can’t they find enough American tech workers? I’ll tell you why: cost of living.
You know how expensive it is to buy a home in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Mountain View, etc….not to mention San Francisco? So incredibly pricey. Why would a college kid move from Texas to California for a tech job when there are enough tech jobs in his own state with a much lower cost of living?
So, I KNOW that the tech industry is keeping wages low by importing cheaper foreign labor. And they want to keep it that way. Do you really think they want to pay wages that would allow people to live comfortably in that area? They’d have to raise the pay by at least 50% if not more to make it an attractive place for young workers who are just starting out.
For a foreigner, that H1B visa gets you citizenship. They don’t mind living a pauper’s existence until they can get that citizenship. Then, they bring over their whole extended family.
I am not implying that the visa seekers are bad people or less educated, but there is a reason these foreigners are willing to put up with the low pay…the possibility of getting citizenship down the road is worth all the suffering.
This is NOT how the H1B program should work. This is why Zuckerburg wants more H1B visas. He claims that he can’t find enough STEM workers, but what he is really saying is that he can’t find enough STEM workers who can live in that area for the wages he is paying.
neo-neocon, I have a fair amount of history and exposure with IT and software. I appreciate your intent and understand why you are shunning anecdotes. I truly hope you can find the data you seek. However, whether you do, or not, I can assure you the consensus by the commenter on this post is correct, at least as far as IT goes. It is almost always done to enrich shareholders and executives at the expense of US citizens.
An “anecdote” you can likely appreciate. When you call a company phone number and are connected to a human in India are you more or less pleased with the communicafion? Do you think companies use overseas call centers due to a lack of qualified English speakers here, or because they can drastically reduce costs?
It’s likely impossible to get the data you seek because it is likely impossible to assess the unintended consequences. Snopercod , Paul and LisaM
Whoops, didn’t mean to hit submit…
If the 3 workplace events listed by the folks above had not happened would those employers had to raise wages to retain their US citizen IT staff? Would the increased wages encourage college students to switch their majors? Would they have to add some extra workers to make up for the extra hours non-citizens will almost always, gladly work?
Since the program exists and employers exploit it , there’s a sort-of Heisenbergian skewing of the “facfs.” If there truly were a shortage of US applicants companies could train folks to program, etc. Just as was done in the early days of the industry, when no one came into the field with experience. Or, as happens millions of times a year when new software is introduced. You were able to learn blogging and develop the skill. Why couldn’t an unemployed, US auto mechanic learn to program JAVA. She could. But she does not have the opportunity because companies don’t need to train her. It’s better for executive bonuses and health care costs to hire a foreigner who is very afraid of losing the opportunity.
Neo,
Please take a look at Prof Matloff’s webpage, here: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html
There are links to his academic articles on H1-b in his writings.
Sorry about all the typos. Whichever H-1B worker programmed the type ahead feature on my tablet did not do a good job!
K-E is correct, and I’m sure you witnessed it all the time in New York, as you were growing up. Immigrant workers willing to live in squalor, in crowded circumstances and work 16+ hour days, 7 days a week.
I have worked with many IT folks from India working here on visas. They live in the cheapest place they can find, spend less than $10/day on food (noodles and vegetables), own a few outfits they wear nearly continuously and send almost all their income back home. 3 -5 years at our wages is enough for many to go home and retire.
I don’t know how you measure that, but through anecdotes, but whether you find the data you seek, or not, it’s true.
If we did not have the program the jobs would be filled by Americans. I’ve worked with talented programmers who were music or history majors in College. They couldn’t find jobs in their field, found companies willing to teach them programming on the job, and were great at it.
Rufus, there was also a couple of court cases about the big tech firms and ‘price fixing.’ As in, they agreed not to poach each other’s workers by offering higher salaries or better benefits in order to keep wages depressed. I believe Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. were involved along with other tech firms.
It’s ridiculous to look at a company like Facebook or Apple and think of them as ‘struggling’ companies that need to offer low wages. But that is exactly how they are acting by circumventing the American market and going directly to India, China, etc. to hire their labor.
If you visited Silicon Valley you would be hard pressed to find many native Californians living there who were still in the workforce (many retirees still live there due to the problems with property taxes and selling one’s home). Home prices are skyrocketing all the time. I have heard of two couples purchasing a house together and sharing a 2-bedroom home b/c they can’t afford to buy a house on their own.
Does that sound like these tech companies are paying fair wages for the area??
