Boston Globe article Sparks replies

Date: Monday, August 12, 2002 12:35 PM

*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***

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

This Boston Globe article has caused many to write letters to the editor.
Some of the letters were written by people on this newsletter - WAY TO GO
EVERYONE!!!

The letters can be viewed at
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/216/business/LettersP.shtml and I will
reproduce them below.

Note an ominous sign in the article below. Scientists may think that
bio-tech will be an escape from H-1B but the companies are already
positioning themselves to import cheap labor. They [economists] predict
there will be an upsurge in the number of biologists and scientists needed
in the growing bio-tech field, especially in Boston." Roughly translated
that means that companies will be importing H-1B scientists since Americans
are way too expensive.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/190/nation/Battle_is_brewing_over_tech_visas+.shtml

Battle is brewing over tech visas
Critics say scarce jobs should go to Americans

By Cindy Rodriguez, Globe Staff, 7/9/2002

Yashwant Bhambhani rode the high-tech wave of the late 1990s, coming to
Boston from India under a special visa for skilled workers to propel the
dot-com explosion that invigorated the economies of California, Colorado,
and Massachusetts.

In those days, he'd send out a resume and - presto! - get a half dozen
calls back. People like Bhambhani were greeted with fanfare by members of
Congress, the information technology industry - and even labor unions. The
record number of high-tech guest workers was seen as an engine for the
seemingly limitless growth of the New Economy.

But today, amid a prolonged slump in the high-tech industry that has shut
down dot-coms and left tens of thousands of technology workers unemployed,
the welcome mat has been pulled back. Bhambhani lost his job with Star
Information Technology in Medfield last year, requiring him to leave the
country immediately, joining the exodus of thousands of laid-off foreign
technology workers.

''Everything was rosy until June of 2000. Then in just three months the
work seemed to vanish,'' Bhambhani said. ''I've never seen such a dramatic
change in my life.''

Now, a growing number of interest groups - from labor unions to Western
conservatives - want the so-called H1-B visa program scaled back or
eliminated. They say the current annual ceiling of 195,000 new visas for
foreign-born skilled workers is too high. Furthermore, they say US
companies do not need to continue bringing in huge numbers of workers from
overseas when there is already a large pool of unemployed Americans.

''The economy in the [information technology] industry has been in
recession for two years. To continue to say that they can't find qualified
workers is absolutely ridiculous,'' said Marcus Courtney, an organizer with
The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, part of the Communications
Workers of America union. ''We need to scale the program back to more
realistic numbers.''

Massachusetts has a lot riding on the debate. In 2000 it had the highest
percentage of workers in information technology of any state, about 1 in 10
workers, according to the American Electronics Association. During the
latter part of the '90s, as dot-coms popped up all along the Route 128
corridor, companies went on a hiring spree, looking first at local
universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston
University.

But they also looked overseas to people such as Bhambhani, who played a
critical role in the rapid growth, specialists say.

Shilpa Pherwani, a consultant with Ibis Consulting Group, a Waltham-based
company, said about 20 percent of the work force of Massachusetts high-tech
companies are here on H1-Bs.

''The local economy wouldn't have grown the way it did without them,'' said
Andre Mayer, senior vice president for research at Associated Industries of
Massachusetts, a nonprofit association of Massachusetts employers.

The H1-B visa was created in 1992, partly in response to company executives
who said there was a shortage of workers schooled in certain computer
languages and technical skills. It started with a ceiling of 65,000 foreign
workers annually, rising to its current cap of 195,000. Last year, 202,000
workers were granted H1-B visas, with 7,000 being carried over into 2002.
But from October 2001 to March 2002, employers sponsored many fewer: Only
about 44,500 compared with 87,000 during the same period the year before.

The current ceiling expires next year and will revert to the original limit
of 65,000 if no action is taken. Already both sides are gearing up for what
is expected to be a drawn-out battle.

In an effort to ensure that the cap is lowered, Representative Thomas G.
Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, introduced in the fall the High-Tech Work
Fairness and Economic Stimulus Act of 2001. It aims to keep the number of
H1-B visa workers at 65,000 and would require further reductions in the
face of rising unemployment. The Communications Workers of America, which
represents technology workers, also supports lowering the cap.

But some labor economists suggest it may be short-sighted to trim the H1-B
visa program now. They predict there will be an upsurge in the number of
biologists and scientists needed in the growing bio-tech field, especially
in Boston.

Bhambhani, who was laid off from his high-tech job in Boston, is now
working in India. He travels on business to the United States, but he
cannot live here unless he finds a new American H1-B sponsor.

''We're living in a global economy, and there shouldn't be any barriers,''
he said. ''We should have a free trade of skills. If someone is coming in
from outside the country it's because they have an edge over you. It's not
like you're giving jobs away.''

Cindy Rodriguez can be reached at rodriguez@globe.com .

