L-1 Data From New Hampshire
L-1 Data From New Hampshire
Date: Monday, April 04, 2005 5:26 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
by Rob Sanchez
April 04, 2005 No. 1226
Bob Sanders wrote an excellent article about L-1 visas. What makes his
article stand out is that he did some outstanding research. Sanders
obtained I-129 forms for New Hampshire by using the Freedom of
Information Act. He did this by filing at the regional USCIS office,
not the national one in Washington D.C.
For the first time ever, thanks to Bob Sanders, we get a peek at L-1
visa data. The New Hampshire Business Review agreed to share this data
with me, so for the first time ever, the public gets to view L-1 data
in much the same way we view H-1B Labor Condition Applications.
Many other activists including myself have been battling the USCIS for
years to obtain their entire database of nonimmigrant I-129s. Bob
Sanders is the first one that succeeded in obtaining data. Although
it's limited to the state of New Hampshire and to L visas, his efforts
give us a glimpse of the types of data the government has on their
computers.
Let me emphasize that I-129 data is the best available because there is
a one-for-one relationship between the visas a company requests and the
aliens that are allowed to work in the U.S. This data is far more
accurate than the LCA databases you can find on ZaZona.com as well as
several other websites, and it represents a huge breakthrough for those
of us that want to see who hires L visa holders and for what job
positions. Until today we have never been able to look at L-1 data - in
other words the L visa process has been a dark secret.
Unfortunately there are many fields missing in the data such as salary,
but perhaps in the future we can obtain more information. Hopefully
this is just a start.
To view the data formatted on an HTML webpage go to:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Library/Archives/NH-I129.htm
You can download the original spreadsheet at:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Library/Archives/NH_I129_data.xls
Please write to both Bob Sanders and the NH Business Review to thank
them for their excellent research and their willingness to share the
data with the public. This is truly unprecedented.
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http://www.nh.com/
(must sign up to view original article)
By Bob Sanders
bsanders@nhbr.com
Article published Apr 1, 2005
Visa program gives firms another way to import workers
When Celestica Inc. announced it was closing its Salem plant last month
---- and laying off 420 workers because it could manufacture more
competitively on foreign soil - a curious fact wasnt mentioned.
During the last three years, the high--tech manufacturing firm imported
54 foreign employees into New Hampshire, supposedly because it
couldnt find such specialized workers here, according to data
released by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Indeed, Celestica leads the state in petitioning for such employees
under the governments L1 visa program, which allows intracompany
transfers for as long as five years with no limits and few labor
protections.
During roughly the same time period -- from 2001 to 2003 -
Celesticas restructuring plan has resulted in the closure or
consolidation of 27 plants in the Americas and Europe. By Dec. 31,
2003, the company eliminated 18,190 jobs, according to statistics in
its most recent annual report.
Celestica said it needs the foreign employees to "apply technology"
because of "the global nature of our workforce," said Pam White, a
spokeswoman for the company, which is based in Canada. The Salem office
filed the petition for the workers because its human resources director
is located here. The workers were sent to work at facilities all over
the nation.
"Its not like they are taking someones job," said White.
But many laid--off high technology workers are suspicious that workers
here on such temporary visas are doing just that.
They say the L1 visa program is used to import lower--paid high--tech
workers to replace or drive down the wages of their American
counterparts. They also charge that the program is secretive, run
though CIS under the Department of Homeland Security and is a means to
avoiding the more regulated, and more open, H1 visa program, which is
partly managed by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Altogether, CIS granted 163 New Hampshire companies 506 L1 visa
petitions during the last three years, according to a database obtained
by New Hampshire Business Review from the CIS though the federal
Freedom of Information Act. Some 121 of these visas are still in
effect.
The list received by NHBR marks the first time CIS has released any
names of companies granted L1 visa petitions, according to activists
who have been trying for years to get such data nationwide.
The list is far from complete, because it doesnt include foreign
employees who work in New Hampshire but are brought in through the L1
program from companies in other states. It does include workers brought
in to the state and farmed out elsewhere.