Rufus Firefly:
The issue of outsourcing—as with those phone bank people you mention—is a different one from the questions about H-1B visas. But to answer your questions—you asked:
Actually, I am usually displeased with the communication whether the person who answers me is Indian or home-grown (at least, as far as I can tell from the accent). The quality of “customer service” is so universally low that it’s the rare person of any nationality who does anything but read from a prepared statement and then argue with me.
I am very very serious. The only reason I tend, on the whole, to prefer to deal with someone from this country is because, on average, I can at least understand their words better, although that’s often not true either (a lot of slurring and fast-talking from native speakers). Otherwise, to tell you the truth, I can’t say that native speakers have been all that much better in terms of the actual service they render. Some have been downright hostile, and I don’t encounter that with the foreigners; they tend to be polite.
As far as your second question goes, although obviously there are plenty of native English speakers here, are they looking for those particular jobs, and are they willing to take them? Seriously; I don’t know. There may indeed be a lack of qualified natives willing to take on those jobs, which to my way of thinking are pretty crummy jobs (not that I’ve ever done it, fortunately). So until I know the answer to that question, I have no answer for you.
In addition—and this is the meta-question that applies to other questions about the whole issue of overseas people vs. native hires, in all these industries: isn’t it part of capitalism to try to keep wages low enough that companies make profits? If companies compete on a world scale, for world business, aren’t they almost forced to do this to make profits by keeping their overhead low enough to be competitive? I’m not arguing for one side or the other here, but I think I at least see the dilemma and realize that it’s a real one, not just nasty companies out to screw Americans. It’s the argument about protectionism vs. its opposite, and it’s been going on for quite some time, right? I don’t see the answers as the least bit simple or clear. I wish they were.
K-E:
Do you have a clue what home prices are there? I do. And let me just say that if our tech companies paid all their people enough to buy a house in the area, those companies would be out of business in an instant.
In northern California in general (and southern as well, I might add), home prices are through the roof. One of the main reasons for this is quite simple: building new homes in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area is held back by a tremendous number of regulations, so the housing stock is very limited and cannot adjust to increased demand.
Neo:
http://tinyurl.com/pbtww32
That’s a link to “Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers” an annual report for fiscal year 2012, prepared by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I haven’t tried to track down reports from other years.
Tables 10, 11, and 12 show compensation by occupation for beneficiaries of all, initial, and continuing employment. In other words, you can see how much H-1B visa holders are paid by occupation. You could then consult Department of Labor publications that report general compensation levels for those occupations. So … compare H-1B workers’ pay to other workers’ pay for the same occupation.
Anyway, if you want to use data to quantitatively determine whether the H-1B program is hurting American workers, the data exists in government publications. The problem is deciding what kind of data will answer your question.
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I’d recommend going to a college or university library and talking to a research librarian. A librarian can not only help you find raw data like this, but also academic papers that take a more macroeconomic approach. For example, some economists will admit that H-1B visa holders compete with natives (that’s us) on a micro level, and thereby reduce their salaries; but they claim that, on the macro level, H-1B STEM workers stimulate the economy and thereby improve other workers’ salaries and employment prospects.
As you’ve already said, this could take a book to unravel. And books have been written. (Ask a librarian.)
Neo,
There is apparently some connection between H-1B visas and outsourcing/offshoring, as explained here by Ron Hira, in the same article you quoted from in your post:
I think Bernie Sanders has talked about this as well.
Yes and no. If you actually visited Sunnyvale, for example, the houses are packed together pretty tightly. There is not a lot of developed land left to take advantage of. People are buying old homes, knocking them down and building them back up. The only solution would be to raze a whole neighborhood of single-family homes that have been there for 50 years and created high rises. I just don’t see that happening. Not to mention the fact that they haven’t built any new schools to handle the influx of people. So they are trying to get development projects off the ground that include more apartment-style living, but haven’t figured out how they are going to educate all of the kids in the overcrowded schools.
San Francisco has definitely created a problem for itself when it comes to housing, but the suburbs have been developed for a long time.
Now, I will say that there are HUGE swaths of land along 280 between Silicon Valley and S.F. that go undeveloped for the usual ‘green’ reasons. That could be a solution area.
However, I still say that Silicon Valley is importing cheap labor to keep wages low. The court case about fixing the ‘poaching’ problem between high tech firms is proof of that. There are people that manage to do well in Silicon Valley (my family included), but they happen to be well-educated, have lived there all of their lives (so they bought houses since the early 90s), and have worked their way up the ladder.
