Opponents rail against high-tech work visas

SAN DIEGO -- In the debate over how many foreigners should be allowed to take high-tech jobs in the United States, the experiences of Martha Dennis and Jose Ramos serve as bookends.

In her former job as a vice president of engineering for a San Diego telecommunications company, Dennis came to regard the experience of trying to hire engineers as "a Kafka-esque nightmare." Faced with ever-fewer applicants of American birth and the bureaucratic labyrinth required to hire foreign workers, she wondered: "Why do we make it so difficult to integrate these very high-value individuals in our country?"

At the same time, Jose Ramos wondered how someone with a doctorate in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech University and eight years of experience needed three years of intense searching to find a decent job. Along the way he depleted his savings, occasionally deleted the Ph.D. from his resume so as not to appear overqualified, and often watched foreigners win positions he had sought.

"I think the problem is that, for the price of one U.S. citizen, they can bring in two engineers," said Ramos, 43, now an associate professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis.

Their experiences illustrate the political debate, once again before Congress, over the effect of allowing more foreign workers to gain a temporary foothold -- and a chance at a permanent place -- in the nation`s glowing Information Age economy.

Advocates say that admitting more highly skilled foreign workers will bring the best and the brightest workers to America, rather than to other nations such as Germany, South Africa and Malaysia that have recently announced plans to recruit them.

Opponents say it will contribute to a "race to the bottom," with immigrants undercutting American-born workers` wages and career prospects.

As the debate unfolds in Congress -- the focus is not on whether to allow in more temporary high-skilled workers from abroad, but how many and under what conditions -- researchers familiar with the new economy`s dynamics suggest that both visions of the effect of high-skilled foreign workers` presence may be correct.

"What you have is not an either-or situation," said Robert Bach, executive associate commissioner for policy, planning and programs at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "You have both. You have a demand for best and brightest up front and a race to the bottom over time."

Congress must decide whether to expand the sought-after H-1B visa, a three-year work visa -- renewable for a maximum of six years -- provided to highly skilled foreign workers, about two-thirds of whom are destined for jobs in information technology.

A maximum of 115,000 such visas are issued annually, but in each of the past four years, the cap has been reached long before year`s end. As a result, under various competing versions being offered in Congress, the number of such visas would be expanded to anywhere from 200,000 annually to an unlimited number. Various provisions also under consideration would set minimum wages for visa holders and require companies recruiting them to pay fees for educating and re-training U.S. workers.

The high-tech industry estimates that between 300,000 and 800,000 information technology jobs are going unfilled because qualified workers can`t be found. The Information Technology Association of America, a trade association, predicts that its businesses will create 1.6 million jobs this year, an increase of 16 percent, at a time when workers are already in short supply.

But the industry`s view of the labor shortage has skeptics.

"What high-tech employers really want is access to a relatively inexhaustible supply of labor having the appropriate skill sets, willing to work long and hard hours, at `reasonable wages` and conducting themselves in a relatively docile manner -- that is not fomenting too many activities of a pro-sort of union nature," said Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton University sociologist who has studied the trend. "If these conditions are not met, then there is an alleged worker shortage."

Espenshade said his research shows that, during the past three decades or so, wages for workers in science and engineering fields have declined 10 percent in real terms.

He concedes that high-technology workers receive forms of compensation, such as stock options, that don`t surface in such wage analyses but added: "I have the feeling that, when industry says that there`s a labor shortage, what they really mean is that their demand for labor is essentially insatiable at the wage that they would like to pay."

But Peter Larrabee, a San Diego immigration attorney, says he finds it impossible to believe that employers would prefer to recruit foreigners. "If you had an American to fill the job, why would you wait four months to fill the job, face higher relocation costs, lots of paperwork, and then have to go on to deal with the immigration headaches?" he said.

Some suggest the answer is money.

Alexandre Menezes, a Florida mathematician who speaks three languages fluently and has 20 years of experience in computer technologies, lost his job a year and a half ago when his office was closed in a corporate merger. Last month, he was offered a job for $60,000.

"I know that $60K is a lot of money for a lot of folks out there," he said. However, in 1991, his salary was $85,000, with bonuses boosting his pay to an average of $100,000 a year.

When Menezes pointed out the discrepancy, the recruiter replied, "You are lucky that we are offering you $60K yearly, since we have the option of getting somebody easily via H-1B visa for half that amount." Menezes was so offended that he chose to continue looking rather than accept the offer.

But he said he understood the recruiter`s stance. "He is right," Menezes said, "because the law of the land backs him up."

Holders of H-1B visas earn an average of $50,000 a year, below the information technology industry average. Recently arrived high-tech workers are three times as likely to be "contingent workers," employed by subcontractors that pay lower wages and do not give employees benefits, said B. Lindsay Lowell, director of research at Georgetown University`s Institute for the Study of International Migration.

Two-thirds of those who arrive with such visas want to stay and become permanent residents or citizens, he said. Lowell and others have argued that it is irresponsible to bring in more of these highly skilled temporary workers, with an implicit promise of permanent immigration status that can`t be met.

"Growing backlogs of H-1Bs in the queue for permanent admissions are one sure outcome, as are growing numbers of H-1Bs who had thought they could stay but are unable legally to do so," Lowell observed. The United States has quotas by country for the number of permanent work visas it issues, and a majority of the holders of the temporary visas issued to highly skilled workers are from Asian nations.

"The current system for granting permanent work visas is already strained beyond its capacity," Lowell said. And if the nation admits more H-1B visa holders, he predicted, "the system ... will make one more promise to immigrants that it cannot keep."

Some industry leaders have admitted that they will need to do more within the nation`s own borders to recruit and train the talent they seek.

Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, has argued that his industry needs to think less like the National Football League and more like professional baseball.

"The NFL doesn`t have a minor league. Instead, college football serves as its training ground," he said. "At its inception, the information technology industry could rely upon colleges and universities to train its work force.

"But now, the IT industry and others who employ IT workers need to be more like Major League baseball, which has a very heavy investment in the training system through the minor leagues."

The number of students pursuing science and engineering degrees is again on the rise since reaching its nadir in 1994, he said. But a growing percentage of those students, particularly those pursuing graduate degrees, are foreigners, who need master`s degrees or doctorates as an entryway into the U.S. work force.

There are those who think technology, which recognizes few borders, may exceed the grasp of any immigration policy.

"You can`t control technology. It has a life of its own, and that`s one of the lessons of history," said San Diego immigration attorney John Quinn.

Immigration laws are unlikely to protect U.S. workers from competition, he said, adding, "You will wind up competing with the Indian programmer whether he`s there or he`s here."

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