Howard University public policy professor, Ron Hira, released a study that found that U.S. tech firms are using the H-1B visa system to replace American workers with low wage foreign workers.
The study used FY13 H-1B data, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, and reveals new details about how firms are using the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program.
Computer World -- Patrick Thibodeau
Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.
The employees are upset and say they can't understand how H-1B guest workers can be used to replace them.
Computer World -- Patrick Thibodeau
New legislation being pushed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to hike the H-1B visa cap is drawing criticism and warnings that it will lead to an increase in offshoring of tech jobs.
IEEE-USA said the legislation, introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday, will "help destroy" the U.S. tech workforce with guest workers.
Live Mint -- PTI
New Delhi: US President Barack Obama has assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he will look into India’s concerns on the H-1B visa issue as part of his comprehensive immigration reform, US officials said on Monday.
Obama told Prime Minister Modi that his administration would be in touch with the Indian government on issues related to H-1B visas, popular among Indian techies.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced S. 153 on Tuesday that would expand the number of H-1B guest worker visas for the tech industry regardless of the fact that there is a surplus of American high-tech workers. Along with Sen. Hatch, the Immigration Innovation (“I-Squared”) bill was co-sponsored by Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
The Hill -- Julian Hattem
A bipartisan team of senators lent a helping hand to the tech sector on Tuesday by introducing new legislation to reform the immigration system for high-skilled workers.
The bill, which was first introduced in 2013 but failed to move in Congress, would address the major demands of Silicon Valley firms, who say that current law prevents them from bringing into the U.S. enough skilled programmers to keep up with the demand.
Breitbart News -- Tony Lee
None other than Jesse Jackson is speaking out against foreign guest-workers in the technology industry.
A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston shows that "for every foreign-born nurse that migrates to a U.S. city there are between one and two fewer native RNs observed working in the city."
Since the recession began, corporate special interests have lobbied for immigration expansion and amnesty even as they laid off U.S. workers. Today, the White House is the one doing the lobbying to get these businesses on board with a series of executive actions on immigration.
The Obama Administration has proposed a new rule to grant work permits to the spouses of H-1B holders who "are either the beneficiaries of an approved Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker (Form I-140) or who have been granted an extension of their authorized period of admission."
On the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, decried the Obama Administration’s proposed rule giving work permits to the spouses of certain H-1B visa holders. He said Congress did not authorize the Administration proposal. “They act on their own,” Sen. Grassley said. “And, they do it to the detriment of American workers.”
The Obama Administration announced a proposed rule that would give work authorization to the spouses of certain H-1B workers, increasing job competition for the 20 million Americans who want full-time work but can’t find it. It does not appear that these spouses will be counted against the visa cap on the category of job they pursue, so the move would expand immigration by executive fiat.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich opposes increasing the H-1B cap (see below). I wonder if he is aware that the Obama Administration's proposed rule change to give work permits to the spouses of H-1B holders is an attempt to work around the cap.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Last week, the Labor Department's Office of the Inspector General announced that foreign worker visa fraud was no longer a "top management concern" for the agency. The announcement is one of the first decisions made by new Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and comes just a few months after the massive tech firm, Infosys, was forced to pay $34 million to the federal government for committing fraud over a host of foreign visa programs.
U.S. STEM professors say H-1B increases would have a dramatic impact on American colleges graduates in these areas
Bright, a company that collects resumes and attempts to match job seekers to open jobs, has found a large number of tech workers are looking for work in STEM fields despite claims that there is a shortage of high-skilled workers. According to its own analysis, Bright says they found evidence of labor shortages in a few specific engineering fields, but for the most part, there is a large available pool of high-skilled candidates for tech employers to choose from.
The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) has written a letter to members of the U.S. Senate asking them to oppose the immigration bill, S. 744. Specifically, IFPTE opposes the Schumer/Hatch amendment that passed during the Senate Judiciary Committe mark-ups earlier this month. The Schumber/Hatch amendment would increase the annual numbers of H-1B Visas.
