A tried and true tactic employed by the industry lobbyists to expand the H-1B
program has been to push the Education Button, the all-purpose stun gun of Capitol
Hill. All one has to do is push that button, and the Congress, and press are
rendered senseless.
The industry's argument boils down to two main premises: (a) A lot of students
in U.S. Master's and PhD CS and engineering programs are foreign students, and
"therefore" there must be a "shortage" of holders of such
degrees. (b) Abuse of the H-1B program is limited to holders of Bachelor's degrees,
imported to the U.S. by Indian firms. Both of these premises are false, as I
will explain here:
(From here on, I will use the term "graduate degrees" to mean Master's
and PhDs.)
Here are the main points:
* H-1Bs with graduate degrees are used as cheap labor by big firms. Intel
has claimed repeatedly that most of the H-1Bs it hires are design engineers
with graduate degrees. (See my law journal paper, at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/MichJLawReform.pdf
pages 43-44, for various quotes.) But if you look at the Dept. of Labor H-1B
Web page, you find that the median prevailing wage quoted by Intel for its H-1Bs
is $65K. Contrast that to the fact that the national median salary for workers
with a Master's in engineering is $82,333 and the median for a PhD is $105,500.
(See reference to 2002 NSPE data at http://www.soe.stevens-tech.edu/seem/UG/SalaryArticle.pdf)
* The fact that so many U.S. graduate degrees are obtained by foreign students
does not mean we "need" so many graduate degrees. One does not need
a graduate degree for most work in the field, including research and development.
For example, Linus Torvalds developed the Linux operating system while he was
an undergraduate. Marc Andreesen developed MOSAIC, which he later refined into
the Netscape Web browser, when he was an undergraduate. Tim Berners-Lee, the
inventor of the Web, has only a Bachelor's degree, and it is not in computer
science. None of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs, founders of Microsoft,
Oracle and Apple, respectively, even has a Bachelor's degree. Even at the firm
which first developed the Internet, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., only 4 percent
of the staff have a PhD. I've mentioned before the Intel recruiters who told
me "Intel is not very interested in PhDs," adding that a PhD would
not have enough to challenge him or her at Intel, except in rare cases.
* If in spite of my comments in the last bullet the industry insists that
it does need people with graduate degrees, then they should hire the tens of
thousands of American programmers and engineers who have graduate degrees but
are unemployed.
In the past, American students "voted with their feet," foregoing
graduate school in favor of going directly into industry because they knew a
graduate degree was not needed to be able to do the work in the field and they
correctly perceived that going to grad school was a losing proposition financially.
(See pp.84ff of my law journal paper cited above.) However, the poor job market
of the last few years has caused U.S. tech graduate programs to be inundated
with American applicants. See for example "Dot-Com Dropouts Go Back to
School," by Vanessa Hua, San Francisco Chronicle, January 27, 2002.
Especially damning is that Thom Stohler, the industry spokesperson quoted
in the enclosed article as saying that they need H-1Bs because Americans don't
go to graduate school, concedes that there are tons of Americans in graduate
school now. He conceded on CNN, "Well, in fact in the last few years it's
been much better." (NEXT@CNN program, CNN, September 28, 2003.)
* Though a small percentage of the foreign students are of outstanding talent,
most are not. The analysis of David North has shown that foreign PhDs are disproportionately
concentrated in the weaker schools. (See pp.47ff of my law journal paper.)
The text of the bill (House version, HR 4166) is available at
http://www.ilw.com/lawyers/immigdaily/news/2004,0420-hr4166.pdf
Note that the bill attempts to ameliorate its negative impact on American workers
by including a $500 "fraud prevention and detection fee" on H-1B and
L-1 visas. As I have said many times, this is irrelevant (and is probably a
deliberate distraction). The H-1B and L-1 laws are so riddled with loopholes
that the employers underpay their foreign workers while still being in full
compliance with the laws and regulations. So there is no "fraud" involved.
Just look at the Intel salary data for an illustration of this--Intel is entirely
within the law in paying those low salaries. Sadly, a lot of people are going
to be fooled into supporting this bill because of this mainly useless provision.
Bottom line: The premise of the bill is unwarranted. If employers want workers
with graduate degrees, they should hire the tens of thousands of unemployed
American tech workers who have graduate degrees.
Norm
Effort afoot to exempt 20k from H-1B cap
Source: Computerworld
The bill would allow hiring of more foreign grads with advanced degrees
News Story by Patrick Thibodeau APRIL 19, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - WASHINGTON
-- There's a new push in Congress to increase by 20,000 the number of foreign
workers holding H-1B visas. Proposed legislation would accomplish that by exempting
foreign graduates with advanced degrees from the visa cap. The bill, introduced
earlier this month by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), is supported by Compete America,
a coalition of manufacturers, academic groups and IT vendors such as Microsoft
Corp., Intel Corp., Oracle Corp., and Sun Microsystems Inc.
This year's H-1B cap of 65,000 was reached in mid-February, less than five
months after the Oct. 1 start of the federal fiscal year. Smith's bill, the
American Workforce Improvement and Jobs Protection Act, wouldn't raise the cap,
but it would exempt from that limit up to 20,000 graduates with a master's degree
or higher from a U.S. university.
Students hired by universities and research institutions under the H-1B program
are already exempt from the cap.
Most of the H-1Bs that U.S. companies are hiring "are coming out of our
own schools," said Thom Stohler, a vice president at the American Electronics
Association, a Washington-based IT trade group that has called for a higher
H-1B cap. Businesses "are not going to Bangalore to find people; they are
finding them here," he said.
"It's the position of the AEA that individuals who possess a master's
or Ph.D. degree are not stealing American jobs; they are creating American jobs,"
said Stohler. Holders of advanced degrees tend to be employed in research and
development work, he said.
Under U.S. immigration law, companies were allowed to begin applying this month
for H-1B visas that will be issued at the start of the 2005 fiscal year. Vic
Goel, an immigration attorney in Greenbelt, Md., said he expects that there
will be enough applications between now and Oct. 1 to exhaust next year's cap
of 65,000 visas. He said the period for issuing new H-1B visas that will begin
on Oct. 1 could close the next day.
Any increase in the number of H-1B visa holders will face opposition from labor
groups, especially the IEEE-USA, a unit of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers Inc. in Washington that says its members are facing record unemployment
levels.
"We question the need for a new visa exemption," said IEEE-USA President
John Steadman, who noted that foreign graduate students can already work for
two years in the U.S. under existing visa rules. "During that time, the
company can evaluate their skills and petition for a green card on their behalf,"
he said.
The bill's prospects are uncertain. The co-sponsors are all Republican, and
this is a contentious year for outsourcing. But Congress has acted before to
increase the H-1B cap in election years.