I couldn’t imagine being a recently graduated college STEM person moving from Utah to CA with hardly any savings. You would never make it financially. And that is a problem.
The fact that H1B visa holders can be paid LESS than an American worker for the same job shows that wages are fraudulently being depressed in that area. Maybe getting rid of the H1B visa holders wouldn’t 100% solve the problem, but it sure would help.
Visit and you will see. Foreigners as far as the eye can see. Hardly any natives. It’s because of H1B visa cheaters.
neo…
Would you take the professional opinion of an attorney working this program — to beat the law — totally ?
A fellow who has put up a YouTube ( can’t find link yet ) and a 30-minute ‘sales presentation’ to the high tech crowd in Portland, Oregon ?
A fellow that works in concert with the rest of his mid-sized firm crafting FAKE advertisements for insertion into the appropriate fish wrap — with his professional pledge that no-one can meet the stipulations in said adverts ?
A fellow who has corresponding attorneys working to the EXACT SAME RACKET — ( its in his presentation ) in Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, and more ?
A fellow that’s been performing such ‘services’ for most of his young career in law and manipulation ?
A fellow that’s personally placed tens-of-thousands in that short time… usually by the gross ?
A fellow that’s performed this hatchet trick for
HP
Apple
Intel
And the rest of the Fortune 500 ?
The back office staff within our biggest banks is his current emphasis. ( dated — the presentation is now years old )
Would you believe that he called out that hundreds of attorneys — nationwide — populate this ‘specialty’ — and they’ve never been unable to bastardize the ‘system.’
Would you believe a psychopath who has terminated high skill careers by the thousands ?
K-E:
One more thing. You write:
That’s incorrect; it certainly doesn’t “get you citizenship.” That’s a separate process. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a single statistic about what percentage of H-1B visaholders go on to apply for their green cards and then become citizens. Most? Some? Not too many? What I do know is that employers must sponsor them and that it’s a lengthy, complex process with quite a few pitfalls, some of which you can read about here.
blert:
I wonder why my message isn’t getting across. It’s quite frustrating. I’ll try again to be very very clear.
I have very little doubt that there are people abusing this system.
I am not defending this system. I am trying to learn how often it’s abused, whether the claims that it’s necessary are bogus or not, whether there are other alternatives that would allow companies to be competitive, and whether the law could be re-written in such a way that abuses are much more difficult to accomplish and much easier to detect.
There are always crooks gaming the system. One of the best examples I can think of is Medicare—tons of fraud. For various reasons, most people believe Medicate should stay in place, and would like to catch or prevent more fraud. That’s a whole nother discussion, of course, but you get my drift I think. The existence of fraud is not the point; I have little doubt it exists.
Ann:
The H-1B visa might sometimes segue into outsourcing, but outsourcing can be accomplished even if the H-1B program were eliminated. As far as I know, outsourcing does not depend on it. Each program is separate and can survive on its own. What’s more, when we are discussing whether H-1B is necessary and what its provisions are, to cite how a company’s workers were allegedly hurt by outsourcing (which was what I was responding to in my previous comment about outsourcing) is irrelevant.
Take a look at some of the least likely newspapers (like the NY Post) and you will find small advertisements for software or IT jobs. Very specific in skills but rarely if ever for someone who speaks a specific language or other local talent. No one responds to these (no one is looking there) and you can claim that no US jobseeker is available. It’s a racket and one run largely by immigrants from India or China themselves. H-1B workers are basically trapped to their job (since the visa goes with it) and can be abused horribly. But mush more interesting is if you look at the instructions for requesting an H-1B visa at the state departments web site you will see special fees for firms with more than 50 employees and more than 50% of those as H-1B’s.
A few firms use these to get skilled workers for lower prices and no status. Rotated in an out they can bid on long term support with few or no US citizens involved.
What started out as a reasonable accommodation turned into a racket.
There is an irony here.
Foreign ‘workers’ are usually — UN-usually unproductive.
The absolute worst: Indian —
as in Hindu ‘princes.’
Americans are wholly unprepared for the Hindu ‘caste’ mind set.
[ The fellows that our ‘pal’ Darth Attorney brings in the most are INDIANS — Hindus. ]
And, since I live just down the freeway from a massive Intel plant, Hindus are everywhere around me.
At least they’re not Muslims — aiming to jihad my keister.
I’d bet real money that our ‘hero’ from Portland is involved, too. His law firm got in on the ground floor of this boon.
The problem with Hindus is caste thinking. Hindus can’t stand being under the management of Blacks or Hispanics. What this means in practice is that American Blacks find that Silicon Valley won’t hire them in any professional standing. For the rest of the (critical) labor force would quit.