OPINION
Letters

Compiled By Globe Staff, 8/4/2002

We received dozens of letters from across the country in response to Diane
E. Lewis's story, ''Congress asked to review IT field; Engineers group upset
over H1-B visas, job losses,'' published July 23 in the Business section.
Here are some of them:

The unemployment rates do not take into account that after severance and
unemployment benefits are used up, IT professionals turn to whatever they
can do to earn money - delivering pizzas, driving trucks, etc. They are then
not counted as unemployed IT workers. In my estimation, the unemployment
figures are far higher.

Is the H-1B visa program being used to replace Americans with foreign labor
that will work cheaper? Most definitely. Greedy corporations don't hesitate
to exploit loopholes in the H-1B laws, despite the damage to the US economy
when Americans lose their jobs. My husband and a number of his co-workers
(programmers) were replaced with H-1B visa holders from India this year. The
company announced up front it was doing this to boost profits. My husband
was forced to remain on the job for six months to train his replacement (so
much for the claim that ''we only bring in the best and the brightest'' or
''we only hire H-1Bs when we can't find Americans to do the work''). My
husband, despite sending out many hundreds of resumes and spending hours
networking, has yet to find a job. We have lost our health insurance.

Half a million high-tech jobs were lost in the United States last year, yet
we continue to bring in H-1B visa holders. Why? Don't corporate leaders and
our congressmen understand that people without jobs do not invest in the
stock market, do not buy consumer goods, and do not pay taxes? It's time to
get rid of the H-1B visa.

Linda Evans

Matthews, N. C.

Almost everyone I know either has been out of work for over six months or
has had to take incredible pay cuts and/or jobs that were previously
impossible to consider.

The last thing we need are other countries shipping their people here when
my friends and I are in such bad shape. I haven't had a real job in well
over a year, and previously I was chief scientist at a major Internet
company that died. If it wasn't for the small amount of money I'd saved, and
sporadic consulting jobs, my family would be out on the street. I have two
kids almost college age, and I have had to explain to them why I can't send
them to college as I'd hoped.

Len Rose

Fairlawn, N. J.

I am in an interesting position with regard to this debate, as I have
benefited from programs similar to the US's H1-B program. I spent a year in
England during the beginning of the IT boom in 1996-97 on a visa similar to
a US H1-B. It was an enriching experience both professionally and
personally, and one for which I am extremely grateful. The standard my
employer and I had to meet was to prove that I possessed skills or
experience no one in the entire European Union could provide. This was a
challenge. We were able to meet this burden because I had designed
proprietary software that I was uniquely qualified to continue developing.

I believe retaining some level of openness to international employment
opportunities is important, in that it contributes to professional
development and the development of the world economy. However, I suspect
that a more stringent set of requirements would leave the door open for
opportunity while preserving jobs for professional Americans.

I don't feel H1-Bs are the largest contributor to the problem, but rather an
easy scapegoat. The greater problem is in this era of high-speed
communications and with the reductions in barriers to trade, employers are
much more likely to outsource to countries where labor can be had at much
lower prices. My last employer sold his business after Sept. 11, and upon
inquiring about work with the new owner I was dismissed with the comment,
''For what we paid you, we could hire five Indian or Mexican developers to
work remotely.''

Herein lies one of the greater threats to American IT professionals. Pride
in being able to say ''Made in USA'' is conspicuously missing from the
software business. Any legislative restriction in companies' ability to
outsource in this manner will likely be construed as an attack on business
freedom or as an implicit tariff.

It's quite obvious that the explosive growth and subsequent decline in the
tech sector along with the more recently exposed epidemic of voodoo
accounting has produced a surplus of technical professionals in the US. I
hope employers can see that these hardships will not stop the gears of
technological advancement, and that the market will react with prudence and
planning rather than with large-scale international outsourcing or even
worse, panic.

Free trade and international employment opportunities like H1-Bs should be
about achieving a greater good, not about disenfranchising an industry full
of highly skilled Americans. I apologize if this letter reeks of some
bitterness, but it has been difficult to accept being a graduate of Carnegie
Mellon University, working for high-profile companies like Microsoft, and
effectively losing my job to telecommuting workers in developing countries
who make less than the US minimum wage. Legislators ought to be more focused
on finding reasonable ways to encourage wise, slow, and steady growth in the
sector instead of pandering to a sense of xenophobia and taking fruitless
action solely for the sake of doing something. I've commiserated with plenty
of unemployed tech workers since losing my job 10 months ago, and not one of
them is concerned about losing a job to an H1-B recipient.

Ian P. McCullough

South Boston

Harris Miller speaks for no one in the rank-and-file IT world. The H1-B
system is nothing more than a government subsidy to Big Business that allows
it to force wages down. There is no shortage of skilled American IT workers.
There IS a shortage of young people (under 30) who will work for half the
current wage 70 hours a week with no overtime and can be thrown away and
replaced when their ''skill set'' becomes ''obsolete.''

I applaud Senator Kennedy for looking into this. Many thousands of American
have lost their jobs, probably permanently, due to the forced influx of
H1-Bs along with the general recession in the IT sector. The H1-B program is
unpatriotic and unfair and needs to be exposed for what it is. It's just
another symptom of all that is wrong with the government being run by Big
Business.

