Ohio Dreams About H-1B

Date: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 3:30 PM

*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***

Get the Facts on H-1B at
www.ZaZona.com

Ohio's Director of Department of Job & Family Services, Tom Hayes said
"We
here believe in the American dream . . . but we can't say that we have
to
hire people who are American citizens."

Not surprisingly the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)
doesn't share Hayes' dream of staffing Ohio state government with H-1Bs.
I
hate so say "I Told You So" (hehe.... OK, not really I love to say it)
but
we in the movement to Abolish H-1B have been telling unions for a long
time
that ignoring H-1B will backfire on them one day.

This is a superb article and illustrates how state governments have
adopted
corporate cost cutting techniques by using the cheap young blood of
indentured H-1Bs.

Today is my birthday and I'm celebrating by glutting your email box with
all
these wonderful articles. Please forgive me if You feel that I'm mailing
too
much. I'll slow down tommorow.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_stan
dard.xsl?/base/news/102301032686020.xml

Visa plan lets state hire foreign workers

06/02/02

Ted Wendling
Plain Dealer Bureau

Columbus

- The state is hiring foreign technology workers at the expense of
out-of-work domestic programmers by using a controversial visa program
that
has flooded the United States with computer specialists.

The so-called H-1B visa program has been widely used by large technology
firms such as Oracle and Intel but rarely by public agencies because the
visas cost employers thousands of dollars in application and legal fees.

The application fee alone recently increased from $500 to $1,000 per
employee. In addition, Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery is paying
a
Columbus law firm tens of thousands of dollars for legal work for H-1B
workers.

In the past two years, the state has paid the firm, Perez & Morris,
about
$70,000 for legal services pertaining to the immigration status of
employees
of state agencies and state universities and colleges. About half of
that
work was H-1B-related, according to Montgomery's spokesman, Joe Case.

The use of tax dollars to pay those fees has angered unemployed
programmers
and labor union officials, who contend that public money should not be
used
to hire foreign labor when a large number of qualified Americans are
looking
for work. Critics say the expenditure is particularly galling when Ohio
is
struggling to close a $1.75 billion budget deficit.

"From a moral and ethical perspective, this bothers me," said Paul
Hanrahan,
an unemployed programmer from Lakewood and regional director of the
Programmers Guild, a New Jersey organization opposed to the H-1B
program.
"These are foreign nationals.

They have no obligation to serve in the United States Army during time
of
war, and yet our tax dollars are being used to support them."

A Plain Dealer survey found that at least eight state agencies have
hired a
total of 22 workers under the H-1B program. Most arrive from India and
the
Pacific Rim.

They include Sivakumar Raju, a programmer from India who works for the
Department of Mental Health. Originally sponsored by a private
technology
firm that assigned him to work as a mental health contract employee, he
was
hired by the state in July 2000, requiring the department to pay a new
application fee.

Raju, 31, said he earned his $48,000-a-year state job by being the best
candidate.

"There were 12 people, along with me, contesting for the same job," he
said.
"We took a test and interview and all those things, and it happened to
be me
that stood first, so they hired me. It's not like there were some other
people who could do the job or somebody who could do it better than me."

The largest number of H-1B hires - eight - has occurred at the
Department of
Job & Family Services, where Director Tom Hayes has drawn accolades for
saving money and reducing his agency's dependence on high-priced
technology
contractors by replacing about 225 consultants with state staff. Many of
the
consultants were foreign workers who came to the United States on H-1B
visas. Hayes estimates a savings of $100,000 for every contractor who is
replaced with a state worker.

But coupled with the dot-com crash and a slumping economy that has seen
the
unemployment rate for computer programmers soar to nearly 6 percent, the
layoffs placed many unemployed H-1B workers in direct competition with
domestic programmers. Hayes said he anguished over the decision but
ultimately chose to hire some of the most-qualified foreign contractors.

The department actually tried to hire more - a total of 19 - but was
forced
to rescind the offers in March after running afoul of federal visa
regulations.

"We here believe in the American dream . . . but we can't say that we
have
to hire people who are American citizens," Hayes said. "We're not
bringing
in people from other countries for these positions; they are people who
are
already here. We're also not hiring these people to the exclusion of
others.
We're hiring these people and others."

That's not good enough for the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association,
Ohio's largest public employees union, even though the foreign workers
become union members.

"Our position is that we believe the state has an obligation to grow
their
own work force, to provide people with the training they need to move
into
those positions," OCSEA spokeswoman Sharon Ralph said. "It would be one
thing if the agency was in a position where there weren't enough IT
professionals available, but they aren't."

The H-1B program was launched in 1992 at the request of the computer
industry to quell fears that Y2K and a programmer shortage would spawn a
massive technology collapse. It allows up to 195,000 foreigners annually
to
enter the United States for up to six years to work "in a specialty
occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit or ability."
Applicants must have the equivalent of a bachelor's degree.

The program is controversial and has been subjected to a torrent of
criticism from people who contend that it provides cheap labor to
private
employers who are willing to skirt prevailing-wage laws. Critics also
say it
turns foreign workers into indentured servants who are loath to complain
about wages or working conditions for fear that their employers will
decide
not to sponsor them for green cards, a precursor to U.S. citizenship.

All of the state workers with H-1B visas are making union-scale wages.
At
Job & Family Services, the eight H-1B employees actually are being paid
above scale under a state law that allows the director to offer a higher
salary to new employees who have "qualifications that . . . are
determined
by the director to be exceptional." Some domestic programmers have been
hired at the higher range, too.

Employers like the H-1B program because it does not require them to
demonstrate a shortage of qualified American workers. However, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service's $1,000 application fee finances
a
$138 million training program that is intended to reduce the reliance on
temporary foreign workers.

The training program, operated by the U.S. Department of Labor, has been
an
abject failure.

"Unfortunately, DOL's . . . H-1B training program . . . never has filled
and
has no prospect of filling, these labor shortages," says a Bush
administration budget summary.

"At times, funds wind up training workers for decidedly low-tech jobs.
One
grant financed training for cable installers; another trained licensed
practical nurses, while a third was open only to union members in the
entertainment industry."

"I don't know of any real training program," agreed David Leopold, a
Cleveland immigration lawyer who represents H-1B applicants.

The $1,000 application fee is "basically a penalty for hiring an alien,"
he
said.

The H-1B program also has been prone to shocking cases of fraud.

Last June, Lakireddy Bali Reddy, a wealthy restaurateur and landlord in
Berkeley, Calif., was sentenced to eight years in prison after being
convicted of using H-1B visas to smuggle teenage girls from India into
the
United States to work in a Bay Area prostitution ring. Reddy used his
son's
Berkeley software company to sponsor many of the girls.

Authorities were alerted to the ring after one of the girls, 17-year-old
Chanti Prattipati, and her unborn child died from a carbon monoxide leak
in
1999 in one of Reddy's 1,100 rental units.

In another case, Deep Sai Consulting Inc. of Lawrenceville, Ga., and its
president, Syamala Kaqmineni, were convicted in November 1999 of
operating
what prosecutors called "a white-collar alien smuggling ring" by using
H-1B
visas to import ineligible computer programmers from India.

Contact Ted Wendling at:

twendling@plaind.com, 800-228-8272

© 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.

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