CIS wont release actual petitions, which would say where the workers
were supposed to work, though that could change under the recently
passed LI Visa Reform Act, which goes into effect in June.North of the
border
While Celestica led the state list of L1 visa petitioners, not all
companies importing foreign workers are high--tech firms. Indeed
several small local construction firms are on the list, raising the
eyebrows of local labor unions.
And the main suppliers of foreign labor under the program are not
lower--wage countries like India, but Canada and the British Isles. And
half of the employees dont have specialized skills, but are in
management, according to the database.
One such management employee is Robert Hollinger, president of Venture
Construction of Pembroke, which uses robotic machines developed by GL
Inc. in Canada to waterproof bridges throughout the nation. Hollinger
moved to New Hampshire five years ago to start up Venture, a subsidiary
of GL, and has since brought his wife and four children to live with
him in Bow.
The rest of Ventures L1 visas - 10, according to the database,
though Hollinger puts the number at seven -- are for specialized
engineers who train locally hired union workers how to use the machines
to work on the bridges.
Although the Canadian engineers are entitled to live here for three
years - with an option to renew the visa for another two - most of them
come to the United States for a few weeks to complete a particular
project and then return home, Hollinger said.
Hollinger, however, said he is in the process of applying for his green
card and wants to settle in the Granite State.
"We arent taking anyones jobs. We are creating jobs," Hollinger
said. "All our subcontractors and suppliers are American as well. We
pay the same taxes as anybody else."
GL&V is another Canadian firm with a New Hampshire subsidiary, the
former Beloit paper company in Bedford, according to Robert Gaulin,
vice president of human resources for GL&V. The company also has a
facility in Nashua.
The firm is actually buying up plants around the country, and sends its
chemical engineers - the database says about 30, but Gaulin thinks that
the number is a third as much - to train new employees in its process.
"They bring the approach, the culture, the knowledge of the company to
do the transitions in a technology that is very specific," Gaulin
said.Is it insourcing?
Critics of the program say they have no problem with the way businesses
like GL&V and GL Inc. employ the L1 program.
"We are not saying that everybody is skirting the law," John Bauman,
president of The Organization for the Rights of American Workers
(TORAW), an organization based in Meriden, Conn., and formed by several
laid--off information technology workers. "The problem is that these
body shops use the loophole in the law to allow some people to bring in
people that can come in and take our jobs."
They point to the poster boy of their movement, Michael T. Emmons, who
in 2002 actually trained the L1 visa workers from Tata Consultancy
Services who eventually replaced him at his job at a Siemens facility
in Lake Mary, Fla.
"What Siemens and Tata Consulting did -- insourcing foreigners to
replace Americans -- is pathetic," Emmons said.
Emmons eventually got an IT job with the Florida state government, but
an outsourcing plan that could involve foreign workers might end his
position there as well.
Testimony from people like Emmons caused Congress to reform the visa
programs as part of the budget bill last December. The reforms were
twofold. One was aimed at the H1--A program, which brings a limited
number of specialized foreign workers into the United States. In
addition to abiding by the nationwide cap - which increased from 65,000
to 85,000 at the end of last year - employers seeking such workers have
to demonstrate that they could not hire these workers in the United
States and that they would be making the prevailing wage rate.
Despite such safeguards, TORAW and other critics complain that
companies havent made good--faith efforts to hire U.S. employees,
paid foreigners lower wages and found loopholes to get around the cap.
The program was run by the U.S. Department of Labor, and it was easier
to track how many workers worked and where they worked. In 2003, for
instance, there were some 1,500 H1 workers in New Hampshire.
It also was possible to find out what companies were paying these
workers. In 2003, Celestica, for instance, hired three H1--A specialty
workers, including a process engineer who was paid $46,416 a year.
The H1--B reform act - aside from increasing the cap slightly and
making some adjustments in the prevailing wage calculations - would
substantially increase the fee for H1--B to as much as $2,185 per
employee, depending on the companys size. Most of that increase
would go to retrain U.S. engineers displaced by the program, but
another $500 would be set aside for fraud prevention.
