Anything from Schumer will not be good for the American tech worker.
He is pushing to remove restrictions by Senators Grassley and Sanders that would make TARP recipients hire American citizens over H1b's.
-----------
Subject: Senate ties TARP aid to H-1B restrictions
To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter
The Senate voted today to place restrictions on the hiring of H-1Bs by
banks that accept government bailout money. The legislation, which was
proposed by Senators Grassley and Sanders as an amendment to the
economic stimulus bill, would in its original form have imposed a flat
ban on hiring of H-1Bs by the TARP-aided banks. It was weakened
quite a bit (details below), and of course may not survive conference
committee etc., but it certainly sends a strong message.
The move was sparked by an AP story that ran in many major newspapers,
investigating usage of H-1Bs by banks that had accepted bailout funds.
The AP places restrictions on redistribution of its articles, so I will
not enclose it here, but you can read it at, for instance,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090201/ap_on_bi_ge/bailout_foreign_workers One of the good things about that article was that it noted that paying
H-1Bs below-market rates can be done perfectly legally. Here is an
excerpt from the article:
* Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay
* them less than American workers.
* Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on
* the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage
* scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with
* lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of
* education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated
* American workers would be considered overqualified.
* "The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the
* workers," said John Miano of Summit, N.J., a lawyer who has analyzed the
* wage data and started the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group that
* opposes the H-1B system.
I've explained elsewhere the details of these and other loopholes.
Needless to say, the industry lobbyists were quick to react. Note that
the vanguard of the industry lobbyists includes the American Immigration
Lawyers Association (AILA), who have obvious vested interests. Indeed,
according to the immigration lawyers newsletter Immigration Daily, for
many law firms H-1B and employment-based (EB) green cards form the
lion's share of their business. I'm enclosing below the press release
from the AILA.
As always, the AILA press release cites work by the National Foundation
for Public Policy, a one-man organization run by Stuart Anderson, who is
hardly an unbiased researcher. He's been making a living writing
articles supporting the H-1B program since the mid-1990s, and was the
author of the lengthy 1997 report by the industry lobbying group
Information Technology of America, which formed the basis for the
doubling of the H-1B cap enacted by Congress in late 1998. Anderson
later worked as a Senate staffer, and was the author of that 1998
legislation, and then of a second act increasing the cap in 2000.
Though he does not say who his present employer (funder) is, the fact
that the lobbyists who quote him the most are immigration attorneys
would seem to point to the American Immigration Lawyers Association or
their American Immigration Law Foundation as his main funder.
Anderson's job creation claim comes from a blatant statistical reasoning
error. See
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/NFAP2.txt for details.
The industry lobbyists love to portray any restriction on H-1B as
blocking industry's ability to hire "the best and the brightest" from
around the world. I strongly support bringing in outstanding talent,
and have personally acted on that conviction in a number of ways,
but as I have shown in my writings, the fact is that only a tiny
percentage of H-1Bs are of that caliber. And if a bank does find
someone of outstanding talent, it can hire the person under the O-1
visa program.
Now, what effect would the measure have if it survives the political
process? I have not seen the exact text yet, but according to press
reports the provision would extend to all TARP-aided banks the rules now
in force for H-1B-dependent employers. The two main features of those
rules are (a) that the employer must recruit Americans for a position
before filling it with an H-1B and (b) employers may not hire H-1Bs
during the period of 90 days before and 90 days after a layoff.
Restriction (a) is not quite as strong as it sounds. A similar
provision in EB green card law is full of loopholes, as the infamous
YouTube videos demonstrated so dramatically; see
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/YouTubeVideosH1B.txt There is a little-known technical difference between the American
recruitment requirements in H-1B-dependent and EB law, with the
H-1B-dependent version being somewhat more effective.
Also, there is an exemption in the H-1B dependent rules for workers who
earn at least $60,000 or have a Master's degree.
All in all, the numerical impact of the Sanders/Grassley amendment would
probably be limited. But it is certainly worthwhile.
The provisions here were part of the Durbin/Grassley bill in the last
Congress. In addition, that bill addressed the real heart of the
problems with H-1B and EB green cards, by setting a definition of
prevailing wage that would reflect reality. Due to these
provisions--U.S. recruitment, anti-layoff and prevailing wage--I
strongly endorsed the bill. (It also had some other parts that I felt
were not important.)
A Computerworld article on today's vote is enclosed below, in addition
to the AILA press release. For the AP story on the vote, see
www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/02/06/ap6020618.html
Norm
www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=knowledge_center&articleId=9127552&taxonomyId=1&intsrc=kc_top
Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/schumer-vows-to-overturn-ban-on-tarp-takers-hiring-h-1b-workers-2009-2#ixzz0jaqHKSDE
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