After dealing with most of Title I ("triggers" and border security) last Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee continues its markup of the Gang of Eight's amnesty bill, S.744, today. Today's markup will mostly focus on Title IV of the Gang's bill, dealing with the guest-worker provisions. Several of the issues to watch for today include changes to the existing H-1B high-skilled worker visas and worker protections outlined in the Gang's bill.
Work on the so-called comprehensive immigration reform bill has been delayed while Senators argue over the inclusion of worker protections in the high-tech industry. Some are pushing for higher wages for those entering under H-1B visas, and penalties for high-end H-1B users, so that such workers do not displace citizens and legal residents.
The Texas firm Dibon Solutions has been indicted by federal authorities for using the H-1B visa system to create an as needed" work force. The papers filed by the federal government detail the scam, saying the tech firm recruited foreign workers and sponsored them for H-1B visas but required them to provide consulting services to third-party companies in other locations.
Washington Post editor Emi Kolawole walked away from a one-sided immigration roundtable with some questions which she shared with her readers in "Microsoft hosts skilled immigration roundtable." Here they are, along with some possible answers that I have provided . . .
A report issued on Monday by the tech placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas says that tech layoffs in the United States hit its highest level in three years during the first half of 2012. The firm's report says 51,529 planned job cuts within the tech sector were planned during the first half of the year.
A recent report from the Washington Post finds that there are too many scientists living in the United States with too few jobs despite bipartisan support for increased immigration for foreign nationals with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The report finds that some high-tech areas are booming, while jobs in many other fields, including biology, chemistry, and medicine, are scarce.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who also serves as Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter Monday to the State and Homeland Security departments, raising questions about Boeing's use of B-1 visas to bring Russian contract engineers into the country.
Information Technology firm and high-tech industry powerhouse, Infosys, is being accused of bringing low-paid foreign wokers to the U.S. illegally, CBS News is reporting.
The allegations come from Jay Palmer, a principal consultant at Infosys. According to Palmer, Infosys engaged in systematic practice of visa fraud. Palmer's charges are the center of a federal probe.
Sen. Charles Grassley’s H-1B reform proposal would close a loophole in the program that allows some businesses to forego recruiting U.S. workers, according the Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Ron Hira. Right now, employers are not required to recruit U.S. workers unless a company is considered H-1B dependent. Sen. Grassley’s proposal would require employers to first try to fill jobs with U.S. workers.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who serves as the Ranking Member of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, sent a letter to Pres. Obama telling him that Jennifer Wedel's story of her unemployed engineer husband is not an isolated case, but a wider, national issue. Sen. Grassley has consistently fought for unemployed high-skilled workers by writing legislation that would rid the H-1B program of known fraud and abuse.
The White House is following up on an offer made by President Obama for Darin Wedel, a semiconductor engineer, according to a report by Computer World. The offer was made during a live online town hall, sponsored by Google, after Darin's wife, Jennifer questioned the government's policy concerning H-1B visa workers.
Want to get your blood pressure up? Read the transcript of a White House press conference this week about the insistence that the hundreds of thousands of unemployed high-skilled Americans apparently don't exist. While Pres. Obama was showing compassion to the wife of ONE unemployed high-skill American worker this week in a much-publicized internet exchange, his Administration was making it clear that it will multiply the difficulty of hundreds of thousands of other unemployed high-skill Americans to get a job.
Pres. Obama's own staff has produced the data to show that the President was wrong Monday when he said America doesn't have enough engineers, was wrong last week in the State of the Union to say we need more high-skilled foreign workers, and was wrong in sending out spokespersons to claim that not enough Americans are obtaining engineering degrees. But the President -- like most Republican leaders -- tends not to look for facts when thinking about immigration but just looks to his elite business cronies. Look at the numbers in this shocking new report . . .