I think we need an H1-B program for politicians and top management in
corporate America. They obviously don' t have the right skill set for
decency, humanity, and patriotism.

Bill Blackmon

New York, N. Y.

Your article is just the very tip of the iceberg. As a mechanical design
engineer involved in the design of steel and plastic components (for 30
years), I know first-hand what industry is doing to the engineering
profession. The situation really sickens me.

Gary Stahlinski

Woburn

This is a very complex subject that will determine the viability of the
engineering and computer science disciplines with US-born students in the
future. We are alreadying seeing our US-born undergraduates abandoning
engineering and pursuing graduate degrees in other fields because the high
influx of foreigners at the Ph.D. level has made the Ph.D. economically
unattractive. The notion that US-born students aren't capable of doing the
Ph.D. is pure rubbish.

Many of our best graduates who are easily capable of doing a Ph.D. in
engineering are going for the MBA, medical school, dental school, and law
school. In another 25 years at the current trend, all of our engineering
will be done by immigrants.

James Gover

professor, Kettering University

Flint, Mich.

I believe the state of the economy is due to layoffs, corporate downsizing,
and sending work offshore since 1986. Laying off an employee is

laying off a consumer. This recession was inevitable; the bubble had to
break sooner or later. The time to sell a stock is when a company starts to
lay off its productive work force.

For a sustainable recovery I believe we have to get back to basics and get
some honest and accurate numbers from the US government. Then we will have
to design a better future. The predicament we are in is due to a faulty
design based on lies and manpower shortage propaganda so corporate America
could import and rely on cheap foreign labor. Our government's CEOs, the US
Congress, are totally responsible for the current state of the economy. They
passed legislation to import cheap foreign workers.

It is time to stop using foreign labor and put the American consumer back to
work.

Richard F. Tax

River Vale, N. J.

Some US scientists have criticized the IT industry for seeking to increase
the number of H1-B visas. Norman Matloff at the University of California at
Davis has argued that companies hire only a fraction of US engineers who
apply for jobs because they prefer less expensive foreign labor - which is
illegal. Hiring foreign labor at a rate less than the prevailing wage for
the equivalent US work is against the rules of the H1-B system.

Joe Kraska

San Diego

The most surprising part of your article was that the aim was for companies
''to rely on foreign nationals only when they cannot find qualified US
citizens to fill jobs.''

In Cleveland, both large corporations I've worked for in the past three
years that used foreign labor to replace US citizens stated it was
financial, period. The entire group I was contracting to when I was replaced
will probably also be replaced, once their platforms become obsolete. The
group has now been taken over 100 percent by an Indian firm that underbid
the contract by 65 percent.

If I get a single call in a week about a job, that's a lot. All the jobs I
qualify for get filled almost immediately. I'm a very experienced multiple
operating system administrator, working on computers since the 1st grade,
and the only jobs available are phone support. That's not right.

Jeff Miyares

Elyna, Ohio

Finally, a somewhat ''balanced'' report on the H1-B visa issue, one not
often covered by the press. You just touched the ''tip of the iceberg.''
This is a much, much, MUCH bigger story.

Robert B. Johnson

B uffalo Grove, Ill.

Well, finally something is being said about this travesty. I want to add my
2 cents worth to this nightmare. Yesterday, finally, after being laid off
Sept. 11, I received an offer for employment again. That's an awfully long
time to be looking. And what makes this especially troubling is the level of
my skills. My chosen field is computer database programming, specifically
using Microsoft Visual FoxPro. In the almost universally accepted testing
service Brainbench, my certification score is tied with someone from Canada
for top honors in the world, in first place in the United States.

Kill the H1-B program and do it now. The company that laid me off last
September (DataScan Technologies of Alpharetta, Ga.) is as guilty as any. It
staffed an entire project with nearly all H1-B folks, mostly from India. I
have nothing against immigrants (my wife is from Nicaragua), but this
program is an absolute sham - just like NAFTA.

Roger Shumaker

Los Angeles

For 10 years I have been unemployed or underemployed. Finally Congress is to
review this fact. My expectations are not great.

I wrote every member of Congress on the immigration commission and told them
what the H1-B program did to me. Not one answered my letters. Then I wrote
my state senator; the response letter was vague.

You see, it is not about a need for qualified technical labor. It is all
about cheap labor, cheap labor being more desirable than anything else.

And it is not over. With so many senior engineers being forced into
retirement or another field, and the just-out-of-college engineers not able
to secure jobs worthy of a degree, the next generation of college grads who
would be engineers will choose a different field. That will result in an
engineering shortage somewhere down the road.

When I get an interview and see that half or a large part of the staff has
just arrived in the US, I know that the result for me will not be
employment.

Gary Wayne

Roswell, Ga.

The Globe Business section welcomes letters from readers. E-mail letters to
business@globe.com; fax to 617-929-3183; or mail to Business Letters, c/o
Cheryl A. Appel, The Boston Globe, P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378.
Letters intended for publication should include the writer's name, address,
and daytime phone number. All letters are subject to editing.

This story ran on page E5 of the Boston Globe on 8/4/2002.
� Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.

Back to archives