The Continuing Saga Of Jobs Americans Won't Do

Remember the post about the video that helpfully explains how high-tech employers could "search" for qualified native workers in such a way that the only person who could possibly qualify for the job was the  foreigner that they were trying to get an H-1B visa for?

Well, the story has mushroomed and made it into Business Week:

The video looks as though it could have been shot at almost any sleepy corporate seminar in the country, with one camera panning between a man in a suit and tie standing at a podium and others seated nearby. But the dialogue is riveting: It's a group of lawyers openly discussing strategies for helping their clients pretend that they're trying to recruit American workers—as required by law—while they, in fact, hire cheaper foreign workers...

"[O]ur goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker," says Lawrence Lebowitz, director of marketing for the Pittsburgh law firm Cohen & Grigsby, before an audience of employers at the firm's conference.

The video, which has been posted on YouTube (GOOG), is now sparking a sharp backlash. On June 21, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) fired off a letter to Cohen & Grigsby demanding an explanation for its advice, as well as going so far as to ask for the names of its clients...

The same day, the legislators wrote a separate letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. They asked for information about how the government is managing the program for temporary work visas, known as H-1Bs...Grassley and Smith then voice concern about the Labor Dept.'s failure to monitor fraud in the visa system, and they request a breakdown of exactly how anti-fraud dollars are spent.

The video may complicate the prospects for immigration reform this year. While most of the debate has been over what to do about low-skilled workers, including the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S., the policies for high-skilled workers are now becoming controversial, too. Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), Google (GOOG), Oracle (ORCL), Motorola (MOT), and a host of other leading technology companies have called for new policies to make it easier for skilled workers to come into the U.S., including by making available more H-1B visas.

The Cohen & Grigsby video was originally posted online by the law firm itself as a way to promote the conference. Then Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group for U.S. tech workers, took excerpts of the footage, edited them into a five-minute clip, and posted it on YouTube. The video has received tens of thousands of views so far...

Employers don't have to prove that they can't hire Americans to employ an H-1B visa worker. But if they want to sponsor that worker for permanent residency, then they need to take a series of steps to prove no U.S. worker is qualified, including placing ads in newspapers, reviewing résumés, and interviewing potential candidates. That employers appear to be gaming that part of the immigration system, with its higher hurdles, is disconcerting to some experts. "What's disturbing about this from a public policy standpoint is that the PERM is supposed to be the gold standard," says Ron Hira, professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology. "If you can circumvent those rules, it begs the question of what's going on elsewhere."

What surprises me is how naive people can be. Did anybody really expect employers not "to circumvent those rules"? Maybe it's time for some classic Adam Smith:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Comments

[Richard A.]

One can get confused over the difference between h-1b and the employer-sponsored green card. Here is Professor Matloff's explanation:
http://tinyurl.com/3y4jc3

Take notice of point 3:
3. The green card process takes several years. Since there is a
separate cap for each country, the wait is nationality-dependent. Since
India and China are the two biggest sources of foreign workers, waits
for those two nationalities are the longest. During that time, they do
not dare move to another employer, as it would mean starting the lengthy
process all over again. This makes them de facto indentured servants,
highly exploitable in salary, raises, working conditions and so on.

[D Flinchum]

"What surprises me is how naive people can be. Did anybody really expect employers not "to circumvent those rules"?"

What is great about this little video is not that it indicates that employers were systematically circumventing the laws regarding H-1B visas and not hiring US citizens for these jobs. This we who have followed this issue for a while mostly knew.

The great thing is that it removes the excuse that the MSM and our legislators like to have that "they just didn't know."

Kinda hard to say that now. Thanks Programmers' Guild!

[KauaiMark]

Let's have the government eliminate the yearly call for increasing the H-1B quota, charge $1m for each H-1B visa granted and charge a yearly fee of $100k to keep it.

I predict that companies would suddenly find lots and lots of "qualified" U.S. engineers.

This would be a win/win/win solution. More U.S. workers have jobs, the companies that still need imported workers could hire as many H-1B's as they could afford and the government gets a new income source to help offset the budget deficit.

(I wonder if "Carbon Life Form Offset Credits" would work in this situation. Quick, get Al on the phone!...)

