Harris Miller's VP

Harris Miller's VP

Date: Monday, September 16, 2002 11:25 AM


*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***

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


When we think of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) we
usually think of the infamous Harris Miller.

Meet Jeff Lande, a vice president of ITAA. Lande is a paid ITAA staffer and
was the lead lobbyist in favor of raising the H-1B visa cap. This article
was written in 2001 and yet Lande was saying that there is a shortage of
800,000 IT workers. Lande's solution to the shortage is classic ITAA - he
wants to increase the number of H-1B visas.

This article talks about a naturalized citizen from India named Dinesh
Ghandi. You might think he would qualify for one of those 800,000 jobs that
Lande was talking about, but he didn't because he is an American citizen.
Ghandi made the mistake of getting a Green Card because he thought to get a
dream job he needed to be a citizen. Now he suffers the same nightmare as
the rest of us because he can't get a job.



http://www.calcpa.org/californiacpa/articles/2001/01.02.html


The H-1B Controversy
by Laurie Mason

A year ago Dinesh Ghandi, with a master's degree in computer science and six
years of experience as a programmer, went looking for a job in the high-tech
industry. He posted his resume on various job Web sites. "To be frank I got
a
lot of responses," says Ghandi, 33. No surprise there. At the time, the
computer industry was begging for skilled programmers.

The only thing that seemed to stand between Ghandi and his dream job was his
American citizenship. "I look like an H-1B visa person, and they called me
up
because of my name," the native of India explains. "Then they asked me,
'What
is your status?' and I said, 'I am a U.S. citizen." Once companies learned
that, he said they stopped calling. "It made me frustrated because I went
all
through the interviews, and then my final [citizenship] status comes into
the
picture."

Ghandi says this happened with three different companies before he finally
landed a good job as a programming manager at a biotech firm. Further, he
knows the people who were hired with the other companies he'd interviewed
with, knows his skills were equal to theirs, and knows they were hired on
H-1B visas.

Worker Shortage
In October 2000, calling it a short-term solution to a shortage of American
high-tech workers, President Clinton signed a law increasing the annual cap
of foreign worker visas (H-1Bs) from 115,000 to 195,000 for three years. The
H-1B visa law, which allows foreign workers to come to the United States to
work for up to six years, was in direct response to cries from the high-tech
industry that they could not compete unless they had more employees to
choose
from.

"As the U.S. economy comes to depend more heavily on information technology,
the availability of skilled workers becomes increasingly important to the
nation," said Alan Merten, president of George Mason University,
communityenting in a press release on a congressional report from the
National Research Council. While the report, which Merten wrote, titled
"Building a Workforce for the Information Economy" was meant to help
Congress
decide how to vote on the H-1B visa bill, it didn't meet its deadline. But
it
nonetheless supported changes to the government's policies on foreign
workers. "The labor market for these workers is unquestionably tight, and
all
sources of talent--both domestic and foreign--are needed to address this
problem."

Jeff Lande, a vice president with the Information Technology Association of
America, a trade association representing information technology
corporations, was the lead lobbyist in favor of raising the H-1B visa cap.
He
says the industry has exploded and the number of qualified applicants has
not
kept up.

"We have a shortage of skilled IT workers that is well over 800,000 in the
U.S. right now, and that figure is expected to grow," says Lande, who feels
the solution lies in working with the government, and in training current
workers as well as the next generation. One such possible solution is the
Technology Education and Training Act of 2000, which would amend the IRC to
allow limited tax credit for IT training program expenses. The bill is
currently with a House subCommittee.

However, Lande notes that such solutions take time and "We have an immediate
problem right now. The U.S. companies must have access to the highly skilled
talent that they need. That's why we advocate for increasing the H-1B visa
gap."

Critics Say Labor Shortage Is Ruse
Critics of the H-1B visa law insist that there is not a high-tech worker
shortage, but rather a glut of available workers. "Fewer than half of the
computer science graduates get programming jobs," says Norm Matloff, a
computer science professor at the University of California at Davis. "This
is
nationwide. I've talked to colleagues at other universities and found
similar
results. This shows the hypocrisy of the industry lobbyists' claims."

Matloff is arguably the country's most outspoken critic of the H-1B visa
law,
which he insists is a bipartisan move to help the high-tech industry keep
labor costs down, in return for political donations. Indeed, after sailing
through the House, the Senate approved the visa increase by a vote of 96­1
before sending it to President Clinton. An Oct. 4, 2000 article in the San
Francisco Chronicle quotes Robert Bennett, R-Utah, as saying, "There were in
fact a whole lot of folks against it, but because they are tapping the
high-tech community for campaign contributions, they don't want to admit
that
in public."

"Basically, everyone on both sides of the aisle is completely beholden,
absolutely unconditionally beholden, to the [high-tech] industry," says
Matloff, who presented his own findings before Congress in an extensive
report titled "Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage."

John Miano, president of the Programmers Guild, agrees with Matloff. "H-1B
has always been justified in terms of the mythical 'great programmer
shortage,'" says Miano, owner and operator of New Jersey-based Coliseum
Builders. "Companies aren't looking for skills. They're looking for cheap
labor."

