FW: Computerworld articles
FW: Computerworld articles
Date: Monday, May 06, 2002 11:17 AM
*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***
Get the Facts on H-1B at www.ZaZona.com
Matloff did such a good job of discussing this article, I decided to
forward
you his newsletter. I apologize for those of you that are on his
newsletter.
Norm's list of items on the salary dispute is very good and should be
used
whenever someone denies that H-1Bs are all about cheap labor.
-----Original Message-----
Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 8:52 PM
Enclosed below is an article from Computerworld. I have a number of
comments:
"The problem with the whole issue is that it gets into matters of
immigration," said Robert D. Austin, assistant professor of IT
management at Harvard Business School. "And that turns into us vs.
them."
So it's not surprising that the debate often drifts into rhetorical
battles, giving rise to such unsubstantiated extremes as the charge
that all the H-1B workers in a New Jersey office cheered as across
the Hudson River the World Trade Center towers fell.
This, together with the remarks before and after the passage, is
apparently meant to suggest that critics of the H-1B program are
xenophobic or racist. Fortunately most supporters of the industry don't
make such charges, but it has come up in Computerworld before. The
editor-in-chief, Maryfran Johnson, once made such an assertion in print,
and when I asked her about it in e-mail, she said that if any programmer
who contacts her so much as mentioned the fact that most of the
computer-related H-1Bs come from India, she immediately dismissed
him/her as racist.
(I should mention, though, that in a recent communication with a member
of this e-mail list, Ms. Johnson said she no longer has this attitude.
I should also mention that Computerworld was once of the first
publications to run stories in which some critics questioned the
industry's "labor shortage" claims. That was in part because at the
time one of the senior editors was upset that the local Boston school
officials were crying "teacher shortage" when this editor's wife, a
teacher, could not get a job with those same schools.)
For the record:
1. I've never heard anything like that crazy rumor regarding 9-11,
and if that rumor had any circulation at all I believe I would
have heard from my national network of programmers.
2. The foreign-born programmers on my e-mail list are among the most
vociferous critics of H-1B abuses. This is natural, since they
often get to see the abuses in more detail. And, needless to
say, being replaced by an H-1B of one's own ethnicity doesn't
make it hurt any less.
I was curious how about Professor Austin, whom I had not heard of
before. A quick check of the Web revealed that he is a Fellow of the
Cutter Business Council, which rents out consulting services to
business. It's not fully clear what his position on H-1B is from that
one little quote above, but he certainly would seem to have an incentive
to toe the industry party line.
The following are some of the arguments on each side:
* Companies have created an indentured servant class out of H-1B visa
holders, according to Norman Matloff, a professor at the University
of
California, Davis.
This isn't a matter of dispute. Congress recognized that fact when it
eased (though far from eliminated) the conditions which create that
de facto indentured servitude status.
The indentured servitude metaphor actually came from the H-1Bs
themselves.
* Companies would rather hire U.S. residents because it costs $1,000
in
fees
to hire an H-1B holder, said Margaret Wong, an immigration lawyer
in
Cleveland.
The average employer of an H-1B is underpaying him/her by, according to
the most conservative estimates (i.e. mine), $10,000 per year, for the
5+ years of the indentured servitude. That's $50,000, again,
conservatively. So a one-time legal fee of $1,000 is nothing. And the
employer saves the headhunter fee. One does have to account for the
green card process, but the employer is WAY ahead financially, and
that's not even adding in the value of what the employers
euphemistically refer to as H-1B "loyalty."
Statistics do show that more foreign nationals receive advanced
degrees in engineering, computer engineering and computer science.
This is quite true, but it is a flagrant red herring as far as the H-1B
debate is concerned. The vast majority of computer-related H-1Bs don't
have a graduate degree. The author notes that I say this, but there is
a twist to it:
But that matters only if you believe the companies; Matloff, a
vigorous critic of H-1B visas, says he doesn't. His research shows
that only 1% of H-1B holders have Ph.D.s and only 7.5 % have master's
degrees, though other research says otherwise.
"Other research"? I wrote to the author this morning, stating that (a)
as far as I know, there is no other research, and (b) my research is
confirmed by recent INS data. The INS finds a figure of 1.6% for
computer-related H-1Bs with PhDs, very similar to my 1% derived from
other sources.
The author wrote back and told me that he didn't write that last clause
("though other research says otherwise"). It apparently was added by an
editor. He graciously thanked me for the correction, and said it would
be fixed. I just checked the online article, and sure enough, the
offending clause is now gone. (Presumably it will be in the print
version, though.) So, when the author wrote in his lead, "It would be
easier to separate sheets of wet tissue paper pounded flat by a hammer
than to separate fact from fiction in the H-1B debate," I might add that
it is REALLY hard to "separate fact from fiction in the H-1B debate"
when editors choose to add some fiction even when the reporter didn't
have some. :-)
Again, the "advanced degree" argument -- a favorite of the industry
lobbyists -- is a just a device created to distract attention from the
real issue, which is cheap labor. Lobbyists know that
educationally-based arguments "sell" very well. So in this case they
try to paint an image that there must be "something wrong" with
America's young people -- "Why Johnny Can't Do a PhD." The fact is that
"Johnny" simply understands that there is a huge financial disadvantage
to going for a PhD in computer science. The NRC report, though heavily
biased in favor of industry, conceded that it would take -- are you
ready for this? -- FIFTY YEARS for an American CS student to make up for
the financial losses he/she would incur by spending 5-6 years getting a
PhD instead of going out to make money right after graduation with a
Bachelor's degree.
