In a message dated 12/8/07 12:54:41 A.M. Central Standard Time, matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu writes:
To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter 103
It's bad enough when a naive journalist gets hoodwinked by a slick PR
pro, but far worse when the journalist ought to know better, as is the
case with the enclosed blog.
Consider this passage:
# According to the key findings in the report,"Driving Jobs and Innovation
# Offshore: The Impact of High Skill Immigration Restrictions on America," most
# legit American companies do not hire H-1B visa workers as a means to get cheap
# labor.
# In fact, the report says "in examining all Department of Labor agency actions
# between 1992 and 2004" related to allegations of underpayment of wages, "the
# average amount of back wages owed to an H-1B employee was only $5,919." Not
# exactly the tens of thousands of dollars H-1B critics often allege.
We "H-1B critics" have pointed out time and again that those violations
of the law are irrelevant, because most MAJOR underpayment of H-1Bs is
done via loopholes, i.e. NOT in violation of the law.
Why do I say Ms. McGee knows this? Because she herself has quoted us H-1B
critics as saying so. For instance on July 21 of this year she wrote
(http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201200100):
% But the most likely source of H-1B abuse pertains to the rule that
% employers pay the "prevailing wage" for skills in a certain geographic
% area. That's a standard rife with loopholes, says John Miano, founder
% of the Programmers Guild, which acts as an advocate for the software
% programming community. Depending on available data, an employer can use
% the median wage for all U.S. employees working in an occupation and
% location, the average of an employer's current workers, or the
% Department of Labor's skills-based prevailing wage system. Classifying
% workers in the lowest of those levels can mean paying them in the 15th
% to 20th percentile. "Between all these measures, you usually have enough
% leeway to take $20,000 to $30,000 off the market wage without breaking
% the law in any detectable manner," contends Miano. Ron Hira, an
% assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of
% Technology who's on leave as a research associate at the Economic Policy
% Institute, points to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's most
% recent report to Congress, which shows that the median wage in 2005
% for new H-1B computing professionals was $50,000. That year,
% InformationWeek's Salary Survey found a median staff base salary of
% $69,000 and total cash compensation of $71,000.
So, McGee not only quoted one of us H-1B critics as saying that
employers can accrue major wage savings in a FULLY LEGAL manner via
LOOPHOLES, she even quoted another H-1B critic who illustrated this with
InformationWeek's only salary survey.
She had written something similar last year, on July 13
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/07/doing_h1b_math.html
* For instance, while the Dept. of Labor has four pay levels considered
* "prevailing wages" for programmers in San Jose, Calif., employers can
* get away with paying H-1B workers the lowest wage level by watering
* down the position's required skills, education, experience, etc., says
* Berry.
*
* More specifically, in San Jose, the Dept of Labor's four levels of
* "prevailing wages" for programmers range from $57,762 for level one;
* $72,800 for level two; $87,838 for level 3; and $102,877 for level
* four. The four different levels are based on skills, years of
* experience, education, and a few other things.
*
* So, for instance, the loopholes in DOL rules allow employers to hire
* foreign workers with PhDs in jobs paying the lowest wages as long as
* the position's job description doesn't require an advanced degree or
* "more than average experience," says Berry.
*
* The guild wants Congress to close these pay loopholes in any
* H-1B (or more comprehensive immigration) reform bill that gets passed.
* Congress should redefine the lowest "prevailing wage" level for H-1B
* workers to be the "median" pay level U.S. workers earn in an
* occupation.
* The guild wants Congress to close these pay loopholes in any
* H-1B (or more comprehensive immigration) reform bill that gets passed.
* Congress should redefine the lowest "prevailing wage" level for H-1B
* workers to be the "median" pay level U.S. workers earn in an
* occupation.
*
* For employers in San Jose, that would mean paying an H-1B programmer a
* minimum of $83,500 annuallywhich is the median wage earned by American
* programmers in that occupation in that cityinstead of finagling to pay
* only $57,762, the lowest wage allowed today. That would make employers
* think twice about whether they really "need" twice as many H-1B tech
* workers allowed into the U.S. each year, he says.
Again, the point is that the real salary savings comes from the
loopholes, in full compliance with the law, not the penny ante
violations DOL finds. In short: Employers don't have to violate the
law, because the law is so lavishly generous to them in the first place.