Having been ruled by the British for a century… (ish) Indians are all fine with the top slots being held by Whites. Even Gandhi worked to that ‘game.’
So, yes, they are flaming racists — worse — they are caste’ists.
They don’t even tolerate their genetic peers.
As for the Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese — they are ALL die hard racists — and usually hyper nationalistic.
Pot meet kettle.
Not one of them is willing to work underneath a Black American.
It would be a familial shame, the ultimate humiliation.
These are cultures that are totally NOT on board with American culture. ( exceptions: Japan, Korea )
Since they have been around a LOT longer than America…
They figure that they’ve figured ‘it’ all out.
They might all benefit by discovering the uncertainty principle.
Neo:
At 6:52 PM, in a reply to Blert, you wrote:
“I am not defending this system. I am trying to learn how often it’s abused, whether the claims that it’s necessary are bogus or not, whether there are other alternatives that would allow companies to be competitive, and whether the law could be re-written in such a way that abuses are much more difficult to accomplish and much easier to detect.”
Maybe a good place to start would be one of Norman Matloff’s papers recommended by Samozrejme at 5:28 PM.
Below I’ve copied the link to the full paper, as well as the abstract.
This isn’t a book, but it’s the next thing to it: a long review paper, just short of 100 pages, with over 300 references.
For what it’s worth, I’d still recommend talking to a librarian about original data sources and other academic papers.
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Mich.pdf
On the Need for Reform of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations / Norman Matloff. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF LAW REFORM. Fall 2003, Vol. 36, Issue 4, 815-914
The H-1B program authorizes non-immigrant visas under which skilled foreign workers may be employed in the U.S., typically in computer-related positions. Congress greatly expanded the program in 1998 and then again in 2000, in response to heavy pressure from industry, which claimed a desperate software labor shortage. After presenting an overview of the H-1B program in Parts II and III, the Article will show in Part IV that these shortage claims are not supported by the data. Part V will then show that the industry’s motivation for hiring H-1Bs is primarily a desire for cheap, compliant labor. The Article then discusses the adverse impacts of the H-1B program on various segments of the American computer-related labor force in Part VI, and presents proposals for reforms in Part VII.
P.S.
http://tinyurl.com/q3dswa9
That’s a link to a list of the 80 papers that cite Matloff’s paper. (Citing papers generated by Google Scholar.)
Hindu princes test well — but don’t see their role as being working or being creative.
So the fellow could actually have an astounding IQ — he won’t ‘give.’
He sees his entire role as lording it over all lessers.
Almost British, almost Royal.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/the-administration/258689-leaked-dhs-memo-shows-obama-might-circumvent-dapa
0bama is ON the case.
Yikes.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. And today the government tells Spurs there is “no inflation” despite food and housing costs gong through the roof.
I’ve been working sales in Silicon Valley for 20 years and tell you H1B abuse is through roof, while outright open age discrimination is common at all the major tech companies. I know a dozen 50 year old experienced engineers living in Silicon Valley who can’t get hired since cheap labor from China and India can be imported.
Neo is being massively naive in saying that all the stories that people tell her point blank is happening aren’t valid until she finds the statistics. She’s going back to her liberal roots in saying that anything not reported in the MSM didn’t happen – eye witnesses don’t matter.
Cornhead:
The problem is time. As I wrote in the beginning of the post, I doubt that even spending days on it would give me enough information to decide. Matloff’s paper is 100 pages long, and probably dense with facts and figures, and cites plenty more. That’s practically a course. Dedication is required.
I will go skim it. But I realized early on that this seems to be a particularly difficult area to get straight on and that people have very very strong emotions and opinions on it. It’s not quite up there with global warming, but it’s not so very very far behind.
Matloff has politics, too. I don’t know whether he’s on right or left, but I know I’d have to read research by both sides to even begin to make a decision.
I don’t know that I’m up for that sort of commitment.
whatevee:
Of course the stories are valid. You are misstating my position. I wrote this:
I’ll repeat: I’m not knocking the stories, but I don’t come to conclusions about an entire program from anecdotal evidence, some of which is probably valid and some not. And for the umpteenth time, I am assuming that there IS abuse of this program. I’m trying to quantify it, get detailed descriptions of how it works, figure out if the program is necessary for some reason, and see if there are recommendations that have a chance of stopping the abuse.