[Tim Worstall]

I am slightly puzzled about how working out how to hire cheaper staff is either a conspiracy against the public or a contrivance to raise prices.
As it lowers costs it's a benefit to the public, no?

[Mark Vane]

Hi, Added a new value add to my blog this weekend - a news widget from www.widgetmate.com. I always wanted to show latest news for my keywords in my sidebar. It was very easy with this widget. Just a small copy paste and it was done. Great indeed.

[spencer]

Tim Worstall -- in the perfectly competitive model lowering cost will lead to lower prices that may benefit the public. But even in the perfectly competitive model the benefit may be higher profits at least in the short run. But in real life it is an unanswerable question.
The correct answer to your comment is it is unknown, not an automatic no.

[msms.ns]

I think that here is an area where contrasting with other countries is valuable. In Canada if a high tech company wants to sponsor you, then, thanks to the point system, they bring you in as a permanent resident (i.e., Green Card equivalent). In the US - because of both the H1B and the LONG time the INS takes to do the relatively simple paper work for the Green Card - companies always bring you in on an H1B, and then, after a time, will sponsor you for a Green Card. Most companies have both policies (i.e., what level executive needs to sign) and procedures (i.e., you must be with the company for 3 years) to make the switch. The question then is why isn’t Microsoft fighting for point based Green Cards as opposed to increasing H1B quotas. Surely not because the H1B give them 3-6 guaranteed years and the Green Card makes you a free agent...

[LRS]

When working for a database corp, every layoff of American developers, technical staff was followed by largehirings of HIB Visas and/or jobs sent to India, Communist China, etc. These countries are not friends of the US and yet they are being used to develope databases and software for Federal organizations like the DOD, DOT, etc. as well as local governments.

When I first started at this company, our cost-center had a dozen or so technical and non-tech consultants who were Americans and 2 from India. When I resigned 7 years later, I was one of 2 Americans and the remainder were from India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and China.

And were they better than the Americans? My manager asked if I would stay on to give the non-Americans additional training. My manager said that they were not too honest with their resumes. Additionally, Indian managers in the US were very bold in saying that in the US they would not hire anyone by Indians even if the American was more competent.

The people of these countries (including middle east countries, and Russia) are given preferential treatment within our universities (i.e. doctrate and master programs), at taxpayer expenses they are supported and helped through these programs and given jobs in places like Los Alamos, Livermore, and government sponsered research programs at our universities.

This is not a matter of not enough technical Americans. This is a matter of greedy corporations hiring cheap labor to increase their profits. Do you really think that they lower costs to the consumer? They just increase their profit margin.

It is like with fruits and vegetables. They take a proportionaly larger share of our paychecks than when I was younger in the 60's. I do not see that cheap illegal labor makes a benefit. I do see that the middle man has a larger piece of the pie, and we pay the price with higher vegetables and with the overhead of maintaining the illegal labour as cheap labor for the farming corporations, construction companies, etc. You know, jobs that Dianne Feinstein and company claim Americans won't do, being as lazy as Americans are, of course.

[Edward Holman]

Our political leadership has decided that society has embraced the concept of a massive and growing Welfare State, and that the redistribution of income and wealth brings with it a certain demobilization effect. No longer can we rely upon a mobile population willing to move and accept low-paying, difficult jobs hence, we must allow in (legally or illegally) 10 to 20 million workers who will mobilize and move to where the labor force is most needed.

Despite all the ranting, raving, jingoism, terror threats, whining and generally talking out of both sides of our mouths . . . we no longer have the will to stop paying our able-bodied adult citizens to NOT work, and we are unwilling to criminally punish employers who seek the undocumented worker.

The brass tacks are - with only 6.8 million counted as unemployed, we cannot run off 20 million employed, since we are paying another 20 million Americans to shun that type of work.

If the federal government refuses to even count its able-bodied on public assistance as unemployed, it is a safe bet that an Immigration bill that allows amnesty will ultimately be passed.

[adbot]

I think hiring a qualified worker for one's company is so important. It is like taking a great risk because that worker should help the company achieve its goals. About the H-1b visa worker, I think as long as a certain company could provide and afford it let it be. It's up to their decision to do it.

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