If you illegally cheat a worker out of $5,000, the DOL will swoop down
on you, but if you obey the law you can underpay the worker by $25,000.
Only in America!
So McGee had written on these issues twice, and not as short comments
but in extensive detail. She knew.
My other point is, what ever happened to journalists "following the
money," in the famous Watergate line? Why didn't McGee ask NFAP where
it gets its funding? Is NFAP really the "nonprofit, nonpartisan"
organization McGee says it is? Or is it funded by the American
Immigration Lawyers Association (or AILF, its foundation), the industry
lobbyists etc.? Anderson does NOT work for free, and his background
makes it pretty clear to most of us that his shop is a lobbyist setup:
NFAP is a one-man operation, that man being Stuart Anderson. And though
McGee describes the organization as "nonprofit, nonpartisan," that ain't
the same as impartial, folks. On the contrary, Anderson has been Mr.
H-1B for years. In Fall 1997 he wrote the pivotal report for the ITAA which
that lobbying group used to convince Congress to enact the first major H-1B
increase in 1998. In 2000 he then became a staffer for then-Senator
Spencer Abraham, and in that position Anderson authored the second major
H-1B expansion enacted by Congress. When Abraham's bid for re-election
failed that year (in part because of Abraham's support of H-1B),
Anderson then went to a top position in the Immigration and Naturalization
Service. As Washington Monthly reported in May 2002 (see
www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.confessore.html),
^ "The best analogy I can draw about Stuart Anderson is something that an
^ INS agent said to me: If you were going to hire someone to run the DEA,
^ you wouldn't pick somebody who favors legalizing drugs," says a top
^ Republican aide on the Hill. "And by putting Stuart Anderson in a
^ ranking position in the INS, you've essentially done the same
^ thing---you've got somebody who favors open borders running the agency
^ that regulates the borders."
Yes, technically NFAP is "nonprofit, nonpartisan"--after all, the
Democrats have been just as corrupted by industry campaign contributions
on the H-1B issue as the Republicans--but NFAP is absolutely not
impartial. And the Anderson "study" on which McGee bases this blog
shamelessly quotes others with highly vested interests (e.g. he quotes as an
authority lawyer Warren Leiden, not mentioning that Leiden has been one
of the immigration lawyers associations top lobbying forces on H-1B),
egregiously misrepresents data and so on.
We hear a lot these days that newspapers are dying because young people
don't read. Yes, some of that is indeed due to the younger set's
fondness for iPods, but a lot of it also stems from the fact that they
just plain don't trust the press. Well, why the heck should they?
Norm
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/12/is_the_h1b_visa.html
Is The H-1B Visa Cap Capping U.S. Innovation?
Posted by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, Dec 6, 2007 02:57 PM
Restrictions on visas for foreign IT pros to work in the United States will drive
more tech jobs and creativity offshore, says a new study released today. While
that argument isn't new, the report has a collection of government and other
stats to help back it up.
Opposition to -- and limitations in the H-1B and L-1 visa programs, especially
the annual cap on H-1B visas -- are largely based on "myths," says study by the
National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy
research organization that focuses on immigration and trade issues.
According to the key findings in the report,"Driving Jobs and Innovation
Offshore: The Impact of High Skill Immigration Restrictions on America," most
legit American companies do not hire H-1B visa workers as a means to get cheap
labor.
In fact, the report says "in examining all Department of Labor agency actions
between 1992 and 2004" related to allegations of underpayment of wages, "the
average amount of back wages owed to an H-1B employee was only $5,919." Not
exactly the tens of thousands of dollars H-1B critics often allege.
The report also finds that while opponents to raising the H-1B visa cap often
warn of serious American tech job losses by opening the "floodgates" to more
foreigners, "new H-1B professionals accounted for only 0.07% of the U.S. labor
force in 2006."
The 37-page study also highlights a number of other point/counterpoint arguments
in the debate about H-1B and L-1 visas and green cards. But the report's
conclusion is clearly stated.
"Further restricting the conditions under which companies can obtain H-1B and L-1
visas for skilled foreign nationals, even if done in exchange for a higher annual
limit on H-1Bs, is likely to result in less innovation and job creation in the
U.S. as companies are encouraged to hire more individuals outside the country."
So, what's your take on all this?