The only way to stop the abuse of foreign labor is to lower the price of American labor, which is kept high not only by prevailing “wage” rates, but by the associated taxes for FICA, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, plus health care, and other mandated and “expected” compensations that DO NOT APPLY to the H-1B visa holders.
Plus, government favors Union Rules that run up the cost of American labor.
All of this is brought to you by exactly the same Democrats who are weeping over the plight of the immigrants and the visa-holders.
GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE LABOR RACKET and we can go back to hiring American labor.
I just noticed that Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2013, but it died in the Judiciary Committee. Don’t know the story.
The bill was “to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to reform and reduce fraud and abuse in certain visa programs for aliens working temporarily in the United States, and for other purposes.”
Text of bill is here: http://tinyurl.com/nfd2dl2
First an anecdote (I know you don’t want it), then a question:
Anecdote – After 25 years in Engineering, my experience is that that the primary reasons for people leaving the engineering field completely are: mid career layoff (very common), and deciding to be a full time mom.
Question – If we really want to encourage young Americans to enter STEM fields, would we not have faith that the market would respond in time? (oh yeah, as it was pointed out above, they don’t won’t it to be a market) Moreover, if there was such an incredible shortage of engineers, why is it so hard for engineers to recover from mid-career layoffs? Too many cases to count.
Neo:
At 8:05 PM, you wrote:
“The problem is time. As I wrote in the beginning of the post, I doubt that even spending days on it would give me enough information to decide. … I don’t know that I’m up for that sort of commitment.”
I’m confused. If we don’t have the power to tell you what to do, then why are we all reading this blog? Isn’t that the way the internet works?
Neo
Everyone commenting on this thread knows exactly what you are asking for and what you are not asking for, they wouldn’t be reading your blog in the first place if they didn’t understand the question. The interesting thing to me is the intensity of feeling about the issue. I’ll make a prediction here. Pretty quick now Rubio will back off from his current position on H-1B. The numbers don’t reach into the tens of millions like illegal immigration but it’s touching tens of thousands of US workers and they’re very angry about it.
” If companies compete on a world scale, for world business, aren’t they almost forced to do this to make profits by keeping their overhead low enough to be competitive? I’m not arguing for one side or the other here, but I think I at least see the dilemma and realize that it’s a real one, not just nasty companies out to screw Americans. It’s the argument about protectionism vs. its opposite, and it’s been going on for quite some time, right? I don’t see the answers as the least bit simple or clear. I wish they were.”
There will never be a truly free world-wide market for employment and labor without dropping the meaning of borders and ceding power to some international body.
Just wondering whether anyone in the MSM has asked Hillary about this: Outsourcing Clinton Allies Accused of Abusing Visa System
Neo,
Interesting post.
As an electrical engineer I can echo the position of the IEEE. The H1B visa scam is just that, industry’s attempt to replace American engineers with foreign engineers willing to work for a fraction of the cost.
If you want information, go to the IEEE web site.
Start here.
The look at the results of this simple search.
From the article, “Every year U.S. schools grant more STEM degrees than there are available jobs. When you factor in H-1B visa holders, existing STEM degree holders, and the like, it’s hard to make a case that there’s a STEM labor shortage.”
Or this…
“And yet, alongside such dire projections, you’ll also find reports suggesting just the opposite–that there are more STEM workers than suitable jobs. One study found, for example, that wages for U.S. workers in computer and math fields have largely stagnated since 2000. Even as the Great Recession slowly recedes, STEM workers at every stage of the career pipeline, from freshly minted grads to mid- and late-career Ph.D.s, still struggle to find employment as many companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Symantec, continue to lay off thousands of STEM workers.”
Go look at the numbers. People who mouth this canard do not know what they are talking about.
How about this, we abolish the requirement for having to graduate from an accredited law school and having to pass a bar exam to practice law?
Try this article. On abuse of H1B workers.
For a variety of reasons, I strongly support reform of the H1B visa program, but if IT people are honest with themselves about this, they’ll need to accept that this story has an element of karmic chickens coming home to roost.
During the last twenty years or so, IT workers have been enthusiastic participants in destroying other people’s jobs — sometimes damaging whole professions, businesses, and industries. Who cares about the poor suckers making buggy whips? I’ve heard that a thousand times. The joy of ruining other people’s lives has always been an unseemly part of IT culture. Now it’s happening to them, and the mean part of me says “cry me a river.”
Tim P:
I haven’t read the link yet—although I plan to try to read at least some of them, it’s pretty time-intensive and I’m not sure how far I’ll get with them.