The Department of Homeland Security announced a series of reforms that reflect the Obama Administration's continuing commitment to attracting and retaining highly-skilled immigrants. The Administration's new initiatives will lead to increased work permits for foreign workers while 22 million Americans can't find a full-time job.
A Google-sponsored town hall event with President Obama Monday evening quickly turned to immigration issues.In the most publicized moment of the event, a woman from Texas asked Pres. Obama why he supported importing more high-tech foreign workers when her husband, who is a semiconductor engineer, has been unemployed for the past three years. Pres. Obama's only response was to pander to the high-tech lobby.
With a U.S. unemployment rate at 8.6%, one would expect that many of the high paying job openings available domestically are a positive sign for jobless Americans. However, that has not been the case. According to data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services department, U.S. companies have hired foreign workers at an expeditious pace.
Bloomberg News hosted a round table last week of business leaders and academia to discuss, in addition to many other topics, how they could get more foreign workers to the United States. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor made an appearance at the panel and his statement to the group sounded off some alarms. Rep. Cantor said he sympathized with their concerns and, through his leadership position in Congress, would work to find ways to increase the number of available foreign workers.
Donald Barlett and James Steele, authors of the best-selling "America: What Went Wrong," are revisiting their economic series with a fresh look at policies that contributed to the current economic crisis. Their "Offshoring" entry - which should be required reading for every 2012 presidential hopeful - examines programming jobs. Once thought as the key to our economic future, IT jobs have been declining for two decades even as the tech industry has demanded more visas for foreign workers.
High tech companies use legal guest worker programs to displace American workers and eventually move many Americans' jobs overseas. Although this harmful practice that has cost hundreds of thousands of skilled Americans their jobs has been ongoing for more than 15 years, it has received scant attention in Washington D.C. or in the national media. But because of testimony given at a recent House Subcommittee hearing on H-1b visas and a whistle-blower scandal from within one of the largest users of the H-1b program, Americans are about to become enlightened.
The House Immigration Subcommittee hosted a hearing on the impact of the H-1B visa program and whether it meets the needs of the U.S economy and its workers. Unfortunately, the issues of fraud and program management remained the primary topics of concern instead of whether or not foreign workers are still necessary during the peak of our recession.
A few weeks ago, one of our members posted a great comment on a blog about the media's perception of the H-1B visa program. The member, who wishes to remain anonymous, used to work for both Oracle and Hewlett-Packard and was an integral part of the companies' abuses of the H-1B visa program. He recruited high-tech workers from Latin America and Asia, and then worked with immigration lawyers who capitalized on the various loopholes within the program.
The NBC Nightly News' segment, "Can America Keep Best, Brightest Immigrants?" asks a seemingly-straightforward question: "Many foreigners come here, get educated, and want to stay, but can’t. How can the U.S. take advantage of their potential?" The report takes a look at the H-1B (non-immigrant) visa program, which was created in 1993 to allow skilled workers - particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields - to enter the U.S. on a temporary basis. The "temporary" part of the visa has NBC and the featured personalities in this story concerned. Their thesis is simple: "America's visa restrictions lead to reverse brain drain," depriving the U.S. economy of the job creators it desperately needs.
Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have sent a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, outlining their concerns of abuse within the H-1B visa program. The H-1B visa program allots 65,000 3-year visas per year for highly-skilled workers with more than half used by high-tech companies. The 65,000 visa cap for the 2011 fiscal year was reached last week, which could prompt calls for increasing the annual cap.
A new report issued by the Government Accountability Office exposes the abuse of the H-1B Visa program, a program that offers up to 65,000 three-year visas per year to be issued to highly-skilled foreign workers. The report found that the majority of the visas go to a small number of companies that simply act as middle-men and offer the workers to larger companies that aren't held accountable for their compliance, or non-compliance, to the program's rules.
Peri Software in Newark, N.J. says its new goal is hire only American workers for all of its domestic positions after settling an H-1B case with the federal government. Peri was forced to pay nearly $700,000 in back wages to H-1B workers after violating federal rules.