Salary statistics posted on the industry Web site Computer Economics show
that the average C++ programmer position ranges from $50,700 to $84,600. An
Immigration and Naturalization Service report, "Characteristics of Specialty
Occupation Workers (H-1B)" finds the median H-1B salary to be $47,000 for
systems analysts and programmers. Matloff cites university studies that have
found gaps of 33 percent (UCLA), 20­30 percent (Cornell) and 15­20 percent
(UC Davis).

But according to Matloff, salaries are not even the biggest issue. More
important is the fact that the H-1B visa holder must stay with their
sponsoring company--or find a new one that will sponsor them in a process
that can take months. "If an H-1B goes to work for Sun (Microsystems), then
they will be an indentured servant to Sun," he says. "If Sun is sponsoring
them for a green card, they are stuck with Sun. On a de facto basis they are
indentured servants. They can't leave. If any industry lobbyist tells you
that H-1Bs are paid the same as everybody else, all you have to do is think
about the fact that they can't leave. And if they can't leave, then they
can't leave for a higher salary elsewhere. Nor can they negotiate by
threatening to leave. So just by definition you know they're not getting the
best salary they can."

However, this problem was addressed by a new provision in the 2000 H-1B visa
cap increase, which allows H-1B visa holders to change jobs as soon as a new
company files sponsoring papers for them with the INS. In the past, H-1B
visa
holders had to wait for the INS to approve the application before they could
change jobs. "This gives [H-1B visa holders] a tremendous amount of
latitude," says Lande, who acknowledges that if the INS doesn't approve the
applications, the foreign worker would be left in limbo as their H-1B status
would not be renewed.

Employers Focus on Skills over Education
A still bigger issue, might be the fact that in California, many skilled,
educated workers are looking for work at the same time that California
employers are doing everything they can to combat a severe labor shortage. A
study released in October by the University of California at San Francisco
and the Field Institute, found that nearly 3.5 million unemployed adult
Californians with work experience are available to fill jobs.

"We are in as tight a labor market as we've ever seen, and that is at odds
with this picture of available workers," Ed Yelin, a UCSF researcher, who
worked on the California Work and Health Survey, comments in a San Francisco
Chronicle article on the subject. In the same article, Yelin notes that
high-tech employers, in particular, would benefit from training their
workforce rather than hiring only people with the specific skills needed.

"HR people say the central issue is skills," says Matloff. "It's not bodies.
They will freely admit to you that they reject the vast majority of their
applicants."

Are American students simply unprepared to take jobs in the high-tech field?
National Science Foundation data shows that on average, American workers
attain fewer science and engineering degrees than workers in Britain, South
Korea, Germany, Japan and Taiwan--but more than China, a major source of
H-1B
visa talent (India is the top source).

Also, a study communityissioned by the ITAA, predicted nearly 850,000 tech
jobs would go unfilled in 2000. The study, sponsored by, among others, Cisco
Systems, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle, (all top employers of H-1B visa
workers)
found a gap between skills needed by employers and skills possessed by
potential employees.

However, while 84 percent of the IT managers surveyed in the report rated
on-the-job training as "effective or very effective," only 10 percent of the
companies said they hired partially qualified workers and provided training
to the employee. The study also found that "the most communityon coping
strategy when managers are unable to hire IT staff is outsourcing and
temporary or contract employees." However, the study noted that "Outsourcing
firms responded to this study with the same problem--a severe shortage of IT
workers and a skills gap in key positions."

Long vs. Short Term
Most H-1B supporters say education is the answer--in the long term. But for
the short term, they say the larger field of candidates provided by foreign
workers is needed. "Companies are spending a fortune on training and
education efforts," says Lande. "With the shortage of talent, U.S. companies
want to find people with the skill sets they need. They prefer to retrain.
They do invest hundreds of millions annually with training and education
efforts."

Matloff isn't biting. "The educational issue is a red herring," he says,
noting that the high-tech field changes so rapidly that the only way for
workers to keep up is by learning on the job. He also says that anyone
skilled in a given computer language can, within weeks of on-the-job
training, gain competence in another. "The educational system could up its
production of programmers by a factor of ten and all that would do is give
them ten times as many applicants to reject. I don't mean to imply for a
minute that there are not issues worthy of discussion about our educational
system. But in this case it is a red herring, pure and simple. As
demonstrated by the fact that they're not using the people that they have."

Still, the temptation to hire H-1B's is great. Many say that since H-1B's
are
"indentured" they can't leave companies short handed, in mid-project and
that
gives them great appeal as employees. "Software programmers can move around,
"
says Ghandi. "An H-1B visa holder is stuck. The company feels comfortable
with that person, they know the person is going to finish the job on time
and
isn't going to go anywhere."

Laurie Mason is a San Francisco-based freelance writer.

© 2001 California Society of Certified Public Accountants. For reprint
permission, contact Clar Rosso, managing editor.


© California Society of CPAs .
(800) 9CALCPA . 1235 Radio Road . Redwood City, CA 94065-1217 .


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