But in my post is an example of exactly why I distrust, and would like to know a lot more detail about, the sort of research that gets quoted to support the arguments. You quoted the following from the article you linked:
But as I mentioned in my post, “STEM degrees” includes people with degrees in psychology, anthropology, and sociology. These should not be counted in the total when you are considering employment at high-tech Silicon Valley industries. In fact, those three fields are not what people think of at all when you say “STEM” degrees, and yet they are included. That would skew all the results right there.
In fact, just doing a quick search at the site you mentioned, the first article I went to was this one, which discusses that very problem:
The article goes on to describe how hard it is to make forecasts or analyze whether there really is a shortfall or not. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes it so hard to figure out what’s really going on here. And the article doesn’t even mention the related problem (the one that disturbs me, among others), that the whole thing seems to be based on the number of STEM degrees, but STEM degrees include a lot of other things like those social science majors.
The more I read, the more certain I become that it’s very hard to predict how many workers are needed, or to measure whether there really is a shortfall or not.
News flash from the front:
No social scientists have lost their jobs to H-1b ‘imports.’
No psychologists have lost their jobs to H-1b ‘imports.’
Heh.
Yes, it really is confusing.
ALL of the travail is WRT massive employers of pure brain talent — NOT employers of social skills.
Amazing.
Somehow stumbling, bumbling ESL Chinese are not displacing those American ‘social engineers’ tasked with building 0bama’s dystopia.
Amazing.
I never previously made the non-connection.
My bad.
I work in the Pharmaceutical industry. I was a chemist for over 10 years, I am now a consultant. Some of the clients I work for have staff which is over 60-70% foreign on H1B VISAs. They have recruiting offices in Bangalore and many cities in China. Almost all of the the IT technical staff is H1B. I was laid off 3 times as a chemist, those jobs are now H1B jobs.
It took me 18 months to get my first chemist position. There are few openings, most go to H1B candidates. Almost all the chemists I graduated with no longer work in the field, because they couldn’t keep a job. There is no shortage of citizen scientists and engineers, it is just they cost more.
I suspect that anecdotal evidence would lead a person to overestimate the impact of H-1B visas. There are plenty of American-born US citizens of Asian descent who have gone into tech fields. I imagine that that there are also a lot of foreign-born people of Asian descent who came to the US for schooling, stayed for the opportunity, and became (or are in the process of becoming) US citizens.
As for the number of people working in STEM or non-STEM and their college majors, I think that Census table has less information than it seems to. For example, about 3/4 of all STEM workers had a STEM education, but a good million of STEM workers received degrees in business or humanities. They’re probably not STEM workers as I’d think of those professions. I’d also guess that a bachelor’s degree doesn’t get you too far in a lot of STEM professions. About half of those who reported a bachelor’s degree in STEM were working in the field, and about half weren’t. Computer science graduates who went on to run the website for Dad’s sporting goods store may be listed as managers or sales staff. Some women (it is rumored) get degrees in STEM, and they may have become housewives. More people than you’d think go pre-med, then medical school, then law school, and become very well-paid specialists.
I think my input on Silicon Valley is not anecdotal. Why? Because it involves a whole area of the country where everywhere you walk, every school you visit is full of immigrants.
When my relative posts pictures of their children with their school friends, the relative’s children are the ONLY white kids in the picture. Most are Indian. The rest are Asian.
My relative works in the public schools. This person enjoys relating the background of the kids they work with every day. Almost ALL are foreign.
So, how is that possible unless the H1B visa program is being abused? Why would so many Americans be displaced from Silicon Valley where the jobs are plentiful, unless they couldn’t afford the wages being offered?
This is a turnaround from Silicon Valley in the 80s and 90s. Sure, there were Vietnamese and other Asian immigrants, along with hispanics. But you still had a good mix of native citizens. Not any more.
K-E:
The public school systems of many cities (Boston, NY, for example) are almost entirely minority (black and Hispanic in those cities). Yet the actual population in both cities consists of many white people (in Boston they are still a majority, in New York a plurality). The children of the white people in those cities are much more likely to go to private than public schools (private includes Catholic schools). What is the private school situation in Silicon Valley?
In addition, if you’re saying white people can’t afford to buy homes in Silicon Valley on the salaries being offered and yet H-1B people can afford them on those same salaries (or smaller salaries), that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Something else might be going on. One of the things I think may be going on is that, by looking at the foreign population of the area, you cannot distinguish the H-1B arrivals from the legal immigrants. I happen to think that system is broken and in tremendous need of reform, as well.