Even for those H-1Bs who do have advanced degrees, they are paid less
than Americans (U.S. citizens and permanent residents) with those same
degrees; see for example the study done by Prof. Paul Ong at UCLA and my
own study, both of which corrected by highest degree attained.
There really is no remaining dispute as to whether the H-1Bs are paid
less than comparable Americans. This is shown in
* the study at UCLA, which found that the immigrant engineers
were paid 33% less than comparable Americans
* the study at Cornell University, which found underpayment of
H-1B programmers and engineers by 20-30%
* my study at UC Davis, finding that immigrant programmers
and electrical engineers were paid 15-20% less than
comparable Americans
* the report by the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
which found that the computer-related H-1Bs were paid a
median of $53,000 per year, far below the national median of
$66,000 for this field
* the audit done by the Department of Labor, finding that 19% of
the H-1Bs were not even paid the salaries promised by the
employers on the visa application forms
* the report by the National Research Council, which found
that "H-1B workers requiring lower levels of IT skill received
lower wages, less senior job titles, smaller signing
bonuses,
and smaller pay and compensation increases than would be
typical
for the work they did"
* articles in respected pro-business publications such as
Forbes Magazine (``Indian programmers working in the U.S. on
temporary H-1B visas typically earn 25% to 30% less than their
naturalized colleagues'') and the Wall Street Journal
(``recruiting foreign talent is cheaper than hiring Americans''
* statements by the H-1Bs themselves, who have formed the
national organization ISN (www.isn.org) with a goal of
persuading Congress to reform the program
The article follows below.
Norm
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/stories/0,1199,NAV47-81_STO70624,00.html
Emotions Run Hot on H-1Bs
Numbers difficult to track; impact of visas debated
By Brian Sullivan
(Apr. 29, 2002) It would be easier to separate sheets of wet tissue
paper
pounded flat by a hammer than to separate fact from fiction in the H-1B
debate.
Employers say foreign workers fill gaps left by a dearth of qualified
U.S.
residents.
Unemployed IT workers and their allies say there's no labor shortage.
They
claim that employers are just trying to cut IT costs and drive down
wages by
hiring foreign workers at lower pay rates.
The truth lies somewhere in between, but clarifying the issue is
difficult
because emotions run high and statistics are either contradictory or
dated.
For example, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) stopped
tracing H-1B data after the Sept. 11 attacks. Other oft-cited numbers
were
issued in 1998 or early 2000.
Still, the available data does bear out that H-1B workers are often
younger
and better educated than their American peers and are seeking permanent
resident status. Most H-1B holders in the computer industry are hired to
fill systems analyst and programming jobs. Some receive the prevailing
wage,
while others make less working in job shops. But the numbers are
meaningless
to many.
"The problem with the whole issue is that it gets into matters of
immigration," said Robert D. Austin, assistant professor of IT
management at
Harvard Business School. "And that turns into us vs. them."
So it's not surprising that the debate often drifts into rhetorical
battles,
giving rise to such unsubstantiated extremes as the charge that all the
H-1B
workers in a New Jersey office cheered as across the Hudson River the
World
Trade Center towers fell.
The following are some of the arguments on each side:
* Companies have created an indentured servant class out of H-1B visa
holders, according to Norman Matloff, a professor at the University of
California, Davis.
* Companies don't hire average IT workers, but rather engineers with
advanced degrees, said Paula Collins, director of government relations
for
human resources and education at Texas Instruments Inc.
* Companies would rather hire U.S. residents because it costs $1,000 in
fees
to hire an H-1B holder, said Margaret Wong, an immigration lawyer in
Cleveland.
According to the last INS report regarding which companies hire the most
H-1B workers, covering October 1999 to February 2000, Motorola Inc.
(618),
Oracle Corp. (455) and Cisco Systems Inc. (398) topped the list. Others
in
the top 25 included Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems
Inc.
Most of those companies wouldn't comment.
Cisco said that the INS numbers are out of date, noting that it has
backed
off its H-1B program and has actually done little hiring of any kind
recently. Layoffs caused by the downturn have increased the number of
qualified U.S. workers in the marketplace, Cisco said.
"Basically, we have been a user of the program almost exclusively to
hire
electrical engineers, all of whom or most of whom have master's degrees
or
Ph.D.s," said a Texas Instruments spokesman. Statistics do show that
more
foreign nationals receive advanced degrees in engineering, computer
engineering and computer science.
In the 2000-01 academic year, foreign nationals took 60.4% of computer
engineering master's degrees. They earned 68.9% of computer science and
51.8% of combined computer science and engineering master's, according
to
Richard Heckel, technical director at Houghton, Mich.-based Engineering
Trends Inc. His firm tracks graduate information from U.S. engineering
colleges. As for Ph.D.s, foreigners took 66.1% in computer engineering
degrees, 54% in computer science and 54.3 % in combined computer
science/engineering.
But that matters only if you believe the companies; Matloff, a vigorous
critic of H-1B visas, says he doesn't. His research shows that only 1%
of
H-1B holders have Ph.D.s and only 7.5 % have master's degrees, though
other
research says otherwise.
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