The L1 program involves fewer workers than the H1 program because it
requires a foreign parent company or subsidiary. But critics worry that
some companies are hiring high--tech consulting firms with ties to
other countries as a backdoor way of using the L1 program to get around
the H1 caps, since the L1 program doesnt have limits on the number
of workers a firm can bring in. It also has no requirement to document
need for a specialized worker or to match prevailing U.S. wages.
"Some are using the so--called L1 loophole to become the international
equivalent of temp agencies," said U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss,
R--Georgia, when introducing the L1 reform Act in 2003.How reform works
In New Hampshire, Geometric Software Solutions is the main consulting
company bringing in employees from India - 23 in all - as "specialists
in product life computer design" to "integrate our technologies,"
explained Kalidas Surapaneni, vice president of business operations of
the company, which is headquartered in India.
It has been difficult to hire locally, Surapaneni said, because U.S.
workers "dont want to wake up at midnight" to talk to company
officials back in India. It has even recruited at local campuses, and
has hired some engineers.
"We sincerely want to higher locally," he said, "But many local people
wouldnt like the jobs, and they dont always give quality work."
The company has used the H1 visa program, but the nationwide cap
prevented the company from importing more, he said, which led it to
turn to the L1 visa program.
Surapaneni wont say how much he pays his L1 visa workers, though he
did say that some make $55,000 while others are paid as much as $96,000
a year.
The workers work two to five years at various locations, sometimes
taking directions from his company and sometimes from those at the
client site.
The L1 Visa Reform Act will affect companies like Geometric because it
would forbid consultants from subcontracting out employees if they were
not taking directions from the consulting firm itself.
But Bauman of TORAW has problems with the law because, he says, it
doesnt close all of the loopholes. He said it still allows
consulting companies to set up shop at another workplace and
subcontract out their work as a whole, rather than as individual
consultants.
Chris Bentley, a spokesperson for CIS, defended the practices.
The CIS uses adjudicators to determine the management or specialized
nature of the labor involved.
"If someone has received a petition, then they must have been fully
eligible to do that. The adjudicators know the law, and we will stand
by their decisions," he said.
But critics arent mollified, noting that it is hard to determine
whether the CIS is requiring companies to follow the law when so little
information is available. The L1 reform act would require the release
of more information, but it is unclear how much will be released until
the agency completes the regulations to implement the law. And that
could be long after June, when it is supposed to go into effect.
--- Text from Sidebox ---
Construction workers and the L1 visa
Local construction trade unions expressed surprise that several
construction contractors are on the list of New Hampshire companies
employing L1 visa workers.
Among them are RJB Drywall of New Boston and Londonderry, which was
granted petitions to bring in a dozen workers - all management -- and
North Star Masonry of Pelham, which brought in another 10 employees,
half of whom are specialized workers.
Neither company appears to be in business, though most of their visas
are still in effect.
RJB Drywall is not listed in the phone book and last filed an annual
report at the New Hampshire secretary of states office in 2003,
according to the agency Web site.
North Star Masonry dissolved in 1993, according to the secretary of
state, though petitions for visas were filed under the firms name
nearly a decade afterward, and two such visas still seem to be in
effect.
Contacts listed on the CIS database for both companies could not be
reached for comment.
"I dont see the specialized technology of applying drywall to
studs," said Steve Joyce, researcher at the New England carpenters
union, which sued RJB in Massachusetts federal court over
subcontracting issues.
The details of the suit, which was settled, could not be retrieved by
deadline.
John Jackson, business manager of the carpenters union in New
Hampshire echoed Joyces concerns.
"The drywall industry is notorious for bringing people down from Canada
and employing people as independent contractors," said Jackson.
Similarly, Bob Martel, a lobbyist and former business agent for the
local laborers union, said that the number of workers coming down
from Canada is "kind of alarming. The Canadian dollar is worth less, so
they work for less and make it more difficult for a legitimate
contractor who has his own workforce. Its bad enough fighting
undocumented workers, but it is very discouraging to have the U.S.
government allowing companies to bring in these people."
The idea that small construction firms are using the L1 program to
bring in workers, "goes beyond my wildest nightmares," said John
Bauman, president of The Organization for the Rights of American
Workers. "This isnt what the program is supposed to be about."
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