If you want to offer some facts on actual populations in these towns—percentages and the like—now, that would be interesting. Here are some I found just now when I searched. For Mountain View, the 2010 census yielded this:
Average home price in Mountain View is over a million dollars (the Bay area tends to be like that; San Francisco is similar), but over half the population of Mountain View rents rather than owns a home.
I’ve looked up the demographics of other Silicon Valley cities, and so far all I’ve found are similar results.
neo-neocon,
I hope you don’t take the push back on this post as upsetment with you, or piling on. You’ve obviously touched a nerve with a lot of folks, and, based on my experience I agree with all that those who also claim experience are saying.
I know you are focused on one, small component of immigrant labor, the H-1B program, but, as I wrote earlier, even if you find the exact data you seek I don’t think it would tell a complete story because the impact is nearly impossible to erase. In words you’ll understand; we can’t run a control experiment to see what the US looks like for the past 20 years with no H-1B program.
I am a huge fan of immigration. I love cultural diversity, etc. But I am mainly opposed to it now because during the time of mass, mostly uneducated immigration in our nation’s past we had an abundance of blue collar work that needed to be done. Today we cannot employ our own citizens in non-blue collar work. Few from my High School class of 1981 went on to pursue College degrees. Nearly half dropped out without earning their High School diploma and many were already doing work study programs during the school day at various, blue collar jobs. For the decade, or so, after graduation that group did well. However, today the unemployment rate for non-College grads is awful, especially among those under the age of 25.
Importing workers (whether through H-1B, green cards, student visas…) to fill white collar positions is now creating a similar effect. I have worked side by side with many immigrants here under the H-1B program or carrying green cards. Many of them lied about their skills to obtain the position and learned quickly on the job. I had lunch last week with a gentleman in the industry who know uses Skype to interview them before bringing them here because he has been the victim of “bait and switch” routines where a qualified applicant will answer technical questions correctly on the phone but the applicant who shows up is incompetent.
There is HUGE money in this in India, China and elsewhere and, as others have pointed out, there are sophisticated folks navigating the legal issues, often unscrupulously, to make money from the system. US companies are almost always very willing co-conspirators because of the cost reductions.
And, as others have pointed out, even if salaries were equivalent, the foreigners are basically indentured servants willing to suffer nearly any hardship because the opportunity and pay is so much greater than what is available in their homeland.
As I wrote, I have interacted professionally with hundreds of foreigners “licensed” to work in the US. I was impressed with many of them and still consider dozens to be friends.
However, I have never met one of them that had a skill set that a company could not have created in an existing, US citizen employee in less than 3 months through on the job training. And, as I wrote, many of the foreign workers are also learning on the job, and the companies know it. In every instance I have seen foreign “white collar” workers used it was done by the company to AVOID using a US citizen; especially one already employed by that company.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I don’t see it as piling on me. But it discourages me because I have always tried to find the facts, and not look at something merely based on my own anecdotal experience, or even the word of others. I would have thought more people felt the same way here.
Anecdotal observations can lead us astray. They’re not bad per se, but numbers give us another way to look at things, a valid and important way. My gut feeling on this particular issue is to feel that immigration is way out of control, too much, and that the rules need changing, big time. But I still want to know the truth, or at least to get more information to lead me to it, and that is what this post is about. I fear that not very many people want to learn more; they’d rather stick with their anecdotal observations or the reports of others, rather than dig below the surface.
I got where I am by digging below the surface.
Why the avoidance?
* They will get more work for less pay from the foreigner.
* No health liability.
* No benefits payments.
* No risk of non-compliance, non-conformity or insubordination.
* Can sever ties with no risk of legal fees.
* Can use foreign workers to transition existing functions to outsourced, overseas functions with no push-back. (Existing, native employees will not typically, gleefully and ambitiously work to eliminate their own positions and those of their co-workers and friends.)
K-E Says:
November 2nd, 2015 at 6:38 pm
“San Francisco has definitely created a problem for itself when it comes to housing, but the suburbs have been developed for a long time.
Now, I will say that there are HUGE swaths of land along 280 between Silicon Valley and S.F. that go undeveloped for the usual ‘green’ reasons. That could be a solution area.”
&&&
Not so fast.
The I-280 lies almost directly atop the San Andreas fault.
The huge swaths of land are KNOWN to be hazardous ground.
It was possible to easily build that freeway section because every other builder had shunned it for generations.
During the ’06 quake the ground jumped 7 to 10 meters in moments… horizontally.
Now you know, too.
neo-neocon,
No question a systematic, data driven approach is best whenever possible. My point on the lack of a valid control is important, though. How many young folks would choose different majors if there were no H-1B program?
And, as others have pointed out, I see many employers use the program to sever ties with existing employees who are 50 or older. I have even seen companies create a position with an odd skill set and eliminate an existing employee (who is, coincidentally in his or her 50s), use a foreigner, then, when their term is up the company, surprisingly no longer needs that unique skill and hires a 20 or 30 something into the same position that had been “eliminated” earlier.
Outsourcing is starting to spread to the Accounting and Legal professions. A foreign professional reviews documents on-line, etc. I know it’s not H-1B, but all parts of the same Hydra to get cheap, highly motivated foreign labor and reduce US citizen employment.
Interestingly, Obamacare may reduce some of this. If healthcare costs shift from employers to tax payers then the soft costs of employing US natives go down and labor rates are more comparable to what foreigners will accept.
Rufus T. Firefly:
As I said, I’m relatively certain that these things are happening. I want to know more of the figures, and they are hard to come by, and the research I’ve found seems deeply flawed. I also want to figure out how to meet an actual need if it does exist, but how to protect from abuses.
So far I haven’t seen much on that score.
neo-neocon,
It would be good if you have some success. It is a topic of interest to many.
Best of luck!
Interesting Blog Neo,
Here are a few things that could possibly help you in your research.
I am an H1B worker who initially entered US as a student to pursue Masters in STEM. I am currently on a path towards PR. I have often felt ashamed when I hear about those cases where Americans have been displaced by H1B. I have asked several of my professors and Tech industry people whom I personally know as to why do they like H1B?
Surprisingly instead of saying H1B ‘s are cheaper and indentured servants they said that Americans are unnecessarily expensive. This has got me thinking..
Now lets take one of the Anecdote that people have repeatedly mentioned here “The Disney Case”. A person earning 120K got replaced by some new (most likely young) H1B who will make on Avg 65K a year. There is no doubt that the American was doing his job well..However the fact that the activities that he used to perform at work were simply replaced by an H1B with just 3 months of training raises a question whether those activities were that important to Disney from a growth point of view? In the technology sector specifically , we as consumers are not willing to pay an increasing amount of price for a technical product or service that is getting older than should we expect Private tech firms to keep paying increasing wages to their work force who is performing great .. but working on IT services that are widely available today? . If you look at the trends , it is the Older IT Engineers who still want to stay as engineers that are getting displaced the most with H1B.
I agree this is just my observation and feeling.. but maybe this gives a direction for you to research as to why American workers are being ignored by tech firms
Secondly, I would like to point out some specific flaws in the statement “US graduates twice as many graduates in STEM than jobs” This research was done by Hal Salzman.
There is a very important disclaimer in this statement that is never mentioned by people like sessions when they use it.
1) The research includes American students as well as Foreign students .
So US does not graduate twice as many Americans than jobs as Sessions and Trump often use it. This is important because the foreign born will need H1B’s if they have to take those jobs
2) The research conveniently limits its scope up until those who have Bachelors degree only. If they include those with Masters and Phd’s the statement will turn in favor of Foreign students.
Critics of the H1B program conveniently say Masters and PHD’s are never specifically required to do any kind of STEM jobs .. so that should not be added as a plus point for international students . Ironically they do not consider this while trying to bring in foreign students in graduate programs.. (because they pay high fees)..
After working with H1-b visa STEM workers for 10+ years, I have a pretty good understanding of the situation. Every single foreigner I worked with was inferior to Americans, and there are tens of thousands of available PhDs born in the USA that could wipe the floor with these people. What we have is American sell-outs who push the H1-B to the limits of fraud and abuse. They are severely underpaid. They spend most of their time training, and 1 out of 5 of them actually are performing the work they were hired to do. Nobody is minding the store. Every one of them gets a renewal and then gets a green card, then get naturalization.
They work about 6 hours a day, charge the govt for 8 hours. When the boss is out of town at a convention they come in late, leave early, and stand around smoking and talking. One or two do all the work, because they have some sense of work ethic.
One of the main problems is that outside of India, none of them speak English well, and all of them come from Communist, former communist, socialist or latin american dictatorships. Only the Indian people share our democratic values. They also bring in lots of family members and send a lot of cash overseas. They spend little in America, buy foreign cars, do not volunteer, have no civil duties.
It is a total scam operation, and I plan to shut down this company in 2016 due to massive H1-b, labor and OSHA violations.